Attention Deficit Disorder - Open to Membership

Struggles with disorganization, rumination, black and white thinking, mood-swings, staying focused on important ™concerns, working with time and transitions, planning, financial follow-through (or follow-through at all!) - these are some of the challenges of living with Attention Deficit Disorder day-to-day.

Whenever I talk about the challenge of living with ADD, one of the comments I hear most often is, "Well EVERYBODY struggles with that!"

Absolutely!  We all have a little bit of "absent minded professor" about us.  Any of us can get so absorbed in what we are doing that we become unaware that time is passing and end up late for a promised appointment..  Everybody has burned the toast or forgotten to check an appointment book until the appointment had passed.  Most of us have gotten lost more than once, and few of us find it easy to concentrate on a phone call when someone in the room is talking to us at the same time.

An ADD diagnosis is one of degree.  Determining where to put that line of demarcation is the subject of heated debate.  Nobody can argue with this fact, however:  our technology has developed faster than our biology.  That fact alone produces a stress response -- we are not built to be able to accommodate what we expect of ourselves in this society.  Some of the difficulties we experience as a result are very similar to those experienced by individuals with full-blown, diagnostic ADD (or AD/HD as it is "officially" referred to in the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-IV.)

We live in a fast-paced society.  Everybody suffers from problems with attention some days and some weeks.  Many of us experience the challenges for periods of weeks or months, heralded by a life-event that seems to unbalance life itself: marriage or divorce, the birth of a new baby, the loss of a job or a promotion to a new level of responsibility, a move to a new state or a new house, children leaving home -  or returning again!

Major life changes, positive or negative, are stressful.  Stress takes a toll on functioning.

Everybody finds it difficult to put the elements of life back together after "falling in a hole" created by struggles with intentionality during the period where priorities must be readjusted to accommodate current reality, when it seems that nothing that worked before is effective anymore.

The "walls" of life are knocked down during renovation.  Until life returns to "normal," recovery skills become increasingly important when the elements of structure that seemed so reliable, if not actually easy, come tumbling down around us.  Learning how to "shift your weight" as stability seems to disappear is an essential component of those recovery skills.

What if life never did return to "normal?"  What if the old ways never worked for you again?  What if you never got a break?  What if every day was filled with numerous examples of failure and frustration as you attempted to use old systems on new challenges that simply did not respond as intended?

You would eventually reach a point where your recovery skills were overworked, liked fatigued muscles expected to exercise without a rest.  That's what its like to live with ADD.  Our recovery skills are worn plumb out!!

Daily we find ourselves climbing out of "holes," left to repair the damage created in a moment's inattention and begin anew.  Daily we fall into additional holes while our attention is riveted on damage control from an earlier fall.  Continually we defend ourselves against charges that others are able to manage successfully, so if we are having trouble it is because we don't WANT success.

When one of those others has a life event that throws his or her life into a similar dynamic s/he experiences personally that some things simply are not amenable to will.  As that person struggles in ways that seem "self-imposed" to others still, s/he is forced to understand and accommodate some of the things that ADDers have always had to live with.

The biggest challenge of all is self-esteem.  "They're right!" s/he thinks, in response to the well-intended "pull yourself together" comments from others, "I should be able to do that?  AM I weak or lazy or self-sabotaging?"

Then there's the challenge of continuing to hold onto expectations of success, rather than succumbing to expectations of failure.  To those who aren't exhausted from "hole climbing" it surely must seem as if the anguished wail from the bottom of the fourth hole TODAY is "over-reacting."  After all, they themselves have fallen into holes before and kept a positive attitude until they were able to climb out and begin again!  Perhaps, they suggest with thinly veiled exasperation, it is your negative attitude that needs an overhaul.

Yet when life changes, whether as a result of a unfortunate mistake or due to circumstances beyond their control, and THEY find themselves navigating a landscape with so many "holes" they find it difficult to find a place to walk without repeated falling and climbing, SUDDENLY they experience the ADD reality.

Yep.  Everybody struggles with ADD challenges which overwhelm them at some point in their lives.

ADD is a minority that is always open to membership -- and almost EVERYONE will find themselves experiencing ADD challenges at some point in their lives!

Pseudo-ADD

Dr. Edward Hallowell, one of the co-authors of one of the best-known books in the ADD field, Driven to Distraction, coined the phrase "pseudo ADD" to distinguish the stress responses of this technology and circumstance/biology discrepancy from the true neuro-biological disorder that results in a diagnosis of ADD.  Many individuals whose lives change to a point where they are unable to cope with attending to the necessary details would not qualify for a diagnosis of ADD, since the primary source is situational rather than neuro-biological, even though they currently exhibit many of the symptoms of ADD.

