Join Gina in New Orleans for CHADD: 11/12-14/15

Now's your chance—to learn in two-three days an amazing amount about ADHD and meet hundreds of other people on this journey. I invite you to join me and many other ADHD experts in New Orleans, Nov. 12-14, 2015, for the CHADD International Conference.

There is something for everyone: parents, educators, adults, and mental-health professionals. Plus, the conference hotel (Hyatt Regency) is very close to the French Quarter and the riverfront. I'd love to see you there!

As in years past, I will be presenting, this time on Saturday, 10:30 am. My topic will be: Adult ADHD Symptoms or Poor Coping Skills? Clarifying the Confusion with Success Strategies. 

Here's a quick summary of my talk:

Most adults with ADHD struggle for decades before being diagnosed. Consequently, many have developed poor coping skills and distorted explanations of their challenges.

In parallel fashion, their loved ones—spouses, intimate partners, siblings, and parents—typically develop their own dysfunctional patterns in reaction to dealing with poorly managed ADHD-related behaviors in the relationship and household. It all makes for quite the “roller coaster.”

Even when ADHD is identified, the confusion continues. Symptoms are variable and lifelong adaptations even more variable. Loved ones also span the spectrum of human strengths and foibles.

How then do individuals with ADHD and their loved ones find their footing as they navigate a mental healthcare system that is seldom "ADHD-friendly"?

How do they distinguish symptoms from counterproductive habits and then appropriately target evidence-based strategies?

See you there, and Laissez le Bontemps Roulez!

—Gina Pera

To Save Their Marriage, They Shot His Xbox—with a Gun

Xbox, post shooting

It’s true. They took it out and shot it. That’s the real photo above. Below, the wife in the couple tells their story, providing a personal glimpse into the complex reasons why some adults with ADHD get hooked into cyber-addictions.

A little background first.

About a decade ago, I wandered into a World of Warcraft support group (for the partners of the players). I didn’t know much about the game. My husband (the one with ADHD in our marriage) played Starcraft briefly, until I pointed out that it always made him mean as a snake. Actually, I should say that he was fine while he was playing it, but once he stopped…look out! It reminded me of the stereotypical addict’s withdrawal. Fortunately, he agreed and we threw the thing away.

But the way these people in that support group described their gaming partners’ behavior, it surely sounded a lot like ADHD. Did they want to hear about this possibility? A resounding and vehement “No!”

Granted, not everyone who plays videogames compulsively and with adverse effects has ADHD. But we know enough now about the dopamine reward system to know this: People with ADHD are more vulnerable to developing addictions of all types, and that includes to electronics and gaming. We talk about this a lot in the Silicon Valley Adult ADHD Discussion group that I've co-moderated for 10 years, for CHADD of Northern California. (Free and open to the public.)

Moreover, people with ADHD might also be more vulnerable to the “escape” offered by electronics and games (see this previous post by Kevin Roberts, an adult with ADHD who wrote the book CyberJunkies).

If excessive videogaming and electronics usage is eroding your relationship, it might be a good idea to give this topic long, hard thought.

Now, let’s get to the story from a friend I’ll call Kate.

Why We Shot the Xbox

By Kate

It felt so good to finally take off my shoes that morning. It had been an especially long night-shift at the hospital. As much as I adore working as a nurse, 12 hours on my feet leaves me ready to crash by the time I get home.

From the garage, I reached around the corner into the kitchen to hang up my car keys. Then I saw it: the ominous glow flashing from the living room. It shouldn't have surprised me. Following the source of the glow, I found him. Right where I’d left him. That glow streamed from the bane of my existence; the Xbox 360.

The Xbox became a problem less than a year into our marriage. My husband was just too good at it. The speed at which he could boost his rank in whatever game he was playing proved gratifying to the point of addiction for my husband. It started out as a hobby, after he became sick.

Later, we’d find out that his symptoms—including constant migraine headaches, chronic nausea, flu-like body pains and IBS—were mostly due to depression and PTSD (all magnified by his ADHD). But we didn’t know that then. We thought he was just ill.

Did he need his gallbladder removed? Was it celiac? An allergy? We didn’t know. While the tests continued, mostly all he could muster the energy to do was play Xbox. Actually, this was a hobby he’d participated in throughout high school but had given up in order to pursue “life”: a career, a wife, a family.  

A 6-Star Husband When They Were Newlyweds 

He had been a 5-star boyfriend for 2 years and a 6-star husband when we were newlyweds. He was so excited when we found out we were expecting our first child and would have gone to the ends of the earth to spoil the baby and I. “My girls,” he’d calls us.

In hindsight, all of the “sickness” seemed to arise when things started getting ugly with his parents and siblings. His parents were splitting up. Everyone was fighting. Everything was falling apart. I’d later learn that, all throughout his childhood, he had fought diligently to keep his family together and now felt he was watching everyone tear apart his life’s work. He was utterly broken.

ADHD and the Automatic No—or Yes

Have you heard of the "Automatic No"? It's one of those phrases that describes a phenomenon among some people with ADHD that is so obvious, so clear, that no doubt a multitude of people have come up with the term, assuming they were the first. I count myself in that group.

