I have lived
with noise in my head. Lots of noise. Some of it is really fun, some of it is
terribly distracting. I am easily side tracked by the shiney, the
humorous, the odd and out of place. Perhaps you can relate? I used to be
so distractible that it would take me roughly an hour a day to sort through all
the stimuli I encountered. Some people instinctively pick up
what they need to know in order to survive. I was not that
person. Every single day, I would replay the various conversations,
silent interactions, information gathered from print, TV, Facebook, and pull
out what was needed. I then tried to organize THAT information into some
sort of coherent filing system and world view. Most people have something
like this in place. For me it was intentionally picking through the pile of information for about an hour, and then
filing it away purposefully, carefully, with a very specific label.
Unfortunately, during these ‘filing’ times, crippling emotions and other
things would jump out of closets and drawers when I least expected
it. Surprise! This would often send me shaking and hiding to some
corner of my own mind clutching every emotional defense mechanism I had in my
possession. But life doesn’t stop when I am hiding in the corner.
My ‘in box’ grew large, right along with new emotional companions –
“overwhelmed” and “extremely frustrated”. In short, life was just
exhausting. All.the.time. And truthfully, it didn’t feel much like
life. It felt like survival.
About 4 years
ago I decided to hunt down my terrifying emotions. I was running
from all emotions at this point, not just the threatening ones. The really ugly ones:
Shame, Pain, and Isolation, became a pack and started dogging my every step.
So I decided to hunt them back. I knew of two instance in my life where
these emotions feasted and I thought it logical to start there. But I was
going to need help. I enlisted a kind counselor named Ruth. We
never much got to the emotional stuff. After one conversation with me, she strongly suggested I
get tested for ADD. I nodded politely as I tried to mentally locate my rolodex
of other counselors I could call – clearly this one was off her rocker… but
then got distracted by the light reflecting off her picture frames in just the
same way as this one picture I studied in college, by….Kandinsky? he was
in the modern group right? Remember that time at MOMA in NY….SOUNDS Like
boats in the Harbor…….And that dog the lady was walking on the Brooklyn
Promanade….NY…airplanes…Ear popping altitude…I really hate
falling….Crashing….remember how you thought being boiled alive would be awful
last week in the bath when it was too hot?...SNORKLING…I should try that
sometime….GLITTERING fish like the lights on the picture frame….WHAT??
Sorry…did you just say something?? ADD? Me? No. I graduated
college thanks. People with ADD have….real problems. Mine are just in my
head.
Ruth must
have seen these thoughts, or maybe she just saw the glazed over look in my
eye. Whatever it was, she wasn’t buy it. “Ever need help cleaning
your room? Organizing?” I physically
winced. How did she know that?? I spent so much time hiding the fact I didn’t ‘have
it together’, it may seem dumb to you organized reader, but it felt like an awful
thing I had to keep quiet. The shame
around this was immense. Labels like “lazy”,
“dirty” and “never going to get it right” seemed to fit the bill as the chaos I lived in
each day re-enforced these negative perceptions. I broke down twice and accepted help
organizing my stuff. There is nothing like coming to the acknowledge your limitations,
not to mention the amount of time you spend making sure that your bedroom door
is securely shut. My intensely organized roommates had taken pity on me and offered to
help me ‘find a place for everything’. They are a compassionate pair of
people, and I love them dearly. We went through everything I owned.
Luckily by hour three, they stopped asking why they found banana peels in my sock
drawer, and where gracious when they discovered power tools next to my dental
floss. I would often get distracted
while putting things away and stash things wherever I could find a place. So
the roommates dove in with gusto. They set aside verbal judgment, and simply
began throwing things away. It was in that moment that I knew they truly loved
me. Me and my crap didn’t fit into their ordered world, but instead of
kicking me out, they simply helped me organize it. For eight and half hours.
And laughed with me while they did it. This could be a blog on how much
that spoke to me of their love and care, but that’s a blog for another day. (I
still get distracted, but now it’s just with the good stuff;) ).
Back to
Counselor Ruth who is waiting me to answer her question: yes.
Yes I have had to ask for help for basic organizational skills. Ruth
carefully explained to me that some people will go undiagnosed because they weren't seen as "failing" in school. They are coping with some success. They are often A-B
students, who struggle to figure out how to “do life” as an adult. Many
will lose jobs and have damaged relationship because of this. Others will
create ways of floating under the radar, using creative problem solving to ‘get
by’. A very small portion of adults will use ADD’s super-secret gift of
“hyper focus” to propel them into next steps, and tenaciously get projects
done. Not all people are driven by taskmasters. Some are just
incapable of stepping outside the hyper-focus slip stream. Once outside it
however, chaos generally reigns supreme.
I conducted a brief
poll of my nearest and dearest, and then I consented to testing. After a
battery of listening tests, and IQ tests, and other learning difficulty
testing, I had my answer- I scored above average!....on the ADD
continuum. What this means as that I have ADD in the moderate to severe
range. Because of other compensation, I
was never diagnosed until I was an adult.
I give you details
of this discovery because I didn’t see
ADD in my life until I saw examples. I
needed to see ADD in a ‘normal adult’s ‘ life .
I was never hyperactive kid or a 'problem' (unless I wanted to be). I didn’t struggle with self control – in fact
I was usually slow to act on things. I never had a clue. If
I hadn’t been diagnosed four years ago, I would have had a really rough go of
things, and probably wouldn’t be where I am now- a place where noise has
quieted and precision is possible. More on that next time.
