Mitchell Attention Deficit Disorder

Mitchell Attention Deficit Disorder 0:00:03 Jon: It s great to start with you again. What would you like us to address? What would come to the top that we should be addressing today? 0:00:17 Mitchell: The biggest thing that I have a problem with which I believe I said the first time I was here which I didn t last very long. That s because I was freshly out of detox. 0:00:26 Jon: Yes, I understand. 0:00:29 Mitchell: Is my Attention Deficit Disorder. I mean, it gets I don t watch movies because I get a half hour into a movie and 0:00:42 Jon: I remember you mentioned that to me, yeah. 0:00:43 Mitchell: Yeah. The same thing with books. I mean, I ve been reading the for the first time even when I went to AA, I was sober. I came here 3 years ago and I remained sober for 2 years and 10 months going to AA, but I never got a sponsor, I never learned the steps. I never read the AA book because when I read, I can get probably like 10 pages in and I forget the first 5. So, it aggravates me. So, instead of aggravating myself, I just don t watch movies or read. But I have been reading in here and a lot of it I don t remember. But I am on page 319. I m trying to force myself to read. I m going to try to read it a second time because a lot of it I forgot. I just, I would like to be able to read and absorb it. I would like to be able to watch movies and remember what I watched. Like when I was younger, I used to go to movies with my friends, like in my teenage years. We d go to a movie and I would leave the movie and everybody in the car would be laughing about scenes in the movie and I would laugh, but I was laughing just to not look like an idiot because I would actually forget the movie. I don t know if that s part of my ADHD. I mean this has been before I even drank or drugged. I m sure drinking and drugging has probably made it a lot worse. But, even back then when I wasn t doing anything, I just couldn t remember it. So, it would be nice for that part of my life to maybe get going in a better direction. That s really it. 0:02:45 Jon: I can make some suggestions that will be useful for that in a number of ways. What kind of work have you done, Mitchell? 0:02:55 Mitchell: I was a department head. Currently, I deliver oil. 1

0:03:08 Jon: How did you do with being a department head? 0:03:13 Mitchell: I faked it a lot. 0:03:18 Jon: Well, you can t fake it completely and keep that job for more than an hour. 0:03:25 Mitchell: Yeah, what I would do is.actually, every week we would have a department head meeting and we would have to do a loss prevention plan, which always kind of confused me. So, I had friends that were other department heads, so we would just go through it and I would get help that way. As far as running the department, I didn t have a problem with telling people in my department what to do. 0:04:08 Jon: I guess you also had to know what to tell them. 0:04:14 Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, it wasn t really all that hard. The majority of the people in your department are responsible for down-stocking, keeping the shelves clean and neat. You know, a lot of people pick something up and they walk two shelves and put it down. So, the majority of what their job was was just to down-stock it if they saw any empty holes and just keep the department neat so people could come in and shop and be able to actually see what they were shopping for. That was the majority of what I had to tell them to do. It wasn t really that hard of a job because that s pretty much what you had to do. It s simple. I met a guy who they call IMA (Inventory Management Associate) and their job was to go around and scan those barcodes you see, which he wasn t under my control. If I wanted to order something, he would but his job was to go around and scan the barcode and it would say how many we had on hand, what our average use was, and from there he would order. So, I didn t even have to really worry about ordering stuff because we had people that did that. So, really my job wasn t all that hard. It was just making sure that the guys that were coming in weren t goofing off, going into other departments, talking to girls 0:04:14 Jon: Manage a group of people and keep them focused. How are you doing with the oil delivery? 0:06:03 Mitchell: Oil delivery doing good. 0:06:08 Jon: It s residential? 0:06:09 Mitchell: Yeah, well, we do residential and we also do what s call fleet fueling. Like, we go around construction sites, like these guys that 2

