What Does an ADHD Psychologist Do and How Can They Help Me?
ADHD is a popular topic at the moment. Awareness over the condition has been building over the past couple of decades, but it seems to have exploded in the last two or so years in particular. It’s common for people to see a TikTok video on what it’s like to live with ADHD and resonate with this, or maybe have one of their loved ones diagnosed and reflect on themselves. Wanting to understand further, many people wonder; what does an ADHD psychologist in Melbourne do? How can psychology help me to live a balanced, enjoyable life?
So what is ADHD?
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD for short, is considered a neurodiverse condition. This means that the brains of people with ADHD operate a little differently to those who are ‘neurotypical’. Note, different does not mean ‘worse’, it just means different.
Traditionally, ADHD has been split into two subtypes; inattentive, and hyperactivity.
Inattentive
People with more of the inattentive subtype struggle with attention. Some examples are:
- Being more easily distracted
- Making lots of little mistakes, or being called ‘careless’
- Being forgetful or losing things
- Finding it hard to stick to tasks that are dull or tedious
- Having difficulty getting organised
Hyperactivity
People with more of the hyperactivity subtype struggle with being impulsive. Some examples are:
- Being fidgety, unable to sit still, or having a lot of energy
- Continually starting new tasks before finishing old ones
- Struggling with impatience
- Acting impulsively or without thinking things through, including behaviours like risky driving
Another key part of an ADHD diagnosis is that the difficulties affect multiple areas of life, since childhood. For example, across areas like school/study/work, and at home, and with friends. This means if you find work tasks really dull and struggle to get through them, but have no difficulties maintaining focus anywhere else in your life, it might be more likely that you just find work a bit boring!
Strengths
It’s important to note that like all neurodiverse conditions, there are many genuine strengths of having ADHD. A few ‘ADHD superpowers’ are:
- Compassion: having experienced struggles of their own, people with ADHD are often very compassionate and able to pick up on the struggles of others.
- Laser focus: whilst ADHDers might generally struggle with concentration, when they’re focussed on something they’re passionate about, they often have improved focus and efficiency over neurotypical people.
- Creativity and problem-solving: research has found that people with ADHD can be more creative and better at generating ideas (particularly ‘outside the box’ ideas).
What are the treatments?
Broadly, there are two main types of treatment for ADHD; medication and psychology.
Medication has a huge evidence base for helping with ADHD, due to the way that medication can stimulate activity in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for tasks such as attention and focus, organisation, prioritising, and regulating emotion. Giving a little boost to these areas is what medication for ADHD does best. Sometimes, getting the right medication might be all that person with ADHD needs. However, for the reasons listed below, many people also benefit from psychology support, at least at the beginning of treatment.
How can an ADHD psychologist help me?
Technically, there’s no such thing specifically as ‘an ADHD psychologist’. This is because psychologists are trained to work across many areas of health and wellbeing. However, psychologists can have a special interest in neurodiversity, and can help ADHDers in many ways.
Clarifying diagnosis
Firstly, if you’re wondering whether you might have ADHD, a psychologist can help explore this with you. As said above, plenty of ADHD symptoms are quite normal, but it’s the frequency and intensity of them that might be indicative of underlying neurodiversity. A psychologist can help you understand your experience, and support you to seek formal diagnosis if this is something you want to pursue.
Support with strategies
Whether or not you have a formal diagnosis, a psychologist can help you with strategies to manage symptoms. These can be quite varied, but include practical as well as cognitive strategies. Some examples include:
- Organisation and time management skills and budgeting
- Help establishing a routine
- Challenging unhelpful thoughts and self-criticism
- Managing procrastination
Treating related conditions
People who are neurodiverse are much more likely to also experience conditions like anxiety and depression. There are a number of reasons for this, including:
- Growing up neurodiverse in a neurotypical world can be difficult. Things that can seem effortless to others might take a lot more effort to someone who is neurodiverse. For example, getting organised with homework or completing tasks on time, or paying attention and staying focussed in class. It’s very common for neurodiverse adults who were not diagnosed as children to have grown up feeling like there was something wrong with them, or that they lacked some fundamental skill that others seem to have been handed out at birth. This can create negative core beliefs and automatic thoughts that affect self-esteem and self-worth as an adult.
- Untreated ADHD symptoms often cause stress. Struggling to pay bills on time, create a budget, or write a shopping list (and so end up buying random things at the shops), are all likely to increase anxiety and financial stress (read more here about spotting signs of stress).
- Struggling with routine. It’s common to struggle with setting and maintaining a solid routine, which can impact on your sleep cycle. Having poor sleep predisposes you to feeling more anxious, lower mood, irritability, and mood swings.
Likewise, people with a diagnosis of ADHD are also more likely to be diagnosed with other neurodiverse conditions, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), so psychologists can support these symptoms if needed as well.
An ADHD psychologist can support you as a whole person. This means understanding how neurodiversity affects you, both its struggles as well as its strengths, and upskilling you in areas that have previously been a challenge.
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You can read more on understanding ADHD at the ADHD Foundation Australia. If reading this makes you curious, we have many psychologists at Peaceful Mind Psychology who work with ADHD. Reach out to our admin team today to discuss booking in!