What treatment do therapists use that helps with your problem?

[Codebox42]

When seeing any type of social worker or specialized therapist, what kind of treatments or specific things do they do that helps with any sort of ADHD problem? And when they are doing it how can you tell if the treatment itself works? Part of me also wants motivation and focus, I think with enough it should help me get to the path of improvement. What kind of things did you do to help improve your ADHD?

[HadEnuf]

There's really no one set of techniques that works for everyone: we're as individual as the rest of the population. For example, I have found REBT techniques useful to upstage emotional overwhelm; but for another, something completely different will “stick” (as thoroughly as John Cleese, dressed as an ice-cream girl, shouting, “albatross”, at that).

I will point out that motivation and focus aren't quite the simple matter of “interest” versus “importance” to which neurotypical brains ascribe our differences: we may well assess importance itself—especially the aspect referred to as salience—very differently from the majority of the population.

For example, we register anything novel as more important than most will (many of us are great at spotting risks that others won't think to anticipate); but we may give far less weight to social expectations of “our place” and tend therefore to act directly rather than to wait for someone in authority to take charge. (This is a very common form of “impulsivity” that causes no end of difficulty.)

This may not be because we don't have any idea of what is important or merely lack “restraint”: perceiving and dealing with our physical surroundings may be so much more important to us that it overrides all else. (If the old hunter-versus-farmer hypothesis accounts for the natural selection of our differing traits, this might mean, “Before something makes dinner of us.”)

Also “we” project “our” expectations on “them” just as “they” project “theirs” on “us”: we don't expect others to be offended by what wouldn't offend us; while others expect us to “know better” because we “should” be offended by what would offend others. For example, many with ADHD aren't offended when interrupted by another's enthusiasm, whereas others may assume any deviation from the “authority program” shows disdain.

(Incidentally, much of this turns out to be cultural. For example, where one's gaze should to be directed when listening to another speak varies more than “western” cultures often assume: holding the gaze of a speaker is considered a crude form of challenge in several of which I am aware—often with tribal rather than feudal histories.)

Neurally, a lot of this boils down to differing anticipation of reward: that's where dopamine chemistry and ADHD medications come into play...