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January 2 - January 2, 2023
anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task;
We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too.
We offend people by forgetting names and promises, but we make good by understanding what nobody else has picked up on.
sandcastle. Indeed, people with ADHD feel an abiding need—an omnipresent itch—to create something.
It’s with us all the time, this unnamed appetite, whether we understand what it is or not; the act of creation offers the magnet’s north pole to our south and clicks us together. It captivates us, plants us in the present, and sets us transfixed within the creative act, whatever it might happen to be.
We don’t care what it is, we just have to address the mental emergency—the brain pain—that boredom sets off.
task, that performance is inconsistent, good days and bad days, good moments and terrible ones, all of which usually lead the teacher, supervisor, or spouse to conclude that the person in question needs more discipline, needs to try harder, needs to learn to pay attention.
diagnosis, is that these same people can hyperfocus, deliver a brilliant presentation on time, and be super-reliable when they are stimulated.
Unfortunately, this natural sparkle can be snuffed out by years of criticism, reprimands, redirection, lack of appreciation, and repeated disappointments, frustrations, and outright failures.
But the fact is that we lack an internal sense of the arc of time; we’re unaware of the unstoppable flow of seconds into minutes into hours, days, and so forth.
William Dodson, one of the smartest clinicians ever to write about ADHD, made famous the term “rejection-sensitive dysphoria,” or RSD, which describes a tendency on the part of people who have ADHD to overreact precipitously and disastrously to even the slightest perceived put-down, dis, or vaguely negative remark. They can spiral down to the depths in the blink of an eye and become inconsolable.
life. As you get older, this tends to manifest as a general dissatisfaction with ordinary life leading to a need to improve upon it, augment it, supercharge it, ratchet it up several notches. This “itch” can lead to major achievements and creations, or it can lead to addictions of all kinds as well as a host of other dangerous behaviors. Often it leads to both.
sense a shift in mood or energy in the group, the class, the family, the organization, the town, the country. Before others catch on, the person with ADHD is telling others to watch out, there’s an ill wind brewing; or to get ready, a big opportunity is just around the corner.
image. Due to the inability to observe oneself accurately, coupled with the heightened sensitivity to perceived criticism and a record of underachievement, people with ADHD usually have a self-image that is far more negative than is warranted.
While we are all wired to feel fear and imagine disaster far more than to feel comfortable and secure (along with our five senses, the imagination is our chief evolutionary danger detector), people who have ADHD or VAST are also particularly prone to head toward gloom and doom in their minds because they have stored up in their memory banks a lifetime of moments of failure, disappointment, shame, frustration, defeat, and embarrassment. Given a moment to reflect on what’s likely to happen next, life has taught people with ADHD to imagine and expect the worst. Too many facts are readily
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Of course, catastrophic thinking is a form of rumination. Your boss throws off a comment that you perceive as a slight. The rear part of the DMN spins into overdrive, looking
back at what she said, taking it apart, wondering what you did to deserve that. Was it really a pointed dig? Then you beat yourself up, thinking back, ruminating on what you might have said or done to provoke the comment. You take apart every imperfect thing you said or did at work, reliving the embarrassment. There’s more than enough angst to go around.
In his book The Globalization of Addiction, Bruce Alexander uses the term “dislocation” (which was coined by the political economist Karl Polanyi) to refer to the loss of “psychosocial integration.” Dislocation, he explains, is psychologically toxic and untenable. An individual will crack in any number of ways: disruptive behavior; extreme anxiety; withdrawal; school refusal; the beginnings of substance use; depression and thoughts of suicide; the development of an eating disorder; cutting; poor performance at work; loss of job; marital difficulties. The dismal list goes on.
Join some kind of group that holds meetings—a book club, a lecture series, a knitting circle. Then attend those meetings! The MacArthur Foundation Study on Aging showed this to be one of the two factors most associated with long life (the other is frequency of visits with friends).
Clear yourself of pent-up anger and resentment—that is, practice forgiveness of others and of yourself. Do this as often as you fill up your car with gas. There is no one way to do this; you’ll have to find a way that works for you. One example: You say to yourself, He was a son of a bitch, but I am not going to waste one more second of my precious life being angry at him. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone the deed, just that you renounce the hold that anger has over you.
Engage in some kind of spiritual practice, whether as an individual or in a group. It doesn’t have to be organized religion, just some framework for entertaining and sharing the Big Questions, Ideas, Uncertainties, Possibilities, and Hopes. Finding the right group is key, but once you do find such a connection, it will reach into, enlighten, and warm many areas of your life.
Never worry alone. This one is key. Of course, choose with care the people you worry with. But when you worry with the right person, worry quickly turns into a chance to problem-solve and sometimes even a chance to laugh—releasing your worries—together.
Visit the local fire department if you can, and talk to a fireman about his job. Firemen love to talk, and they tend to be great connectors.
Always be on the lookout for the person who can provide for your child (or for you) what you can’t.
What three or four things are you best at doing? What three or four things do you like doing the most? What three or four activities or achievements have brought you the most praise in your life? What are your three or four most cherished goals? What three or four things would you most like to get better at? What do others praise you for but you take for granted? What, if anything, is easy for you but hard for others? What do you spend a lot of time doing that you are really bad at? What could your teacher or supervisor do so that your time could be spent more productively? If you weren’t
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As a guiding principle, you ought to spend the majority of your working hours at the intersection of three circles: the circle of all the things you really like to do, the circle of all the things you’re really good at doing, and the circle of things that someone will pay you to do.
the Kolbe Index. If you want to know what strengths you’ve always known you had but likely have never named, take this test. If you also want to know why some tasks have seemed all but impossible to you even though they come easily to others, take this test. If you want to know where your “sweet spot” is, where you ought to spend most of your time, in what kind of work, take this test.
there are five areas of your environment that we would have you focus on for yourself or your child: daily structure, nutrition, sleep, populate your world with positivity, and accept and find the right help.
How many times have we been alerted or reminded and, because we’ve fully intended to follow through, turned the alarm or alert off…only to realize hours later that our mind took off on another track and we missed the proverbial (or literal) train?
Playful attitude. Permission for everyone to be real and genuine. Enough structure, schedule, and rules to avoid confusion and chaos. Meals together daily, with whoever lives in the home; food can bring us together.
Some people with ADHD or symptoms of VAST do better when they eliminate dairy (lactose) or go on a gluten-free diet.
One of the ongoing findings in ADHD research is that some of the gene differences associated with ADHD are related to faulty dopamine and norepinephrine machinery, so a blast of exercise is like taking a stimulant that corrects this deficit for the moment.
Was his inability to put on the brakes impacting his socialization and efforts to make friends?
An increase in dopamine helps our nerve cells pass on information more “cleanly” from one to another. It helps to reduce the noise, quiet the chatterbox, and tune your brain to the right channel. If the signals aren’t clear, it’s easy to fall into confusion and anxiety.
When it comes to the two types of stimulants, the difference is this: methylphenidate type drugs (like Ritalin) raise dopamine levels a little higher than NEP. In the amphetamine type drugs (like Adderall), it’s the reverse. Amphetamine drugs have a greater effect on NEP than on dopamine, though also only by a small amount.
Look at your style, your feel. Is it truly yours or are you imitating someone else’s?
It just means your focus is on the moment, not the outcome.
