This is a tiny snippet of a much longer presentation Dr. Barkley made for parents of kids with ADD/ADHD. It's incredibly comprehensive compared to what is normally available to the public.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in the early 2000's in my mid-twenties and randomly prescribed a new-ish drug called Strattera and shoved out the door after a couple of counseling sessions. The drug made substantial changes to my ability to function, but I had no frame of reference, so I thought that would be it.
Saw this video sometime in the last year and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Contacted Dr. Barkley directly via email and asked him for a recommendation in my area for treatment. Got hooked up with the NYU ADHD program and have been working with the program there for 6+ months and have been on new meds (Concerta) which is like emerging from underground for the last 16-17 years.
If you know someone with ADHD or family with ADHD, watch this whole thing. It's long, but phenomenal. A potential life changer for folks who haven't received help or may be getting the wrong help.
For folks who are poking fun and saying, "I guess have ADHD too!"
That would be like saying you have an eating disorder because you have trouble not eating a box of chips when someone with an actual eating disorder clears out the refrigerator. Or saying you have multiple personality disorder because you occasionally talk to yourself. Or saying you have epilepsy because you get shaky when you are hungry.
Everyone struggles from time to time to pay attention to things and focus on long term goals and lessons learned in the past. That's the human condition.
ADHD/ADD makes it literally impossible to integrate long term thinking into action, both in the future and remembering the successes and failures in your past. Trying to engage structure surrounding things that I am not directly threatened or rewarded by sends me wandering around the room, physically and mentally. Unless I am constantly getting rewarded or punished or don't have some massive impending reward or punishment on the horizon, I can't stay focused on the task at hand.
TLDR: The original video is almost three hours long and changed my life. Don't mock people who have ADHD or pretend to for attention. Attention deficit is crippling. My current treatment is helping a LOT and has changed my life for the better.
I suspected I had ADHD and went to a psychiatrist to figure out if it was true. Eventually all the signs pointed towards the assumption that I was.
The treatment was ritalin alongside talk therapy. Truthfully CBT would have been more helpful but I never got that
How long were you in therapy? Was the person you were in therapy with specializing in Attention Disorders? Who prescribed the medication and how often after you started it did you meet with them?
Sorry. Lots of questions, but it might give me some idea of where to direct you.
About 4 months of therapy. A separate psychologist prescribed the medicine and didnt really do much psychology work. Meetings were every week for that period of time.
The guy who was giving you meds was a psychopharmacologist probably. They tend to do that. Not a lot of therapy.
Four months of talk therapy isn't going to make much of a dent, honestly. I've been working with my therapist for 7 years twice a week. I've got some heavier shit than some folks, but less than a lot. Talk therapy takes a long time because it is mostly you doing the work with tiny nudges from your doctor. My therapist probably says 5-10 words for a 45 minute session. Sometimes less.
I dunno. I guess I would suggest trying to find someone in your area that focuses more on ADHD. Find someone who you feel a bond and trust with. It's ultimately going to be mostly you setting small goals for yourself and working through how you sabotage things and why and making changes. Figuring out what you REALLY want deep down and deciding if that is healthy or realistic. Finding your fear, pain, anger and mostly just your habits and learned survival modes of behavior left over from stuff from your childhood.
Folks with ADHD have to build a LOT of workarounds to make their lives work socially, educationally, professionally and in terms of family. It's a lot. And then you bring your normal stuff to the table. I'll not lie: it's fuckin hard.
But I have two kids, an incredible wife, a job I love, an apartment I never thought I'd be able to afford and a positive outlook on my future and my family's.
I wish I could have gotten to it earlier but it wasn't in the cards.
Go watch Russel Barkley's 2:30-3:00 video on ADHD for parents. Reach out to him via email and ask him if he knows anyone in your area who he trusts. Find out how your insurance covers out of network if it doesn't have them in network. Beg, borrow and steal. It's an investment in your future. You'll make the money back.
That's awesome. Just getting things rolling down the road is the hard part. Once you get some momentum, it gets a LOT easier. Just keep pushing. Any time you feel like you are "done", keep pushing.
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u/supercali5 May 30 '17
This is a tiny snippet of a much longer presentation Dr. Barkley made for parents of kids with ADD/ADHD. It's incredibly comprehensive compared to what is normally available to the public.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in the early 2000's in my mid-twenties and randomly prescribed a new-ish drug called Strattera and shoved out the door after a couple of counseling sessions. The drug made substantial changes to my ability to function, but I had no frame of reference, so I thought that would be it.
Saw this video sometime in the last year and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Contacted Dr. Barkley directly via email and asked him for a recommendation in my area for treatment. Got hooked up with the NYU ADHD program and have been working with the program there for 6+ months and have been on new meds (Concerta) which is like emerging from underground for the last 16-17 years.
If you know someone with ADHD or family with ADHD, watch this whole thing. It's long, but phenomenal. A potential life changer for folks who haven't received help or may be getting the wrong help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo&t=2428s
For folks who are poking fun and saying, "I guess have ADHD too!"
That would be like saying you have an eating disorder because you have trouble not eating a box of chips when someone with an actual eating disorder clears out the refrigerator. Or saying you have multiple personality disorder because you occasionally talk to yourself. Or saying you have epilepsy because you get shaky when you are hungry.
Everyone struggles from time to time to pay attention to things and focus on long term goals and lessons learned in the past. That's the human condition.
ADHD/ADD makes it literally impossible to integrate long term thinking into action, both in the future and remembering the successes and failures in your past. Trying to engage structure surrounding things that I am not directly threatened or rewarded by sends me wandering around the room, physically and mentally. Unless I am constantly getting rewarded or punished or don't have some massive impending reward or punishment on the horizon, I can't stay focused on the task at hand.
TLDR: The original video is almost three hours long and changed my life. Don't mock people who have ADHD or pretend to for attention. Attention deficit is crippling. My current treatment is helping a LOT and has changed my life for the better.