Archives September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008

Treating ADHD Blog

Spinning My Wheels ADD Blog: Treating Adult ADHD With Humor - and Meds

Archives: July 2008

Break It Up!

If only I could break up my whole, overwhelming ADHD life into small, manageable, quantifiable little jobs.

During my hiatus, my editor, the divine Ms A., sent some remarkably solicitous emails inquiring after my state of mind, and saying, basically, that I should concentrate on getting back to what passes for normal hereabouts and not to worry about the blog.

The other day, after I finally had managed to cobble together a post, and figured out how to put the cool little panel from a Krazy Kat comic in it, I sent it off with a pathetic little note asking if, rather than sending in a weekly batch of five or six articles, I could submit them piecemeal. Ms A. readily consented, and here's the next daily blurb.

My reason for wanting to alter my procedures should be clear to all by now: Bigger, more complex projects (writing and accumulating six posts a week) offer more opportunities for confusion and discouragement than small ones. The whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts: writing six closely focused, 400-word articles is intrinsically easier than weaving a coherent, 2,400 article.

I found this to be true when I was a catering chef. The work required a good deal of planning and coordination, and when I began doing it I tended to panic (you'll recall that time management and visualization aren't generally strong points for us ADHDans). Eventually I learned to view each job as a collection of small modules which, individually, weren't at all daunting (except for some of the meringues, which you really shouldn't try to make on steamy July afternoons). With the work accounted for in this manner, I was able to consider the forest as well as the trees, and still manage to sleep at night.

Small, manageable, quantifiable jobs are the way to go. Remember: if you can't describe the job in one clear, concise sentence, you should consider — oh, I hate this word — deconstructing it further.

Or find a sucker to help you peel and skewer all the shrimp.

Back From the Abyss

It's been a wholly unholy month, but I've stared depression in the face and lived to blog about it. I think.

So, as I was saying, before the goddamn roof fell in...

The lousy two weeks turned into a lousy month. It was a teaser: every time I thought I was getting my life under control again, along came another brick out of the sky. It would be wonderful if I could tell you that I went back and re-read some of my own postings, discovering therein the key to reversing my head-first slide into misery.

But I didn't; part of the depression, of course, is the total meltdown of one's self-esteem. When I thought about taking my own medicine, all I could hear was, Why bother? If you're so smart why can't you exert some control over your own emotional state, followed by a suffocating silence.

Even in the midst of my tailspin, I tried to look at my situation objectively. Focus on the good stuff. As Steely Dan says, "Throw out the little ones/Pan-fry the big ones." No such luck.

I've got a firmer grip on the reins now, and I'm trying to keep moving forward. In slack moments I still contemplate my flirtation with the abyss, but no good explanations have emerged so far. So I'm trying to eat better, sleep more, drink less and set reasonable expectations for myself.

Stick around. I'm trying to get back to posting regularly. Lucky you.

ADHD Wake Up Call

Learn to watch your back, ADHDers. You are going to get hurt from time to time.

Impulse control, or lack thereof, is a primary issue in ADHD.

I'm willing to bet that of all the instances of failure to take measured, as opposed to spontaneous, action, the vast majority would occur in situations where one of us spoke without thinking. The concomitant and abetting dysfunction is that we have difficulties evaluating people, reading their moods, reacting to any changes in body language or diction. Much of what I've read on this aspect of ADHD deals with the damage we do to relationships, professional, social, and familial, by opening our big yaps without considering what's about to come spewing out of them: insults, double entendres, broken confidences, bad advice.

The other side of the coin, which I believe gets less ink, is that our inability to read others leaves us terribly vulnerable to malice. How many of us have found that we've gotten screwed at work by someone we trusted?

And how many of those disasters have been followed by other friends' saying, "You didn't know he was after your job? What do you think he was talking to the boss about all last month? Everyone knew about it." Fine. Why didn't someone tip you off? Maybe, in part, because the treachery seemed so blatant that it never occurred to your buddies that they needed to give you a heads-up.

This is one of my recurring nightmares, by the way. I'm in some kind of business situation, and I'm getting screwed. The boss, or a manager, or a rival is tearing me a new one, and there's NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. I'm gonna get finessed out of my job/bonus/promotion/self-respect. And whichever creep is doing me in has this pitiless, contemptuous smirk on his puss.

Honestly, this has taken over the bad dream that haunted me for 25 or so years after college: I wake up around 11:00 a.m. and suddenly remember that I have a final exam in... something, and it's going to be given at... sometime, in... some goddamn lecture hall. Guaranteed to have me awaken drenched in sweat, with my sigmoid colon tied in a bowline on a bight.

Forgetfulness. Powerlessness. Victimization. Self-loathing.

Wake up, my brothers and sisters, and learn to watch your backs. You've got ADHD; someone's gonna get his feelings hurt from time to time. Try to be selective — it doesn't always have to be you.

Keep on Truckin'

Accomplishing something, anything, is more valuable than bouncing around like a superball in a squash court.

A symptom, and a predictive one at that, of the miasma in which I'm lurching around this week is The Shuffle.

No, smartypants, not that dance you used to do back when you were wearing bell-bottoms and flowing shirts with collars that came down to your nipples. That was the Hustle. Or am I thinking of the Electric Slide? Whatever. The Shuffle I'm talking about is the one where I'm so lost, and know it, that I violate my vows and start tinkering with my support mechanisms.

I've been writing lately about the necessity of completing one task at a time.

Accomplishing something — anything — is more valuable than bouncing around like a superball in a squash court. I believe this. So when I find myself spending an hour trying to decide whether I should put all my eggs in LinkedIn or in Plaxo, especially when neither is essential, I know it's time to put a couple of reefs (I wanted to write "reeves" in hoof/hooves, calf/calves, but then one of the other editors resident in my noisy little cranium pointed out that a "reeve" was a local official in medieval England. Haven't you read the Canterbury Tales lately?) in the mainsail.

You know exactly what I'm talking about, mon vieux. Trying to figure out how to link my Google calendar to my email, so that it can send me reminders to reference my new to-do list, which will tell me to consult the chart on the bulletin board over my desk, on which I've already forgotten to post any items for the last five days.

The old vicious circle. Around and around and at the end of the day, nothing but sore feet.

Back to square one. Pick one thing. Do it. Pick another thing. Do it.

Some people can dance. Some can sail. Some can multi-task.

When I feel like this, all I can do is keep on truckin'. (Cue the Eddie Kendricks tune.)