The main thing is to to be aware of how it is affecting you. If you are like most people with ADD, you probably have disorganizing problems. If there is a therapy group with people with ADD, you might find it valuable as it will help you compare notes with other people as well as strategies to deal with ADD. Like Troy said, you probably have some strategies already without even knowing that it was disorder related. Sadly for many of us, it may be very hard to become adjusted without meds, so do keep an open mind.

these stories I find on ADD are so funny and sound just like me..
do they sound a bit like you?

doctors and psychologists who study these things say that those who have it are born with it. Who am I to argue with all that education? Actually, maybe I would because one of the characteristics of people with ADD is an aversion to authority figures. It's not that we always think the authorities are wrong; we may just not want to admit that they are right.

Even though I've had this disorder my entire life, I've only known about it for a little over a year , or at least that's how long I've had a name for it. I had 54 and a 1/2 years to observe its effects on me before somebody told me I had it, and it was diagnosed. I've known most of my life that there was something different about me, that I didn't think and act like most people do, but I never really knew why. I had never thought about the possibility that my brain might have been made a little differently than most brains, causing me to view and react to the world in a manner unlike most human beings.

Okay—at this point I will argue a little with the ADD authorities, as do some other people I know who have these special brains. I don't think it is necessarily a "disorder." After all a disorder indicates something is wrong, and I'm not ready to admit there is something wrong with my brain. It's just different, and to me, that makes it special. My brain is not the ordinary garden-variety brain. I'm offended that someone might think it defective or disordered just because it is different.

Let's make a comparison here. There are more ways than one to measure things. Two of the common systems are the metric system and the English system. Most of the world uses the metric system. Here in the good old U.S.A., we use the English system. Does that mean our system of measurement is disordered just because it is different from the one used by most humanity? I don't think so!

Actually, someone with ADD probably devised the English system of measurement because it is far more complex and confusing than the metric system, and one of the characteristics of those of us with ADD is the ability to find the most complicated method for completing a simple task!

I also differ with the authorities that describe ADD as an attention "deficit." That would indicate that people with ADD don't pay as much attention to our surroundings as the supposedly normal people. Now, I can understand how a normal person might think that to be the case when they talk to us about something for a while, and then ask us a question, only to hear a response dealing with a totally different subject, or perhaps with information that is connected in a manner they are unable to understand. They probably think we didn't hear anything they said.

Actually, people with ADD may pay too much attention to their surroundings. One or two things are commonly going on in our minds at any given time. Most of us are actually gathering (and attempting to process) far more information about our surroundings than normal people do... As a result, we may have so much data in our heads that it becomes difficult to sort it out.

If you were to strike up a conversation with me on a busy street corner—assuming you are a normal person—you would probably expect me to shut out everything else and pay strict attention to you. That is truly a totally unreasonable expectation to place on an ADD person. I would be listening to you, but I'd also be listening to traffic noises, chirping birds, barking dogs, as well as the conversations of people around us. But that's not all! I'd be looking at what you are wearing, your gestures, clouds in the sky, displays in nearby store fronts, billboards, street signs, cracks in the sidewalk, grass growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk, an ant climbing through the grass, the leaf the ant is dragging, and the hole in the leaf.

You've just finished telling me about your Aunt Gertrude's appendectomy, and I respond with, "I never realized an ant could carry anything that big!" You probably think I'm crazy and wonder if I really think your Aunt's appendix was that swollen, depending on how you and I pronounce "ant" and "aunt.This example may present at least an inkling of what is happening much of the time in the heads of those of us with ADD. You see, it really isn't an attention "deficit." It is more like an attention "excess." Maybe, in that respect, we are hyperactive. Even though our bodies don't always show it, our minds are in overdrive.

Then another thing sometimes happens to those of us with ADD—we become hyper-focused. Again, this is not a lack of or shortage of attention. Hyper-focused is highly concentrated attention. When we go into a hyper-focus state, we may ignore you when you speak to us. It's not intentional, but we may be concentrating so intently on one miniscule source of data that you could put an air horn next to our ears, blast it for three seconds, and we genuinely would be totally unaware of your presence. It's just that some subject, some object, some project has grasped and held our attention so powerfully that we become unconscious of anything else in our surroundings until we are completely through dealing with it.



this is what we sound and think like at times....

"I am 55 years old, divorced, have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Parkinson's disease (PD); I have $16 cash in my pocket and an unknown bank balance (Negative or positive? Not sure!) The Department of Revenue is looking for me; there's a nearly full tank of gas in my ten-year-old car with 116,000 miles on it; my phone is about to be shut off; I have three ex-wives, two sons, and a girl friend (sort of); my 90 year-old father lives alone, is losing his memory and is in better shape physically than I; there's the possibility of a new 90 year-old step-mother; I have back problems that are keeping me from working my most lucrative part-time job, a business that has just closed; a deadline to get out of the business location/home that I have just sold in 17 days!, work to get started for my other part-time job, and work needing to be completed for customers from my recently closed business. There are phone calls that need to be made to a disability insurance company, a real estate agent and to artists who have consigned work to me; then there are customers, creditors, and who knows whom and what else I need to take care of.... Where do I start?

After getting a cup of coffee, I think I'll play solitaire on my broken computer... "

Have a great day!