Does everyone have ADHD? Is the number of cases of people with ADHD going up? These questions came from an interesting conversation I had with a Starbucks partner yesterday In the Ina and LaCholla Starbucks.
As we talked I was able to articulate some of the ideas that I have been pondering for quite a while. To begin to answer these questions I will first use an analogy to describe the process that I believe happens in normal people, and then what it would be like from the eyes of someone with ADHD. You will notice the similarities and the differences between them, then I will use those to explain further if everyone does in fact have ADHD.
So a lawyer reads a new law for the first time. As he reads it he is using the left, logical side of his brain to interpret the meaning behind the law. The left side of his brain will begin to analyze the words and what they individually mean, then put them together in a corporate context to begin to understand what their use collectively means as a whole. Now a good lawyer will begin to use his right hemisphere, or creative side and allow his mind to wander through different cenario and applications that he might use this new law. He might wonder why this law was enacted as a clue to how to use it, what loopholes this new law creates, any number of paradigm's concerning the laws application, interpretation, or it's ambiguity. If he were introduced to this new law in a meeting, it would be quite distracting for him to have to do this and not pay attention to how the meeting was proceeding. My point with this is that the good lawyer know the balance of how much he can allow himself to think about this subject according to the appropriateness of the situation.
I will explain cycle rates, and then we will look at this same cenario with the creative knob turned up.
Cycle rate? What is that? This is a way of thinking about the balance between being logical, being creative, or simply being aware of stimulus. For a "normal" person, they look at a problem, and slowly look at it from different angles. They may read the law, and think of another law that it reminds them of. This would be the personal filter of past experience. Then once they have gone down that path for a while, and may or may not have given them any new revelation to the new law, they look at the law analyticity, is the law clearly stated or is it hazy or ambiguous. There are tons of these different perspectives that they could look at the law from, some more relevant, some less relevant. You could say they cycled through different filters that they had, to see which would apply or where appropriate.
Now lets turn the cycle rate up. As this person starts to think of the past experience of the law, before they have finished, they start looking at the wording of the new law, then they realize the old law was worded a little funky, well gee there was this one law that was really funky in wording, but that came about because of the amount of people working on the law. Maybe this new law had too many people giving input to it, Man my sock is really bothering me, maybe those people who wrote the law had socks that bothered them too, or their room was dimly lit like mine. Who, where did that come from? When the cycle rate for going through personal filters, the current stimulus is sometimes more pressing in the mind that what one was thinking about, but this could flip also. If they are driving and the physical stimulus of driving is what is important, and driving by an old building with interesting architecture passes, the driver could start thinking about architects, what kind of schooling they must go through, all that crazy math. Speaking of math, I wonder what my instantaneous velocity is at this moment, am I speeding up at an increasing rate, or am I accelerating at a constant rate? Ok, sorry to do that to you, I know it can get confusing to be thrown down random paths like that.
But what did we learn from this? "Normal" people have the same brain process as ADHD people. In fact, this ability to connect past events to our lives to help us interpret present information is vital. So is the ability to see different perspectives when approaching a problem. These are considers good skills to have. The problem arises when these skills are taken slightly farther than necessary. This cycling through logical, then creative, then sensory impute, is handy and troublesome. I would like to talk about this at some length later on, but feel it would draw me away from my topic.
As I have learned, must continue on the topic. So what were we talking about? Aha yes, everyone has this ability to cycle through different inputs, both physical and mental, and in the mental, from both sides of the brain. I will give some examples of where this is very good, and let you think about these taken to the extreme.
A good salesman has the ability to look at the customers objections from their perspective and overcome them in a way adequate to that customer. What if you looked at situations from other peoples perspective too often? Especially without ever knowing if you were able to actually see it from their perspective?
Lawyers look at the ambiguity of language to find multiple meanings in the laws, aswell as the testimony of witnesses, or even contractual agreements. What if you herd the multiple interpretations of what everyone said? And not necessarily all the time, but that was one of the things your brain cycled through?
A good chess player is able to look at tons and tons of lines of strategy to see which ones work better, but take this skill out of context and apply it to social situations, or simply a question someone asks you. This skill being a positive one in the chess setting, suddenly becomes a weakness when applied to situations where quick decisions and assessing of the situation is a must.
