ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

by Edward M. Hallowell

Keep up with at least two good friends regularly. This is even better than going to the gym every day! One way to do this is to have a standing lunch date or a time reserved for a catch-up phone call every week.

Reserve at least a half hour of uninterrupted one-on-one time with your child every week, no agenda, doing whatever your child wants as long as it’s safe, legal, and not too expensive.

Join some kind of group that holds meetings—a book club, a lecture series, a knitting circle. Then attend those meetings!

Clear yourself of pent-up anger and resentment—that is, practice forgiveness of others and of yourself.

Forgiveness does not mean that you condone the deed, just that you renounce the hold that anger has over you.

Take a daily inventory of gratitude.

Make a point of paying compliments.

Engage in some kind of spiritual practice, whether as an individual or in a group.

Go for a walk in nature alone or with a friend

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.

Minimize your consumption of news if it tends to upset you or rile you up.

Visit graveyards—whether

Whatever you’re wrestling with, take a bow for working so hard to be a better person. In other words, connect with your desire to improve and give yourself credit for trying to do that.

Connect with your personal vision of greatness and try to hold it in your consciousness every day as a guide and inspiration.

Learn about your ancestors.

talk to non-related old people about their lives, in detail.

Associate with dream makers. Avoid dream breakers. Cynics may be funny and entertaining, but they tend to drain you of hope.

Always be on the lookout for the person who can provide for your child (or for you) what you can’t.

Be on the lookout for any charismatic mentor.

ASSESSING YOUR STRENGTHS

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 afraid of getting in trouble, what would you tell your teacher or supervisor that he or she doesn’t understand about you?

the Kolbe Index.

Environment matters a great deal. All kinds of research now makes clear that our environment—including our diet, exposure to toxins, chronic stress, and many other factors—can change the way our genes get “expressed.” In lay terms, that means how you live is a determinant of whether or not you get a disease to which you are genetically predisposed.

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.

proverbial low-hanging fruit: having a schedule and a to-do list. Creating structure with these two age-old strategies will help you plan, prioritize, be on time more often, and procrastinate less. Just the simple act of sitting down to write or type out a schedule or to-do list will help, because any and every time you itemize the tasks on your plate, you are neurologically reinforcing their importance.

Paying attention to the notes and pings is another story. 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?

The trick is to set up backup reminders and systems—even in the form of asking a partner or spouse to call or nudge you to help keep you on task.

Rewards work much better for the ADHD mind than do consequences. So whether you’re an adult working on structure for yourself or a parent maintaining it for a child, build little rewards into the systems you contrive. As mentioned earlier, getting praise from others is always nice (parents and teachers, take note!), but why not also give yourself or your child something of personal value when you complete a big task or consistently remember a bunch of small ones?

working environment that meets your needs. Low-fear, high-trust, from the top on down through the ranks. Structured, organized, but not regimented. Workspace configuration that encourages connecting with others. Permission to be honest. An organizational or a corporate policy against gossip and backbiting. Clear lines of authority and communication. Clearly stated policies on a range of important topics: vacations, time off, harassment, personal email and texting. Low use of the human resources department and high use of working things out with colleagues directly and privately (except if there’s harassment—then HR should have your back!). Permission to be who you are, and the acknowledgment of both your weaknesses and your strengths. The capacity for everyone to take initiative, exert control over what they do, and get credit for what they do. Management makes an explicit effort to match workers’ talents with tasks. Management clearly states and explains expectations.

best fuel for the ADHD brain. We know a lot about what kinds of foods contribute to hyperactivity or substandard performance of your “machinery.” And it’s really not that complicated! In general, it’s best to stick to whole foods. Whole grains are better than processed grains; fresh foods are better than commercially preserved and packaged ones. Avoid processed foods, junk foods, any foods that contain additives, preservatives, and colorings. The more veggies and fruits the better. Healthy oils and fats = good. Trans fats = bad. Steer clear of fruit juices, because they’re mainly sugar (see below) and empty calories. Your body also needs good protein like unprocessed meats, fish, nuts, and eggs. Drink lots of water. Or tea. We also love coffee, as caffeine is the best over-the-counter focus medication that there is. Just drink it in moderation and watch for side effects: elevated heart rate, irregular heartbeat, lots of trips to the bathroom (it’s a laxative and a diuretic), insomnia, agitation, and irritability. These are all signs you’ve drunk too much coffee!

Avoid sugar. Sugar promotes the production and release of dopamine, and the ADHD brain loves a squirt of dopamine. Unfortunately, as good as that initial influx of dopamine might feel—you’re energized, cheery, satisfied—you have to keep ingesting sugar to keep up that feeling. That’s the reason for the gallon of ice cream at midnight, the jumbo Reese’s Pieces in the movie theater, sauces and gravies on everything, cookies galore. Not only is this bad for your waistline, but the post-sugar/post-dopamine crash of mood and satiety feels terrible.

With regular practice, you can actually change the structure of your brain through meditation. A 2011 Harvard study found that just eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction work increased the cortical thickness in the hippocampus. This is a key area of the brain that oversees our learning, memory, and emotional regulation, all important areas to strengthen for those of us with the variable attention stimulus trait.

Aerobic activity, getting your heart rate up to 70 percent max for at least twenty minutes. Balance training, to strengthen your cerebellum as well as your core. Yoga or using a BOSU ball are both good options. Focused fitness, which keeps you on point while getting your heart rate up. Zumba or other dance programs, racket or team sports, and martial arts all fit the bill. For overall health and fitness, strength training is also excellent, and it will naturally be incorporated into some of these activities. If you want extra credit, take some of your fitness choices outside in nature whenever possible.

There are non-pharmaceutical ways to increase dopamine—some healthy, like exercise and engaging your creativity and being connected to others or to a higher goal, and some counterproductive, like bingeing on carbs; using drugs like alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and Xanax; or engaging in compulsive activities like gambling, shopping, sex, or workaholism. Failing to master the adaptive pursuit of dopamine leads to addictions of all kinds, but mastering it leads to success and joy.

Taking a stimulant or stimulant-like drug early in life helps prevent, not promote, addiction later on. Since 80 percent of addictions get started between the ages of thirteen and twenty-three, and since people with ADHD are far more prone to develop an addiction than the general population, and since taking stimulant medication reduces the risk of addiction later on, it makes a lot of sense to start a child on stimulant medication before age thirteen.

ADHD was totally misunderstood for so very, very long. Tragically, terribly misunderstood. This led to the sadistic and systematic betrayal of innocent children, punishing them for what they could not control, and the wholesale wasting of the talent of generations of adults. For far too long, it was considered okay to call those of us with ADHD imbeciles, morons, and idiots. Based on IQ, those were actual diagnostic terms in medical textbooks well into the 1960s. Who wouldn’t want to skip to the end of that?

In other words, the science is proving that we aren’t just trying to be difficult; we’re really having a difficult time inside. We also know that connection to others, identifying our strengths and focusing on them instead of our weaknesses, setting up systems of structure in our environments, getting exercise, and taking medication all really help with these glitches and imbalances.

This is where the part about not caring if the ball drops into the hole comes into play. Chris’s don’t-care advice may seem counterintuitive, but we have learned it’s spot-on. It doesn’t mean you’re blasé. It just means your focus is on the moment, not the outcome.

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