Social and relationship problems

Does anyone have hard problems with friends and family? Not
just from disorginaization and a chaotic lifestyle, but having
problems with conversations and talking. Or inconsistencies in
behavior from mood swings.

Absolutely, I think very differently to my family. I am very straight foward and very right brained and my family tends to be more emotional than I am. I think they find my conversation very intense, because I anaylise every situation, and they feel that I should just RELAX, but I cant help the way my brain works.

I incessantly talk in conversations, which exhausts my family.

And I can appear harsh and insulting, when in actual fact I am just tired of trying to commuicate in an acceptable manner for them, and I become blunt.

Problems - Yeah - always have and I think always will.

I'm sorry. My problem is the opposite, I never talk. I have a
hard time expressing my thoughts into words. I really can't
figure why I'm like this, or how to stop myself from being that
way. I could have a conversation in my head, but never be able
to let it out verbally. I have a terrible time being intimate with
people. I'm not sure if it's just that I have low self-esteem, or I
just can't concentrate on talking. I can do things that most
people find embarrassing, like dancing around and being silly.
I can tell jokes, make up stories and be extroverted in that way,
but I can't talk to people in a normal casual way. I don't know if it
really has anything to do with my ADD, or my depression that
could be making my head clouded. My mind just shuts down
when I'm trying to talk to someone. The harder I try to come up
with something to say, the harder it is to think of something to
say.

yummy - If you are on anti depressants they can make you feel this way. When I was on some once, I could not think of anything to talk about nor had a comment on anyone elses ideas.

I didnt care about much at all and nothing interested me.

I have major communication problems with my family. We are just very very different. I don't express or really feel emotions but am not shy in expressing my thoughts to others. People think I'm cruel but I just feel I am honest.

Since my views on many things are so different from my family's we often end up arguing. Mainly because they tend to see only one side of things and assume anyone who thinks differently is wrong. It's very aggrivating. In most conversations people are expressing their opinion. Opinions can't be right or wrong, it's how you feel about or see an issue. I've never said their ideas were wrong, I just don't feel the same way they do about things. Of course for my family when they state their opinion they think it is fact and either everyone agrees and is right or everyone is wrong and there must be something wrong with them.

I fall into the "well if you think that then there must be something wrong with you." category

I communicate really well on this forum, but even if I msn people I often put my keyboard in my mouth. I wish I had a delete button for my mind and mouth and a post reply button on my chin

anti-depressants don't seem worth taking.Anti depressants made me worse not ever touching them againi just take kava kava, 5 htp, or st. john's wort if i'm feeling down.
why waste money on anti-depressants that don't make you feel
any better and just agrrivate your symptoms? children and
teens that take them become even more suicidal than they
were from being depressed alone. i told my doctor that i didn't
want to go on them. i'm glad i did.

i had a lot of terrible problems with my family and peers all through my childhood and almost all of it can be indirectly blamed on ADD. it wasn't the ADD itself so much as the terrible mood i was in as a result of my inability to cope with the expectations placed on a child as a student in elementary through high school. But before i diagnosed myself at age 21 i figured out a lot of ways of improving the situation and learned a lot of skills that allowed me to cope and make friends and get along with my family without medication.

actually i think exercise was the single most important thing that helped with this. it didn't cure the ADD but it made me feel so much better that my relationships with everyone around me improved significantly.

medication just makes my head clearer and lets me think about things effectively rather than getting into a little cycle of negative brooding in my head. So it makes my social life that much easier.

I still am very emotional and childish/childlike internally, which is something medication won't change and that really is a part of my personality i'm not interested in changing.

Medication isn't supposed to change your personality. If it does you should either switch meds or stop taking it. It is only there to help you deal with the symptoms of the disorder.

kind of a hazy distinction :)

medication makes it easier for me to say what i'm thinking. that's releif from a symptom but it means i talk more, so does it change my personality?

I don't think it changes my personlity in a meaningful way. or were you talking to someone else :-o

I havn't been diagnosed with ADD but I have some of the symptoms. One of my main problems is focusing in conversations. I find that I zone out in group conversations and I have trouble listening to someone when they say more than a few sentences at once. I was always really shy as a kid, I can't remember but I apparently didn't talk at all at school in kindergarten. I'm in grad school now and I have 3 hour classes with a lot of group discussion. It's really hard for me, especially after the first hour, to stay focused on the discussion. My advisor told me last week that I need to talk more and that he's going to be watching me. I also work with youth and I've noticed lately that I am awfull at refereeing. I never noticed how much I'm not paying attention untill the kids start asking "did you see that? Did that count as a goal?" ect and I realize I have no idea what just happened in the game. I went to the counseling services at my school last year to get help with learning to focus better but it didn't really help at all so I stopped going. THe counsellor did set up a meeting for me with a lady from the centre for students with disabilities. She talked to me about ADD and the screening/diagnosis process and it sounded like a long process and I never actually went and started it. I was always very shy and never talked much, still don't. Whenever I do, I say something I wish I hadn't. I'm alright in a conversation with one other person, as long as it is someone I know. In a group, I usually don't say anything. I am told I never participated with the group when I was in school.

Hi Yummy,

I had (and still have) the same experiences with a lack of communication. It seems often I cannot think fast enough or I speak without thinking through how it will sound to others. I definately have big problems with intamacy. I just keep a wall around me all the time. It seems like evry time I have ever tried to open up to anyone I just got slammed somehow, so I stopped.

I don't know if this has anything to do with ADD or not. But I do understand.

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