ADD/ADHD | ADD ADHD Addessories

ADHD Diagnosis

How do you test to see if you have ADHD? Well, it depends a lot on who you are working with and how much you want to have ADHD.

How To Diagnose ADHD

ADHD used to be called ADD (cue Istanbul not Constantinople by They Might Be Giants). One can use ADD and ADHD interchangeably and everyone will know what you are talking about.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodivergent disorder that affects both children and adults. It is characterized by symptoms such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness, which can have a significant impact on a person’s daily life.

Diagnosing ADHD involves a multi-step process that includes an evaluation of symptoms, medical history, and other relevant information. The first step in diagnosing ADHD is to schedule a visit with a doctor or mental health professional who specializes in ADHD.

Medical evaluation

During the initial visit, the doctor will take a detailed medical history, including any previous diagnosis or treatment of ADHD or related conditions. If your current primary care doctor is willing to discuss it with you, you can skip some of the “get to know you,” steps. The doctor will ask questions about your symptoms and their impact on daily life. The doctor may also ask about the presence of other physical or mental health conditions that may be related to or mimic ADHD symptoms. As well, there are some other psychological conditions that are co-morbid with ADHD.

Behavioral assessments

Behavioral assessments are a key part of the diagnostic process for ADHD. These assessments can include standardized questionnaires, rating scales, and observation of the patient’s behavior. The results of these assessments can provide valuable information about the presence and severity of ADHD symptoms, as well as any related behavioral issues.

Most providers use questionnaires that are not subtle. This is where you can decide whether you want to have ADHD, or you do not to have ADHD. (More truthfully, whether you want an ADHD diagnosis or not. You have what you have no matter what the medical chart says.)

Diagnostic criteria

The diagnosis of ADHD is based on the criteria outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5). The DSM-5 defines ADHD as a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with daily functioning.

The DSM-5 is also what changed ADD to ADHD. The committee of authors putting together the DSM-5 were concerned that ADD might be going under diagnosed since a doctor might not come across ADD if they were only looking for indicators of hyperactivity. So, the DSM-5 changed ADD to Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Ironically, adding the H caused years’ worth of children (shout out to GenX) to go underdiagnosed because while they had all the other ADHD symptoms, they were not hyperactive. (shout out to the Predominantly Inattentive Presentation)

To meet the criteria for ADHD, the following symptoms must be present:

Inattention: Six or more symptoms of inattention for children up to age 16 years, or five or more for adolescents 17 years and older and adults, which have persisted for at least six months to a degree that is inconsistent with developmental level and that negatively impacts directly on social and academic/occupational activities.
Hyperactivity-Impulsivity: Six or more symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity for children up to age 16 years, or five or more for adolescents 17 years and older and adults, which have persisted for at least six months to a degree that is inconsistent with developmental level and that negatively impacts directly on social and academic/occupational activities.

The specific symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity that are used to diagnose ADHD vary depending on the age of the patient. For children, symptoms may include forgetfulness, distractibility, and restlessness. For adults, symptoms may include disorganization, impulsiveness, and difficulty concentrating.

Differential diagnosis

It is important to note that ADHD symptoms can be like those of other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, or a learning disability. Your doctor or psychiatrist may wish to pursue alternative explanations for the symptoms before making an ADHD diagnosis.

Congratulations You Have ADHD

Once you have an ADHD diagnosis you can take it out for a spin. You may be disappointed in the reactions you get. ADHD is not uncommon, and many push the idea that ADHD is over diagnosed. Among your friends, acquaintances, and coworkers you’ll find several who also have ADHD. If not, they know someone who does. You need advice about living with ADHD, but you need good advice. Start with a book or two, or a website like this one (shout out to addessories.com). That will give you a foundation of knowledge to take with you out into the world of essential oils, Hamalian lamps.

Unseen Shiny Things

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I’ve been working with some data regarding various mental health things and trauma. (Think big data, not understanding therapy.) It seems that many people with an alternative neural structure get triggered into their various less than optimal status by external events. Something like panic attacks is the quintessential example. Most panic attacks are triggered by an external stimulus.

That may not sound out there at all, but what if many other mental states are triggered, or even partially triggered by external events? Those of us with ADHD talk about losing our focus or being distracted. These are obviously external events, but what about the ones that aren’t so obvious?

Distracted by Distraction

There have been many studies showing that depression and ADHD are common comorbid conditions. Yours truly probably falls into that bucket. Now, depression we are taught is a continuous state, possibly caused not by stimulus but by brain chemistry. It seems that our brains have a tendency to produce low amounts of serotonin or produce excessive amounts of the chemicals that clean serotonin from the body. Either one results in less serotonin than optimal. This condition may cause depression.

