I had SUCH a hard time focusing this week. I actually stayed up until five AM working on a paper today. Then I woke up late for work and made a power point presentation at work, went to class and presented my paper, then wrote another paper (which was a page too short) went to that class and came home. I couldn't focus, had trouble staying on task, and kept doing other things.
I came home and read an article on adult ADHD.
I remember when I came to grad school I was doing so well when I made sure I had a normal sleep pattern and ate regular meals. In addition, I need to manage my time with that awesome day planner I spent forever looking for and really organize myself.
A girl I work with was talking to me the other day when I mentioned my problems with ADHD and she said 'ADHD, is that really real?' Let me be the first to say, for every single one of you who might ask the same questions:
I am not just lazy, unintelligent, unmotivated, or any other excuse you have for ADHD. I have a condition which causes me to have difficulty focusing and controling impulses. When I work on something, a million new ideas and other tasks are flowing through my mind at once. Half the time I stay up late it's because I think "hey, I always wondered about [insert obscure thing here], let's research this!" or "Hey, I want to look at some pictures of puppies, let's go to flickr!" It's something called hyperfocus. This is when people with ADHD are working on a task and get extremely focused on a minor detail, like when I was putting up the sticky notes for my paper and was concerned with aligning them perfectly, or when cleaning my room I decide to meticulously arrange and go through the beads in my bead box. It's compulsive behavior that is terribly hard to pull myself away from. While working on something in hyperfocus, I often think "this is not big picture, I need to move on to something else" but I don't.
My mother's answer to this problem is more meds, which may work for other people. For me, I want to learn to control these impulses myself. I was medicated for most of my life and it involved not only remembering to take a pill every day and sometimes twice a day but also frequent check-ups with a psychiatrist to maintain dosage, EKGs to make sure the medicine wasn't messing up my heart, and exhorbitant amounts of money for all of these. In addition, the last medication I was on (when I was eighteen) made me feel foggy, tired, and slur my words when I didn't get enough sleep. I am trying to simplify my life and take the minimum amount of medication possible (which, with allergies, asthma, and an iron defficiency is still a lot), so I am trying to keep from going on meds.
The thing is, it is SO hard to take care of myself when I constantly have to justify that 1) ADHD exists and 2) I have it. I guess the inattentive component is harder to identify.
So yes, I know this is a hot-button issue, and I know it's overdiagnosed, but know that many people like me do have it, it's real, it's NOT an excuse, and we have to develop all new strategies for performing tasks that you can do without a second thought.
The End.
7 comments:
**HUGS**
I don't blame you for not wanting to be medicated. I'm the exact same way with my anxiety/panic. And I'm with you on people's misperception of both ADHD and panic. They're both so often loosely thrown around like "oh, she's so hyper, she's totally ADHD, lol" or "oh man, I couldn't find my keys today so I totally had a panic attack!" But really, they're both REAL medical conditions and not something to joke about! People who don't have a panic disorder don't get it. And likewise, I'm sure people without ADHD don't get it. Anyway, that was long, just wanted you to know that even though they're two different medical conditions, I get it and if I could give you a hug, I would :) Hang in there, chica!
Robin, totally understand with the panic. When I was going through one of my deepest depressions in college, someone I felt I could trust refused to try to understand. They blamed my relationship with God, called me boring, told me to snap out of it as if I could turn the switch. When I felt anxious about something, people threw Bible verses at me, as if that would totally change everything, as if I'd never heard them before.
I feel that medication did not help me for my ADHD or even my depression. The side effects were awful and I don't want to deal with constantly checking in with a psychiatrist. However, I believe that medication is something that should be considered in certain situations. I've chosen to try to deal with things differently for now but for some people medication works very well. The people in my life who chose to take medications are doing well with them, and if my depression ever got to a dangerous level or my ADHD became beyond unmanageable, I would definitely consider trying it again.
Good stuff :) I just wanted to clarify that I'm not against meds at all. I just had bad luck with them too. They didn't do much for me but make me spacey, no energy, and just not care. No fun! And I still panicked! I also had a bad reaction to a couple. Anyway, they definitely have their place and they are wonderful things for some folks!
That's totally what they did to me! Pharmaceuticals for psychological problems are not quite down to a science yet. It's not as bad as the 50s when people gave litium and barbiturates to people with psychotic disorders, but it's nowhere close to how good we are with antibiotics and treating other infectious diseases. This is coming from someone who was put on Ritalin, Strattera, then Adderal. And I never did focus better on them. I've heard it works better for other people, but I didn't have good luck with them. I spoke with my advisor and I'm going to contact the school to see if they have any resources. Also am transferring my color coordinating to my planner from my calendar so it's uniform. Also got a couple notebooks I can write down all these ideas and put them away until I can deal with them!
I hope things are better next week, Kate! I had so many friends that were diagnosed with depression, etc. in University. Most went on medications. The meds seemed to help with disorders, but caused a whole bunch of other problems that were almost as hard to deal with. Medications are so important for so many people, but I definitely understand why you would want to avoid taking them if you possibly could.
I studied history with a brilliant girl in grad school who had ADHD. She'd also been on medication since she was really young. Sometimes I wondered if ADHD actually made her smarter! She would constantly notice things that I completely ignored, since I'm more of the "big picture" type.
Yes, we people with ADHD definitely get stuck in the details! It's that hyperfocus.
On Wednesday I will be done with all my classes, for good or ill. We're hoping for a B in Program Evaulation so I don't have any danger of academic probation but I'll be alright in the long run if I get a C. I'm getting things together for my summer class after that for sure. I've got a definite B in one class (the one I stayed up all night writing the paper for, which I got 80% on). And I'm in danger of a C in another (unless I just ACE the final). It looks like, however, because I had a 3.7 last semester, I will be okay. I just really really need to pull my grades up for the rest of the time I'm at school. Oh, how I hate Eval and Admin! Hate hate hate!
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