Treating adult ADHD
from the inside out
Seven Common Signs of Adult ADHD
Many people think that ADHD is practically synonymous with hyperactivity and impulsivity. But that is a misconception. Adult ADHD is marked by a set of symptoms and behaviors of which hyperactivity and impulsivity are only two, and not even the most important. Having any of the following symptoms wouldn’t be much of a problem, but put them all together (as they usually are) and you have something that really gets in a person’s way.
- Disorganization – ADDers are often surrounded by clutter and chaos. They seem to attract it. Nothing ever seems to get put away. When it is, it is replaced with more clutter. ADDers often feel totally overwhelmed and hopeless about the messy piles around them.
- Forgetfulness — ADDers have a tendency to lose or misplace their keys, wallets and phones. They also forget appointments, forget what people request of them, and even forget sincere promises they’ve made — which makes other people very angry, since it looks, to a neurotypical person, like they just don’t care, or like they’re being deliberately or unconsciously “passive-aggressive.” I think most people who are called “passive-aggressive” are probably suffering from undiagnosed ADHD.
- Distractibility — Not surprisingly, it’s easy for ADDers to lose their focus on things. In people with Inattentive ADHD, their own thoughts tend to feel a lot louder and more important than what comes from outside themselves — which can make people with Inattentive ADHD brilliant at abstract ideas, yet totally lost dealing with physical reality.
- Trouble starting tasks and following through on them to completion — Anything requiring a lot of thought and a complicated multi-step process over a period of time, such as a school project or work report, or redecorating a room, can overwhelm people with ADHD — and then they may stop in their tracks for months, even years. People with ADHD also frequently lose interest in a project halfway through and not be able to complete it. And sometimes, the strangest little things — such as mailing a letter at the post office — can become a huge, seemingly insurmountable block.
- Difficulties with time management — Being late for everything. Procrastinating. Missing deadlines. Spending hours doing something you didn’t mean to do instead of the thing you HAD to do. Because of their disability, ADDers have a very tough time with time.
- Inability to handle boring tasks — Almost nobody likes paperwork. But for ADDers, complicated yet meaningless and boring tasks like paperwork feel like torture, and they can’t get them done in a timely manner to save their lives.
- Inconsistency — ADDers are consistently inconsistent. This can drive other people crazy, because they never know when the ADDer will come through. It also makes it hard for other people to believe that ADHD is a real handicap. People who are paralyzed can never stand up and walk, but people with ADHD sometimes do great work, which makes other people understandably feel that they’d do better if they only tried harder.
With all these difficulties, no wonder many people with undiagnosed ADHD often have low self-esteem and are either chronically anxious or chronically somewhat depressed. Or chronically a bit of both! They’ve been getting the message their entire lives that they’re not meeting expectations. They forget to pay bills and then get late notices. Their bosses and spouses and co-workers are all disappointed in them. They underachieve and don’t know why. All they know is that they’re working harder than everyone else, it seems, just to live and get the normal tasks of life done, and they do them worse than almost anyone they know.
In fact, ADDers often go through life with a constant underlying sense of dread, always wondering when the next thing is going to happen that in their mind proves once again to the world how incompetent they are at meeting life’s challenges.