Dr. Hallowell

Tomorrow, Thursday March 23rd, I'll be on Collective[i] Forecast, a weekly series via Zoom that features innovators across the business, scientific, medical, government, and technology. (To give you a sense, past invited speakers include Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, Brian Greene, Turing award winners: Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, Bob Metcalf, and many other amazing folks).

Collective[i] is an AI company focused on researching and developing in intelligence that helps company's grow revenue. Collective[i] produces this series designed to help their community plan for the future and collectively learn from the world's greatest minds.

My session is tomorrow from 1:00pm ET-2:30pm ET. There is no charge to attend. To sign up, go to www.ciforecast.com. Feel free to submit a question for me!

Collective[i] Forecast Conversations with the global leaders and innovators whose work is redefining how we work and live.

New Year’s Family Football

Tailgating in the parking lot on New Year’s Day before the New England Patriots final home game of the season, with my wife Sue and two of my three kids.

I believe in the power of connection and love to catapult life out of the ordinary into the extraordinary, into the heady world of the meaningful, consequential, and ecstatic.

Love and connection come in dazzling variety. If you’ve prioritized love and connection in your life, you list a boatload more connections you cherish.

In my family’s boatload are the Patriots, ever since that fateful day—Jan. 21, 1993—when the team hired the great Bill Parcells to coach the team, which prompted me the second I heard the news to drive to the stadium to buy the season tickets which we have to this day, 30 years later.

Three decades of tailgating may not sound momentous, but for us those Patriot Sundays rocked our world. They provided us a place and time to eat, drink, laugh it up, and be super merry together. They regularly set a stage for us to throw a football around, to party and cavort with each other as well as with the thousands of other tailgaters in the huge parking lots. We got group consolation and opinionated finger-pointing when the team lost, and an hour's car ride home of whooping it up when they won.

May each of you have your equivalent of tailgating. Most loves and connections are free and infinite in supply, but, in their busy-ness, people often neglect them. To live life to the fullest, all we need do is make time to develop and cherish them all.

Happy New Year!

You can join my one-week course this summer either in-person or virtually! We'll be covering all aspects of a strength-based approach to ADHD, with modules particularly useful for those in the health and education fields.

From childhood through adulthood, ADHD presents not only problems, but also unique opportunities for change, growth, and success.

Join us and Dr. Hallowell in-person and live online from August 15th - 19th as we explore the entire world of ADHD in its human, clinical, and scientific dimensions to provide a solid, practical basis for understanding ADHD at all ages in all contexts.

Link here: https://www.cape.org/courses-1/unwrapping-the-gifts-a-strength-based-approach-to-adhd-across-the-life-span

Why Coaching?

When I was learning about ADHD from my patients, back in the 1980’s, I discovered that many of them did not necessarily need a traditional therapist, a professional trained to help someone sort out and resolve emotional conflicts while learning how to make wise decisions. No, what these patients needed more than that, children and adults alike, was someone to help them sort out the nuts and bolts of daily life and help them resolve the problems that arise from missing deadlines, forgetting appointments, leaving key materials at home or in the car, and failing to wear socks that match. What we now call “executive functions”.

People needed what I came to call a “coach,” someone to help keep them on track throughout the day, the week, the month, and the year. The coach would help the person set goals and work systematically toward them; develop systems to be on time and arrive prepared; learn methods of avoiding procrastination while also completing a project rather than abandoning it halfway through.

The more I learned about ADHD, the more I could see that people with this condition often knew what they ought to do and wanted to do; they just couldn’t do it. They needed help in organizing to be able to do what they knew needed to be done. If you understand ADHD, you know that while most of us who have the condition can create brilliant schemes and beautiful tableaux, we can’t always deliver them to the right place on the right day at the right time. We desperately want to take responsibility, we want to deliver the goods, but try as we might, we sometimes just can’t.

To do that, we might need a coach. All the lectures in the world on taking responsibility will not instill what we lack in an ability to enact our plans, sort our socks, and cross our t’s. A coach can help a person compensate for weaknesses in executive function, but the coach also serves as a moral support, a cheerleader, always there to bring in the sunshine on dark cloud days.

Executive function coaches do not usually charge high fees. They get trained at one of the coaching schools that have grown up since coaching for ADHD was introduced in Driven to Distraction in 1994. Since then coaching has ballooned into a huge industry, well beyond the needs of people who have ADHD, and even within ADHD coaching, there are many schools, academies, courses, and programs. As yet there is no state certification or licensing, which means you want to check out the background and training of whichever coach you consult.

