ADHD: How Monica in Florida Found an Anchor in the Sea of Life
ADHD: How Monica in Florida Found an Anchor in the Sea of Life
Monica tells her story about how her faith helps her stabilize her ADHD life
One of the comments I’ve heard repeatedly at ADHD conferences around the world is that many people diagnosed with ADHD also consider themselves deeply spiritual. Many have rejected organized religion; others have embraced it. Monica tells her story about how her Catholic faith helps her stabilize her ADHD life:
Monica in Florida found an anchor in the sea of life:
I think one of the big problems for those of us with ADHD, particularly women, but maybe men, too, is that we feel adrift so often. We don’t know what we want, we can’t make up our minds, we’re always changing our goals.
My life has always been like that. Only recently I’ve realized that it was ADHD causing it, and now I’m trying to do something about it.
But the reason I’m writing is to tell you about the one thing that has helped me through all those years when I had no idea what was going on with me, and didn’t know anything about my ADHD. That was my spiritual life.
When I was a child, I was raised Catholic. As a teenager, I rebelled against that, and declared myself an agnostic. In college, I checked out the Quakers and the Unitarians. Now I’m back with the Catholic church, although I don’t imagine that’s for everybody.
My recommendation, though, is that people with ADHD secure an anchor in their lives. I think that something that’s a greater and more powerful force than us, something we can put ourselves in the hands of, is the best anchor. For me that’s my relationship with God, Jesus Christ, and the Church.
I think that whether a person’s Jewish, Muslim, or whatever, they should practice their religion. I even know people who are atheists, or animal rights activists, or into politics, who have made that into their religion, and that’s probably ok, too. At least they know what they believe, and are anchored in something
I thank God that my parents took me to church as a child, because it’s been the constant and stable thing in my life, all through my life. I encourage you to tell people to take their kids to church, or to say bedtime prayers with their children, or to go to church themselves, or to practice some sort of religion at home. I think it’s one of the best things or those of us with ADHD who are so easily cast adrift in the sea of life.
Contemplative traditions and practices are a useful antidote to fragmented attention. Some Buddhist traditions, owing to South Asia origins, even have a name for ADHD as the “monkey brain.” The analogy is thinking of the mind as a monkey swinging from tree to tree.
What I learned to look for in contemplative practices are several aspects.
• Is there a connection to and appreciation of nature?
• Is there a supportive human relational structure that is caring and not manipulative?
• Is there an underlying care based ethos such as the South Asian idea of “Ahimsa”?
• Does the tradition avoid claiming what it cannot deliver, such as being all knowing about the universe?
For those interested I highly recommend Deepak Chopra’s book or audio book “The Future of God. A Practical Approach to Spirituality for Our Times.” In this book Chopra’s thesis is that spirituality should be about reliable knowledge about high reality. The book has some very helpful perspectives.