ADHD Help Starts With Small Steps


Success begets success.  I wasn't feeling much like writing today, but I just finished sending emails to four local therapists to set up a consultation, so now I'm ready to say a little about that.  I screened out practitioners who appeared to focus on children and looked for statements that felt in line with what I'm feeling and trying to accomplish.  It was pretty easy to find people, but the hardest hurdle is just clicking the "email" button.   After that, it's easy to move forward because they will reach out.   

Here are questions I plan to ask them:
  • Tell me about your experience treating adults with ADHD and self esteem issues.
  • What are your thoughts about evidence based treatment?
  • What do you propose for treatment?  How long do you expect to spend on it?
I've also been thinking more about changing beliefs.  I had another 1:1 with my manager today  and he helped me come up with some good ideas.   Here's what I have so far:
  • About my employer: I will create more avenues for growth if I can look at the relationship with my employer as something beyond transactional.   I harbor a belief that I do work and my company gives me money, but this is a fundamentally limited, zero-sum belief.  It's a belief that puts my employer in the role of an adversary.   Some positive things I can do and say to work for a better belief:
    • The vast majority of my coworkers are interested in helping others.
    • I can choose to invite others along on my current quest.  Support can be in the form of a new perspective, networking resources, or just listening.
    • Some people have already offered to help me and I can take them up on their offer.  
  • Words I use: Using words like "fault", "should", "must", etc. are clues of an internal belief system that is limited.  I can practice switching these up:
    • "I have a fault that needs fixing" ->  "There is a belief I can adopt to open a door for growth"
    • "I should do X" -> "I can do X, or not.  I get to choose opportunities for growth when I'm ready for them."
    • "I must be Y" -> "Who gets to decide what I am?  Are there really no other options for seeing myself?"   
Finally, I've started reading the book You Mean I'm not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy?  I read the intro(s) and most of the first chapter last night and so far finding alignment as the authors discuss the challenges of ADHD.   As a child I baffled the adults who worked with me.   I would win state and local STEM competitions but get C's and D's on my report cards.    I would work through the night on tricky projects, but couldn't finish many simple tasks because they were so boring.    Through it all I got a lot of messages about how I should be and felt terrible because I could never make myself be that way.   

So what the book is teaching me is better ways to think about what it means to have ADHD and how to create a positive image of myself through that.  

Trivial Tangent:  The book says that there is some debate about weather to use the term "ADD" or "ADHD".  The authors prefer the term "ADD" because hyperactivity is not the most helpful term.  Honestly, I think Google gets to play the trump card here because "ADHD" is a much more profitable search term.   To see what I mean, search for "ADD help" on google and you will see that almost all the relevant links contain "ADHD".  

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