What I’ve noticed through my work with adults is that while it’s generally easy to anticipate children’s needs through the year, there is no such system for adults. The cycle of the school year does not govern adult lives, and without that structure and planning and anticipating adults’ needs is difficult.
This article is for all the adults who need a jumpstart – or a fresh start. What should you have in your life’s backpack? What skills are essential for you to live your best life? What can you put in your back pocket to ensure that you are prepared for the worst and for the best that life has to offer?
Organization
A lot of people have it completely together, and a lot of people really don’t! What do you need to have it together? Well, first you need to understand what is making it difficult for you to be organized. Do you attempt to be organized and fail? Is it possible that you have Executive Function Disorder (EFD)?
First, you need to understand what EFD means. Experts on Executive Function Disorder Peg Dawson and Richard Guare explain:
Executive skills allow us to organize our behavior over time and override immediate demands in favor of longer-term goals. Through the use of these skills we can plan and organize activities, sustain attention, and persist to complete a task. Executive skills enable us to manage our emotions and monitor our thoughts in order to work more efficiently and effectively. Simply stated, these skills help us to regulate our behavior.
Among the individual skills that allow people to self-regulate are:
Planning: the ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal. This also includes the ability to focus only on what is important.
Organization: the ability to keep track of multiple sets of information and materials.
Time management: the ability to understand how much time one has, and to figure out how to divide it in order to meet a goal.
Working memory: the ability to hold information in mind even while performing other tasks.
Metacognition: the ability to self-monitor and recognize when you are doing something poorly or well.
Response inhibition: the ability to think before you speak or act.
Sustained attention: the ability to attend to a situation or task in spite of distraction, fatigue or boredom.
People who suffer from Executive Function Disorder lack many of these abilities. This can lead to persistent lateness, impulsive behavior, and the inability to complete any task completely.
What can you put in your backpack?
List-making tool. Digital or otherwise, making lists and sticking to them can help you stay on track!
Planner. Understanding the day, week, and month ahead is an important step in organization.
Timer. Keep yourself on pace!
Frequent scheduled breaks. Everyone needs a break, but people with EFD need them more frequently in order to stay on task.
Focus
Many parents in my office do not realize they have ADHD until they bring their child in for an evaluation. On occasion, after a child has finished testing, a parent will ask to speak to me without the child present and explain that through the child’s testing, he or she realized that he or she shares many of the same symptoms. It is only then that the parent realizes that perhaps his or her inability to keep track of all the different elements of his complex life have nothing to do with her intentions and everything to do with ADHD. Together, we then work out a plan to combat the disorder and add some order.
For adults, there are many issues that coincide with undiagnosed ADHD:
Anxiety and depression. Many women experience anxiety or depression as a result of ADHD. They do not understand why they cannot just concentrate and function the way the rest of the world seems to function.
Obesity and eating disorders. Research has correlated women with ADHD and a higher chance of being overweight or having an eating disorder. Since organization is used to plan a healthy diet and make time to exercise regularly, women with undiagnosed ADHD tend to grab quick meals or look to food to provide comfort from their other symptoms.
Addictions. Both men and women with ADHD are at a higher risk for harmful addictions such as substance abuse or gambling. This is because of weaker impulse control.
What can you put in your backpack?
Diagnosis. This can help you understand yourself and your needs!
Education. Learn as much as you can about ADHD. The more you know, the more you can control.
Fidget. Find an inconspicuous item that you can fidget with. This will help you focus.
Exercise. Exercise focuses your body and your brain.
Calm
Do you feel like you’re always angry? Always worrying? Anger and irritability are symptoms that professionals look for to diagnose people with anxiety disorders. There are many ways that anger and anxiety can be linked: you can feel anxious that you cannot control your anger, you can feel angry that things are constantly going wrong and therefore anxious for the future, and you may have a hard time getting angry because your anxiety has made you helpless.
On that note, a recent study in Cognitive Behavior Therapy journal found that “when a situation is ambiguous, such that the outcome could be good or bad, anxious individuals tend to assume the worst. That often results in heightened anxiety. There is also evidence of that same thought process in individuals who are easily angered. Therefore, anger and GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) may be two manifestations of the same biased thought process.”
Anxiety and anger share many physical symptoms: shakiness, heated face and hands, headaches, and pounding hearts. Often, if we can figure out the source of either our anxiety or our anger, we can solve both in one fell sweep. But, before you figure out the source, how can you calm yourself in the moment?
What can you put in your backpack?
Deep breathing. Deep breathing can calm you whether you are angry or anxious. Learn the technique.
More exercise. If you’ve already put exercise in your backpack for focus, put some more in for calm!
Mindfulness. Pay attention to the way you are feeling and your reactions to those around you. This will help you stay in control.
Express yourself. Say it, write it, or draw it, all in respectful ways. This will help you maintain calm.
If you’re an adult who would like to get the year started on right foot – with organization, focus, and calm – work on packing the right skills into your life backpack.
Register now for an anger management workshop by Dr. Ross Greene on November 14, 2017. Please call Mrs. Schonfeld at 718-382-5437 for more information.