Expert: Sharon Crandall - 1/26/2008

Question
ok my friends have been telling me that i have A.D.D just joking around but then the other day my really good friend that i look up to and i were talking and she convinced  me that i should go get evaluated for attention deficit disorder, so i  said ok and made a appointment and the psychologist said that i just had to pay the co-pay and 100 is paid after that and i could come back up to 25 times but i am really nervous  do u think i really need to go back 25 times? what in the world am i going to talk about? and what does attention deficit disorder really mean?

Answer
Dear Nicole,

I have no idea what on earth they would need to do 25 times.  It sounds like she needs another client that has insurance.  Even if you have it what can they do in counseling to help you, especially 25 sessions.

I am going to include a few so-called "symptoms" to show you why they are probably personality traits so that you can see for yourself.  Even with my coaching program I only meet 24 times and that is for people who want to completely change their lives and we work on all areas of their lives.

When I help people with ADD it usually only takes 3 or 4 sessions to help them understand their traits and work with them.

We each are born with over 60 personality traits and each trait is both a gift and a challenge.  Traits either augment each other or soften each other so sometimes we have a cluster of traits that give us challenges in some area of our lives.

Here is a partial list of so-called "symptoms" and what traits they might be.  This will give you an idea of what you are dealing with.  I have written this for parents so ignore child and put yourself in the advice given.

1.   Fidgeting, squirming—unable to sit still.  There are several traits that incline a person to be fidgety.  The first one is Active Body Style.  When a person has a longer torso and shorter legs, he is not built to sit com-fortably but is built to move around.  He usually thinks better on his feet than on his “seat”.   The spine is longer and doesn’t fit well into a chair without getting tired or uncomfortable.  The longer legged persons center of gravity is higher and so he is more comfort-able sitting than being on his feet for very long.  His shorter spine helps him sit longer.

Have you every noticed speakers who pace?  They think better when moving on their feet.  They usually have two or three traits that incline them to need to move around a lot.  Active Body Style mentioned above, is one of them, and the trait of Restlessness or Physical Stamina is the second one.  The Restless per-son has much difficulty sitting still for very long; he has a high need to move around.  

The third trait, Physicalness, determines the natural re-action of a person as to whether he tends to react physically, or not.  Dr. Jones, founder of this method of determining personality traits, taught that whenever anything happens (stimuli from his surroundings), the thought goes through an area at the base of the skull, on each side of the neck.  If the person is high on the trait he tends to react quickly on a physical level.  An example would be a child who jumps to grab a pencil a classmate has dropped, while another child, low on the trait, tends to sit there until he has thought it through before moving toward getting the pencil.  Many things happen during the day that will incline the physical child to grab, jump, hop, reach, clap, squirm, turn around, push, poke, run, slide, or?

2. Gets distracted easily.  There are several traits that can contribute to that.  Low Concentration is the first one.  The gift is that you can multi-task easily because you can shift focus quickly.  The challenge is keeping your mind on one thing for very long. The second trait that could influence this is Wide Tolerance, where you see the big picture and are good at overall planning and in being understanding but have difficulty in focusing on one thing at a time.  There are more traits that can also contribute to this.  

3.  Doesn't follow instructions very well.  Wide Tolerance again can contribute--being spacey.  High Innate Confidence where you think you know what the teacher is going to tell you and so you tune out.  The trait of Impetuous makes you be thinking of what you want to say and inclines you do do things impulsively so you don't hear what the teacher is telling you.  The gift is in being a spontaneous person and usually talks easily.

4.  Doesn't finish things well.  There are a number of traits that can contribute--high intelligence or more interested in either social activities or hands on physical work so you get bored easily.  High Ideas where you have so many ideas that it is hard to finish one thing because you tend to jump to do other things before you finish.

As you can see from this partial list that there are a number of traits that can cause us to have symptoms.  The above is from my book that is just about finished on the subject.  It is only a partial list but will give you an idea that you probably have traits that are also your gifts that can be put to good use in some occupation.  

If you want to be put on a list to get my book when it is printed then email me at personalityconsultant1@yahoo.com and request to go on my list.  

There is a website where a woman has created an excellent program with writing and music to help people with ADD and again if you write to me I will look that up for you and send you the URL.

If you need further help write back here.  I do hope this helps a bit.

Sharon Crandall
Personalityconsultant