Living with Inattentive ADD

Ok so I have plenty of time to do what I'm suppose to do. Today, unbelievably my children have been great and just doing their own thing. So, I help them paint, check my email, do some dishes, do some laundry and it's only 11AM.

My house is a mess from Christmas but I don't know what to do with all of the new toys and things and I just look at it and feel frozen.

Now a non-ADDer would just calmly look at the room and say well this can go here and this can go there but with my brain...it just feels scrambled and starts to shut down.

Then I go looking for sugar or caffeine to see if that will help but it doesn't. It just makes me gain more winter weight which makes me more depressed. Thus the cycle continues. I feel frustrated, bored and I feel like I either want to do something fun and stimulating or go to sleep.

I attempt to do something fun but feel guilty and actually my mind is too fuzzy to be creative and make jewelry which is what I love to do. I can't sleep because I have two children and a husband who already thinks I am wacko so I'm trying to prove to him that I can function well. I am trying my hardest I just can't get over the hump of attacking things that seem so overwhelming to me.

What's funny is that I can concentrate on writing and it's actually soothing. But...then it appears that I am lazy and just play on my computer half of the time.

I wanted to post some things up on my Etsy shop to sell but my mind wasn't clear enough to do it.

This is really frustrating and makes one just want to scream. Forget about the people around you they are thinking "What in the world is wrong with her!"

So I can't say that I didn't have time to do the things I should have or wanted to it was just that my brain wasn't cooperating. IT"S SOOOOOO FRUSTRATING!!!

Well, it's 4:24PM and there are only 3.5 hours until my kids go to bed but then what?
I watch a tv program, fold laundry or do dishes and then go to bed where my mind is finally at rest but it is not because it's already worrying about all of the overwhelming things to tackle in the morning. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

How many people can relate to this?
If only I had one full day of my brain functioning at peak performance oh what I could accomplish!

Please leave some feedback and share your stories. I would love to hear them!
Jennifer

I read this this morning. Well...I may have "scanned" it but there is a lot of information that I can relate to and it's a very interesting article and mentions ADD and depression too.

Here it is:

Are You a Scanner?
By Barbara Sher

"I can never stick to anything."

"I know I should focus on one thing, but which one?"

"I lose interest in things I thought would interest me forever."

"I keep going off on another tangent."

"I get bored as soon as I know how to do something."

"I can't stand to do anything twice."

"I keep changing my mind about what I want to do and end up doing nothing."

"I work at low-paying jobs because there's nothing I'm willing to commit to."

"I won't choose a career path because it might be the wrong one."

"I think everyone's put on this earth to do something; everyone but me, that is."

"I can't pay attention unless I'm doing many things at once."

"I pull away from what I'm doing because I'm afraid I'll miss something better."

"I'm too busy, but when I do find time I can't remember what I wanted to do."

"I'll never be an expert in anything. I feel like I'm always in a survey class."

If you've ever said these things to yourself, chances are good that you're a Scanner, a very special kind of thinker. Unlike those people who seem to find and be satisfied with one area of interest, you're genetically wired to be interested in many things, and that's exactly what you've been trying to do.

Because your behavior is unfamiliar -- even unsettling -- to the people around you, you've been taught that you're doing something wrong and you must try to change. But what you've been told is a mistake -- you have been misdiagnosed. You're a different creature altogether.

What you've assumed is a disability to be overcome by sheer will is actually an exceptional gift. You are the owner of a remarkable, multi talented brain trying to do its work in a world that doesn't understand who you are and doesn't know why you behave as you do.

And unless you know who you are, you're going to agree with them! Not only would that be unfair and inaccurate, it could prevent you from developing your gifts and making your contribution to the world. The stakes are very high.

Identifying yourself as a Scanner means changing the way you see yourself in the world. It starts with understanding that you should stop trying to fit into the accepted norm at once and begin learning about who you really are. To help you build the productive future you were designed for, you need a set of instructions. That's what I've tried to create in this book.

What is a Scanner?

Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. (You'll notice I didn't use the word "or," because Scanners don't love to do one thing or the other; they love them all.)

A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again. One Scanner I know proudly showed me a button she was wearing that said, "I Did That Already."

To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.

It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe they're allowed to pursue only one path. But they want them all. If they force themselves to make a choice, they are forever discontented. But usually Scanners don't choose anything at all. And they don't feel good about it.

