How to Deal With the Stigmatization of ADD

Different places in the world treat people who are diagnosed with ADD in different ways. The measures are different, the approaches are different, the research bases are different. No matter what, if you're labeled with a diagnosis of ADD or any other "disorder" it causes lasting effects in your life. Based on historic psychology and cultural research about "mental illness," ADD began it's current negative stigma path with the beginning of our compulsory education system. What results are we seeing from the current treatment methods and, most important, from the lasting social and psychological effects on ourselves and our children today? How can you change the negative path into a more positive approach to ADD and most of the other spectrum disorders, like bi-polar, OCD, Panic/Anxiety, ODD, and the other "executive function" areas of behavior and pathology? This article brings right-on approaches to build an "amazing, dynamic, high-density" life instead of a life with Learning Disabilities and AD/HD. The hidden nature of the scars people labeled with mental disabilities carry, pack a particular shame, and a characteristic legacy ensues. This can have a range of consequences spanning everything from hiding a recurring prison history, to avoiding the appearance of "job-hopping," to worrying about your boss finding out that you're procrastinating, or even being over-confident that your latest dreams and schemes are based on reality, and not some wild raving thoughts of someone with mental illness. It even includes things like disclosure, and asking to do things outside the system that draw attention in a negative way. Follow these steps to break the negative patterns and responses.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Understand that you don't look like you operate the same as the 80% of the world that supposedly doesn't have learning disabilities and AD/HD. You don't. You're different. The differences make you stick out in the world today. A long time ago, your behaviors and your specialties were perfect for an environment where we needed to act the way you do. The conditions changed over the last 130,000 years, and in particular, in the last 200. Our genes are still the same. So are everyone else's. You now stick out, and when you do, people want to put you in an "unsafe" or "questionable" category in their brain. They react to you accordingly.
2. Shame is nothing to be ashamed of. But getting rid of it can be quite another proposition. A great exercise is to write down 10 things that you are really proud of! Ten accomplishments--and try to make 4 or 5 of them from before you graduated high school. Look for the common characteristics that you think you needed in order to make them momentous occasions in your life. Now, look for ways to bring those conditions into your life and your work in positive ways.
3. Work and life should reflect positive things. When you hang around with other positive people, you form a community or a fellowship. With unity comes strength. If you don't believe that, check out history and anthropology, and not coincidentally, just about every higher thought or religious teaching out there ever written.
4. Work with your strengths, and try not to involve yourself in becoming responsible for more than about 20% of the things you don't really get jazzed about doing. Try to immerse yourself in responsibility for at least 80% of what you love to do and do well as a natural result. You may need to learn more about some skills and things along the way, but your strengths are the things you love to do, and will in many ways, overcome just about anything.
5. If you have AD/HD or any of the other "Learning Disabilities" or "disorders", your life is being ruled by something in psychology called "in-group/out-group" dynamics. You look and act and think different than 80% of the folks inside the bell-curve. It all exists for practical survival reasons in the evolutionary perspective, but today, we live in tighter spaces with a lot more social and security restrictions. This can have dire effects if you "act out" or react to things in the wrong place at the wrong time. Find out more about the ways you look and act different. It can be somewhat painful to examine the way the world has perceived and reacted or responded to some of your absolute best intentions. Be gentle with yourself and get help and support if you need it. A lot of the strengths that come built into the learning disability and disorder packages can be put to use by doing research on the Internet and on eHow.com to find out more about what you look like to the rest of the world. When you start realizing what they're reacting to, you can take positive steps to changing what you look like to the rest of the world.

Tips & Warnings

• A list of the names given to the "disorders" and "diagnoses" given to them can be found in Dr. Stephen P. Hinshaw, Ph.D., recent Oxford Press book, "The Mark of Shame."

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