ADHD Therapy
ADHD symptoms manifest uniquely in each person who experiences them, yet there are recurring themes. Patterns of aversion that happen not by conscious choice but mysteriously automatically, often called “inability to start.” Trance-like activities that last for hours and seem easy to stop or pause, but somehow keep going, often called “rabbit holes” and “wasting time.” Keeping too many balls in the air. Feeling foggy, overwhelmed, daunted, defeated before getting started, helpless to make things happen… except when you’re not helpless or daunted or overwhelmed, and can think just fine, perhaps exceptionally well, and start and finish something, and feel satisfied with how it came out and proud of your talent and skill, which impress others… until you want to do that again, but somehow can’t, and you and others bemoan how you are not living up to your great potential.
What is your experience? We can find out. We can identify recurring patterns. We can learn what triggers your amygdala to register a threat response, and cause you to mutter, “I’ll do it later,” and veer off into stress-relief activities. We can learn what conditions most likely cause you to feel absent, foggy and unsure, and what conditions support your feeling present, clear and strong.
Academic Coaching
For most of a twenty-two year career as a college educator, I was Faculty in Interdivisional Studies and senior faculty in the annual autumn Writing and Thinking Workshop at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where I also coached and advised students, and for three years was the Director of the Tutoring and Writing Center. My mission then and now has been to empower scholars to think with more awareness and creativity, to harness their resources more freely, and to direct their own efforts more consciously.
I’ve successfully coached undergraduate and graduate students from Hampshire, Smith, Mount Holyoke, UMass Amherst, U. Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard, MIT, and Trinity College, among others. I also coach faculty. Many of those I’ve worked with were grappling with ADHD-like symptoms, but several just needed to collaborate with another mind that understands academic procedures and how professors and committees work and think.
You can read more about Academic Coaching on my other website, TheConsciousLearner.com.
Case Consultation for ADHD
ADHD symptoms can cause a selective kind of therapeutic impasse. This is demonstrated by my experiences with therapists referring their clients to me for adjunctive coaching, as if ADHD is impervious to psychotherapy. On the contrary. I have worked with ADHD as college faculty and advisor, professional ADHD coach, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and psychoanalyst. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 40s, so I know it from the inside as well. Attuned therapy—psychodynamic, somatic, expressive—can make tremendous positive differences and alleviate suffering in an adult life entangled with ADHD.
If you are a therapist feeling frustrated or stymied by manifestations of ADHD in your clients, then before referring them out, let me help you help them. Using the collaborative format of case consultation, we can illuminate the many different aspects of ADHD to make it comprehensible and treatable with psychotherapy.
Case consultations can be in person or remote.
