Although men are accused of not knowing their own weak­ness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength.  It is in men as in soils, where sometimes their is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

 

- Swift

 

Chapter 9

MY ADDult TRAITS

                   

As an adult with ADD, I am predisposed to being critical, pessimistic and moody.  For years, I denied that my behavior affected those around me, espe­cially my family.  At work, I appear to be calm and "laid back," but at home I am frequently irritable and display low frustration toler­ance.  Work organ­izes my life:  things are more structured and I am the boss—staff mem­bers can be delegated tasks that are un­pleasant to me.  However, at home, my life is un­structured and family members make demands of me.  I have less control over the home envi­ronment.

My problem adult ADD traits include:

 

§        Boredom

§        Impatience and low frustration tolerance

§        Anxiety and stress intolerance

§        Some risky behavior

§        Impulsive money management

§        Forgetfulness and confusion

§        Sloppiness

§        Disorganization

§        Low self-esteem and need for recognition

§        Lack of follow-through

§        Frequent career changes

         

Boredom

             

Boredom is the ADD trait that distresses me most.  If something is personally boring, I avoid do­ing it.  I cannot totally ignore boring work-related tasks, but I strain to complete them on time.  My at­tention to details is poor.

I search constantly to find stimulating things to alle­viate boredom.  What re­duces boredom this week may bore me next week.  Therefore, staying with an activity for a signifi­cant length of time is hard for me.  Things that stimu­late me mentally—mostly creative endeavors—hold my at­tention and sustain my inter­est the longest.  The onset of boredom sets off the following chain of behavior:

 

Boredom = lack of stimulation → restlessness → search be­havior → stimu­lation and brief boredom reduction, or, if unresolved → mood problems.

 

Like Sherlock Holmes, my mood plummets when boredom persists.

             

Impatience and Low Frustration Tolerance

             

The ADD trait that distresses my family most is im­pa­tience and its related problems—excitability, low frustra­tion tolerance and grumpiness.  I want what I want, when I want it. Thwarted desires make me an­noyed and grumpy.

I once thought my family overestimated my grumpiness and grossly exag­gerated the intensity of my feelings.  My wife would say, "Calm down, you're going to have a heart attack!"  I tended to blame ex­ternal factors for my impa­tience.  "Yes, I am some­times impatient and short-tem­pered," I grudg­ingly admitted, "But my anger is short-lived."  When we went on a family vacation to Disneyland, my three daughters saw a Grumpy sweatshirt (the dwarf from Snow White), which they felt fit my personality.  They gleefully asked if they could buy it for me.  An­noyed, I re­plied, "No!"

           

Anxiety and Stress Intolerance

             

Anxiety and coping with stress have always been problems for me.  I worry constantly about big things and little things:  the health and safety of my family, financial secu­rity, my career, losing the respect of others, etc.

In graduate school, I tried to reduce stress through nightly drinking bouts.[1]  Worries about flunking out of school and relationships with women were espe­cially dis­tressing for me.  The unofficial campus bar at the University of Chicago, the Woodlawn Pub, better known as "Jimmy's," was my favorite hangout.  In the pub, which is near the site of the world's first atomic chain reac­tion, an apocryphal story circulated that Enrico Fermi, the University of Chicago physics professor who produced it, got his in­spiration from watching bubbles rise in a glass of beer.  (A successive student generation has changed the central character in this apocryphal story to a more contemporary Nobel science laureate according to a news piece aired by National Public Radio.)  The story was (is) just an intellectual excuse to drink.

