Traits Associated With ADD/ADHD

 

 

Positive ADD Traits

Creativity
Individuals who have ADD/ADHD tend to be very creative. It is good for them to keep busy with activities that will engage this creativity.

Sensitivity
ADD people are highly sensitive. Many ADD people appear to be the exact opposite though. This may be because society does not want us to show our feelings. This is especialy hard for males. We wonder why little boys with ADD/ADHD are fighting a lot. If they cry like they feel like doing they may be told that crying is for babies and to "suck it up"...

Intuition
ADD people are very intuitive. We rely a lot on our gut feelings. For some reason our society does not to seem to value intuition very highly. Society wants us to prove everything. Sometimes it's very hard for ADD people to find proof for what they know in their gut is 100% correct...

Intelligence
ADD people are usually very intelligent. Sometimes tests used by the non-ADD world do not always show that. Plus when ADD people are not interested in something we don't do very well and the tests become worthless...

 

The Negative parts of ADD

Misunderstanding
Many ADD children and adults often feel misunderstood. Much of this has to do with non-ADD people not understanding ADD. Many people don't believe ADD exists at all. There are also many others that label ADD as a disability or disorder. Yes, we as ADDers may think differently than non-ADD people, but that really does not make us disabled...

Focusing
ADDers have trouble focusing on one thing at time. The non-ADD world sees this as a problem. It can in fact be a problem when an ADDer is reading a book that really doesn't interest him or her. Many of us really like the fact that were are able to do 5 things at once. While many non-ADD people can't "walk and chew gum at the same time", ADDers can do that and so much more...

Organizing
Some people with ADD appear to be very disorganized. Many times that is just an outside appearance. We may not have things in neat files or everything in a spot. Yet, we can usually locate things that are important to us. It's just that since so many things are not important to us at every moment things do get misplaced. For instance when the phone rings it's not import to us at that moment where we put our cars keys. So, the keys usually get thrown down anywhere...

Time
Time can be an enemy to ADDers. It's almost as if it's a foreign concept to us. This can lead to many problems in the non-ADD world. Bills don't get paid on time, assignments aren't handed in, we are late for appointments. Time just doesn't make sense to us at times...

 

Completing Tasks
This may be one of the largest problems for children and adults with ADD. The problems above make it hard for us to complete things. Also, many ADDers don't ever see any things as completely finshed. We almost always have something more to add. It's hard for us to figure our what is acceptable as finished to the non-ADD world when nothing is really ever finished to us...

 


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