ADD and Anxiety: How I believe ADD and ADHD was caused by my anxiety disorder

My entire life I have had difficulty paying attention. In school, I would often stare at the clock or around the classroom trying to find things that were more interesting that what the teacher was lecturing about. It wasn't too difficult, as I've always found school to be incredibly boring.

As I got older and grew into an adult, terms like “Adult ADD or ADHD” became buzzwords on television and magazine advertising. I had certainly convinced myself that that must be EXACTLY what I had!!!

How many times have I been in meetings for work, and a superior will say, “So, what do you think about this?” And I would jump out of my own little world and be like, “Huh? Could you repeat the question please?” This would of course embarrass the hell out of me and would shock me into giving extra effort into paying attention, which only lasted until I once again became distracted.

It wasn't until later on when I really started putting two and two together. I began to notice that the days that I felt incredibly anxious or panicky, everything people would try to explain to me would go in one ear and out the other. Anxiety seems to give a person extremely selective hearing. It seems that with anxiety, the only thing I seemed to be able to focus on were things that I was naturally very interested in. Such things did NOT include school lectures and office politics!!

Then I found the program that cures panic and anxiety. It made me realize that anxiety will completely cloud your logical thinking with emotion. Fear is a very potent emotion. When one is consumed by it, all logic and common sense is thrown out the window. It is extremely difficult to focus on anything of importance when your minds is clouded by anxiety or panic.

So as my anxiety died down more and more every week, my sense of focus returned. What I had been calling, “brain fog”, slowly dissipated. (I had orginally thought that perhaps this "brain fog" had been the result of smoking and anxiety.  But the effects of smoking on my attention span were short lived.)   I started to experience a sense of clarity that I hadn't felt since I was a teenage, when I was focused on my favorite video games. It was then I understood the relationship between the symptoms of ADD and ADHD and anxiety.