            

Risky Behavior

             

When not at Jimmy's, I frequented a mob-owned bar in South Shore, a pre­dominantly African Ameri­can neighborhood.  I caroused with an African Ameri­can friend, a doctoral student, who was as na­ive as I was about urban ghetto life.  He grew up in a small rural Southern town, while I grew up in an all-Caucasian Pacific North­west urban neighborhood.  We were both too trusting, me per­haps be­cause of my ADD.[2]

An attractive, nicely dressed young woman struck up a conversation my friend on our first visit to the bar.  A tall muscular black man sidled up next to us after a few minutes and began an interrogation:  "Who are you?  What do you do?  Are you guys looking for dates?"  We were to learn later that our inquisitor was a pimp and pool hustler who had done time in prison.  The young woman was one of his prostitutes.  The pimp, who could have been the archetype for Jim Croce's "Bad Leroy Brown," had never met a black person who attended col­lege, let alone one who was com­pleting a doctorate. From then on, the bartend­ers ac­corded my friend with defer­ence and gave us free drinks nightly.  "Leroy" re­turned to prison before I left Chi­cago.  He was a violent man and, al­though he never attempted to harm us and always treated us fairly, he did threaten others in the bar.  I did not condone his behavior, but I felt privileged to be ac­cepted by him.  Our dorm friends thought we lived dan­ger­ously.  In hindsight, we had engaged in risky be­havior and were lucky not to have been robbed or as­saulted.  I learned to avoid risky situations like this as I got older.

             

Impulsive Money Management

             

Impulsivity in managing money is a problem for me as for most adults with ADD. For this reason my wife assumed the financial management of our house­hold early in our marriage.  I had no problem managing money when I was sin­gle, but after we married, money management became more complex.  Sud­denly marriage compelled me to stick to a budget.  Al­though I have effectively managed non­profit or­gani­zation budgets over $1 million, I lack the patience to man­age my own money and impulsively spend the extra cash in my pocket. Procrastination in balanc­ing my checkbook sometimes resulted in bounced checks.  The prob­lem improved after I be­gan using a comput­erized money man­agement pro­gram to bal­ance my check regis­ter, but that system eventually failed too because of pro­crastination!

             

Forgetfulness and Confusion

             

Before I learned that I have ADD, I feared that I might be experiencing the early onset of Alzheimer's disease because of my forgetful­ness and problems with memory retrieval. Fre­quently, I have trou­ble re­trieving names from mem­ory, es­pecially when pres­sured. On one occasion, I even forgot my sister-in-law's name in making intro­ductions at a social func­tion.  My father acknowl­edged the same problem, admitting, "I don't pay at­tention to names when I'm introduced to peo­ple."

Jokes are forgotten minutes after I hear them.  On the rare occasion when I do remember one, and try to retell it, my delivery invariably flops:  a mem­ory lapse occurs when I get to the punch line, or poor timing causes the joke to fall flat.

I often do not fully comprehend or remember what I read by the time I reach the bottom of a writ­ten page, especially if I am only mildly interested in the con­tent.  I have to reread the material more than once because I am often too impa­tient to read things completely. That is why I seldom read professional journal arti­cles and books from start to finish, a puz­zle to me when I was younger. In­stead, I scan articles for the nuggets of information that interest me.  When I re­cite these little factoids, others com­ment on how well read I am.  My fund of knowledge is decep­tive.

              

* * *

             

Family schedule changes make me cranky.  Even when routines stay con­stant, I get confused.  I often call my wife to assure myself that I have not forgot­ten what I am sup­posed to do after work.

 

Sloppiness

             

Piles of magazines, books, newsletters, cross­word puzzles or newspapers litter the floor next to my side of the bed—the interests of the mo­ment, the "re­mains of the day"—that I somehow never get around to pick up.  Likewise, scattered sel­dom-to-be-filed work papers cover my car seats.  (I recently bought plas­tic bins to hold them in the trunk of my car.)

As a child, I let the mess in my room collect until my mother finally cleaned it up herself. (My parents ac­cused me of being lazy!)  My motivation did not change much with age.  In high school, I worked as the janitor at my church.  Church members eventu­ally complained to the minister about my sloppy cleaning and I was fired; I had cut corners to get the job done as fast as possible.  Today, I still struggle to complete weekly chores without my wife's prodding.  While she re­fuses to clean up my messes, in frustration she peri­odi­cally gathers up my bedroom clutter and throws it into a paper bag or threatens to put the stuff in the trash. 

              

Mental Disorganization

             

It is a challenge for me to organize oral presenta­tions.  As I matured, I became more comfortable speaking to groups, but continued to have difficulty in orga­nizing my thoughts.  Outlines never seem to help.  I have trouble sticking to them.  Speaking more extemporaneously with­out notes or outlines works best for me, but it has a drawback—I forget key points.

