Am I disabled? Or just special? Or gifted? How do I think about myself?

ADD tends to furnish those who suffer from it with an identity complex:

• How could such a smart person do such stupid things?
• Am I gifted or disabled or just a fuck-up?
• Am I lazy, disenchanted or just scared?
• I don't understand myself, so how can other people be expected to?
• I'm never the same person I was before, even though I know certain things about my personality will always be the same.
• The only thing I'm used to is not knowing what's fallen through the cracks!
• I'm alone. It's me vs. everybody else and I have to watch out for myself.
• I can't keep, keep track of, or hold onto, anything from receipts to people, so I'm always looking for something.
• I can't get a handle on what's going on with me, so I'm always in self-analysis mode.
• Everybody says I'm too hard on myself but I feel like I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

The truth is, ADD is a disability. It's a learning disability and an occupational disability. It leads to a whole bunch of other things which are actual diseases, like depression, anxiety and addiction. When only these symptoms are addressed, they have to be continually re-dressed because their cause is not necessarily being discovered. Often, if they can be eased, a person can look past them and discover ADD as their cause, or at least have an easier time preventing ADD from producing their symptoms in the first place.

Distractability is a symptom of ADD, not the cause. The cause is dissociation with the uncomfortable. It's a coping mechanism that dis-empowered people develop in order to get through a traumatic period in which they're trapped, and when it's developed at a young age, it becomes part of a person's approach to everything. Even if they remind themselves, again and again, "this is an old outdated skill that I can let go of," it's the only way they know of dealing with anything.

Dissociation creates powerful gifts and skills, because it works by pushing someone away from their circumstances and towards their interests. "Idiot-Savants" are kind of an extreme example of this kind of behavior, but those with ADD aren't far behind in terms of the incredible mental feats and level of productivity they can accomplish.

ADD is only a disability because of the isolation it creates. It's like the bubble of dangerous awesomeness that surrounds a comic book superhero. So the disability belongs as much to everyone around an ADD sufferer as to the person in the middle of the bubble.