This is something that I’m really concerned about because I’ve had symptoms of attention deficit disorder (ADD) since being a kid and yet I had no idea and wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my early twenties.

The DSM-IV is the diagnostic manual psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) problems in kids and adults.

There hasn’t been a revision to this manual since two-years before I graduated with my master’s in psychology in 1996. Supposedly there is a revision due in 2011 which will probably change some of the criteria used in diagnosing ADHD and ADD.

What will change?

Here is more detailed information about DSM-V may change the ADHD ADD diagnosis, forever altering who gets the diagnosis and covered by healthcare for it.

Best of Life!

Vern

If you suspect your child (or yourself) has ADD, check here >

I was going phrase the title, “Best ADD – ADHD Treatment? Meditation or Medication? ” but I decided, no – meditation IS the ultimate treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There’s no question in my mind about it.

Why am I sure meditation is the best cure for ADHD?

As I mentioned in my previous post about ADHD – Self Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Diagnosis I have had ADHD – ADD since I was a young child, but only knew it in about 1995 during grad school classes in which we tested each other for various, mostly behavioral disorders.

I had no idea that meditation could be any form of  ADD ADHD treatment and offer any relief from my renegade attention and concentration habits.  I didn’t start meditating for that reason at all. I just thought meditation might be a nice way to relax from the stress of college, working full-time and volunteering as a big brother for 15+ hours per week. I ran and biked, and those helped – but I thought meditation would relax my mind even more.

I couldn’t have been more right.

The type of meditation I did was loosely based on Vipassana, or what Theravada Buddhists call “anapanasati”. Basically I sat down, closed my eyes and watched the breath go in and out. Really that’s basically it. There’s more to it of course, but essentially when you distill it down you could say just that, and have a pretty good synopsis of the whole idea of meditation. Sit and watch the breath at a very small point of concentration where it enters and exits the nostrils.

As one does that – the mind gradually slows down. Over time – days, weeks, months of a regular meditation practice the mind slows down and thoughts come less frequently while meditating. Eventually at some point, they stop. They stopped for me for the first time just a couple months into my practice. The concentration I was able to attain lasted minutes at a time – then tens of minutes… then over an hour.

After the thoughts stop… there is a peace of mind that is impossible to explain. There are many profound experiences that happen as the mind is in this state and it’s quite a journey to say the least. It’s amazing and I’ve tried to capture it in words and videos at some of my websites – but of course the words can never explain an entire body-mind experience.

Anyway, as the months went by I noticed something that was amazing to me. I was having spontaneous periods of concentration on what I was doing.

This was a novel experience for me – living with profound ADHD all my life had robbed me of any spontaneity in my concentration ability. If I wasn’t really trying hard I couldn’t concentrate more than a few seconds on any one topic. It’s a weird way to go through life – but I thought it was normal. Until I started having these amazing states of concentration just happen on their own! I wondered – is this what the rest of the world experiences all the time?

Amazing revelation… meditation has a marked effect on ADD ADHD.

I first started meditating about 1998. Since then I’ve had amazing levels of concentration that have enabled me to write a 130,000 word fiction novel, a 100,000+ word biography, numerous ebooks and create over 100 websites. I consider myself cured of ADHD – ADD but there are still times when it is a challenge to complete some tasks because all the sensory input around me is driving me nutty. In cases like that – if I choose to – I can meditate for a minute or 5 or 10 and resolve all the problems quickly. Sometimes I just like to experience the ADHD for a while because it’s what I thought was normal for 30 years of my life…

Here are some reasons why I believe meditation is the best ADD ADHD treatment:

1. It costs nothing.

2. Residual benefits. You’ll gain relaxation… peace of mind… cure or seriously curb your ADD ADHD in non-meditating, waking states .

3. Meditation is a great way to relax and create a buffer between the you that’s stressed out from work and your family who just wants to experience the stress-free you. Meditation is a great habit to get into purely for this reason alone.

4. Medication involves putting something into your body that gives side effects. Meditation involves slowing the mind down to a very slow, or stopped state… which relaxes you and eases stress.

