Four Things

I wish everyone knew about ADHD

1 . It’s not imaginary.

If you have been diagnosed with ADHD, all that means is that someone else told you something about yourself. The ball is absolutely in your court now. If you don’t make any changes to what you know about this condition, your ADHD will remain a matter of someone else’s opinion. If you ask your friends, family, partner, co-workers what they think about you and your ADHD, you’ll still be relying on what others think. The great thing about the opinion of others is that you can always crumple it up and throw it away.

Fortunately, this is a great time to look for information on ADHD. Take some time to learn facts about this condition so you can decide for yourself if you’re actually willing to do anything about the diagnosis. I suggest you avoid lurking on message boards.

The term ADHD, along with its official diagnosis, is imperfect but useful.

2. It’s different for each person.

First of all, at diagnosis time, the clinicians talk about different presentations of ADHD: Hyperative, Inattentive, or a Mix of both. (I have been told I have the Mix of both. It figures.)

To live with ADHD means you have some of the challenges lumped together in the official diagnosis, but maybe not all of them. And especially, not all of them to the same degree as the next person. What’s more, ADHD doesn’t always appear all by itself – it frequently shows up with friends. Some of these are called co-morbidities, but some are just associated conditions that may influence the way you understand your own ADHD:

Here are some: Anxiety. Depression. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Autism Spectrum. Asperger’s. High ACE Number.

Given that the human brain is the most complex thing we know of, it stands to reason that problems effecting the brain would show up with a lot of variation.

Practically speaking, this means that if you have ADHD you have some things in common with the rest of us, and you also have your own unique flavor of this neurodevelopmental disorder.

And you’ll have your own experience.

3. You Can Learn to Thrive with Your ADHD (but you have work to do.)

ADHD is not like most other things you could be diagnosed with. Compared to other problems in the psychiatric category, it’s the most treatable and improvable condition there is.

But it’s kind of sneaky, because others may be able to tell you’ve got a screw loose way before it occurs to you. Even if you go to a specialist, take some assessments, get a diagnosis, you may have serious problems understanding the nature of what’s wrong. In fact, you will probably not take it as seriously as you ought to.

And that can prevent you from doing what you need to in order to adjust to your reality. This may cause you to waste a lot of time on half measures. The purpose of this blog is to help you avoid making this mistake.

I have developed a whole list of tactics to help people grasp the seriousness of this condition because without the proper attitude, most people don’t find the willingness to do the work they need in order to thrive with ADHD.

4. Do Not Try This Alone

If you’re an ADHDer, I bet you’re saying “whatever” to yourself right now.

And that probably feels pretty comfortable to you.

For a whole raft of reasons, learning to thrive with ADHD is not easy. Among them is a really strong habit of trying to figure things out on your own. And that can work for lots of things.

ADHD is not one of those things.

Email me at matt@adhdwhatnext.com to book a free 20 minute consult with me to learn how you can thrive with ADHD.