Friend with adhd annoying
Your ADHD Friend: Forgiving Lateness, Rudeness, Interrupting
Dear Prospective Parent Friend,
Congratulations! We’ve made tentative moves toward genuine friendship. You seem sane. Our kids are potential playmates. You hold no over-the-top offensive religious, political, or societal beliefs. If you do have them, you’ve hidden them very well.
We have some things in common, like persistent exhaustion. You seem like someone who could develop into a person who might help me clean my house, or who will not frown on my yoga-pants-heavy wardrobe.
We could share war stories about poop. We could celebrate wine o’clock.
Before we make the tentative steps into full-on friendship, there’s something you need to know. I have ADHD. So that it doesn’t ruin the thing we’ve got going on, here are some forewarnings about what friendship with me will entail.
[Get This Free Download: When You Have ADHD, Too — 18 Tips for Parents with ADHD]
1. I Will Be Late, or Not
I am constitutionally unable to arrive anywhere on time. I make plans. Oh, I make plans. I set alarms. I leave extra time. But sometimes my alarm doesn’t go off, or I lock my keys in the car, or small children act excessively like small children. I get stuck in traffic. I need a Starbucks run. I just forget to look at the clock. But whatever the reason, the best-laid plans go bad, and I show up 20 minutes to an hour late. My average is about half an hour. This has happened for every play date that I’ve attended in the history of ever.
Or I get up three hours early and getting ready only takes two hours. I frog-march the kids through the morning routine, and they’re shockingly docile about it. I don’t need a shower. I make lunch too early. I misread my watch. Whatever the reasons, the stars have aligned. Except they haven’t, because now I’m not late: I’m half an hour early. This happens about a quarter of the time.
2. I Love My Phone
It’s not you. Smartphones zap all the good neuro-receptors in an ADHD brain. You can click-click-click rapidly.
Something’s always happening: an e-mail, a Facebook notification, an Instagram like. If you think it’s hard to put down your phone, it’s triply hard for me, whose brain is hardwired to stare at it all day. This means it’s difficult for me to have a conversation without checking my phone.
I don’t think you’re boring. I’m not trying to tune you out. I often can’t stop myself. And when I do get a text, an e-mail, or notification, I have an obsessive need to respond. I can do all these things while carrying on a full conversation. I’m paying attention to you. I’m just paying attention to something else, too.
[Get This Free Download: 8 Ways to Get Better at Small Talk]
3. I Forget Stuff
I try really hard to be prepared. I try to pack bags, to stock snacks, to remember mittens. But a lot of the time, the intention doesn’t match the reality. I always think my diaper bag is packed when it’s not, or that the kids’ jackets were left in the trunk when they’re hung up in my hallway.
This can put a damper on outings. I might have to run home. I might have to visit Target. You might be kind enough to lend me something for the tenth time. For that, I will be eternally grateful. Especially if the thing you’re lending is a diaper.
4. I Will Interrupt You with a Completely Unrelated Thought
You’ll be talking on about your kid’s night waking. I’ll nod, and nod, and when you pause, I will say something like, “Oh, my gosh, did I tell you how my kid keeps eating dirt?” I will launch into a lengthy diatribe detailing said dirt consumption, a diatribe that keeps you from getting a word in edgewise.
This is incredibly rude. I should still be nodding and murmuring consolations about your kid’s sleep issues. But the dirt thing came on so suddenly, and so strongly, that the need to tell you superseded all social convention. I’m not ignoring you. I’m not obsessively self-centered. My conversational skills just misfire – sometimes badly.
5. I Forget Important Intangibles
I will not remember your mom’s name, even if I have met her three times, once over a long lunch.
Vital events tend to fade in my memory; I can hardly tell you what I had for breakfast, let alone who was present at a six-month-old play date gone bad. It’s not that I see these things as trivial or unimportant. It’s just that I can’t freaking remember. My mind is a sieve for certain details. When important stuff comes up, and I can’t remember it, you’ll need to gently jog my memory, not take offense.
I’m a good friend. I’m fun; I meet new people easily (even if I don’t remember their names). I can chat with you until the sun goes down or the toddlers start beating each other up. I’m loyal. I’m funny. But I’ve got ADHD. It makes me who I am. But it can also make me seem uncaring, self-centered, or downright ditzy. Make sure you know that going into this. We can be great friends. But remember: ADHD’s always part of the equation.
[Read This Next: Is Your ADHD Causing Social Slip-Ups?]
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4 Annoying Things People With ADHD Do
The good news is, ADHD isn’t a disorder you have to suffer alone.
The people around you are going to suffer too.
When you have ADHD, you feel the brunt of the symptoms, but the people in your life will feel secondary effects in ways that are small, ways that are big, and ways that are just plain annoying.
That third category is the one I want to concentrate on: Those irritating little things that make people with ADHD just that much harder to put up with. Here are some of the ones that pop up the most in my own life:
This one surfaces with alarming frequency, and it never ceases to surprise me. It basically goes back to not really paying attention when I make plans with other people.
One way this happens is that if I regularly meet someone in one place, I miss it if they switch up the location. For example, if we usually meet at coffee shop A, and they text saying “let’s meet at coffee shop B,” I’ll probably just see the words “coffee shop” and skip over everything else.
Another way this happens is that if we’re meeting at a chain, I’ll inevitably go to the wrong branch.
Or just a different place with a similar name. All these scenarios lead to the following confused phone call:
“I’m here, where are you?”
“I’m here too! Where are you?”
“I’m here…”
“Where is here?”
“…”
Even if I get the place right, there’s a good chance I won’t do as well with the time. As I’ve written about before, people with ADHD have a tendency toward lateness.
That said, I’ve actually improved on this one a little. I wish I could tell you I discovered some super effective coping mechanism that eliminated lateness and time management problems from my life in one fell swoop, but my secret anti-lateness technique is just that I started taking Uber.
So now, if I end up in a situation where taking public transit will mean being obscenely late (or non-obscenely late if it’s something with a strict start time), I just eat the cost and call an Uber.
Unfortunately, having that fallback option only enables bad time management.
One of the things about ADHD is that we tend to have a lot of ideas about things we want to do, projects we want to start, etc. Some people think of this as part of the “ADHD advantage.” Unfortunately, the ADHD disadvanage is that we don’t actually do most of these things.
But that doesn’t necessarily stop us from sharing with the world all our awesome plans for the future, or even saying we’ll include others in these plans. Nor, when said plans don’t materialize, does it stop everyone in the world from rolling their eyes at us and thinking, “I’ve heard that before” the next time we have a brilliant idea for something we want to do.
This is one I’m trying to work on. We know it’s annoying, but we do it anyway. That’s pretty much what impulsivity is about knowing not to do something, but then doing it without thinking. There’s a disconnect between knowing and doing.
If it’s any consolation, know that we interrupt ourselves even more than we interrupt you. In fact, trying to talk and being interrupted is a little window of insight into what it’s like having ADHD the only difference is we’re trying to think and getting constantly interrupted.
What annoying ADHD-related habits and foibles do you have? Or what annoying ADHD-related habits and foibles do people you know have? Please share in the comments! (If you’re married to someone with ADHD, here’s your chance…)
Image: FreeImages.com/Derek Kimball
Tips on dating a woman with ADHD from a woman with ADHD
Congratulations, you're in love! She is sensitive, creative and smart! How are you so lucky? You meditate on this as you bask in the gleaming cloak that lit up your every move during the months you fell in love. And then he suddenly falls to the ground. You look down and see that your sparkly cloak of love is one of the many things strewn across the floor of your sweet lover's bedroom.
Amid the carnage are her many unmatched socks, crumpled Starbucks checks, five half-empty glasses of water, a $5 bill, and an empty Gardenland DVD box. You look at her curiously and she interjects before you can speak: "You're hungry, let's go to the movies, you want to hang out with me and Kelly next week, I was thinking about making burgers tonight, and I also have ADHD" .
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You have a crush on a woman with ADHD, a superhero with supervillain tendencies. It's wonderful, it's infuriating, and you have to know exactly what is meant by this, so as not to behave like the last goat for no reason. (And if you really are acting like an asshole, at least you can do it for a reasonable reason).
We are like superheroes because we have a very high level of activity in the brain, and also because it sounds more pleasant than having a mental disorder. ADHD stands for "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" and women have hyperactivity, is usually emotional, not physical .
We don't fidget and scratch our butts like your little cousin who loves video games and hates math lessons: our thoughts can't sit still. “ADHD is not really a handicap, it's a different way of thinking, and if you know how your partner's brain works, you'll be fine. If not, you're going to get really annoyed all the time," Shanna Pearson, ADHD coach and founder of , the world's largest ADHD coaching company, told VICE.0010 .