5. Meditation is available anytime. You don’t have to wait for medication to kick in – you just sit and do it. Focusing on the breath a few times to calm yourself and slow thoughts down a bit works very well once you’ve meditated a few months.

6. You can’t overdose on meditation.

7. Eventually – after months or years you reach a state where you no longer need to meditate and your base-level concentration is much higher than it was. You can keep meditating and keep affecting it, basically operating as a normal human being after some time. Medication doesn’t change you long-term, only short-term.

I hope you look into using meditation as an ADD ADHD treatment that can profoundly change the rest of your life. If you want some help on how to get started I’ve created a free meditation ebook for download here.

If you want to learn more information about ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder < go here.

Best of Life!

Vern

There are a number of tests for Adult Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis that purport to give you a true diagnosis online after filling out a 25 question (or less) survey. I saw one instrument that had just 6 questions.

I have ADD, and have had it since I was a child. It was a real relief to learn that I had a situation going on in my head and that this is not how everyone’s brain functions. I think most of us with ADD – ADHD are shocked to learn that we have something that deserves a diagnosis.

To me it was my natural state of mind. It was stressing me out all during grade school, high school, college and grad school. It wasn’t until grad school in psychology that I knew what was going on. We gave each other tests for different maladies and I was diagnosed with profound ADD – ADHD. My attention span had always been just seconds long. Before 1997 I’d not experienced a whole 5 minutes of concentration on any one subject. The cure for me? Meditation. I’ll talk about that more in another post.

There are a whole lot of people out there – and some of you reading this too – that have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder and it would be a relief to have it diagnosed today so you can help yourself.

Recently I’ve had a couple people writing me email about how they find out if they have ADD – ADHD. I referred them to some tests I found online that appear to be valid… are they valid instruments though? I don’t recall the names of the ADD tests we used in grad school and I’ve been firmly entrenched in IT for the last 14 years.

I’m not sure if any online assessments of ADD are valid. I know they can’t be used as a diagnosis. I’d not use online tests to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder, but they’re very helpful as a pre-diagnosis. A step to take if you’re concerned you might have it – so you can seek a real diagnosis from a qualified mental health professional.

If you’re interested in what the American Psychological Association criteria are for diagnosis of adult ADD – ADHD, click here – taken from the DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition.

Though some say living with ADHD – ADD is all negative, that’s not been my experience. Maybe that’s because I just didn’t know any better for the first 30 years of my life and thought I was experiencing life the same way everyone else was. I’ve enjoyed a life with a lot of change as a result of living with child and adult attention deficit disorder.

Would my life have been the same had my parents diagnosed it when I was 8 years old? The bulk of study on ADD diagnosis and ADHD was in the 1990’s, so it’s not likely anyone knew about ADD in 1974.

My life on ADD medication would have definitely been different. It’s a choice you have to make for yourself – live with it, or medicate.

Or, you can go the route I discovered just by chance… meditation. I’ll write something about how meditation has helped me cope with ADD in the next few days. Self attention deficit diagnosis over the internet is not something I’d recommend. If you look at the criteria for assessing ADD link I gave above there are tightly defined criteria for diagnosing adult attention deficit disorder and answering some questions and applying their scoring rules are not enough.

Getting 28 points when 25 is supposedly indicative of having the disorder doesn’t mean much of anything in itself. If you do score high on the online tests book an appointment with a mental health counselor and get a genuine test and full ADD – ADHD behavioral assessment. You owe it to yourself to find out because ADD disorder is highly treatable.

You’ve probably heard of the 80:20 rule by now. My take on it as it relates to my ADD – ADHD is…

20% of all you’re doing to make your business work, or meet your goals is the most important to focus on.

80% of what you’re doing is not directly affecting anything. It’s equivalent to throwing wet toilet tissue up on the wall – and eventually enough sticks that you can call it “art”. You won’t make any money with it though. It’s not great art.

Focusing 80% of your time and energy on the 20% of tasks that directly affect your income now is the best strategy… using 20% of your time to throw wet wads of tissue up on the wall.

