- You see, I assumed if you're 47 years old
and you're smart and you're successful,
there's no way in hell you have ADD, right?
Actually, yes, you can be smart and successful
and still struggle with ADD just like I do.
(upbeat music)
As many of you know, I struggle with ADD
and anxiety and mild dyslexia.
I've got a whole casserole of neurological stuff
going on over here
but I've been recently getting a ton of questions about ADD
and so I wanted to address 'em.
Stephanie for example wrote,
Mel, I've heard in a couple of your videos
that you have ADD.
When did you become aware of it,
what are the positive effects,
in what ways has it held you back
and what are strategies that you use to cope with it?
Stephanie, thank you for asking.
So when did I become aware that I had ADD?
Believe it or not, I'm 49 years old.
I only became aware of it two years ago.
When I was 47 years old, I was diagnosed with ADD
and here's a funny story.
I remember right after I was diagnosed,
my 10 year old son, he had a pediatrician appointment
and ironically we were going through all this testing
for ADHD for him and when the test came back positive
that Oakley has ADHD,
I kinda smiled and said to our pediatrician,
well, I know who he gets it from, Mark,
I was just diagnosed with ADD and he looked at me and said,
Mel, you were just diagnosed, what do you mean?
I said, yeah, I just found out like a month ago.
He looked at me dead in the eye, you guys,
and he said, I've known you for 16 years.
You are textbook for having ADD
and I looked back and I'm like,
Mark, why the hell didn't you tell me
and he said, because I'm not your doctor
and I assumed you were already being treated.
When I was diagnosed, it was a bit of a surprise
because I don't know about you
but when I heard the term ADD,
what came to mind for me was a eight year old little boy
who can't sit still in his chair in school.
I didn't really know that ADD is something
that affects girls and also affects women.
Now, when I dug into the research on ADD,
you might be surprised to learn
that ADD, ADHD, it affects men and women in equal numbers.
There's a whole group of psychiatrists and psychologists
who have been studying ADD
and they have discovered that there is a lost generation
of women just like me.
So if you happen to be a woman
and you feel disorganized or forgetful
or easily distracted or scattered, guess what?
You might actually have ADD
and you should probably go talk to your doctor about it.
Now, I'm not a doctor so I can't diagnose you.
I can just share with you what my experience is.
You see, I assumed if you're 47 years old
and you're smart and you're successful,
there's no way in hell you have ADD, right?
Actually, yes, you can be smart and successful
and still struggle with ADD just like I do.
For a very long time, the American Psychiatric Association
defined the standards for ADD
based on how it manifested in little boys
and when girls have ADD and ADHD, it looks really different.
They're not bouncing around in their chair.
They're daydreaming.
They're having a hard time following instructions
and they're really disorganized
and what happens is a lot of girls go undiagnosed
and then that spirals into anxiety and depression.
Why, well, because if you have ADD
and you're not successful with treating it
or you don't have strategies to cope with it,
you tend to start to beat yourself up.
You tend to start to make yourself wrong
for being so disorganized.
You tend to start to feel a little hopeless
over your ability to get things done
and that spirals and that's exactly what happened for me.
You see, I was diagnosed with anxiety
when I was 21 years old.
Boom, right there in that lost generation of women.
We missed the diagnosis of ADD in me.
Instead, it turned into anxiety and depression
and that became the primary thing that I struggled with.
Now, meanwhile, the ADD was underneath there untreated
the entire time.
When I got diagnosed at the age of 47 with ADD,
it was so surprising and so empowering
because I finally had a way to explain
something about the way that my mind works
that made a hell of a lot of sense.
I also found the compassion that I needed for myself
so that I could stop beating myself up
and actually just accept the fact
that I have a neurological condition
that makes me disorganized, forgetful,
easily distracted and sometimes scattered.
Now, what are the positive effects?
Well, I have a lot more humanity for myself
and I laugh at myself when I walk in the kitchen
and see that the faucet is still running
because I forgot to turn it off
instead of making myself wrong.
What ways has it held me back?
I think it's the source of my anxiety
that I suffered with for a very long time.
There are plenty of projects that I was never able to finish
in college or law school or in jobs.
What are the strategies that I use to cope with it?
Well, number one, you gotta go see a professional.
So having a doctor to talk to about ADD
has been extraordinarily helpful
in understanding the way that my mind works
and the strategies that I should be using
in order to set myself up for success.
Get yourself educated after you talk to your professional.
So I love Ned Hallowell's book, Driven To Distraction,
I love John Ratey's book about Spark
and the connection between exercise
and ADD and depression and anxiety.
So get yourself educated.
I take Adderall.
Not every day, not all the time.
I will for example take it if I'm on an airplane
and I'm gonna fly across country
and I have four hours in a seat
and I wanna focus and get a lot of work done.
I'll take it in that instance.
If I have a deadline and I'm finding
that it's hard for me to focus, I might take it then
but that has worked really well for me.
I know a lot of people abuse it.
I don't happen to be one of those people that abuse it
but it has been a real life saver.
The other thing that has helped me
a lot with ADD is exercise.
So I notice that right after I exercise,
I typically have a two to three hour window
where I'm much more focused than I normally am
and finally, I notice a big connection
between my gut and my ADD.
So I am a extremely healthy eater
because when I tend to carbo-load
or eat and mainline ice cream or drink a ton of booze,
what ends of happening is I get more distracted,
less focused and it has a negative impact
on the ADD condition that I struggle with.
I hope that helps.
I hope if you're somebody who's saying, holy cow, huh,
I'm disorganized, I'm easily distracted,
I beat myself up all the time,
I hope that this inspires you to go talk to your doctor
to see if this is something that's impacting you
because the fact of the matter is
you can be smart, you can be successful
and you can still struggle with ADD
and the good news is there's a lot of simple things
that you can do to alleviate the suffering
and actually improve your focus
and your ability to get things done.
(calm music)