Of course you aren’t what you eat. Your body cleverly selects things from your food to use in the building and maintenance of your body. But that doean’t mean you should make getting at the things it needs a difficult task.

We can always use healthy food. Left unconsidered, my diet will quickly resemble the wreckage of a train carrying snack foods, fast foods, preservatives and additives.

I don’t advocate any particular patented diet or diet program as being a cure or even a control for ADHD, but I know that being healthy means that I’m better able to deal with my quirks, better able to corral, to some extent, my scattered thoughts. And being healthy includes eating healthy. You are what you eat, go easy on the bologna

Protein is important for us, especially those of us who are hyper. Protein helps with the repair of used and abused muscles. And I do need lots of muscle repair on a regular basis.

Don’t eat food that hates you

For those of us who are sensitive to certain foods, exposure to those foods will exacerbate our ADHD symptoms. That is to say, if you are gluten intolerant, and you have ADHD, exposure to gluten will make your ADHD symptoms worse. It isn’t rocket science. Discomfort is distraction, and this can happen on a chemical level as well as a physical level.

No Cheating! Well … not a lot, okay?

For those of us who tolerate food well, or only eat food that we do tolerate well, a good diet can generally be cheated on occasionally. Mental health, like physical health, makes us resilient enough to withstand the odd injudicious indulgence.

But, if you eat junk as a rule, you’re doing neither your body, nor your mind, any favours.

I’m not about to tell you what to eat

I can’t map out a diet for you, or your child, because we are not the same people. For one thing, I can’t tolerate soy products, for instance, but that has nothing to do with my ADHD. I will get ill, physically ill, if I eat them. Another thing I have going on is this, I rely heavily on caffeine as my stimulant medication, but I don’t recommend you do that if you can tolerate, and are helped by, stimulant medications.

But I might tell you how to eat

I can tell you that if you pay attention to your diet, and how you feel when eating certain foods, you’ll have less stress in your life. And I can tell you that whether or not the diet has any positive effect on your ADHD symptoms, the reduced stress will certainly make your life better.

Additionally, if it’s your child’s diet you’re working on, know this: any positive attention you pay to your child will affect them positively. Some people suggest that it is a placebo effect, but I think not. I think that if you show a child love and support, if you work with them to help them reach their potential, they will soon realize their own value. They will soon get the message that they are worth the effort, and they will match that effort.

Consider both cause and effect

This also means that a change in their diet might well bring about positive results that have more to do with you paying attention than with the new diet.

But regardless of the cause, improvements should be reinforced positively. Those affected by either the diet or the attention will still have ADHD, they will still have symptoms. But un-exacerbated by stress, those symptoms will hopefully be the lessened.

So what is Dr. Kelly’s advice?

So my advice is … pay attention to your diet, but don’t obsess about it. Be good to yourself, and your body and mind will reward you. Don’t make your children think there is something wrong with them, make them believe there are many things right with them. Teach them to take advantage of their strengths.

Feed your minds and bodies on a steady diet of stimulating thoughts and healthy foods. Like rain and sun and fertilizer helps plants and trees be their best, so to does positive thoughts and a healthy diet help us to grow and flourish.

More on positive thoughts next week.

I love the farmer’s market. If you have a market in your town, a real farmer’s market, you should go.

No, I’ve not started writing a travelogue, but maybe I could do that as a sideline … mmmmmmnnnnnno! The thing about my town’s farmers market is that I’ve lived in this town for 50 years, I know many people. I’m related to some of them. Going to market gets me caught up on current local events and gossip. Deals are made, ideas are generated, friends connect.

Oh, and I often get food there as well. Both to eat on the spot, and to take home for my pantry.

Know thy neighbor

Part of interacting with people, a very important part I think, is knowing who you’re talking to. That moment when you meet someone, and you know you know them, but you’re damned if you can remember from where, or what their name is, or even why you know them … that, that is excruciatingly painful.

It’s called Prosopagnosia

Painful because we care about people. This makes me think that my ADHD is affecting someone else. I often feel like I’m doing my duty by suffering the indignity of this insidious thing, and that it is my job to make sure no one else is troubled by it.

Sometimes it’s just the name you’ve forgotten, but that can be worse. It can be worse if you were supposed to meet that person there and the name is gone, “poof!”

