Surprising Myths & Misdiagnoses Debunked: The Truth about Adult ADHD

that the primary problem isn't being addressed and that's a big deal because you could be struggling with some symptoms for 10 20 years getting really upset about it feeling overwhelmed feeling inefficacious only to learn a decade later that you've been treating the wrong problem and i've personally worked with patients like this and once they actually find out the truth they're just i mean it's so emotional for them you know they're just like i can't believe i wasted 10 years thinking that i had this other thing and now we can finally get to the problem but how much time have i lost and obviously you can always get better but i understand that feeling of overwhelm and what have i been doing these last few years chasing basically the wrong tale yes i actually had a dear dear friend of mine watch your series on med circle on adult adhd and in fact she said uh when she started watching med circle she's now back in college studying psychology because she got so inspired from watching all the videos on bed circle but anyway she watched your uh series on adult adhd she went to her provider they did diagnose her with adhd they treated it and when she told me how she felt afterwards tears in her eyes she goes i didn't realize i had been suffering my entire adult life unnecessarily and so this type of insight is absolutely life-changing and let's dive into some of the questions we are getting on adult and uh general adhd um uh i'm not going to use a names here just for privacy's sake but uh sm says which techniques are most suitable for treating people who have adhd and are those techniques different between children and adults great question um actually a lot of the techniques are based on the same principles and these are behavioral or cognitive behavioral principles but in children adhd looks different than adults many times so for example in adults most of the time adults are not as hyperactive anymore so even if you have that combined type of adhd where there's some hyperactivity and impulsivity that generally calms down a bit in that the adult can regulate that piece a little bit better when they grow up but they continue to struggle with memory and concentration issues they may have trouble staying organized and meeting commitments at work and at home sometimes they make their family members and close friends mad because they think that they just don't care and they're not listening but sometimes with attention deficit in adults they have a difficulty attending to a conversation and following the conversation sometimes they even have difficulty following reading a book or watching a tv program and so sometimes the issues are a bit more subtle but they still have a huge impact on how the individual functions so a lot of the techniques that we work on are actually how we can find accommodations to make them function better in their everyday life and so it's about teaching them systems of organizing teaching them how to prioritize teaching them how to kind of set aside space so that when you can really stay mindful and listen and so in many ways we're teaching them how to function better in adult responsibilities but still using those behavioral strategies and the science is very very strong on that for both adults and children when people think of adhd i think they immediately think well i need to get put on adderall or ritalin is that truly the first line of treatment i don't believe that stimulant medication should be the first line of treatment for most people i think everybody should try to use behavioral strategies especially because the ritalin and any kind of stimulant or non-stimulant medication in many ways i kind of liken it to tylenol you know it suppresses the symptoms but it doesn't fix the problem so if you think head pain because you haven't been stretching and you're stressed the tylenol only just masks the symptoms but doesn't teach you the skills to actually de-stress yourself and work on those muscles it's the same exact thing with adhd so you need to learn the skill sets to actually function better in life and also for some people stimulant medications are just not good for them because there are a number of side effects and some individuals really shouldn't be using stimulants um carelessly especially if they have some kind of substance use history in their family um so i always say behavioral strategy should be a necessary part of your treatment whether or not you're on medications too excellent let's go to our next question sk asks how do you clearly differentiate between adhd odd or obs oppositional defiant disorder and dmdd which is a disruptive mood dysregulation disorder there you go i got my med circle education dr judy okay so this is uh talking about diagnoses in children because odd and disruptive disorders are all uh disorders that you would diagnose before the age of 18. and this particular viewer is absolutely right that it can be very difficult and why is it difficult will children go through so many developmental phases and for the parents who are out there or maybe just recollecting on your own childhood you know that you had that time where you were just an abstinent kid and it's developmental there was nothing wrong with you it's not a clinical diagnosis you grow out of it you know so i think it can be very very difficult and that's why you need an experienced clinician to really observe your child know about your child work directly with your child interview people who know the child like teachers and parents and other people who work with the kid to be able to arrive at the correct diagnosis and i would be wary of anybody who thinks that they can diagnose your child in one session i think i'm a neuropsychologist so i have this huge comprehensive protocol where it's basically 30 to 40 hours of time that i spend diagnosing the child properly but even if you don't have access to a neuropsychologist and you're just working with a therapist a therapist should take their time they should see the child several times before they say here's a diagnosis that we're looking at and i think that because there's also a lot of co-morbidity meaning that adhd co-occurs with some of those other conditions like the disruptive mood and also the odd um sometimes a person could have both diagnoses and so it's really important that the clinician goes through the diagnostic criteria in the dsm and makes sure that the person is actually meeting that criteria um specifically and that that is the best explanation for that particular symptom because sometimes they could look really irritable and it could actually be depression or anxiety it takes time and attention for the clinician and everybody in the child's life to kind of band together and really put their heads together before you can arrive at those diagnoses but i definitely don't take that lightly at all thank you to all of our free members who are watching right here on zoom and shout out to our amazing youtube community who are who is watching this live for the people at youtube if you'd like to participate in this discussion you'll need to go register at medcircle.com and if you would like access to all of our live events that we put on each month some of these are closed only to our all access members and all access members are also guaranteed spots in all