My Blog: ADHD Since 1978-

April 2, 2024
Depression, Parenting

What to do when your child is broken…

I hope nobody thinks that I mean this term in a pejorative way. I’m simply trying to get at the truth, I hope from an objective standpoint. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry because angry is easy. And when I peeled back the layers of anger I know there is a deep abiding sadness underneath. A potential black hole of depression. I have been encouraged recently to let go of the anger. And it’s nice to try to do that. But being sucked in past the event horizon of my own despair is not a thing I enjoy dealing with on a day-to-day basis. But in lieu of continuing to wax cosmological, I’ll get to the point. When my car is broken I take it to the mechanic. He or she works on it until it’s fixed. If my computer is broken I take it to the Apple store. If something is broken in my house, I call my buddy who’s a contractor. In none of these scenarios do they work on it for 45 minutes a week and expect it to get better. Even in physical medicine, if I break my leg, there’s a clear protocol of how to fix that. But what do we do when our children are broken? I’m not intending to be hyperbolic or overdramatic. Despite not being in the best headspace, I don’t think that that is an exaggeration. They need dramatically more care than one therapy session a week and seeing the pharmacologist once a month. As time passes I vacillate between hope and despair. To be honest, the Hope feels like fool’s Gold. The reality is that it is only the sheer power of my will as well as the support of my wife that is keeping these kids anywhere…

March 19, 2024
ADHD, Anxiety

The anxiety Lion.

I’ve been in ADHD coach for about 12 or 13 years. And I had no idea when I started doing this for a living that I would end up talking so much to people about anxiety. Statistics show about 80% of people with ADHD have at least one comorbidity. The most common comorbidity is anxiety I’ve seen it quantified that way many times. And I don’t dispute that anxiety and depression are very closely related. But they are distinctly different. I guess I think of them as something akin to fraternal twins. In my practice anxiety is tremendously prevalent. I would estimate that 90% of my clients struggle with anxiety in one way or another. But often they don’t realize it at first. I like to think I’m getting better at noticing it. But there was a time that it was difficult for me to figure it out as well. It’s quite sinister how many anxiety traits/symptoms overlap with those of adhd. This might end up being a multi-part examination of anxiety. But today, I want to talk about the lion. The lion represents both fear and real danger, a survival situation. It’s important to understand how our brain reacts when confronted by a lion. It is also important to understand how our brain reacts when we start perceiving things as lions that are not lions. Our brains are pretty sophisticated biological machines. But we don’t always have as much control as we think. Generally speaking, a lot of our higher functions, decision-making, human smarts reside in our prefrontal cortex. That’s why we can think about paying you back next Tuesday if you were to buy us a hamburger today. (If you’re too young to get that reference… It just makes me sad.) of course, as ADHD people, we’re not…

March 12, 2024
ADHD

What’s your self-care routine?

There is no right or wrong answer to this. Well, I guess I would argue that if you don’t think about self-care or make it somewhat of a priority in your life, I could argue that’s the wrong answer. But it really comes down to what is self-care. It’s a super now buzz word. I think it’s one of those things that everyone thinks they know what it is but maybe doesn’t. My self-care routine involves working out ideally, 5 to 7 days a week I always try to get enough sleep. That is sort of my baseline. I tried to meditate for 5 to 10 minutes 3 to 4 days a week. I tried to practice the drums five or six days a week for somewhere between one minute and whenever it starts to feel not fun anymore. Eating well as hard I definitely get all the nutrition and the good foods that I need. It’s a question of making sure I weed out some of the less good foods. But for the most part I avoid sugar and processed foods. I watched soccer because I enjoy it. And I try my best to overcome my insane life and support social interactions as often as possible. My emotional relationship with my wife is also foundational. And sex is a self-care tool. Life often gets away. But we shoot for every other night. (Thought about not including sex. But I think it’s a really important part of a happy, balanced life, that we don’t talk about enough in our culture. Whether you focus on the orgasm, the intimacy, or both, it’s hard to argue it they don’t contribute to happiness.) I also try to spend a lot of time in my garden in the summer. So, you may not that…

March 5, 2024
ADHD

The wonderful world of meditation!

