ADHD: Is Forgiveness Therapy?

Few ADHD adults I’ve spoken with over the years would say that they emerged from childhood unscathed, be it discipline or even outright abuse.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

Perhaps it’s because ADHD kids are so impulsive (it sure was my case as a child) that they get in trouble and often end up being punished — sometimes excessively or even inappropriately — for their misdeeds. Few ADHD adults I’ve spoken with over the years would say that they emerged from childhood unscathed, be it discipline or even outright abuse.

Sarah found a path to reclaiming and rebuilding her future that you may find useful.

From Sarah in Albany, NY:

When I was young my parents abused me. I don’t want to go into the details, but it was something that wasn’t very pretty.

When I was in my second year of college, I was depressed a lot and not having the best of relationships. So I decided to go see a therapist about it.

She got me talking about my parents, and all this stuff about them came out. She encouraged me to get angry at them, to scream about it, to cry. I called them up from her office and yelled at them, and they started crying and got really upset. This therapist told me that if I did all this, my life would get better.

I suppose there was some relief about not feeling so guilty, because when I called my parents they were apologetic about not being the world’s best parents, and didn’t deny some of the things they did that hurt me. But my life didn’t change. I was still down in the dumps. I looked at my girlfriends’ relationships with boys and wished I could find Mr. Right.

I went through two more years of therapy, visiting this woman every other week. My insurance paid for most of it, and I kept hoping that it would improve my life. I think one of the things about being ADHD is that we latch onto solutions and answers so quickly. Maybe it’s because I have such a short attention span that I don’t really critically think things through all the time.

Then I bought this book called Fire Your Shrink, by a psychothera­pist named Michele Weiner-Davis. In this book, the author said there wasn’t a single scientific study showing that when people immerse themselves in the pain of their past they get better. In fact, she said, it often makes them worse. And that was certainly my experience.

Ms. Weiner-Davis says that instead of being stuck in the past, we should pull together specific and do-able future goals, then visualize them and work toward them. I know that I’m wildly oversimplifying her book, but it really struck a chord with me.

I left that therapist and found another who was willing to work with me on future goals, instead of constantly revisiting my past. I started out by forgiving my father, and trying to rebuild my relationship with him and my mother.

And I’ve stopped looking for the things in my life — even my ADHD — that are pains and roadblocks and difficulties and excuses.

Instead I now look for the things within me that give me strength, the things I do well, and the things I want to do. I’ve improved a lot just through this change in direction, and in the past six months I’ve made some great strides.