of our events you can go to medcircle.com click sign up and make sure you use the code judy25 it's going to be good for another 45 minutes judy25 to get 25 off your first month that's after you get seven days for free let's go to our next question uh jay asks is anxiety often misdiagnosed as adhd absolutely and that's because anxiety can cause difficulties in concentration it can cause difficulties and learning and memory and so can depression and so a lot of times i will see people coming to me saying i think i have adhd and then we really dig deeper and actually they have chronic anxiety and the chronic anxiety is driving the inattention process and that's why it's so important to really go to your clinicians and be completely open about your history i think sometimes people read stuff and they see webmd and they kind of check off the symptoms that they see on webmd like i have all these things they go to their clinician they say i have all these things please treat me for adhd it's so much more important that you give them the entire backstory because there could be so many other reasons that could be driving the attentional issues anxiety and depression are at the top of the list but there's also other issues like if you suffered a traumatic brain injury then maybe you have some attention deficit but it's not adhd it's actually a mild neurocognitive problem due to the effects of a traumatic brain injury if you drink a little too much alcohol that has also been shown to affect your attention and your concentration and if you're drinking more than the recommended amount per day i have actually seen people say that their attention and their learning has been disturbed and then when they curb the drinking and they dial it back their attention gets better and so there's a lot of reasons for why we should be thinking about other explanations for attention problems i would like to know how many people watching if you feel so comfortable is a parent to a child who has either been diagnosed with adhd or you believe may uh be living with adhd because um uh we'll go we'll get to a question but let me know in the chat how many parents are here because there's an important thing i want you guys to know and we'll talk about that after this next question uh in asks uh could you give an example of a behavioral technique for concentration uh for concentration problems especially how to sustain attention for longer periods of time like 25 minutes dr judy oh i love this um kyle and i have talked about this hack uh several times and i think that you can utilize it as a type of a training tool so i use a combination strategy that combines the effectiveness of pomodoros and also mindfulness so this is how it works so pomodoros are actually 25 minutes so it's kind of interesting that this viewer asks you know how can we extend it among uh beyond 25 minutes and i'll explain that in a second but pomodoros are 25 minutes of time where you only focus on one task and nothing else and the reason why the 25 minutes was chosen for this technique is because almost everybody even when you're procrastinating hate doing something you can do something for 25 minutes like that feels like a finite amount of time it's like the amount of time of a sitcom episode okay i can do this you know and so you you make sure that you have a pad of paper handy next to you you decide on what tasks you want to do you set a timer and you start that timer and do that task only of course your mind's going to wander that's what happens when you have inattention and as your mind wanders just very quickly jot down whatever thought that was go right back to the task when a timer goes off you can look at that pad of paper and some of it will just be random meanderings that don't need follow up on but sometimes there actually might be an important thought and they're like oops i have to go pick up eggs or whatever and so this is good because then sometimes people say well i can't focus on one task because what if i forget other things well now you have this pad of paper where you can review everything and prioritize but the great thing about this system is that as you start to familiarize yourself with it you can start stretching your attention so the next day maybe you set a timer for 28 minutes the next day you set your timer for 33 minutes and you work your way up now for most people 50 minutes to 70 minutes is like the ideal time to focus on something before you need a little break so don't feel bad if like you get up to 50 and you're like okay that's it that's great even people who don't have attention problems need a break after about 50 minutes or so that's kind of the optimal level of attention that most human beings can sustain without getting too distracted or tired uh excellent i i love that uh bridget will you include a link to the pomodoro series um it's great if you want to learn more about that it's with dr judy let's go to our next question uh kaye asks hi i have adhd and borderline personality disorder is it common to have both well okay thank you so much for being honest about what you're dealing with and i would say that yes adhd and borderline are quite common but also sometimes people are misdiagnosed too you know sometimes they have adhd they get misdiagnosed borderline and vice versa um i think that sometimes people think about the impulsivity that can happen when you have borderline personality as a component of your adhd but it could just be a component of the borderline so yes we do see that there is some overlap um it's not hugely common although it is common enough that people have talked about how to manage both of those things together and a lot of it is really about emotion regulation because both borderline personality disorder and adhd requires more attention on the part of the individual to manage their emotions better and so learning emotion regulation strategy particularly from the dialectical behavior therapy literature is amazing it's really just about being able to self-assess how you're feeling and then being able to apply strategies in the moment that can help you have better relationships and meet your goals and so i definitely recommend that for anybody who's listening and might be struggling with both or know somebody who is struggling with both of those conditions dr judy at the top of this event you mentioned how many people actually will outgrow their adhd as they get older and i want the parents to really listen to this because a lot of parents feel um devastated frustrated stuck when they learn that their child has adhd but what do the actual numbers tell us yes i think that's at some point some myth got propagated and spread around that adhd is a childhood condition and that as you become an adult you're not going to have adhd anymore and i'm so glad that you asked us to revisit this question because actually the research shows that 50 of people who have childhood adhd go on to continue to have adhd symptoms in their teenage years as well as their adult years the difference though is that as adults and you might find this if you know somebody with adhd or maybe you are that person that when you are older you have a little bit more control over your environment and what you choose as your career and so sometimes people will find ways to basically disguise their adhd a little bit you know for example if