ADHD 2.0 Quotes

“Because it’s just not in the makeup of people with ADHD or VAST to give up. Sticking to something is a terrific quality if the something is productive and makes you happy or your life better. But sticking to something just for the sake of sticking to it is a Sisyphean undertaking—pushing that old boulder up the hill day after day only to have it roll back down the next.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Many people with ADHD or VAST are at the other end of this scale. They need to move and create movement as they work. They need to create physical, hand-built solutions to problems.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“This relates to how he approaches risk and uncertainty. With a 9 in Quick Start, he is “insistent” in this way, and that makes him like most people with ADHD or VAST. They jump right in without testing the waters first. Remember: fire, ready, aim.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Being a 3, he is technically “resistant” in Follow Thru, which is typical of people with ADHD or VAST. In other words, they take shortcuts and let solutions evolve as they work on problems instead of planning an approach in advance. Dr.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“It turned out that many women dropped out of Dr. Felitti’s weight loss program because losing weight made them feel unbearably anxious and vulnerable. Their girth helped them to feel safe, beyond a man’s desire to assault them. So, even though they knew that their obesity put them at risk for disease, they did not want to give up the protection they felt it afforded them.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“As mentioned earlier, one way to think about the central challenge in ADHD is gaining better braking control over the metaphorical Ferrari brain, both in terms of the speed at which it operates and the level of emotion it can emit.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“In other words, just as the cerebellum had long been known to act as a kind of gyroscope or balancer of gait and movement, he explained, “so does it regulate the speed, capacity, consistency, and appropriateness of cognition and emotional processes.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“In other words: Spend more time in the TPN focusing on a single task. We know what you might be thinking: The whole point is that I can’t focus on a single task! But you can—you are already a master of distraction, so now distract yourself. Productivity isn’t the point here. Moving the toggle switch is.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Trapped in the past or future in the DMN, you’re likely to abandon projects you once started with enthusiasm, make careless mistakes, or, worse, fall into a state of misery and despair, for no good reason whatsoever. All”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“This is truly a malfunction of the imagination, and it explains the confluence of the creative and depressive we so often see within the same person, even within the same hour.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“If there is one takeaway in distilling down the complexity of the DMN and the TPN, it boils down to the fact that the toggle switches between them are off in those with ADHD.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“In a neurotypical brain, when the TPN is turned on and you’re on task, the DMN is turned off. But in the ADHD brain, the fMRI shows that when the TPN is turned on, the DMN is turned on as well, trying to muscle its way in and pull you into its grasp, thereby distracting you. In ADHD, therefore, the DMN competes with the TPN, which in most people it does not do.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“The great mathematician Alan Turing summed us up when he said, “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” That sums us up perfectly.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Still unproven,”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Who are we, the people who have ADHD? We are the problem kid who drives his parents crazy by being totally disorganized, unable to follow through on anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task; the one who is forever interrupting, making excuses for work not done, and generally functioning far below potential in most areas. We are the kid who gets daily lectures on how we’re squandering our talent, wasting the golden opportunity that our innate ability gives us to do well, and failing to make good use of all that our parents have provided. We are also sometimes the talented executive who keeps falling short due to missed deadlines, forgotten obligations, social faux pas, and blown opportunities. Too often we are the addicts, the misfits, the unemployed, and the criminals who are just one diagnosis and treatment plan away from turning it all around. We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure. But then, we can also make good. Can we ever! We are the seemingly tuned-out meeting participant who comes out of nowhere to provide the fresh idea that saves the day. Frequently, we are the “underachieving” child whose talent blooms with the right kind of help and finds incredible success after a checkered educational record. We are the contenders and the winners. We are also imaginative and dynamic teachers, preachers, circus clowns, and stand-up comics, Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, inventors, tinkerers, and trend setters. Among us there are self-made millionaires and billionaires; Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners; Academy, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy award winners; topflight trial attorneys, brain surgeons, traders on the commodities exchange, and investment bankers. And we are often entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

“Needs danger in order to feel engaged with life and truly alive”
― Edward M. Hallowell, ADHD 2.0 : New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood