bibelot
08-10-07, 09:59 PM
Hello, I'm new to this forum, and to ADHD too.
I've heard of ADHD for the first time a few monthes ago, after talking of the way I behave/think with some people, one of them being an ADD adult.
This is more or less what I told them, and that made them think of ADD about me, the ADD person told me it was exactly how she felt and was before she discoverded and treated her ADD problem:
My main problem in life is procrastination.
Whatever it is about, I just can't do it now. Work, friends, daily tasks... I just feel like I'm prisonner of the present time, unable to imagine me in the future. If there's no imediate consequences, then I just can't do it, can't focus on it.
I miss my friends, but it's never the good time to call them. Some start to think maybe I'm not a real friend, I just don't care about them, and it's really painfull.
I used to always do my homeworks at the last minute, when it was already too late, and ended up giving them to the teacher one or several days later. I remember spending full evenings in front of my homeworks, playing solitaire or minesweeping (how interesting, isn't it? :rolleyes: ), just unable to focus on my work. At the end of high school, I stopped worying about homework, with a simple method: I just didn't do it any more. I haven't done any single homework evaluation for the last year and half of university.
I'm always late to my apointments, wether it's about going to university or meeting my friends to have good time. I just stop after each step when I'm trying to get ready: I've washed myself, then something catches my attention, then brush my hair, I suddenly remember I wanted to check my emails, etc... even when I'm ready, it's tme to go, I find so many little (and totally uninteresting and useless) things to do, that I end up being 1 or 2 hours late. Even though I know I will enjoy good time with people I like, it's just too far from me, as I am here, in my appartment, like if I was waiting to be teleport or something. Even though I know it's time to leave, that I will be late if I don't go now, I pospon it.
Knowing is just not enough, I need to feel it in order to react and do something. I sometimes feel like my will is disconected from my brain and body.
My other main problem is lack or organisation, which, added to procrastination and complete lack of sense of time, can make life a nightmare.
I just don't know how long it will take me to do something, which ruins all my attempts to organise myself, because of procrastination and lack of sense of time. Lack of organisation is a big problem when it's about studies, of course, but everyday life as well: I just don't know how to really tidy a room (I won't talk about my appartment...), I'm totally uneffective when I have to do some research for university, I'm loosing everything, even the lists I try to do in order to get organised (lol), when by miracle I manage to make a plan, I just don't manage to stick to it -_-
In any task, if there are too many different things (like titying a room), I just feel lost. Like if I could see my destination, 10 metres further, but there are so many stepts to walk to go there, that I just can think of everything at the same time, and just don't know how to walk there (OK, this is just an analogy, thanksfully I can walk).
If I don't know very clearly, practically, and precisely, what to do, then I just don't know where to start, turn around, can't start the task, just unable to focus on it, like being in a myst.
This myst, I used to think it was stupidity.
short term memory.
I just forget about everything all the time, loosing everything all the time. My bedroom used to be like some kind of spatio-temporal distortion: anything that would enter it could disapear and never come back :D .
As soon as I am distracted from what I was doing, if I focus on something else, then I imediatly completely forget about what I was doing. If I had anything in my hands, I will just put it on the nearest place I find, and just never remember of actually doing it (like when you read again and over again the same page of your book, but just can't tell what it deals with). You could have told me something, an 20 seconds later (no exageration) I won't remember you even talked to me. When I was in middle high school, I used to loose my keys, sportbag, purse, travel ticket, like 3 or 4 times a year. I still lose/forget things anywhere, unrelated to how important they are.
That is the reason why I was very surprised when I got the WAIS III results, as I discovered memory was my best subtest result (17).
attention focus.
The thing is, I have the feeling I have like an exclusive focus. When I'm on something, a project, interested in something, I just think about it and almost only about it. For hours, days, weeks, months, I'm just "in it". And then, if for some reason I have to focus on some other project (like several search homework for university at the same time), or get interested in something else, or if the project just don't show results fast enough, or if I have to wait, not doing anything because of external factors, then it's over. If I have to go back to this project/work/activity, it will be procrastination, turning around the subject without managing to do it. That's the reason why I've never finished anything.
When I watched a film, or read a book, that impressed me, sometimes I just spend the following weeks just talking about it, thinking about it, getting info about the film/book, goodies, etc...
