In our work with ADHD adults, we urge our clients to take their ADHD very seriously. That is, we encourage them to take responsibility for their behaviors and habits and to mitigate their Executive Function Impairments (EFIs) with the help of DBT principles and practices. There is too much at stake for the ADHD adult, such as relationship chaos, poor self-respect, and even early morbidity that can result from impulsive and distracted diets, lack of exercise, and self-care.

Dialectically, we seek to balance this push toward self-responsible engagement with self-compassion and self-validation. Mitigating ADHD symptoms is both a necessary and challenging task for ADHD adults. So, we find it helpful to bring a heavy dose of radical acceptance to bear upon our progress within the present moment while also holding to commitments to build a life worth living into which we invite compassion for ourselves. The SLACK handout presents our efforts to articulate a balance of compassion for ourselves and daily committed action.

We’d like to present here a sample of Mariah's current draft of our SLACK handout.

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In developing Wise Mind for the Distracted Mind: DBT for ADHD Adults, and in writing The DBT Skills Workbook for ADHD Adults for New Harbinger Publications (In press), we are trying to help our clients and our readers connect with tools to empower them to train their attentional regulation with mindfulness and likewise with their values and principles, which are potent motivators for ADHD adults. We want to help them to be more than efficient humanoid machines. We want to help them become both more efficient and more human and find how efficiency can express a strong work ethic and love within relationships. If starting and completing a task fulfills a value, say, contributing to the wellness of a spouse or a household, ADHD adults will discover emergent accountability that is tender and reciprocal. Work and play tasks become infused with the fire and the joy of meaning when tethered to relationships. For this, we turn toward the DBT construct of Wise Mind.

Your Wise Mind is a state of mind where you integrate intellectual assessment with emotional information. It is a state of balance between your Reasonable Mind and your Emotional Mind, which transcends both and opens your awareness to intuitive processes so that you can access the wisdom you have already acquired in your life and increase the wisdom you have already. Wise Mind is also where your aspirations are actualized with the tactical nature of the DBT skills.

Wise Mind is a state, a destination, and an environment. You will sometimes access your Wise Mind through attention that comes through mindful breathing. Your Core Mindfulness what and how skills help you cultivate attention, effectiveness, and flexibility that open paths to your Wise Mind. Knowing that you are in your Wise Mind comes from having peace, confidence, and centeredness.

When you let go of your hostilities toward reality, you open yourself to direct contact with how things are. This letting go of willfulness in favor of willingness allows you a sweet and nourishing humility that opens you to learning new skills and acquiring flexibility to live into your aspirations for a Life Worth Living. The practice of willingness is an act that opens you to new wisdom.

Willingness, as a stance of receptive readiness to learn and to participate in whatever is happening, nurtures a wise mind as an environment, which you can inhabit with increasing frequency and presence over time. Gently and persistently, you find that Wise Mind becomes an abode that holds you and that nourishes your existential depth and breadth emerging from your practices that are both nourished by and nourish Wise Mind recursively.

Finally, Wise Mind as a destination calls you outward and forward each day, bids you to a horizon of becoming. You aim toward daily practices of mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.

With attention, you embody your values guided by principles. Practicing your DBT skills will open you to ever-increasing proximity to a wise life rich with love, meaning, and satisfaction.

Learn More:

Learn more about Mariah.

Learn more about Scott

Webinar on DBT for ADHD Adults on ADDitude YouTube

Scott’s Wise Mind, Wise Life on Spotify

1. Attention and focus. Attentional regulation refers to your ability to activate your broad attention and how you direct your attention in various forms of focus. These are related foundationally to learning, emotion regulation, social interactions, and task completion.

2. Inhibition/self-restraint. This is your abil…

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Thank you for watching and be mindful out there.

Work continues on the forthcoming DBT Skills Workbook for ADHD Adults, which will be released by New Harbinger Publications later this year. The work in writing is both arduous and energizing. Mariah and I are motivated by our passion for helping ADH…

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I hope you will be edified, and I welcome constructive feedback.

Be mindful out there.

~Scott

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Now, with 10% more concentration and intentionality.

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Around the time that I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was a baby therapist reveling in the delights of the fellowship of my colleagues at the Portland DBT Program, Portland, OR. I attempted to grasp the meaning of my ADHD and started a course of medication, which was very helpful and helped me mitigate some elements of my executive function deficits. I was…

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