Now that I’ve hipped you to the ADDitude podcast feed, if you are a girl or a woman with ADHD you need to check out #337. Everyone knows that I like generate my own content on this blog. But sometimes I just need to refer to someone more expert than myself. Underdiagnosis and undertreatment in girls and women has been a problem for decades. Now that ADHD in Women is finally being addressed and studied, there is really important science that all ADHD women should know about. If you are a women, there are ways that your ADHD may really be different from your brother’s, husband’s, or father’s ADHD.

I’ve always listened to the ADDitude webinars as webinars. I never listen live. They are a great resource. About one in ten is worth it for me. Which is saying something, with how much I already know about ADHD. I particularly get a lot out of those that feature co-occuring conditions. But, it has always been a hassle to sign in to listen to the webinar after the fact and have my phone open on the browser, etc. And, they mention at the beginning that there is an option to listen in podcast form. I DO NOT KNOW WHY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO ACTUALLY HEAR THAT AND REALIZE I COULD LISTEN TO THESE WEBINARS AS PODCAST. But I can. And, they have a mainstream chanel. I get it on spotify in my regular feed. I’ll probably still sign up for the webinar, just to remember to listen to that specific one when it comes out, since I don’t listen to all of them. But this is a fabulous option. Get them here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Identity is an interesting thing. It is so important to who we are and how perceive ourselves and the world. Yet, it is not always rooted in fact or in the present. I can speak from personal experience when I say how difficult it was for me to transition from being a professional chef to being a professional organizer and coach. It took me quite a while to catch up psychologically to who the new me was. I held on to my chef’s pants and didn’t use my “nice” knives for a long time. It felt weird saying what I did for quite a while.  As I have reflected on this, I’ve had some revelations that I can relate to many of my clients. When I left being a chef, I was confident, accomplished, and successful. I left those feelings for something new, uncertain, unproved, and scary. There was a gap in my life where I felt somewhat without an identity until my new career/ business was up and running and successful. This was a difficult process to work through. Also, by nature of my first profession’s demands, I didn’t have a lot else in my life. I had my wife and son, but that’s about it. I didn’t have many 9 to 5 friends left, no time for hobbies or sports, and a life that was pretty unbalanced. One result was that I didn’t have many other anchors to tie my identity other than my profession. I have notices a similar thing happen to many of my younger student clients when they start addressing their ADHD for the first time, particularly with medication. In some instances, their friends notice that they are “different.” They usually notice that they feel different as well. Of course, different isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But, when different takes away…

So, about a month ago there was an article in ADDitude the title of which was “Will I Ever Be a ‘Good Enough’ Mother?” When I saw that I knew I was going to have to write a blog post about it even before I read it. So I made a note to come back to it and didn’t have time to read it until today. And, It was exactly what I expected…. https://www.additudemag.com/how-to-be-a-good-mom-with-adhd/?utm_source=eletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=parent_june_2021&utm_content=061221&goal=0_d9446392d6-9194c49d4a-287561789 So, I acknowledge that there is a unique societal pressure on Moms. This article did a pretty good job pointing that out. But I don’t think that is any great revelation. There is a lot of unfair and undue pressure on women in our culture in pretty much all aspects of their lives. Women get paid 70 cents on the dollar. One in four women are raped or assaulted at least once in their lifetime, if not more. Women are often subject to a glass ceiling. Check out the NOVA “Picture A Scientist,” if you want a good idea of how damn hard it is for women in STEM fields and many other male-dominated professions. So, this post isn’t about diminishing the struggles that women face daily in our society, or diminishing the psychological baggage that Moms have in our culture. But, what about the Dads? I know that there are dads who still can’t use the washing machine and cook anything other than spaghetti. But most of the dads I know are guys who take just as active a role in their households as their wife’s do and they both work full time. In some cases, like mine, the mom is the primary breadwinner. There are a lot of “traditional role” pressures on dads too. We are just expected to stoically bear them. I’ve…

