My ADD vs my PTSD
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 9:46AM Since I ran away from home when I was 16, I always wanted to go to therapy, as if something was bothering me, but I couldn't afford it until about 5 years ago, thanks to my husband's health insurance. My first therapist, a very sweet lady, suggested that maybe I had ADD. I had no idea what that meant, and when I found out, I was terrified - something was wrong with my brain. I've read a ton of books on the subject before finally agreeing to tests and, ultimately, to medication. It helped - the first day I took meds, I cleaned out the entire house and did an incredible amount of laundry. My husband couldn't believe his eyes, neither could I. I thought, this is it, I found the source of my problems, and the problems were numerous.
1. I couldn't listen to people and talked incessantly, constantly interrupting everyone. ADD? Yes.
2. I couldn't sleep - I'd be wired up when it came to bedtime and would crash around 2am, only to wake up at dawn, cursing my head. ADD? Yes.
3. I kept forgetting things all over the place - like keys, for example, I could spend an hour chasing them around the house, only to find them in my pocket. ADD? Yes.
4. I had a hard time starting any project, but once I did, I had a hard time stopping. I hyper-focused, ignoring my body's needs like eating, sleeping, etc. ADD? Yes.
5. I was always restless, fast, and anxious - if something went well, I imagined that it couldn't, that one way or another, everything will go bad, very bad, and I was on the lookout for that, couldn't sit still - literally in the chair, and conceptually in my head - I always had to do something, if I sat idle - I felt depressed. ADD? Yes.
6. I could never understand the concept of time, and I trained myself to come on time to meetings by developing an elaborate system of reminders, yet once a year or so, I would completely forget about a meeting, and miss it, or be very late, of which I was terrified. ADD? Yes.
7. I'm a perfectionist. I take on more than I can do. I think in black/white terms. I can't tolerate boredom. ADD? Very much so.
And yet, I've gone off my ADD meds several weeks ago, after my therapist number 5 (it took me 5 years to find the perfect one, the one who could really help) diagnosed me with PTSD and suggested that maybe, just maybe, I don't have ADD at all, but was battling PTSD all those years. I decided to do an experiment. Here are the results:
1. Incessant talking - gone. All my life I've been trying to tell my story to people, but now that I've been heard, suddenly I had space to listen to others. For the first time in 11 years of our marriage, I listened to my husband about his work - he could't believe it. He said, "You actually listened to me, and you heard me, and I felt it." I couldn't believe it either, yet it was effortless. My incessant talking was gone.
2. I still have trouble sleeping, but for maybe about 3 nights in the last month, I slept peacefully, like a baby. Without sleeping pills. Without nightmares or any dreams, without waking up at 3 in the morning. The insomnia is going away, slowly.
3. I realized that I didn't forget just anything, it was the keys, only the keys. I traced this forgetfulness back to one key that I remembered - the big key to the basement, a twisted dar corridor under our house in Germany that I had to unlock and and walk through to take the trash out. I kept losing that key, and my father kept yelling at me each time, calling me names, telling me that my memory is not worth anything, and scaring me to death with his theories that there is something wrong with my genes, and it's coming from my mother, and one day I will turn crazy, just like her. I think another instance of abuse happened in that basement. I say Ithink, because I haven't gone to that memory yet, so I don't know for sure, I just have a hunch. I will go into it tonight with my therapist, by talking about the key, starting from that image.
4. As an abuse and incest victim, I learned early on to disassociate from my body, ignore its signals of pain, hunger, or exhaustion, and I learned t hyper-focus to escape reality. For the first time, again, in my life (I realize I use the expression "for the first time" a lot, but it really is true, it's like I'm discovering who I am, as if I'm being born again), I was able to do work, then stop, and FORGET about it, be with my family. I was never able to put my business out of my head before - I lived with it day and night, non-stop, and that is what burned me out on the end. This revelation was profound.
5. People noticed that I slowed down, I'm no longer very fast or anxious. The paradox? I'm off my ADD meds, so I should be faster! Yet I'm not, and I have less anxiety.
