While reading the book, I marked various paragraphs of interest and made several notes in the margins. Where I'm quoting the author, I will put those comments in quotes. My comments will follow.
Page 18 .. "Every day, all of us encouter and engage in hundreds, if not thousands, of events, small and large. And, every day we have a choice as to how we are going to interpret each of those events. How we choose to think about these events impacts whether we feel positively or negatively toward ourselves and others."
This is a classic DSM mistake most therapists make about ADHD, that Dr. Barkley talks about in his video "30 things you need to know about ADHD", available on YouTube. The mistake, is that the author ignores how these events trigger an emotional response. The reason why the DSM doesn't like the emotional classification with ADHD is that you can't quantify an emotion .. Happy, Sad, Upset, Extatic .. But, you can quantify 3 specific types of emotional responses .. positive, neutral, and negative .. When therapists and authors ignore these 3 emotional responses to events, tasks, inner monologue, thoughts, and memories, they create extremely long winded explanations on why ADHDrs do things they do, and provide NT based tips and tricks - which are next to useless.
So, again positive, neutral, negative emotional responses to events .. (+), (o), and (-) .. respectively. ADHDrs emotional states swing per event. An external event can kick an ADHDr into a positive mood or negative mood. I will demonstrate this repeatedly as I discuss the various topics she brings up.
Page 20 .. "Thinking errors of ADHDrs". I'm not going to go into the errors here, but I'm going to use them as an example of to describe ADHD Negative Thought Storms. ADHDrs ignore the good things that occur to them, and focus on "things that are going wrong or are negative about a given situation rather than what is right or going well." The Negative (-) Thought Storm arises when a negative (-) event happens, and triggers negative thoughts, memories, and inner monologue. ADHDrs not trained to recognize this event, are also not trained how to exit it, by using 1 single positive (+) external event. Thus, the other 6 categories described on page 21 and 22 are must manifestations of a Negative (-) Thought Storm.
Page 23 .. "Now that you have gained some awareness and insight into your destructie thought patterns, it's important that you learn how to challenge or reframe them. Remember, positive thoughts leads to positive feelings, positive behavior, …" Again, the author neglects to show how a physical external event triggers the positive thoughts, feelings, inner monologue, and memories.
Page 50 .. Increasing your Motivation .. "Because we know the adult ADHD brain will seek out and work toward immediate rewards (and avoid immediate penalties), this idea should be used to help individuals power through less stimulating or emotionally challenging taks that will ultimately help them reach their goals."
Let me describe a better way to motivate an ADHDr. Every taks you have to do, is an event. Every time you think about it, it's an event. Does it cause a positive (+), neutral (o), or negative (-) emotional response. Another way you can figure this out is to draw an emoji (smiley face). Or, select one from your phones keyboard of emojis. Does the emoji represent a happy, sad, or neutral character. If it's a happy character, do the task. If it's a sad character, do the task later. it's that simple.
Now, how do you motivate someone to do a hard task that makes them emotionally sad or triggers negative (-) emotional response .. find ways to make the task generate positive (+) emotional responses. This may mean you need to reframe the task. Or, you need to invite someone over to help with the task. Or, maybe you need to do a bunch of smaller positive (+) tasks to get into a "Can Do!" attitude. These are just 3 ways to generative motivation, that actually work for ADHDrs.
Page 96 .. The author suggests creating a list of your daily routine with average times to complete each part of the routine. This is a good idea as long as it generates positive (+) emotional responses. I would extend this idea further to doing a specific task where people routinely ask you .. "So, how long will that take?" If you time how long it takes you to do something, you will be able to answer confidently, vs shrugging and trying to guesstimate your answer on sketchy knowledge of your past work habits.
In addition to using a tasks list, I would include a circle for an emoji per task. If you want to know how to you feel about doing a task, draw the emoji. Boogie boards or electronic note pads are great for this, because you can erase the emoji and redarw it, each time you see the task.
Page 100 .. do not break your day into 15 min or hourly segments, instead give yourself 10 to 15 spots for appointments on a sheet of paper for that particular day. The reason why, is ADHDrs with OCD will constantly fiddle with the calendar defeating the purpose of the calendar, which is to remind you of appointments. This will require you to build your own paper calendar, and I recommend using a 3 ring binder and self designed sheets that suite your purpose. (maybe some day I'll publish all of my templates.)
Again, in your calendar, only write down the appointments you have for that day, and any Todo's you need to get done. I also create a seperate sheet for all the Todo's that I have to do, so that if I have free time, or am board, or just want to remember something, it gets put there.
Page 111 .. Chapter 6 - Enhancing Social Relationships ..
