I confess - I've been running a covert money-laundering operation in my basement for years.
I've laundered many, many dollar bills, the occasional five spot, and a bunch of loose change. I laundered a check once, and my debit card a few times.
. . .Then there were the Chapsticks, a handful of cigarrette lighters, several packs of gum, and countless important receipts. Yep, it's true. For years, if there was something that I absent-mindedly jammed into my pocket, it probably got laundered.
Luckily, I never laundered lipstick. Red schmears all over my husband's white gym socks would have been tough to explain away. My cover would have been completely blown.
Despite my best efforts to operate clandestinely, my tendency to throw currency and financial records into the machine with my delicates is one of those dirty little ADHD secrets that apparently wasn't much of a secret to The All-Knowing-All-Seeing Eyes-In-The-Back-Of-Her-Head One. Yes, my mother.
The other day, my 81-year-old mom was visiting me and the kids. My mom has never used a computer in her life. Whenever anyone points her to something available on the Internet, my mother - in her best English-As-A-Second-Language - defiantly announces, like a recovering cocaine addict, that she is "NOT on lines." So when my mom wanted some information about one of her credit accounts, I - like the good daughter that I am - dutifully offered to look it up for her. All I would need is her credit card. The look of horror that came across her face was unmistakable. "You need the card?" she asked. "Yep, just give me the card so I can get the number off of it."
My mom thought for a moment, then slowly produced the credit card from her purse. She handed it to me languidly, not taking her eyes off of the card during the transfer. She looked sad - as though she believed she might never see that piece of plastic again.
I took the card from her and cheerfully turned to the computer. However, as always happens when I try to do. . .anything, my kids started screaming at me. The little one needed chocolate milk, a new Spongebob episode, and a left sock with no holes in it. . .all at the same time. Meanwhile, the 10-year-old had launched into a loud soapbox rant about how mean I am because we won't buy him an iPhone. My mother, never one to turn down an opportunity to argue passionately with small children, joined the ruckus, contending vehemently on my behalf, that I am "not mean."
As mayhem erupted, it became clear that I would not be able to go online right then to look anything up. I would not have known how to Google my own name in that chaos. I would have to do this later. But I had this credit card that I didn't want to lose track of. So I - you guessed it - shoved it into my pants pocket.
In the midst of the melee between the elderly and the prepubescent, I was startled when my mother let out a blood-curdling shriek. "Noooooooo!!!"
You would have thought that I was just about to toss a baby out of a window. Annoyed, I responded, "What, no!"
"Don't put dat een your pocket!" Mom cried. "You'll vaaawwsh it!!!"
I'll vaaawwsh it? No, I won't! Why do you think that? That's ridiculous? Who would do that?! How do you know? Who told you?? I need names!
"Mom, mom," I chuckled condescendingly. "Mom, I'm not going to wash it. I know that it's in my pocket; I'm just putting it here so that I won't lose it until I can get back to business." Then I laughed, "Y'know, if you folks weren't always yelling and ordering me around, I might actually be able to hear myself think for a minute and keep track of what I'm doing."
And there it is. I may as well have announced, "I thought I had ADHD, but as it turns out, YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST ANNOYING!!!"
Mom laughed and agreed. "Okay, okay. I trust you."
The truth is, I do have ADHD. And my mom was right to be concerned. But it's also true that my mom and my kids - as lovable as they are - are horribly annoying and stressful; and when we are in a group, my brain's CEO hangs out the "Gone Fishin'" sign, and I am often reduced to being a discombobulated idiot.
Which highlights something very, very important. I need time to think. I've never made it a priority to demand time and space to think about what I need and what others need from me. While I've idled away hundreds - maybe thousands - of hours over many years anxiously perseverating, that is not the same thing as constructive thought. The kind of thought that allows you to actually remember you have a credit card in your pocket before you throw the whole mess in the wash. That's one of the pitfalls of ADHD - it's hard to decelerate, turn down the head noise, and just think.
But that is what I did after I calmed my mother down. In an unusual move, I grabbed a notebook and escaped my noisy children and went out to the garage. I stood there for 5 minutes or so, thinking about what I had to do. I took some notes and jotted down a short shopping list. I breathed deeply. Then I returned to the livingroom (which had now become a boxing ring). I got on the computer and looked up the information my mom needed, and proudly handed back her card. And then we laughed.
As I recalled these events later in the day, I wondered why it was that my mom was so worried that I would wash her card, of all things. After all, there are so many ways to lose a credit card. I know from experience. I don't think Mom has ever seen me launder non-clothing items. We've never talked about it.
And then it hit me. I was a chatty, annoying, demanding kid. My dad was a chatty, annoying, demanding husband. When we were around, my 40-something-year-old mom was running around in seventeen different directions at once. And I'm guessing, she was running her own money-laundering operation.
