You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (45 page)

visual perceptual disabilities auditory perceptual disabilities smell, taste and touch disabilities

Integration:
An inability to understand the information
registered by the brain

visual sequencing disability auditory sequencing disability visual abstraction disabilities auditory abstraction disabilities

Memory:

visual short-term memory disability auditory short-term memory disability visual long-term memory disability auditory long-term memory disability

Output:
An inability to get information back out of the brain

spontaneous language disability
demand language disability gross motor disability fine motor disability

The following was written by a learning-disabled nineteen-year-old and illustrates written expression/output disabilities:

Dear Mother—Started the Store several weeks, I have growed considerably I don’t liik much like a Boy now—Hows all the folk did you receive a Box of Books from Memphis that he promised to send them—languages. Your son Al.

Al was Thomas Alva Edison. He certainly went on to prove his teachers wrong about how
slow
he was!

Since this book is about ADD in adults, you may wonder why we’re including this discussion. The primary reason is that some ADDers also have associated specific learning disabilities. In fact, some experts believe that the
majority
of ADDers have associated learning disabilities.

Probably the most common is a receptive or expressive language disability. In simple terms, this is an impaired ability to receive oral or written language and/or to process language for oral or written expression. A difficulty with written language may in fact result from an associated learning disability.

Attentional problems can mimic learning disabilities and learning disabilities can mimic
ADD. It isn’t easy to tease out the reasons for an individual’s learning problems. Is it a specific learning disability, ADD or both? One could argue against the sometimes arbitrary divisions of ADD and learning disabilities because there are many overlapping symptoms. Despite the overlap, having a learning disability is different from having ADD.

Having ADD means having trouble initially getting
information into the brain because of attention problems. If you are present in body only, with your brain out on the golf course, you won’t process incoming information very well.

Having a learning disability means having trouble processing information because of a specific impairment in the components
of learning: input, integration, memory and output. A learning-disabled brain flips letters
and numbers around, puts data in the wrong order and confuses the meaning of incoming sounds, among other things. Medicine is useless for treating learning disabilities because it can’t correct errors in the brain’s interpretation and output of data.

The issue of ADD versus learning disabilities comes down to definitions and descriptions. At this point in research and understanding, the two are
considered separate entities. Although we don’t want to get hung up on labels, we think it’s important for you to consider the possibility that you are also learning disabled. It may be the missing puzzle piece in your recovery. If your medicine is working and you’re making progress with your ADD issues but still have inexplicable problems, you may have an undiagnosed learning disability.

This
possibility underscores the importance of having a complete psychoeducational evaluation. We encourage you to have additional testing if your diagnosis was based solely on history and observable symptoms. Unless you were in school after the 1975 passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, it is unlikely that your learning disabilities were diagnosed.

If your
evaluation uncovers a learning disability, seek help for your LD as well as your ADD. Don’t assume that educational remediation is just for children. There are tutors who work exclusively with adults. The Orton Dyslexia Society and the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities are two resources you can contact for a referral in your area. Both are national organizations with branches all
over the United States. The Orton Dyslexia Society in Cincinnati, for example, has support groups specifically for adults with LD and uses local tutors who specialize in working with adults.

Paralleling the current interest in adulthood ADD, learning specialists are increasingly focusing on LD in adults. Special tutoring
in the areas of specific learning disabilities can reap wonderful rewards.
Whether you’re twenty or fifty, it’s never too late to learn strategies for dealing with learning disabilities.

Many colleges and vocational schools are developing programs specifically for learning-disabled students. In fact, these programs are often found in institutions for graduate education. The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, for instance, has an excellent support service
for LD medical students. Discovering an underlying learning disability can help you reevaluate educational goals you’ve been unable to attain. With your newfound knowledge of your ADD and LD, you may decide to try the higher education route again. Chances are, with some research and planning, you’ll find a college that can meet your needs.

We hope you don’t feel overwhelmed at the prospect of
another problem to deal with! But
not
dealing with it is the worst thing you can do. Accepting the reality of your ADD opens doors to understanding and gaining control. Dealing with the possibility of your LD can accomplish the same thing.

In the next four chapters, you may notice a shift in style as compared with the rest of the book. With the exception of the gender and sexuality chapter, the
earlier part of this book was written thirteen or more years ago, when we were newly diagnosed. From this point forward you will find that we put our coaching hats on, speaking as professionals with more than ten years of ADD coaching experience.

The cornerstones of ADD recovery are summed up in the next four chapters. We call them the
M ’ M’s—short for meditation, medication, mental hygiene and moving forward. In the first of these chapters, “Meditations on Meditation,” we will explore ADD-friendly ways to calm and soothe your adrenalized system.

