You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (13 page)

Jim, on the other hand, can’t realistically
assess himself because he works so hard at pretending nothing bothers him. His “what, me worry?” attitude masks real feelings that probably include anger. He is angry at himself for his shortcomings and at the people who take advantage of him. His armor protects him but also prevents him from grappling with ambitions he’s never been able to admit. If he’s ever able to let his guard down,
he’ll need to confront his anger. If he can learn to deal with his feelings up front, he may even find that his physical health improves.

Manipulation

Todd is forty-seven years old and is restless, attractive and charming. He frequently changes relationships, living arrangements and jobs. He uses his disarming, boyish manner as a powerful lure to hook others into willingly taking care of him.
He never pulls his weight at work, relying instead on his mastery of manipulation to get others to do the work for him.

Faced with a tedious or difficult task, Todd flatters and cajoles others into bailing him out. Sometimes he acts helpless, getting coworkers to do his job under the guise of teaching him. He says something like, “I never was any good at that. I really admire people who can do
it.” Sometimes he tells a tale of woe about his boss piling work on him or about emergencies in his life. His manipulative behavior usually works and someone steps in to bail him out. As soon as he feels restless or coworkers get on to him, he simply changes jobs.

Todd usually makes decent money but regularly ends up flat broke because he’s careless and impulsive with his spending. To deal with
his financial difficulties, he relies on the women in his life to support him. His women do more than simply contribute to his financial support. They are also charged with keeping him out of trouble. They keep track of his checkbook and his household and social responsibilities. Todd manipulates them by using guilt, charm, sex appeal—whatever maneuver will work in a given situation.

Often he
manipulates his current woman into keeping him together enough to hold down his job. She gets him up in the morning, monitors his performance and smooths things over with the boss when Todd messes up. More often than not, he ends the relationship when he feels too constrained by the “mothering.” His behavior sounds a lot like an alcoholic’s but he doesn’t drink. He has just learned to manipulate
like someone who does.

Todd might seem like a ruthless, unfeeling user who will stop at nothing to ensure that his needs are met. He isn’t pure villain, however. He’s an ADD adult who has learned to use manipulation as a cover for his underlying problems.

He lives in a constant state of emergency, running scared all the time. He knows he regularly makes mistakes but feels helpless to prevent
them. So he survives by using other people to cover for him. It’s the only way he knows to survive, although he’s aware that it’s unacceptable for a grown man to be cared for this way.

Todd simply hasn’t figured out an alternative method for satisfying his needs. His manipulations are neither conscious nor premeditated. He doesn’t connect his actions with their impact on others. His impulsivity
and lack of attention to detail make him unaware of much of his behavior and its consequences.

Webster defines manipulating as “controlling or playing on others using unfair means.” It may be a dirty word but everyone uses manipulation on occasion. Although we may not like being manipulated as puppets on a string, occasionally we may need to use this defense as a matter of survival.

ADD adults
in particular can become masters of the art of manipulation. It’s a tough, competitive world out there with dire consequences for those who sink to the bottom of the heap. Many of the newly homeless are hardworking folk who slid over the line into poverty following a setback such as unemployment or illness. If someone starts out in life with a physical handicap,
learning disability or ADD, the
stakes are higher and riskier. There is a great temptation to use any available means to improve one’s odds of survival.

This isn’t to say that the majority of people with disabilities become manipulative. Most are rather heroic in their striving to achieve. They generally cope by learning to work harder than nondisabled people. ADD adults, however, have additional risk factors that increase
the odds of their becoming masters of manipulation.

Withdrawal

Barb is both unattached and detached. Twenty-five years old, she lives with her parents and works as a file clerk. She has rarely dated, has no close friends and spends most of her free time watching TV. Occasionally she goes out to dinner with a coworker, but that’s the extent of her social life. She spends her vacations tagging
along with her parents. Although Barb has an above-average IQ, she is a marginal worker on the job. She makes many mistakes and has trouble keeping up with her colleagues.

Barb is different from most of the ADDers you’ve met in this chapter. She isn’t anxious about her performance and doesn’t worry about her less than glowing appraisals. After a childhood of academic and social failures, she
has decided that giving up is the safest thing she can do. She has chosen to accept mediocrity. The price she pays is a life of boredom, loneliness and depression. Barb is free from the risks she would face if she decided to live her life fully. But is it worth it?

Like that of many ADD adults, Barb’s handicap has never been identified. She is neither hyperactive nor impulsive. Everyone has always
told her that she is lethargic and spacey. Barb believes this characterization. She has chosen survival through withdrawal.

This defense is a cousin to the Who Cares stance but operates slightly differently. Barb has given up completely and has carefully buried her feelings and doubts. She never gives any thought to the possibility that her life could be different. Jim, on the
other hand, maintains
nagging doubts about his abilities and lack of achievement. On some level, he continues to think about these issues that trouble him.

Insulated from pain by suppressing feelings of inadequacy, Barb can’t make a thoughtful decision about her life. The Barbs of this world haven’t made peace with themselves—it’s as if they’re buried alive.

Chip on the Shoulder

While Barb quietly withdraws, Paula
aggressively poises for full-scale battle every moment of her life. She’s only nineteen but has developed an especially prickly suit of armor. When her husband asks if she has taken out the trash, she reacts defensively. She offers a long-winded explanation of why she hasn’t been able to get around to the chore yet. As she becomes increasingly angry and indignant, she switches to the offensive,
attacking her husband for overworking her with his demands.

Paula’s husband asked about the trash only because he was going outside and wanted to take it with him if it was still in the house. He wearily retreats from the house, wondering how his good intentions ended up in this ugly scene. Paula retreats to nurse her anger at a world that is always dissatisfied with her efforts.