But the brain is nothing if not a reactive beast constantly inundated with so many signals and stimuli that it must frequently block or discard them entirely to function properly. For example, as you sit there, what does your shirt feel like on your back?

If you are like many people, it feels like nothing, and yet the fabric of your shirt is touching your back, and you know that your back can and does feel things. So, how do you explain that your shirt feels like nothing until you bring your attention to it?

Which brings me to my points. First, could ADHD periods of distraction be caused by not properly excluding outside stimuli. Do I, as an adult with ADHD, receive and react to more stimuli about, say the update icon on my WordPress editor, than I should. Should my brain be throwing that away as irrelevant as the feel of the shirt on my back, when instead it draws my eye and my attention and throws me off of my work cataloging cool day trips from Denver for a future project?

Second, if depression is an ongoing constant depleting normal levels of serotonin, could the triggering of ADHD actually be that there is too little serotonin to please the brain about external stimuli, and so, that update icon shoots through where a serotonin pool should have stopped it with a nano-sized splash and bounces instead into my brain where it demands processing?

None of this is scientifically backed. I’ve been sloshing through what may or may not be useful data that in some cases includes various mental health factors. Without math, we see what we want to see, and I see a lot in the data that is not only not causation, but not even correlation.

There. I have typed. My brain should be mine again for at least a while.

Happy Election Day to you who are fellow Americans.

Psst

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Watching Training Videos with ADHD

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You know the feeling. You are pumped to learn something new, or to brush up on your existing skills. Either way, chances are there is a company training video, a LinkedIn course, a Kahn Academy, or just some YouTube videos that can help you out. The problem? You have ADHD. It’s only been 20 seconds, and already that video is going too slow.

ADHD Mind and Videos

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking all ADD is like your ADD. Hang around long enough and you’ll find that nothing could be further from the truth. Just like some normals learn better by reading, and some learn better by hands on, some ADHDers learn better from reading than video. I’m one of them.

I read fast. Really fast. I used to think I was a fast test taker. Turns out, that I just read the questions faster than anyone else. As someone who reads and retains quickly, I hate video, especially when it could have been an article. I promise I can read your 5,000 words faster than I can listen to you say them to the camera. If that weren’t enough, I’m also a writer. You can about imagine how I feel then, about reading versus watching.

Check out my Plynk reviews.

But, sometimes the world doesn’t cater to you and sometimes the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to standard reading documentation. Whatever the case, sometimes you just have to watch the videos.

ADHD and 2x Speed

You know how training or informational videos work. The people introduce themselves and they tell you what letters they have after their name that proves they are an expert. If there are two of them there is some banter. I don’t think you need to have ADHD to be eye-rollingly bored at that kind of stuff. A fast forward or clicking down the video progress bar is easily done.

By now they have started covering the material and it is STILL not happening fast enough. You could skip or fast forward, but the point of this course is to fill in some gaps in your knowledge. Skipping ahead might mean skipping that information you need. At this point, your ADHD brain is clawing at the insides of your skull begging you to let it out. You pick up your phone, or your pen and paper and suddenly, you’re practicing calligraphy or scrolling and now, you might be missing something, and you don’t even get to skip ahead.

Enter 2X speed.

Click that 1x, change it to 2x, and change your ability to pay attention (for a while)

As someone with ADHD and all kinds of advertising and interface blindness I never paid any attention to the icons down in the corner. Sure, if you told me to look at them I would, and I know close captions is down there if I can’t understand someone, but I never mess with the video settings and I control the volume with my speakers, so you’ll forgive me if I never really paid any attention to that 1x down there.

But, one day while watching some college admissions thing, I sat there as my daughter clicked that 1x and something magical happened. It turns out you can watch online videos at twice the normal speed. And the best part is that most of the time, you can still understand what they are saying. In fact, your ADHD mind is basking in the glow of someone, anyone, finally talking fast enough for your brain.

It doesn’t have to be 2x. Depending on what you are watching, you can do 1.25x or 1.5x, whatever speed keeps your mind behind your eyeballs where it belongs while still letting you follow along. Unlike skipping, you see everything, so nothing slips by, and you still get to finish the video in half the time.

Finding ADHD tricks like this makes living with ADHD better turning it into the oft desired advantage ADHD can be if you can understand it and feed it properly. Try watching your next training or video at 2x speed. You’ll be surprised how little it changes your understanding, but don’t expect miracles. Your brain will soon adapt to 2x speed and find it too slow. So far, none of the things I need to watch offer 3x speed, so don’t chuck that ADHD medication yet.

