ADHD medication not working? This could be why.

So one thing that I’m finding that is stopping people from getting the right dose when it comes to stimulant medication with ADHD, and this is with my ADHD coaching clients, if they talk too much about anxiety, their psychiatrists may not want to put them up to a level of medication that is going to help them with their ADHD symptoms.

Now, I’m not suggesting at all that you don’t talk to your psychiatrist about.

But what is important is to make sure that you think about how you’re going to talk about your ADHD symptoms. So the more you talk about feeling anxious and overwhelmed, the more they’re going to think, oh, maybe I shouldn’t give them more stimulants.

The problem is, is that the people that I’m talking to and what I’m hearing online and what I’ve heard experts say is that often when we’re on the right dose of stimulant, the anxiety settles. For most people, of course, I can’t generalise to everyone.

We need to think about framing our symptoms in terms of attention.

So giving examples. I find myself doing three things at once and I haven’t even noticed that I’m switching tasks. Drives me nuts, you know, always talking about how it’s impacting you and giving examples. I’m missing really important appointments and it’s affecting my finances.

The other one is hyperactivity. So I need to move in meetings and it’s really uncomfortable or I have this sense of restlessness. Or I’m pacing and it’s disturbing people at work.

OK. And the other one is impulsivity, so I’m spending money that I later regret doing. Impulse buyers.

So think about really concrete examples of your ADHD symptoms and not just general feelings of overwhelm.

Emotion regulation is not part of the ADHD diagnostic criteria or officially recognised symptoms, yet that’s a problem, so I hope this is really helpful.

And yeah, follow me for more info and please, any questions fire away, see you later.

Bye.