you decide to be an entrepreneur well you're not going to get fired by somebody else for not finishing a project but unfortunately you have to manage yourself and so sometimes you fall behind because you don't have a good handle on prioritizing tasks another interesting myth of adults with adhd is that people think oh it's just going to look like childhood adhd and they can't focus on anything in adults it's actually interesting because they can focus in a lot on a specific topic that they find interesting we call this hyper focusing and actually that is a form of adult adhd symptom because basically they're not prioritizing correctly you might be going down a uh you like a youtube or google train for four hours on a topic instead of doing something else that you were supposed to be doing um but also that sort of hyper focusing is a way for the individual to self-soothe sometimes and so in some ways it can be seen as procrastination like there's other things that you need to do and instead you're just kind of going down this gravy train on a topic that might not have a lot of relevance and so adults can absolutely focus when you have adhd but sometimes it might be for the wrong reasons or in the wrong directions excellent if you're here as a supporter for somebody with adhd especially if that person's an adult make sure that or just so you know med circle does offer the ability for you to gift memberships you can gift one month six months 12 months up to you but when you do make sure you use code judy 25 to get 25 percent off your first month you can go to medcircle.com click sign up and use judy25 that code will be good for about another 43 47 minutes dr judy we've got some questions go through here so enough of me talking let's get to it sp asks can hypnotherapy or eft help with adhd great question so let's start with uh hypnotherapy first um there's some evidence about hypnotherapy and adhd i think that the evidence is still kind of early so we're not exactly sure if hypnotherapy truly helps with adhd or if it's maybe like a supplemental uh therapy that can help with the child that's also being treated with something else or an adult is being treated with something else so i think the evidence is um sort of open hand open-ended right now and we'll wait for more of that evidence but i would say that for most people hypnotherapy is not going to cause adverse reaction so it's always worth a shot because what really matters for everybody here if you have adhd or if you have somebody who you love who has adhd is that the only thing that matters is the end of one so like we listen to the research we talk to our friends and we do the best that we can to make evidence-based decisions but at the end of the day you're going to have to experiment to find out exactly what's going to work for you and i have found people who say hypnotherapy has helped me with anxiety hypnotherapy has helped me with depression hypnotherapy has helped me establish a good habit and kick a bad one um it's not that robust yet for adhd symptoms but it's worth a shot if you'd like to try um with eft i'm assuming that you're talking about eft tapping eft emotional freedom technique is an alternative treatment for physical pain and emotional distress and it's sometimes also referred to just simply as tapping or psychological acupressure so people who use this technique believe that tapping the body can create a balance in your energy system and treat pain i would say that this particular technique has very little research behind it um but again sometimes people say you know i tried it and it worked for me so whether that's a placebo effect or rather that's something that um we just need to find out more about and actually does work very well similar to the hypnotherapy we're gonna have to take a little bit more time before we can recommend it as an evidence-based treatment we do have a few series with a certified hypnotherapist grace smith in the med circle video library so make sure you be on the lookout for that dj asks what if you live in a small town and can't get the help you need great question so good and luckily right now during the pandemic so many people have moved their treatments to online services and some people find that this has been great for them some people really miss that in-person interaction but one of the good things about online therapy is that now you can access care anywhere even if you're in a rural area or even if you don't like the providers right in your geographical region you can actually access anybody in your state because most licensures are statewide so i've been able for example to work with some individuals who live in northern california even though i live in southern california and i think that i would just feel encouraged by the fact that now you can access care a little bit easier because so many people have moved their practices online at least partially um there's also a number of different types of online based group therapies now again you know kind of dialing into a platform like zoom where you can actually learn from other individuals who might be suffering um from the same condition that you are and it's always led by a treating therapist and so i would definitely recommend that you look into these options if it's hard for you to access care in your specific geographic region excellent um as i've mentioned at the top of this broadcast med circle is not a treatment platform and we do not refer treatment so i'm still going to ask this question but dr judy i'll let you handle the answer of course h asks dr judy what is the best choice of an antidepressant for adhd patients on concerta okay so it's a great question and i want to also start with that caveat that i'm not a psychiatrist and so it would be hard for me to know exactly what would be a good treatment for you without knowing your history and also i think you definitely need to consult with a psychiatrist i think one thing i would say for sure is that if you're getting your medications through your primary uh primary doctors you know no knock on them but you really do need to work with a psychiatrist who is specialized in mental health conditions especially when we're talking about managing depression at the same time as adhd it's not really that clear-cut so that is advice number one concerta is a stimulant medication and so in general most psychiatrists that i work with and based on my experiences with patients you do not want to put them on an anti-person that is also too stimulating so one example of this would be wellbutrin well butane has a very stimulating effect has an agitating effect for some people and if you have bipolar conditions in your family sometimes it provokes like a mini manic type of a reaction in some individuals and so i would definitely consult again this is why it's important to consult with a psychiatrist because you don't want to be put on an antidepressant that is too much of a stimulating property um and so wellbutrin would be one example of that some individuals when they take concerta um they actually find that that in itself is already starting to help with some of the depressive symptoms because obviously conservatives are stimulant and so people sometimes already have a bit of a mood uh a mood boost from that and so if you feel like you're still not getting enough and you're not somebody who really wants to take a lot of medication this is where i would say explore cognitive behavioral therapy because that is a evidence-based gold standard treatment a behavioral treatment that's non-medicinal that helps with depression but when somebody um adds an antidepressant to concerta again like i said you know utilize caution that it's not something that is super stimulating also on top of concerto which is already a stimulant excellent an anonymous attendee says hi dr judy our adhd and ocd as well as skin picking i never can pronounce this word uh trichothelia mania somehow interconnected too thanks yeah great question so sometimes obsessive compulsive symptoms can manifest through adhd so it's interesting because we do see that there is a little bit of a relationship and when you ask about the skin picking that is seen as a compulsive disorder or compulsive condition as well so that kind of goes along with the spectrum of ocd um in adult patients with ocd who are also thought to have comorbid adhd the symptoms of inattention and forgetfulness and impaired executive function might actually be a phenomenon related to the ocd rather than a manifestation of the adhd so it's kind of interesting that some of the things that we think might be adhd symptoms actually are more of the ocd symptoms and here's why ocd patients tend to have a flooding of their executive function system so when you look at their executive functions which is basically in the frontal lobe they have just a ton of activity it's like over activity in that area that causes the flooding of the resources in your cognitive functions and that can interfere with attention memory and other processes so think about when you get really overwhelmed or it's very late in the night and you've had a very very busy day managing and solving many problems you become inundated and you're exhausted and then you can't focus on anything so that's sort of the idea when you have ocd that you're constantly hitting yourself with way too much stimuli in your executive function you're constantly thinking there's so much rumination going on that it's hard for you to actually focus on anything else and so there's actually a growing body of evidence that at least in some cases the inattention that we see that we think might be part of adhd is actually more part of the compulsiveness and so then if you treat the ocd or any kind of compulsive behaviors the adhd symptoms will also get better thank you dr judy a.s asks hi dr judy my grandson was just diagnosed with adhd at age eight can his adhd change to another mental illness over time or even go away so adhd can go away definitely it can get better for fifty percent of individuals as they grow older but then for the other fifty percent of individuals it doesn't um adhd itself doesn't morph into another disorder unless they were misdiagnosed in the first place so he's eight years old um as i mentioned sometimes it's developmental so we'll kind of have to watch what else is going on but i do find that individuals who don't treat their adhd end up developing comorbid conditions as a result of the suffering from the adhd so for example yeah a kid has adhd they're not doing well in school they start to not believe in themselves they start to feel bad about themselves and they start to have depression and anxiety right and so that's why it's really important when somebody has an early diagnosis which is so good because hopefully that means that you are ahead of the game to address the adhd so that their self-confidence can still be great their relationships can be great um because that's the other thing about individuals with adhd is that sometimes they have more difficulty making new friends and having people like them because sometimes they butt into conversations or they're not listening and so people don't want to hang out with them and so i think the most important thing to set up this child correctly is to make sure that they're getting treatment for their adhd because that way hopefully we can reduce the risk of other comorbid conditions from happening and then also when individuals do get treated with adhd sometimes they do get better and so it's possible that for this child they could be in that population excellent a quick reminder to all of you watching on youtube thanks for being here if you would like to participate with our med circle doctors and with dr judy and future med circle live events make sure you go to medcircle.com and sign up to be a member you can get on our free email list at no charge and get notified of our free events like this one or if you want guaranteed access to all of our events and entrance into our all access only events then you can go ahead and click on sign up when you visit medcircle.com and make sure you use judy 25 for the next 30 minutes to get 25 off your first month uh deep d asks are there any risks to taking vegan no tropic supplements to help with brain fog well you know i know a lot of people really swear by nootropic supplements and um sometimes they'll say that it's worked out really well well for them the problem with the neurotrophic supplements is that they're not regulated by the fda so you actually don't sometimes know exactly what's in them um and maybe every single pill could be a little different and so i always have a hesitation to recommend it for anybody and i think one of the things that people have been utilizing it for as you mentioned is sort of these brain boosting um effects but we don't have a lot of evidence that that's what it's really doing because again when something is not fda approved it doesn't have the kind of rigorous research that we see with other types of things like ritalin and other types of actual psychotropic medications and so this is something that you'll have to talk about with your doctor i think it's very important to always consult your doctor with this because if you're on any other kinds of medications there could be some interactions and they can inform you better but i would just say that i always am cautionary towards any kind of supplements only because they're not fda regulated and you don't exactly know what's inside all of these types of pills an anonymous attendee asks hi dr judy i believe i've always had a small degree of adhd but i was highly functional throughout my career after divorcing a malignant narcissist in a very traumatic divorce it seems my adhd has gone through the roof and i am barely able to keep through or get through a day can you recommend any brain exercises or something else that could help thank you absolutely and uh sorry to hear about the difficulties that you've had in trying to get over this particular relationship that seems you know really really difficult so i think that sometimes people have an easier time compartmentalizing and as we've already mentioned you know a lot of your cognitive resources are spent organizing your day and making sure that you're staying on track when you have some level of adhd once you've gone through a major stressor though and you're dealing with the fallout of that um it's going to tax your cognitive resources further so it makes sense that your adhd might feel like it's worse right now because you've just had to manage other stuff on top of your career right especially when it has to do with the emotional dysregulation of another person like if this person