Meditation & ADHD: An unexpected (but worthwhile) match

While that can be a fitting enough illustration, ADHD can show up in a variety of ways, and at different stages of life. It’s caused by differences in the brain impacting executive functioning skills such as concentration, impulsiveness, attention, memory, and more. For me, it wasn’t until midlife that my symptoms became impossible to ignore. Though I’d been a disorganized daydreamer as a child, like many girls with ADHD, I slipped under the radar, squeaking by in school. But as the decades piled up, my life became busier, and my responsibilities more diversified. With two kids, a husband, a home, and a career, I have a lot to juggle. And I fumbled much of it. Our house was always a disaster, with trails of toys, crumbs, and mail strewn everywhere. Seemingly simple tasks like packing the kids’ lunches for school, or getting ready for a trip to the beach felt impossible. I lost my patience often over simple things like both of my kids talking to me at the same time. The memoir I’d wanted to write for years smoldered on the proverbial back burner, somewhere underneath the laundry and vacuuming.

It wasn’t just that I couldn’t focus. Overwhelm was the central, pulsing theme of my life. Once I discovered that the swirl of challenging traits I was struggling with were connected, convening beneath the umbrella of ADHD brain wiring, I set about understanding my new label. Besides medication, the treatment method I continued to discover was mindfulness. “ADHD is really a holistic disorder because it can affect the whole person and so many aspects of their life,” says Dr. Lidia Zylowska, psychiatrist and author of “The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD: An 8-Step Program for Strengthening Attention, Managing Emotions, and Achieving Your Goals.” Zylowska adds, “mindfulness can help in this holistic way as well, so it’s a good fit.” As a student of psychiatry, Zylowska was interested in helping adults with ADHD hone a greater awareness of their symptoms. When she encountered Jon Kabat-Zinn’s model for Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, something clicked for her. “Mindfulness seemed like a great fit for treating ADHD,” she says. Of course, the idea of sitting for long periods of time watching the mind may be intimidating for those who experience ADHD. “The key is to make the challenge not too big. I set out to adapt existing mindfulness programs to be user-friendly for those with ADHD,” says Zylowska. Despite the challenges, she’s found that incorporating mindfulness can help address some of the problem areas that plague people with ADHD.

“Mindfulness can help with awareness of attention and emotional regulation. It can also help with choosing your actions, modulating your stress levels, and can really improve with how you’re showing up in relationships and communicating with others,” says Zylowska, noting that these are all areas that can be negatively impacted by ADHD. “Mindfulness can help a person where their area of struggle is.” Zylowska recommends several different ways to get started for those of us who find sustained periods of sitting meditation to be too overwhelming.