I’ve had more than one relationship knocked off-kilter by moments of inattention in the midst of important communication. I believe most ADD adults have had such moments. Here’s what usually happens:
She sits me down on the couch to bring up her issue
I listen and absorb what she’s saying, nodding and smiling warmly
Encouraged by my attention, she begins to open up emotionally as she continues
Squirrel
She keeps going, becoming vulnerable
Squirrel
Silence
I realize she has asked me a question
She demands an answer
As I have done all my life, I fake it, rather than be honest about the squirrel; I get her to restate the question
She restates the question
Many squirrels
She is insulted, because she was being vulnerable and I “don’t care”
Desperate, I say exactly the wrong thing
Now she’s pissed
Desperate and frightened, I say another exactly the wrong thing
Now she’s really pissed
Desperate, frightened, and now defensive, I say the mother of all wrong things
She teaches me some new words
I sleep in my car
Now it might not go exactly like this for you, but the gist is the same, right? Our brain channel gets changed in the middle of an important conversation, and we get pulled out of the moment.
But rather than rallying and getting back on point with our friend or partner, we fake it.
This faking starts when we are still young. We zone out when someone is sharing something very important, but we are too embarrassed to admit that we weren’t paying attention, because admitting it might offend or hurt the other person – so we desperately try to reconstruct the conversation to some degree, all while babbling stupid things to stay in the game and cover our lapse. And we come off looking both uncaring and idiotic.
The thing is, after years and years of zone-outs and faking it, we have built a reflex: we pretend to be in the moment, after the fact, when we missed something important, and we don’t fix it – all out of (bad) habit.
This is another one of those cases where we cannot help but see the other side. Of course our friend or partner will be hurt or offended if we seem unengaged or disinterested when they are trying to express something that’s deeply important to them. Of course we come across as lame and ridiculous when we try to dog-paddle our way through it.
On the other hand, those of us on the ADD side of this dialog often can’t do anything about the squirrel. Even when we’ve greatly improved our ability to hang in there, there are moments when the squirrel just jumps into our brain and starts dancing on the remote.
Thanks to CBT, this only happens to me now when I’m dog-tired, and both my brain and body are about out of juice. (A glass or two of wine in such moments really helps. Not.) The times it has happened, my fatigue made my handling of the moment all the more ineffective.
In the moment, this one is a lose-lose: fake it, and it’s train wreck; admit the lapse, and you’re risking anger and wrath (of these two, honesty is the healthier choice, of course).
So choose a moment before the moment, and smooth out the expectations of your partner or friend...
“Remember I told you about the ‘remote’ in my head, how my brain sometimes switches channels on its own? Well, that might happen in a moment when we’re talking about something serious, and I have a tendency to pretend it didn’t happen, because it embarrasses me. When you sense that I’m not hearing you, could you be patient with me and realize that I care about what you’re saying, that I don’t mean to zone out? I want to hear from you.”
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