ADDed Insights... A Conversation with Lynn Weiss

I thought / knew Dr. Lynn Weiss, author, lecturer, psychotherapist, radio talk show host, mother of an ADD son and fellow ADDer. At least I had read several of her books. They're all very readable, with practical solutions to such practical life skills as getting and keeping a job, making relationships work, and just living with ADD.

But my 90 some odd minutes of conversation with her revealed another Dr. Weiss. Recanting the subtitle of her first book, "Practical Help for Sufferers and their Spouses" (indeed, that line and all references to it have mysteriously disappeared in the latest reprints), this Lynn Weiss wants to eliminate the "sufferer" aspect of dealing with ADD. In an interesting paradigm shift, her philosophy about ADD has changed significantly- moving away from the Conventional Wisdom other field, that ADD as a "Disorder", to a view that says ADD needs to be "Depathologized" and "De-medicalized" To be seen as a Difference, but not a Disorder.

And certainly not a Disaster.

Here's part of our conversation:

Bob: Hi. This is Bob. How are you doing?

LW: Great!

She's very "up", a very high energy, positive sounding person

Bob: You work out of your home, don't you?

LW: Yes, and I love it. It's really the only way for me. I'm not very employable.

Bob: Why do you say that?

LW: I just have my own agenda, my own things I want to be doing.

Bob: But not with computers. You didn't impress me as a computer type person.

LW: The hardest part about writing is sitting at the computer. No, I'm not a computer type person, the thought of sitting there for hours... I'm very much a people person.

Bob: Is that an ADD thing, where we don't like to learn new skills, we just like to pursue things we already know?

LW: Well, you know, there's not a monolithic "ADD person". One thing I noticed first of all, back, oh at least two years ago, and this was at Merriville, when all the computer stuff showed up, and people just raved about the computers. There was this huge group at that conference, the ADDA conference. My reaction was "Yuck."

But what I realized was that there are two types of ADD people. One is that "techy" kind, and they sort of hyperfocus, and they really, really love this. Its been a godsend. And then the other is almost the opposite, it's a very creative person in the sense of generating things... many things generate from within, and they're totally structure free, or prefer to be very structure free. I am the latter. It really doesn't have anything to do with learning.

I have no patience for what somebody else thinks I need to learn. Absolutely none. Never have. Even designed my own doctorate. So, that orientation comes because my teacher seems to be within, which is a lot the direction I'm going now. How I feel about ADD has changed a lot.

Bob: It's the Chinese proverb "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

LW: I absolutely believe that. You get into a lot of mystical stuff. Its not really mystical. It's a part of the way that some brains process information. And there as many answers inside as anybody ever thought in a library, in fact there are probably many more. But we ve not been trained, at least not for the last 2500 years, to access that inner system of knowledge. And then you go, and you find, or you ask a question or you gather your own information when you need it for whatever that need is. I think one of the travesties of people who are now labeled ADD is, the only thing that is the problem, is that our culture has gotten so totally far away from that inner, is it "analogue"?, style of learning.

There's a lot of words that can be attached to it. In reality there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with ADD people until you put them in an environment, a non-ADD environment, a digital oriented environment of... of..

Bob: linear thinkers.

LW: Yeah, linear. Well you can have linear, some on both sides of this continuum, but everything that is taught in schools is linear.

Since Lynn had been a radio psychologist on a Dallas radio station, I asked if she enjoyed doing the "Dr. Laura gig" She laughed. We talked some more about ADD in the media, and the mistaken belief that someone's problems can be solved during an 3 minute conversation with a rude radio host, which led back to talking about ADD and the rift between linear and non-linear thinkers.

LW There's a phenomenon called "joining the perpetrator". Are you familiar with of that?

Bob: You mean like the Stockholm Syndrome?

LW: I don't know what that is

Bob: That was a hostage situation, and the hostages eventually began to side with their captives. Apparently this is a common thing.

LW: That could happen to anybody in that situation. It's a survival mechanism. What happens is that if you've been subjugated... or if you are even aware subtly that what is valued is, oh, lets say, memorizing and getting a high grade on what ever test it is

Bob: or what ever behavior is valued...

LW: right... and you spend a lot of time in this, you've gotten out of touch with your own creativity, curiosity, your own love for learning then either then or several years down the line the pain, and the loss of all that opportunity to learn, is so great that the people join the perpetrator. Nobody thinks it or plans it, but that's what happens. Then they pass this on to the NEXT generation.

This in my view is what really devastates people with ADD. They continue to work in an environment that sees them as symptomatic until they become symptomatic. Everybody around them, the professionals, say "Yes, you are symptomatic. You have a disorder." Or they even say "You're different".

