ADD

So a while back I offhandedly joked that I must be a bit ADD because I constantly fidget in church and I always have a bunch of unfinished projects around.

Then the time-before-last when I was at Emily's I was sitting there in the library waiting for the computer to warm up and glanced at the books on the shelf beside me and randomly chose one called something like ADD in Adults.

I flipped through it and there was a test to take to see if you have ADD.

I took it. And I cannot tell you how bizarre it was, as a 40-something mom and minister's wife, to mentally check off symptom after symptom. 40% is a positive diagnosis, said the book, and I was about 60%.

Obviously that piqued my curiosity and I did some research online. Now I will grant that a lot of these ADD sites have a not-so-hidden agenda of making money, so I took them with a grain of salt. But still. It is a strange thing to have your daily struggles delineated there, one after the other, with an actual name for them.

One website listed the following symptoms, all of which describe me to a T:

• Procrastination; difficulty getting started on projects
• Excessive disorganization and messiness
• Inability to prioritize tasks
• Underestimating the time needed to finish a task
• Difficulty sustaining effort over long periods of time
• Starting multiple tasks, but never completing any of them
• Missing deadlines
• Inability to screen out distractions
• "Zoning out" when others are talking
• Randomly skipping from topic to topic in conversation
• Forgetting appointments
• Constantly losing or misplacing things
• Low tolerance for frustration and stress
• restlessness, nervous energy

with these results:

• have a hard time organizing projects and delegating work,
• have difficulty completing projects on time,
• spend hours at work, but get very little done,
• get distracted by trivial tasks, while neglecting the most important ones

Other sources listed things like "white rabbit" syndrome, of always running faster and faster and getting farther behind, and "spider thinking," with one's thoughts skittering rapidly in all directions and not in any sort of order. Then there's hypersensitivity to noises and temperature, family/personal history of depression and other mental disorders, and a long list more that describes me far too well.

My biggest struggle has always been with housework, and I have always felt like a freak for this. Other women seem to have this mysterious magic way of just getting it done and having time for other things, while I feel like I can work all day and not get anything done and I am always, always, behind and most of the time it feels completely overwhelming.

[A situation that is not helped, lately, by never being at home. Sigh]

Anyway, this is a whole new thought, and a rather nice one, that maybe there is actually an issue with how my brain works, and it has a name, and there are concrete ways of coping with it.

As opposed to a moral issue, and a matter of just making up my mind once and for all to be more like my sister instead of so lazy and undisciplined and scatterbrained, and all the other lovely messages my frustrated parents fed into my head because they had no tools for dealing with me, and I have to say I feel more sorry for them than for me.

It has been gratifying to read how-to-cope websites and find things that I've already learned to do, such as using timers to keep myself on task for 15 minutes at a time, and making detailed lists. [My lovely sisters used to find my lists and giggle at how detailed they were, and then add "breathe" and "go to the bathroom" and other necessary items that I had "forgotten".]

And it has also been gratifying to find that there are definite gifts that go with ADD, including--
(Quote from this site)

• Creativity – People with ADD excel at thinking outside of the box, brainstorming, and finding creative solutions to problems.
  
• Enthusiasm and spontaneity – People with ADD are free spirits with lively minds—qualities that makes for good company and engrossing conversation.
• A quick mind - People with ADD have the ability to think on their feet, quickly absorb new information (as long as it’s interesting), and multitask with ease. Their rapid-fire minds thrive on stimulation.
  

Hyperfocus: A Positive Symptom of ADD / ADHD

While adults with ADHD have great difficulty maintaining attention, those same individuals often are able to “hyperfocus” for long periods of time on tasks or projects that they find interesting. When they’re “in the zone,” people with ADD often lose all concept of time. Hours pass as if they are minutes. This single-minded ability to hyperfocus can lead to significant accomplishments, discoveries, and creative breakthroughs.

(End of quote but I can't turn off the italics for some reason)

I am not saying, of course, that this is a definitive diagnosis and an excuse for everything. I am just saying it is a very cool thing to find words for vague things and names for nameless things and real people that share in something that can feel alone and shameful and secret.