Understanding and Loving a Person with Attention Deficit Disorder

Biblical and Practical Wisdom to Build Empathy, Preserve Boundaries, and Show Compassion

Stephen Arterburn, Timothy Smith

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781434712349
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

People who love or work with someone with ADD often feel conflicted: they want to help, but they don't want to enable. They value the person's creativity, but they are exhausted. Stephen Arterburn and Timothy Smith address ten myths about ADD, the pros and cons of medication, foods that help to minimize ADD, twelve strengths of people with ADD, new studies on how to calm the mind, showing empathy even when it's hard, and more. This fresh look at ADD—not as a malady but as a unique way of thinking—shows readers that ADD doesn't have to ruin their relationships. In fact, it can make them stronger.

Chapter One

Wasted Time

The K-cup coffee maker hissed as it brewed an extra-large serving into a disposal cup. The digital clock read 6:17 a.m. Morning network news stridently reported the chaos du jour as Gabriela dried her hair in the kitchen. With her head bent over and her hair hanging down, she caught a glimpse of the time.

“Oh, crud, I’m late!”

She clicked the dryer off, popped a lid onto her coffee cup, grabbed her backpack, and scurried to grab a piece of toast from the toaster.

“Oh, no! I forgot to push it down!” Gabriella would often talk to herself in an attempt to organize her mind. I’m gonna be late for work!

She snatched a protein bar to eat on the way. She was a college professor and department head, and today she was presenting a key proposal to her colleagues. I can’t be late for them.

“Where’s my purse?”

She looked on the kitchen counter, on the bar stool, on the couch, and on the floor next to the door to the garage where she typically dropped her purse after work. She found her black purse there, but not her new navy-blue one. She checked the dining room, the bathroom, and her car. I can’t find my purse!

After ten minutes of searching, she gave up, grabbed her coffee and protein bar, and headed for her car. She placed the cup in one drink holder and the bar in the other. Then she realized she couldn’t start the car. I don’t have the keys!

Gabriella ran back into the house and grabbed her black purse. She dumped the contents on a little table: chewing gum, makeup, lipstick, a compact, mints, old receipts, outdated coupons and gift cards, lint, her daughter’s soccer schedule, pencils, pens, a nail file, and an unwrapped cough drop—but no keys!

“Urgh!”

She started to panic but then remembered that her husband had lovingly made her a back-up set. He’d made a hook for them in the closet by the front door. My back-up keys! She ran to the closet only to discover an empty hook. She looked on the closet floor. No keys!

I guess I’ll have to wake Mark and ask him if he’s seen my keys. She started up the stairs. Halfway up, on the landing, she discovered her navy-blue purse.

“Thank God I found you!” She grabbed it and started down the stairs. When she reached into her bag, she felt the metal, but it felt different and heavy. She pulled it out—both sets of keys were tangled together! Her primary set and her back-up set were both in her purse. She knew what her engineer husband would say: “System failure.”

Gabriela checked her phone for the time: 6:41. Yikes! I’m going to be so late!

Getting going in the morning can be a monumental task for someone with attention deficit disorder (ADD). In addition to losing keys, she might forget her computer with projects she needs for work. A person with ADD might leave his lunch on the kitchen counter or discover at the last minute that he doesn’t have a pair of pants to wear that aren’t wrinkled. Each small task of getting ready for work or school can be a source of frustration, distraction, and irritation.

Gabriela eventually made it to her university—fourteen minutes late for her meeting. She pulled the file for the meeting from her backpack and tossed it into her office. The backpack landed on her office chair—it was the only space free of papers, files, or books. There was one small side chair for her meetings with students, but it was crammed with tests that needed to be graded last week. Her desk was haphazardly organized into eleven stacks of papers. The bookshelves in her eight-foot-square office were jammed beyond capacity, with the inch or two below each shelf stuffed with more books wedged in horizontally. The gray-and-blue institutional carpet was littered with piles of research papers, notebooks, textbooks, boxes, and exams in various stacks—some were two feet high. A fourteen-inch path was cleared to provide access from the door to her chair. Her whiteboard had some brainstorming notes from three terms prior; now they were irrelevant. Beside the board was a two-year-old calendar featuring gorgeous photos of national parks. She had posted her office hours on her door, but they were out of date.

