ADHD | ADHD Information
Welcome Mindy! And don't ever call yourself dumb! I was told from the time i was 6 i had a high IQ, but i was always messing up. I'm 47 and was dx'ed a little over a yr. ago. I always felt "dumb" but somehow i knew i wasn't. I'm on meds now (adderall) for focus
Gettingagrip, you nailed it! We are always distracted in everyday living, which to some people, makes us look less intelligent. But of course we're NOT!
Mindy,
First off you are NOT dumb. Most ADHD people have above average IQ's. The problem is we get to distracted by everyday life to do anything with it. But, the high IQ's are why so many people don't get diagnosed. They are able to function with the disorder. I've taken several online IQ test that have give me results 117, 124, 125, 131 who knows how reliable they are! I've never had an official IQ test. I do know I am not dumb but have a hard time getting motivated to accomplish anything. I did not attend college because the thought of all the homework daunted me.
Are you on meds? I was just diagnosed last week and hope I will be starting meds in the next week. I have a psychiatrist appointment in 3 days. I am really hoping to get some focus in my life that will allow me to accomplish some of my goals.
-Gettingagrip-
Mindy,
I'm 26 and I was diagnosed at 7 and I'm still trying to convince myself I'm not dumb. Anyway, welcome to the board.
-Cheekydeeky
they should always note that a higher iq is not a symptom of success nor a predictor of ..
just like beauty , intelligence comes with a mountain of subconcious assumptions. such as: you will be great academically. not true. school work takes something beyond simply intelligence. it requires an ability to meet deadlines, to take initiative and to work at things a bit harder if they don't come naturally so that you can make the best grade etc. (and obviously a lot of the items listed don't come easily for us!)
another great one is : you know everything or that you could fix everything. one might even assume this about themselves. not out of sheer egotism- but rather b/c a highly intelligent person would find certain things easy and when encountering difficulties may falter or feel all of sudden. whats wrong with me? LOL..and oh yes..its b/c this isn't what i'm best at.
another great one is ..when someone is intelligent they feel confident about what they think and their own brainpower. so not true!!!!
i cannot tell you how many moments in my life i've felt like such a fake! perhaps this was exacerbated by my adhd and not knowing i had it for most of my life. and perhaps it had to do with other ppls' expectations of me when i was a child. things like 'you'll cure cancer!'..'you're going to be a great lawyer!' etc. yes i'm not exaggerating one freaking bit. i've been told all these things since i can remember. and i personally think that its too much pressure. particularly for adhd ppl. wah wah i know, it seems like looking a gift horse in the mouth and being ungrateful. but in reality i was confused all the time...they say i'm smart and yet i lose things all the time..and i forget things all the time and i am a mess etc. it was very confusing.
do intelligent ppl have happiness and success at their doorstep? not always. i can gaurantee you the rest of my family was thoroughly hateful about it. other kids are too. they don't want to be around someone that is so blatantly different. so yes. hmm..intelligence does not equal a happy life, success , wealth etc.
it just means you might learn quicker. you might solve problems faster. i can pick information very quickly. but it took me more than the average amount of time to learn how to drive. i felt like a complete idiot. or an alien trying to learn something supposedly everyone knows naturally from watching as a kid. apparently not me! lol.
i also remember failing miserably as the brain bowl captain in junior high. talk about bad childhood memories. i totally choked. as you can guess from its geeky title it was a competition of all the nerds. i still feel outgunned often. i am always insecure as a matter of fact about just what am i really capable of?
what is it?
its a constant process of second guessing and not understanding certain things, in my case and perhaps its b/c of my adhd. some of my closest friends have said things like 'you try so hard to sound smart. we all know it' which is the worst comment ever for me. what do they want from me? i feel f**ked if i do and f**ked if i don't. i am not about to dumb myself down. my best friend actually said to me"sumi, not everything has to be intellectualized. i just want to talk about stupid stuff right now. you really need to cultivate your shallow side"
i hate that. i feel like sometimes i cannot even be myself. anyway thanks all for listening to my whining. its a relief. and somewhat not. b/c now i'm thinking i should erase this b/c i look like such a jerk! what to do about that anyway?
sumi
I'm afraid to take an online iq test.
