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adhd hacks

Health

Feeling lazy, unmotivated, and ashamed of it? Doctor says it could be undiagnosed ADHD.

"75% of adults with anxiety actually have ADHD as the cause of their anxiety."

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Doctor breaks down how to recognize ADHD in adults.

If it seems that everyone is being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), there may be a reason and it's likely not the reason people think. Diagnostic criteria were initially based off of how ADHD presented in white children who were mostly male, so if you fell outside of that box your diagnosis was often overlooked. This is especially true in girls who then turned into undiagnosed or misdiagnosed women.

But it's not just women who were undiagnosed since the criteria mostly included ways in which hyperactivity showed up—you know, the "H" in ADHD. But not everyone with ADHD presents with the stereotypical hyperactivity bit.

That means a lot of kids fell through the cracks and, as kids do, eventually became adults.

ADHD specialist Dr. Heather Brannon breaks down ways in which ADHD is missed and how to identify it in adults in a TEDx Talk in 2021.


adhd, adult adhd, adhd diagnosis, adhd treatment, doctors, ted talk, tedx, mental healthAdults with untreated ADHD may struggle with procrastination, being distracted, and end up feeling shame over their "laziness" Photo by Hiki App on Unsplash

In the first few minutes of the video, Brannon drops a statistic that feels mind-boggling:

"75% of adults with anxiety actually have ADHD as the cause of their anxiety." Even though I fit into that category, consider my mind completely boggled because I thought I was a rarity and my psychiatrist was a magician. Turns out, he was probably just up to date on his continuing education credits.

Brannon talks about how people who may express feelings of overwhelm, anxiousness, and tiredness and who are easily frustrated may actually have undiagnosed ADHD.

It's pretty easy to overlook ADHD that presents with more of the attention deficit part of the diagnosis than the hyperactivity part. When someone is having difficulty sitting still, talking so fast that you can barely keep up, and is constantly on the go, it's pretty easy to pinpoint there may be an issue.

But when the person is quiet, sits still but misses large chunks of conversations, or is chronically forgetful and sleepy, it's much easier to miss the signs, according to Brannon.

Brannon says many people feel bad about themselves without knowing why, so having an answer for why you're feeling this way can be helpful.

The video is really fascinating and may help others recognize signs within themselves or with loved ones. Give it a gander below:


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

In the clip, Brannon introduces us to a theoretical person named Sally.

Sally is successful, creative, and has a Masters degree. She's functioning at a high level by all indications, but Sally struggles with procrastination, getting sidetracked, and feeling unmotivated. She feels lazy and ashamed of it, but she just can't bring herself to change her behavior.

Brannon says that Sally is typical of adults with undiagnosed ADHD. These are people who feel and know something is not quite right with them, but they have no idea what.

As for a little happy ending, Sally eventually finds out that she has ADHD and receives treatment. Brannon says in the video that the right medication can make a world of difference.

"Now [Sally] can have creative thoughts without having that big swirl of ideas running around in her head. She can look at an email to see if she has time to answer or she needs to save it for later. Now Sally can be on time for her appointment, and that frees up the perfectionist that was trying so hard to be on time before and was failing every time."


adhd, adult adhd, adhd diagnosis, adhd treatment, doctors, ted talk, tedx, mental healthWith her ADHD under control, "Sally" is crushing it. Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Brannon says that over the span of her career, she would estimate about 2 or 3 out of 10 adults have undiagnosed ADHD and are living a life of difficulty and shame.

"That's a lot of people who could be feeling a whole lot better," she says.

This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.

Family

Mom shares hacks for making sure her children with ADHD have a smooth morning

She pulls from her own experience with ADHD to help her kids.

Mom shares helpful morning routine for ADHD kids.

Getting kids up and out the door in the mornings can be a struggle whether your children have ADHD or not. A lot of mornings, it feels like anything goes, from your kid waking up looking like they just fought a flock of wild geese in their sleep to them forgetting their left shoe in the refrigerator.

Why was their shoe in there to begin with? No one knows.

Having kids is committing to organized chaos at any given moment, while also accepting that sometimes the chaos isn't organized at all. It's just a free-for-all, and all the tiny humans look like different versions of you. But Tarah, who created the TikTok page @thatadhdlife, has come up with a solution to morning chaos that helps get her kids out of the house on time and ready for the day.

Tarah is neurodivergent and so are her three children. All four of them have ADHD, but it was Tarah's personal experience with ADHD as a child that helped inform the routine she created for her children.


The mom of three explained to Upworthy that she struggled as a child, and with her parents being divorced, she didn't always have the support she needed. Up until recently, her hacks for before-school chaos were just kept between her and her family.

"I was on a live video—I try to do them every Monday—I was explaining this story about how I saw a little boy who was late and running to school all out of breath," Tarah said. "The look on his face reminded me of little me. When I was a kid, I was always stressed and always late."

@thatadhdlife

Im truly sharing this out of love because school mornings don’t have to be stressful. I’m not saying that you won’t occasionally have a couple flustered mornings once or twice a year but for the most part, it’s life changing. I had to do a part 2 because I talk too much when I’m passionate about something 🫠🤣 #thatadhdlife #justcallmeT #adhdkidsbelike #adhdkidsareamazing #adhdschoolmornings #adhdschool #adhdroutines #adhdsystems

Instead of just watching the boy run as she rode her bike home, she tried to encourage him by shouting, "Take a deep breath, you're going to be just fine. You're going to make it." It was the boy's response of "I'm always late," that Tarah said broke her heart and prompted her to tell her followers the story. This then led to people expressing their own frustration with trying to get kids out of the house on time in the mornings, so Tarah decided to upload a video explaining her routine.