I scheduled time to do blog posts while I’m hanging out in the car waiting for my youngest to finish with his hip hop class. Today I was feeling particularly scattered and didn’t think I was going to be able to focus enough to have coherent thoughts and get them down. But being generally scattered, I thought it was a good idea to meditate. Side note: I’ve been meditating a lot more lately and finding it helpful. I know I have posted about mindfulness many times in the past. I think this post will have a slightly different flavor. I was inspired to write this particular post based on a series of meditations I’m doing on my headspace app. They’re designed to manage a restless mind. While I was away at my ADHD conference last month, I was looking for a different meditation in the app to mix it up. I saw this one and thought to myself, “hey, I have a restless mind.” Though I have been meditating more, I haven’t been doing the 10 lesson course every day. Sometimes I’m not in the mood. Sometimes I don’t want to do 11 minutes of meditation. But I’ve been working my way through it. And I’ve been really surprised about the content. To summarize, it’s not about fighting your restless mind or judging it, or even really taming it. Which I find refreshing, positive, and non judgmental. The emphasis is really just on noticing the state of your mind. A busy mind is not a bad thing. Nor is it a good thing. It just is. I find this fascinating because taking away my own judgment about my ability to do meditation “the right way” was most of what kept me for meditating for decades. Letting go of that was…

February 28, 2024
Uncategorized

An army of one?

remember that slogan from 10 or 15 years ago? Probably not. They didn’t stick with it for very long. as patients, we are a sample size of one. I can’t remember if I posted on this before. But it’s a nugget that I didn’t want to let go for too long in case I hadn’t posted. large studies. Metadata analysis. Science. Odds and averages. All these things are super important to understanding the overall outline of a disease or impairment. But ultimately you are a sample of one. Trust yourself and maybe try to find a doctor who trusts you. Cuz some of us are outliers and there are a lot of ways you can be an outlier. But if you feel strongly that your experience is valid, even if it’s different from the conventional wisdom I would suggest you own that and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s not your truth… Maybe unless you’re a hypochondriac…

February 13, 2024
ADHD

Making decisions easier.

Decision making is not an executive function. But I’m sure I have posted in the past about how difficult decision making is for some ADHD people. It is definitely executive function adjacent. It really requires attention, working memory, managing anxiety, managing impulsivity, and sometimes other executive functions like organization and planning. So, pretty much, everything that we suck at. Congratulations! But I’ve had an epiphany recently that I’ve been sharing with a lot of my clients in regards to decision making. We know that in real estate it’s all about location, location, location. I always say that ADHD management is all about planning, planning, planning. I know I posted recently about the idea that the most important time you spend is the time you spend planning how to spend the rest of your time. (Feel free to reread that. It’s a mouthful. For me. Maybe an eyeful for you…) As I dive deeper into teaching planning to a variety of different kinds of clients, with differing emotional relationships to the idea of creating a plan or a schedule, I realize that decision making plays such an important role in our function or dysfunction. Decision-making will always be easier when we limit the decision set. We tend to get overwhelmed when we have to choose between everything and everything else. We get overwhelmed when we have to choose between a variety of very different things. And we get overwhelmed when we have to choose when we are not at our best. So how do we make choice easier? Planning! Really, what planning is, is front loading the executive function. So it may be uncomfortable or difficult to sit down for 15 or 20 minutes and plan your day. I am not saying that it’s not difficult. Especially at the beginning it…

February 7, 2024
ADHD

Squirrels & hamsters

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But I had a client a couple weeks ago who made a remark that stuck with me. He said that, “everybody talks about the squirrel running by the window that distracts us. But nobody talks about the hamster wheel inside our own head.” Just in time I figured out where I was going with this. I do think it’s important to differentiate between internal and external distractions. I am the classic hyperactive boy. I am what society thinks about when they think about ADHD. My dad always referred to me as “shot out of a cannon.” But research consistently indicates that I am only one flavor of ADHD. But I don’t think it’s an accident that my flavor was noticed first. My symptoms, at least some of them, are very externalized. I am distracted by my physical being and the physical world around me. Whether it is someone talking behind me class, or even the soft tick of the second hand on a clock in an otherwise silent library, those things derail me. Internal distractions are just as difficult to manage. But they are happening inside an ADHD person’s brain in a way that you can’t necessarily see without visible hyperactivity symptoms. In the age of flat earthers, Holocaust denial, in general nincompoopery, it’s really important to remember that a lot of things exist that we can’t see with the naked eye. I think we are getting better at recognizing ADHD in inattentive but not hyperactive folks. But I still don’t think we really talk about what’s going on with those people. Enter the hamster. I think average neurotypical people would have a hard time understanding what it’s really like inside our brains. I don’t think they believe or could even comprehend…

January 30, 2024
ADHD

APSARD conference…

it’s an ADHD professional organization. Google it. just got back from 5-day conference. My brain is full of add information. I’m going to spend some time in the next few posts doing some takeaways from the conference. They will probably be in bullet points. And I will likely do some posts on specifics in more depth after having a chance to watch some of the recordings. I think I’m going to start with some personal takeaways. — sitting still and paying attention is hard. I believe that my medication works about as well as one can expect. And if obviously made a career out of managing my adhd. So, I didn’t expect it to be quite so draining. But unlike other conferences I’ve gone to, the slides were not available online. So I couldn’t follow along. Many of the lectures were overcrowded. So I was jammed on a tiny seat between other people. I did my share of standing up on the side. But there were definitely times I wish I could have sat on the floor against the wall and still seeing the screen. Reflecting, it was actually the sitting still in a small place that was harder than the paying attention. But the combination was a doozy. I actually broke the fidget toy that I brought. Apparently I squeezed it one too many times and it actually exploded. I’ll post a picture of that later. — my tried and true strategy of planning a workout in the middle of every day of lectures worked beautifully. There were actually two days I think that I worked out twice. A really hard hour on the spin bike or lifting weights between 3 and 1/2 hours of sessions in the morning and 4 hours of sessions in the afternoon was not…

