ADHD & ME PART 1 - INATTENTIVE TRAITS
The 3 types of ADHD
The symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be categorised into 3 types of behavioural challenges:
- Predominantly inattentive (difficulty concentrating and focusing) – ADHD-I
- Predominantly hyperactive-impulsive – ADHD-HI
- Combined type – ADHD-C
I am diagnosed as ADHD-C.
ADHD-I - Inattentive
Traits
- Carelessness/Lack of attention
- Starting new tasks before finishing the old one
- Poor organisational skills
- Does not follow through on instructions
- Missing deadlines
- Inability to focus or prioritise
- Poor listening skills
- Losing stuff
- Distractable
- Forgetful
ADHD in perspective
Before I start giving an overview of the impact of ADHD on my life I should clarify that ADHD as it is defined now has been a long time coming in the medical world. The point that children should be identified and diagnosed today is far clearer than it was in the 70’s and 80’s when I was a kid. It is now better understood and is widely accommodated within mainstream schooling . In contrast I grew up in an age, and to a large extent an environment that that was more inclined to assume that I was just a lazy, naughty little sod who needed to pull his finger out. The world has thankfully changed since then, and today’s neurodiverse kid faces a far more accepting world than my peers and I did.
ADHD impacts on my education
My secondary education took place in the 1980’s, when O’ Levels were still the main baseline qualifications in the UK. These qualifications were entirely based on a set of final exams, measuring 2 years’ worth of learning in a series of short, sharp sessions. These were usually a combination of a multiple choice paper, a short answer paper and an essay paper. This contrasts with today’s GCSE approach which works on a blend of coursework and exams. I have recently found a pile of my old school reports and reading through them has been an interesting exercise. Firstly, overall they are not as bad as I remember them, though some parts are horrendous! Secondly, and far more importantly, the gap between my day-to-day course work grades and my exam grades was huge! I was regularly getting B and C grades in my course work, but D and E grades at best in exams. There is a huge amount of evidence in there about my intelligence and ability to grasp a subject, countered by results showing my absolute inability to be able to apply this knowledge in an exam.
These themes, and those grades, continued into my A’ Levels, with my inability to convert coursework grades into exam results described as ‘lazy’ and ‘untidy’. It is noteable that you can see my overall performance start to decline in this period as I became completely disillusioned with the education process. Themes that regularly appeared in reports were:
- Careless
- Lacks attention
- Needs to organise himself better
- Misses deadlines
- Doesn’t listen
- Distracted
After 6th form college I went to a college of further education in West London to do a Higher National Diploma in Hotel, Catering and Institutional Management, but only stayed for the 1st year. In the practical subjects, such as cookery, that were measured by hands-on assessment rather than exams, I became confident and thrived, but in the more bookish subjects like accounts and marketing, where exams and assignments came into play the same old failings came to the surface.
Since then I have had one attempt at gaining a recognised professional qualification. The initial course work went well, then exams came along and that was the end of that and as a result I have stayed away from formal education.
ADHD impacts on my working life
I started out my working life in bars and restaurants, which was probably an ok choice for my ADHD, but with hindsight was an absolute nightmare when it came to my Asperger’s. After a couple of attempts to break out of that world and get a perceived ‘proper job’ I did an NVQ level 3 in Business Administration. That basically involved me documenting everything I did on a daily basis in restaurants in Microsoft Word and then creating an index for the documents in Excel, which in turn took care of the production and storage of digital information modules! This took me a whole week and gave me a qualification that remains my highest attainment, and was to get me a foot in the door with a multinational oil company as a temp and that became a 10 year career.
I joined the oil industry at the beginning of a period of mergers and acquisitions which led to regular job changes as the landscape evolved rapidly, which had the benefits of a) keeping me interested b) letting me try a few different roles, and c) not giving anyone enough time to discover my issues with applying myself in a sustained manner. Once the sector settled down again things started to unravel, with one line manager bluntly telling me that I was a square peg in a round hole and should look for another job with another company, preferably in another industry. Fortunately for me that person moved on shortly after that conversation, so I lived to fight another day, but after 10 years I eventually ran out of road, and a mutual parting of the ways happened.
In my 30s and 40s I moved into Performance Management via a series of roles in oil and subsequent contractor jobs, and I have managed to maintain a career within that area, though without much personal or career development for quite some time. I still make mistakes due to attention issues, but I have developed routines within my work that minimise the opportunities for these to arise.
*In recent months, since my ADHD diagnosis, my world has changed hugely. The medication that I am now taking is having a massive impact on my focus and drive, giving me hope that I can kick on and develop my career, hopefully making up for some lost time. I’ll be dealing with the impact of ADHD medication in a future blog.
ADHD impacts on the rest of my life
My life is littered with abandoned hobbies, a small degree of unfulfilled sporting promise and transient relationships, all of which are typical for an ADHD’er. Much of this is driven by the core ADHD issue of dopamine deficiency, so I have a tendency to grab a cheap buzz wherever I find it, but I am starting to learn that it never sustains.
Hobbies tend to be short-term obsessions that fall by the wayside when the initial rush passes. They are often very expensive habits too, as the thrill that comes from hitting the ‘buy-it-now’ button on e-bay or Amazon is a big part of the process of stimulating an otherwise bored brain. The result is that you end up in the ‘all the gear, no idea’ category!
I was a pretty good golfer as a kid, but a golf course has 18 holes and my attention only lasted for around 12. I was a very good swimmer too, which I now realise was probably due to the fact that there were no distractions in the pool so I could focus, though I was a sprinter so only had to do so for 100m max. Where it all fell down was getting to the pool in the first place, there was always some distraction that got in the way of a decent training schedule. I also spent a few years skydiving, but a daft but serious, self-inflicted injury and a couple of canopy malfunctions due to an inability to listen and my own inattentive parachute packing skills suggested that this was not my best idea. This kind of percieved risk-taking is a common theme amongst ADHD minds; for me it is primarily driven by the release of various brain chemicals that are more accessible for the neurotypical person, but need some ‘extreme encouragement’ in the neurodiverse. It is not uncommon to find ADHD people with fast cars, high powered motorbikes and very many points on their driving licence.
On the friendship and relationship front ADHD has definitely had a negative impact, it must be hard for others dealing with someone whose focus moves around all the time and who has a low boredom threshold, but I think the bigger player in this area is probably Asperger’s, so I’ll delve into that in another blog in the future.
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Excellent stuff Ed, whilst I know the “headlines” re ADHD, I have never thought how that might impact in someone’s everyday life. Hence this was really interesting to read and I look forward to learning more. It must be quite a tough process looking back at yourself but hopefully the diagnosis helps and makes things more understandable and you are able to give yourself a break when reflecting on the past.
Thanks Ian, I really appreciate you taking time out to comment. It’s a huge thing to learn about oneself at the age of 52, so the blog is partly therapy for me, partly education for anyone that reads this and learns something from it, and part encouragement for the many more undiagnosed people out there who might read this and have the same ‘what if?’ moment that I had when reading about people of my age being diagnosed with neurodiverse conditions.
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