Yet there is more

It’s even worse if you actually arrived with the person who’s name has gone missing from your mental Rolodex. Yeah, oh oh.

Now where was I?

So meanwhile, back at the market, I’m minding my own business, when someone I know pops into view. They see me and come over to say hi. I’m not even thinking about their name, I’m just happy to see them. A quick hug and then I remember that I’m not at the market alone. Did I mention I wasn’t alone? Huh, forgot again. I’m bad for that.

So anyway, I’m not at the market alone. I’ve brought a new friend with me because she has lived in my town for close to a year and has never been to the Saturday morning market. I remember her name fine, but I’m struggling with the name of the person I’ve known for a couple of years. And I can’t start an introduction without knowing both names.

Better late than never? Nope, better never!

Ooops, way too late, I’d already started when I realized I couldn’t put a name to the face. I had jovially blurted out “Hey, d’you know …” and then had stopped. Even though I knew the name of the person I was about to introduce, I stopped because my mind was several words ahead, struggling with the missing name.

Finally I yelled at my mind (under my breath so no one heard me) “You don’t need her name yet, just introduce the person you’re standing here with … ”

And then I discovered that my mind had dropped the name it had previously held such a tight grip on.

And then, my acquaintance chimed in … “Hi, Juno, I’m Lanie.” purposely mishearing “D’you know” as “Juno.” Then she extended her hand.

“Pop” … something shook loose in my head. “I’m sorry, Lanie.” I said as they shook hands, “This is Sandy, not Juno.”

We all laughed, what choice did we have. We were having a 100% ADHD moment, we three were experiencing ADHD, my ADHD, at its best.

I spent most of my undiagnosed life blaming bad luck for the lows and feeling very lucky when times were good, which wasn’t often. I didn’t then, nor do I now, believe in the art of fortune telling.

I get a kick out of numerology when applied to birth dates, because the numbers are based on a calendar that has a random start date.

Tarot cards may be more accurate, I don’t know, and I’m equally unenlightened about palm reading. They could be the real deal … though I doubt it. My palms are so scarred that I don’t think you could read them anyway, even if they were actually written on. Oh, wait … eggs, bread, new guitar … maybe I can read my palm.

And I was never lucky at cards

Not Tarot cards, playing cards, greeting cards, none of them.

And credit cards also seem to hold more misfortune than fortune for me. Mine was recently hacked for several thousand dollars worth of travel and accommodation. Visa is currently trying to ascertain whether or not I’ll be liable for that??!?

I’ve never known anyone with a crystal ball, nor the ability to see the future in one.

I think the art of phrenology, the reading of the lumps on ones head, might have more to it then crystal gazing. I’d like to give it a try, if only for the scalp massage. But my head has some weird bumps, I don’t know if they could read mine.

But if there is one obvious place to turn, it would have to be the fortune cookie fortune.

How can we be sure that it is effective?

There are many reasons why the fortune cookie fortune works. It isn’t printed up specifically about you, so it can’t have been knowingly geared to you. And hey, it’s a cookie, what more proof do you need? Okay, enough with the reasons, already.

Without any further distractions, I’d like to relate to you my choices for top 10 fortune cookie fortunes for people with ADHD. Some of them might be actual fortune cookie fortunes … but probably not, this is a low budget production.

10 – You are a person with too many books on the go …

9 – You appreciate browser tabs

8 – The rent is late

7 – You may find that you are easily distracted

6 – What was I talking about?

5 – You are an idea person

4 – At this time you may find you have had to much coffee

3 – You are about to embark on a new career … again

2 – You are a person of infinite activity

And the number one, all time favorite fortune cookie fortune (of mine)

1 – Squirrel!

Happy Friday everyone.

Today is Mental Health Month Blog Day and I wanted to do something to participate. Many of you may be aware that, while my personal mental health issue is ADHD, my personal challenge is to battle mental health stigma. I’m not alone, many bloggers work hard to minimize the effects of stigma with every post they write.

One of my favourite bloggers, Melanie Knapp, writer of Psychology Discussions, also believes in reducing stigma. Her voice is softer and gentler than mine, but her message is no less powerful.

She and I have decided to share a title for Mental Health Month Blog Day. And that title is the one you see at the top of this post. Here is her post.

