In recent months, my wife and I have witnessed death and grief among peers and friends our age and younger. At the same time, we are observing the end of a generation that came before us, and the inevitable health challenges that are natural consequences of aging. I’m reminded at times like this of the importance of our relationships, of being close to the suffering of people we love. When we embrace and support one another in times of pain and suffering, we are engaging with life where it happens, no less than when we embrace the gift of life and the beauty that surrounds us and resides within us.

I just read an essay this morning, written by an acquaintance who died last month. I didn’t know him well, but I knew from friends about the serious health problems he lived with for many years. He had been through multiple losses in his body, part by part, for a long time. He was grateful for his life. He attributed his ability to embrace unavoidable suffering in life to his willingness to accept it all, and to his daily practice of meditation:

It is the practice of staying in the moment that allows me to benefit from a life that does not stay entangled in bad decisions and their unwholesome results, or worry myself into a ball of hopeless depression over events that have not made themselves manifest, and for all I know may never. – Michael Crowder

To read Michael Crowder’s complete essay and Dawson Wells’ reflections on Michael’s life, visit onedharmanashville.com.

Blaming your partner is a weak position in a conflict. It only increases the likelihood that your partner will be defensive rather than open to hearing you. Presuming good intentions, on the other hand, allows room for productive dialogue. That rule applies to both partners.

You may think your wife is hypersensitive, for example, while she thinks you lack sensitivity. In your mind, it is not what you just said that made her angry, but the meaning she made of what you said. Correcting her misinterpretation is not the best place to start. She hears your explanation as nothing more than rationalizing your insensitive behavior. Whatever your intentions, there is an effect.

You are certain that she is angry for the wrong reasons. She acts as if she knows your motives better than you. You are now angry that she is hurt. To her, you are just impulsive and inconsiderate.

So, what is true here? Who is responsible for what? How can you frame your challenge constructively? How can you proceed in a way that moves you toward mutual understanding and resolution?

If you continue to look for who is to blame, you will conclude that it is your partner. When you “win” an argument, you create a loser, and then the partnership loses. On the other hand, if the partnership respects the imperfection and complexities of human interaction, each partner will listen with the intention of understanding the other’s experience. Simply put, mutual understanding and acceptance are much more useful than reciprocal blame.

If the non-ADHD partner can respect the reality of ADHD symptoms and still take care of herself in relation to those symptoms, the partnership will benefit. If the ADHD partner can avoid a narcissistic tendency to be right, or the self-loathing tendency to feel permanently flawed, then the actual problem is one that the partnership can resolve. That is different from trying to determine which partner is the problem.

Blame doesn’t work. The bottom line is this: Strong partnerships can deal with life’s challenges far more effectively and easily than alienated individuals. 

by Casey Dixon, ADHD Coach (http://www.dixonlifecoaching.com/live-well-adhd)

My clients are creative and talented. They are adults with ADHD whose professional accomplishments humble me and shine like beacons in the darkness of “underachievement” that is typically associated with ADHD. They do things that parents would be super proud of, like run successful businesses, stand up in court for victims of crime, conduct large research studies on public health, care for patients in hospitals and clinics, fly across the globe to lead U.N. committees, and develop multiple projects to advance local leadership capacity and improve social welfare. They are attorneys, professors, accountants, neurologists, coaches, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

They also have ADHD. They struggle with typical ADHD challenges, like planning tasks, scheduling time, getting started and finishing their work, curbing distractions, and taking care of themselves with healthy habits. Despite the outward appearance and reality of their successes, adult professionals with ADHD also experience the daily struggle of keeping it together, managing tasks while being overwhelmed – not drowning in the shame and imposter feeling they get when they think about their own performance.

But, how does one learn to not drown? How does one learn to live well and not to just get by, stuck in the dangerous undercurrents of struggle and shame? In my experience as an ADHD coach, the shift in how you live with ADHD is tied directly to a shift in how you think about ADHD. One of my clients expressed her shift in thinking when she said, “Drowning and just getting by is not good enough anymore. It is time to live now.” This was her moment, when she chose to be fully intentional about how she thinks, feels, plans, works, and acts. In order for this shift to work, adults who have ADHD will need to explore and acknowledge both their strengths and limitations, and engage in a targeted exploration of how to optimize their own neurology, create solid external tactics and habits, and purposefully alter their context so that they can swim with ease.