She was trying to save me from myself. I'm grateful. I just wish she'd be quieter about it.
My mom probably doesn't launder money any more, now that she's 81 and my dad is gone, and her kids are grown. She's got plenty of time and space to think about what's in her pockets, and anything else she might want to think about. So, I suppose if she wants to follow me around and help me remember to check my pockets, I'll let her; and I'll be grateful for the blessing of having my mom still in my life, and for her still having the clarity of mind to help me not wash her credit card. Maybe when I'm 81, I'll be able to return the favor for my little inattentive/hyperactive Josh.
Meanwhile, I'll make it a point to take time out for some contemplation and hide in the garage once in awhile. The feds will never find me there.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
If My Brain Worked on Wall Street, It Would Be a Billionaire
I don't know if you've noticed, but I've got ADHD on the brain these days. Finding out that I have ADHD of the brain has sparked in me a serious interest in learning what it's all about. So at the risk of boring all my friends to death, I've been doing a lot of thinking, and reading, and talking about it. This interest is, in part, what inspired me to start this blog.
Sometimes I feel a little self conscious about my blog. I'm not an ego maniac. To the contrary, people with ADHD often report low-self-esteem issues, and I've certainly battled a few of those myself. I definitely don't want to be seen as someone so self-absorbed and indulgent that she believes that there is anything particularly exciting about detailed stories about how messy my desk is at work.
Yet I continue to ponder, and feel inspired to share messy-desk stories. I will be the very first to admit that my disasterous, dysfunctional, hell-hole of a desk isn't fascinating. It's as mundane as all the other messy desks in the world. What fascinates me is the discovery that the messiness of my desk is the result of a process that is far more intricate and complex than just me simply being lazy or negligent.
In my reading, I've been coming across the term "executive function," quite a bit. Researchers of ADHD/ADD talk about how the condition impairs "executive function." My psychiatrist talked about this, also, explaining that my medication will stimulate my "executive functioning," whatever that is. These same researchers explain executive function in scientific terms too advanced for my pay grade, as they say.
But what I lack in professional psychiatric training, I make up for in my ability [compulsive urge] to extrapolate, so I think I get it. The job of a CEO (chief executive officer), for example, is not really to "do" anything specific, but to make sure that others do what they are supposed to do. Likewise the president of the United States is the chief executive of our country. We'll hear people discussing politics complain about how a president doesn't do anything. Whether or not that's true is a matter of opinion, but as a matter of function, the president's primary job is, in short, to support and oversee others doing things.
Executive function in the brain, is, as far as I can interpret, essentially the same thing. Executive function in the brain refers to the cognitive processes that regulate and support other cognitive functions that affect actions and decision making. Executive functioning regulates how the brain applies past experience to a present situation, involving processes such as prioritizing, self-regulation, and various types of memory, for example.
A good example for illustrating this concept is the task of taking and passing an academic test. In order to do well on a test, it is necessary for a student to know the correct answers to the questions. But knowing the subject matter is not enough to ace the test.
In order to pass a test, a student must be able to sustain her attention throughout the test. She must be able to monitor the time available for the test and regulate her performance against that time to ensure that she answers all the questions before the time runs out. When she encounters a question to which she's not certain of the answer, she may have to extrapolate the answer from similar situations she's encountered in the past. If she's stuck on a multiple choice, she must invoke her decision-making faculties to choose the best answer. When things get tough, she needs to be able to control her emotions sufficiently so they do not interfere with her ability to concentrate and respond. If she's called upon to write an essay, she will need to logically organize and express her thoughts in a manner that clearly conveys to the reader her knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. In short, when we break it all down, passing a test is far more complicated a task than simply regurgitating some learned information.
According to Dr. Thomas E. Brown of Yale University, research is revealing that ADHD is not simply an attention-related condition, but a developmental impairment of the brain's executive functioning. In a newsletter article, Dr. Brown offers the illustrative analogy of a musical orchestra without a good conductor. Separately, the violin and the flute and the tuba can all be performing spectacularly. But without the executive functioning of a good conductor to bring all the individual musical elements together properly, the ultimate performance won't be very good.
Well, thank you, Dr. Brown. That explains a lot. I want to know much more about this, and will check out Brown's book as soon as I can. But for now, I'll just say that this makes a great deal of sense and explains so much for me.
It explains my messy desk. Cleaning a desk might sound like a simple task, but if I break it down into its elements, as with the test-taking example, maintaining a clean desk involves priortization, logical organization, memory, self-regulation and motivation, spatial reasoning. . .all sorts of executive functions. No wonder I have trouble; as it turns out, the CEO of my brain is a bit of an underperformer.
