Hello

[TurtleRock]

Sooo Hello
I'm over 30, I live on Canada's West Coast. For the time being I have full time employment but I am honestly not sure how much longer till I finally screw up one too many times. I use sarcasm a fair bit it's the best form of deflection I possess.

I'm an adult with ADHD, I've stayed at both the Child Study Center in Ottawa as well as the Royal Ottawa Hospital Children's Cottages not sure if that was the correct name.

I tested "Gifted" as a child but did abysmal in school

I occasionally feel the need to interact with other people who understand depression I accomplish this by lurking on sites like this sometimes for a day or two sometimes for months.

I am hoping that someone on this site how ever might be able to relate to being an an adult with ADHD and or "gifted" with a learning disability or perhaps you had the luxury of staying at one of the six CSC's in Canada or something equivalent where you grew up. How you coped/cope with it ect

Six years ago I "found" a coping strategy that seemed to work well enough in the sense that I was able to be some what successful at my job and even found myself able to entertain the concept of a relationship with another person.

Over that six year space people died, stuff happened, my sister was committed again, I discovered my wife is/was possibly as messed up in the head as I am also that I really really really wanted out of the relationship.

Despite all that I had days/weeks where I barely functioned was pretty much a zombie I never had a suicidal thought.

So I leave my wife, get a new place start getting semi active again and instead of the enjoying the great feeling of liberation of being free I instead find myself for reasons I haven't pin pointed yet suddenly going from today is a good day to ah frak it I think I might "insert permanent solution here" which is a pretty surreal experience in I feel both rather ambivalent and terrified at the same time. Its the uncertainty of not knowing wtf I'm doing in those moments and then they pass and I feel so detached from the moment. Anyway it has brought to my attention I seem to have unresolved issues regarding my apparent inability to work around my ADHD soooo if you for some reason actually read all this drivel and you can relate to ADHD, CSC, GIfted with learning disabilities let me know.

[fallen]

i was told i was gifted and a genius but then i realized they were talking about the kid next to me, i too appreciate sarcasm, the lowest form of wit, so i have been told many times.
anyway back to looking out the window......
welcome to the site and take care

[Frame]

Gifted, yea I guess; that's what they tell me. ADHD, I think probably; the evidence is mounting. My sister has two boys who are ADHD and from her experience with them, she's prettysure I've got it, but I haven't been diagnosed. Lets see; surreal, ambivalent, terror, abysmal in school; yup, yup, yup, and yup. (Add multivalent, depressed, and angry too.)

Yes, I can relate to all of these and if you search on me you'll find plenty of rants surrounding coping. But if you want to talk, I'll listen. If you want to ask I'll answer.

Welcome Turtlerock.

[TurtleRock]

Thank you both of you,
Its the norm and not surprising, But still makes a difference that feeling that you have some kind of connection to someone else who in some way shape or form thinks in some way like yourself.

I wish I had your talent with words. Grammar and myself do not have a good working relationship. If it wasn't for auto correct most of my ranting would be unintelligible to anyone but me but meh.

it's my understanding that its possible to "progress" from childhood to adulthood with ADHD and subconsciously develop coping strategy's to work around ones person ADHD issues but eventually hit a "point?" where the skills you've developed to cope are no longer enough to allow you to function mostly unhindered and you start to slip and things sort of snowball from there.

That was my take on it any way. I find the desire to "research" my issues/problems/selfinflictedlimitations gets rather bogged down by my mind refusal to cooperate long enough for me to read more then a page or two and then froget any insight I had gained the next day.

I'm intrigued by your way of thinking as it appears many people are now that I have located the elusive "search" button, seriously took me over an hour to realize it was there. I think will will refrain from asking to many questions of you till I've had a chance to see if the answer may lie? within one of your previous posts.

I will ask this have you ever experienced periods of "hyper-focus" its something I only recently discovered was associated with ADHD, If so have you any for lack of a better term control over it ?

As far as the "gifted" label its something I only a few months ago started to do any research into having failed horribly academically I'd added functionally retarded to the list of perceived "flaws" I hate about myself.

Well this was far far longer then I would have liked so /endrant

[TurtleRock]

It always helps to know what your looking for, Even if its just a vague idea.
I think my primary focus is on ADHD as an adult and how others have found some form of success in their lives while over coming their "disadvantages?" related to ADHD. that may require more explanation but I don't have it in me to elaborate right now.

I say primary focus but I think the reality is anything to distract myself
its 1:03am and I'm unable to continue my train of thought with out slopping into a long self serving, self defeating rant.

[Frame]

It feels weird for me to think that the more difficult problem in my life has not been the ADHD (if that's what it is; what ever learning difference) but the gifted part. I look around and see people; bus drivers, secretaries, cashiers, teachers, accountants,.. and they may or may not be happy with their lives but at least they have stable lives that hang together. My life has been an unbroken series of sand castle building projects. The tides coming in again.

