Mindfulness and ADHD: Peace of mind through focus
ADHD is a mental illness that makes it difficult to focus your attention on one thing for an extended period of time. Mindfulness actually helps you focus better. Mindfulness and ADHD can therefore be a good combination. There are four types of ADHD so not all people with ADHD can be lumped together. ADHD can sometimes be recognized by physical agility, for example, motor skills are less predictable as well as thoughts. Another way ADHD can be recognized is by inner restlessness and impulsiveness. People with ADHD are very sensitive to stimuli, but if these are lacking, they may seek out stimuli.
To ensure that you suffer less from ADHD, in this article I will discuss the benefits that mindfulness has for people with ADHD.
Mindfulness against ADHD for adults
ADHD is often thought to be a childhood illness that goes away during adolescence. Yet 60% of children with ADHD continue to suffer from this mental disorder even as adults.
This can make life difficult. For example, it can be hard to hold down a job for an extended period, form relationships, and manage money responsibly. As a result, adults with ADHD may also experience other symptoms, such as anxiety and depression.
This is precisely why it is important to minimize the impact of ADHD on certain areas of your life.
Usually you get medication to be less affected by ADHD, but this is resisting more and more adults. I know some people with ADHD who only use their medication when they are doing something important, such as the tax return, but otherwise prefer to leave the medication alone.
Mindfulness is therefore increasingly being researched as an alternative to that medication. These studies have not been underway for long, but the results are already promising.
Mindfulness is a way of living to be able to deal with thoughts without having to respond to them directly. This can therefore have a great effect against impulsive actions in people with ADHD. In addition, you can experience moments of your life much more consciously, such as walking, eating and breathing, which makes you less guided by your thoughts and therefore less distracted and better able to deal with emotions.
Studies show that certain connections in the brain can change with mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation can even change neuro-activity in the brain and nervous system.
Mindfulness meditation and ADHD
Mindfulness meditation is used for people with ADHD to increase awareness and control over their own behavior, thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness meditation exercises have three steps.
- Focusing attention on an anchor.
Usually, attention is focused on the breath. In cases of autism, for example, it can also be the soles of the feet.
- Becoming aware of distractions and renouncing them.
During meditation, it is normal for distracting thoughts to take place. You also learn how to distance yourself from these.
- Bringing attention back to the anchor.
For example, by recognizing that your thoughts are no longer with the breath or anchor and shifting your attention back to this.
These steps are repeated while learning mindfulness meditation until you can perform it yourself without reminder from the trainer.
In addition to mindfulness meditation, people with ADHD also learn to pay attention to what they give their attention to. This is done, for example, by pausing several times a day to reflect on the moment and the thoughts they are having at that moment.
This involves first alerting you to the fact that you need to take a moment to review what you are currently doing, this can be done, for example, with a mindfulness bell that rings like an alarm. Then you orient yourself to what you are doing and what you are thinking about. This may also reveal that your attention is not in the here and now and whether your thoughts are in line with what you are doing.
If you then find that this does not align, you can use the technique of mindfulness meditation to shift your attention back to your activity which then acts as the attention anchor, as is breathing during mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness is also used to promote emotional stability in people with ADHD. During a mindfulness training session, you’ll learn how to use breathing exercises to reduce surging emotions and how to use relaxation techniques to better accept and process those emotions.
Ultimately, it is not a bad thing to be frustrated, angry, sad and so on. It is especially important to be able to give those emotions a place without becoming physically upset as a result. You then learn that avoiding that emotion or wallowing in that emotion is not the solution, but to observe the emotion and to be with it.
If the emotion becomes too intense, attention can also be shifted to breathing or the bottoms of your feet.
Previous studies show that these techniques can prevent relapses into depression and impulsive behavior in people with borderline issues.
Studies of people with ADHD show that these techniques help reduce ADHD symptoms in nearly 80 percent of participants.
In addition, it also reduced feelings of depression and anxiety among people with ADHD who participated in this study. This may be because the participants thought more positively about themselves and experienced negative emotions less frequently than before practicing mindfulness.
Mindfulness for children with ADHD
Research involving children up to age 12 shows that mindfulness meditation can improve the behavior of children with ADHD. Parents, in particular, report that mindfulness can help their children improve their behavior.
In addition, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children (MBCT-C)has been developed. This therapy is for children aged 9 to 13 with ADHD and is designed to strengthen emotional and social resilience. Attention problems in particular were reduced as a result. These attention problems in turn reduced emotional problems, such as anxiety. There was also a marginally significant relationship found between improving attention and that, as a result, behavior was also improved.
Researchers do say that mindfulness for children needs further study, but the results already seem promising.
The benefits of mindfulness have also been studied in adolescents. A study conducted among adolescents aged 11 to 15 found that mindfulness reduced attention and behavioral problems and that they were able to perform a task better than before practicing mindfulness. Unfortunately, this effect had disappeared after 4 months; however, this does show that mindfulness must be a way of life in order to have a long-term effect on adolescents who suffer from ADHD.
Mindfulness for parents of children with ADHD
As a parent of a child with ADHD, you may experience stress due to your child’s behavior and sometimes react overly sensitively to incidents. Research in which children learned mindfulness while their parents also learned mindfulness and practiced mindful parenting shows that this can reduce parental stress and also decrease any overly sensitive reactions to incidents.
However, according to the teachers, mindfulness had no effect on the children. Therefore, it seems that especially the home situation can be improved by applying mindfulness as a parent and child.
In addition, children with ADHD are more likely to disobey their parents than children without ADHD. This can also lead to many unpleasant situations. Often, medication and manipulative behavior are used in an attempt to improve this situation, but ultimately this does not benefit the child’s learning about self-control, and it can also disrupt the bond between parent and child.
Research already shows that if parents learn mindfulness and are mindful while interacting with their children, without a focus on reducing problematic behaviors, this can already improve parent-child interaction and the feeling that parenting is fun is also improved.
When parents and children learn mindfulness, it improves children's obedience. Not that your child turns into an angel all at once, but more so than they were. This effect was also sustained over time.
Research has also been conducted on mindful parenting in adolescents between the ages of 11 and 15. This showed that fathers experienced a reduction in stress, but were actually more likely to overreact to incidents. While mothers, on the other hand, were less likely to experience a hypersensitive reaction. So that complements each other nicely!
Would you like to learn more about how mindfulness can improve your life? Then check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands or attend a seminar.
Sources:
http://jad.sagepub.com/content/11/6/737.short
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-011-9457-0
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-009-9272-z
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-009-9301-y
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-011-9531-7