This ADHD Awareness month, Author and Teacher Emma Mahony and Broadcaster and Podcaster Clare Catford encourage ADHD-ers to follow their gut and take a risk, after years of feeling “wrong” in a neuro-typical world. How risk-taking can be a strength of an ADHD diagnosis, not a curse. As Clare demonstrates while protesting on behalf of the Posties…
Author Emma Mahony and Broadcaster Clare Catford explore this little known aspect of ADHD where sufferers are more sensitive than others to criticism, perhaps because, by the age of 12, ADHDers receive up to 20,000 more negative comments about themselves than other children. So what effect does RSD have on friendships, relationships and self-esteem?
Hyperfocus
For all that scattered attention, mindwandering, forgetfulness and disorganization there is an even more confusing aspect to ADHD that is often cited as evidence for why the person can’t have it at all. Hyperfocus, the ability to lose time and be completely absorbed by some interesting occupation, and interesting is the crucial word here, seems to suggest that the adhder can pay attention when it suits them.
Thanks to Scott Barry Kaufman for this great positive piece on the power of creativity and ADHD here in the Scientific American. The Author Kaufman suggests that there is a link between a fast brain that allows unfiltered messages to come through all the time, and unfettered imagination. Acting on impulse is not always bad – especially if you use those impulses to create something new. And working memory…pah, who needs it when it comes to artistic or scientific endeavour. Isn’t google our new working memory after all these days?
Continue reading “Hurrah! A positive piece on ADHD and creativity…”
Doctors are getting themselves in a right twist. In response to the previous post on the New York Times piece, Behavioural Neurologist Dr Richard Saul in Chicago has waded in, puffing his provocatively titled book called “ADHD does not Exist” (ironically reviewed by Belinda Luscombe on the same site as one of the Top Ten ADHD books here ). Dr Saul’s stance argued on the Time Magazine’s website here has a particular beef with the new diagnostic manual for mental health (DSM V), which awards ADHD to anyone displaying a minimum of five out of 18 possible symptoms.
His views will no doubt curry favour with Daily Mail readers, who do see this massive upsurge in ADHD diagnosis and medication as a problem, and also with those who feel that taking medication for ADHD is in some way “cheating” in life – whether offering extra focus at school or in the workplace (something that is shown to be not the case in the more level-headed recent Time Magazine piece by Denise Foley in another piece . Foley points out that even with meds, the attention of an ADHD child is still below the par of a “normal” child in school).
Without blamming the reader with any more Time Mag pieces to read, what Dr Saul does not to address in his piece, Continue reading “Now Dr Saul wades in with ADHD doesn’t exist”
Well, well, well. When an issue gets on to Coronation Street, the UK’s longest running soap opera on TV, or The Archers on the radio – then you know that it has made the mainstream. So it was kind of heartwarming in ADHD Awareness month, that ITV have chosen to run with an ADHD storyline. Continue reading “Coronation Street gets ADHD”
Anyone who has been touched by ADHD considers US-based Dr Hallowell as something of a guru. And, on the eve of ADHD Awareness month, the Crossley Family managed to persuade him across the pond to talk to those affected by ADHD in the UK. An author of 20 books, a self-professed ADHDer himself, with dyslexia, and a father to two ADHD boys – Ned Hallowell also runs a psychiatry practice in New York, and advocates what he calls a “strength-based” or positive approach to the condition.
At 64, he has some 25 years of experience under his belt, he refuses to see the complex neurological “disorder” as a disability – instead insisting that if he had a choice to have ADHD or not have it, then he’d keep it. Despite dishing out scripts for medication Continue reading “Mastering ADHD for adults – Dr Hallowell’s Game-changing Workshop in London on 30 September”
A lot could be said about the two days spent in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, along with a hundred or more ADHDers, all twitching to get out of their seats.
The atmosphere reminded me of those signs in the pub above the Optics saying: “You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps”. There was a frenetic, hyperkenetic pace to the whole affair, and any speaker not an ADHDer, of which there were only a few, paid for the slowness of their delivery with the comings and goings of the participants. They weren’t so much booed off, as bored off. Anything went at this conference, and usually it was people leaving the room. Continue reading “ADDISS International Conference in Liverpool – Well Worth the Schlep”
Kevin Roberts, Author and ADHDer, came over from the States to give a couple of talks at the ADHD international Conference in Liverpool – 10 to 12 October 2013. He is co-founder of The Empower ADD project and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Officially or unofficially, he became the Master of Ceremonies of the occasion because his mixture of showmanship, humour, positivity and love of interruptions glued the event together. He’s the unoffical Poster Boy for ADHD, because he believe – above all – that teaching people with ADHD to find the fun in life provides a powerful means to success.
Five Fingers to the Face.. A modern version of talk to the hand. Surely a song written by an ADHDer for an ADHDer. Useful to use against one as well – if they won’t listen to No…
Four more days to go. And I shall be waving him off on the School Bus. With Five Fingers to the Face.
Better Late than Never 