Did you realize, at least in the US, if you train to be a police officer you take a test and if your IQ is above a certain level you won't get in? It has simply been proven that the brightest people won't sit still for the amount of regimented paper work, surveillance, and stay alert waiting for something to happen. My point is that, if I hadn't consistently tested in high percentiles as a child, if I hadn't amazed my elders with little nuggets of insight, even now if I didn't surprise people by putting together information in insightful and creative ways; then I wouldn't have been encouraged throughout my life to reach for achievements only to be held back by something in my brain that no one understands.

I could have been a truck driver (I always kind of wanted to be) but aiming low probably wouldn't have worked either. History has proven that I am way to restless to do for very long, something for which my ADHD doesn't eventually interfere. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing; I'm always distracted by shiny new facts and data. I'm always compulsively trying to fit new intelligence into the scheme of things. I'd end up with a truckload of Mrs. Smiths frozen turkey pot pies scattered all over some interstate clover leaf.

So what to do next? I mean rather, what have I learned that I can apply to a better life? Well, from my experience it seems that people like us (I'm taking a liberty, but perhaps we're not that different), in order to thrive, must have support. And we're worth it. But some of us (I'm raising my hand) from hard history have been taught to believe we are not worth it. I myself find it extremely difficult to ask for help especially when I need it the most. But I also think, while worthiness is a big part of the equation, that I'm all too often not sure what to ask for or how to ask. And because my life is lived in such a non-standard way, I simply can not count on people to know how to help. If I can't explain clearly what I need, then I'm not going to get it. A large part of the therapy of writing in this forum is an attempt to work out ways of explaining my life in new ways that people around me can relate to.

As to your question; let's see: the two important ones I think, are about hyper-focus and hitting a wall. Hyper-focus is for me, the bliss part of (let's call it) ADHD. And yes I have. I was diagnosed a few years back as Bipolar tpye II. Type one is where you swing from high to low. Type II is where you swing from average to low. But I think that labels are all miss-labels and even if they're not, there have been times when I did swing high. When I did, I got a tremendous amount of work done and that felt great. Medication and depression have taken away most of that hyper-focus and I miss it because that is when I'm the brightest. But if you have seen the "Blade Runner", you've heard one character quote (I think) Sartre; "The one that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast".

Anyway; I think it's essential to realize that, no matter who we are, we all learn things as children that we need to unlearn in order to move ahead in life. It may not have always been true, but the world moves so fast now that thing we learned as coping skills years ago might not fit because our situation has changed. The good news is that, most of the people here have a higher than average ability to adapt and I think that includes you. So I think it's important to look at coping skills in terms tools we can take out and use or put away. We all need to continue to look for new tools and sometimes clean out the tool box. Working with words here, I think is a good way to do that and a tool in it's self. Don't worry about making sense. There are levels of coherence in the categories: Art, Expressions, Your Story, Living with...

[Frame]

The Bladerunner quote is "the light that burns twice as brightly burns half as long" and by Lao Tzu.

[TurtleRock]

Bladerunner was an awesome movie.
At this moment which history has taught me is finite in length I am focused on understanding ADHD. I am researching? several different ADHD support websites to glean what information I can. My challenge atm is getting any of the information to stick and the actually applying it.

The term "gifted" is a label and to much importance is placed on it. It only tests for certain types of intelligence and even then its very western oriented and not entirely accurate. Though I lacked any understanding at the time of what it meant it did define the expectation placed one me as a child and the reactions of my parents and teachers when those expectations weren't met.

Aside from being a perfectionist which is a deep rooted compulsion I've never understood given that I rarely if ever can achieve my own standards and it leads me to long periods of self hatred at my perceived short comings. I often feel and some times justifiable so that I can do better if I could just get my brain to cooperate long enough.

I try and look at what it is I am trying to accomplish then list of the things that are interfering with achieving said goal. Then I bash my proverbial head into a wall until the wall breaks and I have some kind of epiphany on how to tackle the issue or My mind starts racing faster then I can keep up and I crumble like a dried out cookie.

I spend a lot of time spinning my tires and doing nothing. I ride on the success of my more lucid moments to carry me through and I do not take for granted that advantages I have. In my less lucid moments I self destruct, act impulsively and fear that if I fall I won't get back up again.

[Frame]

Wow Rock, what a lucid picture you paint. And it's very familiar one for me. I don't like the idea of suffering and missing out on what the rest of the world is enjoying; being held back by my own miss-direction or the shallow decisions of others. But I do believe the grass truly is greener right here if we choose to see it that way. People make much of how great their lives are, how many resources they have; while they burn more resources in a day than some people acquire in a year. Could we live that way if we had the opportunity?

And I think, as worthless as we feel sometimes, that's actually inversely how much more worthy we are. Struggling people like us have made more contributions to society and world evolution than those self-contented stable souls ever will.