I’ve mentioned 100 times that I have Attention Deficit Disorder & Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD / ADHD) to a high degree.

When I’m working on things my mind is going everywhichway. I might be writing this post and I can hear the chickens outside which changes my attention to them. Then I hear a motorbike fly by – and my mind goes with it. Then I can hear some crackling of paper or plastic bag that the wind from the fan is hitting and it’s driving me insane and I have to get up and stop it. As I get up I realize I didn’t shower yet. I go shower. I come back to the computer, but before I do I think about what time I need to go exercise and if it looks like rain or not. I go outside and check for rain. I realize – it’s cold. I shut off the fan. I come back to the computer – reading everything I wrote before because I’ve forgotten it. While doing that I hear the dogs barking… and so on.

Do you or your child have ADHD/ADD?

ADD – ADHD is a horrible thing – in my case it’s like an ultra-awareness of every single part of sensory experience. It’s only overwhelming if you’re trying to do something else – which I usually am – I’m trying to focus on one thing. It is rather impossible to fight so I roll with it. Sometimes there are good days and sometimes not so good.

To have ADHD is a mind wrecker and the sooner you attack it and start setting yourself up with hacks to fix it, the better. Have you seen the ADHD Kid site that has many facts about it? It’s a site I’ve been working on to try to help people get straight facts and helpful lifehacks for dealing with the disorder.

I wanted to put some effort into this 80:20 rule for the next couple days, weeks… or maybe just today and see what happens. I’ll write down my daily goals with an emphasis on the 80:20 and see if I can make myself stick to them.

Things like email, Twitter, Google Reader and other things that I call essentials, really aren’t. They are distractions and part of the 80% that’s aren’t benefiting me directly. I’ll slow those up and put them in the 20% pool of time.

Actually, I’ll try to stay offline most of the day writing because that doesn’t require me to be online. I use this great program in my FireFox browser called, “ScribeFire” that allows me to compose blog posts quickly and with a little extra formatting that I can’t get in my WordPress text editor. I need not be online because it’s all saved to my computer’s hard disk.

I’ll write up a schedule for today…

7-8: look at email, stats, reader, twitter and respond to essentials
8-9: write blog post for aimforawesome.com. Check that blog post that was set to drip, dripped
9-10: add content to 30 day e-learning project
10:30: take friend to work
11:00: pick up some lunch on the way home so I don’t need to go out again for it
11:30: record some screencapture video and voice overlay for e-learning project
14:00: take a shower and go get some exercise if it’s too hot, otherwise stay and do more screencapt’s
15:00: FTP into new client’s account and download all files – have a brief look at code to see what I’m dealing with
16:00: Write content for big client and finish up one site today
18:00: Dinner
19:00: Create YouTube video of snake and joysthaifood.com video of dinner last night. Write more content for new site
22:00: Sleep or watch DVD

Keep in mind that the 80:20 rule is for everything I’m doing for my business goals… it has nothing to do with dropping my friend off at work or eating meals or showering. Those are subtracted out of the equation.

So – looking at hours above, I’m focused on things that will directly affect my income for 9.5 hours and throwing paper wads for 2 hours. That’s roughly 80:20 and if I accomplish this – I’ll be quite happy. I’ll also be doing things that are not work-related for 3 hours.

Usually what I do is leave internet on all day and respond throughout the day to email, blog posts, and tweets at Twitter. I think a huge portion of my day is spent doing this because I’m just not focused enough.

Usually when I write up a “to do” list I jot down main tasks to accomplish without any time frame. I never use hours. What happens then is that I spend all the time between the main tasks looking at email, Google Reader, using Twitter, chat and everything else that isn’t doing anything for my bottom line.

Last week I turned off the internet for a day and realized it was my most productive day of the week. The internet aggravates my ADD – ADHD, but, since that’s the path I chose for my life’s work – it’s a necessary evil.

Did you ever try shutting the computer off for a whole day?

Best of life!

Vern
Living in Hawaii in such a low-stress environment takes away a lot of the ADHD/ADD craziness I experience elsewhere.