I'm just a girl who cain't say no...to life

I sometimes wonder if overcommitment is cast in a far too negative light.

I've heard all the psychological explanations about folks who want to "people please" by agreeing to virtually every request. I'm sure I've been guilty of just such behavior in my life, which often led to resentment, failure to meet my obligations etc., etc., etc.

But saying "Yes" to life is something entirely different. And I find it difficult to turn down opportunities to grab a big bite of life and enjoy it. I suppose my overcommitment is a way of 'people pleasing' -- because it's pleasing ME.

Overcommitment would be no problem if I was an excellent time manager, if I had impeccable organization skills, if I allowed my 'bites' to come in an orderly succession. That's never been my strong suit. And to be candid, it's not that attractive to me - dare I say - boring?

I tend to let the interesting, exciting projects and events in my life cluster on top of each other so that I feel overwhelmed and act a bit frenzied.

What I realize these days is that I kinda like living on the edge. For a long while, I believed that I didn't fit the profile of an ADD adult in terms of being a 'risk taker" to get the old adrenaline pumping. So I don't go to the track to race stock cars. I don't jump out of airplanes with a flimsy parachute strapped to my back (yet). I don't play the slots with my hard earned dollars.

Instead, I overcommit. The adrenaline rush is similar, if not life threatening (ah, but why did I buy a hot air balloon, my friends? Hmmm. I think that was more about impulse buying..another interesting topic -- oops am I losing my train of thought here???).

So it's an ADDiva thing after all. So what? I doubt that I will ever give up my fascination with taking big bites of life. So I am committed to overcommitment...and I plan to include it in my Big Plan to be Fully Me -- great plan, eh?

"Buckets" of projects

It's a fact of my life. I always have 'too many' projects going on at once.

Juggling them can be a challenge - sometimes an absurd goal. But recently, my little ADDiva brain came up with an idea for corralling them that feels, well, organized!

I have created a series of 'buckets' that contain everything about a particular project. For instance, I have a 'bucket' for Retreats, one for Coaching, one for my Website, one for GardenSpirit, one for Finances, one for New Products. You get the picture.

Since I am trying to gain control of the paper critters in my office (they breed shamelessly when they think I'm not looking), I literally set out plastic containers ('buckets' by name if not by design) and started filing papers, software, equipment, notebooks into each one. Oh -- really important: labeled each one of them immediately. I have about 18 of them -- so it's crucial to be able to glance at them and know what's inside.

Now I have a place to look to find my retreat handouts, for instance. Granted, the retreat handouts have a home in my file cabinet and eventually they will live there again. But in the meantime, I can go to the bucket to search for an errant folder.

The challenge, of course, is to get the 'buckets' emptied one at a time. For me, that requires time set aside specifically to focus on filing, labeling and often reorganizing (am I the only ADDiva who reorganizes CONSTANTLY?).

It's not perfect. But for now, it seems to be working for me.

ADD women and spirituality

It doesn't surprise me in the least. So why did it take an "expert opinion" for me to recognize that ADD women (aka ADDivas) are intensely spiritual?

Yes, Ned Hallowell, M.D. wrote about spirituality and ADD and ADHD in his 2005 book about adult ADD, Delivered from Distraction. It clarified something I had suspected for a long time: our sensitivity allows us to be closer to the energies of life.

Tonight I watched a documentary created by a young man of 24 who was searching for "happiness." He knocked on the doors of many of today's "living luminaries," as he called them; priests, rabbis, professors, popular authors (Marianne Williamson, Eckhard Tolle) to find out about happiness.

The answer, of course, lies is within each of us. Not that we each have a different recipe for happiness, but rather that happiness is not an end. Instead, it is an accidental byproduct of living in the moment, aware and awaken to the possibilities.

I believe that ADDivas - far from being simply caricatures of themselves - are in touch with the deepest pulse of life. We are open to the wisdom of the universe if we allow ourselves to listen intently to ourselves.