And I mean it!

Well, maybe not these shoes …

Don’t judge me. That’s really all I want to say. Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. The part about walking a mile in my shoes is somewhat irrelevant. If you truly do know what it’s like to walk a mile in my shoes, I know you aren’t about to judge me.

But if you don’t know what it’s like to walk a mile in my shoes, if you don’t know what it’s like to have ADHD, let me make it easy for you. You already have all the symptoms. Well, if you don’t have all of them, you have most of them.

• Do you ever start doing one thing and end up doing something else?
• Do you ever walk into a room and wonder what you went in there for?
• Do you ever say something and, possibly while you are saying it, start to think you shouldn’t be saying it? And then know you shouldn’t?
• Do you ever make an appointment and then forget about it, completely?
• Do you ever find that you need intense activity to jump start your thinking?
• Do you ever over-indulge in something just because it feels good to?
• Do you ever leave some task to the last minute and then, when others would be giving up, you do it with little or no time to spare?

Me too. But here’s the difference. This is the norm for me. This is my life, from one end of the day to the other, these things happen for me over and over and over, ad infinitum. Or, I guess, ADD infinitum.

For instance, I can walk in to a room, wonder what I went there for, return to the room I had left in the hopes I’ll remember, only to wonder what I’m doing in that room. And even when it isn’t that bad, I still do it twenty times a day.

You might go in to a store to buy a quart of milk and come out with the milk and a chocolate bar. I’ll walk in to the store and come out with 10 things I wasn’t looking for, five of which I can’t afford and two that I already have at home … but I won’t have the milk.

Is there a problem here?

Yes, these things are problems. But you judging me won’t fix them.

I’m glad that those of you without ADHD don’t have to put up with these symptoms [...] I don’t think you could take it.

And while this might be a bit judgmental on my part, I’m glad that those of you without ADHD don’t have to put up with these symptoms at the intensity and frequency that I have to endure. You see, I don’t think you could take it. We, the ADHDers of the world, have been working and living and playing with these symptoms all our lives, you’ve only been told what it’s like.

So I’m asking you nicely, don’t judge me, or others with ADHD, until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.

And for heaven sake, try not to walk a mile in my shoes.

Sometimes I think that working for a contractor is the best possible job for someone with ADHD. There is structure without routine. There is a set expectation. I know what I’m supposed to do and when. I can do my best work and it is appreciated.

And often, when I go that extra mile or figure out how to make something better or do something more efficiently, that’s appreciated also.

Did I mention I’ve started work for the season? Well, I have.

And there’s more. There’s something about working that I love. I mean working as in having a job. The thing I love about it is the focus that comes with engaging your brain in a task that is judged successful when the time is up for the day. Whether the job itself is finished or not, I’ve put in the day. I go at it with the goal being to get to the end of the day, and I succeed.

I’m not a watch watcher

I’m not lazy. I do the work and I put real effort into it. I don’t shirk. If I’m hurting when the day is done, I know I was working hard enough. And the job itself may end at anytime, but more often than not, when that happens, there is another job to go to.

Who’s the boss here anyway?

I’ve noted the difference between working for someone else and working for myself. It’s too easy to get distracted by details, desires, ambitions. I could be self employed but it would have to be as a contractor. I need an end plan in order to focus. The point of running a business is to maintain a job, keep making work. That seems foreign to me. I work better if I can identify a job, and then eliminate it.

And another thing …

Distraction is my number one enemy. But it seems I’m able to work around that when I work for someone else. For example, when I’m on the job, I might be going to the tool trailer to get a shovel. I don’t pick up a hammer and take it to some other task to quickly do some other thing that then sidetracks me again into another line of thought about three other things … or 33 other things. I get the shovel. I go do the shovelling. I put the shovel back. I move on.

What about the soundtrack?

It sounds boring, but it isn’t. My mind is still whirling around at light speed. There’s still a light and music show going on in there. It just doesn’t get to play with things in the real world, it has to settle for thoughts and plans and schemes. It can’t make me pick up the hammer until it is time for me to pick up the hammer.

What’s it worth to me?

There are times when I think ADHD is made up entirely of poor self esteem and self awareness. If I can treat the jobs my boss gives me with this much respect, why can’t I respect the things I need done for myself enough to just take care of them with focus and dispatch?

