The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves)

[Selerik]

I shared this thread with Mrs. Selerik and she sends a bunch of hugs too. She relates to some of these stories as well, the one about setting timers and reminders really stood out to her because she does the same and thought that was what normal people do. She realized she doesn't actually know if that is normal or not.

[faraday]

@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

As a kid, I had a tendency to find something that interested me and just ignore everything else—including, sometimes, sleep—to do that thing. Reading, writing, coding, tinkering with electronics, etc. This would happen instead of my chores, sometimes instead of actually coming to dinner, etc. Meanwhile, things like chores or homework were really hard for me to get started (yay executive dysfunction!) until the eleventh hour, at which point I would work in a panic-induced state of intense focus.

Oh, yeah, totally relating to the hyperfocus. My family always teased me for being in my own little world with absolutely no sense of time passing. "I'll be there in a minute!" Hah. Yeah, no. And the last-minute thing? Same.

It's funny (ironic-funny not lol funny) now to see it from my kids' perspective. Alexa says the timer's up. "There's no WAY that was 30 minutes, Mom! No fair!" Like somehow I've managed to establish this secret code with Amazon where I say "Alexa set 30 minute timer" but it only sets 10 or something.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Ninjakitten said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

after about a minute I had devised a mental trick to let me remember the color/shape combinations so as to not miss many

Is this an ADD thing? I wasn't diagnosed until grad school, but I've always done this for all sorts of things and it never occurred to me until this moment that it might not just be 'normal'. >_>

Yes. You develop an array of coping skills because...you have to. When I was diagnosed, the doctor talkeda bout it, and she bet if I'd been tested as a kid my scores would have been much more extreme. There's a test where they attach an eye tracker/head tracker and make you do a tedious attention game and I was looking away and back with a shake of my head every couple of seconds - that's something I do to refocus on what is in front of me.

[Ninjakitten]

@Kanye-Qwest Now I kind of wonder if I do more of them than I even realise. I guess it's pretty likely I do. I don't think they had me do that particular test... I'd be interested to know if it'd turn up something like that but I'm not sure I'm quite interested enough to actually wish for a tedious attention game.

[Sparks]

@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

There's a test where they attach an eye tracker/head tracker and make you do a tedious attention game and I was looking away and back with a shake of my head every couple of seconds - that's something I do to refocus on what is in front of me.

This is the accursed QbTest I referred to, which my psychiatrist calls "the worst video game ever." (My psychiatrist is also ADHD, so firsthand understands how torturous that test is.)

Since I didn't want to move my head (as I'd been told a goal was to not move your head), my trick was to say under my breath what the shape/color was when it appeared; that made it far easier to focus on whether the next shape/color matched, without me glancing around/refocusing like that. (It was still super difficult not to look away from the screen. My neck and shoulders were so stiff from forcing myself not to move by the time it was done...)

But yes, as KQ said, developing coping/focusing tricks like that is very much an ADHD thing.

ETA: using timers is literally one of the three reasons I have a smartwatch. Being able to tap the button and say "set a timer for thirty minutes" or whatever keeps me functioning. When I don't set a timer, my tea ends up steeping for an hour or something instead of five minutes...

[Dreampipe]

I'd always kinda suspected that I had something wrong with my attention-span, but nobody else was quite so sure. I usually did alright in school and I could hold conversations with people when pressed, so I didn't show any surface level signs that made people immediately suspect something. My diagnosis didn't come till I was already deep into psych and therapist visits for other stuff.

My family has a long history of mental health issues. Bi-polar disorders, anxiety, anger issues, etc. I was getting blown up by a lot of these symptoms from ages 14-19. Sometimes I'd wake up crying and I'd never understand why. Sometimes I'd get so absent minded that I'd just be staring at someone and have no idea what they just said. It was contributing to some overall depression, and on top of that I could barely focus on the stuff I desperately wanted to at the time.

When I was 19 I fired a text off to my step-dad explaining my rampant suicidal tendencies, my actual attempts at suicide, and essentially saying "I don't want to live like this anymore, please help me". I didn't have the courage to call him on the phone, so, that was probably a very scary afternoon that he got that word salad of a message. Luckily he wasn't born into the carnival that the rest of my family was so, he took me very seriously and set me up with a psychiatrist immediately.

