Why have I called my blog Attention Surfeit Disorder?
I was diagnosed late in my life with ADD. 49 in fact. It was impacting severely on my life, both professionally and personally.
I always knew I was different, but sort of put it down to vanity on my behalf, or stupidity on other peoples. I always had troubles in teams, but was smart enough, and would move jobs often enough, that no-one would notice. Certainly not me.
However it all came to a head when I couldn't just up and leave a job. I wanted a proper career and kind of just refused to move on. I got very, very bored, and aggressive with it.
I lost my job, and am trying to kick my career in a different direction.
So, I've been reading up on ADHD, and really thinking about it, and realised it's named wrong. It's not a Deficit of attention, it's a Surfeit.
Noise
For the ADDer, there's a lot of noise. By noise, I don't mean sound, I mean something that crowds out actual meaning.
So if you trying to find a wallet on a crowded table, all the stuff on the table is noise. If you're trying to listen to music over the sound of a car, it's traffic noise. If you're trying to hear a car coming down the road, over music, the music is noise.
For me, everything is important, and I have trouble crowding out the noise. So what I do is, I concentrate on the tidy, and ignore the noise. What, however if the noise is important?
This is where the filters come in. Most people have filters to pick up what's important and ignore the unimportant.
People with ADD, their filters aren't as effective.
I have trouble directing my attention. It's a not a lack of attention, it's a surplus.
As A Child, a long, long, long time ago
When I was 7, my parents and teachers were worried about me. They knew I was bright enough, but I didn't follow directions so well. They would send me in to the supplies closet to get the paint, and I literally couldn't find it. I would stand in the closet, looking everywhere, and the paint would be right in front of me. I'd come out going, it's not there.
It was a puzzle to them, and me.
So they took me to a child psychologist, and remember this was 1972. Hyperactivity was a thing, but not ADHD, and if you weren't hyperactive, you didn't have it.
So they blamed my Mum, which pleased her no end, but they missed the ADD, because it wasn't known then. I wasn't presenting known symptoms.
They also said I just couldn't tell my left from my right. Not instinctively, and I have to think about. Some people are instinctive about it, but I, even now, have to imagine myself picking up a pen to figure which is which.
That, though, is beside the point.
For me, in that closet, there was too much noise. The paint was what I was looking for, that's the signal, and all the rest of the stuff was just competing for my attention. This was noise.
And I think for a lot of people with ADD, that's just what it's like.
An Example
I'll give a real life example, of my wife, but please realise it's not her fault. I'm not trying to blame her, and just trying to state the facts:
For instance, my wife likes to have lots of stuff. We've got twins under 2, and so we have a lot of stuff.
I think we don't need a lot of it, but I can't convince my Better Half to part with it.
The things we own become noise.
I can't control that, I can't throw things away so I ignore them. I deliberately don't look at them. I walk around with my head down, not looking around me.
However, what if I need to find something? I put my wallet down, and it just gets lost in the mess.
Or it gets dirty, and I don't even notice because I'm deliberately not looking at it.
And this happens a lot. It's not because I'm lazy, it's that I'm trying to not get too stressed about.
There's a lot of noise, so I try to fix it, but if I can't I ignore it, but the ignoring it creates it's own problems.
And this can be the life of an ADDer.
This comes down to an inability to focus attention on one thing. It's a focus on lots of things. It's a Surfeit, not a Deficit.
So that's why I've called this blog Attention Surfeit Disorder.
