A Fresh Start
I have, for the better part of my 44 years of life, been struggling with something within myself. I have in part been unwilling to admit it to myself, in part been unable to describe or explain well and in part been afraid to say anything about due to societal pressures. All that is ended.
I suffer from adult ADHD-I, or ADHD type 2 (depending on who you speak to). It is an often undiagnosed mental health issue because people look at those who have it as lazy, slow, spacy, or unmotivated. This is including those who have it, which is what I’ve thought about myself for years. It is characterized by being easily distracted, having difficulty with sustained attention spans on things that aren’t fresh, new and interesting, daydreaming, having trouble paying attention to other people speaking, having difficulty starting and following through on tasks, difficulty in time management, absentmindedness, and appearing apathetic, unmotivated or preoccupied. Current medical thinking is that it is caused by a deficiency in neurotransmitter levels, causing “brown outs” in parts of the brain when more thinking occurs or brain activity is stimulated. There are various ways to treat it depending on it’s severity, both with and without medication. The trick is to have a diagnosis.
My life has gone from a productive one to one where I sit at home all day wondering why I cannot take those first steps to start anything. Not all at once, of course, but over the last decade at the very least. I attributed it in part to the economy, lack of local contacts in the current job market, poor self discipline, bad use of personal information management tools, bad karma, anything but something that might require medical and/or psychotherapist assistance. About a month ago I finally bit the bullet and accepted my wife’s advice and went to see a therapist. That single step, one of the most difficult of my life, showed me there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
That light is still a long ways off, but I can see it’s there. I still need to find a way to re-balance my brain chemistry, build a way of life that exploits the advantages ADHD provides while overcoming it’s many disadvantages, and move forward getting back on track to doing what I want and need to be doing. It’s not going to be easy or quick, and I expect I’ll be falling on my face often (I am already). But I know it can be done, and knowing is half the battle.
The biggest hurdle I currently have is getting others to realize what I am going through. That I am not blowing them off intentionally, not being a lazy bum, not an absent minded professor. It is in a very real sense a disability, since it is a result of a physical manifestation in the brain. But because it is not as easily seen as someone in a wheel chair, it is easy for those who have not experienced it to shrug it off, to believe it is easy to over come, or to disbelieve in it’s existence entirely. Only if that were so.
I have felt like a prisoner in my own head for years. I am not stupid, I have been perfectly capable of doing things that have managed to stimulate me in positive ways enough to over ride my neurotransmitter deficiencies, and have been complemented on how many questions I’ve been able to answer in a variety of subjects. But I have not been able to control my mind in ways that would make me productive. While I can recall things, recalling things when I need to to get them handled has been almost impossible. I can focus on what I am doing, but I can also easily be thrown out of focus by things I cannot filter out when I need to (both internal and external). I can clearly block out steps in a task, but when I need to actually do those steps the whole process overwhelms me and I feel paralyzed mentally in taking that first step. I have not been in control of my mind, my mind has been in control of me. It is a frightening thing, made all the worse by the fact that few others we encounter in life are able (or willing frequently) to understand.
Join me on my trek to overcoming and using this aspect of my life. Along the way I’ll be exercising my eclectic love of a variety of topics as well as my struggles with ADHD. I’ll probably rant about a few things too, life is rarely all beer and skittles. Who knows, some of it might actually be interesting too.