Chapter 13
Meditations on Meditation

Meditation? You Must Be Kidding …

I
f you came to us as a coaching client, sooner or later we would start mentioning the “M” word. Meditation. Most ADDers we have encountered are allergic to that word, to a greater or lesser extent. So were we, until we had calmed down enough with the aid of medication and other self-care techniques. When you have spent an entire
lifetime feeling as if there were a pinball machine in your brain, it is hard to imagine yourself peacefully sitting in the lotus position. The big secret that nobody seems to clue us in on, is that you don’t have to sit in the lotus position at all … you don’t even have to sit down or (thank God!) stop moving. You don’t have to have a fancy mantra, a guru or extensive notes from your trek to
India in order to do this meditation thing correctly. There is no one true path to calming down the mind.

As ADDers, we have extensive experience with “failure,” or what we think is failure. Often, we never get far enough along in a particular direction to actually fail. We don’t even make it out of the starting gate. We get distracted by something that seems more interesting or more important
or glittery than the thing we are supposed to be engaged in. Or, we might push the start button on that old familiar tape—you know, it’s the “I f—ed up, I always f—k up, it will never be any different—I might as well quit right now” self-flagellation tape.

We submit that the problem with meditation is our image, our belief that it is a hairy scary thing that no ordinary human being could possibly
accomplish. It’s hard to begin if we hold in our minds that picture of some accomplished Tibetan monk who sits in absolute stillness and who, by the way, has been practicing meditation an entire lifetime (or many lifetimes). We don’t see his learning curve or any struggle on the way to mastery. So we think we can’t measure up.

You Can Do It … Really!

The key is to allow yourself to take those
baby steps, to make “mistakes” and make room for a certain amount of fumbling around. No one ever learned anything without missing the mark quite a bit at the beginning. Did you know that the ancient definition of “sin” is simply “missing the mark”? Oh boy, and all along we thought it meant bad-bad, punishable by death or something. It’s possible to take meditation a bit at a time and get more comfortable
with it, just as we might do when learning to dance, play tennis, draw sketches or write poetry.

We promise you that it’s not possible to “fail” at meditation. It is astonishing how many of our clients have told us that they tried meditation and found it an exercise in frustration. The problem was that nobody told them a critical piece of informa-tion: how it actually works. These clients thought
that if there was a lot of activity going on in their brains, they were just not doing this meditation thing right. In fact, everybody has a lot of stuff going on in their brain most of the time. The Buddhists refer to this as “monkey chatter.” If you are anxious about all the noise in your brain, there is a tendency to try to get rid of the chatter, to literally push it out of your mind somehow.
In fact, pushing, pulling, talking back to or otherwise engaging with the contents of your mind keeps the whole show going. Meditation begins by just observing. Then we can practice detaching from that jumble of thoughts—to let the mind do its thing without interfering. Eventually those thoughts get tired of trying to push your buttons. They get bored and go away … find
something more exciting
to do. Well, we don’t really know if thoughts actually have a mind of their own, but we both have had the experience of the noise fading to the background. And sometimes, when we remember to keep meditation at the center of our lives, as a daily practice, the noise gives up the ghost and goes away.

It is possible to have a peaceful, still mind. We have been there and are taking steps to spend
more and more of our time in that pleasant place of being. You can go there too, and we will give you a road map and tools for the journey.

The following is a list of helpful guidelines for meditation. Please, please don’t think of them as rules. The “R” word is an automatic signal to our inner adolescent, which is committed to breaking, ignoring or otherwise circumventing anything that smacks
of authority. Also, we know from experience that our creative ADDult readers will come up with new, improved versions of our ideas, tailored to their unique brain style.

An ADD-Friendly Guide to Meditation

1. Repeat to yourselves a thousand times (or as often as necessary): Meditation is a practice. I intend to enjoy and learn from the experience. There are no wrong ways to do it and I will refrain from grading myself.
   
2. Get comfortable. Many meditation books and teachers will warn you to avoid getting too comfortable, because then you might fall asleep. Our thought on that is that if you fall asleep, you probably need it. You got relaxed enough to fall asleep … terrific! It is unlikely that you will fall asleep every time in any case. If you are concerned that you will then sleep the day away and miss work or something, set an alarm.
   
3. “Comfortable” for you might involve standing on your head or lying in your bed—you are the best judge of what works for you. No meditator needs the additional distraction of physical discomfort.
   
4. Take slow, even breaths. Don’t worry if you begin in out-of-breath mode. As you relax, your breathing will slow naturally.
   
5. A word about relaxation: If you are in full high-speed adrenaline mode, you won’t be able to stop on a dime, change gears and get into meditation mode instantly. One might think that particular piece of wisdom is perfectly obvious, but we have personal experience with the hazards of frantic mode … how it seems to suck out your functional brain cells like a vampire.
   
6. When you have calmed your system down through meditation, and a more meditative approach to life, accessing that deep state of relaxation will not involve such a major transition. In the meantime, honor your need to take the time to settle down before you meditate. A hot bath might do the trick, or listening to soothing music. Set a timer for a wind-down ritual. Put your planner and your “to do” list away; get into comfortable clothing. Any activity that is simple and points to your intention to enter a meditative frame of mind will do.
   
