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Post by Lesley on Aug 28, 2013 8:20:40 GMT
Lesley, have you tried other self help stuff too? What did you find so good about mindfulness? I am going to have a look round for groups as I don't think just me, my book and cd are going to make it on our own!! But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water if it is genuinely that helpful. It appears to have amazing reviews, but I would like to hear amazing reviews from inattentive adhd people too!! Sorry to have taken so long to reply to you, Petra. Ah, well, I don’t have to explain why… And it’s really interesting to read the posts other people have made on here in the meantime. To answer the first part of your question – I’ve read any number of self-help/popular psychology books over the years, seen two different psychotherapists (privately, not medically trained) and done a number of day/weekend/evening workshops. Mostly, they all focussed on my difficulties with making friends and generally relating to people. It never occurred to me to look for help with any of the other things that bothered me – I didn’t even really think of those as problems, just as things I’d be able to sort out if I put my mind to it, if I wasn’t so hopeless… I stopped doing all of that quite a few years ago, though, as I felt it didn’t have anything more to offer me (apart from seeing a life coach for a few sessions about 3 years ago about some difficulties I had at work shortly before I retired). As to what I got out of doing the mindfulness course: In general, what it aims to do is to make you aware of the present moment, rather than living in your thoughts of the past and the future and operating on automatic pilot. You are then able to be more aware of what is happening in you and around you, and make choices rather than just reacting. I found that the exercises were (intermittently) successful at enabling me to do this. This also made me more aware, first of bodily sensations, then later of emotions (both things I am usually very unaware of). With the emotions in particular, I really only made the very first steps, but felt that I was potentially on a path to understanding myself a great deal better. I had a number of important realisations about myself, at least one of which came at the end of what had been a very difficult sitting meditation. As a result of these, I have made some changes in my plans and expectations and in my attitude towards important people in my life. I decided to do one of the shorter exercises (mindfulness of breathing) before breakfast and to get washed and dressed before doing it (in contrast to my usual practice of having breakfast in my dressing-gown and sometimes not getting dressed until nearly lunchtime). I found that on days that I did this the whole day went better than usual – in that I felt that I was more focussed and that less of my time was wasted on things I didn’t really want to be doing. Unfortunately I didn’t keep this up when the course moved on to other exercises. One short exercise – the 3 stage breathing space – was (and will be when I get back to it) very useful in helping with transitions from one activity to another, and in making me pause and think again before diving into doing something (usually sitting down at the computer) I will regret. This feels unfinished, but it covers the most important things anyway and it's time I replied. Hope you find it useful.
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Post by Lesley on Aug 22, 2013 13:44:49 GMT
Glad to hear you're going to give the mindfulness a try again, Petra. And well done for even attempting it with only a book and CD to help you.
If there are classes near you and you can afford it, it would be well worth doing an 8-week course. I did this in May and June, and I'm really glad I did. (I also have a book - the one about mindfulness for people with ADHD - which I read, but didn't even start the exercises). It was a condition of the course that you do an hour's home practice 6 days a week, but of course they're not standing over you making you do it, and though I was very good about it for the first week-and-a-half it was downhill all the way after that! But even with the weekly class and doing the home practice sometimes, I found it really useful. I let it drop once the course was over, but having the experience of how helpful it can be is giving me the impetus to go back to it. I'm just about finished sorting out a room in my house to be a better place to practice than the living room where I was doing it before, and then I plan to go back and start working through the course workbook again starting in week 2. I may even start it today!
The other reason for doing a class is that you will meet other people trying it out (for a whole variety of reasons) and there is a least the possibility of both paid-for follow-up classes and workshops and also of a self-help group getting together to keep each other on track. A monthly "top-up" could be very useful. (I have a date for one led by my tutor in September, but I can't make the date! Perhaps next time).
Lesley
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Post by Lesley on Jul 11, 2013 17:52:38 GMT
Yes it is. I was hoping to come too, but now have to be in Bristol in the morning and back home in the afternoon - and I can't face the journey twice in one day. So hopefully I'll see you in August.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 7, 2013 9:14:40 GMT
I'm sorry you had that experience, littemiki. The group does vary from month to month and it is true that some months it is more anarchic/less welcoming than at others. It sounds like you hit a particularly bad one. It would be good if you were to feel you could give it another go. Hopefully your experience would be better this time, and if nothing else you might be able to meet a few people you could make contact with outside the group.
