For Adults with ADHD
Past Letters #5
Letter from the ADD Adult Support Group Leader:
September 1st, 2004
ADD Adults and Adult Support Group Members,Hello. I hope that you all had an enjoyable summer. The summer brings many challenges for those with ADHD, including irregular schedules and the distractions of nice weather. I hope that you all felt more of the joys of summer then the challenges.
My summer seemed to have brought me into a greater awareness of how ADD affects our awareness of ourselves, even when taking medications. You may not have realized this, but ADD symptoms often include a resistance to absorbing certain specific new ideas. Who knows why, but we seem to set our selves against listening to this idea or that, without realizing that we’ve turned ourselves off to it.
Let me see if I can explain this. I have seen this behavior most clearly when I have told someone who seems to have ADD that I think they might have it. Once I have stated to the individual that I think they may have ADD, many times their first reaction is “Oh, I don’t have that.” An immediate and complete resistance to this new idea. I start to list the symptoms and they shake their head for a while “No, I’m not ADD.” But after a certain number of symptoms suddenly they go “Wait, that sounds like me!”
The characteristic I’m trying to illustrate is that first initial resistance. Let me try another illustration. An individual with ADD might have decided that they can’t buy a new computer until they have saved $1000. He gets an unexpected bonus $200 taking his savings to $600. His wife suggests, why don’t we go ahead and buy it now? But he’s not going to do it, or hear her. He can’t see past his original decision that he must have $1000 to buy the computer, and nothing the wife might say about buying it early will register. You will hear loved ones say, ‘Unless I put it exactly the right way or say it enough times, she/he won’t hear me.’
My own example of this is the fact that my medication has recently stopped working so well for me. I apparently have been demonstrating increased irritability and aggressiveness. My family has spent the summer trying to communicate this to me, but looking back at their communication I can see how I did not hear them. When it finally got through it left me wondering, ‘Why did it take me so long to listen?’ And having seen this exact type of behavior in other of my ADD friends, I think it may be a very common thing that we do.
As people with ADD I think we need to increase our awareness this behavior in ourselves. I think it profoundly affects our relationships with others, when our loved ones want the best for us but can’t get their message through. Like everything in ADD this is something to accept about ourselves, to work with - not to judge. But I think every one of us would find it helpful to examine and try to find instances in our lives where we are doing this. ADD seems to be a paradoxical mix of being open to ideas on one hand, and totally resistant to them on the other. Maybe if we become more aware, we can notice when we are being resistant and move ourselves into our more open way of being.
As always, I send you all of my best wishes as you continue to grow in your ADD skills and knowledge.
Regards,
Lauren Torres
Adult Support Group Leader