Posted by Ritch on February 16, 2002, at 18:09:06
In reply to Re: Yes Puzzle!, posted by christophrejmc on February 16, 2002, at 14:02:59
> > I tried to recover this information, but can't find it right off, but I was reading something about ADHD the other day and it said that *other* family members who have OCD is *very* common with children and adults with ADHD.
>
> Just OCD? My brother was (still is to some extent) ADHD, and I'm Dysthymic/Depressive(perhaps seasonally)/Social Phobic/ADD. Please let me know if you find the article (don't go out of your way, though).
I think I can come up with it. I will have to browse around some to *refind* it. Forgetting is my primary occupation.
>
> > So I am seeing these "links" with Bipolar/ADHD, ADHD/OCD, and have seen links with Bipolar/OCD. I have all three to some extent-Bipolar/ADHD/anxiety (GAD-socialphobia/panic). I have got some theories, but I *think* the whole thing is just an *attentional syndrome*. Whether your thoughts are tangential (bipolar), stuck in a "loop" (OCD-GAD-SP), interrupted and straying (ADHD), it boils down to just a cognitive processing problem with behavioural effects.
>
> I really think you're correct. It seems that my mood problems are very similar to my ADD problems -- the same thing almost, except instead of information, I'm processing emotions.
Well, if you beleive that "thoughts come first-then feelings arise from the thoughts", it still is a cognitive origin. I argued a couple of times with a former therapist about this issue. I felt at the time that a "feeling state" could exist independent of what you think. But now I do not believe that. At best, I might go for a simultaneity. If you "look" real hard when you are feeling lousy (or too good) there are corresponding thoughts going on-they might be tough to catch, however.>
> > When this is all combined together you are going to have a *lot* of trouble treating all three thought-processing problems. I can take a small dose of a psychostimulant and the "straying" and "tangential" thinking diminishes, BUT it is easier to get stuck in a loop (anxiety). If I take a little SSRI, the "stuck in a loop" thing gets freed up and I can multitask and my anxiety from getting stuck diminishes. But, that tends to result in worsened ADHD/bipolar problems: I get more "euphoria" from an SSRI than I did on a pstim. I will also start a lot of unfinished projects (overtasking), that never get done.
>
> Yeah, I go from treating the ADD to treating the depression/SP a lot. The medications used for ADD tend to make the social phobia and some of my depressive symptoms worse, and the ones used for depression and SP make my ADD worse (treating all three at the same time doesn't seem to work well).
> BTW, do stimulants (or anything else) help you with overtasking? I've never been able to truly solve that problem.
>
> Thanks for giving me something to think about,
> -Chris
All I can say about pstims (Adderall-in my case), is that *time* changed. Or maybe the sense of time passing was different. How you would define a *moment* was very different (I am talking about a *tiny* dose of Adderall). When I do not take a med that helps my ADHD, all tasks, all ideas, are all fair game at any given moment. *Anything* can distract me away from anything I am trying to do. Everything seems to have the *same* level of importance. Whenever I took the pstim, that all dramatically changed. It switched into a *task*-oriented way of thinking. I didn't have to sit down and write out a schedule of what I needed to do every day and highlight it with different colors. I woke up in the morning and just started doing Task A, Task B, Task C. I didn't think about other things while I was doing a given *task*. Time became *discrete* and very *unitized*. Sometimes I am at work on the computer and I just have to wait for everybody to leave the area to work. Sometimes I have to tell myself something like: "WORK, don't think!", so I can get something finished. A lot of people just have no idea what this is like! Also, ordinary things weren't *boring* any more. They weren't necessarily exciting, but I didn't find anything boring. That is where the pstim worked for the bipolar depression. The interest in ordinary activities returned. Otherwise-nothing was stimulating enough. Who cares?? Try going to the grocery store sometime without a list and when you get back finding you have half the stuff you intended to get, and half the stuff you didn't want in the first place. I read somewhere about having ADHD is like being a "prisoner of the moment"---It is true.Mitch
poster:Ritch
thread:92727
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020215/msgs/94450.html