The ADD Post
Sep. 28th, 2020 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI have ADD.
I’m making a distinction between “ADD” and “ADHD” because I’m probably one of the most chill and least “hyperactive” people you will ever meet. If you talked to me for the first time, or if you worked with me for years, you would probably never know that there’s anything “wrong” with me. Almost no one does, and honestly, I don’t see this as being in a different category of chronic condition than, say, diabetes. It’s genetic, and I handle it with a combination of medication, behavioral strategies, and social support structures. You know, as one does. It’s not a big deal.
For me, this is very much a “mind over matter” situation. My hope is that, if I’m aware of myself and how I tend to operate, and if I put careful thought into the decisions I make, I won’t experience too much trouble as I move through the world. It actually kind of annoys me when people talk about medical conditions like ADD/ADHD as “my brain did this” or “my brain does that,” as if a person is composed of a pure spirit that exists separately from their body, the circumstances of their life, the society they live in, and their personal decisions. It’s much more holistic than that, and none of us are innocent and helpless victims of our “brains.”
Still, having ADD is shitty. Having dyslexia is shitty. Having executive function disorder is shitty. For the record, having anxiety is shitty too. All of this is shitty to begin with, and it’s made even shittier by the fact that almost everyone born after 1980 – regardless of gender, race, or economic class – has been subject to intense neoliberal pressure to “optimize” their “performance” in order to succeed in absurdly competitive systems that only reward people with an abnormally high degree of preexisting advantages. It’s also shitty that these disorders are both poorly understood and ridiculously stigmatized, and that the American medical healthcare system is inefficient, ineffective, and intensely bigoted, even if you’re a straight white man (but most definitely going downhill from there).
In any case, having Attention Deficit Disorder is precisely that – my ability to concentrate and manage my attention is not neurotypical. I personally wouldn’t call it a “disorder,” necessarily, because it feels very normal to me, and I don’t think it’s actually a “deficit” compared to what other people experience than it is a few steps closer toward the end of a spectrum as opposed to being smack in the middle. Sustaining focus and attention for long intervals with no physical movement or immediate reward is painfully difficult for me, but I am relatively good at lateral thinking, thinking quickly, processing multiple sources of input, and managing multiple tasks simultaneously in a way that many “neurotypical” people seem to find exhausting. To use an academic setting as an example, what this means is that I can finish a test quickly and with a perfect score but can't for the life of me sit still and look at the desk while waiting for everyone else to finish (instead of drawing on the back of the test paper or checking my phone).
In the long term, this doesn’t really affect anything. For example, although I can’t sit down and read one book for an entire hour, I can sit down for an hour and read ten books, and I can do this every day until all the books are read. As a result, I read more books than anyone I know (for real), usually with good retention and recall. A problem only arises if you give me a book and expect me to have read the whole thing by tomorrow – in which case I would say that’s your problem, not mine. In other words, the “problem” is often the arbitrary framework for a task, not my ability to handle it. To be blunt, the way I work only becomes a “disability” if someone deliberately goes out of their way to make it so by refusing to accommodate it.
This becomes tricky, however, when I have to set a task for myself.
Specifically, how the fuck am I supposed to write a novel.
I’m making a distinction between “ADD” and “ADHD” because I’m probably one of the most chill and least “hyperactive” people you will ever meet. If you talked to me for the first time, or if you worked with me for years, you would probably never know that there’s anything “wrong” with me. Almost no one does, and honestly, I don’t see this as being in a different category of chronic condition than, say, diabetes. It’s genetic, and I handle it with a combination of medication, behavioral strategies, and social support structures. You know, as one does. It’s not a big deal.
For me, this is very much a “mind over matter” situation. My hope is that, if I’m aware of myself and how I tend to operate, and if I put careful thought into the decisions I make, I won’t experience too much trouble as I move through the world. It actually kind of annoys me when people talk about medical conditions like ADD/ADHD as “my brain did this” or “my brain does that,” as if a person is composed of a pure spirit that exists separately from their body, the circumstances of their life, the society they live in, and their personal decisions. It’s much more holistic than that, and none of us are innocent and helpless victims of our “brains.”
Still, having ADD is shitty. Having dyslexia is shitty. Having executive function disorder is shitty. For the record, having anxiety is shitty too. All of this is shitty to begin with, and it’s made even shittier by the fact that almost everyone born after 1980 – regardless of gender, race, or economic class – has been subject to intense neoliberal pressure to “optimize” their “performance” in order to succeed in absurdly competitive systems that only reward people with an abnormally high degree of preexisting advantages. It’s also shitty that these disorders are both poorly understood and ridiculously stigmatized, and that the American medical healthcare system is inefficient, ineffective, and intensely bigoted, even if you’re a straight white man (but most definitely going downhill from there).
