Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

Narrowed down

33 practices

Medication and how it works Both of us together Clear all

How long you have

A minute 2 Five minutes 19 Twenty minutes 9 Longer 3

Who it is written for

A practitioner 33 Me 26 Someone I care about 23

Where you are right now

Coping, mostly 18 Getting ready for something 9 Struggling right now 6

On your own, or with someone · Both of us together

On my own 83 Involves someone else 61 Both of us together 33

Theme · Medication and how it works

Getting assessed and diagnosed 41 Medication and how it works 33 Systems for daily life 15 Feelings and focus 15 Reading, numbers and learning differences 14 Emotions as signals 11 Touch and bodywork 9 Growing empathy 9 When anger turns to harm 8 Treatment and medication 8 Shame 7 What anger actually is 7 Practising under provocation 7 The cost of avoiding 6 Screens and attention 5 Bringing the future closer 5 Being seen and judged 5 Equanimity and perspective 4 Cool the body first 3 Facing it a step at a time 3 Your sense of time 3 When everything feels flat 3 What ADHD actually is 3 The fear underneath anger 2 The moment before you snap 2 Obsessions and compulsions 2 When you go numb 2 Moving your body 2 Grounding and settling 2 Get started 2 Exercise, food and other supports 2 Your nervous system 1 What you are actually defending 1 Use your strengths 1 Choosing your response 1 Structure and routine 1 Righteous anger and perfectionism 1 Remembering to do it 1 Making it stick 1

Approach

Medical and treatment 27 ADHD skills 6

When

Any ordinary day 26 Coming and going 4 In a change 3

Put today next to the night before it, out loud and often. How did today go after seven hours of sleep, next to the day that followed staying up until three?

ADHD makes it hard to link a consequence back to a choice made hours or days earlier, so the link has to be supplied from outside until it starts…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 16:69

Plenty of children on a stimulant are taking something else as well, most often an antidepressant. That second medicine is usually there for a second problem rather than for the attention itself.

It is a useful lens when a regimen has grown complicated. Ask what each item is for, and the list generally resolves into a treatment for the…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:35

To find out whether treatment is helping, ask the people who live with the person. One parent who stopped her medication for a family holiday remembered a lovely trip, while her children remembered running it.

Two teenagers had packed for her, fetched what she forgot, and kept an eye on the airport clock. She had no idea any of it happened. There is no…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159

The old argument about medication against behaviour therapy was set down years ago. The useful question now is what each one covers.

They work by different routes and they reach different hours of the day, so putting them in a single contest was never going to tell anyone much.…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:67

Adding psychosocial work to medication buys something extra, and less than people hope. The extra tends to arrive in the places medication was never going to reach.

Homework routines, the temperature of arguments at home, how a teacher speaks to a child, the hours after a dose has worn off: that is where the…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286

Doing the behavioural work alongside a medicine can mean managing on less of it. That matters most for the side effects that follow the size of the dose.

Appetite, sleep and irritability all tend to scale with how much is being taken. Where part of the load is carried by routines, by support at school,…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 7:31

Medication treats the attention difficulty. It does not teach reading, lift a depression, or repair a household that has been fighting for years.

Those things need treatment of their own, and they are often what the family actually came about. Treating the attention difficulty well can stop…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 21:83

Smoking runs high in ADHD, and nicotine genuinely does something for attention. It helps to treat that as self-medication rather than as one more impulsive habit.

It changes what a conversation about stopping looks like. If a cigarette is doing a job, taking it away and leaving the job undone is a plan that…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 39:53

Stopping medication rises sharply in the early teenage years. If that is where you are, it helps to know this is the usual pattern rather than a sign that something has gone wrong with your child.

The pull is understandable: wanting to be in charge of your own body, hating being the one who is different, and a parent no longer standing over the…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159

When a medicine seems to be underperforming, look at what else is in the room before reaching for a higher dose. Anxiety, low mood and a wrecked sleep pattern can each blunt a good response or imitate a poor one.

Otherwise the dose climbs while the real driver goes untreated, and the side effects arrive without the benefit. Ask what a bad night actually looks…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 16:43

Blood pressure on a stimulant is an individual matter. For most people it is a non-event, and where it does rise the answer is often a different stimulant rather than none at all.

No blood test or cheek swab will tell you in advance which one suits you. Finding out means trying, measuring and being willing to change, which is…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 33:5

If the first medicine disappoints, that is information about the first medicine. Plenty of people who get nothing from one class do well on another.

Methylphenidate and amphetamine are not the same drug at different strengths. They work by partly different routes, so a poor result on one says…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5

Finding the dose is a search rather than a calculation. It goes up in small steps until either the effect you want turns up, or the side effects get annoying enough that you come back down a step and settle there.

There is no way to work the right dose out from body weight or from how bad things look, which surprises people who expect medicine to be more exact…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.