[...] I do know I support Chuck Parker’s (and Barkley’s) new suggestion for a name for ADHD. EFD or “Executive Function Disorder”. Sure, I’d prefer difference, but if we want those accomodations [sic] we’d better stick with disorder; which it is in the hostile linear environments in which we must perform.
(Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:30am)

To which I replied:

EFD? Maybe. Captures a little bit more of the essence of the problem.
However, I suggest the following as a new name for ADHD:
Sonofabi#!@F*%K@%SHOLE Disorder
I just haven’t figured out how to pronounce it.

1. My observations were based on discussions I’ve had with other ADHDers, which means it’s a very small sample size and not at all scientific.
2. As I noted in the comments, the “loneliness” did not necessarily apply to me. (More on this later in the post.)
3. Many of us have different types of friendships based on different factors: work friends; common interest friends (e.g., hobby; sports; college); common geography friends (how’s that for a fancy way of saying “your neighbors”); life-mate friend (which may or may not be legally recognized through marriage), etc. I have all of these types of friends.

However, the type of friendship that I had in mind when I wrote the first post was the type where you felt comfortable enough to share some of your deepest thoughts. I have two friendships that fit that bill. One (male) has been my friend from the age of 17. We see each other twice a year and have lengthy phone conversations about twice a year. But it was only in recent years that I realized that I could share with him some of my deepest thoughts. Another friend (female) with whom I share my deepest thoughts happens to be a cousin. Like the male friendship described earlier, I realized only in the last handful of years that I could confide in her.

*  *  *  *  *

A good friend asked me if, in light of the previous post, were we still friends. I assured her via email and assure her now that we are, indeed, still friends. That friendship started with a single mutual interest (we get together once a month through a local business lunch group) which has grown into a deeper friendship (talk about personal issues, usually of the “kids and education” variety but we also have some wonderful discussions about politics and society in general). A subgroup of the lunch group is forming around another common interest: writing.

So I’m not necessarily one of the ADHDers who is lonely yet, there are times, when I am, indeed lonely. It is probably caused by several factors.

1. The inordinate amount of time that I “live in my head.” One could argue we ALL live in our heads but it is worse for some ADHDers who have an excessive amount of thoughts, what Dr. Parker refers to as cognitive abundance (there’s more to this concept of cognitive abundance so you’ll need to read his post).
2. It is worse for some ADHDers who have been blessed with both cognitive abundance and intelligence. I’ve been astounded by how many intelligent ADHDers I’ve met (again, this is anecdotal data) who have done extraordinarily well in school (though some do quite poorly) and yet, somehow, despite their success, they had not been able to cultivate meaningful relationships until decades later and, in some cases, not at all. Further, they often felt like (and still feel like) misfits. This brings me to item 3 below.
3. If an ADHDer were to adapt P.D. Eastman’s famous book, Are You My Mother?, it would have to be retitled to something like, “Are You An ADHDer?” The deadly combination of ADHD and intelligence creates the type of person who constantly searches for validation of who they are. (I’m reminded of this comment made by Ariane Benefit: “Our culture does not tolerate misfits of any kind very well, much less support our rights to be different.”)

On A Related Note: I’ve been spending an extraordinary amount of time on fictional and biographical writing. A bit of it can be seen here. To polish my skills I purchased the Write Great Fiction collection of books. Even after reading these books I may still never write great fiction. But I learned something more valuable. Many of the struggles I’ve had, and still have, with my writing are the struggles that MANY writers face. Many of the struggles that, prior to my ADHD diagnosis, I had assumed were signs of my inability to write and which, post-ADHD diagnosis, I had assumed were signs of ADHD, are in actuality the SAME STRUGGLES faced by many writers. What I now realize is that the struggles are exacerbated by the ADHD and not necessarily caused by the ADHD.

