Posts

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    Do Adults with ADHD Really Not Care About Others?

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Symptoms & Diagnosis, Blog

    Are adults with ADHD really selfish? You and your colleagues decide how to divide up a project and agree on the deadlines. As the first deadline is fast approaching you’re feeling the pressure. Yet, you still haven’t started on it. At the meeting to discuss the project you tell them you’re not going to be able to deliver on time. They’re clearly frustrated. You make plans with your friend to meet up for lunch. And it’s on your calendar. But you get so involved in a project at work you don’t stop on time. And you’re late getting to the restaurant, again. Your significant other starts telling you about what happened at work that day. She seems clearly distressed. But you interrupt her with a…

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    How to Take Charge of Your Sleep When You Have ADHD

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Treatment Options, Blog

    Do you struggle with getting enough sleep? If you do, it’s not surprising. As not getting enough sleep is a common challenge for ADHD adults. Maybe you have problems falling asleep, not being able to wake up in the morning or waking up too early. Alternatively, you may have some other related sleep issue. Getting sufficient sleep is obviously an important factor in being healthy and functioning well in your daily life. Because you know when you are sleep deprived you may become more easily stressed and frustrated. And this affects your relationships, as well as your ability to do your important work. In addition, lack of sleep exacerbates your ADHD symptoms. This means your ability to regulate your emotions, focus and attend is even…

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    Here Is How You Can Easily Use Meditation to Treat Your ADHD

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Treatment Options, Blog

      Not sure meditation can work for ADHD adults? As an ADHD adult, I know you may think you can’t pay attention. But the real challenge for you is that you pay attention to everything. And this surplus of attention makes it hard to be intentional about where you focus your attention. So, you may have a hard time getting your important work done, right? You may also have challenges regulating your emotions. If you do, you may easily become angry, excited or sad, and feel these emotions more intensely than non-ADHD adults. This emotional dysregulation can also lead you to be impulsive. If regulating your emotions is one of your challenges, you’d really like to do better. I know. These, and other challenges related…

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    Tired of Working so Hard to Fix Your ADHD?

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Tools & Strategies, Blog

    You are probably reading this article because, yes, you would like to fix your adult ADHD. While managing your ADHD is a lifelong journey, creating the changes to make this possible can be easier. Maybe you’d like to be more productive, have better relationships, improve your finances. What kind of changes are you trying to make right now? Whatever change you are trying to make, I bet you have tried many different strategies. I’m also guessing your efforts have been met with varying degrees of success. Yet, while you know creating change is difficult, you may still get exceedingly frustrated when it doesn’t come easily. And, because of this frustration, maybe you give up easily on a strategy before giving it enough of a chance….

  • Overwhelmed by too Many Choices? Here are the Solutions for ADHD Adults

    ByMarla Cummins Blog

      Adults with ADHD are often overwhelmed by decision-making. But having lots of options is a good thing, right? After all, it allows you to get exactly what you want. At least that is what our modern consumer culture leads us to believe. More is better, right? But what about when you account for the time, energy and stress involved in choosing between so many options? Is more still better? Many adults with ADHD struggle when attempting to choose among an overwhelming number of options. And you can clearly see this in the quote below of a current client (reprinted with permission). I’m really struggling to make any decisions in almost any scenario. Like, choosing between 2 things, choosing to get rid of something. I…

  • The 6 Steps ADHD Adults Use to Solve Just About Any Problem

    ByMarla Cummins Blog

      Problem-solving is hard for ADHD adults. Not exactly rainbows and unicorns. I know. And you may be tempted to stop reading this article right now. But, if you want to become better at handling adversity, I hope you’ll hang in there with me a bit longer. I thought of writing this article while reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. Ordinarily, I would bypass a book with this title. Because, well, it’s probably not serious enough and worthy of my time. But, as is often true when I judge a book by its cover and jump to conclusions, I was wrong. And, as I was reading Manson’s book, I thought of the myriad of ways problem-solving is hard for…

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    What You Need to Know About Diagnosing ADHD in Women

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Symptoms & Diagnosis, Blog

    ADHD diagnosis in women is complicated… It’s not uncommon for both men and women I work with to first receive their ADHD diagnosis as an adult. Sometimes they call me after a very recent diagnosis. And, as we talk about this late diagnosis, the conversation often touches on their feelings about having ADHD and finding out so late in life. They may experience both sadness and relief when they first find out. They feel relief because they can put their past into context — they have a better understanding of their challenges. But they may also feel grief that it took so long to find out. However, women are often more surprised at their diagnosis than men. Which Type of ADHD Do Women Have? Like…

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    Are You Ready to Change How You Think About Your ADHD?

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD Emotional Regulation, Blog

     What might be holding you back from achieving what you want right now is your frustration about your ADHD challenges. If it is, your thinking might be something along the lines of, “This isn’t fair! I shouldn’t have to deal with this!” So, maybe you neither accept what is or effectively work toward making a change. Rather, you stay stuck in this mindset, wanting things to be different than they are, but unable to move forward. The antidote to this predicament is accepting the mindset of Dr. Edward Hallowell’s adaptation of the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; The insight to prioritize wisely what I want to change; The patience to resist trying to control everything I…

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    Are You in the Right Job for an ADHD Adult?

    ByMarla Cummins ADHD in the Workplace, Blog

    We all want to be in a job we enjoy. And, if you are not dissatisfied with your current job, the following questions probably keep swirling about in your head: “Am I in the wrong career?” “Is this just the wrong job for me?” “Are there careers that are a good fit for adults with ADHD?” “Are there jobs that would work for me?” Then, if you googled “ADHD friendly jobs” or “best careers for adults with ADHD,” you found articles proclaiming: “There are dream jobs for people like you, who are creative and easily bored.” “Quit your job if you have one of these 10 worst jobs.” “Sales, entrepreneur, medical professional, teaching, etc. are the best jobs for adults with ADHD.” And so, after…

  • Discover the Secret Sauce ADHD Adults Use to Create Routines

    ByMarla Cummins Blog

      It feels great when you can easily start and follow through on a task or activity that is important to you, right? But contrast that with those times that it feels like you are wading through quicksand, due in part to the challenges that come with your ADHD symptoms. It can be frustrating, to say the least.  And I know you may be hard-pressed to come up solutions. While I write about many ways to make this journey easier for you, the one strategy that stands out in terms of helping to mitigate the challenges you may experience is creating habits. Borrowing liberally from Mini Habits by Stephen Guise and The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg I’ll explore below the ins and outs…