But if you put a non-ADD person into a situation that calls for being spontaneous or using creativity, they would probably fail. I laughingly call it Creativity Deficit Disorder", or "Intuition Deficit Disorder." They would develop all the same symptoms: they would become impulsive, they would become oppositional, they would develop all of those symptoms.

All attributable ADD symptoms, I have come to believe, are secondary problems.

My analogy is that if you take a little fish in the water, at a certain point, fairly young, and say "OK, now you have to go to Flying School." And you put this fish into an environment in which it does not fit naturally and innately.

Well the little fish wants real, real hard to learn to fly, and to make good scores, and is trying. Of coursel He's excited. He says "Gee, l am going to learn how to fly."

But there's something missing, and he can't put his finger on it. He's having trouble breathing, and his whole performance goes down, and it gets cllumsy. So he's labeled. "Well, you know, fish are clumsy."

Bob: He's got Flying Deficit Disorder.

LW: Right. Flying Deficit Disorder. Thank you. And people (or fish) that have Flying Deficit Disorder are clumsy, and have hot tempers, or get depressed.

As we track genetically from one generation we find Out about how Depression and Flying Deficit Disorder run in families.

So this poor little fish, because he's not getting it during the day, is given extra lessons. And he's not allowed to do what he wants to do. He wants to go play, he things it would be fun to go play in the ocean, but No, he has to stay in for Wing Training.

The other issue is that even if we sent in a rescue team, and we rescue this little fish, the little fish has lost time, normal developmental time that the other fish had. He doesn't know how to move in the water, he's slower than the other fish...

The poor fish! He not only has low self esteem, all the damage from abuse, but he feels guilty. "I should have been able to fly. I should have worked harder in wing training. I should have tried harder." All that junk from the perpetrator. And then, on top of it, he's lost the critical learning that is needed to really become an effective swimming fish. That's the travesty of ADD.

NOTE: As she was saying this, I was thinking "Man, this is my life. "Also, I think this might be the answer to why so many of us are not diagnosed until we are adults.

I was raised in a home that was very much ADD. My father designed weapons and communications systems for General Dynamics, one of the big con tractors. He was, and continues to be, a very "Edison"" like adder. Everything in our home centered around and ADD mentality.., discussions were often blew up, but were resolved and put away. Creativity and individuality were encouraged. Even the loneliness of wanting to be pad of my dad's world, but his being too hyper-focused to notice was there too.

I thought all of this was normal, and I was happy with it. Until I got named. As an adult, trying to teach, do the marriage thing and raise kids, / lost it. My ADD thinking cold not handle the linearism of the adult world. I began to blame myself for my failure, doubted my own intelligence and at times even my own sanity.

Now, to better understand what Lynn is talking about here, try to imagine those same feelings on a cultural level

Bob: I know you're talking about education, but the same idea applies across the board. What is the rule for emotional abuse? One month of consistent positive reinforcement to repair each year of abuse? So you get a 36 year old person, or a fish, whatever, you're talking 3 years of consistent positive reinforcement. That's a lot of time.

LW: I watch a lot of people at the conferences, people that I consider fairly successful people, and they insist on medication. This is why. I'm not totally opposed to medication. Its like giving the little fish medication so it can exist in Flying School, but it would be better to change the environment. But we put them on medication, and that's all we do.

You can't just do that. You have to go back and get skills and training. Its not, in my mind, skills and training to make the person a non-ADD, linear type person. You HELP the person learn their ADDedness, their own natural, innate way of learning. You start building bridges, so we can communicate with each other.

Its sort of like taking a plant that needs to grow in acid soil, and putting it in alkaline soil. It will grow, with supplementation, or medication. You can force it. But it kind of doesn't do justice.

On top of that, people need each other. Its kind of like the male/female business. We really need each other; there's no point in bashing the other guy, which is kind of what has happened with the ADD world and the non-ADD world. But its also that we can truly see what and who we are, then we need to learn how to communicate with others who are not exactly like us. And then we get to work as a team.

But teamwork is a hard concept to master. Our schools don't realty teach it, Western culture tends not to encourage it, and we as ADDers usually tend to be loners in the creative process anyway. I asked Lynn what she thought about gender issues within the ADD community.

Bob: One of the complaints I hear from women a lot is that so much of the literature about ADD is so male oriented and male dominated.

LW: Well one of the reasons for that is that it is written by people who are very non-ADD. Even if they are ADD, they've bought in to this non-ADD system, and the non-ADD system is very male-bias.

Bob: But there are some basic differences between men and women. Like if a women says "I'll call you", she means as soon as she gets home. If a guy says "I'll call you", he means sometime before he dies.