Also, some people go to the pub together when the meeting finishes. I've not stayed for that yet, because of the distance I have to travel to get home, but I have heard people say it can be more useful than the group itself. I imagine people are more relaxed then and also there will be the chance to chat to one person or in small groups.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 6, 2013 17:28:35 GMT
There is a support group meets in Bristol - next one is next Friday, 12th July. It's at MIND, 35 Old Market St., BS2 0EZ from 7 to 9 pm. More details are here: aadduk.org/help-support/support-groups/bristol-adult-adhd-support-group/I go when i can, though I don't live in Bristol. I'm hoping to go next week. I think most of the people there do live in Bristol, though some travel to it from quite far away. It would be good to see you there - it's a very friendly and supportive group.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 6, 2013 17:19:34 GMT
I've just PM'd all Admins about it.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 6, 2013 17:18:56 GMT
I've just PM'd all Admins about it.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 6, 2013 17:18:19 GMT
I've just PM'd all Admins about it.
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Post by Lesley on Jul 6, 2013 17:17:20 GMT
I've just PM'd all Admins about it.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 28, 2013 17:54:15 GMT
That's sounding much more hopeful - I hope it goes smoothly from now on (and doesn't take too long).
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Post by Lesley on Jun 20, 2013 12:10:33 GMT
I've been on Strattera since January and not felt anything like that, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't had that effect on other people. I know there seem to be very few people on here taking Strattera, so I don't know if anyone else will know.
I hope it passes off soon. Take care of yourself. Hugs xxx
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Post by Lesley on Jun 19, 2013 13:13:39 GMT
I'm really interested in people saying they have struggled with conversation, where other people just seem to chit chat. When I discussed this with psych he said I might have aspergers! All well and good but I don't have any other symptoms, I'm very disorganised and not orderly, routine or unempathetic, so I couldn't agree on that me. Could this awkwardness I feel around others be due to ADHD? 1. Yes, it could be due to ADHD. Although it doesn't seem to be mentioned often as a symptom, the newspaper article which first alerted me to the fact that I might have ADHD did talk about it - that was one of the things which made me look into it, as it is/was one of my problems (less so now, but because I've learnt not to mind and found friends who don't mind, not because I've developed conversational skills!) 2. On the other hand, you might have ADHD and Aspergers. The doctor who diagnosed me with ADHD thought I might be on the autistic spectrum (which I'd already suspected for other reasons) and had me fill in a diagnostic questionnaire. I came one point below the cut-off point for having it, which he said was still close enough to merit further investigation. (As it happens, I came one point below on the diagnostic questionnaire for ADHD too). (wish I could black box, Any instructions on here?) Click on Quote in the top right of the message. On the screen which comes up (called Create Post), delete the parts of the message you don't want. Be careful not to delete any of the code (the bits in square brackets). To quote twice, like I have here, copy and paste the entire message before deleting, then delete the (ir)relevant bits in each of the two messages. At the bottom of the Create Post screen, there are two links, Preview and BBCode. If you can see the square brackets and their contents, you're in BBCode. Click on Preview to see what the message will look like when posted. You can also type or edit your message in Preview, if you don't want to be playing around with brackets.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 16, 2013 17:19:21 GMT
All the best, Kathy. Hope you get the result you want xxx
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Post by Lesley on Jun 15, 2013 13:29:34 GMT
Really pleased for you, jj - that is SO positive.
xx
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Post by Lesley on Jun 14, 2013 23:49:24 GMT
Go into 'Edit Profile', then it's under Privacy - if I'm remembering right.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 14, 2013 21:44:30 GMT
OK.
I'm going to change my user name to - my name. I only used an alias in the first place because it seemed to be what everyone did when I first joined.
I apologise that it's a letter longer than you wanted, Petra - no, in fact, I don't apologise - it's my name!
The photo is of Peacock butterflies, scientific name Inachis Io, hence my former user name.
Love to you all
Lesley
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Post by Lesley on Jun 14, 2013 21:19:32 GMT
People tell me to pull myself together and to stop making excuses etc. I feel like this advice is akin to telling a man with no arms to slap his face every time he forgets something important - something is missing in me that means the plan is never going to work! (Please forgive the surreal analogy!) Absolutely! If they had any idea they'd know how useless that "advice" is. And yes, my symptoms do vary - though I think I'd put it the other way round. Most of the time I drift along feeling stuck and not doing anything very much (I'm retired, so can get away with that, though it's frustrating, because there are things I want to do), then out of the blue I get a rush of energy and purposefulness, and start getting things done - then equally suddenly it's gone and and I'm back to square one. It's always been like that, and the meds (Strattera) haven't really made much difference to that, though they have "unfogged" my brain, which is great - but it would be even greater if the newly unfogged brain could devise some strategies for helping me get unstuck more often.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 13, 2013 18:45:32 GMT
Hi Kathy
I'm so sorry you're having to go through all this. Not much I can do to help, but on the tiny little point of your age, I will just tell you that I was diagnosed at 61, and that I have read (in Adventures in Fast Forward by Kathleen G. Nadeau) of a woman who was dignosed age 74.
