“It takes a lot of energy to be better than everyone else.”

“Being unhappy is a waste of time”

A client’s mom shared this poem with me recently. It was written about 45 years ago by her mom about her brother.

Ten-Year-Old

…Does everything by fits and starts,

Runs the gamut of manly arts,

Works five minutes on model planes,

Makes dirty marks on the window panes,

Concentrates on spinning a top,

Teases his sisters ’til told to stop,

Tries to think of something to do,

Idly thumbs through a book or two,

The trouble with this man of parts,

He has more fits than finished starts.

-Marguerite Whitley May

I have a lot to offer in terms of what I have figured out. But, that doesn’t mean I have it all figured out or that I don’t have my struggles too. As much as I would love to tell y’all that I’m perfect, I am far from it. It occurs to me that it might be helpful to share some of the things that I sill work on myself. After all, I am always telling my clients not to compare themselves to other, especially since those who seem to have it all together might not. I can be a role model with out being perfect, right?

So, I want to share that I’ve really been struggling with my attention for the last week or two. I mean really struggling. It almost feels like I haven’t taken my meds at all. I’ve started doing two a day work outs to try to balance my brain chemistry I’ve moved up my session with my coach so I see him monday morning. I’ve talked some of it out with my wife. I’m eating well and sleeping fantastically. I’m managing my anxiety really well. And, I still can’t seem to sit down and focus on what I want to. (I’m sure you’ll find that this post is indicative of this struggle, as will be even more stream of consciousness than usual.)

What’s to be learned from this? I don’t know. Why am I sharing? Because I don’t know what is to be learned yet. It would be neat and tidy to figure out what’s going on and then share a nice positive outcome. But it feels important to be sharing where I am now. I guess the important thing is that I’m doing what I can, keeping my head up, and fighting the good fight. When this began last week I felt depressed and defeated. Then I simply made the decision to go with it and see what happened. I’m not necessarily more productive this week, but I’m much happier and have a lot more energy. Less desk work, more yard work. Even if all I’m doing is meeting with and helping my clients this week, how bad a week could that really be? I guess I’ve just learned to trust in myself that I will figure it out eventually. In the mean time it doesn’t help me to beat myself up. I’m just going to keep trying to figure it out and keep doing the best that I can.

Hey everyone. About 2 weeks ago I attended a fantastic ADHD conference though the MGH Psychiatry Academy here in Boston… well, actually Cambridge. It was geared toward medical professionals — I was probably the only coach in the room, but that’s fine with me. Basically, the conference was a review what we know about ADHD, presentations on all of the new science from the past year, and the implications of how this knowledge helps those of us with ADHD be effectively treated. Topics included stimulant and non-stimulant meds, CBT, neuro-imaging, the genetics of ADHD, managing ADHD in college students, and so much more. This is the first of what I hope to be many posts over the next few months about what I learned. I hope they are helpful. Please reach out if you are interested in more information. I will do the best I can to send you in the right direction.

Possibly the most interesting and important thing that I learned was about medication and the ADHD brain. (Much of this is from a study that hasn’t even been published yet.) There are really two parts to this.

1. As brain scanning becomes more sophisticated we are better able to isolate population differences between our ADHD brains and the “neurotypical” brain.* In large scale population studies, it has been proven that there is a small but substantial difference in the size of our ADHD brains. Certain regions are, on average, smaller — as I recall about 10-15%. (As a note here, don’t interpret this as a lack of intelligence The last study I saw indicated that ADHD’ers actually have a slightly higher than normal IQ, 100 vs. 107.)

There is also some really interesting information about how our brains work when they are working versus when they are at rest. I will be honest, I’m not sure I fully understand this. But the impression that I got was that the scientist don’t really understand what it means yet, but that they have identified it as a key difference from the neurotypical population.

Bottom line for this part is that we can conclusively say that the ADHD brain is structurally chemically, and functionally different. I could go on at length about the implications of this now being proven fact. I will save most of this for another post, but just note here, that this fact alone should dispel much of the societal issues we still seem to struggle with around the idea of medication. Yes, ADHD is brain-based, but it is physiological in origin.

2. Whether, when, and how to medicate children has always been a difficult question to answer. I do not pretend to have a concrete answer. However, new research indicates that the prospect is not as frightening as we once thought. Historically, the predominant school of thought was that long term use of stimulants would negatively affect a growing brain. Over time with no evidence of this negative outcome emerging, the paradigm shifted. The school of thought evolved to the idea that the stimulants long term effects’ were neutral. Nothing bad, nothing good.

The most current study, using the most cutting edge brain scans, now indicates that the long-term use of stimulants by ADHD’ers seem to play a role in helping to reshape the brain to make it look more like a “normal” brain. The bottom line is that it appears that stimulants can tap in to the neuroplasticity of the brain and do long term good. Pretty cool!

*The idea of population studies is that these results are the averages of huge groups of participants. By saying that the “population” of ADHD’ers exhibit a trait, it does not mean that all ADHD’ers will do so. The point being that these scans are not a tool for individual diagnosis. However, there is hope that science may eventually get there.

As much as I hate to admit it when I make a mistake… One other thing that I learned at the conference is that a small percentage of ADHD’ers do outgrow it. I would still argue that many people who claim they outgrow it, are just living ADHD friendly lives as adults and don’t realize they are just managing their ADHD effectively. However, the newer brain scans do show that in some cases, the differences in brain size are corrected in adolescence I am endeavoring to track down the actual statistics. (I want to say it was in the low teens though.) I will post that when I have it.

I imagine that schools wouldn’t dare such a “pop culture” source when considering how to deal with kids and family, especially when such matters can ultimately end in litigation.  But, stranger things have happened.  Certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Personally, I do my best to refute ADHD misinformation as often as possible.  I would encourage all of you to do the same.  It is our combined voice as parents and many of us as ADHD’ers ourselves that will move this public debate beyond the hysterical and in to the realm of science and fact.  Let your voice be heard whenever you can.  

Just look at the Autism and vaccination situation.  All that research establishing a link has been proved to have been falsified and totally discredited.  Yet, how many people still believe there is a link because the voice of reason isn’t loud enough and doesn’t come often enough.  Speak up!