When I have to do reserch in books for university homework, instead of just getting pertinent information, I end up reading the whole book...
sometimes I feel like playing video game, or I have one hour to kill, and connect on a MMORPG, and I end up starting new chars, new guilds, new RP projects, and planning on things for monthes (people used to make fun of me for creating new chars all the time, instead of sticking to one and going to the end of the game)... and 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 monthes later, I just suddenly stop everything, and do not play anymore at all, cause I got interested in something else.
After a discussion, after seeing a poster in the street, or anything, I may go on google just by curiosity, to discover what it is, and I end up spending the whole day searching more info about it, reading all websites I can find about it... or just going from one website to another as new subjects are told while I read about the first one. Ans the day after, I will just don't care about it anymore, ever.
When I discovered go game for the first time, I spent the following week doing nothing but sleeping, eating (a little), and playing go. I had to force myself to stop, because that was not a proper way to live.
All of this makes life quite difficlt: hard to keep contact with my friends, failed at school, by miracle I graduated at the end of hight schools, but now, 4 years later, I just dropped out my studies for the second time, still no diploma. My appartment is a mess, and so many other little things that makes everything more annoying or more difficult. Worst of all, the frustration for just... not doing anything. I feel like I've spend these last 4 years just.. doing nothing, while there are so many things I want to do! What a waste of time, I couldn't event say what I was doing during the day, when I was asked..
I guess I forget some things, but basically, this is what I was talking about, when the people told me about ADHD.
So I went to websites to find out about it, and true, I fit many criteria in "attention deficit" category, and some of impulsivity, very few in hyperactivity.
True, I talk a lot, am unable to control my budjet and tend to spend money easily, not to see what is really important and what is just detail, am always moving my feet or hands, tend to speak before people finish their sentences, have always been a daydreamer, and tend to daydream A LOT, even in the middle of a conversation when I suddenly lose interest in what is told to me... reason why I don't know if I'm very patient, or very impatient, as I just daydream the second I don't have anything to do or have to wait, so I can wait for a very long time (which saved me at school, as I was so bored I just used to spend the whole day daydreaming, waiting for the bell to ring to leave class)... true I've always had problems with sleeping, always been hard to get up, even when not tired anymore...
but...
There are several things that keep me quite skeptical:
First, I can't answer to all of the criterias, as I find some of them so vague... I also find it hard to self evaluate, as I have a poor self esteem (at least, I can answer this criteria :p ), and most of all, I wonder how I can decide if the "symptoms" are "considerably more frequent than that of most people of the same mental age.", as I still wonder how a normal person my age is supposed to be, as I've always felt like I was some kind of anormal freak or something.
For many criteria, I wonder if I would really answer "yes" if I was objective, if it's not that I'm looking for some excuse to lazyness...
And two other reasons, the main reasons that makes me think that I may not be ADD:
- no familly ADD or ADHD ever detected (as far as I know, I don't know my father's familly), and never been hyperactive when I was young, never been detected about any behavior problem (in fact, I don't argue with many people, I just have the worst relationship possible with my mother....)
- My subtests where almost the same results in the WAIS III> Perform and verbal IQs were equals. I've read somewhere that ADDers hade most of the time some differences that were spotted to be abnormal as symptoms of ADD.
As I just said, I've passed WAIS III, a few monthes ago, and discovered, at the age of 22, that I was in the 1% population with similar IQ, not detected as 'gifted' when I was younger. Giftedness and ADD have a lot of common symptoms, so maybe the reason why I have all those problems are not related with ADD but with the life I've had as a non detected gifted child (I have the typical failure life or the non detected gifted person, it's just spooky)
The thing that maybe lower this probability is that the people I was talking about this with, and who told me about ADD, were also 'gifted', the one with ADD too.
Anyway, here I am, skeptical, but still having doubts, and I wish I could just not have any doubts any more: if I have ADD, I want to be sure; if it's not that, I'll work to get rid of my problems in another way.
Due to the interference/comon points between gifted/ADD people, I've been told to look for doctors who new about both. I didn't have time to look for this before leaving my homeland, and now I just arrived in England, I'm living in northern Surrrey, not too far from London.
I need both your opinion, advices as I don't really know what to do/how to do it, and finally, advices about diagnosis in my area if you think there's a chance I might be an ADDer (I have no idea how diagnosis of ADD is supposed to be done, and I have no idea how the English medical system works... I started to read the rest of the forum, though, and will continue as it seems there are some advices about it already)
I apology for mistakes/wrong words/wrong sentences I may have used in my (too) long message, English is not my native language and I'm not really used to it yet, as I just arrived England.