It is the switch from getting by to being purposeful that allows adults to really embrace and stick with the changes they need to live well with ADHD. Learning about ADHD, therapy, coaching, and group support can help you to make the switch.
 
If you want to learn more about group coaching for ADHD, check out Live Well ADHD, my 6-week group coaching program for professionals with ADHD, and see if it feels right for you!

A wise Zen master once said that if you have a gaining idea in your meditation practice, you have a problem. Mindfulness is about being, although pop culture sells it as a way to become. You want to practice mindfulness to become better than you are. So, what is wrong with that?

I once asked meditation teacher Lisa Ernst how she answers that question. She said, “I tell my students to leave their goals at the mat.” Your goals will get you to the mat, she explained, but once on the mat, the practice is simply about being with yourself and your life as it is.

You can only start where you are to get where you are going, and so you must know and accept where you are in order to see a path. Then, keeping your wheels on the tracks, and returning them to the tracks as necessary along the way, are the present moment tasks. That is how we get things done. This is mindfulness in real time, in your daily life. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck calls it Everyday Zen.

Our capacity to conceptualize the future is part of what makes us human. Our species would not have survived without the ability to anticipate. And yet we would not have survived by spending too much time in our heads, perpetually wishing for life to be different than it is, or living in regret for mistakes we have made. The balance of imagining a future, learning from the past, and accepting what is true in the moment, is a prescription for real growth and meaningful action.

Living well with ADHD is neither about striving just to keep your head above water, nor perfecting your brain in order to perfect your life. It is about acceptance (of your brain and your life) so you can actualize your vision with your good enough brain. Someone at last night’s ADHD support group suggested that because we do many things exceptionally well, but don’t do everything exceptionally well, we believe we are never good enough. We are not measuring up, even to our own expectations.

When you are mindfully engaged in activity related to your vision, good enough is enough. When you are busy rejecting or perfecting your brain, it is never good enough.

Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till its over.” For those of us with ADHD, it ain’t urgent till it’s urgent. You may not have a normal experience of urgency until you are fast approaching a deadline. Like a cat who isn’t interested in a moth until it flies, you are unconcerned about a deadline until it is flying toward you.

I once asked a bright seventeen-year-old with ADHD why she thought people like us don’t activate until pressed against a deadline. She replied something like this: “I think we don’t really believe the deadline is going to come until we are close to it.”

A sense of urgency is a feeling that follows the thought of something needing your immediate attention. The reason you lack that sense of urgency when faced with routine or boring tasks, or tasks that require sustained mental effort, is simply your neurological difference. You just don’t get that alert from your brain chemistry that neurotypicals get when reminded of a deadline. Medication that stimulates the normal release of your brain’s dopamine can improve the internal alarm system. External alarms, like alerts on your phone or computer, can supplement your brain’s compromised attention manager.

If you have a co-existing anxiety disorder or OCD, you might be an exception. Adults with ADHD who are anxious or compulsive tend to arrive on time for their psychotherapy sessions. Worry is only pathological when it is excessive and protracted. It has a normal function. I would have a better relationship with deadlines if I had a more normal capacity for worrying. Normal worry serves to remind us of this thing called future.

Since you don’t have an effective internal alarm, try using an external alarm. Develop a habit of using the alert function on your preferred electronic device, or keep a paper calendar with you at all times. Then look at it often! Do not use your spouse like a calendar…it is not good for your relationship! If she already is your external alarm, relieve her of that burden. She will be grateful! She doesn’t like that job. She just worries that you will continue trying to rely on your unreliable memory. If your working memory doesn’t work, stop trying to use it. Forget it!

You can live well with ADHD, just as you are, if you are mindful and willing—mindful of how ADHD symptoms affect you, and willing to take charge and use the tools in your toolbox. I am 24 hours ahead of my deadline for posting this blog…thank you!

