General Characteristics of the Adult with | ADHD Information

I jumped from an aeroplane once...forgot to check and see if the 'shoot had opened...it did. 

Plan on doing it again soon if the weather holds out.

i think the author of that list has been spying on me.

one part that reallly hit home was the short temper/easily frustrated. also, the blowing up and then moving past it quickly.

it wasn't till the last few years, at age 40 give or take, that i started to realise my temper was not like other adults, and that people reacted to it as if i'd gone round the bend.

tapping my foot(more like bouncing my whole leg.), doodling, can't do the same thing without breaks. always wandering. for me a desk job would be hell on earth. even my friends i haven't  told about the adhd(all of them) are aware of this! so much for hiding my symptoms.

and these things do impair me. my friends know this too.

its me too..

i get chronically bored.. i would be jailed for it...

wow, just read the list...

Oh well, crud.. Ya mean I have ADD???? Darn and I thought I was just a nut or something........

I fit Every single one of the Innattention characteristics, the impulsive ones, and the restlessness stuff -- good grief how does anyone get along with me?

Sherry

Sadly that is me.

I need to look for a new job but have had so many failures it is tough to start looking.

[QUOTE=kibbles002]

 

 

  -- good grief how does anyone get along with me?

     Good Grief:::Sometimes I can bearly get along with myself ! 

 

[/QUOTE]

YEP...That's ME to a "T"

   Kimberly  (SlugBug)

 

 

  Brookela:::thanks for the great information, lots of good stuff---EMOional tUrmiol...more like emotional 'hot'oil...

 

Thats me!

 

 Avoid new situations...that sounds familiar...my wife has to drag me someplace and then I don't want to leave ! 

General Characteristics of the Adult with ADD

Please keep in mind that this is a generalized overview of how characteristics and symptoms of ADD/ADHD may present themselves in Adults. In addition, if there is no “impairment” in your life, you do not have a disorder. How these characteristics affect each individual will be different and unique.

Inattention and Memory Characteristics

May lose things such as keys, important papers, phone numbers etc on a regular basis. May be forgetful in daily activities “I know there was something I was supposed to do!” or consistently forget to take out the trash, instructions from your partner, or picking the kids up from an activity. May consistently begin a task and not complete it.

Maybe you start to cut the grass, go inside to get a drink, answer the phone, see there is a sporting event on TV, sit down and watch it and leave the lawn mower in the middle of the yard. Maybe you have a “workshop” with projects began with good intentions, all half finished.

May have a problem following conversations. Maybe your wife/girlfriend/partner talks to you and always complains that you never listen. Maybe you are always wondering when someone told you something when they say “Don’t you remember I told you about this last week.” Maybe you miss deadlines at work or hand in something irrelevant because you only heard half the conversation. May be difficult to motivate yourself to begin a project. “Oh sure, that sounds great, I’ll get started on it, well, maybe tomorrow!” A project that doesn’t instantly sound great and exciting may continually be placed on hold, making you look lazy. May have difficulty following a timed schedule. Misjudging time can create havoc in any schedule. Either you begin with an unrealistic schedule, allowing too much or too little time for each activity, or you can’t follow the schedule because you forgot about the time and just spend 3 hours on an activity that should have taken 20 minutes.

Hyperactivity

Okay, so you don’t bounce off the furniture any more, (or maybe you do) but the hyperactivity is still present, it just shows up in different ways as you grow into adulthood.

You may be in constant movement. You play with your pencil all during a meeting, or tap your foot on the floor. You doodle on any piece of paper that is around, including those important statements you just received in the mail. You may get bored easily. Boredom begins to set in about 15 minutes after you begin a project, or a few months after you begin a new job. You find TV boring, the computer is better, a little more interactive, but still becomes boring. You have an intense need to make everything in life a little more interesting. You food contains more spices, your desk contains toys, your life is filled with gadgets that looked great at the store but you lost interest when you got home. You may become restless after a few minutes of inactivity. Time to sit down to a relaxing evening with your partner and 15 minutes later you are ready to go and do something, or you begin to fade in and out of the conversation, planning what else you can do. You spend your day at work walking around and talking, getting coffee, making phone calls or anything else you can do to relieve the restlessness from sitting at a desk. You may have a great desire for active, risky and fast paced activities. Basketball is great, baseball much to slow, you start counting grass blades while standing in the outfield. Driving 20 miles over the speed limit makes that boring road so much more exciting and gets you off it quicker. Hang gliding; jumping from airplanes, racecar driving, and other such sports exhilarate you. Riding a bike is great; riding down a steep mountain on a bike is even better.

Impulsiveness

You may interrupt others or answer a question before the other person is finished. Entering in a conversation in the middle of someone else’s sentence can be embarrassing and lead to others thinking that you are rude and inconsiderate. You may blurt out your thoughts without thinking first. Do your friends and family know you for your “bluntness” or “complete honesty?” Do your thoughts jump out of your head before you even have time to decide if it is an appropriate response? Do you tend to hurt other people’s feelings with your remarks, even though you never intended to be insulting?

Emotional Turmoil

You may become easily angered. Do you find your temper rising over the smallest incident? Does your family and friends wonder why you can get angry so quickly? At the same time, are you able to release your anger quickly, left wondering what all the fuss is about? You may have a low tolerance for frustration.

Without instant success, do you find yourself become frustrated with a project and leaving it alone? It is possible that consistent failures in the past due to ADHD (diagnosed and undiagnosed) may have left you with a bad taste for “failure” and your frustration with not being able to complete a project successfully can create stress in your life. You may have unpredictable moods. Instability in moods, happy one moment, frustrated the next; depressed the next can create havoc in social relationships.

Low Self Esteem

You may have the ability to appear confident to others. Previous failures and frustrations can cause your confidence to waver. On the outside, you might appear a confident outgoing individual, while you secretly fear your “imminent” failure. You may avoid new situations. To avoid the fear of failure, do you avoid entering into new relationships, or into situations involving something new in order to avoid possible failure?

 

http://add.about.com/cs/foradults/a/general.htm