In making oral presentations, I resort to the dry wit that I inherited from my grandfather.  The style of humor that alienated peers when I was younger, now tempered, works to my advantage.  Using jokes as icebreakers, I frequently try to engender laughter with self-depreciating humor. (It works better than the sar­castic humor that used to an­tagonize others.)  I addressed a child welfare confer­ence and quipped about my naiveté early in my career as a casework supervisor in a welfare office:  "A case­worker told me that her female cli­ent's water broke.  So I said, 'Why don't you call a plumber?'"  Another time I joked about a trip to Vir­ginia City, Nevada:  "I thought the coupon for a free 'well drink' at a casino was a rip-off.  Big deal, a free drink of water!" 

Humor, however, does not compensate for my mental dis­organization.  A highlight in my career was the invitation to present an academic paper at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Symposium on Role Transitions in 1982.  There were 35 par­tici­pants from NATO coun­tries including Canada, Greece, the Neth­erlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and West Ger­many.  The presenters were eminent profes­sors of sociology, social psychol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy—ex­cept for me.  I was a social work lecturer at the University of Washington, and the only non-PhD per­son invited to par­ticipate in the conference. 

The invitation turned into one of the most embar­rassing experi­ences of my life.  I feverishly studied the outline of my pa­per for three consecutive nights be­fore making my 30-minute presentation.  Even with in­tense preparation and an outline, I could not or­gan­ize the material in my head or pace its delivery.  My lecture lapsed into a rambling dis­course and I pre­sented only half my paper—Role Transi­tions of Pro­fessionals Moving to Rural Locales—in the al­lotted time.  Thankfully, the other conference presenters spared me further humiliation by not commenting on the paper during the question and answer period.  As I slunk back to my seat, a foreign professor sneered with incredu­lity, "You're a lecturer at the University of Washington?!"  My written paper did, however, earn kudos from the con­ference editors, who in­cluded it as a chapter in their book published on the proceedings.[3]   Once again in my life, I felt stupid.  My poor verbal perform­ance mystified me.  "Why can't I present my thoughts in a clear, coherent man­ner?" I agonized.  Ten years later, the diagnosis of ADD revealed the answer to this question.

             

Low Self-Esteem and Need for Recognition

             

The NATO incident underscored my belief that others doubted my professional competence.  This feeling lin­gered despite ample evidence to the con­trary.  Bat­tling with low self-esteem is a common problem for adults with ADD, even in the face of suc­cess (Hallowell & Ratey, 1994a).  My level of self-es­teem waxed and waned de­pending upon the events of the day, the week or the month.

I have difficulty accepting constructive criticism from supervi­sors. I also have trouble accepting posi­tive comments because of my tendency to de­value my own abilities. Compliments sometimes seem gratuitous or un­deserved to me. 

My first waking thoughts at one time focused on my ob­session with career recognition and advance­ment. Yet, no matter what I achieved, my craving for ac­knowl­edgment was never sat­isfied.  I wanted more.

In 1986, I was invited to submit my biography for in­clu­sion in the first edition of Who's Who Among Hu­man Ser­vices Professionals.  I was thrilled.  Finally, this recognition validated my professional compe­tence, I thought.  Within the next three years, my bi­ogra­phy was published in three Marquis publica­tions:  Who's Who in the West, Who's Who of Emerg­ing Lead­ers in America and Who's Who in the World.  A listing in the first edition of Marquis' Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare followed in 1997, culmi­nating with the 1998 publication of my biogra­phy in Who's Who in America.  The publication of my biog­raphy sym­bol­izes to me the success that eluded me as a child. 

             

* * *

             

As executive director of United Way of Island County, Washington, in 1990 I received a Mailgram from Bill Ara­mony, president of United Way of America.  It read,

 

CONGRATULATIONS ON A JOB WELL DONE.  YOUR ACHIEVEMENT IS OUTSTANDING, AND IS FURTHER DEMONSTRATION OF YOUR LEADER­SHIP IN MOBILIZING A CARING AMERICA TO HELP MEET HUMAN NEEDS.

