Living Successfully with ADHD is About Balance
December 29, 2008
As I get the opportunity to tackel another new year in my life I am convinced that healthy living, for those with and without ADHD, is about moderation and balance: eating, exercise, work and play all require an ability to moderate. But moderation doesn’t mean avoiding the peaks of exhilaration or ignoring our superior talents. At times, we simply need to strive to be the best we can be, and then we need to relax enjoy less than perfection.
There is a moderation or balance necessary as we choose whether to focus on using our strengths or developing our weaker attributes.
I once worked with a business owner who had developed a complex piece of medical equipment that was being used “experimentally” in dozens of hospitals. He hadn’t ever submitted the paperwork to the FDA for approval for its manufacture and use as an “approved” device. The owner was a brilliant technician who couldn’t manage his time, set priorities or direct his employees. When I came on board the FDA was on the verge of shutting the whole operation down for want of a detailed and ordered list of manufacturing steps. The owner just couldn’t produce the list; he didn’t think in that kind of sequential way.
Each of us has a constellation of personal attributes, on one end of the spectrum are strengths that lead to successful actions, and on the other end are weaknesses that restrain our success or cause us to regularly stumble. The common wisdom, and what many people challenged by ADHD have consistently heard, is that you need to develop the areas you’re weak in.
There’s truth in that encouragement (or reproach?), but there’s also a misunderstanding of how success seems to work. Getting to sustainable success takes a balanced approach; we need to focus on our strengths and find ways to work around certain core social/professional attributes that we are weak in, like my business owner not being able to set priorities.
We wouldn’t expect a football player to necessarily be a top level engineer or a commercial pilot to also be an exceptional lawyer. Professionals who excel focus on playing to their strengths. There are some skills, however, that are called upon day in and day out and even if we aren’t exceptional in those areas we need to be able to get by. The trick is to develop enough skill to predictably meet your obligations, but to keep a major focus on using your areas of strength to drive you toward success.
A position that requires you to make excellent estimates of time or to work in an unstructured environment, but meet precise goals, may well put unreasonable demands on your weaknesses, whereas a partner who loves keeping an eye on the details may allow you to shift focus to using your strengths.
We can’t always choose which attributes we will need, but we can try to be sure that the majority of demands on us play to our strengths and try to minimize the need for us to struggle with our weaknesses. To not keep that balance may well derail the possibility of success.
I hope your new year brings satisfying successes, insight and growth.
Holiday Wishes
December 28, 2008
I was reflecting on cards sent by our clients during this holiday season. Thank you all, I am touched. It is truly a priviledge to work in the field of psychiatry. I get to know clients and their families intimately and continue to learn as much from them as I hope they learn from me. So rather than blogging about “Organizing the Holidays with ADHD” or “Focus on Protein” after you’ve had your fill of sugar cookies, I decided to keep this more simple and personal. My message to you is that I hope you find acceptance in yourself and others this holiday season. Acceptance is a generous gift and a rare find. I wish for you the joy of acceptance of who you are, your unique qualities as well as your challenges. I wish for you the ability to recognize the same in those around you - your family, your friends, your colleagues, and those you meet in passing every day. Life is stressful. Sometimes we try too hard to meet all the requirements. We miss the point. So as we near the closing of 2008 and organize the gifts that came in boxes and wrapping paper, remember that the greatest gifts were not the tangible ones, but those you feel in your heart. Wishing you acceptance, integrity, understanding, warmth and kindness in 2009.
Theresa Cerulli, M.D.
Improving Working Memory
December 15, 2008
When our brains came into this world they never planned on the Internet, a multi-tasking lifestyle or countless interruptions. Some suspect that genetic alterations passed down over generations have helped our brains adapt…somewhat. The new research on neuroplasticity shows that regular brain workouts can boost our brain power for accommodating to the demands of a changing world.