One of my clients is midway through a multi-week class on Mindfulness, a bringing of awareness to the present. She appreciates how the 30 minutes of meditation allows her to be more calm, be more within herself. It's a good reminder for all of us.

Allow yourself to be fully present. Ignore the blinking messages on the machine, the hundreds of emails and errands. Instead, remember Who You REALLY Are: an integral and crucial part of this amazing matrix of Life. How your brain jumps from subject to subject or whether you're taking medication or not isn't really important in the Big Picture.

You are enough, just as you are. You are PERFECT just as you are. ADD is just a functional, physical pebble in our pond that wiggles to and fro as the water washes over it. You are NOT your ADD. You are your deepest, most wonderful self and you have a purpose in this world, during this lifetime.

I'll paraphrase the wise quote: "Don't die with your music still inside you." Let yourself sing, dance, create, LIVE.... full out!

"Does not work well with others"

The realization was shocking in its intensity.

I literally bolted out of bed this morning to write it down: I avoid team projects and collaborations like the plague because of my ADD.

I'm spending the week in hot-hot-hot Scottsdale, AZ at the Breakthrough to Success seminar with author Jack Canfield. We've been working with a partner or in groups of three or four since we arrived three days ago. No problem at all for me. Our work was completed in the room the very same day.

But now, there is talk of collaborations with other participants that will mean long term commitments and continued contact. I can tell that I am already beginning to shut down. I return to my room during breaks instead of "networking" with other participants. I find myself growing shy instead of being outgoing and gregarious as I was at the beginning of the week.

I hate it. I want to participate. But I have had my fill of being the person with great ideas, lots of energy, optimism...and then as my time fills up or my interest wanes, becoming the person who is undependable, "flaky" or missing in action.

I know deep in my heart (or brain) that I will get 1) bored or 2)busy and then begin to miss deadlines or appointments. Then comes that sinking feeling of drowning in Too Much To Do. Followed closely by pin pricks of resentment that I "have to" go to that meeting or "promised I would" come up with a proposal by 5 pm on the 22nd.

I feel pushed around by my own choices. And that's the weird part: I MADE the choice to join the team. Or I used to make that choice.

What I know about myself is that I am (truth time here) not a good team player. Men tend to be better than women on teams in part because of their participation on team sports. But my reluctance to commit to working with someone else is deeper than gender differences.

It's the secret heart of an ADDiva.

I don't want to disappoint my team members. I don't start out a collaboration with the intention of slowing down the project or being late to meetings. But it sure turns out that way. Ooops...in the past, it has turned out that way. I can change my future, right?

OK, so how do I make this work? How do I create this differently?

I can choose carefully the people who are my partners and teammates. I can make sure they are people who can accommodate my wonderful and important style of participation.

I can be honest about my abilities: I can tell people that I am a great idea person but sometimes stumble on execution. If they don't like that, it's probably not a good fit.

I can be realistic about my time commitments.

I can take on small bites of the project instead of gorging on gigantic pieces (my usual M.O.)

I can check in regularly with myself and with other team members to see whether we're still a good fit.

Moreover, I can look at my staggering list of commitments and decide NOT to be part of a new MasterMind team.

Whoa. I can take care of me. And be successful because of my ADD rather than in spite of it.

Guess what? You can too. Go for it!

ADHD, hormones and menopause

Back in 2002, when my peri-menopausal hormones were poised to take a dive, I followed the advice of my OB-GYN and stopped taking my low dose birth control pills.

Now, mind you, I didn't need them for birth control -- I'd had that tubal ligation thing-y a long, long time ago. But as I moved into my late 40s, my migraines had gotten worse, I was a mess the day or two before my period and things just didn't feel right to me. When the doc suggested birth control pills, I was skeptical -- I didn't want to take pills every day (an ADDiva remembering to take pills EVERY DAY? OK, I missed them regularly, with breakthrough results, if you know what I mean).

