Tag Archive for: Meet the ADHD Expert

Meet the ADHD Expert Laura Rolands

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Laura Rolands

 

Throughout the month of December, I am honored and grateful to share posts by ADHD experts.  In this series of  Meet the ADHD Expert, our experts are sharing their thoughts about ADHD.  Let me introduce guest blogger Laura Rolands.

 

 

Laura Rolands of MyAttentionCoach.com is an ADHD Coach who helps adults with ADHD/ADD pay attention, improve their time management skills and increase productivity.  Her clients include students, adult and organizations looking for help with time management, productivity, organization, procrastination and other challenges related to ADD or ADHD.  Register for Laura’s free time management guide on her website at www.MyAttentionCoach.com and listen to her radio show archives at www.PracticalADHDStrategies.com. 

 

What was your first experience with ADHD?

I first learned about ADHD when talking with teachers at my child’s schools about attention challenges that we didn’t know how to resolve at the time.  It was a frustrating experience in the beginning, but we worked together to develop strategies that have helped my child succeed.  In reality, I saw ADHD, however for years in my work as a Human Resources professional.  I just didn’t know how to recognize it at the time.

 

What was is one thing you want everyone to know about ADHD?

While it can happen, ADHD challenges do not typically go away with age. New challenges can present themselves later in life after the structure provided by parents is no longer applicable.  Being aware of this can help the adults with ADHD to identify and develop strategies to assist them personally and professionally.  Taking proactive action can also help build self-confidence.

 

What is your best tip for ADHD?

Be on the lookout for overcommitment and learn how to say no.  ADHD can cause impulsivity that can lead to a calendar and to do list that is literally overflowing. Learn to say “no” to gain positive control over your commitments and schedule.  Follow these skill-building steps:

  • Identify situations where you make impulsive decisions to accept new projects or tasks..
  • Rehearse saying “no” before entering the situation.  For example, saying, “No thanks, I just can’t add anything new to my plate right now.”  Avoid long explanations; they leave too much open to debate with the requestor.
  • Practice your statement five times before entering the situation.
  • Evaluate your progress and praise yourself to celebrate success.

It takes daily practice to build this skill.  Start practicing today to “no” into a positive!

 

What is your morning like?

Mornings are relatively long at my house with the first alarm sounding at 5:10am and the last person leaving the house around 7:45am.  There are 4 of us who wake up, get ready and head to work and school at various times.  Mornings are rarely hectic though and I am thankful that my kids get out of bed without too much prodding.

 

Stay connected to Laura

Website:  www.MyAttentionCoach.com

Facebook:  www.Facebook.com/MyAttentionCoach

Twitter:  www.Twitter.com/LauraRolands

 

 

 

Meet the ADHD Expert Andrea Sharb

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Throughout the month of December, I am honored and grateful to share posts by ADHD experts.  In this series of  Meet the ADHD Expert, our experts are sharing their thoughts about ADHD.  Let me introduce guest blogger Andrea Sharb.

 

Andrea Sharb

 

Andrea Sharb, ACC®, CPO-CD®, COC®, and CPO® is owner of S.O.S.~Sharb Organizing Solutions, LLC and a trainer for the Coach Approach for Organizers.   Since 2006, Andrea has specialized in Helping Others Overcome Overwhelm™.  Her most rewarding work is with chronically disorganized clients, especially Adults with ADHD or those who wonder if they have ADHD. She also works with individuals who want to gain better control over their physical space, time or life.  A certified coach, her approach, is grounded in helping clients raise their awareness around how their challenges are impacting them.  With awareness raised she assists them in creating strategies for a more organized, productive and fulfilling life.  She then supports her clients in the implementation of those strategies.  Her goal is to not only teach her clients techniques for clearing the clutter from their lives, but to empower them to make changes leading to a more organized lifestyle.  In addition to working with organizing clients, she provides mentor-coaching services to professional organizers.

 

What was your first experience with ADHD?

I first became aware of ADHD in my work as a professional organizer.  What I noticed most was how I identified personally with many of the struggles of my ADHD clients.  I had always been good at organizing physical spaces. But, was challenged when it came to managing my time and dealing with overwhelm that resulted from taking on too many shiny, new activities.  As I learned more about ADHD, in order to better serve my ADHD clients, I began to suspect I was dealing with ADHD myself.  I was formally diagnosed with combined type ADHD a few years ago.

 

What was is one thing you want everyone to know about ADHD?

What I most want people to know is that ADHD is not a sentence to a lesser life.  Change is possible, but it takes building awareness about your ADHD and your strengths, designing actions and developing accountability around those actions, and creating supportive systems. An ADHD coach can serve as a guide in all of these areas.

What is your best tip for ADHD?

When you learn something that works for you, it’s important to find a way to remind yourself of it, so you can continue to use it to support you.  Unfortunately ADHD often results in us forgetting what supports us most.  Document what works best for you on a list of best practices, and review it regularly.

 

What is your morning like? 

