By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. So does my ADHD life... Photo by David Benbennick; licenced under the Creative Commons
I don’t know about you, but before my ADHD diagnosis, my life was kind of like an Escher painting: lots of elements looked normal, but the big picture was definitely screwed up.
I particularly relate to the drawing where you’re not sure if the figures are walking down the stairs, or up the stairs, or both. It’s disorienting; it’s anxiety-provoking; the perspective leaves you feeling slightly off-kilter.
If you have undiagnosed ADHD and you see these works, something inside you screams: Hey! That’s me! Continuously moving, but never getting anywhere!
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
I love Saturdays. It’s the one day of the week I cut myself some slack and listen to my favorite comedy show, The Debaters, and to advertising genius, Terry O’Reilly, on CBC Radio, Canada’s national broadcaster.
A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the early morning show on a Saturday and making an omelette (yes, that’s something I can actually cook!) The host, Mary Ito, spontaneously decided to ask her listeners to send in words that they had made up. Great! I thought. I’ll tell her about my word “blurtatious.”
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
Fire’s burning, fire’s burning
Draw nearer, draw nearer…
A while ago, I reminisced about good times as a Girl Guide. I have very few childhood memories, but incredibly, 40 years later, I can still tie a clove hitch, and I’m a mean fire pit architect: I can build it teepee-style or log cabin.
I’m amazed that I can still remember these things, not to mention the indelible memory of the night we had a séance to channel Lord Baden Powell (the Guiding Founder).
My friend Keri went into a trance and channeled Baden Powell, and we all peppered him/her with questions, only stopping when she went white as a ghost and nearly passed out, scaring the beejeezus out of all of us. What I don’t remember is how we got away with that, right in the Trillium Hall. No doubt about it: Girl Guides was cool.
It was also the perfect place for a hyperactive Chick A-D-D like me.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
I’ve been mulling over the controversy around the upcoming DSM-5.
A friend and I were discussing the issue when she made a remarkable comment. It was one of those insights that, as soon as you hear it, the lightbulb goes on.
Having a several decades-long career as a publisher, independent bookstore owner, and book lover made her remark even more startling.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the Dragon. I thought I’d celebrate by starting off with some fresh-baked peanut butter cookies for breakfast.
The Dragon made me do it…
Confession: that’s not exactly how I planned it; cookies for breakfast on Chinese New Year was serendipity, of sorts. I’d planned to make them yesterday, as a way to take a break from my work.
As a little girl, peanut butter cookies were my favorite. How hard could it be? I thought. I found a website called Simply Recipes which I mistakenly read as, “simple” recipes. With only nine ingredients, and three – 3! – steps, I thought even I could handle this cookie-making thing. Goes to show how wrong you can be.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
Did someone say "Starting fires?"
Girl Guides. They had me at “fire-starting.”
Did you go to Girl Guides when you were a young ADHD girl? I did, and I loved it. Turns out a lot of the skills I learned in guiding were handy for a budding ADHDer. The camping trips didn’t hurt, either.
What’s not to love?
There was the aforementioned fire-starting (initially, the leaders and I had different ideas about that. We worked it out.)
Then there was financial management. I discovered that if I spent my dues on candy before the meeting, I’d be too hepped-up and sent home. I decided to pay my dues. Besides, I didn’t want to lie about losing my money. I actually did lose it often enough as it was.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
What's Your ADHD Story?
Since I last wrote about the impending DSM-5, Dr. Ronald Pies’ blog post appeared in World of Psychology here at Psych Central. I found Pies’ post, Why Psychiatry Needs to Scrap the DSM System: An Immodest Proposal, interesting on several levels. Foremost was the fact that Pies calls for a replacement of the DSM that sounded hauntingly familiar.
Storytelling is very Canadian, eh?
Pies’ suggested approach to replace the current DSM diagnostic tool looked a lot like something already being used by Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Tim Bilkey. Bilkey has diagnosed over 3400 adolescents and adults at his ADHD clinics in Ontario.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
ADHD transition triumph: solving surprise party startle!
I’ve written before about how difficult transitions can be for those of us with ADHD. In my post, 8 Gifts for ADHD Kids, gift #4 was transition time. Even ADHD adults need extra time to switch from one activity to another.
This weekend, I looked forward to being taken out to dinner for my birthday. We’d arranged to meet at my friend’s house, and proceed from there.
I arrived punctually, only to find that some of my closest friends were already assembled. There were helium-filled balloons, presents, bottles of wine, and a huge spread of incredible home-cooked food.
In short, more than a few of my favorite things. But also an unexpected and therefore overwhelming array of stimuli to take in on a moment’s notice.
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
Zoë Kessler, 4 months old; the beginning of a lifetime of bad hair days!
I’m celebrating not only the new year, but also my birthday (today).
Birthdays remind me that the clock is counting down. What do I want to do with the time I have left? And how do I figure out how much that is? See? Time-management is impossible!
Nonetheless, people without ADHD try to convince us otherwise, so I play along. I personally have learned how to be on time since my ADHD diagnosis, so that’s something (and I’m sure my non-ADHD employer is grateful).
Every year from January 1st to the 7th, I take time to reflect, clarify my goals, and to learn from the past years’ experiences.
A major problem with this strategy, of course, is that I can hardly remember last year. Still, I soldier on. I can still learn from what I think happened, right?
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By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.
My first post for 2012 takes me full circle to one of the inaugural posts I wrote for ADHD from A to Zoë back in 2010.
At the time, my ADHD diagnosis was a mere 2 years old, and I had a bag full of questions I needed answered, not least of which was: What The #$#%! Is ADHD?
It turned out that the answer was not that straight-forward. Nor, it would seem, is it any more so today.
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