All people are different, some are chic, and others are probably very angry, but they all need people who understand them. I spoke with Pearson to help you understand me, my ADHD and the best way to be my lover.
I am very cute, funny and cool.
Let's start with this, because everything else is kind of annoying. There are many reasons to love someone with ADHD! Because ADHD helps me think so many thoughts at once, people like me tend to be very sensitive to how you feel and the situations around you. Your mom will love me! Great!
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I feel a lot of things very deeply and at the same time.
According to Pearson, 80% of ADHD symptoms are triggered by feelings of inability to cope. “Everything is in full swing, the good is in full swing and the bad is in full swing,” she says. That many thoughts is great, as I can help come up with thirty different (racially sensitive) housewarming party themes, and I love having long conversations about everything that's ever happened to you in life. But I also get a little, um, flamboyant, and if there's too much going on, I get really tired and may need to lay low for a couple of days. I once read a pamphlet that said I could even see colors is brighter than than other people, I need time to process this crap!
I am either very concentrated or very dispersed.
Over-focus is a common symptom of ADHD, which, oddly enough, sometimes makes me very absent-minded. If my brain energy is being used so acutely for one purpose for which I have a strong passion (Watchmen episode 3), it is difficult to take it away in order to direct it to something else (your birthday dinner) - even if the latter may be more importantly: it's scientific data! “People who don’t understand what ADHD is are ready to label them as weird, despite the fact that they come up with the most brilliant ideas, for example, about a cure for cancer, while drinking coffee,” says Pearson.
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Please slow down when I can't.
"I'm saying that 70 percent of women with ADHD are argumentative, so if you're argumentative, you're going to have a lot of argument in your relationship," Pearson says. These statistics seem very accurate to me! Thinking I'm right, I definitely think I'm right. In my case, it can be twice as bad due to the fact that I am a Taurus. And also because I'm probably right.
I'm probably (probably) smarter than you.
Pearson says that because your partner with ADHD has such a unique way of thinking, being aware of each other's thinking differences is essential. “You are dating a person whose way of thinking is completely different from yours. It is likely that this person is smarter than you. If you don't understand why, you will make yourself and your partner more than unhappy," she says.
I forget easily and I will cancel plans.
“Remind this person often of your feelings, because he forgets.
People with ADHD tend to “live in the moment,” and even if everything is great, they doubt it or forget it after a week,” Pearson says. It is useful to remind very well, not only about economic problems like scheduled meetings and birthdays, but also about emotions. For example, I know that you said that you love hanging out with me, but in a week everything could change, and you did not answer my SMS, which I sent five hours ago. Five! Hours! Back!
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But I will remember your favorite Sandra Bullock quote!
Pearson says people with ADHD prioritize emotional information; I can forget I said we were going out for coffee two weeks ago, but thanks to me, you will feel insanely special when I remember that you always wanted that Crystal Castles T-shirt (the one with the web, not the one with the with Madonna) but you didn't make it to the concert in 11th grade, so I'm going to order it specifically from an eBay dude in Iowa for your birthday.
To health.
Don't give me more irrational shame.
Pearson argues that confidence is not the opposite of low self-esteem, and many women with ADHD have both. “Women with ADHD almost always have confidence and low self-esteem because they live in a world in which they are very empathetic and passionate, but constantly hear: “Why don’t you just…?” Pearson says. She says she has worked with decades of marriages in which successful top managers are so shamed that they never even discussed their ADHD with their partners. Please don't do this to me.
Be honest and direct.
I can't help but talk about my feelings when I feel them, so I talk about injustices and whether your outfit looks good or not. You may not appreciate it, but this is the only logical way for me, and I expect the same from you. “People with ADHD despise bullshit and tend to have a wide open mind and don't play games,” Pearson says.
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I will definitely interrupt you! Many times!!!
There is not much to say here - except that I beg you very much to forgive me, my friend.
It will be when I do this, please tell me so I know to stop. BTW, HAVE YOU READ THEORY THAT THERE WILL BE ZOMBIES IN RIVERDALE?
Also, my room is a mess, just deal with it.
As with emotions, I have my own way of organizing my things. I could tell you exactly where on the floor every item of clothing I have is, but I don't know if you just got into a bag of chips or a plastic water bottle, and sorry again.