LW: That's true whether you're ADD or not, laugh

I was talking with a fiend the other night about the old goddess culture, which for about 2500 years has been "bye-bye", because that's when the patriarchal culture took over. This had a profound effect on everything-- it effected EVERY part of our culture.

Well, the old goddess, feminine, recessive, analogue— that ADD processing -- was overthrown in terms of power by the patriarchal, linear, sequential system.

Bob: What you're saying is real consistent with Hartmann's Hunter/Farmer theories.

LW: In a way it is. Its much deeper and pervasive, but I've always understood that he is tapping into something that was very much there.

Bob: Where he would use the terms Hunter/Farmer, you would use the terms Feminine/Masculine. How much of this do you think is gender bias? Are there gender differences between male and female ADDers?

LW: Well.., we're ALL male and female. I have my male aspect and my female that takes precedence. You're a guy; you have more of the male, but you also have sensitivity, and other feminine aspects.

These vary, I mean I've know women who were more "male" than some guys. And I sort of liken feminine energy as receptive energy, and I liken male energy to action. So we need both.

Now, in terms of gender bias and ADD, it's going to look a little different on the surface but if you realize that a chatterbox is not any different than a guy running around bopping people on the head, I mean they're basically the same behavior...

Bob: Just different manifestations...

LW: Exactly. I don't really see any difference there.

Bob: So is that the problem with the literature too? Is there gender ambiguity in language?

LW: Again I go back. Its written by people who have bought into this male based system. When I go out, I am such a minority at the conferences, and that's fine. And I usually relate very well to those people. But that's because I have made a conscious effort to do that. They're wonderful people, wonderful people, but they're still talking about ADD, categorizing it, rather than dealing with what it is. I call it the "medicalizing" or the"pathologizing" of ADD.

Bob: Its become a cottage industry of sorts. And maybe I'm part of that now. I don't know. I hope not.

LW: And it's a huge business. There are a lot of money and power issues involved here.

Bob: I would just like to see everybody stop talking about it, and just start doing it... making the two cultures mesh together. And that's where I see the real clash. Its like a culture clash.

LW: It is a culture clash. That's exactly what it is. How did you get it? You know, I cannot tell you. I will talk to some of the biggest officials, and they don't get it. They do not know what I m talking about.

Bob: Its because they don't see that. I did some studies with some Native American groups and looking at things like that, historically stuff... mainly because of my grandfather. Anyway, whenever you have a group, I was interested in what had happened on this continent, but ANY time you have a group where another group comes in, takes over, and subjugates the original group, they ALL take on the same attributes: you have high rates of alcoholism, depression,... all these negative things. And in a lot of ways, I see that as kind of what happened with the ADD thing. Its that same perpetrator thing you talked about earlier.

LW: I am fairly familiar with some of that Native American culture, having grown up in Arizona. And the more I look at it, at the style and the linguistic styles, the more I realize, there is a lot of analogue, what we call ADD characteristics.

Bob: Oh yeah. Its right there.

LW: Then it dawned on me basically what you re saying. Yeah, the land was taken away, and there is a pattern of subjugation of the culture. But another issue, which may be deeper... OK, who usually wins out?

This happened to the Celtic people 2500 years ago. I found historical work along that line. And what happened was the same thing. And I had not come to realize that it was VERY ADD like. Along came the Greeks and the Romans, very linear, very digital, very effective at establishing a power base to go out and fight other people. And so what you have was strategic planning taking power.

A great example is in the horseback riding style of the two cultures. The Celts would hop on the horse, and if the horse went anywhere close to the direction they wanted to go in, the would ride off in that direction. Along came the Romans, at the Pathagorean time, a very linear process, on Arabian horses, very precise, riding in single file, totally different than the Celts.

So what you had was the ability for strategic planning, and the Greek warrior cult taking power. That combination. Then the Romans followed right after that along the same lines. And they went out and took over more and more people. They were able to do that, they were so effective, because the Celts were not organized. They were busy having fun, living life while the Romans were developing this vast empire and community.

And so that shift in power, because they obviously beat the Celts, they took the power. That was 2500 years ago. Same story.

Now the Celts and the American Indians,— and I'm sure there are others, I'm not that familiar with African history or other places— very Earth based spirituality.., all very ADD characteristics.

And so what I think what happened here, when the American Indian was subjugated, and that they were also forced into a learning system, an information processing system that did not fit them.

Bob: and a social system

LW: and a social system. It's the fish in the flying school. And they can't go back to the other because the whole culture is gone. .where are you going to go?

I finally made it out here to the woods, and I tell you, my life is wonderful. I'm very effective. I'm very productive. Life is easier and I can write incredibly well. But to get here, I had to go through a lot of the other system, and it just about did me in.