I learned today what it feels like to have your car alarm go off while you’re sitting in the driver’s seat, parked in front of a friend’s restaurant where patrons…right in front of you…are occupying tables on the covered patio on an unusually warm day for January, eating their lunches within twenty feet of your barking car. One patron walks over to the screened window to see if it is his car that is creating this protracted disturbance. After seeing your flashing lights, he returns to his table…and now you are watching people who are watching you!

I know now what it is like to learn on the job—by rapid trial and error—how to turn off a car alarm when the electronic device on the key chain no longer works because you washed it in the washing machine two months before, and you’ve had to lock and unlock your car the old fashioned way. I know what it is like to appear clumsy in front of others while experimenting to disable the alarm because you have to get out of the car and let all the restaurant patrons see you…the tall guy scrambling out of the little white car…with parking lights flashing in sync with each honk of the horn while you manually lock the car door, successfully silencing the alarm…and after two or three minutes in the spotlight, you walk rapidly from the car and away from the patio, into the front entrance.

No one is hurt…not much time is wasted…your spouse isn’t there to feel embarrassed and annoyed at you…there is no one around who is likely to criticize you…and with years of experience in the involuntary spotlight of your ADHD, with a greater-than-average potential to experience such public episodes, and your greater-than-average capacity for divergent thinking and rapid processing in an emergency, there is no reason to re-experience any of the shame that you felt as a child with your undiagnosed difference. This is living well with ADHD!

Something you recently saw or heard just disappeared from the radar. You know what I mean? Sometimes your memory, vision, or hearing seem to fail you. It doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to create problems in your daily life. Such events are common among adults with ADHD. These episodes are like magic tricks…now you see it, now you don’t! It makes no sense to people who don’t have a brain that is wired like yours. You lack credibility when you try to explain it. 

You heard the dishwasher stop thirty minutes ago, and you know there are clean dishes that you should put away. You will do it later, of course, because you are in the middle of something. You are always in the middle of something, right? The next day, you open the cabinet and see that there are no clean dishes there. So, you take just one clean dish from the dishwasher for your 15-minute meal. You don’t have time to unload the dishwasher right now. You are always in a hurry, right? By the next day there is a tower of unwashed dishes in the sink because the damn dishwasher is still full of clean dishes!

You got the vacuum cleaner from the closet and started vacuuming the bedroom. The phone interrupted you, and you had a nice, long conversation with your sister. While on the phone, you noticed that the litter box needed to be scooped. After hanging up, you scooped litter and then watered the drooping houseplants. And there were clean dishes in the dishwasher that needed to be put away…remember the dishes? All this time you have been in and out of the bedroom, not noticing the vacuum cleaner. It was there each time you entered the bedroom, but your vision seemed to have acclimated to its presence, and you sort of didn’t see it. Like a magic trick, it became invisible to you. Try explaining that to your spouse!

Your wife insisted that she told you her brother would be passing through and staying overnight on Friday. You agreed to go out to dinner, she said. You even answered yes when she asked if 7 pm would work. But you couldn’t have had that conversation, because you were planning to watch a game on television. You are certain that she never told you. That is something you would have remembered, especially on a game night. She was just taking advantage of your fragile memory. She wants you to feel weak and inferior, right? Of course! She makes up these stories and believes them, and there are no witnesses to prove her wrong. You begin to question her memory. She forgot to tell you that her brother was coming. She forgot because you are just not that important, right? I didn’t think so.

The attention magician might recede if you could stop sprinting and “jog” at a more deliberate pace, start getting regular sleep, exercise routinely, eat healthy foods on a schedule, meditate every morning, and take your medicine or supplements at the same time every morning. You vow to yourself that some day soon, maybe next week, you will start doing those things. But you are too busy right now, and you don’t have time. Time is what other people have. You will begin once there is less stress in your life, right? Other people are just lucky that they don’t have the stressful life you have. 

So…what if that is true? If your life is so stressful, and you don’t have any time, which of these mental hygiene routines should you sacrifice?