are doing a lot of work out here on the road. You can drive (equipment) or any of those over to a gas station to get fuel. So, what you do is, we sell home heating oil and we sell off-road diesel. So, we would go into construction sites like this and we would fill all of their equipment. 0:06:46 Jon: So, that s how that s done. 0:06:48 Mitchell: Yeah, that s how it s done. 0:06:49 Jon: I never thought about it because I don t see those things pulling up to the gas station. 0:06:53 Mitchell: Yeah, that wouldn t happen. Yeah, so that s how it gets done. Some sites we actually bring a 1,000 gallon tank to the site. 0:07:08 Jon: Leave it and they 0:07:09 Mitchell: Yeah, and it looks just like a gas pump, 1,000 gallon tank, and they can just drive right up to that because its right on the site. 0:07:21 Jon: So, you ve been certainly able to hold and maintain some responsible positions and get things done. You re good with people and you re good in directing people and you can get from one place to another in an appropriate way. You d like to be able to focus and learn from reading and perhaps also from films. So, I have some suggestions on some things you can do with that that I believe would make a significant difference quickly. 0:08:01 Mitchell: Okay. 0:08:05 Jon: What happens is that our minds are likely to naturally highlight things that are problematic rather than things that are working well. And then there s an emotional response to it being problematic that further may derail things. So, people can be spinning in that direction. So, I meet with people in college and graduate school studying for law boards, all kinds of stuff, and what happens with them is that their minds may wander and then they realize that there are things that they didn t learn and then they feel badly about what hasn t been learned and then sit down to try to learn more but with a sense of failure and a sense of tension in doing it and it s all spinning in the wrong direction. 0:09:27 Jon: So, here s the solution. You reading is a one-way thing. It s just goes this way. That s not ideal for learning. So, the best thing for you to do is to make it initially as interactive as possible. It s not set 3

up to be interactive, but you make it interactive in this way. You read a paragraph as you start. Once that seems like it wouldn t be challenging enough, read a page. When you re ready, you move to two pages. But, initially you re starting with a paragraph. If that seems too big, you start with a sentence. You read it, stop, and then you think/say what it just said and then move ahead. 0:10:40 Jon: What will be happening is your brain is going to start noticing what you are getting instead of noticing what you haven t been getting. As you begin noticing what you have been getting, your mind will then get more and more and the amount that you get will begin to increase. 0:11:13 Jon: Give me a second. Let me grab something so I can show you what I mean by that. (pause) A magazine mostly for women. I wonder if it will work for us. So, I d like you to read from there to there, where it says fifty. Don t read it out loud. Just read just that section and stop. (Pause while Mitchell reads.) 0:13:05 Jon: Good. Now, tell me anything that it did say. 0:13:14 Mitchell: It said that once you re, for a woman, once you re over the age of forty, you should start getting tested for breast cancer. That s when insurance usually starts to pick it up. 0:13:34 Jon: Okay. 0:13:35 Mitchell: And you should get it done in your thirties or more often if you have a history of breast cancer in your family or if you ve been exposed to radiation. 0:13:49 Jon: Okay, wonderful. So, that s what you did get. Now, I m sure if I comb over it, I can find some sentence that you didn t mention. I could probably find something you didn t mention. But, if somebody was to have gotten that from it, then let s say written down what you just said, and then read it over again, notice what he missed, feel awful about the things that he missed and then rip the magazine, it wouldn t be the best way to learn it. 0:14:36 Mitchell: True enough. 0:14:36 Jon: But a lot of folks do that. Father s teaching the kid to play catch, throws the ball to the kid. The kid runs for it and misses the ball. Father says, You run like a little girl and I wish you were never 4

0:15:09 Mitchell: True. born, you little shit and throws the ball to him again. Probably, he misses. 0:15:11 Jon: Next time, Dad is saying, Want to play ball?, the kid is hiding under the bed. 0:15:15 Mitchell: Yes. 0:15:18 Jon: And there is a lot of that going on, unfortunately, right? There s a lot of that going on and there s a lot of that going on in schools and there s a lot of that going on all over the place. But, you obviously have the ability to read something, retain it and intelligently describe it. So, we don t have to build that in. You ve already got it. 0:15:48 Jon: The problem is that your mind has been hyper-alert to what you didn t get and wouldn t get rather than to what you were getting. The way our minds work is when you notice something, you get more of it. 0:16:15 Jon: Now, parents might notice appreciatively what they would like their son to do more of, but notice critically what they would like him to do less of. Let s say he s six. So, he writes in a coloring book and they say, Good, little baby. And then he takes the crayon and writes on the refrigerator and she says, Oh, you re terrible, little baby. You should feel ashamed. Response to both things. What mother doesn t understand is, what she responds to will be increased whether she responds with pleasure or whether she responds with criticism. If she responds to it, it s likely to increase it. Big news for her. If she realized that, her whole life was going to get a whole lot easier and she s going to find a lot fewer drawings on her fridge. 0:17:32 Jon: What you just did was different from what you have been done previously. What you ve done previously is read with a concern that you there would be things that you wouldn t know and then read pretty far with the idea that longer is better and then realize there were things you didn t know and then feel crappy and then repeat. It s a recipe for having the problem. You can take somebody who never heard of any kind of attention deficit disorder and just tell them to begin following those instructions and at the end of few weeks, they would have whatever this thing is supposed to be. It would cause it. 5