Psych had me getting medically tested for a lot of things after we started opening up all the cans of worms. I've had a lot of acronyms stamped on my brain since then. ADHD, MDD, PTSD and such. I told the relative I'm currently living with about that trio and they said, "Really? ADHD? You always seem to do alright at work things when you get into it."

I asked them what they thought about the Post-traumatic stress and major depressive and the response was, "Oh no I believe those, you're sad and traumatized all the time". THANKS AUNTIE, I love you too.

Over the course of the 3-4 years I've been in and out of psych offices they've tried treating me for my ADHD but really there just isn't a lot of stuff that's worked for me yet. I've been on Ritalin in the past but combine that with my anxiety medication and you get a really tweaked out me. Other shit I got going on takes priority than being inattentive or hyperactive from time to time. My medication also acts as a mood stabilizer though, so hey, we got one problem mostly under control.

I don't think I've ever had it quite as severely as most of the people in this thread. I got my GED, I didn't flunk out of classes when I needed to, I don't /always/ blow off friends because I go scatterbrained out of my control. But it's always kinda... there. And the fact that it's not omnipresent in everything I do makes it more difficult to really understand when I'm having an ADHD moment and when I'm just being friggin dumb. Which also makes it difficult to explain to people around me because I'm not usually like this so why am I like this now?

And it all just circles 'round and 'round. It's not so bad, I guess. I get stuff done eventually, I just don't get it done fast, or get it done with full concentration all the time. But stuff happens. I can be alright with that.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point but uh, I hope this kinda gives some insight from another person who's got ADHD baggage. Stuff's hard.

[Roz]

@Dreampipe said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

When I was 19 I fired a text off to my step-dad explaining my rampant suicidal tendencies, my actual attempts at suicide, and essentially saying "I don't want to live like this anymore, please help me". I didn't have the courage to call him on the phone, so, that was probably a very scary afternoon that he got that word salad of a message. Luckily he wasn't born into the carnival that the rest of my family was so, he took me very seriously and set me up with a psychiatrist immediately.

I don't know why this hit me so hard today but god bless your stepdad.

[Darinelle]

@Roz said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Dreampipe said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

When I was 19 I fired a text off to my step-dad explaining my rampant suicidal tendencies, my actual attempts at suicide, and essentially saying "I don't want to live like this anymore, please help me". I didn't have the courage to call him on the phone, so, that was probably a very scary afternoon that he got that word salad of a message. Luckily he wasn't born into the carnival that the rest of my family was so, he took me very seriously and set me up with a psychiatrist immediately.

I don't know why this hit me so hard today but god bless your stepdad.

+1 on this one.

The only therapist my parents ever took me to was one who was faith-based in the same faith I was struggling with and also a friend of the family so guess how much I ever talked about anything?

Yeah.

So. She diagnosed me with OCD based on a 5 minute multiple choice test and then kept asking me how I felt about my family life and my faith. Predictably, nothing got done and now here I am in my 40s trying to deprogram and figure out anything because of deep-seated trust issues and rampant paranoia. Threads like this where people actually get help and live better lives are what encourage me to keep trying.

[deadculture]

As someone who suffers from inattentive ADHD, I have to say it's very fascinating to hear these stories, particularly from other Inattentive types. It was an uphill battle to figure my shit out, and it continues to be, every day, but I'm happy with the progress I've made. Granted, the med I take is just legal amphetamines on an extended release capsule, but it helped.

[surreality]

Only child. Neighborhood where I grew up was mostly retirees at the time, with a whopping two other kids in the whole development for most of my childhood, until we got a third. (Woo!) You want the recipe for 'introvert able to amuse the shit out of themselves in creative ways', well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

In some ways, I'm grateful for my differently-functioning brain. It took me a very long time to appreciate the simple fact that I would have doubtless been the most bored and miserable, sickly child, otherwise. If I didn't amuse myself, well, nobody else was going to do it. In some ways, I was lucky to a fault. My family is full of creative nutters. As infuriating as they all are sometimes, it was at least something they understood in theory, and when I talk about 'I will always be an artist in some form or another even if it means starving in the street' it's something I count as a tick in life's win column simply because it is one thing I can do, and that would not be the case if there had been no support or understanding there. (There's a downside to this one, though, too. Because of course there is, right?)