4. There is one more factor that needs to be acknowledged: ADHDers are not easy to be with. They can often be their own worst enemy. They often create the very conditions that make friendships, at any level, to be difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

Post Script
I must acknowledge how this blog and the sometimes detestable Facebook has made it possible for me to talk with fellow ADHDers and also to the non-ADHDers who live with them. Even the lowly telephone has played a role in collapsing geography. Together, these technologies have made it possible for us to digitally “bare our souls,” creating friendships that I would not have had otherwise. Some day I may have the opportunity to see them in person and give them a hug. In the interim, I hope they can accept this virtual hug in lieu of a real one. They have enriched my life in more ways than they can imagine. And for those I see in person, since ADHDers have memory problems, remind me that I owe you a hug too.

       ___                  ____                  ___
  ____(   \              .-'    `-.              /   )____
 (____     \_____       /  (O  O)  \       _____/     ____)
(____            `-----(      )     )-----'            ____)
 (____     _____________\  .____.  /_____________     ____)
   (______/              `-.____.-'              \______)

(Virtual hug courtesy of ASCII Art)

[CLICK HERE for Part II of ADHD and Loneliness]

…we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness. – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Everyone has a story to help them understand themselves and their relationship to the world. It is their personal explanation of who they are and why they do the things they do. It is their mental comfort food. They repeat the story to themselves when they are confronted with something unknown or with a story that conflicts with theirs. The Late Diagnosed ADHDer (Ltd-ADHD) — an ADHDer who was not diagnosed for twenty or more years — may create a story that contains extraordinary leaps of logic in order to explain, in a logical manner (or at least in a consistent manner) why they stand outside of the “accepted” norm. Most of the disagreements I’ve had with other ADHDers has been over the nature of our stories. Some ADHDers have developed the story of ADHD-as-a-Gift while others have invented new personality types: ADHD that is not ADHD.

My story can be summarized in two words: Yes…But. I may agree with you about some things, however there’s always that “But,” always the reminder that life is both bitter and sweet and never experienced in a pure state. We may fool ourselves, for the moment, into thinking that ADHD is a gift in much the same way that we fool ourselves into believing that the world is flat when we need to drive from one place to another. But we’re adults. We know better. The world is not flat (physically, that is). There are no fairy godmothers and, yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. So while there is great benefit to be derived from intentional blindness, from focusing on the sweet and pleasurable — the taste of your lover’s sweat; completion of a large, complex project; the summer sun warming your bones — I always worry that we’ll forget about the drudgery, the struggles, the monotony of much of life. So my response to many things is, Yes…but.

But let’s be honest.

Who wants to be reminded of the bitter when the sweet has such a wonderful taste?

In an English literature course in my second year of college, we were discussing e e cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town. Someone said that there was a sexual overtone to some parts of the poem. “When I thought of that,” I said, ” I figured that I must be crazy.” Without hesitation the professor replied, “Who told you that you were crazy?” At the time I had no response. But I have one now. No one had to tell me I was crazy. I read it on everyone’s face.

The further I went in college, the more I realized that there were others that saw the world the way I did. But despite finding like-minded intellectuals, something was still wrong. Very wrong. It took forty-six years for me to finally figure out why I bounced from career to career like a billiard ball careening off a bumper. I suffer from the holy trinity of self-delusion — intelligence, creativity, and ADHD — giving me the ability to creatively “explain away” my problems instead of confronting them. It did not take long for me to discover fellow sufferers who explain away their problems by claiming to be a DaVinci, a hunter in a society of farmers, or, like Marko Ferek, a hyperactive dreamer. His creation of this unknown personality type is a text-book case of the holy trinity in action.

Ferek writes

I was a below average student. I had a short attention span, I day-dreamed a lot, was fidgety, and no matter how much I tried, I could not focus. Due to this I was often criticized, which lead me to loose all self-confidence. The inability to explain to myself why I had such problems in school, led me to believe that I was stupid.

At the age of 22 I accidentally found out about ADHD. As soon as I read about the symptoms I realized that I had ADHD. This was a big shock for me because I realized that I was not stupid, but that I simply had problems with concentration. I felt a huge urge to understand myself more because I knew I was unknown to myself.