 

I cherished this document from the "father of the United Way movement" and hung it on my office wall with pride—one of a growing number of plaques that I gazed upon daily to maintain my self-esteem.  No matter how many plaques and awards I put on the wall, however, there were never enough to overcome my self-doubts.  I was afraid that others would dis­cover my incompetence.

In 1995, Aramony was convicted on 25 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He received a seven-year prison sentence.  Ara­mony's fraud par­al­leled the "fraud" I felt within my­self.  His fraud was crimi­nal and public—mine was self-per­ceived and personal. This feeling persisted despite the fact that my United Way achieved the highest five-year giv­ing increase among Wash­ington United Ways (106%.) during my tenure and executive direc­tor.

          

Lack of Follow-Through

 

Follow-through on projects is a weakness for me.  Since the age of 27, when I was elected president of the Wash­ington Association for Social Welfare, I have filled many positions of leadership.  The more board memberships I collected on my resume, the more important I felt.  How­ever, my commitment to these organi­zations was often poor.

A few years ago, for example, I became involved with the Northwest Chapter of the Huntington's Dis­ease Society of America.  Two years later, board members elected me president of the chapter.  A committee or­ganized a daylong conference in Seattle during my presi­dency.  They brought together medi­cal and re­habili­ta­tive experts to speak on the latest develop­ments in the treatment of Huntington's Dis­ease.  I played no role in planning the conference, but or­ganizers asked me to make a brief speech greeting the attendees who came from throughout the re­gion.  Board mem­bers were peeved when I left for a college football game imme­diately after the wel­coming speech, oblivious to the insensitivity of my be­havior.  Since then, I have learned to limit the number and scope of volunteer activities in which I participate and, when I do make a commitment, to accept only tasks that I am moti­vated to accomplish.

             

Frequent Career Changes

             

Frequent job change, a common problem for some adults with ADD, is my trademark. Acquaint­ances in the past considered me a job hopper: "Where are you working now?  It's difficult to keep track of you."  One of my colleagues once joked, "Miller, you change jobs as often as most people change their underwear."  I re­sented that remark, but have since realized that he was right.

My professional career in social work has been var­ied.  I have been a social worker in adult correc­tions, a child welfare supervisor, a university lec­turer, a program developer, mental health therapist, clinical director—and an executive direc­tor of a YMCA, a United Way and a mental health center.  I held 11 different jobs in 21 years, aver­aging less than two years per position, before Catholic Commu­nity Services hired me. I have worked at CCS for over nine years—a record for me.

My inclination was to look for new employment when a job became too boring or stressful. I ration­alized my behavior, saying that stress caused me to quit, or greater opportunities for advancement beck­oned elsewhere.  "Most people would do the same," I told my wife.  She was not sympathetic.  My recur­rent job changes prevented me from taking ex­tended family vacations for several years because I lacked the re­quired longevity on the job to earn summer leave.

 

My Strengths

             

The use of an appointment book, computer and elec­tronic or­ganizer mitigates my disorganization at work.  Working with employees that are more or­gan­ized has helped keep me on track too. I have many personal strengths, some that I at­tribute to ADD, which compensate for my weaknesses. I am hard working, flexible and versatile, with the ability to work well under pressure.  I have a "can do" atti­tude. My tolerance and ability to identify with the common human­ity in others, despite personal differ­ences in socioeconomic status, political philoso­phies and reli­gious beliefs, is a source of personal pride.  Perhaps my greatest assets are creativity and its cor­related attributes: maverick independence and an intuitive nature—traits that may be linked to my ADD.

             

1.  Creativity

             

O. S. Fowler, cited earlier, wrote in 1856 that a "de­fect" in the ability to sustain concentration is a trait of genius.  He said that it is characteristic of many emi­nent adults and may account for the ver­satility of the American character.  A body of con­temporary lit­erature also links creativity and intelli­gence to ADD (see Hartmann, 1993; Hallowell & Ratey, 1994b; Cramond, 1994).  A study by Robin et al. (1997) found that adults with ADHD are inclined to be in­tuitive, innovative and creative, but more dis­or­gan­ized in their thinking than a non-ADHD adult sam­ple.