I knew somehow that taking hormones wasn't so good for my body, but I put my brain on hold and followed the prescription. Happily, they worked like a charm. I was calm, only a couple of migraines a YEAR instead of a month and I didn't seem to be stressed at the EXTREMELY HIGH level I had been pre-meds.

The doctor told me that when I turned 50, we'd switch to HRT (hormone replacement therapy). I balked - Oh no! Hormone replacement is bad for women, I'd say. I don't want breast cancer or uterine problems or whatever the latest research bad news relayed. Then my doctor told me something I hadn't read in the science section of the newspaper: HRT actually had a lower dose of hormones than even my low dose birth control pills. I was shocked. Who knew?

In order to see whether I was really getting to the Big M (Menopause), we had to measure my current hormone level. So in January, I stopped taking the birth control pills for a test in February - we needed at least four weeks off artificial hormones to test my real hormone level.

I had the test - simple as I recall. And then waited to hear from her about going back on the low dose pills. She never called me, although the test results (sent by mail) showed that I wasn't in menopause yet. By March, I was beginning to flush and by
April I could hardly get out of bed in the morning, suffering through 40-50 hot flashes a day.

I finally called the doctor's office and told her what was going on. "Why didn't you go back on the birth control pills?" she asked in amazement. Because no one told me to, that's why!

So, no matter what the test showed, I was definitely menopausal with a capital M -- and there was nothing Divine about it.

I was miserable. I needed to do something. So I forced myself to read all those books on menopause I had bought but avoided for years. My reasoning was completely illogical: if I didn't educate myself on menopause, perhaps I could sneak by without going through it. Just stop having periods and become 50 with grace and ease.

Ha.

About the same time, I lost my mind.

No really. I couldn't carry on a conversation. I could barely keep my mind on doing a load of laundry. And as to coming to the table with business associates? I just kept my mouth shut most of the time - an unusual state for me.

It was awful. I realized that I had gotten by on my intelligence and wit most of my life. I had worked hard to think ahead of where conversations were going so I could be seen as brilliant and interested in the subject. I had brought a unique point of view to projects and conferences. I was seen as bright and witty.

Yet now I couldn't even rub two words together and make a sensible sentence. I was in despair. I realized, to my great sorrow, that my psychiatrist was right. I did, indeed have ADHD. And it had taken control of my brain. Or what brain I had left, anyway.

Reluctantly, I made an appointment with the psychiatrist and spilled out my torturous story. I had turned into the town idiot in a matter of months. I was stupid where I had once been intelligent. I was distracted beyond belief. I was ... doomed.

He listened for a few minutes and then said calmly, "Your brain needs estrogen. Go get some."

Well! This was about the time the Women's Health Initiative Study had been stopped because women who were receiving HRT were dying of heart disease because of the estrogen (at least that's what I HEARD from the hundreds of news reports that penetrated my conscious mind).

I wasn't about to put myself at risk of heart disease; my dad had almost died of a massive heart attack at age 49. I had always soothed myself that I wasn't a candidate for a heart attack because I was a woman with estrogen and I was too young to die. Now, one of those weapons was gone. And was I too young to die? Maybe not.

I found myself a supply of human identical hormones and used progesterone cream to calm the hot flashes. Note I said progesterone, not estrogen. I was too afraid of estrogen to try it. But I did find an OB-GYN who was also a psychiatrist. She headed up the PMS clinic at Duke Medical Center and I was allowed to see her for hormone consultation;

Predictably. she said "You need estrogen. Here's a prescription." I fought the idea like a crazed tiger -- the Women's Health Initiative said... I've heard of someone who... What are the data for cancer in women who have taken... I pretty much drove her crazy for months with my worries and questions. She printed out the data, sighed, and printed out more data.