Have you ever called yourself stupid for not knowing something that you, or someone else, thought you should know? Did anyone ever say something like this to you, with an incredulous tone: “YOU don’t know what _____ is?” What my fragile ego heard about 25 years ago in response to this question was, “If you don’t know that, you’re an idiot!” After gathering myself, I gave a simple and honest reply that made me feel confident: “I’m sorry…but no, I don’t know what that is…please tell me.”

Having the upper hand, the questioner softened his tone, which was fine with me because he knew something I didn’t. I recall that it was he—and not I—who had made a big deal out of having a ninth grade education, which was my father’s highest education level. Two graduate degree programs didn’t teach me all I ever needed to know. My father was a successful man whose street level wisdom funded my classroom education. My questioner was a talented artist who knew plenty that I didn’t know. But his tone revealed how little he knew about how much I respected him and his work.

When he honored my request to tell me what I didn’t know, my transition from not knowing to knowing took less than a minute. There was a useful takeaway for me from that one interaction. For the past 25 years, I have frequently repeated this mantra: We are all naive—about something—until we’re not.

I’m grateful for the man who is marrying my daughter next spring, and for his spirited family. I’m Greg Focker in this circle of trust, and fortunately, the future father-in-law is not Jack Byrnes. We are visiting the parents in their Charleston neighborhood where alligators sometimes emerge from the surrounding waters (not a metaphorical reference!). The thought of encountering one of these creatures on my morning walks creates a great opportunity to practice mindful awareness.

I’m grateful for the young woman at the Southwest Airlines gate for believing me when we arrived here. I had insisted, after her first fruitless search of the plane for my cell phone, that the phone was definitely there. If she didn’t look again, my phone would travel to Baltimore. I told her precisely where she could find it…left side of the plane by the wing, in the pocket in front of the aisle seat. A second search produced the phone, and our gracious hosts were waiting politely for me at curbside, just outside the baggage claim area. Retired people are so patient!

It doesn’t bother me so much on vacations that I have ADHD. It’s just inconvenient for others, and yet sometimes it can be mildly entertaining. Having left home in a hurry, without my deodorant, was not a problem because Howie, the future father-in-law, uses a spray and was willing to share. When my wife went out with Ellen to get groceries, I discreetly texted her this message: “In the unlikely event that you are going to be in a place where they sell underwear, I wear a medium.” I learned later that her burst of laughter made it impossible for her to be discrete. I’m grateful that my wife can still laugh about such a serious matter…seriously!

I’m grateful for Alan, our hosts’ neighbor who has ADHD. He is among the small—but growing—percentage of African Americans who get diagnosed and treated. After a long and pleasant chat with Alan, I proposed, with sincere empathy, a gift for his wife: Melissa Orlov’s book, The ADHD Effect on Marriage. I told him of my recent ADHD “tricks,” and we talked about what it means to be living well with ADHD. It will not go away, we agreed, but Alan knows that his success in selling medical lab supplies has something to do with his resourceful brain. His family enjoys living in this peaceful community, and my walk in his neighborhood on this foggy morning–and I don’t mean mental fog–begins now.

Please accept this message of hope to everyone who has felt alienated in recent weeks. We all need each other more than ever. We need to recognize our interdependence and embrace our collective strength. We cannot afford be hopeless and cynical about the future. There is work to be done to make sure that no one is left behind.

In our special kind of democracy, it is the responsibility of all three branches of government to represent the interests of all of its citizens. If representation is threatened, we have an obligation to be part of the solution—in some way, big or small— to preserve the principles that are the bricks and mortar supporting our dwelling place. Someone suggested to me recently that we will all benefit from having just one conversation with someone who disagrees with us and find what common needs can be realized from civil discourse.

Respectful dialogue has never been more important. We are a diverse population, and that reality is not going to change. Thank God for that. To live in a diverse culture on a beautiful continent is a gift. Preserving that gift requires compassion and hard work. Unity is more powerful than division.

As adults with ADHD, our differences do not disqualify us from gainful employment, fulfilling marriages, healthcare and other basic rights. The same is true for all kinds of differences that make up the human family. To engage in compassionate action is to give to others what we wish for ourselves.

I wish the best for you and your family, and for your community. May we remain united in love and respect for one another.