Good luck with it.
Lesley x
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Post by Lesley on Jun 13, 2013 18:35:36 GMT
Hi galactic
I've been meaning to answer your initial post since I saw it, because it rang so many bells with me, but it's taken your post of yesterday evening raising the possibility that you might give up to spur me into action. Like janev says, don't give up - in fact I'll second everything she says.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that if it was up to me you would be diagnosed as ADHD right now. Everything you say at the beginning of your first post (the list which you intorduce with the words "I described my problems to the psychiatrist pretty much as follows" shout it out. Then in a later post you say "I tend to quickly gain interest in different hobbies/subjects and then just as quickly lose interest and move on to something else". Yep, that's it too. All of those (some more than others) are things I identify with. Then there's the social anxiety... but I'll come back to that later.
I'm going to give you a short (I hope) potted biography - I hope when you read it you will understand why:
I was a clever but quite shy and withdrawn child. I did well at primary school but didn't have many friends - in fact I don't remember having any at my first primary school and only made one towards the end of my second one (she and I then remained friends until we lost touch in our mid-20s). I did well at secondary school - 10 'O'-levels (yes, I'm that old!) at grades A-C, 3 'A'-levels, an A and two Bs. But I remained quite socially isolated, making friends only slowly and keeping in touch only with that one when I left school. Same story at university - 2:1 degree, but difficulties fitting in socially. I've two friends I'm still in touch with from university days - because one of them made a big effort to keep in touch with me and kept me in touch with the other as well.
I found a job quickly after leaving university and remained employed pretty well continuously until I retired in December 2010 at the age of 61. I had five jobs in this time (plus a year out acquiring a postgraduate diploma), the last three for 18, 9 and 11 years. Over the years I gradually learnt to get on better with people, but continued to make few friends - that's a talent I've acquired only very recently, and I still have only a few real friends. I've been married twice - the first was short and not at all sweet, but the second has lasted for 31 years, plus the five years we were together before marrying. (Just to complete the picture, I've two sons, one from each marriage).
Not the typical profile of a person with ADHD, eh? HOWEVER:
I spent a lot of my time at work - feeling that I was not on top of things and wondering when I was going to be found out - searching for the piece of paper I needed which I had put down only a few minutes before - trying desperately to get my chaotic paperwork sorted and filed - doing nothing very much for lots of the time and then having to work desperately hard to make deadlines - starting projects and not carrying them through - planning wonderful projects and not even starting them - taking work home at weekends because that was the only way I could manage - being late for meetings and appointments - feeling that I should be achieving a lot more than I was - never managing to get to grips with the reading I needed to do to keep up with the job
But to everyone else I looked completely calm, confident and on top of things. And I didn't think there was anything 'wrong' with me - in the sense of having a recognisable disability that the medical profession could help me with. I just thought I was completely disorganised and hopeless.
A few months before I was due to retire I had a week's leave. I had planned to spend some of the time getting some household tasks done (e.g. sorting out the piles of newspaper articles, complete newspapers and magazines and other junk I had in every corner of the house!), and some of it going for walks, going swimming and doing other fun things. The weather was beautiful that week, but I spent the entire week sitting in front of the computer, playing computer games I wasn't even enjoying after the first half-hour, and moving from Facebook to my email and back again. I ended up totally depressed, thinking "is this all I've got to look forward to for the next twenty or thirty years?" Then I read an article in a newspaper about ADHD, recognised myself (though, not surprisingly, with some reservations), and felt that, after all, there was hope for me ...
End of potted biography. And on to a few points I want to make:
1. Social anxiety - the symptoms of this and ADHD do overlap - in fact the article I read mentioned social awkwardness quite strongly - if it hadn't I might not have identified with it quite so much. So when you say that your social life has suffered due to social anxiety, not ADHD, it could be social anxiety AND ADHD - or even just possibly ADHD misdiagnosed as social anxiety.
2. 'Mild' signs of ADHD? If they're bad enough to affect your life, if they're bad enough that you need to seek help, then they're bad enough that you deserve an assessment by a specialist, and the appropriate treatment if the diagnosis is positive.