has narcissistic qualities that can be a lot to manage and so i think you know in terms of brain training programs what we do find is that there are a few evidence-based programs that can be helpful for people to work on their attention and some of them you've probably heard of things like lumosity and peak.net which has also an app as well as a computer platform there's also a working memory training that is put out by pearson um it's something that you'd have to sign up for um and then a psychologist will kind of work through it with you but you can do the training program from home and um it's called cog med cog so you can look that up it's a five-week training program that you can do from home but i also think that it's really helpful just to keep your brain sharp by doing other types of brain training programs that can just be taken out of a book you know when you get like workbooks on amazon on how to improve your attention really it's all about using it the best of your abilities so just make sure that you keep practicing things for your attention um and whether it's a book or an app it doesn't have to be technology but um anything that basically continues to train and hone your attention will be very very helpful as well as making some accommodations in your environment so right now i would say if there is a way to delegate certain things delegate them um if you need to sort of separate yourself more and have better boundaries so like there's work time versus relaxation time just make sure that you're tightening up any structures that have worked in your life before this sm or cm rather asks is there a link between adhd and ptsd there is a link between adhd and ptsd for many individuals and i actually just worked with a patient yesterday and talked to them about this and so the sad thing about trauma is that it does affect all of your systems particularly if you've been exposed to this trauma at an early age we've actually seen research that actually changes the way that your brain works it changes the way that you're learning and memory processes develop and so a lot of individuals will struggle with attention issues because of this unresolved trauma um but also i think that trauma has a lot of severe symptoms that can occur especially when you're in the middle of dealing with those symptoms it can be really hard to focus and concentrate so actually one of the symptoms of ptsd could be attention issues so first of all we have to find out if that attention issue is more related to the trauma or if it's a separate condition that can be labeled as adhd but functionally if you're having attentional issues then everything that we've talked about applies doing brain training learning accommodations for your environment learning ways to train your attention up a little bit better practicing mindfulness mindfulness is actually one of the best interventions for attention problems most of the times when we find that we're having inattention difficulties if you just start utilizing mindfulness it actually helps a lot so that's a great technique if you have ptsd or adhd or both what are the most common mental health conditions which occur along adhd and do learning disorders have comorbidity comorbidity with adhd absolutely so adhd and uh learning disorders have a high level of comorbidity and so there's actually been a few studies about this and what we find is that adhd and learning disorders are comorbid at about a 45 rate makes sense because you know i think with individuals who have adhd from a very young age they probably missed out on some of the learning processes they probably didn't catch up the same way as some of their peers and so you know i think as we're thinking about the different types of learning issues the most common one that individuals have is reading disability or sometimes what we call is dyslexia so adhd and dyslexia have a high rate of comorbidity but also there's comorbidity with auditory processing issues which is not a technical learning disability but it's obviously a learning condition um also there's math disorder and writing uh disorders and so um adhd itself is not necessarily considered a learning disability at all but you can get a lot of the same accommodations in the school system if you have adhd so for example whether you're an adult or a child you can get accommodations for various types of things if you have adhd including like if you're taking an entrance exam like the gres or you know the bar exam you can actually get accommodations as an adult if you're diagnosed with adhd the same way that you would if you have a documented learning disability if you're enjoying these types of discussions we have plenty more for you and med circle last month released its very first app it's just called the med circle app you can go to itunes or your google play store and download it for free when you download it and create an account you will get access to uh some free sessions to check check out and of course for all of you who are all access members go ahead and sign in with your login credentials to watch on the go i've been using the app a lot i actually listened dr judy to your series on a about two weeks ago using the app it was great uh so uh the links are in the chat to this or just search med circle in the app store uh anonymous attendee ask dr judy hi dr judy why is it rarely ever talked about the type without hyperactivity so why is adhd not talked about in terms of the hyperactivity piece or maybe why is um add never talked about oh atd is no longer a diagnosis so i think sometimes people say add because in the previous versions of the dsm um add was the diagnosis but then they realized that there was a subset of individuals about 30 to 40 percent of people who also have a hyperactive or impulsive condition and so they now call the entire condition adhd but there are two subtypes so they're still being able to address that so there's adhd inattentive subtypes so that would pretty much be like what add was in the past so you have inattention problems mostly but you don't have the hyperactivity or impulsiveness piece um adhd uh impulsive hyperactive type would be that you have that but not so much the inattention it's a very very small number of people who have that maybe like 10 and then there's about another group of people that have both so we call that the combined subtype where you have both the inattention problems and the hyperactive and impulsive problems but you have to meet criteria separately for each of those and so there's six symptoms on the inattentive side and six symptoms on the hyperactive and impulsive side interestingly as an adult even if you were diagnosed with a combined type as a child most of the times they start to become more like the inattentive type and that's because as adults you even if you don't love it you can pretty much stay in your seat and even if it's hard for you you can like hold yourself back from blurting something out you know so you just get better with self-regulation so i think that that's the part that gets better for a lot of people as they grow older if you still have the adhd condition as an adult o.l asks this is my case i was diagnosed three months ago 37 years old today happy birthday o l with treatment i am learning how to live a new life recently divorced and living by myself as a struggle any resources