2x Speed and Accents

There is a funny bit I wanted to relate. I have been watching this one lady’s training course. It’s a series of several videos and I have watched them all on 2x speed. Then, we hit a bit that I wasn’t quite getting. So, I went back and then selected 1x speed. I was shocked to find out she had some sort of Australian or British accent. It turns out that speaking faster eliminates accents.

Who knew?

Do One Thing – Overcoming ADHD Once

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Depression and ADHD are comorbid indicators. They often go together. Adding the apathy of not wanting to get started on anything, along with the inherent procrastination that comes with ADHD, and sprinkling on a top of distraction just waiting to happen and it is no wonder that many adults with ADHD find it difficult to get things done.

There are many methods of time management out there for people ADHD. They range from great ideas like Eating That Frog to dumb ones, like blaming everything on perfectionism. The reality, however, is that you are unique, you always were. You were unique before you realized you had ADD, you were unique when you started treating your ADD, and you’re unique now, when you are living with ADHD. It’s not wonder then that other people’s solutions don’t work for you. You need your own unique solutions to living with adult ADHD.

Just because you need to build up your own unique ADHD tips and tricks to get through a life that requires you to things and to do them on a schedule doesn’t mean that other ideas won’t work for you. You just have to find your arrows and load them up in your quiver, metaphorically speaking.

Sometimes, the stock photography gods smile upon you 🙂

Do One

One method that with my ADHD that I am tinkering around with is the idea of doing one thing. Similar to the concept detailed in Eat That Frog, the idea is to commit to doing one thing from a list of dozens or even hundreds of things. Unlike the eating that frog, where you jump in with the worst, or most dreaded task of the day, I’ve had some success working with my brain instead of trying to force it to do something it doesn’t want.

As I arrive at my desk each morning, or even upon returning from a trip to the coffee pot, or from lunch, I often find that my brain looks around and has one thing that it wants to do. Many times, that one thing is something productive. Rather than trying to save that motivation and harness it later, I jump in with both feet.

My brain feels like finally cleaning up my desk? Let’s clean my desk.

My brain feels like writing that technical writing proposal? Let’s write the proposal.

My brain feels like rescheduling the dentist, ordering my meds, or filling out this month’s writing calendar? Let’s do those things.

My brain feels like writing an article on doing one thing? Hey! Inception!

How To Do One

If I were trying to turn this one idea into a book, as so many time management, and organization self help books are wont to do, I would add a swear word and start writing the 150 pages of backstory, history about myself, and obtaining the epiphany that goes into turning an idea the length of a pamphlet into a 300 page book that you can stick on the shelf at Barnes and Noble (irritation Segway!) A name like Do One Damn Thing! or maybe One F*cuking Thing!

You’ve seen the books. You know what I’m talking about.

Instead, let’s just keep it real among fellow adults with ADHD, or those of you without ADHD who have reached the intelligent conclusion that if it works for people with ADD, imagine how well it would work for someone without ADD.

The secret to how to do one thing is to let yourself. Give yourself permission to do what your brain wants to do. Often, you will find that the one thing is not what you should be doing, or what would the the most productive thing you should be doing. That is okay. You can come back to that thing later. Heck, if if works for you, promise yourself that that will be the very next thing you do.

The point of doing one is to harness your motivation if only for a moment. Finding motivation with ADHD can be really, really, hard. Give yourself permission this one time each day (or a few times, however, you want to use this) to enjoy the motivation. You will find that much like procrastinating forward, doing one thing results in more things being crossed off your ADHD to do list than fighting against it. After all, a list with 30 things on it gets shorter whether you cross off #1 or #28.

Me?

Well, I broke my own rule.

My brain wanted to clean up my workspace and I was going to let it, but then I thought about what I was doing and got distracted (nach) by the thought of writing up an article about using your motivation to do that one thing and here we are. Writing about ADHD when you have ADHD is a nonstop adventure in inception.

Try doing just one thing and let me know how it goes for you.

BTW, I ended up cutting and pasting a bunch of what I originally wrote here into a new article where I have noticed that I can write for clients about the same topics I write about for my own websites much faster. The differing factor that I’m noticing is that I write their stuff in Word and then just send it off to them. Maybe, just maybe, there is something about writing inside of WordPress that stifles my brain or otherwise slows it down.

It might also be that without thinking, even in the back of my head, about linking, SEO, keywords, length, or finding stock photography that my brain just cranks out text further. So, I’m trying something that I am very, very nervous about. I created an “In Progress” folder where I can do the Just One Thing when it is writing something.

My fear, which I’m sure that many of my adult ADHD tribe can relate to is that many “in progress” things end up becoming “never finished” things when our ADHD brains move on. But, I crave more success than I have been having and doing more/getting better requires trying new things, so here we go.

As always, wish me luck. I do the same for you.