I have no notes on this chapter, but I'm going to say this in general .. What works for an ADHDr, works for NTs as well. If you like positive events, so do NTs. If you generate positive events for an NT, you will have a good relationship with an NT. The converse it true as well. If an NT is annoying you (negative event) you won't want to be around them anymore.
Page 122 .. Better Communication Skills .. here is my motto for speaking to people, "5 Words or Less!" Communicate what you want to say in 5 words or less. Or, be as brief as you can.
Something else that popped up while writing this is .. "You don't have to tell someone the whole truth!" What this means is that while there is a whole story to be told about a true event, you only need to tell the person what they need to know about that true event.
Page 135 .. Chapter 7 - Organize Your Space ..
Let me just say .. out of site, out of mind. If you can use clear pastic containers to organize everything into, and elfa shelving to store it on. (This is an OCD Hack) And, use glass cupboard doors in your kitchen! Things can't hide that easily when you can see them.
The other thing i will say about this chapter is that ADHDrs have projects. So, keeping various projects in containers will help you remember what you were doing, and where you were in doing it. I have shelves with labeled 3 ring binders displaying all the projects I'm working on. As I have a thought or idea, I take a sheet of paper, write down the idea and put it in the binder. When the binder is full, it's time to write a book.
Note, this concept can also be applied to email and blogs. Do you find yourself finding wonderful articles that, if saved, would enhance something you're working on. Send it to yourself in an email and later store it in a folder, or post it to a blog. Not only does the blog save it, but others can see your progress and comment on it.
Page 157 .. Chapter 8 - Effective Study Skills ..
The material is good here, there are a few things I would add, and an entire subject that I would like the author to research. The first thing that I would add is to use a 3 ring binder to write down topics. While ADHDrs lack skills to know how to capture class notes and study properly, creating their own book on the subject is actually a helpful way for them to capture what is important in the class and study. Each topic would be written like an article that focuses on a specific aspect of the instruction and how the ADHDr would have taught the it. This does a lot of simple things really fast .. but most importantly .. it helps the ADHD see where their gaps in understanding are. If they can't explain the topic, they need to fill that gap to continue building knowledge on the topic.
The area that I would like the author to research and expound on is math. Not just simple addition and subtraction that is taught in K12 schools, but higher math in colleges for engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, and physicists. You see, Math is not processed in the same place that language is. In fact, where most ADHDrs get lots is when trying to memorize relationships between variables (equations). They can't see the same relationship when written with different variables, because the language center of their brain has stored the equation as a picture. If you think that's odd, you're not alone. But, language is processed as a picture not as individual letters. Look at the various type fonts you have access to, each font creates a new picture of the word. (FYI .. psychologists have proven both concepts are true .. language as pictures, and math and language are processed in different parts of the brain.) In fact, math is a guessing game of .. "Am I right?" .. the more times you get the math answer right, the more confident you become in using it as the answer. Does 1 + 1 = 2? Is 2 - 1 = 1? What about - 2 + 1 = -1? Are all these equations saying the same thing?
Remember, ADHDrs have to externalize everything. And, we work best when we are generating positive events (+). So, listen to music that makes you happy, watch a movie that makes you happy, and keep your professor on speed dial, or someone else who knows the subject matter who can help when you get stuck. Nothing will suck your time away faster than a negative event (-).
Page 187 .. Chapter 9 - Job Satisfaction ..
I skipped this chapter. But I will impart some wisdom I've found concerning this subject. I do keep a blog on "Working with ADHD" after all. So, as mentioned above concerning friendships .. positive events (+) make for better working relationships. Negative events (-) will make you hate the job. There is a difference bewteen management and leadership. Managers track metrics.. training, productivity, performance, and quality .. Leaders follow the definition of leadership .. Guiding Intent w/Integrity .. (Mind you there are 1000's of styles of leadership ask described by this definition, not all are positive). A good leader and manager will use Project Management 101 .. Manage Expectations .. and the 2nd law of Project Management .. Mind the Gap! .. (I spoke about this earlier in the chapter concerning education.)
A good community is one that supports each other. A bad community is one where people are decisive. (Aka, they create constant tormoil and back stabbing between department and team members.)
Overall, I think the book provides a lot of good information. I just wish it were re-organized from the perspective of how positive (+), neutral (o), and negative (-) events cause respective emotional responses that cause you to seek out or avoid things. I also wish more ADHD coaches and therapists helped ADHDrs to look at life from this perspective as well. For me, I have started curating a constant stream of positive events. When a negative event crops up, I can easily catch it and push it out. When I get depressed .. lost in an ADHDrs Negative Thought Storm .. It has been hard, because I keep trying positive events (+) until I finally get out.
