A1A5KA
03-17-08, 10:33 PM
Hi everyone,
<O:p</O:p
I've been thinking lately about ADHD and how my brain works. Two reasons. First, I'm supposed to get meds for ADHD this week and I want to have a before and after comparison. Second, I was talking to my counselor about co-morbid conditions and she said she thought I had some symptoms of aspergers. (which I don’t think I do. But I might be wrong. Or I might have something else.) So I would like to tell you how my brain works and ask that you please please give me your opinions on whether this is adhd or something else or if I'm just strange. Please? Here goes:
My mind is like the internet. I have a lot of really interesting, useful information in there. But some of the links don’t work properly. Sometimes I’m trying mentally to look for something and I can’t think of it because the link that’s supposed to remind me of it is broken or missing. Sometimes things have too many links and they seem to come up in random searches. If I think about it, I can usually work out what it was about that item that connects it with the information I was really trying to find but it’s still a bit annoying.
For example, it’s like when you put in an internet search for chocolate chip cookie recipes and you get links not only to recipes but also to the old TV show “CHiPs” and how to erase “cookies” from your computer! Sometimes I probably seem slow because EVERYTHING reminds me of something and I have to first sort through all of it to find what I’m looking for and second figure out what I’m supposed to do with it. So I have a hard time getting things finished because even if I follow the mental link that involves starting a project, I get bored or distracted and follow another link and never seem to find my way back to the page with “finish the project” link. People don’t understand what an accomplishment it is when I actually finish a project or even when I remember to do something that I keep forgetting about.
I also have problems with noise. Outside influences usually override inside influences, so noise can make me forget what I was thinking about. This can be good or bad. On the good side, if I get anxious, I change what I was thinking of by playing loud music. When I was home alone and got scared, I used to turn on every TV and every radio in the house to drive away what I was imagining. On the bad side, if I’m trying to study and someone is talking or playing music, I simply cannot concentrate on what I am trying to read. Like I said, my brain is like the internet. And I always have a search bar available. So if something happens to distract me, that subject automatically gets entered and my brain is off running to find another list of links. Sometimes I can stop myself and push the “back” button and get back to what I was supposed to be doing, but sometimes I can’t and I totally lose track of what I was thinking about before the distraction happened.
I hate trying to have conversations with people who don’t have ADHD. They seem to think so slowly and want to talk about the most mundane subjects. Don’t get me wrong, I like people. I want to fit it and I wish I had more friends. But even when I’m talking to someone and it seems like we’re ‘on the same page’, it’s like on my page you can click on almost every word and find a link or even a whole series of links to related information but on their page there are no links. So while the person I am talking to sticks to the same page of information, I am popping back and forth to various other web pages and only half listening to what they are saying. This is also a problem because I don’t seem to be able to keep more than one thing in my brain at the same time. I mean that if I am reading a book and listening to a song and someone is talking, only one of those things will actually register in my brain. So I only get about half of any given conversation.
It also doesn’t help that I never really learned how to socialize with people. When I was a kid, I was always the least popular kid in my class and we moved around a lot. So where others learned things like “how to make and keep friends” or “how to carry on a normal conversation”, I never did. I’m doing better as I grow older. As an adult, I automatically have the social standing that allows me to ask questions and learn from my mistakes that I didn’t have as a child. After all, if I say something wrong as an adult, someone is likely to ask me to clarify or explain what I said, not laugh at me or try to beat me up after school! But this confidence is still very shaky. I’ve been out of high school for nearly twenty years now and I think I am just now beginning to recover from the emotional damage public school did to me. Looking back on my school years knowing now that I’ve always had ADHD, I can understand what happened a lot better, but that doesn’t change the hurt that never fitting in caused.
Maybe that’s one reason that I’ve always been more interested in books and information. I am and have always been a bookworm. I don’t remember when I started reading, but 4<SUP>th</SUP> grade, I was reading on a college level. I am hungry for information and have been known to carry 3 books in my purse at the same time. I am always on the look out for more things to read. I like books for two reasons. First, I like fiction because it allows me to participate in social situations in a safe way. I can “listen in” to conversations, watch people interact, or experience thrilling or dangerous situations from a safe distance. If anything gets too uncomfortable, I can always turn the page or close the book. My mom says that I’ve done that since I was a child and she always worried that I was living my life vicariously.
The other reason I like books is that they offer new information and new links to old information. For example, if I’m taking a test and trying to remember what I know about insects, it helps if I not only have heard about insects in class, but I also have read several books about them, taken notes about them, seen movies or videos about them, talked about them, etc. Just like the more popular a web page is and the more links it has, the more likely it is to come up in a search, the more mental links I have to something in my brain, the more likely I am to be able to bring it to mind when I want it. I love to find patterns. I love it when I can find the connections that link one piece of information to another. I like to think that there are patterns in everything. And if I can just figure out how things are linked together, I might just have a chance of finding them in the internet search engine that is my brain!
So, that’s me. I know it was long and rather random, so if you have gotten this far, I thank you very very much. Now will you please please please respond and tell me if this is ADHD or if it’s something else? Do any of you do this or feel like this? Is there anybody else out there who’s mind works like mine? Or am I just strange?
Amy
<O:p</O:p
I've been thinking lately about ADHD and how my brain works. Two reasons. First, I'm supposed to get meds for ADHD this week and I want to have a before and after comparison. Second, I was talking to my counselor about co-morbid conditions and she said she thought I had some symptoms of aspergers. (which I don’t think I do. But I might be wrong. Or I might have something else.) So I would like to tell you how my brain works and ask that you please please give me your opinions on whether this is adhd or something else or if I'm just strange. Please? Here goes:
My mind is like the internet. I have a lot of really interesting, useful information in there. But some of the links don’t work properly. Sometimes I’m trying mentally to look for something and I can’t think of it because the link that’s supposed to remind me of it is broken or missing. Sometimes things have too many links and they seem to come up in random searches. If I think about it, I can usually work out what it was about that item that connects it with the information I was really trying to find but it’s still a bit annoying.
For example, it’s like when you put in an internet search for chocolate chip cookie recipes and you get links not only to recipes but also to the old TV show “CHiPs” and how to erase “cookies” from your computer! Sometimes I probably seem slow because EVERYTHING reminds me of something and I have to first sort through all of it to find what I’m looking for and second figure out what I’m supposed to do with it. So I have a hard time getting things finished because even if I follow the mental link that involves starting a project, I get bored or distracted and follow another link and never seem to find my way back to the page with “finish the project” link. People don’t understand what an accomplishment it is when I actually finish a project or even when I remember to do something that I keep forgetting about.
I also have problems with noise. Outside influences usually override inside influences, so noise can make me forget what I was thinking about. This can be good or bad. On the good side, if I get anxious, I change what I was thinking of by playing loud music. When I was home alone and got scared, I used to turn on every TV and every radio in the house to drive away what I was imagining. On the bad side, if I’m trying to study and someone is talking or playing music, I simply cannot concentrate on what I am trying to read. Like I said, my brain is like the internet. And I always have a search bar available. So if something happens to distract me, that subject automatically gets entered and my brain is off running to find another list of links. Sometimes I can stop myself and push the “back” button and get back to what I was supposed to be doing, but sometimes I can’t and I totally lose track of what I was thinking about before the distraction happened.
I hate trying to have conversations with people who don’t have ADHD. They seem to think so slowly and want to talk about the most mundane subjects. Don’t get me wrong, I like people. I want to fit it and I wish I had more friends. But even when I’m talking to someone and it seems like we’re ‘on the same page’, it’s like on my page you can click on almost every word and find a link or even a whole series of links to related information but on their page there are no links. So while the person I am talking to sticks to the same page of information, I am popping back and forth to various other web pages and only half listening to what they are saying. This is also a problem because I don’t seem to be able to keep more than one thing in my brain at the same time. I mean that if I am reading a book and listening to a song and someone is talking, only one of those things will actually register in my brain. So I only get about half of any given conversation.
It also doesn’t help that I never really learned how to socialize with people. When I was a kid, I was always the least popular kid in my class and we moved around a lot. So where others learned things like “how to make and keep friends” or “how to carry on a normal conversation”, I never did. I’m doing better as I grow older. As an adult, I automatically have the social standing that allows me to ask questions and learn from my mistakes that I didn’t have as a child. After all, if I say something wrong as an adult, someone is likely to ask me to clarify or explain what I said, not laugh at me or try to beat me up after school! But this confidence is still very shaky. I’ve been out of high school for nearly twenty years now and I think I am just now beginning to recover from the emotional damage public school did to me. Looking back on my school years knowing now that I’ve always had ADHD, I can understand what happened a lot better, but that doesn’t change the hurt that never fitting in caused.
Maybe that’s one reason that I’ve always been more interested in books and information. I am and have always been a bookworm. I don’t remember when I started reading, but 4<SUP>th</SUP> grade, I was reading on a college level. I am hungry for information and have been known to carry 3 books in my purse at the same time. I am always on the look out for more things to read. I like books for two reasons. First, I like fiction because it allows me to participate in social situations in a safe way. I can “listen in” to conversations, watch people interact, or experience thrilling or dangerous situations from a safe distance. If anything gets too uncomfortable, I can always turn the page or close the book. My mom says that I’ve done that since I was a child and she always worried that I was living my life vicariously.
The other reason I like books is that they offer new information and new links to old information. For example, if I’m taking a test and trying to remember what I know about insects, it helps if I not only have heard about insects in class, but I also have read several books about them, taken notes about them, seen movies or videos about them, talked about them, etc. Just like the more popular a web page is and the more links it has, the more likely it is to come up in a search, the more mental links I have to something in my brain, the more likely I am to be able to bring it to mind when I want it. I love to find patterns. I love it when I can find the connections that link one piece of information to another. I like to think that there are patterns in everything. And if I can just figure out how things are linked together, I might just have a chance of finding them in the internet search engine that is my brain!
So, that’s me. I know it was long and rather random, so if you have gotten this far, I thank you very very much. Now will you please please please respond and tell me if this is ADHD or if it’s something else? Do any of you do this or feel like this? Is there anybody else out there who’s mind works like mine? Or am I just strange?
Amy