Healing ADHD: Radical Acceptance Meets Executive Function
February/March 2020 Enews
Welcome to March.
Somehow I missed the February newsletter altogether. I’ve been very busy – especially with worrying, researching, and watching the news about the Coronavirus, doing ANYTHING else “more important” or more interesting, and otherwise procrastinating. I’ve even started a few times but didn’t manage to get it done.
Unfortunately, “most of us with ADHD have to hijack the emotional part of the brain to get started. We use our emotions to help us to think, remember, plan, and act.” It’s amazing just how harmful this tactic can be. Self-acceptance is a universal problem, but those of us with ADHD struggle with it again and again. With every slip-up and failure to produce, we hammer the message home. “You are NOT enough!”
New treatments for ADHD are beginning to focus on the importance of accepting the reality of ADHD and celebrating the core of our “being” despite the problems we face. The challenges exist. Never the less, in order to heal, we have to learn to live with them with grace, WITHOUT tearing ourselves down with each new “failure.”
Loving yourself is a basic need of the human spirit, but we’re talking about ADHD and things get complicated because of the emotional aspect of the disorder. I explore this approach to Healing ADHD through a number of resources this month. They include:
- 5 Perfectly Awful Ways to Motivate the ADHD Brain
- Radical Acceptance Meets Executive Function
- ADHD Choices: Things I CAN do!
- Self-advocacy for ADHD: Know yourself
Read the newsletter online here. Healing ADHD: Love Who You Are
Until next month,
Take care of yourself in this uncertain time of contagion. Educate yourself and remain vigilant about hygiene and distancing to protect yourself and your loved ones. Don’t let fear and anxiety take over.
Joan Jager
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash