10 Tips For Coping With Your ADHD Symptoms
People with ADHD are hard to understand. They hate meetings. They always forget items to buy in the grocery store. Alarm clocks also don’t work for them. These are just a portion of the challenges that an ADHD person faces day after day. It may be hard, but if you learn to accept these truths, along with mastering ten useful tips in coping ADHD Symptoms, you will live a normal life.
ADHD is a lifetime reality. It’s not dormant; once you have it, it’s going to dictate your entire life. However, with the right treatment plan and coping tools. People with ADHD will be able to overcome their condition, live a normal life, and be more successful with anything they do.
Take advantage of these ten strategies in coping ADHD symptoms every day of the week
1.) Treat It Like A Journey
To keep your sanity in check, avoid the following mindsets:
“My ADHD isn’t permanent. I’ll get better in due time.”
“Exercise, sleep, and proper nutrition does help cure my ADHD.”
While we want to believe them to be the case, all of these beliefs will still not eradicate your ADHD symptoms.
So instead of you getting frustrated over your expectations, dump all of your assumptions about ADHD and accept that it’s a chronic mental condition. While ADHD is un-curable, it can be managed. So start thinking about long-term solutions, instead of settling for quick fixes. Treat your ADHD as a life journey, where you pick up valuable life lessons about it on your way to acceptance.
2.) Know Your Strengths & Learn To Love Them More+
Our ADHD can sometimes force us to be what we are not, which results in our failures. Don’t let yourself get frustratedly obsessed with fixing your failures. If you’re just not that good with something you’re doing, then it’s time to move on.
What you should be doing is cataloguing the areas where you are good at – where you are sure to succeed. Sit down and think about the things that are working with your life. Once you’ve come up with some, focus on them and concentrate on how you can make these strengths better.
3.) Get Support On Dealing With Your Weakness
We all know our weaknesses. We’ve had so many failures that we can easily point them out. For people with ADHD, what you should do instead is continue dealing with them and hoping that you’ll get better. What you are doing is a lost cause, as no matter how hard you try, your mind will never allow you to turn your failures around. So instead of dealing with them on your own, have someone else do them for you.
Get close with people who excel in the areas where you struggle. If you are a proficient starter yet bad at finishing things, partner with a great closer who knows how important it is to get things done.
If you’re great at grammar, yet bad at solving math problems, team up with a math guru and watch your problems reduce to a pulp. Your ADHD complicates things, which is why you need someone to weather the storm on your behalf.
4.) Be the Person Who Knows How To Adjust
If you’re taking ADHD treatment, you might be used to trying to make changes and adjustments to make your treatment right for you. The same also goes with anything you do. Depending on what situation you’re into, you need to make the necessary change if it’s affecting your ADHD. If you don’t like working in your office because it’s preventing you from concentrating and getting things done, then, by all means, look for another job that will suit you. If you feel like your treatment is getting too easy, then amp it up a notch. Whatever you do, keep in mind that change is the only constant thing that you need to do to be able to cope up with your condition consistently.
5.) Refer to what Technology can Offer
If you want to take your treatment to a whole new level, try incorporating it with the benefits that technology can offer. Look for gadgets and apps designed to help manage ADHD-like problems, like keeping track of your priorities. An excellent example of an app that can help you cope with your ADHD is the 30/30 app. It lets you allocate a specific amount of time to each of your to-do list items. The app will then remind you to complete a task first – without delay – before you can move on to the next. Look on the Internet for other useful ADHD-friendly apps.
6.) Make Sleep Your Main Priority
A lot of people with ADHD – mainly adults – have sleep problems. Falling asleep is a struggle, which means waking up in the morning is also the same. It will be hard, but you can actually fix your sleeping problems, but it will start with you making sleep your main priority.
The first step is to determine the amount of sleep you need. Some people only need six hours to feel refreshed; others, on the other hand, require more than nine hours. Once you’ve determined the amount of sleep you need, adjust to when you preferably want to wake up. If you need six to seven hours of sleep, and you need to wake up by five to get ready for your 8 AM work, make sure you get to bed by ten the night before.
You can also try medication to help treat your sleep problems. Melatonin is an excellent supplement for helping you fall asleep faster. Finally, incorporate a ritual before you go to sleep and, as much as you can, be consistent with it. Stop drinking caffeine at night, and put away your gadgets two hours before going to bed. It might be hard at the beginning, but you will eventually get used to it.
7.) Starting & Finishing Tasks
When it comes to ADHD, starting and finishing tasks is one of the hardest things to do. That’s why to get past this struggle; you need to be prepared.
Keep in mind that the first step will always be the hardest. If you are starting a new task, try isolating the preparatory work from the actual work. The former will be all about gathering everything you need, while the latter is where you jump right into it.
Always incorporate anti-procrastination tools like a timer to ensure that you are not complacent with your time. Also, make sure you take a break from time to time and not go all the way to avoid any potential burnout.
If all else fails, go get a friend to help you get through with what you are doing.
8.) Contain Your Impulsive Self
People with ADHD will always tend to have impulsive outbursts from time to time. You can’t help it since it’s part of who you are. So to stop potential eruption before they even begin, try to incorporate a cueing system that will remind you to always think about the implications of what you’re going to speak during any situation. An alarm that triggers every couple of minutes is a good tool to help you contain your impulsive behaviour.
If you are working a project with a group of people, try to warn them about your impulsive tendencies. Tell them, “sometimes my mind thinks so fast that it doesn’t give me the chance to filter out all of my thoughts. If something bad comes out of my mouth, please let me know, and I’ll try to clarify it.” Always remember that impulsivity is a neurological-based mental condition. If you still get frequent outbursts, it might indicate that you should change your treatment plan (if you have one).
9.) Keep Meetings Short & Simple
For a person with ADHD, it’s understandable that your mind will most likely trail off during meetings or conversations when the time exceeds your attention span – or when the topic you’re talking about is just to “boring” for your liking. One way to remedy this is to make meetings as short as you can. Turn an hour-long conversation into a 10-minute talk, and you can see how just how much information you can acquire.
If you are unable to dictate the duration of the meeting, you can always record it, or jot down important notes so you can come back to crucial parts for a quick reminder. You can also ask other participants about something that was unclear to you. Always incorporate these strategies into every meeting or discussion, and you will surely be fine in any of these engagements.
10.) Set Up A Meal Plan/Schedule & Stick To It
For Adults With ADHD, cooking and grocery shopping can be a very challenging task. So to help you overcome the struggle, try working with your family and figure out a solution that everyone can agree upon. Try easy recipes, buy takeout from one of the finest diners in Manchester, or set up a meal plan where you cook specific dishes for each day of the week. That way, you can avoid the burden of having to waste a considerable amount of time on deciding what to cook. Long story short – patterns make it much easier to plan.
Fight your ADHD With These Strategies
Life with ADHD is hard. But with a little tweak in your lifestyle, along with incorporating these ten useful tips, you can cope up with your condition and live a healthy life. If you are still struggling with taking control of your life, you can see one of our doctors at the ADHD Clinic London. Contact us now for more info at enquiries@adhdcentre.co.uk.
