Attention Deficit Disorder: Practical Coping Methods - part 7 pps

of depressive and anxious symptoms. The development of intru- sive or unwanted and uncontrollable mental images plagued their everyday thinking. • Trauma and other adverse life events were found to be associated with alcohol use in adolescents. Females, more so than males, had a history of sexual abuse; males were victims of other types of violence. • Alcohol was viewed by the adolescent as providing a means of emotional self-regulation. They were in charge and could exercise their own control. 11.4.1 The Overfocused Subtype in Adolescence The overfocused subtype of an ADD without hyperactivity is highly vulner- able in adolescence. The drama, the oversensitivity, poor sleep patterns, irri- tability, sleep deprivation, blood-sugar problems, etc., all come to a head in adolescence. All of the ruminating and overfocused thinking that has been internalized bursts forth and emotions erupt, overwhelming adolescents, and all of those close to them. Suddenly these individuals have turned into raving lunatics, maniacs out of control, and one thinks is this ADHD? Can a child be ADD without hyperactivity until adolescence and then become ADHD? Our answer is no. What happens is that this dramatic, overfocused subtype reaches an emo- tional peak and there is a considerable degree of acting-out behavior that occurs with temper tantrums and out-of-control emotionality as well as wide mood swings and overall discontentedness. Nothing pleases them and they don’t know how to be happy nor how to make themselves happy. They want to be close and then they don’t want to be close. They fight with you and tell you to go away and then cry and say that you don’t really love them because you are not helping them. They want to be young and to be taken care of yet they want to be grown up to have the freedom. They don’t know what they want and neither do their parents. These emotionally reactive, sensitive beings are the ones who create the air- tight mask to keep everyone at bay. They do not want anyone to know how vulnerable they are. They keep everyone away, but their messages are mixed because they really want to be close. They are scared and always anticipate the worst. Then there is the what if. What if this happens and what if that happens. In this manner, they effectively talk themselves out of taking any type of risk. Change only occurs with risk and these individuals therefore do not change. They become stuck in their own fears and eventually their own hatred of their fearfulness. The anger that they feel inside is projected outward to those around them and they can become quite nasty to live with. They are critical of themselves and of those around them as well. The continual ruminating becomes a recital of how bad they are and how terrible they have become and © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8493-????-?/97/$0.00+$.50 © 1997 by CRC Press LLC 12 The Impact of Attention Disorders Within the Family System 12.1 Introduction Often, the ADHD family is divided: family members band together and exclude the ADHD member who, by the very nature of the disorder, tend not to collaborate and refuses to honor borders and boundaries. The ADD child tends to also be excluded from the family structure. This type of child becomes lost, cannot keep up with other members, and, as a result, is left behind. Both types of individuals operate outside of the family structure, however, one is due to behavioral opposition (ADHD) and the other is due to being unaware (ADD). The household can easily revolve around the ADHD child, who demands attention and is continually causing a problem in the home, school, and com- munity. There is unpredictability in living with ADHD individuals — no one knows at what moment they may decide to do something or act a certain way, and there is no viable rhyme or reason for their behavior. Isolation can occur, with extended family members, grandparents, aunts and uncles refusing to accept the family because of the child’s behavior. Parents who spend much of their day disciplining children have little energy left for intimacy and fun. Parents continually inform us that they have little private couple time since no one else is available to help care for their children. Marital time, extended family experiences, and vacations become a distant memory. 12.2 So What Do We Do? The family must work together to cope with the disorder, whether it be ADD or ADHD and to view it as a characteristic of the family, not the specific © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8493-????-?/97/$0.00+$.50 © 1997 by CRC Press LLC 13 Living With the ADD Adult: How Does ADD Affect A Marriage? 13.1 Living with an ADD Partner Living with an ADD spouse can be a very difficult and trying experience and can leave people easily embittered and eventually wanting to leave the mar- riage. Partners of ADD spouses tend to be co-dependent individuals and they specialize in picking up the pieces of their ADD partner. As a result, the ADD people tend not to address issues and cope with the consequences of the dis- order themselves, and their partner aids in this process. They begin their marriage as equals but become locked in a situation where one person is more powerful than the other. As non-ADD spouses care for ADD people and assume more of their responsibilities and duties, the ones who are needed become more powerful, which unfortunately is what co-dependent individuals are truly looking for (which is why they would foster such a sit- uation in the first place). The non-ADD spouses are needed and critically important to their mates, which alleviates any fear they may have of being abandoned. It is a boost to their self-esteem (aren’t they wonderful) and all goes well for a while. Eventually the non-ADD spouses may become tired, overwhelmed, and no longer able to pick up all the pieces. If they have a job and/or children they find it increasingly difficult to take care of everything and if they don’t take care of it themselves no one else will. Children add to the burden of non-ADD spouses and as the needs of the children increase, these spouses have less time to devote to caring for their ADD partners. The ADD partners, who were used to being taken care of, have come to view such caretaking as a sign of love and caring. When the caretaking is diminished and pulled back, ADD spouses feel abandoned, no longer important, and discarded. Sometimes there is jealousy of the children, who still receive the attention and nurturing ADD spouses so desire. © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8493-????-?/97/$0.00+$.50 © 1997 by CRC Press LLC 14 ADD in the Workplace 14.1 Introduction We have found that ADD individuals truly have difficulty sustaining and maintaining a job that is the least bit demanding of them. ADHD people have little or no frustration tolerance and if things do not go their way, they leave. Thus, ADHD individuals perform better in self-employed positions or, if employed by a company, in a position where they can operate prima- rily by themselves. ADD without hyperactivity individuals tend to procrastinate and avoid any situation in which they fear they may fail and thus often do not complete tasks and projects. They tend to develop low self-esteem, which compounds their already precarious position either with customers or within their com- pany. This is due to their failure with follow-through and accomplishment of set goals. They make promises they can’t or don’t keep and eventually people tire of this (and of them). Thus, ADD individuals saturate the legal profession (they run their own show and the secretarial staff takes care of the details), become business own- ers (others take care of the details, paperwork, and follow-through) or go into teaching (lots of structure to their day). There is a lot of emotional reactivity in ADD persons as a whole. However, they lack the ability to follow it with action. All talk and no action. For exam- ple, they will complain about a job situation forever yet not do anything about it. One of the reasons ADD individuals lose their jobs is that they become upset about things in the workplace, complain, and yet do nothing. As a result, their feelings fester and pretty soon their performance drops as they stop putting as much energy into the job as they once did. It is only a short trip from there to being fired. ADHD people cannot follow a sequence of events to reach a goal and there- fore constantly tend to be moving and out of balance with their own produc- tivity. They look busy, but don’t get much done. They may also go off on an idea without the proper groundwork to make it happen. ADHD persons come up with great and exciting ideas but they are only ideas. They have no © 1999 by CRC Press LLC . and how terrible they have become and © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8 49 3-? ?? ?-? / 97/ $0.00+$.50 © 19 97 by CRC Press LLC 12 The Impact of Attention Disorders Within the Family System 12.1 Introduction Often,. © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8 49 3-? ?? ?-? / 97/ $0.00+$.50 © 19 97 by CRC Press LLC 13 Living With the ADD Adult: How Does ADD Affect A Marriage? 13.1 Living with an ADD Partner Living with an ADD. jealousy of the children, who still receive the attention and nurturing ADD spouses so desire. © 1999 by CRC Press LLC 0-8 49 3-? ?? ?-? / 97/ $0.00+$.50 © 19 97 by CRC Press LLC 14 ADD in the Workplace 14.1