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.