Posted by laima on March 3, 2007, at 7:56:52
In reply to Re: Diagnoses, interesting and otherwise, posted by Meri-Tuuli on March 3, 2007, at 6:26:06
I'm not sure what you're saying, actually.
1) Society doesn't dictate that ADD or ADHD people hold 9-5s-it may be a dominanat norm, but there are PLENTY of other respectable alternatives, in all levels of education, the arts, the trades, consulting, private trading (stocks), science and research, restaurants, merchandisizing, internet/web design and consultation, etc, etc, etc.
2) ADD/ADHD can cause real problems OUTSIDE of a 9-5 office setting, too. It's not a matter of simply not being able to sit still, nor is it a "can't behave at the office" problem.
3)As an aside, everyone needs to earn a living- and we don't have so much or such extensive social welfare in the US as you lucky Europeans.
To top it off, I can speak of ADD- it can be a real problem- to always be losing things, getting lost in conversations or lectures, not following through my projects or tasks- starting too many, being generally disorganized, and having a hard time engaging deeply enough into activities to enjoy them, let alone get anywhwere near a flow state. Not keeping track of the characters in a long book, etc. And it's not an IQ problem, it's a paying attention/follow-through/organization problem. It's not "society" that wants me to improve in these areas- it's me, wanting to be able to live the best life I can.
To use an analogy, is it society dictating you not ever feel anxious, that you shouldn't- or is it your own best interest? I guess it's the latter. Can anxiety be taken care of with strictly behavioral interventions? Many claim so- what do you think? Just a thought for analogy.
> why should society dictate to an ADHDer that they must hold down a 9-5 job, be organised etc etc....? Surely its the non-ADHD society forcing the ADHDer to behave as the rest of the non-ADHD population? If everyone were ADHD then we'd have working cultures that were supportive of the ADHD way of working! Do you see what I'm saying?
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poster:laima
thread:737261
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070302/msgs/737900.html