6. I traced my time anxiety to the fear of being late, to my father establishing very strict rules, for example: I had to be home by 10pm, when I started going out with a boyfriend (I was 16), and if I was 1 minute late - literally, 1 minute - it was bad. He was mad, he yelled, he called me names, sometimes he hit. Until one day I was so fed up with it all, that I decided to run. That one day, when he raised his hand to slap me, I raised mine. I remember the anger in his eyes, and the astonishment at my action. If not for my step-mom stepping between us, I don't know what would have happened, but I do remember that I was ready to fight till death. I was ready to bite him, claw his with my nails, hit him with my head, feet, elbows, anything I had. Hence my fear of being late, hence the over-reaction to timing meetings - to elaborate systems of reminders. I'm still struggling with this one, but understand now where it's coming from.
7. I don't have to be a perfectionist anymore, as I don't have to be perfect for anyone, I can just be myself. I don't have to tell everyone "yes" to every request, I'm learning to put up boundaries. I'm not viewing people as good or bad anymore, as I used t when I was a little girl. I can sit still and just look outside the window, though I still feel the pang of guilt, guilt about not doing something useful, but Im learning to notice the guilt and let it go.
Do I have ADD? A close friend of mine told me yesterday that I don't have any ADD at all, comparing me to his other friends with ADD. Do I have PTSD? Yes. I have panic attacks, I have anxiety over the impending doom and the death of the world, every day, and I'm on the lookout for it. I have flashbacks in the middle of the street, get nausea, lose all feeling in my limbs at the dentist's office. I avoid social gatherings, struggle with sleep, am jumpy if someone touches me, and still have my irritated bladder symptom (for 1 year now) of having the urge to go to the bathroom every 15-30 minutes. I was suicidal for several weeks in January, but I'm better now.
Best of all, I now know what is going on with my body and my head - the worst was not understanding it. Now my path is in working through it, one day at a time, with tons of breathing through it.
Reader Comments (5)
Ksenia -
It sounds like you've come a long way in understanding yourself. And I can tell you from personal experience, it does improve with age. As you get older, your metabolism slows down and it makes a difference. But being aware of what's going on inside and outside of you is important at each stage of your life.
I think learning to be adaptable is the most valuable lesson. As I grew up to be who I am, I looked at what "other people" considered to be "normal" (that still changes on a daily basis - I don't know what I want to be when I grow up!). And I realized that normal is a highly subjective concept. A "normal" amount of sleep is supposed to be 8 hours a night. Me, I tend to go on 5 - 6 hours a night, sleeping for 8 hours on rare occasions. Heck, I never even napped when I was a child. So I simply accepted that fact and work into the late hours of the night most of the time rather than laying in bed tossing and worrying about not "being normal." I'm happier and certainly more productive but it also allows me to deal with some amount of what is probably ADD in that I manage to get my long list of To-Do items completed every day even if it gets spread out over more than the "normal person's 8-hour workday." When you finally let go of other people's concept of normal (with some limits, of course), things flow better in your life.
Quite frankly, the only times I think much about ADD or ADHD is when other people bring it up and talk about how it's wrecking their lives. Of course, that's when the doctors step in and tell you you're not "normal" and start prescribing drugs that may or may not address your specific problem.
It's obvious to me that you've had a very creative career and life so far because you have also managed to embrace and understand yourself well enough to your advantage, Ksenia. There are a lot more of us out there than you think!
Yay for you and your amazing therapist. It sounds like you on a great path right now, even if it does sound a bit scary to confront your past like that. Good for you for taking care of yourself. You deserve it!
I just returned from 3 weeks in Haiti. I'm a learning what PTSD is for me. What I'm trying to understand is about the people that are still there. What do they have? Hope?
Ksenia,
Thank you for that wonderful sharing - and what great progress on such difficult life work!
Oh, thank you everyone for your comments - it helps a lot. Let me know what you want to know about the things I am going through - if it will help you personally. I have amassed an incredible amount of most recent research and data, and I will be blogging about it here, hoping to help others as I help myself.