Hyperactivity, behaviour and exercise

You can listen to the audio version here

I sat in the doctor’s office and have just been told that I have ADHD. I remember that I looked at her very confused and thought .. nah, you got something wrong there. I’m not hyperactive at all. I’m actually really calm and lazy and not moving much and all those things, no that’s not me, can we test again, please?

She looked at me and said “yeah, right” and pointed at my legs that I had been bouncing at a speed of 300 km/h for the past 10 minutes … fair enough, but not enough proof to be hyperactive for me …

So I went home, wondering why they would even think that I’m hyperactive. I can understand the “not focused parts” and all that, but hyperactive?
I went to meet a friend for an afternoon coffee. At some point she saw my watch blinking with digital fireworks and asked me what that’s for? – Oh, it’s just telling me that I did 10k steps, that’s all.
She looked at me and said, it’s 4pm. How did you get to 10k steps? What did you do today? I don’t even get to 5k before I get to bed.
What 5k? That’s how much I move till 12 maybe. I was confused, she was confused.

You see, a normal day for me is ending up at 12k and I didn’t do much of an effort to get there.
I was told that there are people out there who have the fitness goal to walk 10k a day.
It’s a fitness goal? I thought everyone does that automatically. I guess not?!

Now I’m not particularly walking around much, but I did notice that I do move a lot, my legs, my arms .. there was a lot of surpressed energy going on in my body.
Now, on days where I incorporate exercise I end up easily at 20k, not considering a hard workout or even cardio workout.
I’m not saying this to tell you “look how many steps I make a day”. I’m telling you this to show you how hyperactive I am – without knowing it.

Why my hyperactivity never showed in the classroom

I’m convinced 100% that the reason why my physical hyperactivity has never been seen during my school time was the fact that I was exercising and doing sports all the time .. like ALL the time when I was a child or young adult.
In my country we have only half days of school, not much homework and then we are free all afternoon to go. Luckily enough I had parents who were supportive of all my interests and were happy to drive me around every single day, sometimes multiple times a day to my activities.

This is what I would I do on a regular basis during one week:
– handball (including training 2x a week and a game each weekend)
– horseback riding (once a week)
– swimming (to the point that I almost became a life guard) (in the mornings in summer)
– dance classes
– tennis (once on weekends)
– badminton (on a team with 2x practice per week)
– outdoor things like inline skating, biking, hiking and running in the woods (occasionally depending on the weather – daily in summer)
– gym (hated it but was part of handball practice, but came to like the courses that were related to martial arts and dance)

So you would think that it is a lot .. Maybe it is, I don’t know. It was normal for me. Tons of different activities, it never got boring and I moved. Plus, it was me chosing them, noone else.
But if you think that was all that I did for moving … Actually when I came home from school, the first thing I would do was to go to my room, put on loud music and dance or do a short martial arts video training. Then I would eat and do homework. And then I’m off to my activities. And sometimes even when I came back from activities I would put on music and dance .. still …

Now that I’m writing this … ooook, that is a lot of movement there!! I never noticed that!
It was normal for me.
If now I would imagine you would put me into a classroom the entire day, like we do with our kids, they come home exhausted from school at like 5, have time to eat and then have another 1,2,5 hours of homework … I think I would have died!!

I tried to move less. I tried to not bounce my legs and just sit and concentrate on things or people and I observed my body. It starts aching. Literally. And then all I can focus on is the restlessness in my body, how everything in my body wants to move to a point where I feel my buttcheeks moving just to not show the obvious body parts like legs, so people would not notice. This is ridiculous! I can’t help it though. I wish I could.

I wish I could stop it, but …

Let me tell you to which degree this is out of my control.
A few years ago I had an accident while skiing. I fell into a hole and twisted my knee – meniscus tear. I’ve had physical therapy forever and nothing really helped. So I went to see a specialist who used to treat a football team and knew what he was doing.

He looked at my pictures and symptoms and told me .. you have a 50/50 chance that the treatment I’ll give you will work. If it works great, if not .. operation.
The treatment is there to take away the inflammation, then to fortify the muscle around the tear. We will do an intense treatment, every day for 2 weeks and see if you react to it.
Ok sounds great. So I got treated as if I was a professional soccer player.
The deal is this one … “you stay calm, come here do the treatments and then a couple of exercises at home but that’s it”. Ok, ok, I got it. No problem, that’s easy. Great, who doesn’t want to get told to not move and just sit around and relax!

Apparently me, because I lasted around 2 hours until I felt my legs moving all alone, then a little more, until I found myself dancing around the hallway.
The treatment started to work, the inflammation went away, but the pain stayed.
Ok, we do another 2 weeks. Stay calm and do as we said … ok, ok!

Not ok, I really tried to force myself to not get up and dance around, but I just couldn’t do it. So the doctor saw that things got better but not to the point where it should be so he asked … what are you doing? – Nothing! – You are doing something! – Not at all? I mean, I may .. kinda like … move a little … from time to time … just a little .. you know …

I could see that he tried to really retain himself to stay friendly because I kind of wasted his time by not following his instructions, I understand that. And believe me I really do not enjoy the pain so I would really love to follow your instructions!!

So he told me, listen, I’m not sure you understood … either you stay calm and do the exercises only or … you will get operated!! Like, that’s a no brainer!
Yep, now that you are saying it like this … stay calm for 2 weeks or operation .. makes sense! Who wants to get operated if they can avoid it so easily?

Well, me apparently. Because no matter how much I tried, and I tried to focus and told myself “operation” in my head on repeat .. AND while being in pain while dancing … I was not able to stop! Believe me, if I could have, I would have. You must be extremely stupid to NOT stop moving when so much is on the line! Right? And yet, I wasn’t able to.

The good news is that the doctor and his team were so amazing that they made it work somehow anyways after I explained that I simply can not. It took longer, but they didn’t give up on me. So now I’m happily dancing around without pain and without operation. But I’m not thanking myself and my efforts for that! You need good people around you at times that have your back!

And you wonder?

And now imagine you have this child in your classroom. Being forced to more or less sit for hours on end, in front of a desk in a chair. That is not human – any human! We are meant to move – everyone of us! Some more, some less, but we are all built to move!!

And not only is that kid trying to stay calm, but despite all his or her efforts they will get reprimanded and punished and looked down on – even though they are trying so hard and wish they could.

I think if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have been put in my situation as it was as a child, and I would have to do what the kids are expected to do every single day now … I would totally perish – with behavior issues and mental health issues such as depression at a young age. I’m not surprised to see a surge in young children coming up with all this lately …

I’m absolutely not surprised! And I’m hurting for them!