Oh well …

But this is a question I can spend some time pondering, while I work, because while I work, my mind will need something to do. It isn’t allowed to play with the hammer.

And I only know one of them. Well, okay, I know the one where I set my GPS to an address and let it tell me where to go. I’m use to being told where to go, I’ve been told plenty.

I would really like to set the GPS voice to that of a Scottish Female. I find that accent very appealing. But I’m pretty sure I’d just find that to be distracting. I’m also certain I’d be taking wrong turns just to hear her say “That’s okay, sure, we’ll just be recalculating and we’ll have you back on the rrrright rrroad in noo time.”

Back on track …

But the GPS isn’t what I want to tell you about. I want to talk about ADHD Navigation. On Tuesday of this week, I hit the road at 5AM for a run down to that city with the international reputation, that you may all hold accountable as the place of my birth. That’s right, Toronto. Toronto has grown a bit since 1959, and I have too. For one thing, I find myself calmer and cooler if I steer clear of such hectic urban sprawl.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the city … once I’m in it. I love walking down streets of culture. Past culture, current culture, future culture, I feel at home in the melee of sights and sounds and smells.

Wait, am I lost, again?

Again I digress. I was talking about navigating, ADHD style. But now, looking back on what I’ve written, I see I haven’t so much digressed as given you an example of ADHD Navigation. I’ll get there, just not on time, and not likely via the most direct route. And that was my trip to Toronto, and also my return home.

My passenger and I were on our way to her new apartment to deliver some of her belongings. She doesn’t drive and told me that she has only a vague sense of which highways go where. And we get along well enough to chatter quite a bit, so road signs are no help beyond providing options for more conversation – “I wonder what that sign said?”

So the rule of the day for navigation was just keep heading South and East, on the way down, then North and West on the way home.

All those in favor …

Turns were decided on by majority vote, which was usually a vote of one, with the other voter abstaining. One or the other of us would say “I think we should take that road coming up, and the other one would say “Whatever you think best …” thinking “I’m sure you’re so wrong.” but sub consciously hoping the other one was right.

And more often than not, we were right. On the way home, we discussed this means of navigation. She had been a bit upset by it I think, but seemed relieved when I said I didn’t care. I think she was worried that I might have expected her to navigate with detailed precision.

Zen and the art of friendship maintenance

I pointed out that we had seen some wonderful sights, and had some delightful conversation. That our friendship had not suffered and, in fact had more likely grown stronger. She laughed when I called my means of finding my way “holistic navigation.”

Sometimes when I’m bouncing from thing to thing in my scattered world, I come across stuff I might have missed had I not been … you know, looking at everything at once, the whole picture. I think that holistic navigation, while still in its infancy, is well worth looking into. Someone should focus on that, eh?

When I was a young lad in school, as you will know if you have parents or grandparents, I had to walk twenty miles to school each day and twenty miles back again, up hill both ways, and it always snowed while I was walking. And often times, that was the good part of my day.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I am not lying when I tell you that I went to one room schools, as in “Little House On The Prairie.” Grade one and grade two were spent in a school with grades one through eight all being taught by one teacher. How did I learn anything you ask? I learned everything. If the teacher was talking I was listening, struggling to comprehend lessons meant for people who ranged from a year older than I was to people twice my age. But I couldn’t do my own work.

By grade three we were being bussed to different schools, still one roomers, where we were collected by age so that we didn’t have as many distractions. That year I attended a school that had only grades one two and three. The next year I went to a different school that had grades four and five and the next year I went to a different one again that had grades five and six.

The good, the bad and the abusive …

Although I had a fairly bad teacher earlier in my life, grade five delivered me into the hands of the queen of harsh teachers. Her methods of motivation were making an example of you and ridiculing you. And by you, I mean me.

As a boy with ADHD in a world that knew nothing of ADHD, I was a natural target for her maliciousness. I was not her only target, not even her favorite one, but I was a frequent one, and I was one who was prepared to believe in my stupidity.

The breaking of a boy

The year went very poorly for me, and finally … I broke. I don’t remember what happened that day, I don’t remember the fracturing of my mind. If you had asked me I would have said I must have blacked out, but I was apparently loud and vocal about my fear of having to remain in that school.

I never went back. After a month of rest I was returned to the school of grade fours and fives where I managed very well with the understanding woman who mastered that institution.

Lets talk about something else

In my school career, I had good teachers. My grandmother was a retired teacher, and she became my first school teacher when she taught me to read and write before I officially started school.

My first grade teacher was a kindly gentleman who was intolerant of misbehaviour, but fair in deciding what that actually was. My third grade teacher was also a very good teacher, and my fourth grade teacher, the one who took over part way through my fifth year and salvaged my shattered self esteem was by far my favorite.

Yes, I got my share of “Does not apply himself to the full of his potential …” comments on report cards, all through school, at every grade, but that was all they knew back then.

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be thankful, to look for the good in everyone and everything. But I’ve been bitter about my experience in grade five for so long that it’s hard to let it go.

I’m moving on …

But today, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to thank that teacher for giving me something none of the good ones were able to offer. I’m going to thank that teacher for teaching me what life without compassion would be like.

I’ve grown strong because of good teachers I’ve had and continue to have in my life. Ones with compassion, ones who seek out the student who needs their own path to learning.

The good ones are out there, I’m nodding at you, Rahmi and Tron, as my proof. And I know there are more of you, I wish to say thanks to you also. You are needed, you are admired and appreciated and needed.

If you have ADHD, you’ve got trouble. You know the symptoms as well as I do. And yes, we all agree that we love our lightning brains, but the controls on them aren’t what we would have ordered if we had been getting the custom model instead of the factory refurb.

The thing about ADHD is that our minds don’t develop completely in a couple of key areas. We’re left with the executive function of a child.

That means that even as adults, we make mistakes that are viewed as children’s mistakes. When we screw up, we do it in a childlike way.

But take heart, I’ve found some thoughts that can help you overcome feelings of inadequacy, simple things that are childlike in their simplicity.

1. Sit at the kids table. I prefer the kids table, ADHD fits in there. If you sit with the adults, you’re not going to have as much fun, but if you sit with the kids, you’ve got potential to really enjoy yourself. You score extra points if doing so allows someone who really deserves it, to sit at the grownups table.
2. If given a choice, always opt for the more youthful activity. Lets face it, most of us are far more likely to shine at sport oriented activities or video games than we are at discussing the market or the merits of various shades of white for a soon to be painted second bath. Choose the walk, the game of ping pong, canoeing, snowshoeing, air hockey, you get the picture.
3. Get busy. When you’re feeling like you’re out of sorts, having trouble concentrating or just unable to settle into something like bed or a movie, do something active for a while. We don’t transition well, but if you force a transition into some brief active or adventurous diversion and then transition into whatever you’re having trouble with, you might find it easier to cope. So take a short, brisk walk, Climb a tree, play hoops or hopscotch in the driveway or bounce a ball against the garage for 15 minutes.
   It’s not unlike speeding up your breathing to get control when you are hyper-ventilating. Once you have control, you can slow it down. Once you have control of your transitioning, you can move to the quieter activity with less trouble.
4. Take the time to play now and again. We spend way to much time worrying about falling behind. The truth is that we have no benchmark we have to reach. We can’t fall behind. Okay, we can get behind in the laundry and the bill paying, but we can get behind in feeling good about ourselves too. So schedule yourself some fun. Paint a picture, especially if you’re not good at it, make a house of cards, join a baseball or hockey league, learn to bake or take up archery.
5. Last of all, and this one truly is the closer, don’t take yourself so seriously, especially when you screw up. When you were a kid, and things didn’t work the way you planned and you got in trouble, it was out of your head in moments. Let it go, the self abuse does more harm than the screwing up could ever do.

So that’s my advice for today. Do the young thing, if you have a choice of two paths, take the one that leads past the playground, kick gravel, drag a stick along the fence, see what the view of the trail is like from the woods instead of settling for the view of the woods from the trail.

Just lighten your heart and mind, just be good to yourself, just … be a kid.

Having ADHD means that I have non-functional executive function, executive dysfunction if you will. This is the part of my cognitive machinery that is supposed to help with decision making.

It isn’t that it doesn’t work, it does, when I engage it. But engaged should be its default state, and it isn’t . Or at least, when it is needed, it should kick into gear automatically. It does not.

