Nancy A. Ratey - The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents

COACHING YOUR ADHD
BRAIN TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR
TIME, TASKS, AND TALENTS

Nancy A. Ratey, Ed.M, M.C.C., S.C.A.C.

THE DISORGANIZED MIND. Copyright 2008 by Nancy A. Ratey.
Foreword copyright 2008 by John J. Ratey, M.D.
Afterword copyright 2008 by Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address
St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

The circumstances and experiences described in this book are all drawn from
the authors work as an ADHD coach over the past fifteen years. The names and other
identifying characteristics of clients and their family members
have been changed to respect their privacy.

Some of the material in this book has appeared, in different format, in
Clinicians Guide to Adult ADHD Assessment and Intervention, edited by
Sam Goldstein and Anne Teeter Ellison (Academic Press, 2002).

www.stmartins.com

Book design by Mary A. Wirth

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35533-3
ISBN-10: 0-312-35533-5

First Edition: April 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

THIS BOOK IS IN MEMORY OF

My father
Clair William Young (8/30/19245/7/2004)

No matter what, you never lost hope, and you always believed in me.
Your determination and perseverance in helping me taught
me to never give up. Your spirit lives on!

My best friend
Cara Dunne-Yates (3/17/197010/20/2004)

Your immense love for life, laughter, and adventure was
a source of great strength and joy to me. You were the
ultimate teacher of how to live in the moment and
not sweat the small stuff. I miss you greatly.

My colleague in arms
Laura Whitworth, MCC (10/15/19472/28/2007)

Thank you for sharing a vision with me. We did it!
Your gift of being able to hold the space allowed me
to always keep my eye on the bigger picture
for that vision to grow.

I am blessed and humbled to do the work I do. To each and every one of my clients, thank you for letting me into your lives. It is an honor and privilege to have been part of your journey. Were it not for your courage to step forward, to put your trust in me, and to share your pain, struggles, and triumphs, there would be no book.

I especially thank those clients and colleagues who shared their insights with me as I planned and wrote this book.

Ned Hallowell, the field of ADHD coaching would not exist were it not for you. You saw the missing link, the way to fill the gap, to create a way for individuals with ADHD to live a more fulfilling life on a day-to-day basis. It was coaching.

Sue Sussman, I am forever indebted to you for opening the door and taking that leap of faith with me to create the National Coaching Network. It was your vision that breathed life into coaching. And to Bonnie Favorite, for helping to give shape and form to our initial training model so we could share coaching with the world, thank you.

Madelyn Griffith-Haynie and Eric Kohner, your pioneering efforts set the stage for ADHD coaching. Thank you for your tireless efforts and for helping to pave the way for coaching to become what it is today.

Also, thank you to ADDA and CHADD for your years of support for the concept of ADHD coaching.

There are many people who either directly or indirectly supported me in giving birth to this book. I thank each of you for your contributions. Thank you to Faith Hamlin, my agent; Sheila Curry Oakes, my editor at St. Martins Press; Whitney Barrows, my Sancho Panza; Sherry Lowry, a wonderful coach; Joe Blackmore, Gordon Curtis, Sam Goldstein, Jackie Grupe, Ben Hillyard, Pat and Peter Latham, Karen Lu, Theresa Maitland, Terry Matlen, Rich Mintzer, Kathleen Nadeau, Patty Quinn, Sally Snowman, Dean and Sari Solden, Robert Tudisco, and Renee Van Notten.

One of the most difficult aspects of writing this book was sustaining the energy it demanded, something that would have been insurmountable without the support, encouragement, and love of my family, friends, and colleagues. Thank you all for being there when I needed you and for contributing your memories, insights, and words.

The process of writing a book is difficult to explain. It certainly takes a lot out of the person writing it, but I think it takes an equal toll on the persons family. From Ohio, Michigan, and Brazil, mine reached out to me here in Boston on a regular basis, cheering me on. To each of you, I offer love and continued thanks for the encouragement you gave to me through it all.

I am eternally grateful to my mother, June Young, whose enduring love and support have been my wings. Thank you for teaching me to laugh and for laughing with me, still.

To my friend and writer, Maureen Ackerman, thank you for giving voice to my experiences and for letting your imagination and belief in possibility inform the pages of this book.

And to my husband, John, there are no words to express how much I appreciate your steadfastness. None of this would have been possible without your unwavering love, patience, support, and expertise. You teach me, always, what I love you means.

In the late 1980s, when Ned Hallowell and I were first refining our ideas about ADHD that led to our three Distraction books, we realized that when working with our adult ADHD patients, we were doing something different from simply exploring the past with these patients in an attempt to change their futures. We were doing neither classical psychotherapy nor basic diagnosis and drug treatment. Our work was different from therapy and could be done by someone who had enough training and awareness of what ADHD was all about. Ned coined the term ADD coachingwe called it ADD back thenand he wrote about this in Driven to Distraction.

About that time, Nancy and I married. I became aware that coaching was already happening in the treatment of dyslexia and that Nancy was a natural coach. She soon teamed up with Susan Sussman to combine their experiences and thoughts into a formalized curriculum to teach others how to coach adults with ADHD.

Since that time, I have come to understand and appreciate more about what ADHD is in the brain and what coaching offers in response to this type of brain difference. One of the biggest problems for patients with ADHD is that they cannot sustain the motivation to accomplish their goals, even when they have the talent and skill to do so. This fact generates many of the pejorative labels that those with ADHD accrue; they are seen as lazy, inept, and undependable. In brain lingo, the coach acts as an external frontal cortex of the left hemisphere, or specifically the executive functioning brain area, helping the individual to maintain arousal and remember motivation to succeed.

Most individuals with ADHD eventually learn that they need something to help them gain control over their lives, and those who come looking for help are, at various levels, ready to change. As a psychiatrist, I work with my patients on therapeutic issues, diagnosing and fine-tuning their medications. Often, however, as these issues are being worked on, some of the daily living issues persist. When patients are at the point of really wanting to tackle these issues and become masters of their own lives, they seek out the service of a coach to move forward on their own.