If there is one brain function that we call upon more than ever these days it is our working memory (WM). Without a good, functioning WM we would not be able to keep in mind pieces of information while carrying out another task. We’d constantly be having go back into the dining room to understand what made us walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. We’d find ourselves on page 25 of a novel not knowing why certain events are unfolding or what is motivating the protagonist to do or say what she does. It is not uncommon to find WM deficiencies in children and adults with learning and executive function problems. WM affects reading comprehension, math reasoning, problem-solving, concentration, response-inhibition and the ability to manage many tasks within a given day – WM plays a sizeable role in our everyday lives.
What can we do to improve WM capacity and keep up with the barrage of tasks and information we need to manage every day? Up until recently WM has generally been held to be a fixed property of an individual. However in 1999, Dr. Torkel Klingberg at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden developed a series of exercises for improving WM, known today as Cogmed Working Memory Training. Several studies later Cogmed Working Memory Training was found to significantly improve WM as indicated by neuropsychological testing and subjective ratings in children and adults with AD/HD, head injury and stroke. The training consists of a specific set of exercises performed from home on a computer five days a week for five weeks, taking about 30-40 minutes daily. Performance on these tasks gradually increases during training. Given that WM supports so many other cognitive functions necessary for success in school and at the workplace, a research-based approach to improving WM is a worthwhile endeavor.
For more information see www.Cogmed.com. Cogmed Working Memory Training is now available at Cerulli and Associates.
A Heavy Burden To Bear
December 9, 2008
I am a huge fan of the television show Heroes on NBC. Yes, I do love a good story about heroes. I won’t deny that. But what I love even more about a show like this, and this show in particular, is that the characters are human. They are ordinary people – with extraordinary talents – who are out to save the world.
Not only that, but they struggle with real world issues that most of us can identify with.
And perhaps that’s the real reason I love this show. Each episode is full of lessons and inspiration if you are watching closely enough. Heck–you don’t even have to be watching that closely. They just flow naturally – and talk to you about all the good in the world (even in the face of evil).
The most recent episode was particularly striking for me, because one of the Heroes traveled back in time to when he was just a young boy — probably 8 or 10 years old at most. In this one scene, he listened to his father say to his mother, “Hiro will never amount to anything in this world.”
The irony of the scene is that Hiro has saved the world from disaster, not once, but twice…
My lesson from all of this, and it’s something I see a lot in the work I do… Having such high expectations for our children is very dangerous. After all, they are still so young and impressionable. Even for the child who is struggling — there is hope.
Each of our children will someday reach the heights we hope for, and that they want, but they are going to have to struggle and fall before they hit it big.
PS – For more information on how you can support a child who is struggling with their differences, I invite you download your very own ADHD Essentials Audio Kit.
ADHD or Shpilkes
December 1, 2008
I have always enjoyed working with clients with energy and creativity. Growing up in a family with a variety of personalities spiced with the strengths and weaknesses of ADHD was a wonderful introduction into this work. I was reminded of this recently when my sister called to tell me about the “perfect” site she’d found for the wedding of my niece.
“It sits right near the beach with a wonderful view of the water. It’s the perfect size for the number of guests we’re inviting and if anyone gets bored they can go for a walk on the beach,” she seriously explained over the phone. I cracked up!
Who but a person with the wiggles and attention span of ADHD would choose a site for a wedding based on a way to relieve boredom? I love my sister dearly, but she has shpilkes. I was reminded of how appropriate this delightful Yiddish word is when I was reading Jerome Groopman’s book, How Doctors Think. He describes himself thus:
“Truth be told, I was not a model child, too eager to engage in mischief, paying little attention in class, looking at the clock and counting the minutes until recess. A psychologist today might fix the label of ADHD to me, but at the time my family concluded that mine was a classic case of shpilkes, a Yiddish word meaning, roughly, ‘ants in your pants.’”
My parents, who both spoke Yiddish, used a similar, but perhaps more interesting expression, “full tuchas mit vertschaft”, meaning, I was told, “a behind full of furniture.” Ah, that the light hearted amusement of these words could help reduce the negative self-judgments of ADHD.
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