I was finally convinced: the WHI study had been done with women over 60 who had never taken hormone replacement; many of them already had heart disease which was exacerbated by the addition of hormones. I was still fuzzy headed and feeling so unlike myself that I filled the prescription for the Vivelle estrogen patch - the name sounded so soothing and calm. But I was so edgy about the whole idea.

Within a couple of weeks I was doing better. And when we added my Wellbutrin back into the mix, it was like I had been asleep and Prince Charming had come along to give me a little kiss. I was ALIVE again! I could THINK. I could REASON. I could sleep through the night without alternately sweating and freezing!

I have to tell you - it's been four years now and I have tried twice to stop using the patch or reduce the dosage. And it doesn't work. I fall back into the same trap. As my doctor says "This is a quality of life issue. Do you want to live in misery or do you want to risk the estrogen possibilities?" Of course, she thinks the risks are minimal.

I can't help feeling that I am a walking, talking science experiment and one day if we find out that the estrogen patch was a bad idea, it will be too late. I am playing hormone roulette with MY LIFE here. It's an uncomfortable place to be.\

But I can tell you that this supplement to my brain has made my life bearable again. I can function, reason, think, talk intelligently. I like me again. And I supposed that IS a quality of life issue, isn't it?

NOTE: Please know that this post represents MY experience only and is not an endorsement or recommendation for you or your body. Only you and your doctor can make the choices that are right for you!

The Law of Attraction and ADD - dream come true

I know the Law of Attraction works (made famous recently by the movie THE SECRET). But I don't often get a reminder as powerful as the one I received today:

An ADD client of mine - let's call her Valerie (not her real name, of course) - came to our session today in a state of anxiety. She needed to find and move into a new apartment by the beginning of August - just 33 days from now.

She and her two young daughters have been living in a tiny 500-square-foot apartment while her husband works on a big project out-of-state. When hubby commutes home on the weekends, it's close quarters. Eventually, the couple wants to buy a house - the larger apartment is a stopgap measure.

"Valerie" was discouraged; there were only a few rental vacancies in the school district she wanted for her daughter. Most of them were too expensive; after all, there are two households to support - his and hers.

"There aren't any nice places I can afford out there," she said. "So many people want to live in that area. Plus, I get so overwhelmed trying to figure out the school district from the address. I have to go back and forth from the online listing to the school map."

Lots of details, scanning, moving back and forth between data bits--it sounded like a nightmare for an ADDiva like Valerie, or anyone with ADD, for that matter.

So I asked Valerie to close her eyes, take a few deep breaths and imagine moving into a home, townhome or apartment that was just perfect for her and her daughters. We took a virtual tour of the home as she created, starting at the front door, proceeding through all the rooms - kitchen, living room, dining room, bedrooms, baths, even the closets.

When she had a clear picture of the home in her mind, I asked her to tell me about it, expecting to hear about a modest two bedroom apartment.

To my surprise, she described a brand new dream house: granite countertops, upgraded cabinets, hardwood floors, an office with a place to curl up and read, walk-in closets, two car garage.

I was doubtful; it would be a big stretch financially to buy new construction. And she had some legal issues that stood in the way of getting a loan.

But the Law of Attraction says that if you ask for what you want and know that the answer is always YES, then you will create it for yourself. Mentally, I took a deep breath, hoping I wasn't leading her astray.

"OK, you can have it that house!" I declared confidently. Valerie was stunned. "I can?" she asked with a nervous laugh.

"You bet," I said, realizing that she COULD have it....if she moved to a different area or was willing to spend most of her income on the house, cut down on restaurant expenses and vacations. Those weren't sacrifices she could make right now.

"It might not happen immediately," I said. "You can't go from zero to 60 miles per hour all at once. You might need to go from zero to 30 the first time, then hit the accelerator to reach 60."

So we did more visioning - this time about a spacious apartment that would be her "stepping stone" to that dream house.