I will sum up what conclusions I make from all of this. ADHD is simply the natural creative ability that we all posses, simply taken to a higher thinking cycle rate. It is not even thinking faster, is is just more jumping around. And even this skill is beneficial applied to some concepts. Another way I can put the cycle rate, is that the subconscious thoughts are continually interrupting what I am consciously doing. A different perspective on this, is that the natural feedback loop in my mind is like low volume elevator music, you only hear it when it stops or something really interesting comes up. But for me the volume is turned up a little more, so I hear the thought process of my subconscious continually working, and this can be distracting. One last analogy for this. As I was talking to the Starbucks partner, she herd the incorrect grammar that she had said, and immediately corrected it. This is the internal subconscious listing to what she said and alerting her to the incorrect grammar. So we all have this subconscious voice filtering information, it is just a little louder in ADHD, but in some cases it can be much louder.
I think there was good information here. Again as usual, any comments are appreciated. If you have any other ways of thinking about these, let me know, or if there was something not quite as clear, I would love to know how to express these ideas better. The only thing not very beneficial is criticism without a way to fix it.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Thursday, June 16, 2005
What is ADD/ADHD
As a disclamer, this is what my experience along with many conversations with other people that have ADHD. This is by no means comprehensive, nor are the ideas taken from somewhere else, they are an amalgamation of experiences up to this point.
What is ADHD/ADD
This is a tough question because I believe that ADHD is simply a normal trait that everyone posesses (creativity) taken to an extreme in some individuals. The degree to what extreeme this is taken is what creates the grey area, how much of this abundance must a person have to be classified as having ADHD. For my purposes I will state the extreemes of a given atribute, and let thee reader decide.
For me ADHD, is a blessing and a slight nusance. A blessing, in that I have a continual flood of ideas, inspiration and perspectives from which to draw on at any time. It can be a nusance in that I am always jumping from one idea to another, or have a hard time being consistent with most things on a daily basis.
Let's use some analogies. Imagine with me for a moment, a novelist writing a book on a typwriter. Sitting in a dimly lit room at 3:00 in the afternooon. The bed is unmade, with the room tidy but unorginized. Maby a hotell room or a sparse apartment. She is sitting at a small table trying to think of the complexities of her story. At any given time she must attain a balance between getting ideas, and writing them down. The process of typing down the ideas stunts her ability to think of more, while the more deeply she thinks about the story, the less she writes about it.
Where is her ispiration comming from? Is the inspiration a part of her will that she can force to happen? Or does it come in fits and starts and random times and from random places? She glances over at the disheveled bed and realizes her main charicter is not as one dimensional as she realized. Deep in his ethos is a part that longs for the freedom of spontenaity amongst his strictly regimented lifestyle. This thought came from her surooundings. It was the stimulos of her eyes applied to the thoughts going on in her head.
This is an example of a "normal" person using her creativity. Now imagine she has ADHD. She is sitting at the table, looking around the room for inspiration. lets do internal dialogue here "wow my room is a mess, look at the bed, all messy, I wonder why material my sheets are made of, I have herd egyptian cotton is nice, do they use sheets in egypt, why did the sphynxes nose fall off, my character should have a protruding nose, yess that is good. Then she starts to type, " Wow this old keyboard is weird, listening to the beat of the keys I am pounding I can make a rhythm, or even morese code. That's cool." And with each new idea a whole new stream is born. With one idea comes the whole mental shift of thinking about that idea to it's extreem, but that never comes, because as she takes that idea very far, more intriguing ideas come to mind.
I think this story illistrates the way the creative process when taken to an extreeme throws off the balace of being able to produce what one is thinkinng about. Creativity is only good if it produces something, but with ADHD the wonderment of the process hampers the ability to produce a work.
Let's do another anologie.
A man is at a party where he only knows the person that brought him. His firend wanders off and he is left to fend for himself. He begins a conversation with an attractive girl, which carries on for 10 min. Then they are interupted and somehow get separated and do not see each other again.
Now put yourself in this man's shoes. What is going through his head as he talks to the girl? "Man, I wonder if she likes me, is she intrested, does she have a boyfirend?" These are questions anyone would think about, somewhat surface level. Lets turn up the creativity knob. What was her up bringing, did you notice the southern accent, is she a natural blond, wow look at her nails, well manicured, her outfit matches well and seams to fit with her personality, aswell as matching the time of day, the season, and the general ambiance of the party. Did she just look away because she was bored, or looking for a more exciting conversation, or hoping one of her friends noticed the attractive guy she was talking too?
This train of thought is still pretty focused even though it shows the natural tendency to analyze the situation, and second guess what is really happening.
Another train exebited by overactive creativity, is the awarness of signals put off by others, and by yourself. But without focus or discipline, these run rampant without having the ability to measure the validity of each signal in turn.
So we will trun the creativity knob up full blast and see what happens.
Lets do the internal dialogue of the man again. "Man I wore the wrong shoes, they are a little uncomfortable, hey that hot chick is comming closer, intresting accent" he says to her"Excuse me, I noticed a slight accent, are you from the south?" bla bla bla.... he sees the fingernails well manicured and wonders how recently they were done, maby she is high maintinence and only likes to go to nice restraunts, dosen't enjoy the simpler things of life, wow these shoes are uncomfortable better shift my weight, oo no, I think she noticed that, she might think I am anxious to leave, but i just want to get to know her better, I wonder what kind of car she drives, I like bigger cars I fit into them better."
Not sure if this example illustrates it well but I will have to refine the core idea more. By the way, as my internal dialogue is going, if any readers of this have comments about how relivant each of these examples are, just post a comment. Or even better, if you have a good analogie to share, please do so, I appreciate the imput. None of these ideas are set in concrete, and I think each individual exibits these traits through their personality and individuality. I am looking for commonalities, and the deeper meaning of why we have this dialogue or self doubt, and how we can channel it into being productive, or deep thinking.
More to come later.
What is ADHD/ADD
This is a tough question because I believe that ADHD is simply a normal trait that everyone posesses (creativity) taken to an extreme in some individuals. The degree to what extreeme this is taken is what creates the grey area, how much of this abundance must a person have to be classified as having ADHD. For my purposes I will state the extreemes of a given atribute, and let thee reader decide.
For me ADHD, is a blessing and a slight nusance. A blessing, in that I have a continual flood of ideas, inspiration and perspectives from which to draw on at any time. It can be a nusance in that I am always jumping from one idea to another, or have a hard time being consistent with most things on a daily basis.
Let's use some analogies. Imagine with me for a moment, a novelist writing a book on a typwriter. Sitting in a dimly lit room at 3:00 in the afternooon. The bed is unmade, with the room tidy but unorginized. Maby a hotell room or a sparse apartment. She is sitting at a small table trying to think of the complexities of her story. At any given time she must attain a balance between getting ideas, and writing them down. The process of typing down the ideas stunts her ability to think of more, while the more deeply she thinks about the story, the less she writes about it.
Where is her ispiration comming from? Is the inspiration a part of her will that she can force to happen? Or does it come in fits and starts and random times and from random places? She glances over at the disheveled bed and realizes her main charicter is not as one dimensional as she realized. Deep in his ethos is a part that longs for the freedom of spontenaity amongst his strictly regimented lifestyle. This thought came from her surooundings. It was the stimulos of her eyes applied to the thoughts going on in her head.
This is an example of a "normal" person using her creativity. Now imagine she has ADHD. She is sitting at the table, looking around the room for inspiration. lets do internal dialogue here "wow my room is a mess, look at the bed, all messy, I wonder why material my sheets are made of, I have herd egyptian cotton is nice, do they use sheets in egypt, why did the sphynxes nose fall off, my character should have a protruding nose, yess that is good. Then she starts to type, " Wow this old keyboard is weird, listening to the beat of the keys I am pounding I can make a rhythm, or even morese code. That's cool." And with each new idea a whole new stream is born. With one idea comes the whole mental shift of thinking about that idea to it's extreem, but that never comes, because as she takes that idea very far, more intriguing ideas come to mind.
I think this story illistrates the way the creative process when taken to an extreeme throws off the balace of being able to produce what one is thinkinng about. Creativity is only good if it produces something, but with ADHD the wonderment of the process hampers the ability to produce a work.
Let's do another anologie.
A man is at a party where he only knows the person that brought him. His firend wanders off and he is left to fend for himself. He begins a conversation with an attractive girl, which carries on for 10 min. Then they are interupted and somehow get separated and do not see each other again.
Now put yourself in this man's shoes. What is going through his head as he talks to the girl? "Man, I wonder if she likes me, is she intrested, does she have a boyfirend?" These are questions anyone would think about, somewhat surface level. Lets turn up the creativity knob. What was her up bringing, did you notice the southern accent, is she a natural blond, wow look at her nails, well manicured, her outfit matches well and seams to fit with her personality, aswell as matching the time of day, the season, and the general ambiance of the party. Did she just look away because she was bored, or looking for a more exciting conversation, or hoping one of her friends noticed the attractive guy she was talking too?