I couldn't take it if i got some awful score
aiyah!
i feel stupid b/c things that i have no interest in absolutely do not enter in my realm of conciousness.
i have an official iq of 170 from an adult wechsler revised.
a prime example of feeling stupid: (which is actually funny to me besides)
when i was waiting tables i remember that my friend george was commenting on a recent pro sports game he attended and he was very pleased by it..the very fact that i would call it simply and generically a 'pro sports game' will prove to be integral:
he said he saw the comets. to which i responded "which sport is this?"
george: "basketball"
me: "hey! what happened to the uh...what were they? oh yes..the ROCKETS? i thought they were supposed to be really good..didn't they win something for about three years in a row? why did we get rid of them?"
every waiter within the vicinity laughed and i never lived that one down
if any of you are as sports inept as i am. the joke on me is that the comets team are the womens' basketball team ..and i live in houston..and i'm such a feminist but i can't even bother to support womens' prosports live and in the flesh b/c i cannot afford the attention span.
did i feel stupid? a crimson level of stupid yes.
but hey, the doc did say that i'm in the top 2 % iq wise. i've learned quickly that iq doesn't mean anything at all. its controversial for very good reasons. it is a decent indicator in some ways but yet a poor distinction in most ways.
sumi
Sumi and everyone else,
I was never curious about IQ until I kept reading that people with ADHD usually have above average IQ's. That kind of made me curios. I note that on all the online IQ test I took they all had a disclaimer that a high IQ is not an indicator that you will be successful in life. Boy they hit that one on the head especially for ADHD sufferers (I almost said victims because I feel that way sometimes). I didn't get to be 47 (just diagnosed) without creating some of my own coping mechanisms.
One of the ADHD test I took was a 567 question personality profile. The results said that only 1 % of women (which I am) has the personality traits that I have. I think one of my coping mechanisms was to just not care what other people thought of me and to not let myself care to much. I work with 3 men in close quarters. One day I remarked to my husband that the testosterone got kind of deep sometime in the office. His response to me was "If it was anyone else but you I'd worry about them." Several experiences in my past have made met someone who is actually kind of hard on other people. I am working on this aspect of my personality. Sumi you sound a lot like me (sorry, I hope that didn't offend you since I just said some rather unflattering things about myself).
Thisis getting so long but I just wanted Donny to know that we all cope in our own ways. You and I both need to change our ways. I need to become more tolerant and compasionate towards others and you need to stop worrying so much (about everthing but especiallyabout what other people think) and take care of yourself. You need to love yourself. I know this is easier said than done. Are you in therapy at all? I have found that just telling someone about how I really feel is freeing. I have found that I truly care about all of you here and hope everyone does well and gets what they need to make it in this life.
Wow, first day on Adderall and it is making me very verbose. Time to get some work done.
-Gettingagrip-
Barb etal,
Here are some free online IQ tests. I cannot vouch for the validity or accuracy of the tests or scores but I found them fun and interesting. As you can see by this list there are lots of these tests online, this is only a small precent of them.
-Gettingagrip-
http://www.highiqsociety.org/noflash/nonmembers/iqtests.htm
http://www.teststeststests.com/iqtest/
http://www.ivillage.co.uk/ivillageuk/articles/0,,161171_1825 61,00.html
http://www.queendom.com/tests/iq/
http://www.intelligencetest.com/
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Free-Online-IQ-Test-Tests.htm
http://www.clickslink.com/links/free_iq_test.html
http://web.tickle.com/tests/uiq/authorize/signin.jsp?url=/te sts/uiq/index.jsp
http://psychology.about.com/library/bl/bltest_mensa.htm
Hi TRYN2FOCUS,
First of all, great screen name!
There are quite a few postings on this site about Straterra. It does seem to cause sleep problems in a good number of people. I do okay on it, but I take it first thing in the morning.
Have you been diagnosed with ADD? Have you tried any other meds? There are many other medications and different people react differently to them.
