Focused Forward

A lot of us rely on adrenaline for motivation. Sometimes, not having any better ideas, we do a little self-trash-talking to get the adrenaline to kick in. It can feel almost motivational to scold yourself, in a scornful, disapproving voice. Perhaps your childhood gave you a hair-trigger sensitivity to the subtleties of those voices.

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

Either way, it’s 100 percent safe and 100 percent private. You don’t have to earn it or deserve it or work for it or surrender it to the authorities. It belongs to you and you alone. It’s unconditional. It is what it is and it isn’t what it isn’t. You will go there whenever you need a break, a strategy or a vacation. When you’re out of ideas, you’l

Accept that you’ll constantly have to bring your brain back into balance. Don’t take it on as something that’s wrong with you or bad or broken—and try not to encourage any hired killers who insist the opposite.

“The role of emotional management in adults with ADHD is something the DSM IV criteria don’t touch, but most of us who are clinicians and researchers who deal with adults with ADHD repeatedly encounter patients who have difficulty managing their emotions. For many persons with ADHD, when an emotion hits them, whether it is worry, or they are annoye

good information. The problem is that we can’t really use it until we confront the fallout from the emotional stress of life as an ADHD adult. And to confront that emotional stress, we have to look at it, to acknowledge its existence. And who wants to do that, when the mind’s natural instinct is to fight, run off somewhere shiny and exciting, or fr

Emotional Distress Syndrome play out in people’s lives? What is the storm? The cycle goes something like this: 1. Something irritates/overwhelms/startles you. You run out of gas on the way home from work, and when you look for your AAA card, you discover your wallet is missing. Your teenage daughter, who was supposed to be spending the night with a

If you’re part of the three to five percent, your view of the world is skewed, from just about every vantage point. Organization, follow-through, vision, clarity, communication—all just a little out of step with what you experience going on around you. You’re constantly thinking of what’s either behind or ahead of where you are right now, ping-pong

Want an emotional sense of well-being and calm Need to lull yourself back to sleep Are emotionally distressed and long to feel safe Need to reset your focus and concentration Feel generally crazy Feel yourself spinning into reactivity Need to be somewhere you’re not Need a boost or a bump or a break, or just a time-out Crave escape from a threat or