My husband used to be the Master of the Automatic No. Once he was diagnosed with ADHD (in 1999), I started understanding how he developed this habit.  When I interviewed him, a few years ago, for an article on his best tips for slowing his own ADHD roller coaster, I asked him about the Automatic No. Here is his response:

Stop—And Smell the Gardenia

“Ohhhh, smell this gardenia,” I said to my husband, lifting a freshly picked specimen to his face. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. SniffSniffSniff. His quick succession of inhalations over the ivory-petaled flower produced no reaction. Continuing at that pace, however, he'd soon be hyperventilating.

What a shame, that he couldn’t partake in the pleasure of the rich fragrance, a fond remembrance of my growing up in the South. In the summers, the scent of gardenias—along with their larger cousins, the magnolia tree flowers—would hang in the warmly humid air. It was practically the only good thing to come from that oppressive heat; our house had only spotty air-conditioning back then.

That little gardenia bush had produced nothing but leafy growth for the past eight years. They are notoriously finicky bloomers in the Bay Area, I've been told. And, this summer marked the first success: a constant profusion of velvety blossoms against shiny, deep-green foliage. The bush is pictured here, along with a metal goat stuck in the rose pot behind it. It is fitting for this post, because my husband’s nickname is Dr. Goat. Here, the goat looks like he might eat the gardenias, fine-smelling or not.

This wasn’t the first time when my husband could not share my appreciation of scented flowers. “I must have blown out my olfactory receptors in the lab,” he always says, speaking of his time spent studying to become a biologist and dealing with various chemicals during experiments in the lab.

Cooling "Heat of the Moment" Despair

Back in the “bad old days,” when my husband and I were getting whipped around on the ADHD roller coaster, we desperately needed better strategies—fast! Unfortunately, there was very little worthwhile reading in those days about ADHD and relationships.

Both of us learning about ADHD and my husband taking medication helped immensely. But that went only so far to counter entrenched patterns developed not knowing that ADHD was in the picture. One of those patterns I call the "downspiral of despair," the feeling of futility each time the roller coaster dropped again. In the early days especially, when progress sometimes means two steps forward and one step (or even three steps!) backward, it's tough to keep believing that things will progressive get better. 

In honor of Valentine's Day, I offer to YouMeADD blog readers a few tools that I wish we'd had then and which we will use now. I hope they help to ease the drops and dips in your relationships (not just the romantic ones, either), including your relationship with yourself.   

At the end of this post you'll find a musical dance-number my husband and I created just for you!

A Treasure Chest of Memories

When I spied this box at a local store, I knew I'd found the perfect gift for my husband Valentine's Day: A Treasure Chest to store the hand-made cards and funny notes we have made for each other over the years, along with little mementos of good times together. Why such an idea?  I'll tell you.

It is all too easy, when caught up in the heat of an argument or disappointment,  to forget all that's good in the relationship—and the other person.  Of course, this is true for humans in general but it seems especially true in ADHD-challenged relationships, especially in the early days after diagnosis.  Reacting "in the moment" sometimes means forgetting the Big Picture. If a trove of positive remembrances sits prominently displayed, you needn't go digging into drawers, folders, and envelopes to spark your memory. It's right there.

Even single adults with ADHD often find themselves losing sight of the Big Picture in their lives. That old adage about there being two kinds of time for folks with ADHD, Now and Not Now, can leave them stuck in Now, with no conception that things might look different in Not Now. When their string of successes is interrupted with one slip, they "hyperfocus" on the slip, giving it undue weight and forgetting all they achieved before it and will go on to achieve after—if they don't let themselves become preoccupied with the one slip. They can benefit from an active strategy for offsetting this negative pattern, to avoid sinking their mood and self-esteem and paving the way to an attitude of "why try?"

If You Think Fear-Based Management Works for You—Think Again

 

Prior to being diagnosed with ADHD at age 37, my husband says his best coping tool was "Fear-Based Management"—fondly referred to as FBM. What sometimes seems to help us cope in the short term can, in the long-term be our undoing. And, for many adults with late-diagnosis ADHD, it's hard to distinguish between helpful and counterproductive coping skills.;

As regards my husband's long top go-to strategy, FBM, he swears it got him through graduate school. The way it worked then: He nurtured thoughts of disastrous consequences if he didn't finish that paper on time and complete that research project. 

FBM may have helped him to earn a tough advanced degree in the hard sciences. But, looking back, with the advantage of diagnosis and better treatment, he sees now that "self-medicating with fear" did little for his nervous system or, ultimately, his ability to relax and enjoy life.

Anyone following the online headlines and heated commentary these days, on any topic, gets the feeling we're all relying a little too heavily on FBM and the rest of the limbic system. Being a little too quick to react, without fully taking in details, and often in anger. A little too willing to let our "primitive" and fear-based brains overcome higher-order, more rational thinking. 

I was pondering about this very topic when I ran a piece by writer Susan Schorn, author of Smile at Strangers and Other Lessons In the Art of Living Fearlessly. I found her essay "Tigers, Tigers" wise and thought-provoking. She has graciously allowed me to reprint below. Enjoy—and check out the video sharing Susan's fascinating journey from a "small child with a small personality" into a powerful writer and martial-arts instructor who teaches violence prevention.