Turns out, she had already found an apartment in the right school district that would be available August 8 -- but where would she and her daughters live for those eight long days? We brainstormed about ways to negotiate with the old or new landlords and came to the conclusion that the worst case would mean storing her belongings for a week and living in a hotel. The girls would think it was an adventure and they could move into the new place before school started.

When Valerie left GardenSpirit, I was convinced she would work out a perfect solution to the apartment situation and I promised to send her the names and numbers of some inexpensive yet dependable movers.

About two hours later, I received an email from Valerie with the words "NEW HOUSE?" in the subject line. On her way home, she had stopped into the bank just to check on mortgage loans.

Turns out, the legal issues that stood in her way were not a deterrent to applying for a mortgage. And the payments on townhomes in her area will actually cost less per month than rent!

I know this works. I KNOW it. Yet it's so reassuring to SEE the Law of Attraction in action. Even with ADDivas like Valerie.

Wow. Last time I talked to her, she was on the Multiple Listing Service site, finding lots of options for her first house. I know it will happen. I act 'as if" it's already happened. And by George, it DOES happen. Wow.

My ADD handwriting sucks

It happened at the bank yesterday.

Again.

I wrote a deposit slip for $5,000 (it was for quarterly taxes, OK?).

The woman at the drive-through was quite pleasant as she processed the transaction. I thanked her and pulled forward, but before I left the parking lot, I glanced down at the receipt.

It read: $500

OMIGOD. That's $4,500 less than I expected to go into the account. I'm pretty sure the IRS would not be amused by a bounced check.

I wheeled back into a parking space, grabbed the receipt and headed for the teller counter. She had the original check in her hand.

"I knew you'd be back!" she said gleefully. "It was your handwriting. I couldn't read it," she added triumphantly. She adjusted the deposit and gave me a new receipt.

I was not triumphant. I was dejected, embarrassed and humiliated. Again.

My handwriting...um...sucks.

Always has and apparently always will.

And yes, it's an ADD thing. Darn it. It's an ADD trait I sure could live without. Excuse me for complaining about something so trivial. But perhaps it's not so trivial to have trouble communicating on paper.

I'm a big list maker - errands, groceries, To Do's. Lists are a good thing for ADD -- they capture all those creative and random thoughts in one place.

Problem is that five minutes after I write them, I can't read them. My husband (who apparently has a secret decoder ring) actually translates my own lists back to me!

Before debit cards were a fact of life, I was called on the carpet by sassy checkout clerks who insisted "The bank won't be able to read this and I'm not going to be responsible for it!" I wanted to deck her and/or melt into the floor to avoid the sneers of the 1o people in line behind me.

Remember how good old Emily Post made that stupid rule about writing thank you notes with a pen and paper? Clearly she didn't have a trace of ADD in her brain cells.

One of my friends (lovingly) says that she enjoys getting letters from me because every time she reads them, they take on new meaning (OK, so I'm interesting).

Why do I continue to write sloppily (hate that word)?

I just don't have good coordination between brain and fingers, I guess. Years ago, I was writing a check while the clerk watched me. Noticing my handwriting, she said, "Oh, you must write really fast." As I laboriously finished writing the check, she looked disapprovingly at me. "Well, I guess not..."

As if writing quickly made it acceptable for me to write illegibly, but writing slowly was no darned excuse.

I have no excuse, really. My thoughts come rapid-fire and my handwriting arrives on a slow boat to China.

I've tried printing instead of writing cursive but it's so time consuming. I tried a digital recorder, but somebody has to transcribe all those digital messages (not me...too boring). I've used extra wide lined paper, unlined paper, steno pads, legal pads. Nothing changes my style.

All I can say is: thank god for debit cards (fewer checks) online banking (even fewer checks) and email (typing is good for the soul). Technology has allowed me to communicate in a way I would never have been able to manage otherwise.

Just be thankful you aren't reading this blog in my handwriting. Victor's got the decoder ring this week.