0:18:33 Jon: So, what I recommend you do is, regardless of what they would like you to read, whatever the assignment is or whatever, what I would like you to be doing is what you just did. You read a section that you think is reasonable. It s reasonable if reading it can hold your attention. While you just read that, was your mind wandering to other things. 0:19:09 Mitchell: Not at that moment. 0:19:10 Jon: No. So, see that was a reasonable chunk because you reasonably held your attention on it. If you found your attention was going somewhere else and you had to bring it back, you picked the wrong size piece. So, a piece is a piece that you believe you will stay with until the end point. And as you do more and more, you ll know where that point is. 0:19:45 Jon: When you start, you start with the realization, I am going to go to that spot and I m going to stop at that spot. It will have nothing to do with what you feel like. It s like making an oil delivery. Where are you going? I m going over to 27 Apple Street. Yeah, well, what if on your way you decide you d rather sit in a park? You say, Well, that s not within the question. It won t matter. What if when you get to 27 Apple Street, you decide you d like to just keep going? You say, Well, that s not going to happen either. I know exactly what I m going to do. I know exactly where I m going to go. I know exactly that I m going to stop when I get there. I know I m not going to stop until I get there. You don t think what will happen, that s how it is. And because it s that way, it works. It hits. It s focused. It s successful. 0:21:00 Jon: See, what happened the last time I met with you and today, you sat down and outlined in great detail experiences that you had which you considered failure experiences around focusing. All the way back. And I remember you explained the same thing to me when we met at our previous meeting. So, what was being noticed was what we want less of. What was being ignored is what we want more of. What we just did was the opposite of that. What did you get from that? Oh, well, that women might do well to begin getting checks at different ages depending on family history. Now, it s not an area that you ve had burning desire to learn about because it doesn t really personally apply how often thirty year old women should get mammograms. So, we picked something that actually has no interest other than the interest was in going ahead and being absorbed and retaining information. And with that thing, you did fine. You ended up with, Well, there was this, there was this, there was this. 6

0:22:50 Jon: So, a few things happened. One is, it became interactive. It was interactive with me, but if I wasn t there, you can still end it there and say, Okay, what are the things that I did just learn from that section? I learned that, I learned that, I learned that. All right! Now, I ll move on. That s going to completely change the direction that the ship is headed. If a ship is going like this and you just change the direction that much, it covers a completely different part of the ocean. But, this is a significant shift, so it will cover a significantly different part of the ocean, like right way. 0:23:50 Jon: Your assignment is to notice what you have learned. What did I get? Name anybody you ve met here, any guy, gal, anybody you ve met. 0:24:16 Mitchell: Mike T. 0:24:17 Jon: Okay. And what does he look like? How would I recognize him? 0:24:26 Mitchell: He wears a Dolphin hat and some kind of Dolphin gear, black hair, probably around, I would guess around 5 6. 0:24:40 Jon: About what age, would you figure? 0:24:43 Mitchell: Well, I know what age he is because he told me. 0:24:45 Jon: What age is he? 0:24:46 Mitchell: Forty-seven. 0:24:47 Jon: Okay. Where is he from? 0:24:50 Mitchell: Right down the road. I think he s in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. 0:24:53 Jon: Ah, so he s from near here. 0:24:55 Mitchell: Yeah. 0:24:57 Jon: Did he have a problem with some kind of substance? 0:24:59 Mitchell: Alcohol. 0:25:01 Jon: Married? 0:25:04 Mitchell: Yes. 7