This train of thought is still pretty focused even though it shows the natural tendency to analyze the situation, and second guess what is really happening.
Another train exebited by overactive creativity, is the awarness of signals put off by others, and by yourself. But without focus or discipline, these run rampant without having the ability to measure the validity of each signal in turn.
So we will trun the creativity knob up full blast and see what happens.
Lets do the internal dialogue of the man again. "Man I wore the wrong shoes, they are a little uncomfortable, hey that hot chick is comming closer, intresting accent" he says to her"Excuse me, I noticed a slight accent, are you from the south?" bla bla bla.... he sees the fingernails well manicured and wonders how recently they were done, maby she is high maintinence and only likes to go to nice restraunts, dosen't enjoy the simpler things of life, wow these shoes are uncomfortable better shift my weight, oo no, I think she noticed that, she might think I am anxious to leave, but i just want to get to know her better, I wonder what kind of car she drives, I like bigger cars I fit into them better."
Not sure if this example illustrates it well but I will have to refine the core idea more. By the way, as my internal dialogue is going, if any readers of this have comments about how relivant each of these examples are, just post a comment. Or even better, if you have a good analogie to share, please do so, I appreciate the imput. None of these ideas are set in concrete, and I think each individual exibits these traits through their personality and individuality. I am looking for commonalities, and the deeper meaning of why we have this dialogue or self doubt, and how we can channel it into being productive, or deep thinking.
More to come later.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Childhood Memories
What was it like for me in school?
I remember one time in math class, there were 5 or 6 of us kids sitting around another student who would hold up flash cards of multiplication, and we had to blurt out the answer before anyone else. I don't think I got one of the cards first, or second, or third. I think that was the first time I recall thinking about my thinking process, and why it was different from the other students.
Why did it take me a while to process these new math concepts? This is now a theme that has driven my thinking since that point. When I looked at the numbers, I questioned their overall relation to each other, not only the predefined question we were supposed to be answering. I was having a hard time limiting my mind to the constraints the class was putting on me. It took me quite a while of thinking about why 5 and 6 where so similar, one number off, yet different. One was even, one was odd, 6 is a perfect number, having the same numbers, 1 2 and 3 that when added equal it, and when multiplied equal it as well. I had to let my mind wander through some of these concepts before it would settle down on the concept I needed to learn.
One thing that always frustrated me in math, was that I always wanted to know what the other buttons on the calculator did, but no one could explain it to me conceptually. In fact, their inability to do so, led me to believe that most people did not really understand what was going on with these higher functions. It has only been recently that I have been intrigued once again to some of the oddities of numbers that I was presented with back in the day.
School was quite frustrating back then. I did not yet have the ability to explain things in a cohesive manner. I would start talking and my subconscious would interrupt me with wonderful ideas, and I would start talking about those, or simply stare off in wonderment of these ideas that I could not yet explain or focus down into an intelligible level. Thankfully my mom home schooled me for the first three years, so she was able to encourage my creativity while still honing my inability to focus on one idea.
For the record, I am learning html so as to publish a website that will cover many ideas that are foundational to what I want to say. As I write this post, I am realizing I have not defined what ADHD is like for me, how I have overcome the obstacles while maintaining the positive attributes. Tons of things I would like people to know about. This is the frustrating thing about ADHD, I see many things at once, and can't decide which should come first. Just for fun, here is what I mean
-ADHD as a child
-Why I am glad I took ritilan for a short time, but also hate it.
-What ADHD is like in different situations
(must go off on this one)
-Driving
-Thrift Stores
-Reading Books
-The classroom
-Sitting in Starbucks
-Why brief respites of focused attention help to refocus attention
(This is the point at which I realize my stream of consciousness could go on forever, but where I also see it segwaying into several more subtopics, or back to my original point. I guess I will take it back to the original point, but that is not quite as much fun, I guess I will have more fun later, I will take you on a real ADHD trip... ha, ha, ha.)
So what am I doing about all of these ideas. I am slowly but surely working on writing a book about learning and ADHD, I keep journals that are highly unstructured but through natural selection of random ideas are becoming more structured, and this list could go on for quite a while as well. I hope this blog will forum for people to ask questions, give feedback on these ideas, as well as helping me refine my ideas to further help other people like me. We shall see where these ideas take us. My next post will have to deal with some of what I experience with ADHD, hopefully broad enough to encompass the aforementioned specific examples.
