TGIF: How to Thrive with Adult ADHD
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Dear Community,
Welcome to our weekly well-being column TGIF - Your Weekly Reset. Each week I will answer questions from you (or topics of general interest!), bringing in themes of mental wellness-related tools, reminders of gratitude, innovative solutions, and a summary of my own feelings related to the topic.
Submit your questions - things heavy on your heart and mind or just questions you feel better asking anonymously, as often as you’d like and I’ll be sure to address them in our upcoming columns.
As always, thanks for being here.
This week’s question is about adult ADHD, something more and more adults are contemplating and trying to navigate.
I feel I’m addicted to procrastination and the adrenalin that stress gives me by working in fits and bursts, but I know it’s not healthy. I wonder if this might be ADHD and can I really help it?
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for this question. This is a large question so I want to break it down into digestable resources, with full knowing we may circle back around to this topic based on questions and further interest! Let’s dig in.
TOOLS
Since our 5 years of being open in Michigan, Reset has seen a considerable increase in adults inquiring about their own ADHD diagnoses. While children generally need to be formally assessed by a PsyD or Ph.D. level therapist to then make school accommodations, adults can successfully self-assess and/or work with their psychotherapist by bringing this self-assessment tool.
Now, if an adult is interested in medication to help manage their symptoms of Adult ADHD, then they must visit with a psychiatrist, MD, NP, or another prescribing provider. Not everyone has this goal of working with medication for their ADHD which is why a formal assessment by a doctor-level provider is not always necessary (and helps you avoid costly exams!).
I say this because I want you to first feel empowered. I want you to start to practice self-awareness of the top unrecognized signs of adult ADHD and see if they apply to you. This involves effort on your part to slow down, get curious, and take notes. This also involves a lot of self-compassion, perhaps grief over a missed diagnosis earlier in life and even anger towards others who you felt misguided by.
Often Missed Signs of Adult ADHD
Hyperfocus in certain settings but not able to pay attention at all in other settings.
Difficulty controlling attention. Lowered distress tolerance.
Impulsive shopping and overspending and/or problems with drugs, drinking, impulsive behaviors.
Time blindness, terrible with time management
High functioning. Look busy and almost like a workaholic, all in desire to keep your mind busy.
Highly self critical. Constantly beating yourself self up for not being able to do what others are doing.
GRATITUDE
If you are reading this and your mind is starting to get very noisy, I want you to put your hand on your heart, take a deep breath, and pause.
There are wonderful parts of you that are your ADHD parts. The part of you that is a risk taker, an excellent presenter, highly energetic and verbal, spontaneous, playful, creative, experiential, innovative, entertaining, sensitive, empathetic, attuned, gregarious, observant, witty, and intelligent. Take a moment and extend gratitude towards those parts of you.
These are parts of you that may even feel like your most authentic parts! You were built this way (ADHD is often genetic and inherited) and it’s a wonderful thing. Being “neurospicy” is brilliant and affects more than 20% of the world’s population - and some argue up to 45%!
Of course! We are diverse humans who naturally have differences in the way our brains process, respond, and react to the world. Isn’t that terrific?
INNOVATION
Now, contrary to traditional opinion, treating ADHD is not about treating the person. It is about adapting the environment for that person.
There are institutions that have been built (thanks to the Industrial Revolution) to assume humans can work in predictable, monotonous, and robotic ways. Many of these institutions and work environments exist today and have created shame for the humans who do not fit into those ways of operating.
If you feel you may have ADHD (or perhaps sense your child does) I want you to think about your sense of belonging:
Has it always felt difficult to “fit in”, mold to the environment, “behave” and follow the rules?
Have you felt like a mess up in an environment that expects stability, structure, routine, and obedience?
In school or work settings, were you the one over-stimulated by the loud, chaotic noises and aesthetics?
Were you the one always in trouble for talking out of turn, interrupting, and needing to use the bathroom 10x a day?
Let me tell you this: you are not and were not the problem. It was a mismatched environment. That is all. The environment (school, work, social) did not match the way your brain operates, and unfortunately, limited research over the last 50 years has made most of our country’s environments a mismatch for neurodivergent folks.
FEELS
One of the largest implications to those living with ADHD (or other neurodiversities) who are in mismatched environments, is that a ton of cognitive and emotional energy is spent on masking.
Psychologist Russell Barkley coined the term masking as he discussed the “impression management” those with ADHD do in order to not be seen as though they are living with the condition.
Masking has negative consequences because it leads to self-esteem issues, and a lack of acceptance of oneself, and continues the spirals of anxiety, shame, and self-criticism for feelings of not belonging, fitting in, or having the same capacity as peers. Alternatively, embracing oneself and all your parts is an exceptional way to heal those wounds from masking.
If this all feels like you, know that it starts first with awareness. From there, you may go through a period of grief as you remember all the times when you masked and were self-critical due to behaviors that stemmed from the inability to work with your ADHD.
I invite you to practice forgiveness. A prompt I love to use is, “it’s okay, you were just trying to…”. Repeat that journal entry over and over, exhausting it until you can feel tenderness towards those memories and towards people in your life you felt misguided by.
Then, start doing your research. Build up your toolbelt to strengthen your executive functioning and begin a meditation and movement practice like your brain depends on it. Work with a therapist who understands adult ADHD and can help coach you. Enjoy your coffee, your fits and bursts type of work ethic, your creativity, and unfinished household tasks, and ask for help. Delegate, outsource, and own it. Create a time when you can slow down and lean into the environments that help you quiet the internal and external noise.
You are magnificent. There is nothing wrong with you.
Click here to learn more about therapy for ADHD.
Hugs,
Kerry
