ADHD Tools – Part 3: Don’t Do It Alone

Tools and Tricks to Improve Your Executive Functioning

Part 3: Involving Others And Asking for Help

In my last two posts, I have written about practical tools that can improve your executive functioning (here are Part 1 and Part 2. In this third part, I want to emphasize one more strategy: involving other people for help.

This third strategy could also be seen as a part of the other two. Other people can be our external memories, as well as hold us accountable for our choices, make life less boring, and help us make better long-term decisions.

However, I figured the aspect of asking others for help deserved to be addressed on its own, if only because this point might be the hardest for many.

Why is asking for help particularly hard for people with ADHD?

In my work with people with ADHD, especially those who had received their diagnoses as adults, I’ve learned that many of them have struggled all their lives with great amounts of shame over their difficulties, and with feelings of inadequacy. Throughout their childhoods and adult lives, they experienced repeated failures to meet expectations. First, it may have been the parents and teachers who interpreted their struggles as laziness or disobedience. Later, they might have disappointed their friends and partners by forgetting dates or commitments, and their supervisors or colleagues by missing deadlines. And most importantly, they kept failing their own expectations, blaming themselves, and not understanding why they couldn’t just “get it together”, like everyone else seemed to.

Shame makes us want to hide, instead of asking for help. Therefore, I think it is important to recognize that if you have ADHD, your shame might, in fact, be one more real obstacle you have to overcome. It is one more thing that may truly distinguish you from others (to a degree, just like your ADHD symptoms distinguish you only to a degree), and it is important to address it. Because it, too, is holding you back.

How can involving others be particularly helpful for people with ADHD?

Other people are often an essential part of our external memories (or “extended minds”, as reflected in the idea of distributed cognition). But they can also motivate us, hold us accountable, keep things interesting with their presence, and help us to make better decisions.

Here are just a few examples of how you might involve other people to help manage your ADHD symptoms:

• Trust someone to remind you of important dates, as a backup to your own calendar system (not as a replacement).
• Set up appointments to work on particularly challenging tasks in someone else’s presence (or virtual presence), if they also benefit from that accountability.
• Involve a friend to develop a token system with you, where you can earn tokens for tasks that are particularly hard for you. Your friend can hold bigger rewards for you that you can exchange for the tokens you earned. Include them in the celebrations of your achievements.
• Ask for other people’s perspectives when you are facing important decisions. Chances are, if they don’t have ADHD, they might approach decisions differently than you [5]. They might also think differently about risks and benefits than you [7], or about the future [1, 2, 3, 4, 8] – which are aspects that usually matter for important decisions. If your preferences are truly different from theirs, of course you should choose whatever aligns with your own values. This includes honoring your own risk tolerance, and your own future time perspective, as long as your decisions don’t harm others. But other people’s input might help you take additional or different aspects into account, so that you can make the best choice for yourself.

Remember it’s a two-way street

If you’re still hesitant to ask others for help with any of your ADHD-related challenges, remember that the “neurotypical” people (or, perhaps even more so, those at the other end of the self-control spectrum) need you too. In Ann Patchett’s words, as she tells the story of her colorful friendship with Lucy Grealy [6]:

“We were a pairing out of an Aesop’s fable, the grasshopper and the ant, the tortoise and the hare. And sure, maybe the ant was warmer in the winter and the tortoise won the race, but everyone knows that the grasshopper and the hare were infinitely more appealing animals in all their leggy beauty, their music, and interesting side trips. What the story didn’t tell you is that the ant relented at the eleventh hour and took in the grasshopper when the weather was hard, fed him on his tenderest store of grass all winter. The tortoise, being uninterested in such things, gave over his medal to the hare. Grasshoppers and hares find the ants and tortoises. They need us to survive, but we need them as well. They were the ones who brought the truth and beauty to the party, which Lucy could tell you as she recited her Keats over breakfast, was better than food any day.”

Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty.

Hopefully, once you think about it, you recognize the positive value you are contributing to the people around you, not just despite but also because of your differences. Chances are, they recognize it too and welcome a chance to help you to succeed.

If you’re not sure where to start, I’d love to help you figure that out.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

Picture Credit:

Images created with the assistance of OpenAI DALL‑E and Microsoft Designer

References:

[1] Carelli, M. G., & Wiberg, B. (2012). Time Out of Mind: Temporal Perspective in Adults With ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(6), 460–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054711398861
[2] Jackson, J. N. S., & MacKillop, J. (2016). Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Monetary Delay Discounting: A Meta-Analysis of Case-Control Studies. Biological Psychiatry. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 1(4), 316–325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2016.01.007
[3] Marx, I., Hacker, T., Yu, X., Cortese, S., & Sonuga-Barke, E. (2021). ADHD and the Choice of Small Immediate Over Larger Delayed Rewards: A Comparative Meta-Analysis of Performance on Simple Choice-Delay and Temporal Discounting Paradigms. Journal of Attention Disorders, 25(2), 171–187. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054718772138
[4] Mette, C. (2023). Time Perception in Adult ADHD: Findings from a Decade—A Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(4), 3098. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20043098
[5] Mowinckel, A. M., Pedersen, M. L., Eilertsen, E., & Biele, G. (2015). A Meta-Analysis of Decision-Making and Attention in Adults With ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 19(5), 355–367. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054714558872
[6] Patchett, A. (2004). Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. Fourth Estate.
[7] Pollak, Y., Dekkers, T. J., Shoham, R., & Huizenga, H. M. (2019). Risk-Taking Behavior in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): a Review of Potential Underlying Mechanisms and of Interventions. Current Psychiatry Reports, 21(5), 33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-019-1019-y
[8] Ptacek, R., Weissenberger, S., Braaten, E., Klicperova-Baker, M., Goetz, M., Raboch, J., Vnukova, M., & Stefano, G. B. (2019). Clinical Implications of the Perception of Time in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Review. Medical Science Monitor : International Medical Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research, 25, 3918–3924. https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.914225