ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are quite similar disorders with major differences. You may be inclined to lump the two in the same category, interchanging the two for each other. Be assured that the difference in these two disorders are enough to make them separate entities altogether. If you understand what the differences between the two are, you will be better equipped to handle each situation.
Here is the difference between ADD and ADHD:
One Word
The biggest difference between ADD and ADHD is one single word. The word is hyperactivity. Hyperactivity is a major factor because without it, the disorder wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it can be. For instance, ADD alone is fairly tame and usually only affects the person who has it. The ADD person is likely to sit and stare out the window as they daydream. Though their minds wander, it wanders more inside themselves. With the hyperactivity, the entire picture changes. The ADHD person is likely to switch tracks very quickly in the middle of a conversation or switch activities without thought as to whether the first activity is completed or not.
Withdrawn/Outgoing
The difference between ADD and ADHD is that ADD makes the person withdrawn where ADHD makes a person more outgoing. In fact, that ADHD person is usually a little too outgoing at times. They will spurt things out of their mouths without thinking and no matter where they are. The good news is that they have much higher self-esteem than those with ADD. ADHD people are very impulsive though. That makes them much harder to deal with than ADD people. Putting the two types in the same room together would show a total contradiction in personalities. The ADD person would be sitting in the middle of the room staring off at what appears to everyone else as a blank space on the wall. What they are really doing is thinking about anything except what is going on around them. The ADHD person will be thinking about everything that is going on around them. They will fidget, comment and nose into conversations that are not their own. They will try to talk to the ADD person who will in turn look straight at them because they are thinking about why people have different eye colors. It makes not sense. The two are on completely opposite sides of the world. It works out well though. They would make a good couple because one can’t shut up and the other one can’t stop listening.
Concentration
Though ADD and ADHD people are both prone to not being able to concentrate on things, they go about their non-concentration levels in different ways. The ADHD person will hone his ears to things that are far away and close by. Everything is going through his head at once. That is why it is so hard to concentrate. The brain is telling him this, that and the other thing and he feels the need to concentrate on them all at once which means he can’t really concentrate on any of them at all. ADD and ADHD people have one thing in common, neither one can keep their mind focused on the right things.
Creativity
Both ADHD and ADD people have a great deal of creativity. This is another area where that is the only similarity. ADHD people are more prone towards physical creativity and ADD people are more geared towards artistic types of creativity. Where an ADHD person would rather build a house, the ADD person would be more likely to write a story about a house. Both are very good at what they do, but they go about their creativity in totally different ways. This is one of the advantages of having these “disorders”. Many people don’t often think of the fact that there are good things about having such a disorder.
These are the major differences between ADD and ADHD. People often lump the two together as though they are the exact same thing. The problem with that is that it doesn’t give the person who has it a fair chance. In other words, the symptoms are different and therefore need different treatments. Don’t forget that there are very good things about having these disorders. It is how much the person with it decides to use it for their own better.