Elementary school was hell, but I don't completely blame the ADD. The school where I landed first was... calling it a backwater would be a compliment. My parents were raised in 'good' Catholic schools; this wasn't one of them but they didn't grasp that at first. I was tiny for my age, and we'll just say I was lucky I was a girl, because I guess tiny was 'allowed'. A friend of mine since those days, also small, but male? They threatened to keep him in first grade purely because "He's too short for second grade." This is the level of 'whatever y'all are smoking, you're bastards for not sharing it with everyone else.'

Being small meant being physically pounded on regularly while the nuns blithely looked on without budging; if you came to them bloody and in torn clothes from being dragged across the parking lot by an ankle, though, by gods you were the problem, not the kids doing the dragging. This was a separate issue, but one extreme enough I still have spinal damage from it to this day, and the ADD compounded it.

Being 'untidy' or 'disorganized' or 'forgetful' was simply bad. Willfully, intentionally bad, and could be nothing else. Once you were 'the bad kid', forget any hope of help. Forget the chance that anything going wrong is not completely and wholly your fault. That kid who turns around and smacks you so hard in the head you spit out a baby tooth while you're reading? Well, you shouldn't be such a bad kid, and these things wouldn't happen to you!

I remember 'the nice teacher' simply dumping my desk over onto the floor and telling me to organize the mess all through second grade. I remember other students stealing supplies that still had my name written on them in sharpie, and being told I was the bad one for not having them/'being unprepared'; any other possibility was unthinkable to everyone with any authority to do anything whatsoever to help. It spiraled, badly. Kids are not stupid. When even the authority figure indicates in some fashion it's acceptable to treat someone badly, they know it's just fine for them to do it, too, and there won't be consequences for it.

Then, because it was the way things were done there and then, when it was time for report cards, it would get worse. They had the 'socialization section', and by gods, do I hope that's gone the way of the dodo, and I was so grateful when, years later, public school had no such fucking thing. I was sick of 'doesn't live up to potential' by the time I was six. Every single box there was to check was marked 'Unsatisfactory' save for hygiene. To this day, the word 'Unsatisfactory' makes me want to spit and punch whoever's mouth it comes out of reflexively.

No, I actually don't want to 'make friends' when that very clearly means 'let people hit me or jump up and down on my back while I'm face down on asphalt'. Who the hell would? When a five year old knows this isn't the kind of 'friend' you want to have... If only the Evil Overlord List existed back then, is what I guess I'm saying here.

This is already long and this is... up to fourth grade. Everything from there gets so much worse for the next two year period I need to stop writing a while and just breathe and tinker with graphics for a little bit before even trying to tackle it.

[faraday]

@surreality said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

In some ways, I'm grateful for my differently-functioning brain. It took me a very long time to appreciate the simple fact that I would have doubtless been the most bored and miserable, sickly child, otherwise.

I agree. I like this lady's video about that. She say ADHD is related to the "novelty-seeking gene" and actually can be advantageous to society in many ways. Just not, y'know, sitting in a school desk all day. I don't know the science she's citing, if it's bunk or not, but I like the idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWxmEv7fOFY

[Ninjakitten]

@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

my trick was to say under my breath what the shape/color was when it appeared

That is definitely the sort of thing I do, yeah. And patterns and rhymes and rhythms and associations and sometimes just repeating the word or list over and over in my head, though if something pulls me out of that and I didn't have something to rebuild it like a pattern I spotted/created then it's probably mostly gone.

ETA: using timers is literally one of the three reasons I have a smartwatch.

For a long time I had a watch with a dedicated timer button, and a row of marks across the top. 30 20 15 10 5 3 1. Every time you hit the button it went up one level, so if you wanted five minutes, just press the button three times. 15? Five times. And it was small and round and plain black and when I put a leather band on it it didn't even look like a digital at a glance. I really miss that watch. It was ridiculously useful to me through high school and college.

[saosmash]

I'm impressed with all of you sharing your stories. I'm sorry I don't really feel comfortable enough with mine to share it in a broad way right now. I have a weird diagnosis that is neither fish nor fowl and the short version is that I am frustrated about it. I'm being treated instead for the concomitant depression and anxiety that come with being an untreated neurodevelopmental problem.