I’m not going to go too much into depth on this one. I know I’ve written about this a lot in the past. But one thing that has come up in my coaching a bunch lately is the idea of how to prioritize self care. To define that, let’s consider sleep, exercise, mindfulness, down time, social interaction, or whatever else you need to keep your machine well oiled and ready to keep grinding.  For the sake of clarity and brevity, I’ll use exercise as the template for self care. Plus, it is probably the most important of those listed for me, personally. Yet, it is never the number one thing on my priority list… objectively. I can make it be number one. But it’s not there on its own. Yet, there is no way to make up a missed day of exercise. I didn’t get my blog post done yesterday and no small children died. I can always get that done another day or even, God forbid, skip a week. But I seem to effectively moved that task to today. But I did get my 42 minutes in on the spin bike yesterday.  And, I’m going to work out again today. Because that is a thing that I just can’t make up for.  I had a coach in high school who was also a math teacher. And he had a catch phrase, “Five times ten is greater than one times 50.” He was mostly referring to muscle memory and developing good habits. But I’ve found the lesson broadly applicable to my ADHD life, specifically in regards to self care. I get more out of meditating for five minutes five times a week than I would only doing it once for 25 minutes. I get more out of practicing the drums…

I’m really debating hard how much to share in this post. I don’t want to complain. I don’t want to over share. And those who read regularly know that I try to tow a line of speaking the truth about parenting kids with issues but not divulging too much about my kids, as what goes on the internet lives forever. So, I’m just going to start writing from my gut or my heart and see where it goes. Maybe it will be detailed and off putting. Maybe it will be vague and hard to follow. But I’m hoping for inspirational, in that whatever you are going through, you are most certainly not alone. LIkely it will be deeply personal. My wife is working like crazy and working for people who are crazy. I don’t want to diminish the herculean efforts of single parents by saying that I am a de facto single parent right now. But it isn’t too far from the truth. The timing of this happens to coincide with my oldest, 12 year old, having a major depressive episode, increased anxiety, the onset of social specific anxiety. And, if you read my blog, you know that my 7 year old is substantially mentally ill. And after a period of relative calm, he’s not doing particularly well either.  I have been hanging on by my fingernails for about two months now. I haven’t been in my garden. It’s at a critical point. If I don’t get out there in the next day or so, opportunities/ crops will be lost. I’m already writing off my fruit trees. I missed my chance to get them netted when I was sick for my whole off week last week. I’m not practicing the drums. I miss that. I am working out, still eating…

Quick one today. I”ve been sick all week so I haven’t even had the chance to back date my entry for last Friday. You see, Friday is blog day because I don’t have any clients on Friday. I’ve learned over the years that most people don’t want to talk about their issues on Friday afternoons. So, why bother working a half day. I can always use it to reschedule folks. But mostly I use it to do office work, schedule appointments for myself and my kids. They both do therapy mid afternoon on Fridays. It’s also morphed into laundry day for me, making beds, doing the shopping list for Saturday, and mowing the lawn. So, as you can see, it may not be the best day for me to plan of being introspective or even to just plain have the time to sit down and write something halfway decent.  If you’ve noticed over the past month or so since shortly after I got back on the blog horse, so to speak, that I’ve been less than consistent about my Friday posts. Oh, I’ll back date them so it looks like I posted on Friday. But you’ll get the email when I actually write it, which has likely been the following Tuesday or Wednesday.  Here’s where the wisdom come in. I’ve been doing this coaching thing long enough for other and for myself that I noticed this pattern and asked myself a question. I asked why I still have it on my calendar to post on Fridays if that doesn’t seem like a realistic goal right now? I challenged my assumptions. I challenged a structure that had worked for many years in the past. I didn’t allow that structure to become a sacred cow. It took me a few weeks to…

This is a quick follow up to the meal planning post from a few weeks ago. I think there are a few details that I didn’t mention. The most important, especially for the beginning planner, is to make the menu before you go shopping. I am realizing that I need to emphasize this now because my substantial garden is just coming in. I’ve been harvesting chard and kale for a few weeks. The first variety of broccoli in the mixed seed pack is ready and the broccolini is loving life in a different bed this year. So, I need to think a lot before I make my list about what, if any veggies I need. Also, my wife is working like a mad woman as she’s in catering sales and people are allowed to get married again. WooHoo! My suggestion is to look at your calendar for the upcoming week. Think about who is going to be around for dinner each night, who’s cooking, (assuming that’s you) how much time do you have to get dinner ready, what other evening activities are going on, and consider what you already have in the house (like salad greens that need to be eaten in the next two days,) and then plan your meals based on those factors. If you do all that before you make your shopping list, it will be a much less mystifying process. You should waste less food and money. You should be more prepared for dinner each night. Yes, it may be uncomfortable to force your brain to do the executive function heavy lifting at first. But it will become second nature eventually. And, my family love being able to check the “menu” on the fridge as much as I love not forgetting what my plan for the…

