You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (52 page)

What, however, is available for the ADDult who has not been meditating for umpteen years? Neurofeedback is a technique that uses EEG readings to help clients shape their brain wave patterns in a positive direction so they can pay attention, rather than daydreaming,
for example.

How Does Neurofeedback Work?

There are five major types of brain wave patterns. Multiple patterns are present in the brain at any given time, but each area of the brain has a predominant pattern that reflects the person’s current mental state. These patterns can be measured and recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG can be used to make a map of the person’s mental function.

The five types of brain wave patterns are:

Beta waves:
These are the fastest waves. When a person is attentive, the brain has a lot of beta waves.

SMR waves:
A subcategory of beta waves, they occur when a person is quietly focused to prepare for a physical challenge.

Alpha waves:
These waves are slower. They are the brain waves of relaxation.

Theta waves:
Even slower than the alpha waves,
this is the brain wave pattern a person has when daydreaming or almost at the point of falling asleep.

Delta waves:
The slowest brain waves, they are the brain waves of deep sleep.

When a person without ADD tries to engage in an activity requiring concentration, he or she activates beta waves in certain parts of the brain. When confronting a task that requires focus, children and adults with
ADD increase theta waves instead (the daydreaming brain wave).

By showing the client what their brain waves are doing at a given time and rewarding them for shifting to helpful brain wave patterns, the neurofeedback therapist helps the client to gain control over her wandering brain. Essentially, it is behavior modification for the unruly mind.

Now, we mentioned that this therapy is controversial.
For a long time, the scientific folks pointed out that there were no good controlled studies supporting the effectiveness of neuro-feedback. Of course, what they fail to mention is that these types of studies are expensive and it is harder to get funding for them. In the past few years, some research has been done that suggests it may be time to give neurofeedback a second look.

We have heard
mixed reviews from colleagues and clients. Some have found the treatment very beneficial, while others have been disappointed. There are no guarantees, but we have collected enough testimonials to warrant including neurofeedback in our listing of alternative treatment strategies.

P
ROS

A noninvasive alternative to medication

If taking medicine feels too much like an alien force taking control
of your brain, you may be more open to a therapy that helps you to retrain your own thought processes.

No physical side effects

C
ONS

Expensive

Can be time consuming—2 to 3 visits per week for 6 to 12 months required. (Time factor may be reduced with newer, in-home systems becoming available.)

Currently not as much scientific evidence that it is effective compared to stimulant medication.

Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, the founder of the Optimal Functioning Institute for ADD Coach Training, has found that a combination of stimulant medication and neurofeedback has been the most helpful in managing her ADD. She points out that six months to a year is a long time to wait while you are failing at school, work or in relationships.

Workouts

Cerebellar Stimulation:
In
Delivered from Distraction
, Dr. Hallowell tells a story about his son Jack, who hated reading until he started a program of exercises designed to stimulate his cerebellum. Until fairly recently, it was thought that this part of the
brain was mainly involved in balance and physical coordination. Now it is known that the cerebellum is also involved in general brain functioning. For example, brain-scan studies have shown that
there are connections between the cerebellum and the frontal lobes, as well as other areas of the brain that are involved in ADD and dyslexia.

Occupational therapists have long known about the connection between ADD and cerebellar functioning. They treat the symptoms of both ADD and learning disabilities using a variety of exercises that involve balance and coordination. More controlled research
needs to be done, but the results of the existing studies are promising. For more information about this topic, we refer you to the chapter on cerebellar stimulation in
Delivered from Distraction
. In brief, a few of the specific programs mentioned are the Dore method, Brain Gym and Interactive Metronome.

Some examples of cerebellar exercises are balancing on a wobble board, juggling and standing
on one leg. Basically the exercises involve balancing, coordinating alternating movements and activities that cross the midline of the brain and back again. One of Kate’s clients is an extremely bright young woman who is a doctoral candidate at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Intelligence is not a problem in her case, but staying focused long enough to write her dissertation
is a big challenge. She has found that alternating ten minutes of writing with ten minutes of juggling helps her to stay the course. She says that her juggling really stinks, but that isn’t the point. Perhaps you might want to consider playing around with juggling, or walking a straight line to improve your balance. Experiment to see if these activities improve your ability to focus and concentrate.

Exercise:
Of course, we all know about the recommendations to do aerobic exercise three times a week for your heart. But have you ever considered looking at exercise as a brain-boosting strategy? It promotes mental focus and sustained attention,
as well as providing a buffer against stress. Consider conducting an exercise trial to determine a routine that provides the most benefit to you. Do you
need daily exercise? How about several shorter periods of exercise throughout the day, whenever your focus is flagging?

Fidget to Focus:
Do you wonder why you do the following things?

• Pace and doodle when you are on the phone
  
• Concentrate better when you are chewing gum
  
• Study with the radio and television on
  
• Retain the information from a lecture better when you are playing a video game or jiggling your foot
  

One of the biggest problems with staying alert and focused is that so many of the activities we are required to do are painfully boring—sitting in class, for example, or in those endless meetings at work. The problem is that snoozing is not an option. Loud snoring might earn you a pink slip or reverse brownie points toward a failing grade. Our brains need an optimal level of stimulation,
and you can “feed” your brain using multiple sensory pathways. Check out the book
Fidget to Focus
, by Roland Rotz and Sarah Wright, for tips on sensory strategies you can use to boost your brain’s attentional power. You can even buy some nifty fidget toys in the store at ADDconsults.com.

Blues Busters:
Consider replacing all your lightbulbs with full-spectrum ones. Full-spectrum light is used
as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder, otherwise known as the winter blues. While it is not a specific remedy for ADD, many of us also suffer from seasonal depression and can benefit from the additional boost provided by full-spectrum light. You can get these at your local chain hardware store. While they are more expensive than ordinary bulbs, they last much longer.

Get Your Thyroid Checked:
A thyroid condition may mimic the symptoms of ADD. You may not have ADD at all, or your ADD symptoms may be increased by a hidden thyroid problem.

Food Allergies:
Food allergies can cause ADD-like symptoms. Peggy had a client whose son had an allergy to corn. His physician was reluctant to consider that a food might be at the root of this child’s “ADD.” In desperation, the mom took her
son to an appointment with a bag of microwave popcorn in hand, marched into the office and insisted on popping the bag of corn and then feeding it to her son in the doctor’s presence. Right before the doctor’s eyes, this woman’s well-behaved son morphed into a “bouncing off the walls” terror. Needless to say, the doctor became a true believer in the power of food allergies to wreak behavioral havoc.

In this chapter we have reviewed the major medications used to treat ADD, as well as a few alternatives for waking up the brain. Of course, medication is never the whole answer to the puzzle of ADD. When it works well, it serves to help us to be available for learning. A huge piece of our learning, of course, is actually
unlearning
all
the inaccurate thoughts and beliefs we accumulated when we didn’t know that ADD was the problem. In the next chapter, Mental Hygiene, we will explore ways to get rid of that mental debris from the past.

Chapter 15
Mental Hygiene

“She was recycling the raw sewage of poor mental hygiene.”

—Neil Anderson, LMT, subgenius, barroom philosopher

O
ur friend Neil uttered these words after spending an evening with a female friend, attempting to console her after a breakup with her boyfriend. We know you can imagine the scene … we have all been there at least once. The poor girl (we’ll call her Karen)
is an hour into her rant/crying jag. Karen has now moved beyond the specifics of the breakup and the horrible things her boyfriend did to her. She has segued into a painful litany of the reasons why, of course, no one in their right mind would want to be seen with or (God forbid!) date a worm like her. She is fat (or scrawny), ugly, stupid, needy, selfish, boring … you pick the adjectives. Any attempts
to steer her into cleaner waters, so to speak, are met with resistance and a renewed outpouring of self-directed venom. Eventually, Karen cries herself into an exhausted sleep.

Karen has taken a big hit to her sense of self. Generally it takes more than a few repetitions of this cycle of self-loathing before the “hittee” is ready to pick herself up and move on. The length of time needed varies
with the importance of the relationship, the current self-esteem level, what is going on in the rest of the person’s life and other such factors. There are ways of moving through the process more quickly, and we will share these with you a bit later in the chapter.

It is easy to see the dynamics of lousy mental hygiene when you are sitting outside, watching a friend flail around in their personal
mental sewer. You know that the person they are describing is nothing like the person you know and love. When we are the ones in that dark place, however, the nasty mental landscape seems as real and vivid as anything we have ever experienced.

It is as if our brain is buried under layers of dirt. And the dirt consists of all the mean, derogatory things we have ever said about ourselves or had
others say about us.

KK:
“Let me give you an example from my own life that has nothing to do with ADD. A few months after my former husband and I separated, I gained forty pounds in about six weeks. It seemed like a miracle in reverse … or a reversal of the Sleeping Beauty tale. My experience was that I (mostly) went to sleep for a few weeks and woke up in this bloated, alien body. Nobody kissed
the princess and so she turned into a big fat ugly frog. In real life I took to my bed in the throes of depression.

“Our appearance has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves. I believe that the weight was a physical manifestation of how I felt inside. The breakup of my marriage cracked my defensive shell and exposed a host of unhealed emotional wounds, bringing them to the surface.

“That
weight stuck around for years—in fact, I am still carrying it. I know that it will come off soon, because I now like myself enough to feel that I deserve to be fit. One of the gifts of having this experience is that I got to see, in real time, that a certain kind of appearance has nothing to do with my lovability. I have a wonderful life partner now who tells me I am beautiful and sexy just the
way I am! He is also not the only one who expresses admiration and interest. I now get more validation than I did when I was young and slender.

“For years postseparation, I couldn’t get a date or anything approximating one. Like Karen, the girl who broke up with her
boyfriend, I recycled that raw sewage over and over. I told myself I was fat, ugly, unwanted. Four years ago I met a man in a drumming
class and was attracted to him. After class one day we had a great conversation, but I was disappointed when he told me he had a girlfriend. I thought, ‘Oh well, guess this one isn’t a possibility.’ It would have been fine if I had left it at that, but of course I didn’t. I instantly went into he-wouldn’t-want-me anyway-I-am-so-old-fat-and-ugly (add stupid, untalented, dull … I probably used
them all). ‘Fat’ was the dirtiest word, the one that hurt the most.