that can help me with this specifically i do not know how to live by myself after medication hmm well i probably need a little bit more information about that in terms of living by yourself without medication but i think sometimes medication can um provide us with so much relief um when when you're going through a more severe time with that symptom right it's like okay at least this thing is working right now and it takes less of my own individual effort when it's harder for me to do that um and so that's why sometimes with the more severe adhd conditions it is helpful to have medication and the behavioral strategy at the same time because the medication helps you calm down enough and focus enough to learn the strategies and use them in the first place but without medication i think that sometimes people have you know just an adjustment period where it's like oh like that band-aid got ripped away and now i have to sort of rely mostly on my behavioral strategies and that can be hard if you're living by yourself it's also hard because it might be harder to structure your day um without other people's activities around you and without things that you're sort of like gearing yourself towards during the day and so it does help that you are still tapped into some kind of community so even if you're not living with anyone um being able to have accountability buddies i think this is so important for individuals with adhd particularly for adults you know having people who check in you guys can sort of talk about your structure for the day i also find that when you live by yourself it's especially important to have structure every single day even on weekends i know that people think weekends are for relaxing but even that even for relaxing you have to have some structure it can look different from your monday through fridays but you still kind of want to get up around the same time every day you don't want to sleep in for four or five more hours so that actually does impact your attention in your learning abilities we can over sleep and then actually become more foggy in our brain and fatigued so that's one piece of it and then the other piece is to really start small with the behavior strategies if you're living by yourself and just going through this transition period so you don't have to adopt every single thing at once but just start out by structuring your day so that the mornings are for a certain thing and the afternoons are for a certain thing and the evenings are for a certain thing something even that simplistic can be really really helpful and finally i want to underscore the importance of quality sleep so it's actually less important that you get the eight or nine hours but more important that the sleep is quality and less disturbed and so having like a nighttime routine uh shifting down from blue colors and you know even changing like the tone on your devices or using blue blocking glasses um taking the last hour before you go to sleep to unwind instead of read stuff that might amp you up so no coping articles the hour before you go to sleep that's right yeah and you know just making your bedroom a place of relaxation your bed should only be for sleep and sex so don't resist the temptation to like bring other things into the bed like your computer and like other types of things that shouldn't be there like a pizza you know just make sure that that's for sleep and sex only yeah i'm guilty for all those things okay uh jk asks why prescribe a stimulant for adhd isn't that counterproductive uh no actually it's so interesting so what we find is that you know for individuals who have adhd they actually have less activity in certain parts of their brain than we would think and so basically the stimulant property and why it works is that it basically focuses that individual um to have more uh brain activity that's actually focused in nature it's a little bit weird because you kind of think about well why why would um the stimulants help but what we find is that individuals they did she actually have less activity going on in their executive functions so the stimulants actually helps to increase that temporarily uh great question jk i've always wanted that myself uh sm asks can adhd be hereditary yes adhd does run in families and there is a strong familial link and so um and that doesn't mean that if you have adhd your children will definitely have adhd it just means that there might be a relationship your child might be a little bit at higher risk compared to the average person um for having some level of adhd although it might even be subclinical it might not actually get diagnosed so adhd does run in families and we believe that there's probably some genetic component but obviously we don't know enough right now to say that there's like a specific gene we have found that there's a couple of gene variants that seem to be linked in families and so i think the research is definitely ongoing but we certainly find that there's a familial risk factor and they've been doing some more you know twin studies in this area to look at the genetics of it and whether or not it can be hereditary but it is not a one-to-one ratio just because you have it doesn't mean that your offspring will have it it just means that the risk will be heightened to some degree i think i know the answer to this one pms can mindfulness help you with concentration issues yes mindfulness is the best right i mean i think i i you know i mindfulness is so difficult mindfulness is difficult for all of us especially when we feel like there's a lot going on it's easy for our brains to go into the future or in the past and so mindfulness what is most helpful is really just doing it in small little doses when you notice that your mind is wandering and you're having difficulties with attention and i think that people think mindfulness has to be like you meditating and like a mantra and it's not like that at all mindfulness is so fun you can do it while making coffee you can do mindfulness while taking a shower you can like mindfully get dressed you can mindfully take a walk so i definitely encourage people to think of mindfulness as active things but um that it doesn't have to be in one way but i i what i love the most about mindfulness is when you notice yourself being inattentive simply just reminding yourself to shift your attention back to the present moment can help you focus again and the quickest way to do this is a technique called grounding so that just means that you're really making contact with the physical space around you so like right now i'm putting my hands on my desk and i'm like feeling the wood of my desk and i'm feeling you know my back against my chair and just really again connecting with your physical environment because that's a really good way to start honing in on the present moment and then once you have that grounding which only takes a couple minutes then you can say what do i have to do right now and this is where then i would connect the pomodoro technique that we talked about earlier where you focus on just one task for 25 minutes set a timer and everything so that it's exact um and and that in itself is a mindfulness activity using a pomodoro is like okay 25 minutes yeah exactly getting distracted excellent um we are coming into our last 10 minutes here with dr judy talking about adhd of course we are going to