hey there everybody and welcome back to the addiction to co-occurring Disorders Treatment
manual today we're discussing unit 1 Part 6 an introduction to ADHD I'm your host Dr
Donnelly Snipes in this part we're going to Define attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder and explore how it may interact with mood physical and addiction issues
a lot of people struggle with attention deficit disorder or attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder people who have ADD or ADHD often fail to pay attention
or make careless mistakes in the things they do they have difficulty following through with
tasks especially long tasks or complex tasks they have difficulty organizing their life
they may dislike tasks that require sustained mental effort they're easily distracted forgetful
they often fidget or have difficulty sitting still people perceive them as being constantly
on the go they just can't sit still they may talk excessively have difficulty waiting their turn
and often interrupt or intrude on others whether it's in a game or in a group or in a conversation
so these symptoms can be very problematic and these symptoms are not being lazy or being rude
or something that somebody can just be taught a simple skill for people with ADD ADHD actually
have differences in their wiring their mental wiring and their neuro neurotransmitters that make
it more difficult to do some of these things so I think it's important to spend some time if you
think you've got add or ADHD to think about how each one of these symptoms could trigger addictive
behavior anxiety anger guilt grief or jealousy and three healthy ways of dealing with each symptom
for example failing to pay attention or making careless mistakes that is something
that is very common in people with ADD or ADHD but then it can trigger a feeling of
guilt in them when they don't do something right it can trigger a sense of anxiety when
they start to do things because then they start wondering am I going to do something right or
am I going to screw up again it can trigger a sense of grief in them because they don't
feel like they can be the person that they want to be it can trigger jealousy in them because
other people can more easily focus on things and they have to work so much harder to pay attention
and not make careless mistakes additionally if the person is undiagnosed or if they're
interacting with people who don't understand they've got ADHD other people may be extremely
critical of the person with ADHD when they make careless mistakes saying you're not living up
to your potential or that worse yet that was a stupid mistake or something similarly harmful
yeah so this particular symptom can trigger all of those things that we've been talking about
not following through with things or disliking tasks that require require sustained mental effort
are also things that are difficult for people with ADHD but things that they have to do in the
typical environment in the typical job there are a lot of um
reasonable accommodations that can be made for people with ADHD at work and I encourage you to
apply those same reasonable accommodations to your recovery for example tasks that require sustained
mental effort like doing this activity break it up into shorter bits so for example look at how
each symptom could trigger addictive behavior and then at a different time look at how each symptom
could trigger anxiety and then at a different time how each symptom could trigger anger
so you're not having to sit for 50 minutes and focus on doing one thing you're breaking it up
into manageable segments that you can look at and go okay that's something I can get done