Practices

Anger sends people back to the thing they had stopped, and the thing they had stopped makes the anger worse. Any plan that treats these as two separate projects tends to come apart.

Write anger into the relapse plan by name, alongside the parties, the old friends and the difficult anniversary. Then when you look at the anger, ask…

Difficult things come out more easily when your hands are occupied and you are not looking straight at the other person. Walk side by side, drive somewhere, wash up together, keep the sewing going.

If you are the one listening, offer it first. Most people assume that picking something up would look rude or half interested, so they sit still and…

Irritable bowel symptoms turn up more often in people with ADHD, and they tend to track stress. If your stomach is at its worst in the weeks when everything else is at its worst, that is information rather than coincidence.

Two things help more often than they get suggested. Cutting caffeine frequently settles symptoms on its own, since it speeds the gut up and raises…

If your mood drops reliably as the light goes, that is worth naming as a thing in its own right. Seasonal low is more common alongside ADHD, and a light box first thing in the morning helps a lot of people.

Use it early in the day and use it consistently, since the timing is part of how it works. It is also worth asking whoever prescribes for you about…

Very low vitamin D produces fatigue, low mood and a flatness that looks exactly like depression, and it is not part of routine bloods in most places. If you have never had it measured, it is a fair thing to ask for.

One clinician telling this story about himself had a level that was almost undetectable, and no antidepressant would have raised it, because what was…

Before settling on depression as the whole story, ask for thyroid function and vitamin D to be checked. Both are common, both are cheap to test, and an underactive thyroid produces a picture that looks like depression from the outside.

An untreated thyroid problem also blunts how well antidepressants work, so missing it can mean months on a treatment that was never going to do the…

Stress unsettles the gut and an unsettled gut drags on mood, so the two keep each other going. The good news buried in that is you can step in from either end.

You do not have to establish which came first. Easing the pressure on your nervous system helps digestion, steadying what you eat helps mood, and…

Before settling on a purely psychological account of months of anxiety or broken sleep, it is worth having the ordinary bloods done. Low iron, low vitamin D or low magnesium can produce symptoms that look exactly like a mental health problem.

This is not about swapping therapy for supplements. It is about not spending a year working on something a blood test could have partly explained. If…

When something has helped a little and then stalled, adding a different kind of help often does more than pushing harder on the first one.

That is the thinking behind adding a second medicine with a different action rather than only raising the dose of the first, and it is the same…

A pharmacy refusing a valid prescription is often working from a made-up rule or a plain mistake. It can usually be escalated, and it usually resolves fast.

People have been turned away for having a prescriber in the next county, or told the shop does not stock narcotics for a medicine that is not one.…

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…

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…

With many of these medicines the unpleasant part turns up on day one and the good part takes weeks. Knowing that in advance is most of what carries people across the gap.

The first fortnight can feel like a bad bargain, because it is one: you pay now for something that arrives later. Put a date in the diary two to four…

Treat the first fortnight as a stretch that needs contact rather than silence. Say plainly that things may feel worse before they feel better, and arrange to hear from the person during that window instead of after it.

This is when most people quietly stop. Somebody who has been warned experiences a rough two weeks as expected; somebody who has not experiences it as…

If a child is climbing the walls, green space helps most, a walk down a busy street helps a bit, and staying in the room helps least. Any of the three beats none.

The research on this puts them in that order rather than saying only a forest will do. A park, a scruffy playing field, the bit of grass behind the…

Slow movement practices seem to help mood, sleep and the general hum of stress. Bringing that background level down often does more for your concentration than trying to concentrate harder.

Running on a constant stress signal wears down exactly the part of you that plans, waits and holds a thought. So lowering the load is not a soft…

Movement gives you back some willingness, not just some focus. The problem is often not that you cannot concentrate but that you cannot make yourself care enough to start.

Those are two different difficulties and the second one is usually the more disabling in adult life. After moving, the same task tends to feel…

Peripheral biofeedback, the sort that tracks skin conductance and heart rate rather than brainwaves, has more behind it than neurofeedback does. You practise letting the body drop into a calmer state while a monitor shows you it happening.

Once that state is familiar, pair it with a distinctive scent used only for this. After enough repetitions the smell starts pulling the state along…

When omega levels are low, everything about ADHD tends to get louder: attention, mood swings, holding things in mind. Low omega does not cause ADHD, but it can be sitting on top of it.

Think of it as one more layer to lift off rather than the thing underneath. Specialist labs can measure levels if it seems worth checking, and…

One woman's ADHD symptoms climbed and her thinking slowed as each B12 injection wore off, then settled again after the next one. The deficiency came down one side of her family and the ADHD down the other.

The two lived in the same person without either causing the other. What made it findable was the timing, because difficulties that follow a cycle are…