Two days ago, I have finally come to understand that I have adult attention deficit disorder (ADD).
If I look back, my life is a series of incompletes and indications:
- In elementary school, my report cards often had comments like this: " is creative and smart, but has trouble focusing and completing work on time."
- In college, my grades ranged from A's to I's (incompletes). I never graduated. I had trouble keeping track of assignments and deadlines. I had trouble organizing and planning work. I had trouble finishing work because I had unrealistic expectations of my work (it had to be completely original and of genius quality = perfectionism) and at the same time I could not keep myself focused on the most important work and would procrastinate to the very end and beyond!
- Early in my marriage, my wife commented about me staring off into space like I wasn't there. (I was off vividly imagining something.) My difficulties making and meeting commitments, or making commitments and letting everything else go, have been a sore spot in our relations.
...and so on.
Here's the funny thing: I could see it in others but not in myself. For example, about 15 years ago, I was working at as a contractor at a financial company near San Francisco. I was having a conversation with the project manager, a great interesting funny guy; I was just listening to him but on this particular day his attention and thoughts were jumping all over the place and at high speed. And I thought "Wow! THAT guy has ADHD." I was kinda like a patient in the mental hospital who points to another patient and tells the doctor "See that guy...he's crazy." LOL
A few days ago, my wife researched the topic and said, "hey - listen to this". Without giving much advance context, she read out the list of characteristics of people with the inattentive variant of ADHD. It was me! She was summarizing the core of my problems in life!
This isn't to say that I'm an abject failure. I've achieved many things in life, with my family and my work. It's just that it has been a steeper uphill struggle than it needed to be.
I just started reading the Kindle edition of Mastering Your Adult ADHD - A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program. Here's a diagram of the three "dimentions" of ADHD.
Do any of these seem familiar to you?
I've started the treatment recommended by this excellent book. The first module, "Organization and Planning" helps me learn to "effectively and consistently use a calendar and task list" and other problem-solving skills.
The book helps you go about methodically developing a whole set of tools and habits to overcome the negative effects of ADHD. I'll share these with you as a move forward.
The book warns against is setbacks: It's easy to start, make some gains, and then drop the treatment. The book says "Setbacks are a major part of the progress. You need to have setbacks and learn to handle them in order to reduce the likelihood of future setbacks!"
I'll let you know how it goes.