January 23, 2024
ADHD, Anxiety

feeling stupid is irrelevant

so many of my clients have a difficult time admitting when they don’t know some thing. This often leads to missing opportunities or not succeeding at some thing. And that seems pretty silly to me, especially when there’s a legitimate and real solution right there. Ask the professor. Ask your boss. Check in with a colleague. Ask your dad. Phone a friend. If you need the information to move forward being embarrassed is a relevant. I’m going to a conference in a couple of weeks. It’s a super academic affair mostly for doctors. There were multiple words on the itineraries that I had to look up. And then I had to send the following email to one of the organizers. Susanne, Hi I have a couple more summer embarrassing questions about the conference in a couple of weeks. I am not particularly well-versed in the academic jargon of professional conferences. So here goes… Thanks in advance, Matt There was a time in my life when I would have put off sending this email because it made me feel uncomfortable that I didn’t know these things already. Thankfully, I have moved past that point in my life and I just don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about me. And that’s really helpful. Because I’m gonna get the answers to these questions and be able to have a much better and lower stress conference experience

January 16, 2024
ADHD

Daily SCHEDULE 12/9/23

I’ve been promising my clients that I’d post a newer daily SCHEDULE. So here it is. For the record, it went like clockwork until we left basketball. Also, I didn’t anticipate needing some downtime in the middle of the afternoon. And putting my sons soccer rebounder together took a lot longer than I thought. Much more complicated than a goal when it comes to assembly. But the metric always is, did I get more done having a schedule than I would have without it? Absolutely! The other metric is, did I feel less stressed and more in control of my day and my time? Absolutely! Had a great low stress day with my nine year old and got a lot done. Sounds like a win to me. Seems more than worth the 12 or so minutes it took to make the schedule the night before.

January 9, 2024
ADHD

Rubber ducking

I’ve been meaning to write about this for months. I learned this from one of my clients who’s a programmer. Apparently when you’re stuck with a programming problem you’re supposed to talk it through with a rubber ducky. I’m unclear on whether or not it’s a real or metaphorical rubber duck. Either way, I love it! I know that I have talked about self-talk in the past. But this is another great opportunity to discuss it and think about why it works. And I feel a little validated that other people in the world do this enough that it’s a thing in computer science. Maybe I should start by explaining what it helps with before I go on to how it helps. As ADD people we have a tendency to get into the weeds, to use a restaurant term, inside our own heads. We can overthink things. We can use all or nothing / black and white thinking. We can catastrophize with the best of them. It can get ugly. I find that one of the most significant contributors to our feeling overwhelmed is when we let everything swirl around in our heads instead of letting it be real out in the world. Inside our heads thoughts can twist and magnify and cause more distress than clarity. Now if you had an anxiety it gets even worse. Not much can affect your functioning more negatively then the nest full of vipers inside your brain that is a clinical level of anxiety. So, we need to get those snakes out of your dome. How do we do that? Stop thinking and start doing. And even talking, writing, outlining can be ways to start doing. They are certainly ways to make your thoughts real. How many times have you said something out…

January 2, 2024
ADHD

How I’m posting today after not posting for 2 months…

first, it’s been a couple months since I posted. Partly that’s because businesses been good. Thank you to my clients. Partly it’s because home has been stressful. A quick note here. When I started my blog about 10 years ago, I promised myself that I would keep it up. I have been diligent and faithful to that intention for around a decade. However, there have been times where posting new entries has fallen a little lower in the priority queue. The reason I mention this is that I think it’s important to be intentional. But it’s also important to be flexible when life switches it up on you. I think I’ve learned three things in this regard. The first is that it’s important to be kind to yourself and recognize that it’s okay to temporarily reprioritize. That doesn’t mean you are never going to get back to something. The second is that it’s also okay to change your priorities permanently or at the very least acknowledge realistic external forces. Thomas Jefferson once said something to the effect of, “no one axiom can be deemed wise and expedient for all times and circumstances.” Any system or structure or intention that you have in your life that really works still doesn’t guarantee that it will work forever. I have strategies that I’ve been using since my late teens. But I’ve also had to make significant changes when I was a chef and working 80 hours a week, when I stopped being a chef and started my own business, when we had a child, when we had a second child, when our kids have had psychiatric crises. Without going off on a tangent, there are some inalienable truths about how to manage life, I think. But how you apply those things can change…