Worse still is that, since I have to engage it manually, I have to decide whether I need it, without having it engaged. Do you see a problem there? How am I to make a decision on whether I need the decision making machinery without having the decision making machinery up and running.

It’s never that easy …

That all sounds rather simplistic, and it is. In truth, if I’m slowed up a bit, my uncommon common sense will often give me pause to think. I love that phrase, “pause to think.” It’s often what I need. If pausing to think isn’t common sense, if it isn’t executive function, it is a damned good substitute.

No you may be wondering whether I’ve gotten off on the wrong topic here. I haven’t mentioned social media yet. Well maybe now is the time to tell you that social media isn’t really the social filter I was alluding to. It’s more the context of the social filter, mixed with a means of communicating. You see, it’s the enter key that I use. Okay, sometimes it’s the mouse button, it’s what ever gives me the chance to differentiate between thinking and saying.

It all happens too fast

When I open my mouth, I don’t get to assemble the words, take a second and maybe a third look at them and then click send or hit enter.

When I open my mouth to speak, in my mind, the deed is done, the words have already been spoken. In fact, my mind is already farther on in the conversation, anticipating what the response will be and calculating options for my next response. And it gets pretty upset when it has to backtrack to apologize for something it has already forgotten it sent to my mouth.

But online, oh online …

Yes, when I’m logged on to some social network or other, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, I am the editor of my own thoughts. And before I hit enter or click send, I have the opportunity to edit those thoughts, and sometimes delete them entirely.

Now I’m not saying that I always edit those thoughts, that I never mess up online, I’m simply saying it happens less often. Those of you who only know me online are now thanking whatever god or gods you honor for the gift of not knowing me IRL, in real life, right?

Don’t worry, I’m not offended …

I’m so much cooler online … no, really.

What I’m really saying is that somewhere in the fact that there is an enforced difference between typing the statement and sending it, is a clue to what is missing for us, the thing that is dysfunctional.

It is as futile to tell us to stop and think before we speak as it would be to tell us to pay attention.

But there must be something to this. There must be, because I truly am … so much cooler online.

I know, scary thought, eh?

Are you tired? Are you bored? Have you had enough of ADHD? Do you want a cure? Do you want a way to fix it? End it? Leave it in the past?

Join the club. That’s what we all want.

That’s why the people with the latest therapy or herbal remedy or book or diet will always have customers.

Don’t misunderstand me, some of the books outline plans that help some of us, maybe even many of us. And many of the books available do the great service of reminding us that we are not alone in this insidious disorder. But we are as diverse a group as there could be. Even the things we have in common aren’t common to each and every one of us.

How bad is it, doc?

So we are in the worst situation. We recognize our symptoms in each other, but no one else has all our symptoms. How could there be a single solution, a one size fits all fix for the diversified mind of diversion?

In a world of white, button down arrow collared, long sleeved dress shirts, we are a big old rack of tie-dyed tees …

In a world of white, button down arrow collared, long sleeved dress shirts, we are a big old rack of tie-dyed tees, every one the same, no two alike. Some of us are loud and flashy, some of us are deep and quiet, each of us is swirly in our own unique way.

And when we get going, we can be pretty intense. We do things with out reservation, we hit some plan hard and barrel through. We don’t look to the side when this happens, we keep our head down and we charge in with guns blazing, so to speak.

Ahh, but then …

When we’ve finished, ahh when we’ve finished, we can’t answer the simple questions that people ask. Questions like “How did you think of that?” or “How did you manage to accomplish that so quickly?” go unanswered while we raise hands and shoulders and shake heads with glazed eyes and open mouths. We don’t recall how we did it, sometimes we don’t recall even being present for the work.

And yet, we know we did it. We have a brief sense of accomplishment. We even feel proud of what we’ve done, though we wonder how we managed it.

This is just one of the things about ADHD I could leave behind without a backward glance. I wish I could capture the secret of “how I do it” so I could bring it to bear on every problem I have.

And I do love the things I do, the things I get done, the stuff I accomplish. But I know the sacrifices I make. I forget the little things and the not so little things that require my attention.

So when it comes to ADHD, I’ve been there, done that, whatever that was …

… you know, most of it, well, some of it, anyway. Damn!