Can I get over Adhd with my own will power?

[Deel311]

Can Doing something with full attention help us to overcome Adhd?

[Mamamichl]

Nope. If we could, then I would have gotten better long ago. I finished college magna cum laude. Still have trouble with blurting at work. You do have more behaviors when stressed though. Also, therapy has helped me learn some helpful strategies and I’m starting my med journey (unsuccessfully so far). Mindfulness activities help to slow my brain in general, but sometimes something small brings back my adhd with a vengeance.

[CoastalRealtor in reply to Mamamichl]

I feel this! What mindful activities have you had success with?

[Mamamichl in reply to CoastalRealtor]

I like the calm app for some meditation. There are also cards you can use that I want to get. The ones that help me found best are the 5,4,3,2,1 senses one and breathing holding breath one (4 seconds in, hold four seconds then breath out for 6 seconds). I also like to watch candle flame and smell the candle at times.

[CoastalRealtor in reply to Mamamichl]

Thank you! I’ll have to try the candle thing and the calm app (although if I look at my phone I will struggle to turn off my brain). I do try breathing and counting. Sometimes that’s helpful. Tell me more about the cards you mentioned. That’s new to me. Again, thank you for your tips!

[Mamamichl in reply to CoastalRealtor]

The calm app and loóna app both work well with me. Calm is all audio, so just push play. For loóna, they have a coloring option and helps you focus on the story with the music and coloring.

[FocusAndFlow]

No and yes. The typical answer is 'yes and no', and the writer would go on about the business of qualifying each in that order.

I say 'No and Yes', because I have to believe it. Meaning, I cannot take Rx (disastrous side effects, brain is too sensitive, especially sleep disturbances), therefore I'm left with white-knuckling it.

I've come to discover how strong the 'NO' is and therefore having to find ways to work those behaviour pattern problems toward a 'Yes'. This is incredibly difficult, it takes a lot of consistent effort over long periods of time, but I am finding some things that help and I will list them below. Hopefully these prove helpful to others reading this.

Full disclosure: I am nearly 51 years old, I was diagnosed with advanced adult ADHD twelve months ago and all the prayers of the last 20 years trying to figure out why I took things so hard and why my life has increasingly 'gotten harder' were finally answered during 2023 and I've been drinking form the firehose all year - I don't say any of this lightly.

I highly recommend listening to Andrew Huberman on Hubarmanlab.com. He's on all social media. Space-Time Bridging is a type of meditative exercise that I do a couple of times per week and it has greatly helped me to regain my sense of time, timing, and task completion. I also believe it has really helped my memory, but I'm doing other things, so sometimes it's hard to attribute one improvement to a specific thing.

Dr. Peter Attia is another guy I listen to on The Drive podcast. His thing is Longevity, and he's been instrumental in me figuring out my nutritional biochemistry to help me lose weight in a consistent and sustainable manner to not only live a healthier life, but also improve biomarkers from blood tests, which directly correlate to a clearer mind and more efficient mental processes translating into better attention and focus. Understanding my relationship to/with food and simply saying goodbye to simple carbs has helped my focus tremendously. Quick sugar destroys focus and attention, simply put.

Between those two guys, and numerous things they mention, there is a wealth of research you can do to figure out what works best for you.

Naturally, supplementation - Iron, Zinc, super high quality Omega 3s, 10mg Creatine Monnohydrate daily, Rodhiola Rosea, PEA, L-Tyrosine, Magnesium Glycinate and Ashwaghanda (for sleep!), and ZERO ALCOHOL help tremendously after a couple of months to feel better and better and increasingly focused and capable. Of course, this becomes a new life discipline, you just can't lapse. Let's not forget exercise, especially goign out for walks or runs in the early morning with the rising sun's light hitting your eyes. That resets your circadian rhythm after just a couple of days and improves sleep tremendously. Sleep hygiene is my one hub around which I hang all the other 'spokes' of my ADHD Life Discipline.

I highly recommend reading Jack Kornfield's 'Meditation for Beginners' and skip all the hippy dippy BS, but focus on understanding the brain mechanisms at play. I've been meditating for about 12 weeks, my 12 minutes minimum about 5 times per week and I feel much calmer, and it has greatly helped to 'put a bit of distance' between me and 'it', whatever 'it' happens to be, and I am much, much better at catching myself getting upset over little things that can quickly send me down a rage/anger/sadness/depression/anxiety rabbit hole. No thank you. I can actually simply observe the thoughts and feelings now and 'move them aside' for the most part. What a difference! I recommend following that book with Amishi Jha's 'Peak Mind', and I'm currently reading 'Altered States'. To me, understanding the mechanics of the brain has been a HUGE help across all domains having to do with ADHD symptom/behaviour management.