Other individuals who would qualify for diagnosis who lived lives set up to compensate for their challenges often feel that ADD  appears all of a sudden when life changes to a degree where their old coping mechanisms can not overcome their brain-wiring.  Their recovery skills are inadequate to the task.  Still others were able to limp along under-functioning but "passing for normal" until something happened that seemed to push them over the diagnostic line.

In cases like these it seems to me that the popular press, always hungry for headlines, pounces on an opportunity to bewail the sudden increase in ADD diagnoses, as if those individuals who increased the ADD statistics suddenly acquired ADD or were jumping on the ADD bandwagon to have a handy excuse for personal shortcomings of will and motivation.  Botheration and nonsense!

Contrary to what you may have read, doctors are extremely reluctant to diagnose ADD and to prescribe medications for temporary situations that mimic ADD.  We have studies that seldom see the light of day, as far as press coverage is concerned, that show that ADD is actually UNDER-diagnosed and under-medicated .

Diagnosis is important to rule out other things that mimic ADD as much as anything else, and can only be done by a professional licensed and qualified to diagnose.  But the fine points of diagnosis and where you fall on the diagnostic continuum are ultimately unimportant when you still have to find a way to live your life successfully, as do those of us who struggled with the challenges of diagnostic ADD earlier in the game.

Why not allow yourselves to use the techniques we've found to compensate for ADD challenges?

In ADD support groups we learn that our symptoms are not unique and that others have found ways of coping with them.  ADD Coaches have discovered a lot of ways around functional and attentional challenges of all types and all origins.  You don't have to struggle alone and you don't have to "reinvent the wheel," whether your struggles are the result of "real" ADD or not.   Find out what bona-fide Adders do to cope.

The ADD Lens™

I like the idea of looking at things through The ADD Lens™.  If functioning constancy is a recurring problem for you, start to utilize a few of the techniques that have been found to work with people who have been diagnosed with ADD.  See if looking at yourself through The ADD Lens™- as if you had ADD - gives you a way to approach areas of prior difficulty in a way that you can handle them successfully.

As the founder and CEO of the Optimal Functioning Institute, which trains ADD Coaches worldwide in a TeleClass format, and one who considers herself the ADD Poster Girl, I promise you that people all over the world have found ways to compensate for "organizational challenges" of all degrees and types.  OFI's two-year, ICF certification tracked program explores the underlying issues of "ADD affect" (and strategies and techniques to compensate) in depth.

I don't want these strategies to remain "our little secret."  With a conservative estimate of 18-21 million diagnostic Adders in the US alone, many still to be diagnosed, I can't train coaches fast enough to handle the need for the diagnostic Adders, let alone those who struggle with what I term "situational ADD."

Finding support

In 1994 I began two monthly calls to support those looking for answers to ADD challenges, The ADD Hours™. I offered them at no charge to the participants, other than the cost of their own phone calls, at regular rates, to the area code of whatever OFI TeleBridge was used for the group.  As interest increased I added calls, and currently offer 8 monthly calls supporting various ADD issues and discussions. While most of them support ADD Professionals and coaches of all types, three of them are open to the general public.  Anyone can join in from anywhere the world.  All you need is a telephone.

AddCoach.com™

To find out how to attend The ADD Hours™ go to and click on the calendar link.  They are still offered at no fee.

I am also pleased to announce the debut of a brand new company - AddCoach.com™, which will introduce the developmental versions of what will become a brand new curriculum.

The new curriculum is intended to provide an inexpensive alternative for those who want to take advantage of the strategies taught to the OFI Associates, effective with organizational and attentional challenges of all varieties - those who would like to take on their challenges in smaller "bites," without having to dedicate two years to the ADDCoach training program.

Classes from AddCoach.com™ are intended to support:

Adders themselves, including those with "situational ADD"

those who live with and love Adders who frustrate them

those who work with Adders in any arena, and

those who coach Adders, whether as a practice focus or because

• their client base includes those they desire to support with technologies designed to work especially for attentional differences.

Ultimately, each TeleClass will be supported by a book from The ADD Lens™ Series, available for sale separately and included in the price of the TeleClass.  The developmental classes will be supported by emailed portions of the text, sort of a build-your-own-book-from-class-materials format, so that I can tweak the final version to include what I learn from the participants of the class.

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