Great question Ellen!  I’d love to be able to tell you my mornings are well ordered, but they tend to be a little inconsistent depending upon whether I have an early morning appointment.  If I have an early morning appointment, the external accountability makes all the difference in motivating me through what needs to be accomplished before I leave.  If my first appointment isn’t until later in the morning, things get a little more challenging.   Early morning appointment or not, there are some constants:  Before I even get out of bed I review my best practices on my iPad and check my calendar for the day.  If my first appointment is a little later in the morning I also clear the email that filled my inbox over night.

 

The next step is dealing with what I call my linked activities:  putting in contacts, brushing teeth and getting dressed for exercise.  No matter what the day, these tasks almost always seem tough to tackle.  Putting in the contacts is easiest, because being able to see has the biggest payoff.  From there it is a matter of talking myself into doing just one more thing.  “Ok, contacts are in, all you need to do now is brush your teeth.”  “Alright, all you need to do now is get dressed and put your hair up.”  There is a lot of self-talk going on in my house in the morning.

 

If I have an early morning appointment, I head straight to the treadmill.  Exercise shifts my brain into gear and can make all the difference in how my day goes.  I do a lot of my professional reading while I’m on the treadmill because reading becomes so much easier for me when I’m moving.  (My husband will tell you that if I read while sitting in a chair I tend to fall asleep, which isn’t terribly conducive to learning.)

 

A later morning appointment can result in procrastination around exercise, so I’ll usually end up working backwards from the time I have to leave and calculating the latest time that I can get on the treadmill.  Setting a timer for this time and placing it in another room makes all the difference when it comes to transitioning me to the treadmill.

 

After exercise, breakfast and a shower, it’s time to start the day.

 

Anything else you want to share? 

Just to say thank you for this opportunity to share with your readers and to pass along the following: The way your brain works is not your choice. How you respond to the way your brain works is.  What choices will you make with respect to your ADHD and overcoming your own overwhelm?

 

Stay connected to Andrea

Website: www.sossharborganizingsolutionsllc.com

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/SharbOrganizing

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasharb

Google+: https://plus.google.com/102698754930689067632/about

Meet the ADHD Expert Ari Tuckman

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Throughout the month of December, I am honored and grateful to share posts by ADHD experts.  In this series of  Meet the ADHD Experts, our experts are sharing their thoughts about ADHD.  Let me introduce guest blogger Ari Tuckman.

 

Ari Tuckman

 

 

 

Ari Tuckman, PsyD, MBA is the author of three books:  “Understand Your Brain, Get More Done: The ADHD Executive Functions Workbook”, “More Attention, Less Deficit: Success Strategies for Adults with ADHD” and “Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD: A Practical, Easy-to-Use Guide for Clinicians”. His “More Attention, Less Deficit” podcast has over one hundred episodes and is approaching one and a half million downloads. He is a psychologist in private practice in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

 

What was your first experience with ADHD

I fell into working with adults with ADHD when a psychiatrist asked me whether I wanted to help his patients with practical matters of daily life. He found the medication to be helpful with the basic symptoms, but these patients needed help with the skills of time management, organization, prioritization, procrastination, etc. At the time (1998), few clinicians specialized in ADHD in adults, so there was a great unmet need. My joke is that if you knew three things about adult ADHD, then you were the expert in town. Now you have to know four. So it is slowly getting better.

 

What was is one thing you want everyone to know about ADHD

ADHD can be very impairing before it is diagnosed and treated. But the good news is that there is a lot you can do to make someone’s life better once they know that it is ADHD that underlies a lot of their difficulties. ADHD tends to respond well to treatment and we know a lot about which strategies tend to be most effective for people with ADHD. So it can be a very optimistic diagnosis if you use that knowledge effectively and work hard at it.

 

What is your best tip for ADHD

Learn as much as you can about it, whether it’s you who has ADHD or your romantic partner, family member, etc. The more you know, the better off you will be. There is no need to re-invent the wheel when there is already so much that is already known. You obviously need to customize any strategies for your own situation, but there are a lot of good ideas already out there.

I sometimes hear that the romantic partner or family members of the person with ADHD are hesitant to invest the time to educate themselves about ADHD, saying that they already do enough so they shouldn’t have to put in the extra work. While I appreciate that they already feel overloaded, there is great power in understanding ADHD and how your partner operates. While it may not be their responsibility to ensure that the person with ADHD does what they need to, it is their responsibility to ensure their own happiness. If learning about ADHD helps you get your own needs met more effectively, then why wouldn’t you do it? Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own happiness.

 

What is your morning like

We wake up at 6:15, my son gets on the bus at 7:20 and my wife and I head out by 7:45. It sounds like a lot of time when I say it, but it goes pretty quickly, especially if we get behind schedule. At this point in the school year, I have a good sense of what needs to be accomplished by when in order for us to get out on time. I make breakfast and know that we have to start eating by 7:00, so that helps keep us on schedule. It’s easier to break the morning in half—before and after 7:00.

 

Anything else you want to share

There is a lot of good information out there about ADHD. I’m a big fan of getting good ideas wherever I can. So keep educating yourself. The best part is that the strategies that work best for people with ADHD tend to just be plain old good strategies that work well for most people.

 

For more information about Ari:

adultADHDbook.com

Podcast: More Attention, Less Deficit—listed in iTunes