In recent years, there's been a lot of public criticism of ineffective CEOs on Wall Street, who have been awarded with multi-million dollar bonuses as their companies collapsed, contributing to massive economic crisis in our country and througout the world. Only in this context, it seems, is poor executive functioning rewarded quite so handsomely.
It's really too bad I didn't take my dad's advice of getting a job in a bank instead of majoring in anthrolopolgy ("What the hell is 'anthropology' anyway?"). With executive functioning like mine, I could be rolling around naked in my undeserved millions right now, paying someone else to clean my desk.
Sometimes I feel a little self conscious about my blog. I'm not an ego maniac. To the contrary, people with ADHD often report low-self-esteem issues, and I've certainly battled a few of those myself. I definitely don't want to be seen as someone so self-absorbed and indulgent that she believes that there is anything particularly exciting about detailed stories about how messy my desk is at work.
Yet I continue to ponder, and feel inspired to share messy-desk stories. I will be the very first to admit that my disasterous, dysfunctional, hell-hole of a desk isn't fascinating. It's as mundane as all the other messy desks in the world. What fascinates me is the discovery that the messiness of my desk is the result of a process that is far more intricate and complex than just me simply being lazy or negligent.
In my reading, I've been coming across the term "executive function," quite a bit. Researchers of ADHD/ADD talk about how the condition impairs "executive function." My psychiatrist talked about this, also, explaining that my medication will stimulate my "executive functioning," whatever that is. These same researchers explain executive function in scientific terms too advanced for my pay grade, as they say.
But what I lack in professional psychiatric training, I make up for in my ability [compulsive urge] to extrapolate, so I think I get it. The job of a CEO (chief executive officer), for example, is not really to "do" anything specific, but to make sure that others do what they are supposed to do. Likewise the president of the United States is the chief executive of our country. We'll hear people discussing politics complain about how a president doesn't do anything. Whether or not that's true is a matter of opinion, but as a matter of function, the president's primary job is, in short, to support and oversee others doing things.
Executive function in the brain, is, as far as I can interpret, essentially the same thing. Executive function in the brain refers to the cognitive processes that regulate and support other cognitive functions that affect actions and decision making. Executive functioning regulates how the brain applies past experience to a present situation, involving processes such as prioritizing, self-regulation, and various types of memory, for example.
A good example for illustrating this concept is the task of taking and passing an academic test. In order to do well on a test, it is necessary for a student to know the correct answers to the questions. But knowing the subject matter is not enough to ace the test.
In order to pass a test, a student must be able to sustain her attention throughout the test. She must be able to monitor the time available for the test and regulate her performance against that time to ensure that she answers all the questions before the time runs out. When she encounters a question to which she's not certain of the answer, she may have to extrapolate the answer from similar situations she's encountered in the past. If she's stuck on a multiple choice, she must invoke her decision-making faculties to choose the best answer. When things get tough, she needs to be able to control her emotions sufficiently so they do not interfere with her ability to concentrate and respond. If she's called upon to write an essay, she will need to logically organize and express her thoughts in a manner that clearly conveys to the reader her knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. In short, when we break it all down, passing a test is far more complicated a task than simply regurgitating some learned information.
According to Dr. Thomas E. Brown of Yale University, research is revealing that ADHD is not simply an attention-related condition, but a developmental impairment of the brain's executive functioning. In a newsletter article, Dr. Brown offers the illustrative analogy of a musical orchestra without a good conductor. Separately, the violin and the flute and the tuba can all be performing spectacularly. But without the executive functioning of a good conductor to bring all the individual musical elements together properly, the ultimate performance won't be very good.
Well, thank you, Dr. Brown. That explains a lot. I want to know much more about this, and will check out Brown's book as soon as I can. But for now, I'll just say that this makes a great deal of sense and explains so much for me.
It explains my messy desk. Cleaning a desk might sound like a simple task, but if I break it down into its elements, as with the test-taking example, maintaining a clean desk involves priortization, logical organization, memory, self-regulation and motivation, spatial reasoning. . .all sorts of executive functions. No wonder I have trouble; as it turns out, the CEO of my brain is a bit of an underperformer.
In recent years, there's been a lot of public criticism of ineffective CEOs on Wall Street, who have been awarded with multi-million dollar bonuses as their companies collapsed, contributing to massive economic crisis in our country and througout the world. Only in this context, it seems, is poor executive functioning rewarded quite so handsomely.
It's really too bad I didn't take my dad's advice of getting a job in a bank instead of majoring in anthrolopolgy ("What the hell is 'anthropology' anyway?"). With executive functioning like mine, I could be rolling around naked in my undeserved millions right now, paying someone else to clean my desk.
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