I'm atypical though, rather than acting *out* on my inbility to focus, I withdrew into my head. There are forty-seven hundred squirrel cages in here, all full, and all going a mile a minute.

The official phrasing, last I heard, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Inattentive Type. I have often heard/read that it could be more acurately descriptive to call it Variable Attention Disorder, because we might be paying attention to seven things all at once (and probably not very well) or we might be paying attention to one thing to the exclusion of others (hyper-focus is a common experience) but it is difficult to predict what will catch our attention. Moreover, we have a heck of a time choosing what to pay attention to. I mean, I'd kill to be able to choose the seven things, maybe narrow them down to two or three at a time, or to be able to plan ahead for what I want to accomplish with a hyper-focus spell.

My therapist said that the "acting out" part of ADD and ADHD is not very common in adults.

What is amazing me right now is how long I have thought that EVERYONE'S brain worked like that, and why the hell couldn't I cope when everyone else could?

I seriously spent my first week on meds going "wait, you mean other people have been aware of the passage of time all along? AND THEY NEVER TOLD ME?"

I wish you a year of light and laughter, good work to do and satisfaction from it. I wish you joy.

This is so sweet, Beverly. Thank you. And thanks for all of the birthday wishes. On the day or not, they all contributed to make this one of the best ever.

you mean other people have been aware of the passage of time all along

So, is this a sign of ADD (or ADHD)? I had never heard this before, but it would make things make more sense with some friends of mine.

There is a book by Sari Solden, called Women with Attention Deficit Disorder. It may be every bit as helpful as Driven To and Delivered From Distraction. While ADD undermines self-esteem for anyone who struggles with it, it can be a particularly vermicious kinit pernicious challenge to the self esteem of women who have it. Part of that is because we are less likely to be diagnosed as children, therefore struggle with it for many years all the while thinking that whatever is wrong with us is a moral or personal failing rather than a medical condition. Another reason is that it makes it extremely difficult to do well with all the roles that a modern woman has - not only in work and academics, but also all our social duties such as keeping up with all the birthdays, all the holidays, all the activities as well as organizing and keeping one's home clean.

So, is this a sign of ADD (or ADHD)?

I can't remember whether I've seen it listed that way as an official symptom, but one of the ways my particular inattentiveness/multi-focus/hyperfocus has always played out is as "wait, where did those three hours go...?"

The more you talk about ADHD, the more I think I should be tested too. I've always had a terrible time focusing on just one thing and getting it done, and when something has to be done, I usually have to ingest massive doses of caffeine to sit down and to it. When I get enough caffeine, I can sit down and focus.

In a Freecycle e-mail I just got:

"offer: king size head broad and rails"

The ADD discussing is making me think that I need to get off my ass, find a doctor here in St. Louis, and get back on my meds. Work has been busy enough that my usual coping strategies have not been keeping up.

They hadn't discovered ADD when I was a child. I only discovered it when my younger son had it--I recognized in him a lot of the things I had done and felt, and behaviors I'd had before I learned how to circumvent them. I spent grade school testing high on IQ and pretty high on aptitude, and taking home interim reports and report cards all saying "She's so smart, she just doesn't TRY." My poor parents truly had *no* clue, so they tried all the punishment and reward stuff, which of course just made me feel stupider because it didn't seem to work, either.

When you're a kid, you *believe* grownups--I mean, they're the ones who who know, right? You're new here, and they've been here a while, so they know stuff you haven't learned yet. So when they tell you you aren't trying, or you're stupid, they must be right.

When I was in my teens, I fell badly skating, dislocated my knee, tore and pulled every connector between my calf and thigh. I remember sitting on the edge of the orthopedist's table. "Wiggle your toes." Look, wiggly toes. "Now raise your leg." I tried. I tried so hard I broke a sweat and nearly passed out, because I didn't want to have a leg that didn't work. I didn't want to be that person. But the truth was, I *was* trying. The pathway for the message to move was just verschimmlt.

So when I explain it now, that's the ...simile? I use.

Several of my bosses and co-workers have mocked me for my OCD. Little did they know that being OCD was all that kept me moored.

My mother begged to have me tested for ADD when I was in school, because I would take nearly all of my classwork home unfinished as homework, but I also had good grades and didn't disrupt the class much (unless you count sharpening your pencil every 5 minutes), so they refused to believe I needed testing.