try to get through as many questions as possible if your question was dismissed it's either because there was another question that was similar to it or it was off topic it's nothing personal we just want to concentrate as many questions as we can and if you want more information we are doing this seminar tomorrow however we will be doing it for all access members only it'll be a little more intimate we'll have a little more time and so you'll have a much better chance of getting your question answered and also learning more information you can sign up that you sign up for that if you're an all access member using the links in the chat let's go to our next question ar asks dr judy could you please talk more about differential diagnosis as it comes to adult manifestations of adhd and atypical depression dysthymia definitely as i mentioned earlier a lot of times people will get an adhd diagnosis when maybe it's really depression and i think the most important thing to ask yourself if you think that you might have both or maybe you just have one is is your mood related to your ability to concentrate um that's a really good question that you can ask yourself and talk to your provider about because for people who have dysthymia or atypical depression their difficulties with concentration are always mixed in with their mood states so when they're actually feeling a bit more lifted and they're not quite as depressed that day they actually can focus on things a lot better and so if you find that there is a relationship with your mood and your adhd then it's possible that really you have depression and not so much the adhd and what you find is that when you treat the depression the attention issues start to go away and so that's another telltale sign that maybe it's a depression versus the adhd now if you always have difficulty focusing no matter what even when you're feeling great then maybe you have both maybe you have both the dysthymia and the depression symptoms and you have the adhd also but a lot of the same treatments apply some of the things that we've been talking about like cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness practices actually treat both and as i mentioned earlier too some people will take a small trial of a stimulant medication and they're actually finding that it also has some beneficial effects for the depression as well and so many of the treatments do go with one another so i definitely want to encourage people who might find that they have that comorbidity and by the way the adhd and depression comorbidity is pretty high depending on what study you're looking at it's somewhere between 20 to 40 percent so um you're not alone and there's a lot of ways that we can resolve it and we have a lot of studies that have treated both together excellent um bg asks how is bereavement and adhd similar in adults as well as in children oh definitely um we've been having a lot more uh research coming forward about how one type of grief is a really um anxiety-ridden type of grief so people are going through grief and they think that maybe grief is all about depression which of course sometimes it is you feel depressed when you're grieving and you feel very sad but also some individuals when they're grieving have a lot of anxiety and that anxiety can cause what looks like adhd as well and so um and then i think it's really just about the fact that our brains as much as we would love to talk about how we're all good multitaskers or make that a big goal um multitasking is actually impossible for our brains i don't know if people know that um people who call themselves multitaskers what you really are doing is rapidly switching between tasks so your mind can't focus on more than one thing at a time but it's more just like going in between things as quickly as possible unfortunately when you do that your brain gets exhausted quicker too and when your brain gets exhausted quicker and your cognitive resources get taxed then what looks like adhd will emerge because i mean we've all been there you know yesterday yesterday i had a very very busy work day and by the end of the night i was like i really can't focus on anything like this is a diminishing returns and i need to just shut my computer because like it's not working you know and so i think all of us have been there where you've had that long day and you can tax your cognition either through doing a lot of work stuff or through emotional content right so when you're grieving there's a lot of activity happening in your brain and it actually leads to attention problems at least temporarily so i've always told people if they're going to therapy that day if they're having to process trauma or grief go light on yourself that day you know don't also put a bunch of work related activities and responsibilities and big projects on the same day like give your brain a little bit of a break and reschedule some of the harder tasks that you have to do for a different day fgs my partner has adult adhd and gets hyper focused often and it can be very frustrating what is a good technique that i can use to get him to stop and refocus on the task at hand thank you in advance oh great well hyper focusing again as we talked about is a common symptom of adhd and uh it actually sometimes can drive people crazy because they're hyper focusing on completely something else that you know either the parent or the romantic partner believes they should be focusing on and so i think that the really important thing is to start to teach that person how to self-monitor i mean there's only so much you can do for them even as a parent so it's important to teach them how to monitor themselves so setting a timer you know i know that we talk about timers a lot but it's really effective like okay you're allowed to go down you know this uh crazy google train but like only for 45 minutes right and then we have to switch tasks and do something else and teaching them those skill sets and like reminding them to use that skill set um you can also allow them to do a little bit more of that hyper focusing once all the responsibilities are done so this is like a type of prioritizing like do these tasks first and then i'm going to give you an hour with the hyper focusing and you can just do whatever you want almost like a reward almost like when people play video games after at the end of a long day you know it's like giving it to them as something that they can do but only after other priorities have been met and um i think that that's a really important thing is just to try to teach those skills and impart those skills and even demonstrating them yourself so like maybe you know finding some bridge with you and your child and saying i i would love to do this too but i'm gonna wait until like after dinner then i'm gonna have an hour where i can just read the articles that i want to read and spend time on this when i've actually taken care of my other responsibilities first excellent uh i love this question an anonymous attendee says can you also do the diagnostic process for adhd online or do you have to be in an office okay so right now i'm a neuropsychologist and right now because of the covet pandemic and because of how bad things are in los angeles i'm doing all of my neuropsyc assessments virtually and the test administrators like pearson and uh par and like all the different