Read Online You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder by Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo
Tags: General, Psychology, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Health & Fitness, Diseases, Nervous System (Incl. Brain), Mental Health
Ads: Link
and other aspects of task performance can also suffer as he fails to slow down enough to balance his internal processingand physical capabilities (output). As a result, he makes careless errors and has trouble with motor tasks. The authors, for instance, have had a long-standing love/hate relationship with tennis that has resulted in part from the supersonic brain phenomenon.
PR: “Kate and I should have our names listed on a plaque of notable accomplishments, a kind of Guinness Book of Records . Wemerit inclusionon the basis of our record-setting number of years in beginner and advanced beginner tennis lessons! Regardless of how hard we worked at our game, we never seemed to make much progress. After we both started taking Ritalin, we experienced a startling improvement in our skills on the tennis court.
“Lest struggling athletes read this and race to their pharmacies for their physical skill pills,I need to emphasize that the improvement we experienced was one of mental skill. We were playing better because we were thinking better, or at least more slowly and with better planning.
“Taming our runaway thinking tempos gave us a more accurate sense of time. Our abilities to strategize and s-l-o-w d-o-w-n improved our game. With relief and a sense of accomplishment, we finally graduated fromour beginner lessons.”
Applying the brakes to our supersonic brains often gets easier by the time we become adults. Many of us manage to achieve some degree of balance and an ability to stop and think—at least more often than we did as children. Unfortunately, as soon as we start feeling complacent, something invariably goes wrong.
KK: “I’m certainly no whiz at higher mathematics, but I can accuratelyadd long columns of figures. I prefer doing my addition without a calculator so I don’t have to worry about pushing the wrong buttons.
“Years ago, however, I made the mistake of rapidly calculating our household budget to figure out if my former husband and I could afford a major renovation. I didn’t recheck my figures before assuring him that the project was financially do-able. I swept awayhis natural caution with my enthusiasm and energy and implied that he was a stick-in-the-mud for raising questions and objections. After we had committed to the project and were up to our ears in plaster dust, I found a glaring omission in my figures. I had neglected to add the mortgage payment to our monthly budget!
“My grandmother bailed us out. If she hadn’t given me a portion of an inheritancewe might still be in debtors’ prison—assuming such places still exist!”
This anecdote is illustrative of an important balancing act for many of us with ADD. We have to put the brakes on our racing thoughts gradually enough that we don’t come to screeching halts, paralyzed by fears of making impulsive mistakes. Alternately, we don’t always apply the brakes when we should, especially when we’reworking on something easy or familiar. When we’re feeling overconfident we may “put the pedal to the metal” and send our racing thoughts careening out of control!
Paralysis of the Will
The balance can also tip in the other direction, with a failure to act at all—something like a paralysis of the will. The output function totally stops working. When this happens, the ADDer may find himself ina frozen state, unable to take appropriate action. He may watch the softball whiz by as if he were a spectator instead of the player responsible for intercepting it. When it’s time to answer someone’s question, he may stand back feeling stupid, because he can’t think of a response. Input problems probably also play a part in this paralysis of the will. If he hasn’t input the information he needsto properly respond, the quality of his output will be impaired.
Did you know that this little section on the paralysis of the will sparked a thread on about.com that ran to over four hundred postings? Obviously, it struck a nerve with many
PR: “Kate and I should have our names listed on a plaque of notable accomplishments, a kind of Guinness Book of Records . Wemerit inclusionon the basis of our record-setting number of years in beginner and advanced beginner tennis lessons! Regardless of how hard we worked at our game, we never seemed to make much progress. After we both started taking Ritalin, we experienced a startling improvement in our skills on the tennis court.
“Lest struggling athletes read this and race to their pharmacies for their physical skill pills,I need to emphasize that the improvement we experienced was one of mental skill. We were playing better because we were thinking better, or at least more slowly and with better planning.
“Taming our runaway thinking tempos gave us a more accurate sense of time. Our abilities to strategize and s-l-o-w d-o-w-n improved our game. With relief and a sense of accomplishment, we finally graduated fromour beginner lessons.”
Applying the brakes to our supersonic brains often gets easier by the time we become adults. Many of us manage to achieve some degree of balance and an ability to stop and think—at least more often than we did as children. Unfortunately, as soon as we start feeling complacent, something invariably goes wrong.
KK: “I’m certainly no whiz at higher mathematics, but I can accuratelyadd long columns of figures. I prefer doing my addition without a calculator so I don’t have to worry about pushing the wrong buttons.
“Years ago, however, I made the mistake of rapidly calculating our household budget to figure out if my former husband and I could afford a major renovation. I didn’t recheck my figures before assuring him that the project was financially do-able. I swept awayhis natural caution with my enthusiasm and energy and implied that he was a stick-in-the-mud for raising questions and objections. After we had committed to the project and were up to our ears in plaster dust, I found a glaring omission in my figures. I had neglected to add the mortgage payment to our monthly budget!
“My grandmother bailed us out. If she hadn’t given me a portion of an inheritancewe might still be in debtors’ prison—assuming such places still exist!”
This anecdote is illustrative of an important balancing act for many of us with ADD. We have to put the brakes on our racing thoughts gradually enough that we don’t come to screeching halts, paralyzed by fears of making impulsive mistakes. Alternately, we don’t always apply the brakes when we should, especially when we’reworking on something easy or familiar. When we’re feeling overconfident we may “put the pedal to the metal” and send our racing thoughts careening out of control!
Paralysis of the Will
The balance can also tip in the other direction, with a failure to act at all—something like a paralysis of the will. The output function totally stops working. When this happens, the ADDer may find himself ina frozen state, unable to take appropriate action. He may watch the softball whiz by as if he were a spectator instead of the player responsible for intercepting it. When it’s time to answer someone’s question, he may stand back feeling stupid, because he can’t think of a response. Input problems probably also play a part in this paralysis of the will. If he hasn’t input the information he needsto properly respond, the quality of his output will be impaired.
Did you know that this little section on the paralysis of the will sparked a thread on about.com that ran to over four hundred postings? Obviously, it struck a nerve with many
Similar Books
