Quotes from Edward M. Hallowell

The clinician's challenge is to find a way to allow the ADD person to put on the brakes. From a biological perspective, one of the most successful strategies has been the use of medications.

Trapped in the past or future in the DMN, you're likely to abandon projects you once started with enthusiasm, make careless mistakes, or, worse, fall into a state of misery and despair, for no good reason whatsoever. All

In other words: Spend more time in the TPN focusing on a single task. We know what you might be thinking: The whole point is that I can't focus on a single task! But you can—you are already a master of distraction, so now distract yourself. Productivity isn't the point here. Moving the toggle switch is.

All children do better when they know who is in charge. Knowing that they are not gives them a sense of security and order. The same goes for adults, to a certain extent—having a clear chain of command at work, for instance, is both orienting and especially helpful to the employee with ADHD.

As far as I can see, many people who don't have ADD are charter members of the Society of the Congenitally Boring. And

The paper is due in five days" becomes "It's not due now," and the five days might as well be five months.

For example, if you were nearsighted and had never heard of nearsightedness, and for years you had thought your blurry vision and subsequent learning problems were due to lack of effort or moral turpitude, imagine your relief in discovering that there was this condition called nearsightedness, and it had nothing to do with effort or morality, but rather was a neurological condition. So it is with ADD.

Uncannily accurate intuition, coupled with a tendency to overlook the obvious and ignore major data.

This is because the structure, novelty, and motivation associated with

There is nothing that as a team we can't solve.

Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. Swedish proverb

These examples reflect the stuff adult ADD is made of. Peter's piles are particularly emblematic. So many adults with ADD have piles, little mess-piles, big mess-piles, piles everywhere. They are like a by-product of the brain's work. What other people somehow put away, people with ADD put into piles.

The great mathematician Alan Turing summed us up when he said, "Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine." That sums us up perfectly.

Worry is a special form of fear. To create worry, humans elongate fear with anticipation and memory, expand it in imagination, and fuel it with emotion.

in one of those moods, it is not the time for introspection. Beware the preacher because he is beguiling. Because you're intelligent and you like words, and you grew up in a strict moral framework, when you hear arguments mounted against you you can hardly resist answering back. But once you join in, the preacher has you. You cannot win. The preacher will always have the last word. In those moods, you can never stare him down.

There are several medications used in the treatment of ADD. They all help the individual to focus better. In a sense, they act like internal eyeglasses, increasing the brain's ability to focus on one task over time while filtering out competing stimuli or distractions.

Embedded in the mind of each person who has ADHD, or depression, or bipolar disorder, or an anxiety disorder, one can find talents and strengths.

Lots of kids who have ADD also have something else, something we don't have a name for, something good. They can be highly imaginative and empathic, closely attuned to the moods and thoughts of the people around them, even as they are missing most of the words that are being said.

Being a 3, he is technically "resistant" in Follow Thru, which is typical of people with ADHD or VAST. In other words, they take shortcuts and let solutions evolve as they work on problems instead of planning an approach in advance. Dr.

A person with ADHD has the power of a Ferrari engine but with bicycle-strength brakes.

This relates to how he approaches risk and uncertainty. With a 9 in Quick Start, he is "insistent" in this way, and that makes him like most people with ADHD or VAST. They jump right in without testing the waters first. Remember: fire, ready, aim.

Many people with ADHD or VAST are at the other end of this scale. They need to move and create movement as they work. They need to create physical, hand-built solutions to problems.

Because it's just not in the makeup of people with ADHD or VAST to give up. Sticking to something is a terrific quality if the something is productive and makes you happy or your life better. But sticking to something just for the sake of sticking to it is a Sisyphean undertaking—pushing that old boulder up the hill day after day only to have it roll back down the next.

Exercise is probably the best natural antianxiety, antiworry agent we have.