My self-research lead me to an unexpected discovery, something I always felt inside but through the years stopped believing. I found out that I don’t have a deficit, but a gift!” Although I portray the symptoms of ADHD and therefore fall under the ADHD umbrella– I actually don’t have ADHD. Symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity are not the result of my deficit, but a result of my creativity, my gift. I have a healthy and creative mind that creates ADHD-like symptoms.” [Emphasis added]

But wait! There’s more!

Then, out of the blue, I had a vision. I saw my mission – to explain people like me to the world, because this specific spectrum of creativity is still not recognized. I call them “hyperactive dreamers”. Since then I dedicated myself to my mission. [Emphasis added]

Did Marko Ferek really create a new personality type? Of course not. His inability to explain himself to himself led him to believe that he IS stupid. It is likely that the criticism he received never helped him make the distinction between is and like. To tell a child he is acting like he is stupid (which implies that he is not) is not the same thing as saying he is stupid. The former describes a set of actions; the latter describes a state of being, and it is the latter that had a devastating effect on his self-image, something most every ADHDer can relate to. But the label “stupid” left him wondering, how could he be both stupid and creative? That’s when he hit upon his Aha! moment. He is NOT stupid. However, his special type of creativity exhibits characteristics that look LIKE he is stupid. He is hyperactive and impulsive, not because he has ADHD, but because this newly discovered personality type mimics ADHD. In fact, it has all the characteristics of ADHD even though it is NOT ADHD.

I won’t dwell any longer on the twisted logic used to arrive at the concept of “hyperactive dreamer” because I want to address a more fundamental issue, namely that all ADHDers have to grapple with their diagnosis and to figure out what it means for them and what it says about them. Some see it as magical fairy dust while some others see it as a curse that destroys life. Then there are others who just see it as this “thing” they have that sometimes interferes with their life but which is not the sole focus of their life. (This describes my current relationship with my diagnosis. I’ve moved beyond ADHD-as-a-Curse to my Mosquito Theory of ADHD.) Marko Ferek has discovered a brand new way to live with an ADHD diagnosis: acknowledge the obvious, deny the obvious, and give it a new name, such as hyperactive dreaming.

We must admit that for someone to simultaneously acknowledge and deny what is obvious to all, takes enormous courage and creativity, much like that exhibited by Buckminster Fuller, who was a “hopelessly nearsighted child” who “refused to believe that the world was not blurry ” until that fateful moment when he got a pair of glasses. Perhaps Ferek is “psychologically” nearsighted and needs to be fitted with a pair of “psychological” glasses. Then, once he can see what everyone else sees, he can use his formidable talents to help others understand what it is like to be just like Marko Ferek: intelligent, creative and ADHD.

After years of ADHD symptoms and struggles — dating back to elementary school — Jeff Siegel was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 46. That diagnosis was “bittersweet,” says Siegel. “On the one hand it’s a relief, you know exactly what the answer is,” he says. But on the other hand, there’s fear too — that it’s something you can’t get rid of. [ Click here to read the whole post ]

Oh. Before I forget. I should mention that the ADHDer referred to in that Everyday Health post is me.

I was puzzled by a recent post in PsychCentral. I read it and reread it. I waited a few days to see what comments people would write. I looked at some of the other posts referenced by the author. Finally, I arrived at the same conclusion I had when I first read the post — this is pure nonsense. Beginning from its provocative title You Are Not Your Thoughts: A Personal Philosophy Of Mind, to the implied “seal of approval” by the use of a selected Martha Nussbaum quote, I found myself arguing with almost every point that was raised.