I remember one time in math class, there were 5 or 6 of us kids sitting around another student who would hold up flash cards of multiplication, and we had to blurt out the answer before anyone else. I don't think I got one of the cards first, or second, or third. I think that was the first time I recall thinking about my thinking process, and why it was different from the other students.
Why did it take me a while to process these new math concepts? This is now a theme that has driven my thinking since that point. When I looked at the numbers, I questioned their overall relation to each other, not only the predefined question we were supposed to be answering. I was having a hard time limiting my mind to the constraints the class was putting on me. It took me quite a while of thinking about why 5 and 6 where so similar, one number off, yet different. One was even, one was odd, 6 is a perfect number, having the same numbers, 1 2 and 3 that when added equal it, and when multiplied equal it as well. I had to let my mind wander through some of these concepts before it would settle down on the concept I needed to learn.
One thing that always frustrated me in math, was that I always wanted to know what the other buttons on the calculator did, but no one could explain it to me conceptually. In fact, their inability to do so, led me to believe that most people did not really understand what was going on with these higher functions. It has only been recently that I have been intrigued once again to some of the oddities of numbers that I was presented with back in the day.
School was quite frustrating back then. I did not yet have the ability to explain things in a cohesive manner. I would start talking and my subconscious would interrupt me with wonderful ideas, and I would start talking about those, or simply stare off in wonderment of these ideas that I could not yet explain or focus down into an intelligible level. Thankfully my mom home schooled me for the first three years, so she was able to encourage my creativity while still honing my inability to focus on one idea.
For the record, I am learning html so as to publish a website that will cover many ideas that are foundational to what I want to say. As I write this post, I am realizing I have not defined what ADHD is like for me, how I have overcome the obstacles while maintaining the positive attributes. Tons of things I would like people to know about. This is the frustrating thing about ADHD, I see many things at once, and can't decide which should come first. Just for fun, here is what I mean
-ADHD as a child
-Why I am glad I took ritilan for a short time, but also hate it.
-What ADHD is like in different situations
(must go off on this one)
-Driving
-Thrift Stores
-Reading Books
-The classroom
-Sitting in Starbucks
-Why brief respites of focused attention help to refocus attention
(This is the point at which I realize my stream of consciousness could go on forever, but where I also see it segwaying into several more subtopics, or back to my original point. I guess I will take it back to the original point, but that is not quite as much fun, I guess I will have more fun later, I will take you on a real ADHD trip... ha, ha, ha.)
So what am I doing about all of these ideas. I am slowly but surely working on writing a book about learning and ADHD, I keep journals that are highly unstructured but through natural selection of random ideas are becoming more structured, and this list could go on for quite a while as well. I hope this blog will forum for people to ask questions, give feedback on these ideas, as well as helping me refine my ideas to further help other people like me. We shall see where these ideas take us. My next post will have to deal with some of what I experience with ADHD, hopefully broad enough to encompass the aforementioned specific examples.
Mark and his philosophy of life
Mark recently moved back to California, but he was here long enough to share some wonderful conversations.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step
I am very happy to start writing this. I have begun to write a book about my experiences on having ADHD or as I prefer to call it, dual brained. My intent is to use this blog to be a place where others can read about my experiences and learn about themselves or others they know who are dual brained. I am researching learning, the process of it from my experience as well as published and scholarly works. I also hope to learn from the feedback I get concerning the articles I write, and a sifting of ideas from the broad range of experiences of many people, to ensure that my experiences are not isolated.
I think this blog will also serve as a way for people I know to keep abreast of what I am up to, what new things I am learning, and new inspiration that can help me in my search for a deeper understanding as to the underlying principals behind nature and life (I know, I know, my english teacher would tell me this sentence is a tad to long, but it exemplifies the thought process of my brain, and will give a peek into the flow of ideas in my mind).
I am thankfull for this ability to express myself, and for the hope of helping others like me. May I be clear in expression, yet not lose my voice. May I be general enough for undestanding, yet specific enough for relivance. These statements will become clear later, delving into the deep waters of my thought process.
I think this blog will also serve as a way for people I know to keep abreast of what I am up to, what new things I am learning, and new inspiration that can help me in my search for a deeper understanding as to the underlying principals behind nature and life (I know, I know, my english teacher would tell me this sentence is a tad to long, but it exemplifies the thought process of my brain, and will give a peek into the flow of ideas in my mind).
I am thankfull for this ability to express myself, and for the hope of helping others like me. May I be clear in expression, yet not lose my voice. May I be general enough for undestanding, yet specific enough for relivance. These statements will become clear later, delving into the deep waters of my thought process.
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