A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting my talk on “You, Me, and A.D.D” to the Santa Rosa Chapter of CHADD. What a fun crowd! About 60 adults with ADHD and/or their partners turned out. That’s a lot of people for a small town! Coordinator Pauline Laurent is doing a great job creating awareness in Sonoma County.
As I made motored up Highway 101, anxiety swelled. A public speaker I’m not — or at least I thought I wasn’t. Being the much-youngest of seven in a very verbal Italian family, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. And my journalism career has mostly been spent behind a desk and on the phone. Would I lose my train of thought and start jabbering? Would they like the cartoons or my sense of humor? Would the adults with ADHD be defensive that my talk focused more on the challenges posed by ADHD — and what to do about them?
“I have a patient with 2 PhD’s and a Master’s Degree, about 55 years old [two degrees in physics, and the other in another field of science] – he simply can’t think when the variables become unpredictable and, in the context of time, too abundant to manage in a give time frame. He is wonderful in the context of mathematics, but simply can’t take the responsibility of working socially with the unpredictable variables present in management with a team.
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