Tag Archives: General

Dealing with an ADD-C Adult.

Dealing with an ADD-C Adult.

Yeah, this is me. Your mileage may vary. ADD is a spectrum disorder, which means some people might not even know they have it, and others will never do well at supporting or caring for themselves. It rarely travels alone, so you’ll find a lot of ADDers who are depressed or bipolar, have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalcula, or even autism spectrum disorder. It’s also a collection of symptoms that are divided into hyperactivity, inattention, and impulsivity. You need to have at least six of the symptoms in two or more of the categories, and it has to be disabling in two or more environments. Depending on the distribution, you can be ADHD (hyperactive), ADD-PI (primarily inattentive) or ADD-C (combined – neither primarily hyperactive nor primarily inattentive.) So we’re not all the same, but no matter what, it’s no walk in the park.

Children nowadays get diagnosed early enough that they can be helped behaviorally and/or pharmaceutically, but most of us in the over-30 age group made a lot of mistakes, failed at tons of things, lost friends and spouses and jobs, and couldn’t figure out why or how to stop doing it all over again. Because when we were young, if we were diagnosed at all, the whole of the problem was being hyperactive, and the accepted wisdom was that we’d outgrow it. All the other stuff that we now know is integral to ADD, for us, was character flaws. Lots of emotional baggage. So it’s a good thing to know how and why you’re different so you can figure out what you can and can’t change, and stop beating yourself up when you fail at trying to change that second one all the time.

It’s really hard to explain what it’s like to live with an ADD brain for a lot of reasons. If you have ADD, you lose count of all the times you’ve tried and been told things like “oh, everyone loses their keys,” or “that’s just an excuse for being lazy.” If you live with someone who has ADD, it can drive you nuts when it seems like you’re speaking a different language to each other and everything’s in constant chaos.

So I’m going to explain what it’s like for me, and a few things that make it easier to be like me or live with someone like me. More below the fold. Read the rest of this entry

My Depression Poem

My Depression Poem

I can feel the cloud envelop me.
Do not tell me to cheer up-
I have no limbs, but you ask me to fly.
Would you command
a dead man
to breathe?

Do not remind me of my blessings –
to have such wonderful things in my life
and still feel no joy
makes me
ungrateful.

Do not tell me I am beautiful;
that you love me;
I feel ugly and unworthy of love.
When you tell me these things
either I have tricked you into seeing me
as something I am not
or you
are lying to me
which
is
worse

Do not tell me anything.
Just take me to the doctor
and get me
my damn
meds.

Thoughts on Stalkers!

Thoughts on Stalkers!

I recently purchased “The Narrow Stairs” by Death Cab for Cutie, so I’ve been listening to “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and revisiting why it creeps me out (even though I like the song.) In the same vein, this appeared on Emails From Crazy People. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When the song first came out, I was shot down for finding it a creepy-stalker song. Some of the comments on EFCP reflect the same attitude towards the protagonists of both the song and the note – aww, poor guy, too shy to tell the girl he loves her face to face. . .NONONONONO!!! Wrong! Yes, there is definitely social ineptitude there, but there’s a fine line between not knowing the right way to tell someone you like her (or him) and making yourself frightening to that person. I realized that one of the reasons I heard the alarms going off in my head is that I actually have been stalked, on more than one occasion, and I didn’t find it sweet or romantic in any way. If you’ve experienced it yourself, or known someone who had, you would not call the stalker “sweet” or “shy” or “romantic.”

For purposes of brevity, I’m going to use the masculine pronouns here. It’s not that women are never stalkers (just ask David Letterman, for one) but that I’m relating it to my own experience, and because male stalkers are more commonly known. Here is why stalking is ALWAYS creepy:

The stalker is either someone you have already rejected (check out those song lyrics) or someone you would reject (the stalker knows this, which is why the approach is indirect.) He is not some shy, hopeless romantic. . .he is strange, and the strangeness evident in his stalking behavior only scratches the surface of his strangeness.

He knows you will reject him, or have, but is convinced that all he needs to do is back you into a corner, capture you, or confine you until Stockholm Syndrome kicks in. Does this work for anything? Would any sane person, after being held prisoner mentally, emotionally, or physically, ever decide that her captor/tormentor was really the love of her life? No, that would happen only after her sanity had been compromised, and her escape options had run out.

He sees you as an object. He sees you as a possession. He sees you as Galatea to his Pygmalion – a lump of clay to be carved and perfected until you fit his purpose. Your individuality, your thoughts and feelings, your sense of self-worth are all subordinate to his idea of who you should be. He has already figured out who you are and how you will fit into his life, even if the closest he’s ever been to you is fifty feet away. He doesn’t know who you really are, and doesn’t care – his mind is made up. A healthy relationship involves compromise, but what he’s looking for involves none whatsoever on his part.

He’s STALKING you! He may be outside your window while you’re sleeping. He may be following you on your errands. He may be sitting outside your office ALL DAY LONG. No matter where you go or what you do, you never know if you’re being watched from a distance. If it goes on long enough, he may come indoors, speak with other people you know about you, even break into your home (because he knows you’d never actually let him in.) His stalking behavior can very easily become threatening or dangerous. Ronald Reagan and John Lennon were both shot by stalkers. Many kidnappings were preceded by stalking. Notes from stalkers often contain escalating threats over time. A normal person would not imagine that implying dire consequences would cause another person to change her mind about loving him, but a stalker would, and often does. He will kill or hurt someone to make you love him. He will break into your home and steal things to show you the depth of his affection. He might even do things to hurt himself and tell you about them so that you know what YOU are doing to HIM by not responding to his advances.

Someone who is sweet and shy and romantic is harmless, and might indeed get the girl of his dreams based on his virtues and patience. The stalker is not harmless. He is not sweet. He is not shy. He is not romantic. There is nothing positive about his actions. He is a stalker, and he is creepy. A song about a stalker is creepy because stalkers are creepy. He might not think so, but we all should know better.