ADD

3 min geek

As of Thursday, August 27, 2015, I:

[ ] Have
[ ] Have Not

been diagnosed with ADD.

This has been a very long journey.

What is ADD?

NIMH describes ADHD as:

one of the most common childhood disorders and can continue through adolescence and adulthood. Symptoms include difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior, and hyperactivity (over-activity).

By their criteria, they would probably consider me to be of the “Predominantly inattentive” subtype. I never really displayed the hyperactive component, even as a kid. Some heath professionals prefer to think of it as two separate disorders: ADHD, with hyperactivity, and ADD, without. There seems to be some disagreement about this, and some professionals even don’t like the term "Deficit," explaining that it’s more "Attention Inconsistency," as many people with the disorder exhibit the ability to "hyper-focus" at times, in addition to being completely distractible at others.

About Me

The first thirty-eight years

I have gone back through and tagged several posts in my blog history with ADD, that most prominently demonstrate what I think are related to (potentially) having ADD. If you’re curious to dig into them, it may give you some historical background about the ways that the disorder shows up in my brain. If you just want the tops five, they are (in order of importance):

While these blog posts only go back to 1999, I’ve certainly had this ever since I was a kid, even if it wasn’t diagnosed.

[Spring Ridge pod story] — so my mother was definitely aware of my tendency to get distracted easily, even if she couldn’t put too fine a point on it. ADD wasn’t really widely discussed publicly when I was a kid — a number of professionals even expressed doubts that it was a disorder at all, and once it entered public knowledge, it was as a disease that only affected children, and that hyperactivity was the major component.

Since then, medical research and trials have proven that there is a neurological component regarding an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain, and that there is a subtype of the disorder that doesn’t exhibit the hyperactive symptoms at all.

That’s me.

I’ve dealt with this for so long, trying to find systems to deal with the way my brain works, trying every system of lists and day-planners, and productivity software out there. I always felt, if I try this new organizational system, maybe this time, it will finally be the one that works, and my life will change for the better. But after an initial burst of focus (probably related to the novelty of the new system), I’d fall back in to the same old habits. It has always felt that I somehow just needed to try harder to control myself, but that it takes way more effort than it should need to to get myself to focus for any extended length of time.

Seattle

  • moving, SAD, never felt like I had depression before, talked to AAl, got help, 3 sessions, AAl recommended his guy, he wasn’t taking new patients, let it slide, the events of "Stream" (above) led me to think about it again, asked AAl, he got a referral for me, made an intake evaluation appointment 3 weeks out (only time available)

  • he gave me a list of books, D2D, laughing in recognition, anxious for appointment to come, just want to KNOW for sure.

I found myself thinking that I really hoped that I had ADD, or something that would explain the way my brain worked, because another diagnosis of “You just didn’t try hard enough” would be incredibly depressing, because I’ve tried REALLY FUCKING HARD.