“You are not your thoughts” – Really? Then what am I if I am not my thoughts? A rock? A tree? I am my thoughts (isn’t that obvious?) and without them, I am not human.¹ I can change those thoughts which, the author — Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar — acknowledges, is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy and which she succinctly summarizes as follows:

In a (very small) nutshell, CBT asks you to question your thoughts, and the beliefs that underpin them. It asks you to have another look at the way you’ve got things set up in your mind. To see if the conclusions that it’s so easy to jump to in the heat of the moment are actually even real or right. To renovate the interior of your inner-most home. And it has a few user-friendly formulas to do it with. [Emphasis in the original]

But Gawne-Kelnar has a problem with CBT. It can devolve into condescending happy talk. While holding out the promise of personal change through the process of changing your thoughts (see Am I My Own Placebo Effect?), at the same time it passes judgment about those thoughts: this one is good; that one is bad. To some degree there’s nothing controversial here. This type of self-imposed talking cure has become a staple of the Westernized psyche. But now things become more problematic, more confused. Gawne-Kelnar wants to separate our thoughts from our sense of who we are, from our “identity.” She quotes Martha Nussbaum:

…shortly after [birth] we encounter external forces that corrupt and confuse us. These influences take hold of us: and yet they are not really us. They are not “our very own feelings,” but something from the world outside; and they enslave us as time goes on. [Emphasis in the original]

This quote is rife with assumptions that border on the nonsensical. To say that after we are born we “encounter external forces that corrupt and confuse us,” implies that without those external forces, a child will develop a sense of self, a sense of her own feelings that are pure. Really? And how does this miracle child acquire language? How does this miracle child acquire the mental capacity to understand, to describe, to express her very own feelings?² Nussbaum (at least in this quote) and, by implication, Gawne-Kelnar, are assuming that humans are born with some essence, some sense of self, that precedes socialization. While current research has pointed in the direction of infants “understanding” much more than we have realized, we also find that they cannot express those “understandings” without language which can only be acquired through those corrupting external forces. Bottom line: there is no self that preexists the effects of the external forces because it is those external forces that provides the human being with the conceptual language necessary to have the concept of self. By appealing to some mythical “self” that is separate from us and our thoughts, or that exists prior to birth and the corrupting influence of socialization, is to resurrect old philosophical problems of mind-body dualism. That may work well within the realm of new-age mysticism but not within the current state of science and psychology. You are your thoughts, even if you don’t think so.

1. If I am not my thoughts then doesn’t that mean I am in a vegetative state, that I am an empty vessel, a simulacra of a human being? Even to enter some Zen-like nirvana implies that I have some thoughts that are putting me in a calming, meditative “non-thought” state but I am still my thoughts even if my thoughts are not foremost in my mind at that very moment.
2. There are faint echoes here of Ayn Rand’s grand delusion known as Objectivism. For an eye-opening look at Rand’s absurd philosophy, see this set of videos.

Source: http://23.media.tumblr.com/nCIWNGzuUk18deenxH5enuDio1_400.jpg

Be Yourself

(Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher)

The puzzle of the human experience is that a thought – which comes from somewhere in the mind which comes from somewhere in the brain – can compel me (me? Who is this “me” that’s being compelled?) to engage in physical activity, like running, that in turn changes the physiology of the brain that changes the mind that changes my thought. But this is circular. It’s a closed loop. (A very strange loop!) Where’s the beginning? Is there a beginning? Do I know that I am really changing my thoughts or am I playing a game with myself to make myself feel better so I think up “changed thoughts” and I point to those “changed thoughts” as proof that my thoughts have changed. But have they really changed? We know that there is physiological evidence showing that physiological changes can take place in the brain as a result of physical activity. But I don’t see my brain-physiological changes. I only know about them within my own brain because (here we go!) I think I detect the changes. (What does “I ‘think’ I detect the changes” mean? Who’s doing the thinking?) Are my changed thoughts real changes? What are “real changes”? Certainly they are not changes that are independent of me but are changes caused by me. I’m my own cause and effect, my own Prime Mover. (Therein lies the promise of self-improvement because I can will myself to improve and that will-to-improve can bring about the very improvement that I seek. But is there an upper limit to self-improvement or can it go on forever? Does my physiology impose limits? If yes, is it possible for me to know what those limits are?)

There are times when I think I am my own placebo effect,  thinking that my thinking has changed because of the thought that by actually doing something, like running, I can bring about a change in my thinking.

I think that makes sense.