Several respected writers push the notion that most, if not all, people with ADD are creative and highly intelligent. Psychologist Milton Lucius charges,

 

There is simply no evidence for this whatso­ever.  They [some authors] state without a doubt that people like Ben Franklin had ADHD because he was creative and intelli­gent. That's absurd.  There's no way to know that [Per­kins, 1994, p. A14].

 

Despite Lucius' caveat about creativity and ADHD, I am an exemplar of the creative individual with the disorder.  The late Louis Sauter, a local mu­nicipal court judge and former president of the Na­tional Judges Association, submitted my name to a re­search project on wisdom and creativity sponsored by the Insti­tute of Gerontology at The Univer­sity of Michigan. The principal research investi­gator asked law judges, presumably models of wis­dom, to nomi­nate individuals who they thought were creative and wise.  She wrote,

 

As part of a two-year study, I am collecting infor­mation about the psycho­logical charac­teristics, life experiences, and current views of people who have been nominated as having such qualities [wisdom and creativity] . . . Un­usu­ally wise and creative people comprise a small and select group . . . Little information exists in psychology about the antece­dents and conse­quences of wisdom and creativity, and few studies focus on actual exem­plars of these posi­tive characteristics [L. Orwoll, letter, May 9, 1991].

 

I was flattered, but flabbergasted.  I had not con­sid­ered myself particularly wise or creative.  Upon re­flection, though, I am able to syn­thesize facts and ideas in new and crea­tive ways, identify and capital­ize on opportunities and produce innovation.

As a lecturer at the University of Washington, I dem­on­strated creativity through the papers and arti­cles I wrote, and through research conducted on the sat­isfaction of mental health professionals with rural life and practice.[4]  As a pro­gram developer for a com­mu­nity action agency, I con­ceived of the model for the first agency-based crisis nurs­ery program in Washington State—a model since adopted by other organi­zations.  I developed two Armed Services YMCA pro­grams that won national Program Merit Awards from the McDonald's Corporation.  At United Way, I pro­grammed a computer spreadsheet tem­plate that cal­culated the payout of thousands of dol­lars to hun­dreds of agencies participating in the Com­bined Fed­eral Campaign, cutting the calculation time from days to seconds.

 

2.  Maverick Tendencies

             

I am inclined to be a maverick like others with ADD. Mavericks are independ­ent. They do not color within the lines or stay within the box.  They do not feel bound to do things in tra­ditional ways or ac­cording to conventional wis­dom.  They challenge rules and orthodox expecta­tions and in the process sometimes cre­ate novel so­lutions to problems.

Conventional social pressures that run counter to my personal values and be­liefs do not in­fluence me much. Several years ago, for example, a woman friend dared me to join the lo­cal chapter of the Busi­ness & Professional Women's Club (BPW).   "O.K.," I said glibly, "sign me up."  As the father of three daughters I felt that it is important for men to sup­port women’s issues.

The club inducted me as its first male mem­ber. "Are you gay?" a member asked ear­nestly. Others in the community were curious about my motivation too, but no one openly ridiculed me. It was rather auda­cious of me to join a women’s club in a male-domi­nated Navy town, but I did not care what other men thought. Within two years, members elected me club presi­dent. I was one of the first two men in the United States to hold that BPW post.

             

3.  Intuitive Nature

      

I am action-oriented and believe in the motto of my Puritan ancestors, the Ea­gers:  Facta non verba (deeds not words); and in Nike's motto, "Just do it!" Ar­ticulating planning steps can be trying for me be­cause of my impatience. Intui­tively I seem to know how to reach goals without a lot of fore­thought, so I do not spend much time agonizing about the steps in the process. I just do them.        

Strategic planning sessions, and meetings in gen­eral, bore me.  I am impa­tient in meetings because individuals tend to repeat and rehash a point of view at least three times as communication experts re­port.  If people stated opinions only once, meetings would take one-third the time. When meetings go on too long, I start clowning around to keep myself stimulated.

 

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