Adult ADD Strengths

This list was created by Marie Paxson, Coordinator of Chester County Chadd (near Philadelphia). She graciously offered me permission to reprint it here .

CHADD stands for Children and Adult with ADD, it’s an international non profit ADD support group. Here’s the US HQ, here’s the Cdn HQ, here’s CHADD Vancouver and here’s my Vancouver Adult ADD support group which is the adult group of CHADD Vancouver

You can check my list of Canadian ADD Support groups and International ADD support groups for an ADD support group in your area. Or if there’s no ADD support group in your area you can start your own ADD support group.

I don’t usually put such long items by others on this blog (my own are often long enough!) but this one by Thom Hartmann, that I read a long time ago, I just came across again in doing some research for a event tomorow How Giftedness Can Cause Learning Challenges with Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide
that I’ll be a panel on. Thom’s latest book is Screwed: The Undeclared War On the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It.

Thom has written several books on ADD and other topics, and is a former psychotherapist and founder of a school for children with ADD, has his own national radio show, and has done a wide variety of other things.

Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide’s authors of a must read book for parents of ADD or LD children, The Mislabelled Child: , How Understanding Your Child’s Unique Learning Style Can Open the Door to Success will be here in Vancouver Sunday to do a one day conference, How Giftedness Can Cause Learning Challenges. It’s sponsored by The Gifted Children’s Association of BC and Silbury Gifted School and Resource Center. The Eide’s will be speaking in the morning and I’ll be one of the panelists during the afternoon session.

The Eide’s are quite digitally active. They have 2 websites, neurolearning and The Mislabeled Child and a blog, Eide Neurolearning Blog. They’ve got a pretty interesting blog, one thing I’ll suggest they add tomorow is blog categories and some labeling on their sidebar

I’ve noticed that some of my ADD coaching clients as well as others with ADD sometimes feel a bit strange when things are working too smoothly, when there systems seem to be functioning well, a sort of vague uneasiness, some more stronger than others.

I think that some people with ADD periodically, unconsciously create problems or chaos as a way of making life challenging thereby providing needed stimulation to their dopamine scarce ADD brains. Provoking a crisis or chaos to help get stimulated, get the dopamine flowing as it were. Not deliberately of course.

If you do have things running fairly smoothly at home and at work, why not periodically plan your disruptions?

I and my co speaker at the Navigating ADHD presentation for ADD Awareness day, Diane Sugars, Executive Director of the Learning Disabilities Assn of Vancouver were interviewed on CBC Radio’s Open line show BC Almanac by host Mark Forsythe on the topic of Adult ADD the day before ADD Awareness day. I’ve listened to Mark for a long time on CBC and have always enjoyed his programs. He was a good interviewer and new how to handle the callers and the guests very skillfully. If you have a chance to go on his show, I’d highly recommend it.

Health Canada Issued a news release late last month with the title “New Information Regarding Uncommon Psychiatric Adverse Events For All ADHD Drugs” Here’s their first paragraph from their release

OTTAWA - Health Canada is informing Canadians that the prescribing and patient information for all drugs used for the management of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is being revised to provide information about the potential for psychiatric adverse events, including rare reports of agitation and hallucinations in children.

When I read how different media outlets covered the news release and read the release myself, my first thought was, what’s going on here? This is not new information, this is OLD information.

Just a quick reminder that ADD Resources is having their annual ADD conference this weekend in Seattle. I’ve attended it before and found it very useful. Also you can’t beat the price $85 for 2 days! CME’s are available.

Too bad they decided to have it on Canadian Thanksgiving, if they picked another day they might have had a bigger turnout from the Vancouver area, since we’re only 3 hours away.

Vancouver based Dr. Gabor Mate, author of Scattered Minds will be the keynote speaker. Here’s his two talks, the first is open to the general public. If you get a chance to hear him, take it, he know’s his material and talks from the heart.