3. The lack of any overt problems and of hyperactivity/impulsivity at primary school age IS a problem, but mainly a problem (in my totally uninformed opinion) with the diagnostic criteria. Unfortunately we've got to work with the diagnostic criteria we've been given. However, a specialist who knows what s/he is doing and who recognises that everything else points to ADHD will know how to tease out the indications that are there. I still feel my answers to questions around this area were stretching a point, a little bit bogus perhaps ... but they did the job.
4. And that's one reason why it's important to see a specialist. It's not only the "much worse" ADHD people whose lives are being adversely affected - it's also the many whom general psychiatrists are not recognising because they don't fit a stereotypical pattern.
5. But there's another reason too. I was 'diagnosed' twice - first as not having it by a Psychiatric Nurse and Psychiatric Social Worker on my local Community Mental Health Team, then as having it by an ADHD specialist. The difference in diagnosis wasn't the only difference between the two interviews. The first was totally unstructured - I was asked what my problems were and they came up with alternative explanations for them (like your psych and the social anxiety). The assessment by the specialist, by contrast, consisted of my filling in a couple of diagnostic forms before the interview (my husband also filled in a copy of one of them, which related to my behaviour now; the other was a checklist developed specifically to overcome the problems of assessing the childhood behaviour of adults seeking diagnosis for the first time); and of an interview in which he asked specific relevant questions, so that he was able to elicit relevant information. This gave me much more confidence in his diagnosis - if he'd said I didn't have ADHD, I would have had (reluctantly) to accept that. And I also think that if he had felt ADHD wasn't the problem he would have been able to suggest what was and what my next steps should be.
So there you have it - and sorry it's so long. Please do stick with it, and get yourself a diagnosis you can feel confident in. If you just give up now you will go on wondering, and struggling - and one day may be looking back and cursing the wasted years.
Good luck.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 3, 2013 21:52:34 GMT
Hope all goes really well for you tomorrow xxx
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Post by Lesley on Jun 2, 2013 11:56:08 GMT
OMG you mean i spent weeks (litrally ) learning to black box - and now they don't exist!!!! thats so typical of the way life goes for me!!!! finding it so difficult to master what ends up becoming irrelevant !!!!! Jan, you can still do it - I'm doing it now - they just don't put a black box round it any more, so it's more difficult to see what is the quote and what is new material.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 2, 2013 5:15:55 GMT
But it was much more convenient on the navigation bar so it was there on every page - to the people at Proboards, can we have it back there, please?
And while you're at it, can we have the black boxes round the quotes back? It was much easier to read posts with quotes easily identified.
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Post by Lesley on Jun 2, 2013 5:04:01 GMT
Or it's at the bottom, under Threads and Posts: Recent Threads
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Post by Lesley on Jun 1, 2013 11:14:56 GMT
I know I should actually be pleased I'm that bit further along the path You will be - properly - eventually. But it's common - pretty near universal, in fact - to feel depressed - and even "cry-ey, emotional and pissed off" - after finishing some great struggle, even if it ends in complete victory. Don't know why it should be like that, it just is. I hope you're feeling better already - but if you're not, don't beat yourself up about it. Your recovery will take as long as it takes - there are no "shoulds" or "oughts" about it. xxx
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Post by Lesley on May 31, 2013 20:23:33 GMT
just shows how amazing you are that you can still come out with some class A humour whilst wading through all this on going shit!!! if i was you i'd be getting 2 bottles ( and probably 8 cans ) put your feet up and enjoy Seconded. You've battled through stage one and come out triumphant - no wonder you're exhausted and drained. Have a pamper-yourself weekend - you deserve it! xxx
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Post by Lesley on May 29, 2013 23:10:24 GMT
Hey, you updated your blog! Don't forget to add that to the 'I did it' thread you started.
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Post by Lesley on May 29, 2013 22:07:35 GMT
Congratulations. So glad it went well, after you had the courage to try out the unknown quantity of a brand-new service.
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Post by Lesley on May 28, 2013 9:23:12 GMT
The saving grace with this (I hope) is that it is so obviously a religious group with their own axe to grind that no-one except those already inclined to believe them will take any notice of it - and there's no way they're going to listen to any refutation. Coincidentally, this is the second time Leon Eisenberg's name has come up recently - I posted this - aadduk.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=articles&thread=6240&page=1 - a couple of weeks ago. Something tells me he's going to keep popping up for a while.
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Post by Lesley on May 27, 2013 20:22:46 GMT
This is a great idea, kathymel. I look forward to having something to put on it one day.
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Post by Lesley on May 27, 2013 16:51:26 GMT
It's the second Friday of the month - so Friday 14th June.
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