I agree that sleep (as well as diet and exercise) is very important to help control the severity of ADD symptoms.
I took some offical IQ test in college in my Psych lab. I scored a 90. I found that, especially before my diagnosis of ADD, I readily labeled myself as stupid and subconsciously referenced this score as proof. Along with the many things that I forgot, the many times I couldn't remember a word, etc... Funny thing is that I know I'm not stupid, I just do really stupid things sometimes and I am working on not letting those things weigh heavily on me as they once did. I took an online IQ test once I was on meds and Donny, I scored much higher! 
Sumi- I get that from some of my girl friends too. But I love getting philosophical! My honey and I sat around the other evening discussing weather taking a life in some instances, is moral or not. We also have an on-running game that we have been playing since we first started dating. If one of us uses a word that the other does not know, you get a "cool point". I believe that I am "the coolist" right now. (I used the word "martyr" in a sentence that he didn't think was right. He thought that to be a martyr you had to make a sacrifice or die, but you just have to be suffering in some way. I got 10 cool points for that!) I think that ppl may be intimadated by big words and deep thoughts. I think most folks are pretty simple. Don't dumb yourself down. I was spoken to in school during my nursing clinicals because my charting was "too hard to read" I believe the teacher said. I'm sorry, if an area of erythema is on the venteral aspect of the abd begnning mid-sagittal and extendiing to the left lateral plane, that's what I'm going to put! It's more accurate than what my teacher wanted me to write "erythema on the left abd", not as accurate. My teacher said that other nurses may not be able to understand it and I told her I wasn't witing for other nurses, I was writing so the MD could track the progress of the rash! I'm not about to make my charting less accurate just so those who fail to keep up on their med term can read it.
Know what I do so I remember the "good" things that make me feel smart? I keep a gratitude journal. I write things down that happen that make me feel intelligent. Like an e-mail I got from my boss that praised my work, big tests that I passed (EMT, LPN), high test scores, the time I was in the paper (someone wrote an editorial about how great my team is and specifically mentioned me and how I was a "compassionate professional when tehy needed on the most". When I start to feel bad and have some setbacks I look back at that and feel better.
My this is long.... everyone just remember that Winston Churchill (who failed 6th grade), Tom Cruise, D'avinci, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Mozart, Picasso, Ozzy Osbourne (no sh**), Yeats, Beethoven, and many others had/have ADD!
Sumi,
You do not sound like a jerk! You sound like a very intelligent person who is put down because of her intelligence. People with average IQs often do not understand how big words and analytical thought processes are as normal for you as they aren't for them. Be who you are naturally, trying of course to not talk so far above certain people's heads that they can't relate to you and feel that you can't relate to them.
Its hard not to feel stupid when you know information is there in your brain and you could have accessed it a minute ago and you will remember it 5 minutes too late. Its hard not to feel stupid when people you know are not nearly as smart as you, seem to "get it" way before you do. etc, etc,etc.
We are not stupid! We think ouside of the box and non ADHDers just can't comprehend where we are coming from. If you think about it though, who is it they come to when they have a problem they just can't figure out in the normal way? LOL! Us ADHDers!
For anyone who has not had a high IQ score come back, it is very common for a person with ADHD to score much lower on IQ tests than their actual IQ because of the focus problems inherent with ADHD. Don't look at your score, look at all the things you "just know". So called normal people don't usually have that benefit.
I have had official IQ tests done but they were years ago. I have wondered about online tests, just for fun. Does anyone have any addresses for some freebies?
thanks barb i really appreciate it.
i'm not sure there are any free iq tests online anymore. LOL once ppl seemed to catch wind that they could make great money just pitching things like: do you want to know your true potential etc. it seems all down hill from there.
a sight which does have an iq test you can take for free is emode. they have an iq test..but to me it seems rather short first of all. but it will give you a score and a brief summary. but they make you pay for the 'full ' report.
perhaps if you live near a large university you can see if their psych dept. has any students that have to hold live psych tests to get their doctorate etc.
sumi