Josh slammed down another energy drink and punched off his video game console. The clock on the HD DVR announced that it was 1:31 a.m. He grabbed an accent pillow from the couch where he was seated and flung it across his living room like a flying disc. I did it again! I didn’t finish the work on the project that’s due tomorrow! Instead of working on it, he lost three hours playing what was only supposed to be a “few minutes” of his favorite game. Josh thought video games helped him relax, but they were also a huge distraction. He would hyperfocus on the game, do well, and lose track of time. If only I could do as well at work as I do on gaming, he mused. He looked around the living room. For the first time in three hours—or maybe it was three days—he noticed the mess; it looked like a tornado had thrown his stuff all over—clothes, pizza boxes, junk mail, empty energy drink cans, and other debris. Some of it he didn’t recognize as his. Maybe the tornado blew in some of my neighbor’s junk? He tried to convince himself. I can’t be this messy!

He took another look at the clock by his large flat-screen TV. The old feelings crept back in like a stinky, toxic fog. He felt like a failure. He felt disorganized and embarrassed about not completing tasks. He was afraid that people at work would talk about him being distracted, forgetful, late, and undependable. It made him feel like a loser. These are the dark, familiar curses from college and high school. He remembered his mom yelling at him when he was young: “Josh, why can’t you put things away? I keep telling you to put your toys away in your toy box and don’t leave them tossed all over the house! Why can’t you remember to do that?”

He couldn’t remember; he kept forgetting. Someone was always mad at him for being forgetful, messy, or disorganized or for saying things that were “inappropriate.”

He was angry about the compilation of harsh criticism over the years, but he didn’t want to give into it. He crushed the aluminum can in his fist. He grabbed a large trash bag from the kitchen and began tossing in the junk that had accumulated around him. He was too frustrated to sleep, so he decided to spend an hour working on the project that was due on his boss’s desk in a little more than six hours.

Josh recalled his boss’s comment from his last review: “Improvement needed: giving attention to detail and follow-through.” He wanted to show her that he was working on these issues. He opened up his laptop and the project folder on his desktop. He stared at the document. It was just black words in Cambria font on a white background. Words. Just words. It wasn’t making sense. I need a snack to recharge my brain.

Josh got up from the couch and went to the kitchen. He found some cheese and crackers and took them back to the couch. After he took a few bites, the words on the screen started to focus. They started to make sense. It was now 2:14 a.m., and he was just getting started. I have to finish this project, even if I have to stay up all night. That’s why they invented coffee.

By 4:35 a.m., he was blurry-eyed but not beaten. The concepts and words came to him, and he was able to finish his report, including the statistical graphs and visuals that his boss had requested. He saved it, sent it to his printer, and headed for bed. I have just enough time to sleep for an hour before I have to get up and shower.

At 5:45 a.m., his electric shaver purred, trimming the stubborn stubble on his chin. I look exhausted. Josh stared at his reflection in the mirror—faint half-moons underscored his bloodshot eyes, and two new wrinkles seemed to have appeared on his forehead overnight. I have to break this last-minute panic, or it’s going to cost me my job. Staring closer in the mirror, he thought, I think it’s causing me to age faster. He clicked the shaver off and muttered, “I need to get help.”

Josh has ADD. On his lunch break that day, he called a therapist about an appointment. On the phone, he told him, “I’m tired of my procrastination, my lack of follow-through, and the subtle but ever-present feeling that I’m a failure. I don’t want to feel like a loser. I want to feel confident and focused and meet my goals.”

He felt comfortable talking with the therapist and made the wise decision to schedule an appointment. After all, ADD is a neurological disorder that makes it challenging for those with the condition to sustain focus and effort, take initiative with tasks, and organize their work and personal lives. The most common symptoms are impulsivity, distractibility, and hyperactivity. ADD is not caused by laziness, weak character, or lack of self-discipline. It’s not correlated with intelligence; in fact, many people with ADD have high IQs. ADD is a democratic condition affecting all ethnicities and genders, regardless of circumstance.

The following is a conversation between Josh and his therapist that gives us insight into the struggles a person with ADD faces.

“My brother and I almost got into a fight while we were on vacation in the mountains of Colorado. My parents had rented a large cabin for us to be together, bond, and make happy memories with the grandkids,” Josh told his therapist later that week. “But I think we almost destroyed it.”

“What happened?”

“Eric is my older brother, and he picked on me as a kid. My mom always sided with me, and my dad sided with Eric. It made home life tense. Eric knows how to push my buttons. He sailed through high school, college, and graduate school and landed a sweet job, while I spent five years languishi...