So, I don’t intend this to come off as complaining. But the reality is that much of life is harder for us as ADHDers. Owning that hardness is a key to succeeding, which can be counterintuitive. I guess it is sort of a Buddhist ideal of accepting reality and not fighting it. But I won’t get too Zen with the whole thing. I will say that it is often the things that society labels as “easy” that we find hard. So it can be much harder for us to let go of the feeling that those things shouldn’t be hard.  But once we let go, we can decide to create new strategies, new ideas, new ways to work around the shackles of the traditional world and make it bend to our needs. Wow. That sounds kind of grandiose now that I’ve written it. But I’m going to leave it in. Why? Because I just spent 1:07 on the phone with my mortgage company for our rental property because they didn’t pay the insurance out of the escrow and I got an email that the policy lapsed. Exactly what I wanted to deal with today. Actually it was my second call. So, “all day” I’ve been on the phone for about an hour and a half and I’m a bit punchy.  But that was part of my inspiration for this post. The other part of the inspiration came from a conversation I had with a client last week. That conversation crystalized in my mind how difficult it is for so many of my clients to make “simple” phone calls. There are so many reasons why. If I remember, I think I’ll do a whole post on that soon. But here I just wanted to give a quick tip about the dreaded…

By the way, I can’t honestly recall if I have blogged about this aspect of mindfulness before or not. I’m sorry if this is redundant, but happy if it is a needed refresher. I never thought that I could meditate. My dad, the completely neurotypical one in the house, was a TM guy. He still meditates for 20-30 minutes a day. He tried to get me to do it when I was a kid. A squirmy, hyper, easily bored kid. Even medicated, I couldn’t do it.  But the “can’t” really comes down to the definition of the “it.” I looked at my dad and thought, I have to do this like him. I need to do it for a long time. Five minutes felt long to me at that point in my life. There’s no way I could do it for longer.  I was also limited by my expectations. My dad does it for a minimum of 20 minutes. Even if I could do it for five minutes, what could I possibly get out of it? Perfectionism. Black and white thinking. Negative thought patterns. I pulled out all the ADHD stops. To be fair to myself, I don’t know if I could have meditated then, even medicated. But I know that I wasn’t able to with the limiting ideas I had in my head.  For many years exercise was my meditation. And, I very much do consider my exercise practice an integral part of my ADHD and depression and anxiety management. I really do consider it, at the lever I do it, mindfulness. But it isn’t really meditation. I only got into meditation in my late 30’s when my son did a study at MGH for ADHD kids under 6-12 using the kids’ calm meditation on the HeadSpace App. I…

What is mindfulness can be a difficult enough question for anyone to answer. For an ADHDer, it can be even harder. We tend to think of a super zen person, maybe even a Buddhist monk meditating for hours while completely clearing their mind of all distractions. But that is a very limited and typically ADHD/black and white way of looking at it. Honestly, that’s how I thought about it when I was younger until my eyes were opened. Now with a broader understanding of meditation and mindfulness as a whole, I realize how essential they are to managing our ADHD. First, meditation is great. I’ll come back to that. But meditation is not the only way to “do” mindfulness. For those of you who cringe at the mere mention of the term mindfulness, like the teenage client who inspired this post, I give you permission to insert the work intentional-ness every time I use the word mindfulness from now on. Because that is really all it is. In my experience mindfulness can be as simple as being intentional about something that you have never been intentional about before.  I’ll give you one example. Dr. David Nowell @davidnowell on Twitter gave me a deck of his mindfulness cards when we got together to network many years ago. I loved them and still have them. As with any group of things, I responded to some more than others. One of my favorites was, and I’m paraphrasing so I don’t have to look through the deck this is still on my desk these many years later, “listen to one of your favorite songs but concentrate only one one of the instruments.”  I was not a musician and other than jamming to a particular guitar hook, or that sweet drum fill from “in the air…

I was going to write about something else this week, until this article came across my desk. Thanks for sending it via snail mail dad. Food for thought when we know our ADHD kids are prone to addiction of all kind. Sex addiction, Internet addiction, porn addiction. My twelve year old boy still looks away and says, “eeeew” when there is a kiss in a movie. But he also has my wife’s old laptop in his room most of the time. I think it’s time for “The Talk.” And, porn clearly needs to be part of it. A reminder: Almost all addictive and risky behavior by ADHD kids starts earlier than we think it should. As parents, we should almost always err on the side of bringing those sensitive topics up on the early side, rather than the late side.