I'm Dr. Tracey Marks this is part 2 of a series that I'm doing on ADD or ADHD.
Today I'm talking about other symptoms or other problems that can look like ADD
but aren't really ADD or aren't the official disorder. ADD is a
disorder of childhood that can continue into adulthood it does not show up for
the first time at age 40 when you've had a successful career and now after your
promotion you have some additional responsibilities, a new baby at home and
you can't keep up with your work. If you're having these kinds of problems
you don't want to use stimulants to push yourself to achieve more. What else can
cause attention problems? If you're anxious, you can have trouble focusing. If
you're depressed or have bipolar disorder, you will have trouble focusing.
and you may even have memory problems if you have depression. If your problem is
anxiety and you use stimulants to better focus it can take your anxiety through
the roof. It's the same with mania. A person who has mild or hypomanic
symptoms and has trouble focusing can be escalated into a full-blown manic
episode with psychotic symptoms if they take stimulants. Another thing, being
sleep-deprived can cause focus and thinking problems. If you're stressed out
because you've got too many things going on, you can have trouble organizing your
thoughts and concentrating. Not everyone who has ADD as a child takes medication.
So there's people who never - didn't start taking medication until they became
adults. Whether or not you take medication depends on the severity of
your symptoms. You could you may have had some symptoms
and problems as a child but you were able to compensate by studying longer or
maybe you just got mediocre grades. But as the demands on your brain got greater
and greater like college or graduate school, it became harder and
harder to compensate. So I've seen many people who start treatment for the first
time in college or graduate school but they still had a history of
disorganization and impulsivity or difficulty staying on track with tasks.
But it's very unlikely that you manage to get by all of these years until age
30 or 40 years old to now need stimulants because you've got a lot
going on. Too much on your plate can make anyone have difficulty paying attention
and getting all your tasks done. If you make the mistake though of taking
stimulants to get more done, you can burn yourself out because with the stimulants
you're forcing your mind and your body to go beyond what it can do naturally.
And that might work for a little while, but the success is usually short-lived
and a person can crash and burn. What is the crashing and burning look like? Very
bad anxiety or depression. So you don't want to push yourself past your
normal capacity. Another example of this concept of pushing yourself too hard is
having a job that requires you to work all day and then when you get home
you've got to work in the evening. Some people will want to take stimulants in
the evenings so that they could get in another few hours of work and someone
will say to me "by 9 o'clock I'm really starting to drag, I just I just can't get
through it." Well if you've been up since 6:00 a.m. it's only natural that your
body is going to start slowing down by 9:00 p.m. Our minds aren't meant to be
super sharp for 16 straight hours. So if you notice that as an adult in your 30s
or beyond that you've got a lot going on and have trouble keeping up with things
before you assume you have ADD and need stimulants, first take a step back and
allow yourself to decompress and try and reduce your responsibilities. If that
doesn't help, then you may want to be evaluated for an anxiety disorder or
depression. For more on my series on ADD, you can take or click on the link
the corner right up there on my series on ADD and if you have any questions