Thank you for reading me, if you had the courage to read all until here.
I've heard of ADHD for the first time a few monthes ago, after talking of the way I behave/think with some people, one of them being an ADD adult.
This is more or less what I told them, and that made them think of ADD about me, the ADD person told me it was exactly how she felt and was before she discoverded and treated her ADD problem:
My main problem in life is procrastination.
Whatever it is about, I just can't do it now. Work, friends, daily tasks... I just feel like I'm prisonner of the present time, unable to imagine me in the future. If there's no imediate consequences, then I just can't do it, can't focus on it.
I miss my friends, but it's never the good time to call them. Some start to think maybe I'm not a real friend, I just don't care about them, and it's really painfull.
I used to always do my homeworks at the last minute, when it was already too late, and ended up giving them to the teacher one or several days later. I remember spending full evenings in front of my homeworks, playing solitaire or minesweeping (how interesting, isn't it? :rolleyes: ), just unable to focus on my work. At the end of high school, I stopped worying about homework, with a simple method: I just didn't do it any more. I haven't done any single homework evaluation for the last year and half of university.
I'm always late to my apointments, wether it's about going to university or meeting my friends to have good time. I just stop after each step when I'm trying to get ready: I've washed myself, then something catches my attention, then brush my hair, I suddenly remember I wanted to check my emails, etc... even when I'm ready, it's tme to go, I find so many little (and totally uninteresting and useless) things to do, that I end up being 1 or 2 hours late. Even though I know I will enjoy good time with people I like, it's just too far from me, as I am here, in my appartment, like if I was waiting to be teleport or something. Even though I know it's time to leave, that I will be late if I don't go now, I pospon it.
Knowing is just not enough, I need to feel it in order to react and do something. I sometimes feel like my will is disconected from my brain and body.
My other main problem is lack or organisation, which, added to procrastination and complete lack of sense of time, can make life a nightmare.
I just don't know how long it will take me to do something, which ruins all my attempts to organise myself, because of procrastination and lack of sense of time. Lack of organisation is a big problem when it's about studies, of course, but everyday life as well: I just don't know how to really tidy a room (I won't talk about my appartment...), I'm totally uneffective when I have to do some research for university, I'm loosing everything, even the lists I try to do in order to get organised (lol), when by miracle I manage to make a plan, I just don't manage to stick to it -_-
In any task, if there are too many different things (like titying a room), I just feel lost. Like if I could see my destination, 10 metres further, but there are so many stepts to walk to go there, that I just can think of everything at the same time, and just don't know how to walk there (OK, this is just an analogy, thanksfully I can walk).
If I don't know very clearly, practically, and precisely, what to do, then I just don't know where to start, turn around, can't start the task, just unable to focus on it, like being in a myst.
This myst, I used to think it was stupidity.
short term memory.
I just forget about everything all the time, loosing everything all the time. My bedroom used to be like some kind of spatio-temporal distortion: anything that would enter it could disapear and never come back :D .
As soon as I am distracted from what I was doing, if I focus on something else, then I imediatly completely forget about what I was doing. If I had anything in my hands, I will just put it on the nearest place I find, and just never remember of actually doing it (like when you read again and over again the same page of your book, but just can't tell what it deals with). You could have told me something, an 20 seconds later (no exageration) I won't remember you even talked to me. When I was in middle high school, I used to loose my keys, sportbag, purse, travel ticket, like 3 or 4 times a year. I still lose/forget things anywhere, unrelated to how important they are.
That is the reason why I was very surprised when I got the WAIS III results, as I discovered memory was my best subtest result (17).
attention focus.
The thing is, I have the feeling I have like an exclusive focus. When I'm on something, a project, interested in something, I just think about it and almost only about it. For hours, days, weeks, months, I'm just "in it". And then, if for some reason I have to focus on some other project (like several search homework for university at the same time), or get interested in something else, or if the project just don't show results fast enough, or if I have to wait, not doing anything because of external factors, then it's over. If I have to go back to this project/work/activity, it will be procrastination, turning around the subject without managing to do it. That's the reason why I've never finished anything.
When I watched a film, or read a book, that impressed me, sometimes I just spend the following weeks just talking about it, thinking about it, getting info about the film/book, goodies, etc...
