Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

by Edward M. Hallowell

41. Try to let a successful moment last and be remembered and become sustaining over time. You’ll have to train yourself consciously and deliberately to do this because you’ll naturally tend to forget your successes as you brood over your shortcomings or pessimistically anticipate the worst. 42. Remember that ADD usually includes a tendency to overfocus or hyperfocus at times. This hyperfocusing can be used constructively or destructively. Be aware of its destructive use: a tendency to obsess or ruminate over some imagined problem without being able to let it go. 43. Exercise vigorously and regularly. You should schedule exercise into your life and stick with it. It helps you work off excess energy and aggression in a positive way, it allows for noise reduction within the mind, it stimulates the hormonal and neurochemical system in a most therapeutic way, and it soothes and calms the body. When you add all that to the well-known health benefits of exercise, you can see how important exercise is. Make it something fun so you can stick with it over the long haul, i.e., the rest of your life. One particular form of exercise, sexual activity, is very good for ADD.