[deadculture]

@saosmash It gets better. Takes time, but it gets better.

[Darinelle]

@saosmash You don't owe anyone your story. It's perfectly okay to just sit there and lurk and know that you're not alone in struggling to be whoever you are.

[Auspice]

@Darinelle said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@saosmash You don't owe anyone your story. It's perfectly okay to just sit there and lurk and know that you're not alone in struggling to be whoever you are.

[saosmash]

Aw. Thanks guys.

[surreality]

...the early 'therapy' was pretty much awful. This is that 'back when' section that, uh, Gany, please skip this?

I saw an audiologist for years, starting in first grade. This was a day a week (or every two weeks) when I'd go into a tiny soundproof room for an hour, with giant heavy-ass headphones plunked on my wee noggin, and they'd play special recordings made of multiple conversations all layered over one another. I would either have to write down something dictated to me over a loudspeaker sent into the room, if the audiologist was in the booth section, or answer questions on a timer to her when she was in the room to ask them. I have a fucked up combination of 'very sensitive hearing' and 'an inability to filter background noise', so they thought. Well, I do have pretty damned sensitive hearing, but the 'inability to filter background noise' is one of those things that's related to ADD. Whee, right? All of this was to 'train my brain' to filter the background noise, and that was not going to happen. Did anybody explain this to me as a kid? Nope. All I knew as a kid was that I was going into a little white padded room, having noise blared into my ears, while a stranger asked me to take notes and answer questions on a timer. Want to confuse the shit out of a kid? Try this. (No, really, don't. Ever.) Still hate crowds. Hate them. Too much of it and it's right back to the white closet with the vinyl-padded headphones from hell in my head. No thanks!

Since hyperactivity wasn't a factor for me, and the 'can ADD exist without hyperactivity?' was a ping-pong match at the time, and my hearing was trippy (vision, too), they tried 'hypersensitivity'. I am super sensitive to light/color and loud noises, so they weren't completely wrong there, but it wasn't the issue. Treatment for hypersensitivity is varied, and in addition to the above, there was a lot of physical stuff, most of which involved sitting on a mat (looking just as confused) as a therapist poked me with everything from feathers to those little needle-wheel things. (Pattern drafting class was surreal to a fault, y'all.) Again, no explanation, beyond, "We don't want you to flinch when your parents hug you!" Well, again, maybe just don't touch people who don't want to be touched? How is this not a complete answer?

I think I was dangled off of, spun on, swung on, swung from, bent, spindled, and confused on every weird object in that gym-like room. I won't pretend that some of it wasn't kinda fun, because they had neat weird swing things and I liked swinging and spinning as a kid. (To this day, if I'm stressed, I will still spin the chair back and forth some.)

About once a month, there were puzzles of all sorts, and testing that I'd have to ask about to even guess at its purpose.

There's a fairly fucked up situation this all creates, in combination with what's mentioned previously: this isn't helping, it's scary, and there's no one who will help. They probably won't even listen. This is a fucked up thing to come to understand by the end of first grade, especially when you see the same pattern repeat itself endlessly. The end result is this: there was no place, and no person, that was 'safe'. No one, and nowhere. Help was not coming, even if there were people there who earnestly believed they were helping and trying to help. (Then, you're just ungrateful, too.)

There's a reason I say listening is so important. Really listening. 'Ignore everything the kid says and plow along no matter what while keeping the kid completely in the dark' doesn't work, no matter how smart you are, or how smart the people making suggestions are.

A person is not the right place for the 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' approach. You can demolish a wall and start over if you have to. It doesn't work that way with people.

[faraday]

Thinking about this today while on the support chat with Verizon.

Online chat/RP with ADD:

• Read message.
• Start thinking about reply.
• Get distracted.
• Some random amount of time later... "Did I reply to that? Crap."

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

...the early 'therapy' was pretty much awful. This is that 'back when' section that, uh, Gany, please skip this?

It's all right. My little girl is already in speech therapy, and it is doing wonders. She does have sensitive hearing, and the combination of hyperlexia, speech delay, and energy makes her frustrated in school. As far as I can tell, the problem isn't really with her: it's with adults who she is unfamiliar with or has no respect for.

So, she's pretty much a velociraptor.