Living with ADHD can present unique challenges, particularly when it comes to maintaining focus and concentration. Distractions, racing thoughts, and difficulties staying on task can make it feel impossible to get anything done. What can you do when you’re losing focus? Fear not! In this blog, we will explore practical strategies to help you regain focus and enhance productivity when living with ADHD.

Living with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can pose unique challenges for introverts. Introverts get energy from being by themselves and often feel overwhelmed and need time to replinish their energy after being around others. ADHD alone can cause symptoms of overwhelm and overstimulation. Introversion, combined with the symptoms of ADHD, can make the world seem overwhelming. By understanding your unique qualities as an introvert with ADHD and utilizing strategies with introverts in mind, you can effectively manage your symptoms while you harness your innate introverted talents. Let’s explore various techniques that empower you to cultivate self-care, decrease overwhelm, and achieve a sense of balance in your life.

Having a morning routine can allow you to feel more focused, help you put important things first and can be a helpful way of incorporating important things you want in your life into your daily schedule. Beginning a morning routine can be hard for anyone, but when you have ADHD, it can be excruciating. Maybe the idea of a morning routine sounds good, but you don’t know where to start. Perhaps you already have some things you sometimes do in the morning, but they haven't quite solidified into a routine. What are some ways that those of us with ADHD can effectively create a morning routine and also maintain it? Let’s look at the tips below as a structure in beginning a morning routine.

Overthinking, the act of thinking too long or too hard about something, is an issue for many of us that deal with ADHD. It can leave us feeling frustrated because it can keep us from focusing on the important things that are happening in front of us. Overthinking about a task or problem can also lead us to not taking action on that task or problem. As a person with ADHD, I also deal with overthinking. I’ve worked on this a great deal, but overthinking can still rear its ugly head from time to time. Although I use mindfulness techniques almost every day, I’m not consistent about regular mindfulness meditation and I feel like it may be time to put myself on a “maintenance plan” for dealing with my own ADHD overthinking. I’ve decided to incorporate daily mindfulness exercises into my routine to see how they affect my overthinking.

ADHD paralysis (also called ADHD freeze, among other things) is the debilitating feeling that occurs when you have a task you want to begin but feel like you cannot get motivated enough to actually do it. ADHD paralysis can feel very strong. Some people have reported that it sometimes makes no sense for them not to do a task and it may be a task they’ve done over and over in the past. They may even have the desire to do the task but they simply cannot bring themselves to do the task at hand. Sometimes the thought of movement can take so much energy that any kind of mental/emotional/ physical forward motion sounds impossible. 

“What’s wrong with me?” Michael exclaimed as he put his head on his desk . Michael had been working on his homework for an hour and was only on his second math problem. He had many more left to complete and it was getting late. He knew his Mom was going to come in and check on him soon, and would be upset that he wasn’t further along in his work. Besides that, he was planning on playing the video game he got yesterday and knew that if he didn’t complete more work that he wouldn’t be allowed to play the game tonight. “Why does it take me so long to get this work done? I know how to do it, but it takes forever to get going. I give up.”

f you are like many of us, you’ve had a situation in which life is going along swimmingly and then you have a thought. Yeah, that thought. One that is super negative or disturbing. One that comes in without knocking on the door and wants to hang out uninvited. Sometimes the thoughts can be sexual or violent in a disturbing way. The thought might leave you thinking, “Oh no, not that thought again! How could I possibly be thinking that? What is wrong with me? That thought is nothing like who I am, or who I want to be”. This can leave us judging ourselves on top of everything else.