July05

We have all heard about how positive thinking can change the way you see things but for people with ADD this is a major factor in our lives.Many people have negative thoughts about themselves. ADDers seem more prone to dwell on these thoughts. Everything that happens becomes our fault. We call ourselves stupid when we make even the slightest error.For many of us this was reinforced by family and teachers as we grew up and friends and partners in our adult lives. We accept these words from others about us because we accept them when we refer to ourselves with them. It has been a part of who we are for so long that we don't even consider that the words we tell ourselves can be just as harmful as those we hear from other people. Maybe more so because we can't get away from ourselves.We can change the way we talk to ourselves though. It takes time, consistency and the ability to really listen to what we are saying to ourselves. When we begin changing our self talk it is important that we set the same boundaries with the people in our lives who have used negative words toward us in the past. When one of them call us stupid or blames us for something, we need to let them know that we can't accept being talked to in that way any more.We can tell them that we are working on our self image, that the words they use hurt us and we would like them to stop using them or that we simply want more positive things in our lives and we don't want to hear those types of words used anymore toward us or people around us. What ever feels comfortable, as long as we get our point across and then stick to our guns. Habits are hard to break and we have lived with this one our entire lives. Reminding others that we don't want to hear those words used is a good way of reminding ourselves not to use them. Don't use them to describe yourself or anyone else. Try to take them out of your vocabulary.