Your Brain's Not Broken Quotes

“The results of the experiment suggest that, for those with ADHD, anticipation of a reward means nothing to their striatum. It takes the actual rewards or fun events to light up the striatum with excitement.3 But for people who don’t have ADHD, even before the actual rewards arrive, the striatum is buzzing with activity in response to signals that promise rewards will be coming.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Today, when people say they “went down the rabbit hole,” they are usually referring to getting sucked into spending way too long reading about or researching something on the internet. For those of us with ADHD, though, rabbit holes are a description of our daily thought process as it takes twists and turns, tangents, and digressions.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“A nonpharmaceutical approach is for clients to learn how to predict and manage emotional responses to lessen the frequency of unwanted outbursts.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Those who struggle with emotional regulation tend to”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“ADHD is more about loss of interest and motivation than attention and concentration.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“when someone worries that something will happen, their mind and body are already experiencing the very thing they are fearing as though it is currently taking place.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“anything that isn’t happening right now seems too overwhelming to plan.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Those of us with short-term memory issues feel like we are trying to catch bubbles a child has blown with a plastic wand.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“I know too well how those of us with ADHD are assessed by a non-ADHD world. Previous supervisors, friends, and even family members have interpreted my symptoms as carelessness, laziness, or stupidity. Even when people know that I have ADHD, they often attribute my symptoms to flaws in my character, telling me to pay more attention to this or that.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“So if this is the normal emotion level, and I feel things here”—he raised his hand well above the normal level, then sat back—“then how much should I be trusting these emotions?”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“ADHD expert William Dodson explains that “the vast majority of adults with ADHD are not overtly hyperactive, though they are hyperactive internally.”1 For many of them, their hyperactivity feels more like an inner restlessness or agitation. They will likely worry about what may happen in the future. Like their outwardly hyperactive counterparts, they also have racing thoughts and a craving for excitement, but it occurs inwardly.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Hyperfocus Conversely, sometimes it will look like those of us with ADHD can actually sustain focus, but it’s not a normal type of focus. When we deeply and intensely concentrate on something that we find very interesting, we will unconsciously tune out any irrelevant thoughts and senses. This is a single-minded trancelike state called hyperfocus. It’s our way of tuning out the chaos inside and outside of our heads. Hyperfocus happens when we completely immerse ourselves in an intriguing task, like working out complicated math problems or editing photos and film.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“There is also the “Wait, what?” phenomenon that happens when those of us with ADHD forget to listen. We think we are listening, and then our minds begin to drift. We zone out without realizing it, which leads to difficulty in remembering conversations or following a complex set of directions. This occurs not because we don’t care about what is being said but because we have difficulty sustaining our attention for very long.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“There is a misconception that those with ADHD lack the ability to pay attention or stay focused. The reality is that ADHD causes us to pay too much attention to everything most of the time—especially when it comes from our environment. We may become easily distracted by irrelevant information that our five senses are detecting: people whispering, crooked artwork on the wall, perfume that is too strong, the itchy tag of our T-shirt, lights that are too bright. Because we don’t have the filters to sift out unnecessary information, these distractions, which are nearly invisible to the neurotypical person, compete for our attention. Because of our brains that go ping! our attention is often inefficiently redirected.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“I am continuously working diligently to suppress ADHD tendencies by pretending that I care about polite small talk, not interrupting people, and listening carefully.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“If You Love Someone Who Has ADHD”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“About three-fourths of all adults with ADHD report the inability to shut off their mind so they can fall asleep at night.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Why is this task in this quadrant? How will I begin? (Be very specific.) When will I do this? (Set a specific time to begin and end.) Where will I do this activity? What might be emotionally distracting to me while I work? How will I manage that? How will I guard myself against the malicious motivators?”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD

“Because we don’t have the filters to sift out unnecessary information, these distractions, which are nearly invisible to the neurotypical person, compete for our attention.”
― Tamara Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD