Attention Deficit, Vigilance Surplus

Imagine you’re a caveman – you’re walking through a forest trying to hunt or gather food. A forest is only peaceful if you leave a noisy world: there are lots of sounds, images, colors that can be detected. Being able to notice all those stimuli can make the difference to survive. Today, when survival is more assured, and the number of stimuli is multiplied exponentially, those same skills make success more difficult. This is what it means to be ADD.

The term is “attention deficit disorder,” but the reality is quite different. It’s not that you don’t pay attention–it’s that you pay attention to EVERYTHING. What I’ve learned over the last couple of years is that for most people, people are able to mentally filter out all the distractions of the modern world. People don’t notice the music playing in the cafe, the lawn mower down the street, the birds chirping in your neighbor’s tree. That’s background noise to you. To me, the music in a restaurant is ALWAYS too loud, landscaping day at my complex (Wednesday) is a horror, and groups of more than five people are to be avoided. In order to keep yourself sane, you have to block out everything, because you can’t help noticing everything.

When I was growing up, ADD wasn’t a thing. You were “hyper,” “distracted,” or often, “just a boy.” My school counselor told me, “You’re like a car with both feet on the gas and the brake pedals. When you learn to let off the brake, you’ll do amazing!” This was in junior high! I didn’t know why I couldn’t focus on things, why I got bored so easily… it was just my life.

It was only when my children were diagnosed that I finally started understanding why I do what I do and what I can do about it. Apparently, there is more than one type of ADD, and the regular prescriptions (taking speed to push you over the edge and calm down) don’t work on me. I’ve learned to take a cocktail of supplements which are much cheaper; 5-HTP, Omega-3, and GABA are the most effective… along with a couple minor ones.

However, there are a lot of advantages. I can focus really hard on a project to the exclusion of all else (once I get going on it). I can notice little details that most people miss. I can work really hard on something and then drop it if priorities require me to be somewhere else. I can listen better because I notice all the signals that people are sending. But most of my life does not require my superpowers.

Most of the time, I cope. I learned to carry headphones to block out noise in restaurants; I don’t have to plug them in, just muffle the sound to my ears a little bit. When I want to write, I pump up the trance/EDM music because it overwhelms all other stimulus and allows me to focus on typing. (I never listen it otherwise.) I seek out a lot more alone time than most people because dealing with other people is exhausting.

Does that sound familiar? Or do you live with someone with ADD? Tell me your experience in the comments below!