In any case, having Attention Deficit Disorder is precisely that – my ability to concentrate and manage my attention is not neurotypical. I personally wouldn’t call it a “disorder,” necessarily, because it feels very normal to me, and I don’t think it’s actually a “deficit” compared to what other people experience than it is a few steps closer toward the end of a spectrum as opposed to being smack in the middle. Sustaining focus and attention for long intervals with no physical movement or immediate reward is painfully difficult for me, but I am relatively good at lateral thinking, thinking quickly, processing multiple sources of input, and managing multiple tasks simultaneously in a way that many “neurotypical” people seem to find exhausting. To use an academic setting as an example, what this means is that I can finish a test quickly and with a perfect score but can't for the life of me sit still and look at the desk while waiting for everyone else to finish (instead of drawing on the back of the test paper or checking my phone).
In the long term, this doesn’t really affect anything. For example, although I can’t sit down and read one book for an entire hour, I can sit down for an hour and read ten books, and I can do this every day until all the books are read. As a result, I read more books than anyone I know (for real), usually with good retention and recall. A problem only arises if you give me a book and expect me to have read the whole thing by tomorrow – in which case I would say that’s your problem, not mine. In other words, the “problem” is often the arbitrary framework for a task, not my ability to handle it. To be blunt, the way I work only becomes a “disability” if someone deliberately goes out of their way to make it so by refusing to accommodate it.
This becomes tricky, however, when I have to set a task for myself.
Specifically, how the fuck am I supposed to write a novel.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 06:39 pm (UTC)Here’s somebody who says they get bored easily and that it helps to work on several writing projects (including a novel) at the same time:
https://getyourwordsout.dreamwidth.org/470579.html
I do this too. It might take me like 10 years to finish the novel I’m working on, but I CAN imagine finishing it.
You seem to be a really fast writer and very organized, so I feel like you could finish a novel in a relatively short amount of time, along with a whole bunch of short story collections and zines and whatnot along the way.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 09:34 pm (UTC)I've noticed my own writing expands to fill the time available (so if I try to write on a weekend day it will take me all damn day to produce the same amount I could get in my lunch break on a work day), so I try to counteract this by setting timers. Which works for my excitable-squirrel brain, but might not for yours.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 10:01 pm (UTC)Every afternoon, I drive to the neighborhood park and sit in my car to write with no internet reception and nothing to distract me. I put three documents on my desktop and set a timer so that I'll work on them for five minutes each. If I end up getting absorbed in a particular project, so much the better. If I can't concentrate for longer than that, I'll take a walk and go home.
This is a highly inefficient way to work; but, by continuing to do it every day, things eventually get done by sheer virtue of the inexorable march of time.
I'll be honest, people who use strategies like Nanowrimo and wordcount goals are like wizards to me. Writing is magic. Who knows how it works?
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 10:14 pm (UTC)I was really, really glad when
no subject
Date: 2020-09-29 11:53 am (UTC)It actually kind of annoys me when people talk about medical conditions like ADD/ADHD as “my brain did this” or “my brain does that,” as if a person is composed of a pure spirit that exists separately from their body, the circumstances of their life, the society they live in, and their personal decisions. It’s much more holistic than that, and none of us are innocent and helpless victims of our “brains.”
As some who does occasionally use the "welp, my brain is doing a thing right now" thing, it also annoys me. I've known quite a deal of people who dismiss any attempt to make their lives and conditions more managable because... honestly, I don't know why. I knew someone who made a Facebook post once laughing at the "ridiculous" advice her doctor gave about getting more sunlight or even taking vitamin D to help with her depressive episodes. And yet I've noticed a considerable improvement in my mental stability by having to be on-site for work for the past two weeks, because I'm not trapped in my house that literally gets maybe an hour of sunlight through the windows. It's 100% a holistic thing, like you said; our symptoms might not take a 180 change overnight, but small things done consistently totally improve quality of life.
At the same time, I was also in the "more sunlight? lol ok sure" ideaology when I was... 16? Give or take? You know, when you're young and think you know everything, but have a speck of experience in comparison to what you have today? But I see grown ass adults pull this kind of thing and I worry. Like if that's the go-to reaction to things that might make a difference in your life, what else is getting that knee-jerk reaction?
But then there are things where I can literally be doing everything "right" and nothing in the world has influenced me to feel awful or whatever and then I'm suddenly overcome with mania or depression and I don't know why (I mean, I know why if it happened any time this year, but like... you know, in less pandemic-y times). Same with some of my autoimmune diseases, where I'll take my medication the same time and eat the right food and am not overly stressed and then a flare-up strikes. Sometimes triggers are definitely a culprit, but I swear sometimes I take a fine-tooth comb to the past week and can't find shit. It's like my body sent out the Teams meeting invite and excluded me, I swear.
tl;dr - much yes to everything you're saying, but also damn does it suck when you're doing everything by the book and your body is just, "Well, that's nice, but...."
and thanks for coming to my TED TalkSustaining focus and attention for long intervals with no physical movement or immediate reward is painfully difficult for me, but I am relatively good at lateral thinking, thinking quickly, processing multiple sources of input, and managing multiple tasks simultaneously in a way that many “neurotypical” people seem to find exhausting
Wow what a mood. I think about this a lot with college and how I'd utterly flunk out if I was anything but an art kid. The constant doing a project and interacting vs constant lectures was such a godsend. Even my art history classes focused so much on student interaction that I was able to focus without feeling like I was going to die. Also, I still don't understand how people take notes. I just.. how.