ADHD Therapy

Amanda, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your clinical specialties? My name is Amanda Edwards and I'm a licensed professional counselor. I work at Mid Michigan Therapy in East Lancing, Michigan, and I specialize with clients with depression, anxiety, ADHD, um just life transitions in general, alcohol, and substance use as well. Mana, one of your clinical areas of focus is working specifically with women with ADHD. Can you tell me about patterns you're seeing and some of their experiences? Yeah, I've u been working with teens um college students as well as adults with ADHD. Um and a lot of the women have been diagnosed later on in life um because they don't meet the typical criteria of what like a hyperactive ADHD person looks like. A lot of times they'll experience not necessarily the hyperactive behaviors like running all over the place or you know having a lot of energy but more of like the hyperactive thoughts like it's more of inside in their mind. They also talk a lot about feeling emotionally overwhelmed because of that hyperactivity of their thoughts in their mind as well as time blindness like completing a task or working on a task and then feeling as though they have to complete the task in one sitting instead of being able to stop it because they're afraid that they're not going to be able to go back to it. Can you give us a snapshot of some of the interventions that you use when providing um ADHD therapy with the women you see? Yeah, so a lot of times we work together to come up with different skills and tools that will work best for them. One of those is body doubling. And what body doubling is is where you essentially have a partner or someone that you can do something with. So, for example, a lot of my college students, they will, you know, have a friend that they want to study with. So, they'll set this study group. And when they set it up for themselves, right, and they just say, "Hey, I'm going to study at 4." It doesn't feel like they have to do it. But when they have a friend, they don't want to let their friend down. And so, that accountability just helps them follow through a little bit more with that task. as well as um we've also talked a lot about like finding the right type of stimulation so that it's not too distracting, but it's enough that they're able to focus in these situations. So, for example, studying with a movie that is something they've seen over and over again, it's not going to catch their attention, but it's enough stimulation to keep them focused in the task at hand in the study. Yeah. So, if you're struggling with symptoms of ADHD or you suspect that you may have ADHD, uh, reach out to Mid Michigan Therapy and we can get you set up for services.