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Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood QUOTES

Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood QUOTES

41 " ADD people love bottom lines,” I answered, laughing. “It’s always, ‘Get to the point’; ‘What’s the next show?’; ‘Where’s the beef?’ ” “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I’m not big on scenery. I want to get there. Is that bad? "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

42 " We also see people with ADD hyperfocusing on an activity, like rockclimbing or driving or work, probably because it allows them to forget about the expectations associated with “time.” Our patients frequently report that they are their most calm when completely caught up in the thrill of it all, whatever the “all” may be. It could be fun, a catastrophe, or a life-or-death crisis. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

43 " These situations allow the ADD person not only to get into forward motion, but also to forget, to disregard that they need brakes in the first place. In an emergency, it’s full speed ahead. What a relief. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

44 " The clinician’s challenge is to find a way to allow the ADD person to put on the brakes. From a biological perspective, one of the most successful strategies has been the use of medications. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

45 " For example, if you were nearsighted and had never heard of nearsightedness, and for years you had thought your blurry vision and subsequent learning problems were due to lack of effort or moral turpitude, imagine your relief in discovering that there was this condition called nearsightedness, and it had nothing to do with effort or morality, but rather was a neurological condition. So it is with ADD. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

46 " This is because the structure, novelty, and motivation associated with "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

47 " These examples reflect the stuff adult ADD is made of. Peter’s piles are particularly emblematic. So many adults with ADD have piles, little mess-piles, big mess-piles, piles everywhere. They are like a by-product of the brain’s work. What other people somehow put away, people with ADD put into piles. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

48 " Embedded in the mind of each person who has ADHD, or depression, or bipolar disorder, or an anxiety disorder, one can find talents and strengths. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

49 " I think people come to words much as lovers get together. They stumble onto each other, at the oddest of times, in the strangest of places. They will meet in an empty laundromat on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or they will catch each other’s eyes across a ballroom dance floor in the middle of a wedding waltz. They will meet without appointment and strike up a relationship without an agenda. There may be a long courtship or a whirlwind romance. There may be protracted avoidance, even what looks like a phobia, as in Karl’s case, or there may be an instant avidity, what amounts to love at first sight. Some carry on a kind of epistolary relationship with words, expressing their feelings through the formal prose of elegant notes, while others jump at words and bark them out at the world in the immediate poetry of certain street-corner vendors. Some slap their words up on posters on telephone poles, while others keep them in reserve, like a pistol concealed in a pocketbook. Some read haltingly, like the nervous lover, hat in hand, while others seem born to orate. We all woo language differently, and language grants us her favors in different ways. Sometimes the relationship takes off, although it is rare there is a ride without bumps. While utterly beautiful, endlessly varied, and thoroughly transfixing, language can also be frustrating, confusing, exasperating, and unforgiving. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

50 " Adults with ADD associate so much anxiety with beginning a task, due to their fears that they won’t do it right, that they put it off, and off, which, of course, only adds to the anxiety around the task. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

51 " As one task is put off, another is taken up. By the end of the day, or week, or year, countless projects have been undertaken, while few have found completion. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

52 " Tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

53 " the person with ADD seldom feels bored. This is because the millisecond he senses boredom, he swings into action and finds something new; he changes the channel. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

54 " Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an ability to hyperfocus at times. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

55 " Inaccurate self-observation. People with ADD are poor self-observers. They do not accurately gauge the impact they have on other people. They usually see themselves as less effective or powerful than other people do. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

56 " Difficulty getting organized. A major problem for most adults with ADD. Without the structure of school, without parents around to get things organized for him or her, the adult may stagger under the organizational demands of everyday life. The supposed “little things” may mount up to create huge obstacles. For the want of a proverbial nail—a missed appointment, a lost check, a forgotten deadline—their kingdom may be lost. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

57 " You see, my problem is I don’t know whether I’m smart or if I’m stupid. I’ve done well, and I’ve done poorly, and I’ve been told that I’m gifted and I’ve been told that I’m slow. I don’t know what I am. "

― Edward M. Hallowell , Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood