Rag  Li wrote:

ADD is a disease. Ewwww!  ... Stay away.  It might be contageous?

  ** The perspective is all wrong **

** NEW CONCEPT **   Don't look at such things as being pathologies.

Instead of asking ' What is going wrong? '  or ' What isn't working? ',
how about searching for what is happening, ... what IS working
magnificently, eh ?

 ... This change in perspective changes EVERTHING!

Example:

I went through a battery of pyschological testing to see if I had ADD.
Obviously , the focus was to figure out what was wrong.

For myself there were two glaring anomolies in this testing process.

1) The Rorschach Inkblot Test

 ... I cheated a bit. Because of insecurity, I read up on it a bit.
... just enough to learn that I could look at it, rotated in any
direction.  ... just enough to learn that I could look at any local
part of the picture.

The end result was that I was able to percieve an immense number of
objects within the random noise.  ... far, far more than the examiner
of many years experience had ever been provided with. Many of my
discoveries had never been encountered before.

 I went right off the "production" scale with that test!

2) The Shifting Categorization Test.

I was given a book with a 100+ pages. ... A sequence of patterns were
provided to me and I was supposed to choose the next in the sequence
from a set of choices.  ... It was "something" like this.

Anyhow, I zipped through this particular test very, very quickly
*apparently*. It also seems that my score was either theoretically
perfect, or at most, just one mistake.

The examiner was really put off by this. He couldn't understand.  ...
He said that most people found this test to be very difficult, time
consuming and frustrating.

 Oh ?

When the report came back to my shrink, it said that I did *indeed*
have ADD. My memory was slightly lacking for my requirements. O.K.

No mention was made of my performance on the Ink blot or 'Shifting
Categorization' tests.  They were anomolies. Irrelevent. Distractions
...

Silly buggers.

These 2 tests ... forget the ink blot one

 ... The 'Shifting Categorization' test.

It provided a very strong, specific and unusual 'datum' about me.

Specifically, it described one thing IN PARTICULAR that I did
exceedingly well. It stood out miles above all else.

Duh ?  ... isn't <<this>> what is important/significant, here ???

Isn't such a thing THAT which is *IMPORTANT* for any person ?

 ... Sure it is, obviously.  ... provided that one has the gumption to
recognize the beast.

-----

Thus, set out a set of psychological tests to detect cognitive skills
that are peculiarly and abberantly intensely effective.

 ... What a concept ?

And in one short step, Cognitive Science is transformed from slightly
worse than barbaric to slightly better than barbaric.

See how easy it is to become an expert ...

So ?   ... Comments ?

I shall continue in the next posting.

RL

I am told I have ADHD scored on Tova at 11.08 the doc says this is the worse
she has ever seen. Not a good thing to tell a patient unless you are willing
to stand behind them if they decide to try for disability.

I used to get quite pissed if someone said ADD did not exist, because most
of all I did not want to accept responsibility for my own actions, and the
idea of ADD was a convenient guilt hamper so I could excuse myself.

Second, is that I don't care if it exists or not, I know something is up,
just as surely as if some invisible giant ran up to me and knocked me across
an alley, and I wake up broken and bleeding I know something hit me.

What do I think ADD is?

I think it depends on the person, but for me, I would say its chief
characteristic is a lack of volitional control over what your mind filters
out and lets through, and that this filtering is in-appropriate. It lets
through all the chaff, but might not inform you that you are about to be hit
by a train.

I also think it might be a constellation of issues, that might possibly be
addressed and taken care of.

For example, focusing was a major pain for me, I could not do it at all. For
me, the answer was to trance out, suppress conscious thought, and there went
all the distractions and focusing is not child's play to me.

For another, the answer might lie elsewhere.

I'm fast finding out via http://www.essential-skills.com that a number of
things I thought were parts ADHD, were merely results of abuse that many of
us have experienced, and that my responses could be changed.

Whatever ADD is or isn't, until lately, its been a losing battle and a
nightmare, that if I had my way, I'd rather not have ever lived.

"And travellers now within that valley,
   Through the red ~ litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
   To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
               Through the pale door;
A hideous throng rush out forever,
   And laugh ~ but smile no more."
~ EA Poe

"Of Roorbach, Too, where, unbeknownst, to us,
Or you ~

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Inhabit The Folds ....
Of summers with Romeo ~ !"
~ Folly