Practices

Think of ADHD as sitting at the centre of an onion. Poor sleep, sleep apnoea, low vitamin levels, allergy, ongoing pain, untreated anxiety or low mood all sit in layers around it, and each one makes the centre look worse than it is.

This explains something that otherwise looks strange: treatments that do nothing whatever for ADHD can still make a real difference, because they…

People who are sleeping properly, eating properly and moving a bit tend to want each other more. The unglamorous parts of life management run closer to the bedroom than either of you might expect.

It is worth saying out loud when desire has quietly gone from a marriage, because the usual explanations reach for something heavier: he has lost…

A no is usually information about fit rather than a report on your worth. Some of them have to happen before you can tell which places are right for you.

This is a real reframe rather than a comforting one, because a rejection does carry usable information: about what they were after, about what you…

When something feels unbearable to risk, follow it downwards. If that did happen, what would it mean, and what would happen after that?

Keep asking gently, and stop when you reach something that is a statement about the person rather than about the situation, such as it would prove I…

An exam is a task with requirements. It is not a ruling on whether you are capable, however much it feels like one while you are sitting inside it.

Saying that once changes very little. The person this comes from took a long time to arrive at it, and that is worth knowing so you do not expect it…

Some of the low, grey stretches are not depression. They are what happens when there has been nothing on the go for a while, and the colour comes back when a project starts.

It is a quieter thing than depression and it does not look like much from outside. Sleep is fine, you are still working, but the zest has gone out of…

There is a real difference between a person who will not start and a person who cannot get started, and with ADHD it is nearly always the second.

This matters most in how you speak to yourself, and in how the people near you speak to you. Refusal invites pressure and punishment, which reliably…

With ADHD the one dependable thing is that you are not dependable in the same way each day. A day when everything works and a day when nothing does can arrive with no reason you can find.

Say this out loud to the people who need to know, because the good days get held against you later, by them and by you. Plan around your average…

If thoughts of ending your life turn up, tell someone that day. Do not wait to see whether they pass, and do not wait until you can explain them properly.

Feelings can arrive at full volume with ADHD, and the gap between a thought and acting on it can be short, which is why waiting it out alone is the…

If things fell apart when your routine did, that is information rather than a character flaw. A great deal of what was holding you together was built into the day around you.

Fixed start times, someone in the next room, a journey that marked the edges of work: these do real work, and you find out how much only when they…

Anything that gives a quick lift, a bet, a purchase, speed, a risk taken late at night, pulls harder when your brain is short of reward. The workable move is not more willpower, it is putting friction between you and the thing.

Friction is a delay you build while you are calm: the card left at home, the app deleted, a rule that anything over a set amount waits until…

A sharp sense of unfairness is common with ADHD, and it often ends in walking out rather than in raising the matter. The instinct is usually sound. It is the timing that costs you.

Try a rule of your own making: when something at work feels unjust, write down what happened the same day and do nothing else for twenty four hours.…

The same mistake costs far more when you have no money behind you. Legal trouble is not handed out evenly, and that sits on top of the earning difficulties ADHD already brings.

This is worth naming when somebody is carrying shame about a record: what happened was shaped by what they could afford at the time and not only by…

The teenager with ADHD is often the one who admits it while everyone else produces a story. That is not worse judgement about right and wrong, it is less thinking ahead about how it will land.

Parents can read a caution or a suspension as proof of a moral problem, when the honesty in the room points the other way. Instead of a lecture,…

ADHD does not come with extra intelligence, and it does not take any away either. What being bright does is buy you time, because you can work around it for years before anyone notices.

That is why so many capable people get diagnosed at university, or in a first job with real responsibility, at the point where the workarounds…

A lot of people with ADHD quietly believe they are not clever. Usually it comes from reading a page four times and taking nothing in, and concluding the obvious thing about themselves.

That belief does a great deal of damage. It keeps people out of courses and jobs they could do, and it makes them give up on any new strategy the…