When I have to do reserch in books for university homework, instead of just getting pertinent information, I end up reading the whole book...
sometimes I feel like playing video game, or I have one hour to kill, and connect on a MMORPG, and I end up starting new chars, new guilds, new RP projects, and planning on things for monthes (people used to make fun of me for creating new chars all the time, instead of sticking to one and going to the end of the game)... and 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 monthes later, I just suddenly stop everything, and do not play anymore at all, cause I got interested in something else.
After a discussion, after seeing a poster in the street, or anything, I may go on google just by curiosity, to discover what it is, and I end up spending the whole day searching more info about it, reading all websites I can find about it... or just going from one website to another as new subjects are told while I read about the first one. Ans the day after, I will just don't care about it anymore, ever.
When I discovered go game for the first time, I spent the following week doing nothing but sleeping, eating (a little), and playing go. I had to force myself to stop, because that was not a proper way to live.
All of this makes life quite difficlt: hard to keep contact with my friends, failed at school, by miracle I graduated at the end of hight schools, but now, 4 years later, I just dropped out my studies for the second time, still no diploma. My appartment is a mess, and so many other little things that makes everything more annoying or more difficult. Worst of all, the frustration for just... not doing anything. I feel like I've spend these last 4 years just.. doing nothing, while there are so many things I want to do! What a waste of time, I couldn't event say what I was doing during the day, when I was asked..
I guess I forget some things, but basically, this is what I was talking about, when the people told me about ADHD.
So I went to websites to find out about it, and true, I fit many criteria in "attention deficit" category, and some of impulsivity, very few in hyperactivity.
True, I talk a lot, am unable to control my budjet and tend to spend money easily, not to see what is really important and what is just detail, am always moving my feet or hands, tend to speak before people finish their sentences, have always been a daydreamer, and tend to daydream A LOT, even in the middle of a conversation when I suddenly lose interest in what is told to me... reason why I don't know if I'm very patient, or very impatient, as I just daydream the second I don't have anything to do or have to wait, so I can wait for a very long time (which saved me at school, as I was so bored I just used to spend the whole day daydreaming, waiting for the bell to ring to leave class)... true I've always had problems with sleeping, always been hard to get up, even when not tired anymore...
but...
There are several things that keep me quite skeptical:
First, I can't answer to all of the criterias, as I find some of them so vague... I also find it hard to self evaluate, as I have a poor self esteem (at least, I can answer this criteria :p ), and most of all, I wonder how I can decide if the "symptoms" are "considerably more frequent than that of most people of the same mental age.", as I still wonder how a normal person my age is supposed to be, as I've always felt like I was some kind of anormal freak or something.
For many criteria, I wonder if I would really answer "yes" if I was objective, if it's not that I'm looking for some excuse to lazyness...
And two other reasons, the main reasons that makes me think that I may not be ADD:
- no familly ADD or ADHD ever detected (as far as I know, I don't know my father's familly), and never been hyperactive when I was young, never been detected about any behavior problem (in fact, I don't argue with many people, I just have the worst relationship possible with my mother....)
- My subtests where almost the same results in the WAIS III> Perform and verbal IQs were equals. I've read somewhere that ADDers hade most of the time some differences that were spotted to be abnormal as symptoms of ADD.
As I just said, I've passed WAIS III, a few monthes ago, and discovered, at the age of 22, that I was in the 1% population with similar IQ, not detected as 'gifted' when I was younger. Giftedness and ADD have a lot of common symptoms, so maybe the reason why I have all those problems are not related with ADD but with the life I've had as a non detected gifted child (I have the typical failure life or the non detected gifted person, it's just spooky)
The thing that maybe lower this probability is that the people I was talking about this with, and who told me about ADD, were also 'gifted', the one with ADD too.
Anyway, here I am, skeptical, but still having doubts, and I wish I could just not have any doubts any more: if I have ADD, I want to be sure; if it's not that, I'll work to get rid of my problems in another way.
Due to the interference/comon points between gifted/ADD people, I've been told to look for doctors who new about both. I didn't have time to look for this before leaving my homeland, and now I just arrived in England, I'm living in northern Surrrey, not too far from London.
I need both your opinion, advices as I don't really know what to do/how to do it, and finally, advices about diagnosis in my area if you think there's a chance I might be an ADDer (I have no idea how diagnosis of ADD is supposed to be done, and I have no idea how the English medical system works... I started to read the rest of the forum, though, and will continue as it seems there are some advices about it already)
I apology for mistakes/wrong words/wrong sentences I may have used in my (too) long message, English is not my native language and I'm not really used to it yet, as I just arrived England.
Thank you for reading me, if you had the courage to read all until here.