7. Sensory cues are excellent ways to help you transition from one mental state to another.
   
8. KK:
   “One of my clients worked at home and devised a system to help him transition in and out of work mode. He had a special hat, special chair, scented candle and certain kinds of music that he only wore/smelled/listened to when he was at ‘work.’”
   
9. You might use this technique to facilitate your transition to meditation mode. The sensory cues help you “remember” how you felt during previous sessions and thus enhance your ability to return to that familiar place.
   
10. Choose a single focus for yourself, something to listen to or watch while you meditate. Some people pay attention to their breath, while others repeat a word or phrase in their minds. That repeated phrase is a mantra. It does not have to be a fancy code thing given to you by your guru, who has received the magic words from his illustrious teachers. You can just make it up. Kate’s favorite is “let go.” You can also use a visual focus, such as a candle flame. Experiment … find what works for you.
    
11. So, the single-focus “thing” could be one of several choices. (Choosing a visual focus is a common childbirth technique that is also a form of meditation.) Obviously, if you are using a visual focus like a flower, a flame or some other object, you will need to keep your eyes open. With an auditory focus, closing your eyes will block out any visual distractions. With ADD, some of us are more visually distractible, others are more distracted by sounds. We suggest that you try out different “points of focus” to find what works best for you.
    
12. You can also use music as your focus. Steven Halpern’s tapes are especially good for meditation. We recommend that any music you choose be free of words—it is too easy to get caught up in lyrics.
    
13. Take a break … This is a long list.
    
14. Okay, you are now seated on your favorite super-duper meditation pillow, or on your bed or whatever position is comfortable for you. Your breathing is slowing down and you are repeating your mantra, listening to your music or watching that candle flame. Are you bored yet?
    
15. Some people do just fine sitting or lying down, but many of us get unbearably restless when we are required to be physically still for any length of time. Don’t “should” all over yourself if you have a higher need for activity than someone else. Just work with it. Allow yourself to have
    your
    experience; there’s no need to judge or compare yourself with others here. We promised you that you did not necessarily have to sit down to meditate.
    
16. Moving meditation is just as good as the sitting/lying variety. It is actually a better choice for the active ADDer. You don’t need the additional distraction of an antsy body when your goal is to calm the mind. We recommend that the activity you choose for meditation be something simple and repetitive. Something you can do on autopilot. Walking is a moving meditation that works well for many people. You can use awareness of your feet moving on the ground as your focus. This would be a good one for people who are strongly tactile/kinesthetic.
    
17. You are now sitting or moving and it is time to meditate. You notice all the thoughts in your head clamoring for your attention. They may be annoying or irritating. What do you do? When you notice your attention drifting in the direction of that thought salad, gently disengage your attention. Bring your attention back to your focus. At first, and on those bad brain days, you will be repeating this process quite a lot.
    
18. Stay with it. We promise it will get easier as you go along. The key to success in this case (as with any new challenge) is to take it in very small bites.
    
19. KK:
    “As I write this I am sitting at Peggy’s computer with a jumble of random papers scattered in front of me. There is one with a paragraph entitled ‘taking little steps.’ It says to think about how you eat a hamburger. If you jam the whole thing in your mouth and try to swallow it, you will have little pieces falling out all over your shirt! It works much better if you take smaller bites.”
    
20. The smaller bites in this case involve time. Start your meditation practice in small increments. Meditate for five minutes a few times a day. As you become more comfortable in the practice, you will likely increase the length of your sessions because they have become so enjoyable. And you will begin to see benefits spreading out to encompass the rest of your life.
    
21. When you have gotten into the meditation groove, you will be able to get into a state of deep relaxation more quickly. Sometimes a few deep breaths will do the trick. When the workplace or a social situation is getting you into a tizzy, you can retire to the men’s or the ladies’ room and “take five” to get recentered.
    
22. Remember, the purpose is not to actively clear your mind but to step back from the noise, to put your attention on your chosen focus. This practice will help you to begin choosing your focus in everyday situations. Imagine that—your attention under your control. And this gets stronger with practice!
    
23. Of course, the results are not instantaneous. Many, if not most, ADDers are unable to successfully practice meditation without the benefit of medication. An optimal dose of stimulant medicine can turn the noise down to acceptable levels.
    
24. What about the regular practice part of meditation? Don’t we ADDers have a lot of trouble sticking to any routine? Well, it is true that we struggle with structure and routine, but there are ways around it. Get yourself a coach to help you stay on track. A good ADD coach will help you with accountability for your goals without making you wrong. Accountability in this case is not about guilt or failure. It
    is
    about you and your coach not letting the goal drop, staying in the conversation about how to accomplish it, and celebrating the little steps as well as the big ones. Finding out what works for you as an individual is a trial-and-error process. If you forget to practice for days or even weeks, you can always get back on the horse.