Your lover with ADHD doesn't need to be undead, and not all bribes are taken off of them whenever she forgets something important or acts like a bastard. Of course, you can be annoyed, because for the last two weeks I have been late every day for a meeting with you. But we really need to understand when you get irritated, especially when the conversation we're having is just one of the many things going on in our brains.
I also thought about writing a story about jet skis being bullshit. It's just a thought.
Follow Celeste Yim on Twitter.
Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD, Lakhta Junior in St. Petersburg
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ( ADHD ) is a complex of psychological and behavioral disorders, which in recent years has been increasingly discussed by both parents and specialists.
This disorder of higher nervous activity, which usually manifests itself in childhood, has long ceased to be a rarity: according to various estimates, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in developed countries today affects from 2% to 15% children and adolescents (in Russia, the frequency of occurrence is about 10%).
Note that any relatively new diagnosis, new medical concept, or even just a new term very quickly acquires a lot of myths and misinterpretations, which also fully affected ADHD. But let's not waste time quoting all the nonsense that you can hear or read on the Internet about this syndrome lately, but let's try to briefly figure out what it is about.
ADHD is a real-life disorder, not a medically invented disorder. It is included in the International Classification of Diseases and is associated with dysfunction of certain structures of the central nervous system responsible for the regulation of its work. In other words, the basis for the development of this syndrome is objective organic disorders that do not depend on the nature of the child or on the style of parenting. Here, however, there is a temptation for parents to attribute their own pedagogical helplessness to a fashionable diagnosis, relieving themselves of all responsibility and requiring specialists to treat hyperactivity syndrome where it does not exist.
How ADHD manifests itself
Real ADHD, as the full name implies, is manifested by the instability of voluntary concentration of attention: the child cannot concentrate and do one thing for a time sufficient, for example, to learn a new skill or achieve some result . We emphasize: it is that “can’t”, which is fundamentally different from “does not want” (“Borings, give me a smartphone, I don’t need it, I will be a blogger / model”, etc.
, etc.) - that is a completely different story, where you have to deal with the problems of motivation and values, with negativism, emancipatory reactions, ordinary laziness, oppositional behavior or something like that.
Most likely, this has nothing to do with true ADHD. In a child with ADHD, under the influence of the slightest interference, stimulus, stimulus (or spontaneously), attention switches from object to object, without dwelling on any of them. Punishing for this is as pointless as panicking.
Another key point in the name is the capacious word “ hyperactivity ”, which is manifested by restlessness, impulsiveness, fussiness, an uncontrollable need to do something, and the real productivity of this activity is very low or equal to zero. Actually, the same thing as with attention happens with kinetics (from the Greek. "movement"), and it is no coincidence that ADHD is classified under the heading of hyperkinesis.
To this should be added the instability of memorization, the tendency to lose or leave the necessary things somewhere, to answer inappropriately, to interrupt, to react too hastily and abruptly.
It is quite natural that such violations of self-regulation can not only irritate the environment, but also have a very negative impact on studies, in communication with peers, on relationships with parents, and ultimately on general adaptability and self-esteem.
It is very important to understand that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is not at all equivalent to intellectual disability. In the most powerful, beautiful, fast computer, the operating system can act up, but the processor does not get worse from this. Need fine tuning.
Symptoms of ADHD — what to pay attention to
If something in a child's behavior worries you in this context, try to take a closer look:
— how the child moves,
— how many and what movements he makes per unit of time,
— how appropriate and effective these movements,
- are they controlled or involuntary,
- what and how is it pronounced,
- how is the information coming from outside processed and how effectively used,
- whether all this is connected with the mood of the child, his well-being or the external situation (for example, general overexcitement at a noisy birthday party).
Perhaps your real concern is that you personally act in a very different way, with a different pace and style, because you have a different temperament, different experience and, as they say in medicine, psychomotor. But if the so-called intuitive diagnosis (and this phenomenon really works among close people) tells you unambiguously that the child’s behavior is abnormal and it does not depend on him, or on you, or on the situation, then it’s time to think about showing child to a specialist (psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoneurologist, just a neurologist - for the first visit it is not so important), so that this visit looks as natural as possible and is minimally traumatic.
Of course, at that moment you should already know well who exactly you are addressing and why to this specialist, and not to that one. But it is a must to apply.
Treatment of ADHD in children
Given that the etiopathogenesis of ADHD (i.e., the causes and mechanisms of development of this syndrome) is still not well understood, it would be irresponsible on our part to recommend any specific ways to correct this condition.
