SUCCESS AND RESILIENCE IN ADULTS WITH ADHD
The following is a summary of an article, which appeared in the ADHD Report edited by Russell Barkley and Associates. This article appeared in the August 2001 issue. The author of the article is Paul J. Gerber, Ph.D.
This article looks at the factors that contribute to the success and resilience of adults with learning disabilities and ADHD.
There has been individuals suspected of having LD or ADHD in the past that are very successful, such as Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. This article looks at living examples of successful people who have LD/ADHD and identifies the commonalities they have that contribute to their success.
The implication here is simple, develop these traits yourself or encourage the development of these traits in your child and you will improve the odds of success.
This is the main element in the success of these individuals. The more the person takes control of his or her life the higher the odds of success. What does control mean? It means; "making conscious and well grounded decisions to take charge of one’s life." Control involves two separate themes. First is internal decision making and second is adaptability or external manifestations.
This component has three subgroups.
The first important piece is desire. The individual must have the desire to succeed. Desire is important because individuals with ADHD have many hurdles to overcome throughout their life. Desire is developed through a predisposition, motivation or anger. Sometimes it is developed as a result of a critical incident in childhood sometimes called a turning point experience. Someone in this position might say, "I decided to show everyone that I could do it."
The second important element is goal orientation. The successful person with ADHD consciously set goals for themselves. They used these goals to help keep themselves on track, to set additional goals, and to evaluate their failures when things didn’t go as planned.
Reframing is perhaps the most important of the three pieces to internal decision making. Reframing is the process of reinterpreting an ADHD experience in a positive or productive manner. The four steps in reframing are: recognizing that you have a problem (e.g. ADHD); understanding the nature of the disorder (e.g. via education) and that it affects many aspects of life; acceptance of the disability, understanding the limitations that exist and mourning the reality of these limitations and finally having a plan of action that takes into account strengths and weaknesses.
There are four subgroups in the adaptability or external manifestations portion of this model of success. They are 1) persistence, 2) goodness of fit or finding your "islands of competence", 3) learned creativity, and 4) social ecologies or developing protective factors.