Posted by LightShifter on January 21, 2004, at 21:58:47
In reply to Re: Brain fog, posted by lamark on January 21, 2004, at 19:02:54
What we are talking about here is the difference between an acute situation and a chronic condition. Stress is a subset of ADD. You can have Stress without ADD but not ADD without stress. I feel ADD may actually be caused by stress in the home life and with being forced to learn things against your natural desire. IT would be interesting to profile ADD kids and find out how much stress is in their home life that causes anxiety and what the percentage of them is.
Usually the questions to ask to find out if you have ADD is to ask yourself if the thinking conditions existed when you were a child. For me for instance I always had trouble staying focused and with being ditractable... especially by noise in school. This caused reading problems and caused me to have trouble with remembering what I heard verbally. My ability to convert what people were talking about seemed to be much slower than most but I had a great ability to be able to empathize and "listen" with my heart to people. I was able to "listen" with my "emotional" brain but had difficulty cognizing with my intellectual brain...I was what you call a "right brainer" or artistic/relational type. I could listen intellectually but it simply took longer for it to "sink in" and I really had to concentrate and sit up close to the teacher to remove distraction. I used to hate this term but they used to say people like me "were slow".
This is not an indication of intelligence however, I have learned tons on my own at my own pace and have read tons of books about subjects I'm interested in. I just have problems paying attention to things that I don't have any interest in. I suspect many people have this problem but are "able to" pay attention anyway. In my case, it just doesn't sink in at all or only very little.
I think eventually they'll realize they are not supposed to be trying to force kids to learn things against their wills in school but who knows how many generations it will take. Instead, what they do now is prescribe drugs to people like me so that everything seems to have "more of a sense of importance" and the "signal to noise" ratio improves so we can focus on and therefore remember the useless stuff they're trying to teach us better. Think about it, other than reading, writing and basic arithmetic, how much of the crap they really taught you in school have you ever really used in life? For me, it is very little, and I could have learned what I use in life in about 4 or 5 years and taught myself the rest (though who would want to and why?) after I simply learned to read. We send children to schools so we won't have to deal with them during the day and so we can work. IT has very little to do with "intellectual nurturing" and much more to do with conditioning/brainwashing children to become robots and do as they're told so when they reach adulthood they can be used by corporations. They are simply using the "supply and demand" of validation tactic to create a codependent society.
Sory about the the babbling but I have a real problem with the way we force children to learn things against their free wills. IT takes away childrens natural desire to want to learn when we force useless stuff down they're throats. Children are not our slaves and should have the same rights for freedom that anyone else has. If you are not a musician they don't force you to become artisticlly oriented, why then if you are not an academic are you forced to become so?
Blessings, ...Dan
> I described my symptoms to a therapist yesterday and she said that a lot of it has to do with stress. But obviously after the first appointment she couldn’t really determine where these symptoms were stemming from for sure. She recommended more appointments which I agree with, she also recommended the common ways to manage and reduce stress (fitness, diet, reading, etc.). However, I have also been reading about the ADD symptoms and I do agree that my symptoms are very compatible with disorder. Is it common for a therapist's first reaction to be stress? Is that usually the case? Perhaps, I just need to have a few more visits and try and figure things out myself. I do know however that I don't want to try taking medications unless it is a last resort.
poster:LightShifter
thread:7959
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040118/msgs/303973.html