0:25:06 Jon: How do you know? 0:25:06 Mitchell: Because he told me. 0:25:08 Jon: No, because you recall things, but you would have gone a long time before you would have sat here feeling happy about the fact that you knew all this stuff about that guy. 0:25:25 Mitchell: Right. 0:25:26 Jon: You would have, instead, found somebody who there was something that you didn t know 0:25:36 Mitchell: You know, you re 100% right about that because the first two or three weeks I was here, there were some people s names I could remember and other people that I saw for two or three weeks, I couldn t remember their names. 0:25:51 Jon: And which one were you noticing the most? The ones you did remember or didn t? 0:25:56 Mitchell: The ones I didn t. 0:25:57 Jon: The ones you didn t. Absolutely. You didn t say, Oh, my God, I just passed this guy in the hall and I knew exactly who he was! 0:26:04 Mitchell: Right. I was aggravating myself with the fact that I could not remember somebody s name. 0:26:04 Jon: Yes, rather than, Oh, isn t that amazing? I not only know what his name is, I even know how he dresses, I know exactly his age, I know what issue he s had with this I could keep asking and you d be able to give me more stuff about this guy because your mind has retained and does retain, but you haven t been noticing the retention and what you notice, you get more of and what you don t notice, it doesn t increase. 0:27:00 Mitchell: Right. 0:27:03 Jon: So, some attractive gal, every time you pass, says, Wow, do you ever look good in blue! Without even thinking about it, you re looking through the closet and, Well, there s this blue shirt. I think I ll be wearing that one today. It increases. She might be sitting there with her girlfriend saying, I wonder how many times we can get this dude to wear blue, just fucking with him every time he 8

0:27:40 Mitchell: Yes. passes. We ll say, Wow, blue pants, cool! But it will work, won t it? 0:27:42 Jon: And you re like, Can we get to the store so I can buy some blue things? Anybody donated anything blue? Can I borrow what you ve got there? It works. It s silly, but it works. You notice it, you get more of it. The major problem you ve had isn t with the way your brain works. It s the way it s been worked by what has been noticed. You have a wonderful ability to read something that really doesn t have any interest at all. I mean, what difference does it make when thirty year old women should get mammograms? Where are you going to use that? Where will that have value for you? But you were able to recount it to me, tell me about it, give me information, how there s a decision tree and the situation may be earlier or later. You might change the beginning time, you might change the frequency. You covered all that stuff. 0:28:41 Mitchell: Yes. 0:28:42 Jon: That s what you did get. So, flip it, get some kind of thing that you re going to notice that when you see it will remind you to do one thing and that is: notice accomplishments when it comes to learning and focus and information retrieval. Get some sticker with a frog on it or something, it doesn t matter. Stick something someplace where you ll see it that s on the cover of your notebook or somewhere. And it becomes a reminder notice what I m getting, notice what I m retaining. 0:29:33 Jon: I had a fellow come to me who was a physician and then he had a brain bleed and then he found he couldn t remember stuff and he said to me, I have to pass a certification test. I don t remember this stuff I learned as a medical doctor. What the heck? I spent years and years in medical school and don t know anything. And he was in a panic and all he could think about is what he didn t know. 0:30:07 Jon: I mean, the guy was really panicked. I said this to him, I said, Well, I have something I always wonder about. Could I ask you? And he said, What? And I said, Well, I see people walking around and their heads always stay attached to their bodies. Why don t they just fall off? And the guy says, Why don t their heads fall off their bodies? It s because of the way the neck is built. And I said, I don t know what you mean. And he goes, Dude, you got bones here and muscles here and nerves like that. And then I 9

started to ask him another question that he would know the answer to. And pretty soon, he was knowing the answer to all kinds of things. More and more things. And then he realized, Gosh, you just keep asking me questions and I keep knowing the answers! I guess I m fixed. And then he left and took the test. But he thought, well, we had to fix his brain, something happened to his brain and now he can t know things. All we switched was he started to notice what he did know and that what he knew super increased. So, if you do that, that will flip the whole thing around. 0:31:36 Mitchell: Yeah, because that s exactly where I always felt, like there was something wrong with my brain. 0:31:40 Jon: Exactly. And you can see why he thought so. Somebody looked at an x-ray and said, It looks like you re going to die within a few hours. And then he didn t, but then he figured, Yeah, but something s wrong with my brain. 0:31:53 Jon: There s nothing wrong with your brain. You re able to connect, you can have good conversations, you re easy to be with, you ve had responsible positions. It s just that the noticing has been on the wrong thing. Flip it around, you ll be fine. Make sense, bro? 0:32:13 Mitchell: Absolutely. 0:32:13 Jon: I enjoyed getting to meet with you. 0:32:16 Mitchell: Thank you very much. I m going to put that work today. 10