As kids, most Scanners had been having a great time! At school no one objected to their many interests, because every hour of every student's school day is devoted to a different subject. But at some point in high school or soon after, everyone was expected to make a choice, and that's when Scanners ran into trouble. While some people happily narrowed down to one subject, Scanners simply couldn't.

The conventional wisdom was overwhelming and seemed indisputable: If you're a jack-of-all-trades, you'll always be a master of none. You'll become a dilettante, a dabbler, a superficial person -- and you'll never have a decent career. Suddenly, a Scanner who all through school might have been seen as an enthusiastic learner had now become a failure.

But one thought wouldn't leave my mind: If the world had just continued to accept them as they were, Scanners wouldn't have had any problems. With the exception of learning project management techniques, the only thing Scanners needed was to reject conventional wisdom that said they were doing something wrong and claim their true identity. Almost every case of low self-esteem, shame, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, indecisiveness, and inability to get into action simply disappeared the moment they understood that they were Scanners and stopped trying to be somebody else.

It appears that Scanners are an unusual breed of human being. One reason they don't recognize themselves is that they don't often meet people like themselves.

How do you know if you're a Scanner?

Maybe it would be useful to first discuss who isn't one.

Who isn't a Scanner?

Well, specialists aren't Scanners, obviously. If you're someone who is happy being completely absorbed by one field, I've labeled you a Diver. Some clear examples of Divers are professional musicians, scientists, mathematicians, professional chess players, athletes, business owners, and financiers. These people may "relax" with a hobby, but they're rarely passionate about anything but their field.

In fact, Divers often wonder how people can be interested in anything but what they're interested in. Sometimes they even make fun of themselves for it, like the racing bicyclist Tim Krabbé described in The Rider, who glances up from his gear to look at people walking and says, "Nonracers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

By contrast, Scanners rarely think what other people are doing is empty. They're always curious to know "what's out there" and love to poke their noses into just about anything. A Diver rarely spends a moment wondering what he might be missing when he's totally absorbed in his field. On the other hand, 99 percent of Scanners spend a lot of time scanning the horizon, thinking about their next move.

Many people look like Scanners, but aren't

People who continually move from one idea to another often have very different reasons for doing so. Some are simply trying to make up their minds, and when they find the "right" choice, they can easily give up all the other ideas they considered.

Others move between ideas for reasons that surprised me when I first heard them. Here are some examples.

I spent years frustrating myself and everyone around me with my constant jumping from one thing to another. What I learned about myself eventually is that I knew deep down what I should be doing all along, but was simply too scared to commit myself to it. The constant stream of alternative ideas was simply an advanced avoidance technique.

I think I've always avoided what I really want to do because I was afraid I'd be mediocre, or fail completely, so I'd keep changing my mind before I produced anything that could be judged.

Depressed people often make the mistake of believing they're Scanners. Depression can create a fractured consciousness that doesn't allow one to pay attention to anything for long, and some depressed people believe that the cause of their depression is their inability to find something they can care about intensely. But the reverse is usually true: They can't care about anything because they're depressed. One of the main symptoms of depression is the inability to feel desire. A woman who had experience with depressed people told me:

The types of attention span problems that have to do with depression are quite different than job-interest attention spans. When you get so you can't read a book (and even newspaper articles are too complicated to remember from start to finish), you can't pay attention during a conversation, and you have no idea where your keys and wallet are when usually you know exactly where you put them, then you need to talk to somebody about therapy and medication, both of which work wonders.

And then we have ADD. Before knowing who they were, many Scanners assumed that their "problem" might be attention deficit disorder (ADD), simply because everyone assumed that being interested in lots of things was a form of distraction. In my experience, I've found that many Scanners actually do have ADD, but they are true Scanners all the same. I've also met people with diagnosed ADD who appear to be Scanners but are not. Once you understand that a bona fide Scanner has no problem with the normal ability to focus (as opposed to ADD-style hyper-focus), the confusion with ADD usually clears up.

I'm a Scanner and have been diagnosed with ADD. And I can tell you that nothing is clearer than the difference between feeling stuck because I'm having an ADD attack -- that is, my mind is in a fog and I have trouble remembering what I'm doing -- and being stuck for the typical Scanner reasons of being attracted to so many things that I can't figure out which project to reach for next.

Of course, there are many people who are quite content in their fields and have a few normal interests in addition, such as a lawyer who enjoys cooking and travel, or an advertising art director who collects antiques. But there's a noticeable difference between someone with a normal range of interests and a Scanner.