A Vision for You: Series Summary

Welcome back to an ADHD roadmap on navigating Adult ADHD, and this is our last video of our series. If you've made it this far, we've learned a lot. So in this last video, I'm not going to provide all that much new information. However, it's really important to do a recap to remember all of the different things that we've learned, some of the main points, and for me to give my final thought and vision for you, the first thing we need to remember is that ADHD is not a moral failing or personality defect.

It is having a different brain structure. It's a neurotic developmental disorder, meaning a disorder of childhood brain development. We just have different brain structures now, whether that's difficulty regulating our minds impulsivity or the hyperactivity of our body. It's all about self regulation and how the prefrontal cortex of our brain, the one responsible for higher level thinking, the part of us that makes us human, often has difficulty regulating some of those impulses and is more inconsistent rather than not being able to work at all.

Remember when we talked about the stoplight and the ADHD brain? The dopamine is the electricity that runs the stoplight. It tells us when to go to stop or to slow down. In the normal brain, we talked about how it goes in a pretty predictable pattern, green, yellow, red. However, in the ADHD brain, it doesn't quite work that way. Often we get stuck in the green far too long or in the red, making us unable to do some of the things we know we need to do. So remembering that ADHD is not about not being able to do certain things, it's an inconsistency.

It's often a disorder of transitions. So a lot of the skills that we need to learn and apply are about trying to use that to our advantage, or at least having some of the skills to stay on task when needed and when to be able to shift and do something else when that's necessary. So then how do we start to combat some of these deficits? Well, in the series, we talked about things like mindfulness, the importance of medications, which are the number one frontline treatment. However, also some of those behavioral interventions, like being organized with using lists, finding other tricks, even things like different types of therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy, neurofeedback.

There's a lot of different things that we can do to address some of those symptoms of ADHD. Another important thing we have to remember is that ADHD is not just the symptoms in the DSM. When it comes to attention. When it comes to hyperactivity, those are often focused and geared towards children, which ADHD diagnosis has typically focused on. And that's why we're doing this series on adult ADHD, because it could often look different. And one of the major things associated with ADHD is difficulty with emotional regulation.

We talked about how ADHD is associated with many different disorders like mood disorders, depression, bipolar, but also a high prevalence of anxiety disorders. And that's why it's so important to manage our emotions in a healthy way, whether that's through various therapy skills, which we have talked about, and going to therapy, which can be extremely important for us, but being able to find other ways to remain emotionally healthy in some of the basics, like folks with ADHD, how we can struggle with things like sleep, hygiene, exercising, all of those things are important for anyone, but for us, it's much more important to keep those things in order.

Further, it's important to keep our relationships and our life in order. Relationship quality is one of the highest predictors of happiness in anybody's life. And for us, that can be a struggle. So remembering things like effective communication, learning how to educate others about our ADHD so they have a better understanding. So remember, invest in your relationships. The last key takeaway is all about self advocacy, how to teach others about ADHD so they have a better understanding. Again, improving the quality of your relationships, whether that be personal or at work, which is a very big one, where we can struggle professionally because we learn in different ways, or we need different accommodations so that we could be successful, which not only benefits us, but benefits any team that.

That we're part of. So remember, learn how to self advocate and being able to ask for the things that you need to benefit everyone. So before I end this series, I just want to give you this final message from the heart. I know what it's like to have ADHD, and I know what it's like to have it and not know and struggle and wonder, why is it that I struggle with certain things? Why do I feel different than other people around me? Why do certain things feel like so much more of a struggle than other people?

We've all been diagnosed at different times. And maybe you're like me and did not get diagnosed until your thirties. You know, even being a mental health professional, I knew I had some of the symptoms, but for some reason, I could never accept that this was something that I had. As adults or even as kids, we learn to accommodate ourselves, we learn to play to our strengths. It's like somebody who has trouble with their vision, their hearing becomes better to accommodate, to compensate. And that's often what we do.

And that can make it harder for us to accept, because in some ways we may be successful. Like for myself, I was very successful in many areas of life. I knew I had strengths, and to me that meant, well, I can't possibly have ADHD then. Well, no, that's not how this works. I really struggled in many different areas. And it wasn't just the DSM criteria of stuff at school and performance and being a kid running around. For me, it was a little more quiet, it was more the inattentive type. But I did struggle emotionally with different mental health disorders, having serious struggles, lifelong struggles with addiction, a lot of these things that were correlated with ADHD.

So my message here is that we can learn how to live life with ADHD and still be happy, to learn to play to our strengths as we talked about being more creative problem solvers, often having better people skills, empathy, there's a lot of different things that we can employ to live a happy, healthy life. I always tell folks ADHD is about extremes. We're like everyone else, only more so. We take things pretty far, we feel things more intensely. We're not all that different than other people, but so the same things that benefit other people in their life, in their personal, professional, emotional world, will also benefit us.

The only difference is we need to be a little bit more diligent about it. We need to learn how to practice some of these skills. Perhaps it's taking those medications, whatever it takes for us to be healthy and happy. So I want you all to try to use any of the skills that you've learned in this video and really take it to heart and try whatever works. Not everything is going to work for everyone. I gave a lot of information here, a lot of different tips and tricks, and we just scratched the surface.

So see what makes sense for you. Anytime anyone gives you advice, make sure it makes sense to you. Do your diligence and try some of these things. And if they work, great. If not, you can move on to others, take what you want and leave the rest. But I have found that these things have helped me greatly, have helped my clients greatly, and just like anyone else, you deserve to be happy. So with that, I bid you adieu and I wish you well on your journey.