In the TikTok video, Tarah tells her followers that they need to first "reverse engineer" their morning by observing their child's day to see what's going wrong. She explains that this could be anything from them not being able to find their shoes to them not remembering to brush their teeth.

After providing examples and a few side quest stories that tie back into the point, Tarah explains her system, which surprisingly starts the day before. They check the weather in order to pick out clothes, then they pack their lunches and clean out their backpacks, all before bed. Tarah says she's been doing this routine since her oldest son, who is 15, was in kindergarten. But it wasn't always like that.

When her oldest child was in kindergarten he was struggling until the mom of three changed things up.

"I really realized with him that he loved when he learned things that became muscle memory, so I made things really hands-on and interactive. I knew I needed to thrive and not just survive," Tarah told Upworthy.

In the video, she explains how this routine she implemented years ago has helped her children be much less stressed in the mornings. Each child has their own version of the same routine based on their age. Parents in the comments were impressed with Tarah's system. Some even said they were taking notes for themselves even though they didn't have children.

Listen to Tarah's helpful tips below:

@thatadhdlife

Replying to @thatadhdlife im just a neurodivergent momma who knew I wanted a different life for our neurodivergent kids. I promise it’s possible but this takes planning, persistence and patience. It’s never too late to start but just know that the older they are, the longer it’s going to take to become an intrinsic habit. Hold their hand through it until then and take a lot of deep breathes. You got this ❤️ ##thatadhdlife##justcallmeT##adhdschool##adhdschoollife##adhdschoolmornings##adhdsystems##nervoussystemregulation##nervoussystemhealing

ADHD work from home productivity unlocked.

Having ADHD is like having this weirdly inconvenient but sometimes timely super power. If you don't have ADHD then that sentence probably makes little sense and if you do have ADHD I'm currently giving you the Hunger Games three finger salute. Hilariously the acronym ADHD stands for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder but in reality, there's no issue with a deficit of attention. We just seem to focus on the thing we aren't supposed to be focused on because it's shiny and the task we should be doing is dull and repetitive. This can make working (you know, the thing adults are supposed to do) difficult.


The routine of going into the office to work in a different environment can be helpful so long as no one talks to you for hour-long stretches. But working from home when you have ADHD is a whole different type of beast, the distractions are abundant. Why would you want to focus on writing a brief or doing a spreadsheet when you suddenly realize you haven't cleaned your baseboard since you moved into the house seven years ago? Now the spreadsheet that should've taken two hours takes a full work day because you keep looking at the baseboards and before you know what's happening you're on your hands and knees with a wet rag working up a sweat.

I know, I got you. That's why I came up with a list to help ADHDers stay focused on the task they're actually supposed to be doing while still hitting that reward button, even when you work from home. Obviously this list isn't exhaustive and won't work for every ADHD brain because ADHD is truly like a box of chocolates. Sure there are similarities, it's all chocolate after all, but nearly every piece is different. See what works for you and toss the rest. Well, don't toss it because that would be wasteful, repurpose it or give it away. Without further ado, the list:

Visual timer.

Amazon

1. A big ol' visual timer

Yeah, a timer. That's where the reward comes in. You tell yourself you're going to do a task for 20 minutes, so you set the timer and see how much you can do before the time is up. Sometimes it's just the right amount of pressure to motivate you to do the thing that feels like watching paint dry. The reward for completing the task before the timer is done makes your brain light up and before you know it, you're setting that bad boy again. You can get it here.

White basket.

Amazon

2. A small everything basket

Sure, you're thinking, "Why do I need a basket if I'm at home? I can walk to the trash can." Stop that. The basket is for everything you will inevitably collect when you're on your fifth trip to the kitchen or bathroom. That sock you picked up will lead to you in turn collecting more laundry. The next thing you know you've got a load in the washer and dryer and you're folding clothes instead of working. The sock you picked up goes into this basket by your workspace. This is the "until I can put it away basket." It will save you from deviating from the task. Buy it here.

Fidget toy.

Amazon

3. Bubble popper fidget toy

Because meetings are boring and your energy has to go somewhere so you can actually hear what the person is saying. I personally prefer the animal shaped ones because I'm actually a child with a mortgage, but really any kind will do. They're quiet and mindless. You don't have to look down to concentrate on the activity so you can focus on the task at hand: pretending to be an adulty adult in the meeting. No one will know you're playing with a toy off camera. Grab it here.

Office chair.

Amazon

4. A sit any way you want chair

I'm not sure if it's an ADHD thing or if it's just a coincidence but I've yet to meet a person that has ADHD who can sit in a chair like chairs are intended. Legs just don't seem to work that way when you have ADHD. This isn't backed by science but I'm sure they can do a study on it and prove my hypothesis. A wide-seated chair will let you sit however your legs need to fold in order for your brain to focus. Sit criss cross apple sauce if you'd like. Having the right chair will help create the environment you need to focus. Pick it up here.

To-do list notebook

Amazon

5. A sweary notebook

Making a "to-do" list doesn't seem to work for ADHD people. I'm sure someone loves lists that also have ADHD, but I personally have not met one. I like to make a reverse list so at the end of the day I can see everything I've actually accomplished. So instead of writing a list in advance, as I finish things I just write them down and cross them off. Check. It's done. I've found this keeps me motivated to start the next task because there's no order I have to follow. You just do a thing then write it down and cross it off. Get the notebook here.

Everyone's needs will be different but if you find you're focusing on the wrong things while you're working from home, this list can help. If you have a hack that works for you, don't keep secrets. Share yours and help another human.

Editor's note: Upworthy may earn a proceed from items sold on this list.