If you or someone you care about has ADHD consider hiring a coach. It is a practical, cost-effective intervention that complements the other elements of whatever treatment plan you select.

You can also learn more at Ask Ned on Facebook Live next Thursday April 14 at 1pm est.

ADHD and Stress: the love-hate relationship

What is stress? Perhaps it is any task, person, physical condition, impending event, or chance occurrence that takes you out of your comfort zone and causes you to worry, brood, ruminate, lose focus on what you’re doing, and often induces physical changes like elevated blood pressure and heart rate, rapid and shallow breathing, fearful feelings and a sense of impending problems if not disaster.

Why would anyone like that? The definition I gave highlights the negative aspects of stress, what I call toxic stress. But there is such a thing as positive stress. For example, feeling anxious before you go on stage or take a test can actually improve your performance. If the anxiety gets too high, then it impairs your performance. But as long as it doesn’t get into the danger zone, some anxiety, some stress, promotes peak performance.

People with ADHD love stress, because we are adrenaline junkies. We often, consciously or not, seek out or create stressful situations in order to help us focus and super-engage with whatever we’re doing. The surgeon who has ADHD hyper-focuses while performing surgery. The rush of adrenaline he or she gets in the O.R. improves the quality of the surgery. When the operation is done, there’s a come-down which makes doing the post-op note, the paperwork, onerous and prone to be put off.

A trial attorney loves the crucible of the courtroom, the drama of playing to the jury, cross examining the witness, manipulating the judge, and trying to get under the skin of the opposing counsel. Stressful to be sure. If you measured the physical factors I mentioned in the attorney in action, they’d likely be slightly elevated, not too much, but just enough to take the attorney into “the zone”. The trader on the commodities exchange, watching five computer screens simultaneously, tracking three cell phones at once, while also texting and emailing, while also glancing every few moments at the Bloomberg ticker finds himself or herself in seventh heaven, in the midst of what many people would think of as holy hell.

Stress can be your ally or your enemy, depending on how you manage it. If you use it to get pumped up and deliver your best effort, then that’s great. But if you allow it to run away with you, and take you off into the world of hyper-stress, then not only will your performance deteriorate, but you’re putting your health at risk to boot.

Lots of people use medication to manage stress. While that’s ok, I’d not turn to meds first. Instead, use insight and anticipation. Know what’s coming so you’re not surprised when it hits. Practice preventative maintenance as well. You are not nearly as likely to let stress reach toxic levels if you exercise regularly, get enough sleep, eat well and don’t misuse substances; make sure your day has moment of positive human contact and connection.

So, learn strategies to turn stress into good stress, while also learning how to keep it from becoming toxic.

Here is the video recording of my first Ask Ned Facebook live with ADDitude. Thanks to all who joined - next one is Thursday March 17 at 1pm est. The topic will be Women and ADHD.

Ask Ned: Medications Dr Ned Hallowell Facebook Live recording on Medications

Loved doing my first Facebook Live with ADDitude! There were a few technical issues at the start which we'll have smoothed out next time! Thank you to all who attended, some great questions. Will share the video soon.

How Far We’ve Come

If you work on a project every day for 40 years, pouring your heart and soul into it, your time and treasure, every drop of hope and optimism you can call up in the face of rank ignorance, prejudice and wrong-headedness, you sometimes lose track of how far you’ve come. Squeezing out of yourself as many bright ideas and persuasive words as you can come up with while borrowing what else you need from others, biting your tongue when people take potshots at you, misrepresenting what you said or not bothering to represent it at all, you can feel worn out and forget the good that’s come of all the work.

When you’ve done all this for many decades in efforts to enlighten people and provide them with the good and liberating news about how people learn, you should take a moment to stop and look around. Like climbing a mountain, you don’t often look down to see how far you’ve come.

When I chatted with Bob Broudo, retiring head of the Landmark School in Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, I got a chance to do just that.

We’ve come a long way since 1971, when Bob started, and 1981, when I started. We’ve come even further if you go back to when we were kids. In those days there were basically two words to describe a child’s—or adult’s—brain: smart and stupid. For stupid, there was but one treatment, try harder. To motivate you to try harder you’d get humiliated, punished, or ultimately set aside if the trying harder didn’t produce the desired results.

How difficult it was to persuade people how much more there is to intelligence and creativity than smart and stupid. How hard it was for people to believe that some of the greatest contributors to human civilization, some of our greatest geniuses, were actually deemed stupid as children.

We talked about what has changed, and what still needs to change, before we can say we truly celebrate difference. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-broudo/id1588162121?i=1000551373249

‎Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different: ADHD and Beyond: Bob Broudo on Apple Podcasts ‎Show Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different: ADHD and Beyond, Ep Bob Broudo - Feb 17, 2022

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Of all the holidays, Valentine’s Day is the only one dedicated to life’s most special feeling, the feeling of love. Not only is love life’s most special feeling, but nothing comes close to love in the good it can do you and the rest of the world. In my opinion, every day ought to be like Valentine’s Day, a day when each of us tends to our loves with care and devotion.

A person relishes life - not just enjoys life, but cherishes it, savors it, and delves into its every second with gusto - in direct proportion to the number and depths of the loves in their lives.

These loves of course will include people, but also projects you pour your most creative energies into, places in your past or present the mere imagining of which bring tears of joy and perhaps loss to your eyes, pieces of art you’ve always cherished, a musical instrument or a favorite song, a lake you adopted early in life, a restaurant you pray never closes, a certain cuisine, wines, a nightclub, a memory from way back, a baseball team, a little league moment, a coach from years ago, a teacher, a dog, a grandparent or grandchild, a distinct vision of greatness, a certain pair of very old and comfortable shoes, a hairdresser you can’t imagine life without. . .you get the idea. You relish life in direct proportion to the number and depth of the loves you hold dear.

So what’s love got to do with it? Only everything. Remind yourself of this fact every day, as you get caught up in the maelstrom of modern, crazy-busy life. You know it’s true, that love matters most, but it’s easy to forget, as obligations, demands, and incessant interruptions pull us off track. So today, Valentine’s Day, may I suggest you resolve to make very day a Valentine’s Day, a day during which you relish, and thereby deepen, as many of your loves as you can.

Having a person through whose eyes you enjoy seeing the world, the part of the world that person chooses to show you, that’s a special person for you. And having a person who’s been able to do that reliably, consistently, with flair and spice for some 40 years, well, that’s Dan Shaughnessy for me. I’m so pleased and honored for him to appear on my podcast.

Growing up, I was an average athlete at best, but I was a whacked-out-crazy, pedal-to-the-metal, preoccupied, fervent, never-say-die, wait-til-next year fan of all the teams Boston boasted, which, in the 1950’s, the first decade of my life, included the Celtics, the Bruins, and the Red Sox. We didn’t have a football team back then, so, by default, I became a New York Football Giants fan, as that was the team that broadcast its games on TV into my little town at the elbow of Cape Cod.

I fell in love with watching, listening to, reading about, talking about, rooting for and in every other way imaginable (imagination being where sports fans live) involving myself in the lives of my teams. I lived through their victories and defeats every week. In the case of the Bruins and Red Sox it was mostly defeats. In the case of the Celtics it was an embarrassment of riches. In the 13 seasons between 1957 and 1969, the C’s, as they were and are called, won 11 world championships, including one stretch of an unthinkable (but, yes, imaginable!) 8 in a row.

My guides and teachers through all of these dramas, were the scribes, the writers who covered the teams. I grabbed all the local newspapers every day, and devoured each sports section (and only the sports section) as if it were my daily. The new writers like Dan transformed sports writing into writing period. He is a fine writer in his own right. I’d put his prose up against most of the novels I read these days. Not just for his style but for his bite. He doesn’t do boring. Shaughnessy possesses what may be a writer’s most valuable skill: he can get under a reader’s skin. He can inflame a reader, delight a reader, make a reader laugh, even educate a reader without the reader realizing he or she is learning something new. I’ve been reading him since the early 1980’s and I still look forward to his columns each time they appear. I hope you enjoy the episode.

‎Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different: ADHD and Beyond: The Wonderful World of Dan Shaughnessy on Apple Podcasts ‎Show Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different: ADHD and Beyond, Ep The Wonderful World of Dan Shaughnessy - Feb 3, 2022

If you think you, or someone you love has ADHD, get a diagnosis. Don't wait for problems to pile up. ADHD can be an asset, and it can also ruin your life - knowing, and understanding how to manage it makes all the difference. This is why I call ADHD the "good news diagnosis" because once you know, things can only get better.

If you cannot find an ADHD center or doctor in your area, go to the nearest medical school and inquire at the dept of psychiatry for an ADHD expert.

So easy to read even Max was gripped!

My latest book is now out in paperback. It’s around 100 pages, full of practical tips and science and less than $20.

I'm excited that our latest book is now out in paperback! It's short, only around a 100 pages, perfect for the ADHD brain!

It covers the latest science and strategies to help you or someone you care about thrive in life with ADHD.

As a child, Christmas was always my favorite holiday, the most special of days, as it was for most kids who celebrated Christmas. As an adult, I still love it, as does my wife and our three grown children. Even though they are full-fledged adults, they’ve retained their childlike enthusiasm for the holiday, as have my wife and I. Long may that enthusiasm endure, I say to myself, as we get ready to celebrate Christmas together as a family once again.

The five of us will be together Christmas morning around the tree along with our young steed of a rescue dog, Max, weighing 90 pounds of muscle and love, as well as our two rescue cats, Tango and Whiskey, who only speak to us on special occasions as they scurry around the house, hiding under beds and in closets, dispensing mystery and their unique feline charm.

Still as impatient as we were as kids to get to the gifts, we’ll start with mugs of coffee and the flurry of the opening of presents. After we’ve filled several huge trash bags with wrapping paper and broken-down boxes, and each of us has stacked our gifts in our own private pile, we’ll feel the special elation and unique wind-down of another crop of presents fully harvested and stored.

Then we’re off to the dining room for the first feast of the day, a dish my wife, Sue, has made every year since we got married 33 years ago, biscuits with sausage gravy, a bequest from her childhood in Virginia.

Later we watch football games and begin cooking the Big Meal, the family dinner we’ll gather together to eat. Each of us volunteers to take care of one dish, while Sue oversees the organized chaos. The drippings from the roast beef pan provide the key ingredient to my dish of Yorkshire pudding which I love quite ardently.

All this is by way of wishing that each of you be filled with glad tidings and great joy this season. If the devil is in the details, it is most surely true that the angels reside there as well. The details of our lives tell the truest story of our lives. Whatever your details may be, I hope you will take time first to notice them, then to let them soak into your imagination where you can cherish them, honor them, relish them, and preserve them. Drink your mulled cider with great appreciation for cinnamon and cloves and spices everywhere. Sit on your holiday porch and watch the dogs trot by, or walk your holiday beach with an ear for the clang of the distant buoy. Eat your holiday goose or your figgy pudding or your Cajun jambalaya with the satisfaction each can bring like nothing else can right then and there.

While you are then and there, enjoy your here and now to the max, that’s my wish for you and for me and for all of us as we gather together under the skies for as many more moons as we’re allowed. Let your mind be struck with awe, your imagination fill with the sweetest of treats, and your love of life, both in its pain and its joy, bring you the peace that passes all understanding.

The Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in Philadelphia changed this week. One of its brightest lights went out with the passing of Dr. Aaron T Beck. The moment of his death must have made even the mice go silent and the dogs mourn. The world loved Dr. Beck.

Why was this bow-tied, self-effacing, elf-eyed pioneer so loved? Because he cared enough about human suffering to suffer himself in order to relieve it. He took on the orthodoxies of Freudian psychoanalysis decades ago when not kowtowing to the king could get you banished. With all the daring of an innocent, he proclaimed the king had no clothes and then went to town to prove it.

In an epochal triumph of common sense over unquestioned beliefs, Beck proved that if you changed how you think you can change how you feel. He said you didn’t need to get at the “root cause,” you didn’t need to rehash how your mother treated you or explore unconscious sexual fantasies about her, but instead you needed to submit your irrational negative assumptions about yourself to a conscious review.

If you believed you were a loser, Beck urged you to drill down and examine the evidence behind that belief. Did the evidence support that view, or did it rather support a more positive view of yourself? Search for the root cause if you like, but in the meantime change your thoughts so that they jibe with reality. Next thing you know, you’re feeling better.

At first the high priests of orthodoxy scoffed, calling Beck’s treatment superficial, a band-aid on the oozing wound of human misery, an avoidance of the hard work that had to be done to get at the root cause and exorcise it. They dismissed Beck and his theory as pop psychology worth no more than a comic book.

Little did they know that Dr. Beck’s good sense would help many millions more people than psychoanalysis ever did. Never one to gloat, however, Beck kept working hard right up to the moment of his passing.

Beck’s method, which was called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, became the most studied of all non-medication treatments in mental health. The studies showed that it works, often better than medication, with benefits that last indefinitely. Changing how you think is a skill anyone can learn that can transform your life from one of chronic suffering and self-attack to one of good cheer and self-acceptance, even self-love.

Brave Dr. Beck, called Tim by his friends, sallied out into the arena to take on the Goliath called psychoanalysis armed only with his slingshot and a pebble called reason. Reason won. And the world got better, much better, than it had been before.

Thank Dr Beck. We are all in your debt, even the mice and the dogs agree.

Dr. Aaron T. Beck | Beck Institute Dr. Aaron T. Beck is recognized as the originator of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and is one of the world’s leading researchers of psychopathology.