Career News 24/7: The Cynical Girl: We All Have ADHD

Friday, September 7, 2012

The Cynical Girl: We All Have ADHD

Posted: 06 Sep 2012 03:45 AM PDT

Last week, I went to see a sports psychologist to help me with my running goals. Yes, I am a suburban white American woman with excellent private health insurance.

As I was ticking off my list of challenges — calming my brain, staying focused, feeling less moody, developing healthy goals and sticking with them — the psychologist asked me if I had ever been screened for ADHD.

Ugh. Are you kidding me? The whole world suffers from ADHD. Look at these adult symptoms.

Difficulty Getting Organized. Are you kidding me? How do you think Container Store is able to monetize?
Reckless Driving. I’m just back from Chicago. That’s called Tuesday.
Marital Difficulties. Yeah, uh, well, nobody is perfect. And I’m still married.
Extreme Distractibility. Hello, internet?
Poor Listening Skills. I am listening. Really.
Restlessness. I will own this. I’m permanently restless and I cannot relax. I keep telling myself to take a meditation class.
Difficulty Starting a Task. See #6. WAIT I JUST FOUND A CLASS AND BOOKED MYSELF AS AN ATTENDEE.
Chronic Lateness. No, actually, I am always ten minutes early to everything due to my OCD.
Angry Outbursts. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. Also, I’m not angry. I am passionate.
Prioritizing Issues. Everything is important. Nothing is important. It is all about shifting perspectives.

I am not a big believer in being diagnosed with anything so I won’t be screened for ADHD.

I will admit that I tried to tell my husband about the sports psychologist and interrupted myself seven times to tell him OTHER stories — including the fact that I googled Aishwarya Rai for no reason, the other day, and fell into a story about her weight controversy — and almost forgot the point of what I was talking about in the first place.

And I forgot to book a car rental for my trip to Toronto, this week.

Oh well. Highly successful people have active minds. Like Sir Richard Branson.

They also have staff.

I believe that training, exercise and meditation can help align all of that mental activity and shift the energy in a more positive way. So now I just need to find someone who will help me run and fix my brain. And I need to find a way to focus all of this mental energy on something more worthwhile and important than scanning the internet and getting distracted by Google and celebrity gossip.

But I don’t have ADHD because that’s so 90s.