The list goes on and on, but to bring all this home to my point and your question, No, we can't just push ourselves to 'get over our ADHD with our own willpower' IN THE MOMENT, Buuuuuut.... If you take methodical steps and build new behavioral patterns in all these directions bit by bit, day after day, I believe that we can, in a way, conquer this thing with our willpower. It's a discipline thing and it's a timing thing. No, it can't be forced in the moment, full stop. But, it can be 'negotiated away', at least to some or great extent, with a long-lived approach that, frankly, leads us to living very healthy lives.

I'm currently pretty far from calling my ADHD a 'blessing in disguise', but I would at least rather live a life where I have a vehicle to begin thinking of it that way, and perhaps getting to where I think of it that way at some point in the future?

Be kind to yourself - Always remember to practice self-compassion FIRST. Everything else must and will follow. That is the hardest thing, every day, all day long.

...until it isn't...

Praying for everyone on here.

[Deel311 in reply to FocusAndFlow]

Can you suggest me some exercises or things you do to keep your self calm and focused

[FocusAndFlow in reply to Deel311]

Sure, I will throw a couple your way, but the fact is that you will be best served by trying these out, and others you encounter along your journey and put them into practice until you find the subroutines that work for you and your specific ADHD. That said, these may work wonders, or they may fall flat - Only by making these habit will you get any results. I mention this because part of my struggle has been do define this routine and then stick with it. I allow myself some flexibility every day, as it is impossible to do all of these things in one day and get anythign else done.

Here goes:

1. Meditation - Jack Kornfield "Meditation for Beginners" this book is the perfect, easy place to start. After meditating for about 10 weeks, I started feeling genuine relief on a structural basis, meaning, an overall improvement in mood and calmer demeanor throughout the day.

2. Time-Space Bridging - This is an exercise I learned by listening to HubermanLab (Spotify, etc.) It is similar to meditation, but it's done with eyes open and it helps reset your internal clock - it did for me. The better I can timebox things, the better I can achieve results, the better I feel and my stress goes down. It's helped my memory too.

3. Exercise - Especially if you're feeling overwhelmed, just go outside for a walk. It's best if you can do it in nature, so if you live near a park, by all means, or take a short drive there and just walk around in nature, through the trees. It does calm down the brain. If you can run, to some pushups while there, etc (a bit of a HIIT workout), even better.

When you come back from these three 'tools' to do your work, you should start feeling a bit less stressed/anxious and increasingly being able to do a bit more without getting quite so distracted. Remember that we can't use brute force for this, at least not for long, without seriously detrimental results, so give yourself a little breathing room as you progress through this. You've got this. Just lean into the effort and don't focus so much on the result. It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but the more we focus on the result, the more we obsess over it and the more distracted we get and the more difficult it becomes.

The brain is an amazing machine. Make it your friend. One day at a time.

[AuDHD3245]

Sort of.... But it's exhausting. We have to learn how to learn how to adapt our brains to the subject. That takes energy and we have to hold it, remember it and implement the strategy every single time. Doable but not for long

[FocusAndFlow in reply to AuDHD3245]

I completely agree with the exhausting part, especially. I'm currently experimenting with learning to take a more nuanced approach to my ADHD and 'befriending' an energy and focus modulation discipline throughout the day. If I find myself getting distracted and not 'performing' to my expectations, I take a tiny break, learn to let it go (whatever it is), take a drink of water, or whatever else is on my routine to redirect, and keep moving forward.

I never thought that learning 'not to care' about dozens of little situations throughout my day would be a doorway to success over this condition, but as it turns out, every time I take power away from it by not letting it 'beat me up' (or letting it make me beat myself up, more like), the more energy I get to conserve and redirect in another direction.

Ergo, it becomes a tad bit less exhausting every day. I'm moving on to what appears to be the next stage - successfully reingaging my day in a new direction to start the cycle all over again, without it becoming exhausting. The better I get at this, the more cycles I will get to repeat per day, but one also needs to be cognizant that some days are better than others. This is all dependent on sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc - It's all connected.

Here's to energy modulation, cheers.

[STEM_Dad]

The short answer is 'no'.

That's because ADHD is rooted in a person's neurology.

If it could be fixed by will power, I would have figured that out many years before I got diagnosed. I was trying real hard all the time to overcome my ADHD traits.

~~~

In a particular instance of struggling due to ADHD, you may be able to use will power to "brute force" your may though. But that's not a healthy long-term strategy, because you would probably become very self-critical, as I was before my ADHD diagnosis.

I learned self-acceptance, and got started on ADHD medication, and I'm learning healthier ways to compensate for my ADHD tendencies.

I still struggle everyday. Some days more than other.

~STEM_Dad {diagnosed at 45 with mild-to-moderate Inattentive ADHD and Anxiety; studies multiple "productivity" methods and systems for 30 years into my diagnosis, including "how to increase willpower" as a topic}