Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD
Focus, starting, and ADHD
Most advice about focus is written for a brain that starts easily. This area is not. It covers what ADHD actually is, how to make a start when starting is the hard part, how to bring a future consequence close enough to feel, and how to stop paying for it in shame.
Narrowed down
4 practicesTheme · Shame and stigma
How long you have · A minute
When · Any ordinary day
ADD and ADHD are not two different things. ADD is the older public word for what is now called ADHD, inattentive type, and the quieter presentation is not a lighter version of it.
The mix up matters more than it sounds. Parents sometimes hear ADD and take it to mean something mild that will not need treatment, and school or…
Manuals rename things. Paediatric bipolar became disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, whole categories were reshuffled to line up with the international classification, and none of it changed who anybody was.
If you have old paperwork carrying a label nobody uses now, that is bookkeeping rather than a hidden verdict on you. What is worth your attention is…
A blank face is not usually an angry one. If you tend to read disappointment into people who are only tired or thinking, that reading is a habit, and habits can be checked.
Two things feed it. Reading faces accurately is genuinely harder for some people with ADHD, and if you grew up being told off a great deal, expecting…
Talking a lot is on the diagnostic list. It sits with the impulsive symptoms, which makes it part of the condition rather than proof that you are self absorbed.
That reframe is worth having, because most people who do this have been told off for it for years and have drawn an unkind conclusion about…