Paula is a
selfish shrew, making her saintly husband’s life miserable. She has a colossal chip on the shoulder, responding to innocent comments with a barrage of defensive excuses and explanations. At least this is the way she acts. But appearances aren’t always what they seem.

Paula is an ADD adult who spent much of her childhood rebuked for things she forgot to do or didn’t finish. Her psyche is raw from
all the times she worked her heart out only to be chastised for the one thing she didn’t do. Her life has been filled with false accusations of thoughtlessness and laziness that no one knew were symptoms of her subtle disability. She ruminates about the injustices in her life and the unfairness of it all.

Paula’s chip on the shoulder is a protective suit of armor designed to shore up her sense
of self. She continually defends herself as a matter of reflex even when she isn’t being attacked. The intensity of her defensive stance may be out of proportion to the imagined slight, but her life experiences have taught her to expect criticism. She can never let down her defenses. She has to be ready for the next assault on her being.

Paula’s defense serves another purpose. It inoculates her
against requests for her time or energy. With deficits that interfere with an organized lifestyle, she frantically tries to keep up with demands that are sometimes overwhelming. Her prickly shell fends off at least some of the extra demands as it makes people think twice about approaching her with questions or requests for her involvement.

There isn’t anything inherently bad about emotional self-defense
in the face of real injustice. In Paula’s case, however, her knee-jerk defensiveness is the maladaptive suit she wears every moment of her life. She has suffered so many wounds that she can’t differentiate between real and imagined assaults. She focuses exclusively on protection, never allowing herself to find the strengths that would lead to positive growth.

Take Me or Leave Me

You probably
know highly effective people whose self-confidence you admire. They are self-assured and comfortable with themselves. They assume a healthy attitude of “What you see is what you get—I’m okay and have nothing to hide.” They use this in a positive way. They are unlikely, for example, to waste time on relationships that probably wouldn’t work anyway.

Pete is a Take Me or Leave Me man in his midthirties.
He is attractive and affable, drawing people to him with his sense of humor and gift of gab. He comes across as honest, straightforward and comfortable with his limitations. He sincerely apologizes when he misses an important deadline at work or forgets
to attend his daughter’s school play. Pete disarms most people by being the first to admit his weaknesses. He frequently makes himself the butt
of his own jokes.

“What you see is what you get” Pete has chosen a positive coping mechanism … or has he? What makes Pete different from the self-confident people we described? The difference is that Pete’s “take me or leave me” attitude is a carefully fabricated facade behind which he hides.

He is a grown-up class clown who “keeps ’em laughing” so no one will notice the things he can’t do.
He uses his excellent sense of humor to create a smoke screen to hide difficulties and deflect criticism. Would-be critics find the wind taken out of their sails when Pete beats them to the punch by making a joke about his failings. He leaves them with nothing to say.

It’s healthy to take ourselves less seriously. Pete, however, does it to excess. Though he readily admits his weaknesses, he never
does anything about them! He retreats behind his self-deprecating facade instead of honestly studying his behavior.

He’s busy hiding and is unaware of the increasing frustration and anger of his friends. They continue to forgive his failings but are beginning to have nagging feelings that something is rotten in Denmark. Pete’s basically a “good guy,” but he’s totally undependable. He isn’t doing
anything to improve himself. His mistakes are getting less funny, and his refusal to take anything seriously is causing increasing resentment.

Pete’s coping mechanism does protect him, but it’s maladaptive. It prevents the introspection he needs to make positive changes in his life.

It Ain’t So

Donna’s family of five lurches from crisis to crisis. She always attributes her family’s problems
to external events and people.

Everything will be fine when the excitement of Christmas is over or when one of the kids gets a new teacher
. She spends much of her time waiting for things to return to normal, but they never do.

Donna is forty-five years old and has given up a professional career to stay home with her three children, who are all hyperactive and disobedient. Donna is gentle and
spacey, rarely raising her voice to her children or asserting herself with other adults. She works hard at a difficult parenting job, but her children continue to be unruly, and her household remains noisy and disordered. When a crisis erupts, she consults with professionals but promptly disregards their advice. She denies that a real problem exists.

Several years ago Donna was diagnosed with
ADD. Her physician prescribed Ritalin and she took it for a short while. She explains that she stopped taking the medicine because it interfered with her sleep, but she never told her doctor about the side effect.

It’s obvious to anyone who knows Donna that her ADD has a big impact on the problems she experiences. The chaos created by her unruly children overwhelms her. Her deficits make it nearly
impossible to provide the firm discipline and structure her children need so desperately. She continues to delude herself into thinking she can manage everything by herself.

Donna avoids her problems the way Scarlett O’Hara avoided hers. She chooses to deny they exist. Denial is an integral part of grief when a loved one dies. It provides time for mobilizing strength to cope with the realization
of the loss. Denial is a healthy, essential step that leads to ultimate acceptance.

The end of a relationship or a job, the loss of a body part or an alteration in self-image can also set the grief process in motion. Donna is grieving the loss of
a perfect, healthy self
, replaced with the label of ADD. She has always known that something was wrong but hasn’t found comfort in her diagnosis. Similar
to a widow who keeps her long-deceased spouse’s belongings as if he
were still alive, Donna is stuck in denial. Because she can’t acknowledge her limitations, she can’t move beyond them toward a stage of acceptance.

Donna uses her It Ain’t So defense to run frantically in circles, trying to avoid facing herself. Unable to
own
her ADD, she continues to attribute her problems to something or somebody
else. She refuses to take needed medication or avail herself of professional help. She expends considerable energy trying to keep everything together. Her misguided efforts, however, don’t yield results. If she can ever face her situation realistically, she’ll be able to use her creative mind to find solutions.