One Brain's journey

A new study, that will be published in the August edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology, conducted at the University of York in the U.K. shows that stimulant medication significantly increases visuo-spatial working memory but that Cogmed Working Memory Training leads to significant improvements in all four critical measures of working memory: verbal and visuo-spatial short-term and visuo-spatial working memory. In addition the training effects were still in place when the subjects were retested six months later.

The subjects were 25 children with ADHD. The study is the latest from the team of Joni Holmes Ph.D and Susan Gathercole Ph.D who have been performing independent research examining the impact of Cogmed training on subjects with ADHD and working memory problems.

A friend asked me for a phone number a day or two ago and I said I didn’t have it but I knew someone who did and gave him that phone number. He called the mutual friend who declared, “I gave that number to him last week.” The first friend called me back to tell me this and I suppose expected some measure of guild from me in that I had lost the number or, more likely, had written it down and forgotten where I had put it. He got no satisfaction on the guilt front. I learned that lesson not long after I was diagnosed with ADHD. Soon after I heard one of the top experts on ADHD in Canada talk about the difference in treating adults with ADHD and treating children. “The main difference,” he said, “is that with the adults you have to deal with the self-esteem issues that have built up over a lifetime and if you don’t do this, you never get anywhere with treatment. With the kids they haven’t had time to suffer all the knocks and disappointments that lead to low self-esteem.”

I have never forgotten this and although I can still do a number on myself over some mistake or misplaced object, I rarely let someone else get away with it. My reply to the mutual friend was simply, “Whether I got it from him before or not is irrelevant. What I said was that I don’t have it now.”

My close friends know that this sort of statement means the issue is closed, certainly as far as I’m concerned but the odd one, usually someone who doesn’t know me well will persist. It happened to me a few weeks ago. Someone whom I have known for a long time but not well asked me to ask another mutual friend to call him when I saw him next. I stated that I would not remember. He persisted, more-or-less along the referred guilt path with a statement like, “What do you mean you won’t remember?”

I replied, “I don’t know how I can make it any clearer. I wont remember.”

He still wasn’t buying it and said, “Okay I’ll call you and remind you.”

Now I had him and I knew as sure as I knew I wouldn’t remember the first message that he wouldn’t remember to call to remind me and sure enough he didn’t.

I don’t really get angry in these circumstances…unless pressed. At least I have stopped getting angry, for the most part, at myself. Oh it does happen occasionally but it passes quickly but not nearly as quickly as any referred guilt from someone else. I guess you could say this is my contribution to my own self esteem and when I am diligent about it, it works.

The day I was diagnosed with ADD I left the psychiatrist’s office and sat in my car in the parking lot and cried. In an instant I had the answer to all the accusations from age 12 to that moment of how I was lazy of how I didn’t apply myself of how I didn’t measure up. Now I knew for the first time that it wasn’t my fault. I was infinitely relieved to the point where it brought the tears. Unfortunately the feelings of relief didn’t last and within a month or two I was in the same psychiatrist’s office telling him that I was depressed. What I was now thinking about was of the promise of a good and interesting life that had gone unfulfilled.

I remembered the psychologist who did a complete psycho neurological, psycho-educational assessment after I had failed my second year in university, who told me that I had the intellectual capability to be successful in any course of action I should choice and in any educational program I might choose. I asked what she meant and she replied that I could study medicine, law, architecture, physics…anything. However, she had also picked up indications that there something quite wrong and recommended that I spent some time and effort finding out what that was. I didn’t. I was so relieved to find out that I wasn’t an idiot, not that they would have had the knowledge back then to find out anyway.

On yeah I had gone to night school and slowly, painstakingly acquired a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and then completed the BA at the university from which I had been debarred years before but these were not difficult programs and I still had trouble with them.

I realized, gradually, that most of the major choices in my life had not been made by me but by the disorders, ADD and the social anxiety subsequently diagnosed. I had jobs instead of a career. I had not chosen to stay single, to not raise a family, to not own property. I had not chosen to live most of my life alone. These things had been forced on me either by ADD or by social anxiety. Of course I also realized that there were thousands, maybe millions of people on the planet who would change places with me in an instant but quite frankly it didn’t make it any easier. It wasn’t about the quality of life, the opportunities or even about having a choice. It was about being deprived of the power of choice.

It cost me—mentally, emotionally and eventually financially. I filed for personal bankruptcy and spent too much of my time in regret for things that never were.

It took a few years, but then the medication, I was on both a stimulant and an antidepressant, began to work. I started to follow some of the other suggestions I had received, like taking a martial art and I came to terms with the past and began to look to the future…