SAMPLE

By Libby Silberman

Interventions for Adult ADHD

This month’s Sample starts with a story.

Let me tell you about Rikki. She’s happily married, a proud mother of four, and works as a makeup artist, product photographer, graphic designer, plus moonlights on occasion as a party planner. Yeah, all of it.

She really is amazing at all of these things. She’s highly creative and such fun to work with. She takes jobs whenever she’s in the mood and takes really low fees. Her work is breathtaking. I grew friendly with her around two years ago via a project we collaborated on, and we later realized we’d attended the same summer camp as teens, albeit in different bunks. Since then, we’ve been in touch. I love when she sends me completed projects—graphic design, photos she shot, and photos of events she planned. She’s so remarkably creative—she sees things differently than most people.

Sounds like the utopian artist to hire for your next project, huh?

With her permission, I’ll share the other side of the story.

Rikki can run late. She can forget to do projects. If the going gets tough, she can abandon her work for days. But when she delivers…wow. The girl’s got talent.

She struggles with backend problems as well. She doesn’t always remember to bill or follow up on bills, and her books are a mess. Sometimes she wonders if she’s making a profit—that’s how little she knows about her businesses.

If she’s in creative mode, whipping up multi-layer desserts for Shabbos or setting up her makeshift studio for a product photoshoot, Rikki can easily forget about her kids as they happily romp around the house, wrecking the place. She might make the most amazing desserts but totally forgot about making dinner. Tuna sandwiches and omelets save the day, and she moves on with a sheepish smile.

She can forget playgroup carpool when it’s her turn, though her neighbor has taken to reminding her twenty minutes prior, something she simultaneously appreciates and resents.

In her family life, she’s an endlessly loving and patient wife and mommy, and an eternal optimist. However, she can get into a funk where she’s all depressed for a couple of days before she gets back to her usual upbeat self.

If you know someone who fits, even partially, Rikki’s profile—candid as it was—you probably know someone with adult ADHD. Unless you have it yourself.

The awesomest gift, and a tough one, too.

Eventually, when every person in her orbit – including herself – was thoroughly frustrated, she sought a diagnosis, if only to give a name to the thing she’d been shrugging off for so many years. She’d sort of known this was it, but after yoyo-ing through omega-3 and focus vitamins and selfhelp books, she wanted a fix that was going to work. Simply put, she was relieved to be offered medication. Finally, she hoped, she’d be able to focus and get things done like the rest of humanity.

Ritalin was an entire waste of time. The side effects made her miserable, and it hardly worked anyway. Her psychiatrist eventually prescribed Concerta, and the change was instant. She was able to have singular focus and stay regulated and relaxed instead of overwhelmed and anxious.

Others commented on the change. Someone mentioned that she was more put together. Her neighbor stopped calling to remind her to do carpool duty. Her husband was impressed at how well she was keeping the house together. But she hated every minute of it.

While she was able to focus, her brain hurt. Her creativity felt squashed. To use her words, “I felt like I was squinting at something without seeing the big picture, but unable to look right or left. That’s how intense the focus was.”

Additionally, her appetite was very compromised. She didn’t feel hungry throughout the day, but as soon as the Concerta wore off in the evening hours, she would go on a binge, eating up whatever she found in the pantry.

For a long while, things flowed this way for Rikki. The upsides, the downsides; medication was her reality despite the misery.

At an appointment with her psychiatrist, she asked the doctor if there was anything else she could try due to the numerous difficult side effects of Concerta. She walked out with a prescription for Vyvanse. After a couple of weeks on Vyvanse, she felt much better than she had in two years.

It helped her focus without feeling like she was looking into a pair of mini binoculars, and it helped her get things done as well as regulate her moods and emotions better. The downsides weren’t too awful— she sometimes had difficulty falling asleep and occasionally had to push herself to eat.

A major downside of this type of medication is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem; it “postpones” it. In other words, taking medication helped her throughout the day. It helped her manage her emotions, for example, but as soon as the medication wore off after 12 hours or so, she suddenly felt extremely anxious and overwhelmed. She spent many evenings experiencing the gamut of negative emotion, including frustration, helplessness, anger, and depression.

Eventually, Rikki sought ADHD coaching/therapy to help her manage her professional and personal life. Relief helped her find the perfect therapist, a woman with ADHD herself (of course, who else?).

Upon the advice of her coach, she tried journaling to get thoughts and feelings out of her system (she’s a super-deep thinker and feeler), and started exercising regularly. Both helped, she admitted, as an adjunct to medication.

When her therapist handed her a book, The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD, she was skeptical— she already owned a dozen self-help books—but she took it anyway. Could practicing mindfulness solve her ADHD-related issues?

And this is where I (finally) come into the picture. While I’d sort of suspected that Rikki had ADHD, she’d never told me any of the above before. Rikki and I were chatting on the phone (a rare occurrence in the email gen), when she mentioned she was reading this book that would possibly interest me, “maybe for Wellspring.” She shared a little about her ADHD and how it impacted her, and how medication had solved some problems but created others.

Written by Dr. Lidia Zylowska, The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD details an eight-step program to help the ADHD adult ground themselves via sitting meditation, thoughtful speaking and listening, and development of self-acceptance. The book is clearly written for the fidgety reader, with easy-to-read short segments and beyond-easy readability.

The book is accompanied by an audio CD containing ten meditation tracks for implementation of the book’s theory.

And now, for this month’s Sample: It’s about this audio CD—How practicing mindfulness aids adults with ADHD and the ADHD parts in a nonADHD adult…cause we’ve all been there.

Practicing mindful meditation can help adults with ADHD manage their thoughts, focus, and emotions.