Focused Forward

If you can’t make yourself shower, wash your face. If you take prescription medication, keep taking it. Process, process, process, in whatever way works for you. Talk aloud to yourself, write in your journal, get it out on paper some other way, yell, sing, swear. No one needs to hear you doing this. If you have something to say to someone, you can

Self-Care 101 See your practitioner, psychotherapist, MD, massage therapist, workout buddy, whomever. Find the number. Make the call. Find that pod of support. Reach out to ADHD buddies, any and all. Find the number, make the call. Simplify everything. Cut down on commitments. Try to do some percentage of what you usually do, but don’t be too hard

Remember Your limbic system is reacting to a threat. This threat may or may not exist. Your brain is more than a limbic system. See: meditation, mindfulness, spirituality, intuition and humor. Remember Your Emotional Safe Place and Mental Support Group are an eye’s blink away. Remember Sometimes a storm is a metamorphosis. If you keep your eyes ope

Sometimes, all you can do is summon your courage, turn INTO the wind, and hang on to the wheel. Your brain is not broken. You can still think. You can still make good, if tough, decisions. You still have courage. The storm will end.

The ship’s captain orders the crew to turn the ship away from the wind, to “fly away from the gale.” The crew refuses to follow his orders, choosing instead to obey Mad Jack, an experienced, if unranked, sailor who tells them to turn the ship directly into the wind. His order is nearly impossible to carry out, but it saves the ship and all of their

“I will now state the obvious. I don’t regulate emotions very well. I think I have a storm coming on.” “I’m hypersensitive. It feels like a big bruise. Such jealousy when I start noticing other people’s accomplishments! I have a hard time feeling happy for someone who’s accomplished anything! I wish people would quit publishing novels. I wish their

But you can also read this section if you’re in the middle of a big storm, or feel one coming on:

Rhyme and Reason: Intellectual and Emotional Curiosity Curiosity comes easily for people with ADHD. That’s good. Really. People with ADHD have this perception that curiosity breeds distraction, and that therefore they need to keep it in check. Not necessarily. I think it’s possible to channel curiosity, to use it to calm emotional distress.

What’s the Next Step? Sometimes that’s the only question you need to ask yourself. That means you can forget about the Big Picture, the future, the dire implications, the regrets, the looming deadline. Really. This is your (temporary) pass. What’s the next step? Do that.