Edward M. Hallowell's Blog, page 2

A Shot in the Arm

Have you had yours yet? I got mine on Saturday, March 6 at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Covid Vaccine Clinic in Boston. 11:30 a.m. I’ve never had a shot before and remembered the date I got it. I do recall getting vaccinated for smallpox when I was 6 years old, but I do not recall the date, just the funny way the doctor scratched around on my arm to give it to me.

But we remember when we got this vaccination, those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to get it, don’t we? Maybe not the exact date, but the rough date and the time of day and the location and which of the three vaccines we received. I got what I call the “ADHD” version of the vaccine because it’s a one-time deal, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I left the clinic with a hop, skip, and a jump. I’ve never been actually overjoyed to get a shot, but I sure was this time.

How about you? I hope you’ve been able to get it. If you don’t want to get it, I respect your decision, but to tell you the truth I don’t understand it. It seems to me—and to all the medical experts I’ve talked with or read—that getting this vaccine is our best way to beat this pandemic, this plague that has turned our world upside down. If we want to get the world back right side up, one of the best steps we can take is to get vaccinated, the more of us the better.

Not only does getting the vaccine move us closer to herd immunity, but it gets us away from isolation. Not that staying inside, not going to restaurants, movies, large gatherings, and everything else we’ve had to give up has been complete isolation, but it’s been its own form of incarceration. It’s been bad for us. Most people don’t know this, but social isolation is as dangerous for your health as cigarette smoking, obesity, or not wearing a seat belt. 

The medical fact is that we need each other. We need each other’s presence, in what I call “the human moment”. The electronic moment just doesn’t do it. The human moment packs a power a megawatts more than the electronic. We sense and feel each other’s presence, and benefit from it, in ways science has not learned how to measure. But a tone of scientific evidence proven how dangerous the absence of one another can be. This pandemic has driven home that fact like nothing before.

Now it’s time to open up your arms and celebrate! Don’t throw caution entirely to the wind, but do rejoice, give thanks, and sing. Praise the people who developed the vaccine, manufactured it, delivered it, and shot it into your arms. Go back outside and run around, or, if you’re older like me, walk your dog with a hop, skip, and a jump, and be glad to be back in nature, with each other and with the renewed kingdom of connection.

It’ll be a long time before we take stock of all the damage this virus has wreaked. But what we know right now for sure is a truth we’ve always known but too often forgot or ignored: the simple truth of how much we need each other. 

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A New Normal

I wonder if we can ever feel ok again after the trauma of the pandemic, let alone “normal,” whatever that murky word means. People often talk about “when life gets back to normal,” or “when things go back to the way they used to be”. After 500,000 deaths in the US and counting, it’s hard to imagine a return to life as we knew it before COVID 19. But then again, Heraclitus, millennia ago, was wise to the impossibility of turning back clocks when he wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”Well, it sure ain’t the same river, and none of us is the same woman or man any more. How has the virus changed the river, how has the virus changed each and all of us, how will we come to terms with it and when? It’s safe to say no one knows. It’s also safe to say the changes in the river and in us are neither entirely bad nor entirely good. How do half a million deaths, in the United States alone, weigh on the psyche of a nation?As we look for positives, some of the new ways of being that were forced upon us have silver linings. I think many of us have a new appreciation of the term “essential worker”, as we have depended not only on the vital healthcare professionals but also those who have kept our lives going, delivering our packages and our food and continuing working in stores and services so that we have stayed supplied with our needs.For so many of us working via zoom, we’ve had a little more insight into each others’ lives. The children and pets that have popped up into the background of a call, reminding us that we all have busier lives and responsibilities beyond work alone. The pressures of being home most the time with the same family members for some, the loneliness of living alone and trying to stay connected for others.Maybe we have also gained a little more understanding through this time of how our differing brains have different strengths, and also need different types of support.And yes, I am referring to those of us standing tall who have the invisible differences like ADHD. Many have found the pressures of the pandemic have led to an introspection and realization that maybe they have one of these differences, and have sought out official diagnosis. My practice alone is busier than ever, and more and more people of all ages are getting diagnosed, especially the largest overlooked group, adult women (and within that, women of color).I always see this knowledge as liberating, the chance to understand oneself better and to seek support where it is needed and to build on the strengths that are always there, even if they can feel buried away. Most importantly, it’s the chance to take away shame and moral judgment of the difficulties one might have faced, and to understand instead that some brains are just wired differently. And that is ok.As we grieve the people who’ve died from the virus; as we help our children make up for what they’ve lost in school; as we try to build back up the many businesses that faltered or failed in the past year, I hope and pray that when we are able to remove our masks and come closer together physically, we will learn maybe the most important lesson COVID could teach us: to judge less and love more.Shakespeare urged that we love that well which we must leave ere long. For those of us who’ve survived the pandemic, who’ve been lucky enough not leave this world as yet, let’s go at life with renewed purpose not just to stay safe and virus-free, but to extend beyond our safe zone and into the zone of making peace with those we disagree with, suspending judgment in favor of forbearance, reconstructing bridges that we’ve burned, and learning once again how to laugh, especially at ourselves.The normal I yearn for is I hope one we all want. A normal where understanding and empathy come before judgment and disdain. Where difference is celebrated more than conforming. Where strengths are seen instead of weakness, and where love and connection replace hate and division.