organizations that make these tests for us to diagnose people with adhd and other types of brain conditions have made these tools available for online administration so you can absolutely get a good assessment online whether it's through a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist or if you choose to work with a neuropsychologist i think the most important thing though is that you actually find somebody who has expertise in this area what i have found to be concerning is that right now because there's this online boom of therapy services that there are people who are just putting up like a 10 question uh questionnaire and saying if you answered all these questions then you have adhd and then you should come see me and i'll help you work on it do not think that there's an easy way to diagnose adhd like that i mean it might feel really great that you can just take a questionnaire online and diagnose yourself but that is not the standard way to diagnose it and as we just opened this conversation with kyle if you don't have the right diagnosis to start with you don't even know what you're working with and we want to make sure everybody's getting proper treatment so you can actually feel good yeah there you go parents we have a series with double board certified psychiatrist dr dominic sportelli on adhd and children it is a must watch if you are the parent of a child living with adhd that is available in your all-access membership for those of you who are adults living with adhd there are many of you you are not alone and we have a series with dr judy ho on that very thing adult adhd it answers many of your question goes in depth on the signs symptoms treatments and long-term recovery it's a phenomenal series for you if you're living with adhd as an adult that of course is available to you on your all-access membership as well uh dr judy i'm really excited for us to continue more of this conversation tomorrow and as you mentioned in the group chat go into more details on um care and management strategies uh you are the best i just thank you for your time and your insight and advice on behalf of me and all the members i really appreciate it um dr judy your time is valuable so i'm gonna let you go but we will see you tomorrow and i'm going to sit here and chat with you guys a little bit longer uh to get some of your feedback so if you're interested and leaving feedback to med circle stick around because i have a couple questions for you guys and i would appreciate your answers dr judy thank you for being here thank you so much kyle and hopefully i'll see some of you tomorrow it was great to get to get to talk to all you and answer some of your questions and i'll see you soon awesome well thank you as med circle members for being here and if you're still watching this on youtube uh thanks for watching you can go to medcircle.com sign up for free and get notified of future med circle live events that are free we have ones for all access members only and also for free um we have a poll that would indicate what brought you to this seminar if you're interested in participating in that poll it just popped up on your screen or hopefully it did there it is are you a patient parent a supporter or a health provider for adhd you can answer that that would be great um it helps us produce future series that are most valuable to our members um we're gonna do a second poll as well and the second poll is um what was the second poll that i wanted see someone mentioned brain fog earlier and now um there was another question i wanted to ask you guys shoot oh man it was a good one too this is why you gotta write stuff down man shoot i'm really losing my footing and you guys were fired uh or on fire today so thank you guys for being here um all right well i can't think of it if it's really important i'll ask it on the next one uh but now i would love to answer some of your questions hi kyle will med circle and dr judy be doing webinar on self-sabotage i think it's a great idea possibly um candace thank you for the clarification thank you leanne uh thank you brenda i'm sure she did um you still can use judy 25 at checkout uh to get 25 off your uh first month as a med circle all access member and this is this is where the real value is into becoming an all-access member in addition to getting our vast video library that covers a multitude of mental health disorders and treatments and patient stories etc we it will also get you guaranteed access to all of our free events which have sold out i mean sold out filled up um so far each one has filled up the first one filled up in a few hours this one filled up in a couple of days but all access members are guaranteed access to these events and then we will be doing uh med circle live events just for our all access members this allows a smaller group a more intimate group to have more in-depth discussions and obviously get through more of your questions because we're it's a shorter amount of people if we're planning right now we're doing two of these a week so with a seven day free trial and four weeks at 25 off that's five weeks that's a potential 10 live seminars that you are guaranteed access to plus our entire video library um and that's for you know less than 20 bucks i think with the discount um it's a great way to get educated what most people miss in their journey on mental health is the education piece i was diagnosed with depression when i was nine years old i did not realize what my depression was until i started working for med circle and i started working for them two or three years ago so i was in my early 30s okay so that is not okay because i am much better today because of that education i pick better mental health providers i understand my signs and symptoms i understand the treatments that are available to me i had been in therapy since nine years old and had never heard of cognitive behavioral therapy if we rely on other people to help us we will not see the same results as when we rely on ourselves and seek out the right people to help us do you see the difference there when we rely on ourselves by becoming an educated and empowered patient we then seek out better help because we are an informed person and that is the power of education for parents of children that is the power of an education for you to have your child see faster results better results and that comes from being educated um thank you guys for being here if you have any questions email me kyle at medcircle.com or you can reach out to uh med circle on social media other than that i'll see all of our all access members tomorrow for more discussions with adhd and of course remember whatever you're going through you got this

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 200,666

Keywords: adhd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, add, adult adhd, attention deficit disorder, mental health, adhd symptoms, attention, treatment, adhd treatment, health, psychiatrist, attention deficit, mental illness, hyperactivity, disorder, adult, medication, adhd medication, brain, psychology, psychiatry, diagnosis, symptoms, what is adhd, adhd in adults, adhd test, mental disorder, ritalin, anxiety, psychologist, therapist, medcircle, kyle kittleson, youtube, youtube live, live stream

Id: D9wlg6MARYU

Length: 58min 17sec (3497 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020