The New York Times – Health – Well – Exercising the Mind to Treat Attention Deficits – By DANIEL GOLEMAN – Published: May 12, 2014
Mental Muscle versus ADD.
Stimulant medications can be great, until they’re not. The bad news is not soft…it’s real: after a period, often 2-3 years, the medication stops helping the way it once did. Following the honeymoon period after beginning medication during which the ADD teen or adult finally has the pleasurable experience of finishing tasks, arriving on time, resisting impulses, when the friction the ADD behaviors cause at work, school and at home have become a stressful memory, the old behaviors creep in again. It’s discouraging, and leaves both the adolescents with ADD and those who care about them (or work with them) frustrated.
Daniel Goldman in his blog posits that mindfulness training for cognitive control is the solution. It remediates the weakness in that specific brain muscle that causes the difficulty. Remember the brain is a muscle, like the bicep. Strengthen the part of that muscle that’s not working as you need it to. Cognitive control feels good; it allows for the delay of gratification, impulse management, emotional self-regulation or self-control, the suppression of irrelevant thoughts, and paying attention or learning readiness. It’s the difference between feeling like you’re a sailboat being pushed around in the ocean wherever the wind is blowing (which can be exciting but exhausting, and lacking agency) and truly taking the helm, firm hands on the wheel.
Check out Mindfulness practices – the work by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Elisha Goldstein are particularly good.