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Meet Rebecca Shafir

This month for our meet our staff, we are featuring Rebecca. Rebecca Shafir M.A.CCC is a speech/language pathologist with a specific interest in cognitive health and executive function coaching for college students, adult professionals and entrepreneurs with ADHD or ADT (Attention Deficit Traits).

With over 30 years of experience, Rebecca also provides communication and leadership coaching to businesses and organizations. She coaches clients and teams worldwide online.

Rebecca has served as Chief of the Communications Disorders Department at Choate-Symmes Health Services, Chief of Speech/Language Pathology at the Lahey Clinic Medical Center, and as an executive function coach at the Hallowell Center since 2003.

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Meet Kyle Fabel

This month for our meet our staff, we are featuring Kyle. Kyle came to coaching via acting, followed by directing, followed by teaching theater. He has moved from coaching highly creative actors to coaching highly creative clients primarily adults and young adults with ADHD.

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Meet Carey Anderson

This month for our meet our staff, we are featuring Carey. Carey utilizes her clinical experience and vast administrative experience to work closely with each clinician and potential client at the Hallowell Center NYC. She ensures patient’s needs are addressed and matched to the appropriate clinician.

Carey has spent much of her clinical experience working with adult clients with substance use disorders as well as working with performing artists in private practice. She discovered her passion for counseling through her first career in the performing arts.

Carey received her MSEd in Mental Health Counseling from CUNY/Hunter College and was clinically trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital as a Mental Health Counselor working in their Partial Hospitalization Program. Carey’s approach is influenced by her continuing education in Positive Psychology, mindfulness training and person-centered counseling.

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Meet Ned Bliss

This month for our meet our staff, we are featuring Ned is a Licensed Independent Social Worker and the New Patient Specialist for the Boston Hallowell Center.As an adolescent and adult therapist at the Hallowell Center since 2012, he excels at connecting with his patients on a personal level and helping them to face their challenges with confidence and determination. He utilizes a cognitive behavioral approach to therapy.

Ned started his professional career in special education, working primarily with intellectually curious students who benefited from a holistic and varied approach in the classroom to meet their exceptional potential. While doing this work he developed a passion for supporting people with various learning differences. Ned has an intuitive understanding of the challenges people with ADHD face in both the academic and professional realm, having ADHD himself. Ned is a graduate of Tulane University, and he received his Masters in Clinical Social Work at Simmons College in Boston in 2009.

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Ice Cream at Midnight

Most people have their secret cravings. But we who have ADHD specialize in one kind of craving. We crave carbs.It’s the pint, quart, or even gallon of Cherry Garcia or Mocha Nut Fudge ice cream in the middle of the night as a “snack”. It’s the jar of Skippy’s Smooth or Peter Pan Crunchy peanut butter that always seems to be one knife stroke short of empty, no matter how many jars we buy. It’s the jumbo bag of M&M Peanut that we refuse to share when we go to the movies (those days will return. . .). It’s the extra spoonful of gravy we slip onto our mashed potatoes after topping them with more than an average serving of butter. It’s the beer we love. It’s the sugar we add not in teaspoonfuls but in tablespoonfuls (if we bother to measure) to our coffee, tea, cereal, or bowl of blueberries.We may be overweight. . . or not. We may be pre-diabetic or diabetic. . . or not. We may be behind in our dental bills, or we may avoid the dentist. . . or not. We may or may not be paying a medical price for our sugar cravings and our carb loading. We may or may not suffer pangs of shame and guilt because of it. We may or may not try to curb giving in to these urges.But most of the time we who have ADHD do not understand the very logical reason that we just can’t resist that final piece of cake. It beckons us all the way from its resting place in the kitchen upstairs to our bedroom just as we are about to fall asleep, only to rouse up out of bed to snarf down that slice before finally going to sleep.It’s because of the shot of dopamine carbs give us. Remember, we’re on a perpetual search for the dopamine shot, we don’t have as much as neurotypical people. It’s also why we’re 10 times more likely to develop compulsions or addictions of many kinds: to alcohol; to nicotine; to weed; to cocaine; to opiates. And to the many behavioral compulsions and addictions: shopping and spending; gambling; pornography; extreme sports and exercise; and games and screens of all kinds.And then there’s food. Most people don’t make the dopamine connection with food, especially carbs. The fact is that a spoonful of sugar doesn’t just make the medicine go down, it becomes a form of medicine itself. Not a good medicine, but a part of many of our regimens to self-medicate.As a means of relieving tension and getting instant pleasure, carbs work even faster than alcohol. It’s much safer from a social standpoint to be a carbs junky than a drug or alcohol devotee. But it can be dangerous nonetheless. Most of us who flirt with the carb cravings—like me—wish we didn’t and try to find better ways of getting that dopamine shot.The best way to beat the carbs carousel is to develop other ways of getting that dopamine shot. At the top of my list is a creative outlet. Mine is writing. Writing this very note right now is giving me the shot I might have sought from an ice cream or a Triscuit covered with peanut butter. Yours might be drawing, or making a cool TikTok, , re-designing your garden or trying a new recipe. Whatever it is, have a creative outlet!Second on my list are connections – human or canine. We just adopted two kittens, so I should add feline to the list. Have regular contact with a friend or relative you really enjoy talking or being with. Walk your dog or play with your cat. Connection with another living being makes a huge difference to our mental well-being.And then physical exercise is among one of the very best ways you can get some good old dopamine. Maybe you like running or going to the gym. Maybe you hate the thought of sports! Use that creative mind and think out of the box for exercise that might tempt you.So next time you’re courting that bowl of Cookie Dough or that jar of peanut brittle or the stack of pancakes overflowing with syrup, think to yourself, it’s just the dopamine shot I’m craving. Rather than reaching for the snack, how else can I get it? You’ll be glad you did, as you start to develop healthier ways of satisfying your brain.

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Ned’s New Podcast

 

LAUNCHING OCTOBER 12th

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Ned’s New Book is Published!

Buy your copy of ADHD 2.0: New Science and Strategies for Thriving with Distraction from Childhood through Adulthood

This brand new book from Drs Ned Hallowell and John Ratey is packed with new science, tips and practical plans for both children and adults. Read why they consider “Variable Attention Stimulus Trait” to be a much better and more positive name for this fascinating and potentially positive trait. Learn about exercise and the brain, the Default Mode Network and how to avoid it, how to find your Right Difficult, the latest in medication and more.Click here to order a copy.

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Meet Jen

 

This month for our meet our staff, we are featuring Jen Zobel Bieber. Jen is a certified personal coach whose specialty is helping adults with ADHD achieve significant personal and professional goals.

Jen has a keen ability to listen, synthesize, and help individuals move from contemplation into action. She brings to her work an understanding of the neuroscience of ADHD and its practical applications. Her clients come away with tools for time management, organization, decision-making, and simplifying. They report feeling more centered and confident as they capitalize on their strengths, manage their challenges, and exceed their own expectations.

Jen received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Columbia University, where she graduated as valedictorian of her college class. She received her coaching certification from NYU.  Earlier in her career, Jen worked in the film and television industry in news, documentary, and entertainment production for NY1, PBS, ABC, NBC, and HBO.  Jen’s work as a personal coach has been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Time Out New York, Forbes, and on The Today Show.

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