thinkythink

ADHD and difficulty making friends #3

3. People with ADHD have difficulty knowing or remembering relevant boundaries in relationships. It is much harder to have a good relationship with someone if you forget or don't realize (or impulsively ignore) that you don't want to share certain personal information with them. Also related to this is the fact that not everyone needs to know everything about us and we don't have to connect on every level to everyone. It is ok to make distinctions based on the kind of relationship. This makes it a lot easier to like people and for them to connect to you without either person being overwhelmed.

I feel like there is a lot more to say here, but these are some of the points that have come up a lot in my coaching work. It is possible to have good relationships when we don't expect them all to work the same way and we have some good self-awareness in our social lives.

ADHD and difficulty making friends #2

Continuing on from Sunday's post, here is my second point on ADHD and difficulty making friends:

2. People with ADHD seem to have difficulty making the distinction between different kinds of relationships.  I think our culture at the moment makes this harder on us as well because we tend to lack community in our everyday lives.  If you don't have a strong neighborhood, extended family, and other group such as club or church  or whatnot, it is hard to experience having a rich community of people with whom you have meaningful ties- even if they are NOT your closest friends. I think that people with ADHD can do well to remember that when they get to know people, they may become close friends OR casual friends OR friends with something in common but not best friends. What you share in each kind of relationship is different.

It is OK to have few close friends, and to enjoy acquaintances or less-close friends and have an ongoing relationship with these folks without their needing to be closer. Again, a hard thing to remember for many people with ADHD.

I do want to stress that at the same time it is important to know what kind of groups of people you enjoy being part of. If you get antsy or annoyed in certain settings or types of organization, that is not where you will develop community successfully. That is about fit between you and the organization; not about the people in it necessarily (though that can also be a factor). Of course that is yet another discussion.

More in the next post.

ADHD and difficulty making friends

I have been reading a really long discussion thread on www.womenwithadhd.com about the difficulty people (ok, in this case women) with adhd feel they have making friends. It reminded me of discussions I have had with coaching clients over the years and with the things I have learned myself about this topic. I wanted to note a few of these. I will start with one point today:

#1 People with ADHD seem to have difficulty learning about/remember the different phases of getting to know people. Once in a while, you might come across someone with whom it just clicks immediately and presto, you are bestest chums. But with most people, getting to know them is somewhat like dating; first you learn a bit about each other, and see if there is friend chemistry, if there is anything in common, and from there, what kind of connection would you like to have? Are there activities or interests in common? What kind of time do you want to spend with this person or is it just nice talking to them at first? Just as in project planning and other areas, it is like people with ADHD forget about the different phases involved and need to consciously break them down.

More in the next post...

Hyperfocus time (empty time)

What I don't have right now is gobs of unstructured time. This is a good thing, in that I tend to be more on-task, on-point, and generally productive that way. But when I didn't know why I wasn't getting the changes to my website made (migrating it over to a typepad platform so I can then edit it much more easily) I realized this was the missing ingredient.

I loved working on my coaching website when I first put it together- that was more than five years ago. I hacked it together using some (overly) powerful webauthoring/design software, figuring out how to make it work as I went. It was a lovely process, because I really had to think about what kind of look, feel, and content felt right to me. Because the fit between client and coach is key in coaching, this is important. A site that feels like me and how I want to portray myself and my business will tend to attract the people who fit me as a coach better. That is in fact what I found after I put it together.

But how did I do this? Hyperfocus. I delved in and let myself muck about with it for several days. I simply don't have that time with two small children. I have time right now when the toddler is at daycare- and some time when both are cared for- but most of the latter is resolved for actual client appointments. Of the former, my time with just the baby, I can't release my focus into the wilds of a big computer-based project as baby needs me regularly.

What other kinds of projects lend themselves to big blocks of protected time? For me, things like organizing files or cabinets. Or other spaces for that matter. Or computer files or email. Once my mind is in it, I can go for a long time- using my hyperfocus. But to do that I need empty time.

Some pretty cool things about being a mom with ADHD

1. I can get excited and playful along with my children- and get really excited that they are excited- about things that seem little. I can immerse myself in emotion, including enthusiasm (and conversely I can be empathetic).
2. I am experienced. I already knew how to deal with memory issues and cognitive deficits before becoming sleep-deprived and mommy-brained. I am ahead of the curve there- and I am less likely to get bent out of shape about it.
3. I am flexible. I don't need to try to fit kids into my life; I am used to reshaping my life when new things come along, so I will roll with whatever they need.
4. I am fascinated by how my kids work and what they need; I can experience every new phase as novel, and let the need for novelty kick in and let me (hyper)focus on them.
5.  I am used to disorder and chaos. I don't have to try to fix toddler chaos or the hurricane that hit what used to be a living room, even if I need to reset my mind- and my surrounding now and then to calm the inner storm. I am far past having set-in-stone ideas of how my house should be organized or how clean it should be. That means I can enjoy my kids more.