The ADHD Brain: The Hardware and the Software

Effective management of anything begins with understanding how it works. The physical brain (gray matter, chemicals, etc.) and the mindful brain (thoughts, beliefs, and what we pay attention to) are different and must be managed both separately and together because what impacts one impacts the other.

David Giwerc, founder and owner of the ADD Coaching Academy (www.addca.com), puts it best with his alliteration, Machine (brain), Mind (beliefs), and Mission (Machine and Mind working in harmony). The Machine and the Mind must work in harmony in order to achieve the mission. Let’s look at each component of the Machine, Mind, and Mission to understand more.

The Machine is the gray matter, the chemicals, the synapses, the electricity of the physical brain. For us to perform at our best, the physical part of the brain needs to run optimally. A variety of things can impact the physical functioning of the brain, including but not limited to exercise, sleep, nutrition, illness, chemical imbalance, medication (social, over-the-counter, prescription, and illegal), and environmental inputs.

If any one of these is negatively impacting your physical brain, then performance and the ability to achieve your mission is compromised. This is why it is so important for those with ADHD to be obsessed with self-care, getting adequate sleep, eating the right foods, getting proper exercise, and avoiding extreme environments.

The mindful brain is made up of intangible thoughts, beliefs, views, perceptions, or what I call filters. What impacts the mindful brain is a function of interest and what the mind chooses to pay attention to. Simply, you can choose to pay attention to what you can’t do, or you can choose to pay attention to what you can do. Same goes for judgments. You can choose to listen to others tell you what you can’t do, or you can listen to those telling you what you can do. A personal example is this.

When I was in high school, my learning disability and dyslexia negatively impacted my grades. I was told I would not be able to get into any college, let alone a good one. Rather than dwell on this, I paid attention to what I could do, which was swim. Being a nationally ranked swimmer afforded me the opportunity to attend Indiana University. As a student athlete, I was afforded an unlimited number of tutors. Knowing that I could take advantage of this benefit, I did, and I graduated. I accomplished my mission by paying attention to what I could do—not what I couldn’t.

To segue into Mission, I frequently talk to those with ADD who say they have tried ADD medications which either didn’t do any good or quit working. Their comments don’t surprise me, because if the Machine and the Mind are not working together, the Mission can’t be accomplished. You see, ADD medications impact the physical brain. They change the chemical makeup and alter functioning.

Medications have no impact on the thoughts or beliefs of the mindful brain. Put more simply, the medications impact ADD symptoms, but they don’t teach you to get organized. If the Mission is to get organized, the Machine and the Mind must work in harmony! When it comes to ADD, scientific evidence supports this. The most effective treatments are multimodal, which combine medications with other behavioral work that addresses the mindful brain.

One thing that is important to point out is that an ADD-er’s solution is typically only obvious to the ADD-er after finding it. Let me illustrate with another personal example. While I was in college, one mission I had was to write a few research papers. Again, my disabilities got in the way because the volume of reading was a challenge.

In order to achieve my mission, I paid attention to what I can do—and I like to talk. Thus, my not-so-obvious solution was to find and interview either an expert on my topic or the author of a book on my topic. In this instance, I paid attention to my mindful brain and what I could do. Since, as a swimmer, I was taking care of my physical brain with sleep, daily exercise, and nutrition, I achieved my mission, wrote the papers, and graduated with my BS in public affairs.

The takeaway here for ADD-ers is this. The means by which you achieve your mission might not be obvious to you or anyone else before you start, but if you let your mindful brain pay attention to what it can do, and if your physical brain is working optimally, you can find a way to achieve what you intend!

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so please add your comments or experiences below.