What To Do When Your Therapist Doesn't Know Adult ADD

I had an interesting conversation with a coaching client this week. It seems that her therapist sometimes over analyzes typical ADD challenges, and suggests an "out there" interpretation.

I've heard of this happening to many people. Here are a few examples that have been told to me by clients and friends:

• Getting lost on the way to the first appointment and getting there late turned into a case of "There is a reason why you don't want to be here. What are you afraid of?"
• Forgetting the scheduled appointment time and calling to double check turned into "You don't value this process."
• Problems hyperfocusing interpreted as "the inner child struggling with the inner parent."

Let me be clear: I don't want to knock therapy or therapists. I am a HUGE fan of therapy and I wouldn't be who I am today without it. I have been fortunate enough to have had the support of some really wonderful and gifted therapists in my life and will be forever grateful.

I also believe that ADD coaching clients often benefit from having spent some time with a good therapist. The coaching process seems to progress much more smoothly when a client can relay what they've learned about themselves in therapy, and use this knowledge and awareness as they work towards achieving goals.

However, a therapist I used to see (she's mentioned in the Introduction of my book) used to say, "Anyone can get trained and hang up their sign. It doesn't mean they know what they're doing." This, of course, is true for not only therapists, but for coaches, plumbers, hair stylists, doctors, and anyone else.

I have had a few clients who have definitely worked with these "anyone can hang up their sign" therapists, and it's usually quite obvious to the client that the therapist is less than ideal. (I had a friend who saw a therapist for a few sessions and the therapist tried desperately to relate every problem--from stress at work to a fear of clowns--to suppressed memories of sexual abuse. It didn't take my friend long to find a new therapist, who had no such suspicions.)

More often than not, however, the therapist means well and is doing exactly what they were trained to do...but has little or no knowledge of adult ADD. So to the therapist, common ADD challenges look like something else entirely, especially when common suggestions and solutions don't work.

Case in point: being late to appointments. I manage to be on time for my own client appointments, but when it comes to my personal appointments, I am almost always 5 minutes late. It doesn't matter if I'm on my way to the store or catching a train. Hell, I'm often late when leaving for vacation! If a therapist looked at my being 5 minutes late to our appointments as a sign of my not being committed to the process, they'd be flat out wrong, since I'm 5 minutes late to many things! The issue is not my commitment, it's actually the way I manage my time. (Incidentally, I'm usually not concerned about being 5 minutes late. I'd rather be 5 minutes late than stress out. And I don't expect anyone to go over the scheduled appointment time because I was late.)

Therapists are a lot like GPs (family doctors, general practitioners) in that they are trained on a broad array of topics. They may have an area of specialty, but they can't be experts in everything. As a result, you may find yourself working with a really good therapist who you genuinely like and find helpful, but who has little knowledge of adult ADD. And if this is the case, then it's your job to educate your therapist.

This can be done easily and tactfully by recommending a book on adult ADD (Ned Hallowell's Delivered from Distraction or Sari Solden's Women with ADD would be good choices), by printing out an article or two on your specific ADD challenges, or simply sharing what you know from your own research. A good therapist will be open to learning more.

And if you're just starting to look into working with a therapist, then by all means try to choose one who knows about adult ADD! The More Resources page on the ADD Management Group website provides links to professional service directories in which you can search for a therapist in your area.

The bottom line is that when you're working with a therapist to ensure good mental health, make sure that you like, respect, and trust that person.

I'd love to hear about your experiences! Have you had any really great therapists who have helped you work through your ADD challenges? Any stories of bad experiences? Any therapists out there want to weigh in?  NOTE: Please do not mention anyone by name. I'd love to hear from all of you - please share your thoughts in the comments field.

Want to learn more about taking care of yourself to manage adult ADD? Then check out Chapter 1 in my book, Odd One Out: The Maverick's Guide to Adult ADD.

Comments

[ADD-Libber]

I had a very good therapist, but she knew little to nothing about ADD. I started seeing her for other issues, and discovered on my own that I had ADD. She referred me to a psychiatrist. According to him, I had ADD "off the charts". I benefitted from medication immediately.

After my diagnosis, my therapist and I rarely discussed my ADD. A lot of that had to do with me. I knew that she didn't know much about it, so why talk about it? I had other issues to deal with :-)

I then discovered that, in most cases, I couldn't separate the issues from the ADD. For example, the reason I can't pry myself from surfing the Web is because it keeps my brain engaged. It's not because I'm rebelling against my parents for being a responsible teenager back in the day!

I decided to end therapy recently, largely because of the diminishing returns. My time there substantially improved my life. But now I feel it's time to take action and reduce the navel-gazing.

[Robert Besaw]

I have a therapist that I started with last year but after a few sessions stopped going. It wasn't a personal reason, but he felt I wasn't committed to working with him. That wasn't the case, I was just always getting caught up and the 30 minute drive was killing me.

Since being diagnosed and reading both of Dr. Halloway's books I understand much more. I saw this therapist recently again and told him about it and he was fascinated by this. It was his suggestion before that I might be AD/HD that partly motivated me to talking to a psychiatrist.

On our last consult I got the impression from his questions that I really did understand more about it than he did, but he's trying to educate himself as he suspects some of his other clients issues could be related to this.