Author Archives: David Joel Miller

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About David Joel Miller

David Miller is a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Clinical Counselor, faculty member at a local college, certified trainer and writer.

Today is World Mental Health Day

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Mental Health or Mental Illness

Mental Health or Mental Illness?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Raising awareness of mental health issues.

Today is the official World Mental Health Day. Each year on October tenth a day is set aside to remind people about the importance of good Mental Health and Mental Wellness. World Mental Health Day is an initiative of the World Federation of Mental Health and is supported by WHO (World Health Organization.)

The theme for 2014 is “Living with schizophrenia”. Last year’s theme, 2013, was Mental Health and Older Adults.

In North America, Mental illness is the largest single health issue. Days of work lost and impairment in functioning as a result of mental illnesses exceeds the disability burden of both cardiovascular disease and cancer (WHO.)

Depression is the largest single cause of disability. The good news is that today the emphasis in the treatment of mental illness is on wellness and recovery. Many people who have had episodes of serious mental illnesses have gone on to have happy and productive lives.

Consider today how your life or the life of someone you know has been affected by a mental illness. What would it mean to you if you or someone close to you could recover from that condition? No one should have to face a mental illness alone. There is help available in many places. We hope that this day, World Mental Health Day will focus awareness on the need to do more to help those who are currently experiencing a mental illness.

Remember World Mental Health Day.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Learning to love yourself.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Feeling of love

Learning to love yourself.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

If you do not like yourself you make it hard for others to like you.

During the growing up process, you can accumulate a lot of negative attitudes towards yourself. Someone told you that you were less-than or not worthwhile and you may well have believed them. An important part of recovery is learning to like and eventually to love you.

Developing a healthy respect and appreciation for yourself does not mean that you get conceited. It does mean that this relationship you will have with yourself needs to be positive.

You will spend more time with you than with anyone else on earth. Wherever on earth, you go, when you sleep, you will wake up with you. Learning to like you is an important skill.

Work on being your own best friend and start treating yourself the way you would want your friends to treat you.

Here are some tips for becoming that best friend and learning to like you.

Make time to be with you.

Do not consider time alone downtime and go frantically searching for someone to be with or something to do. Learn to enjoy your own company. Take a walk, read a book, or just sit mindfully and meditate on nothing in particular. Enjoying your solitude can make interacting more enjoyable also.

Treat yourself the way you would want to be treated.

Do not abuse yourself physically or mentally. Do not call yourself names. Nurture yourself.  Ask yourself if you would treat your best friend this way. If the answer is no, don’t do that to yourself either.

Ask yourself questions and write those answers down.

When you first meet a new person you ask them lots of questions. Make up a list of the things you might ask a new acquaintance and then think about how you would answer those questions. Write the answers down and periodically look over those statements.

Explore who you are and how you became that person. For some, the best way to get reacquainted with themselves is to write out their autobiography. You do not need to have lived an extraordinary life to have had some extraordinarily interesting experiences. What are some of your life experiences? Where were you when an event in history happened? How did you feel when you heard about an important event?

Compliment yourself – recognize your achievements.

Make sure to give yourself compliments. Learn to recognize when you do something worthwhile and you will be less compliment starved when you are around others.

Knowing a list of the things you have done well can help offset those self-doubts that your life has not been enough and you have not done great enough things.

Inventory the ways you feel loved and then practice these things.

What things do others do for you that make you feel valued and loved? Practice doing these things for yourself. Becoming more self-loving opens up a place for you to express love and positive feelings for others.

Monitor your feelings and take action when needed.

Your feelings are just as valid and important as anyone else’s. Respect and honor those feelings. If you find yourself having an unexpected feeling find out what that is about.

Feelings and intuition can be powerful voices for good if you will just learn to listen to them.

Make meeting your needs a priority.

Getting your needs met should not be an afterthought. Learn to make your needs a priority.

Believe that you deserve to be loved and no one can do this better than you.

Work on experiencing love and on having plenty of it.

Take yourself on a date.

Do something nice for yourself. Travel; go to a movie or dinner alone. Do not look at this as being lonely but as carving out some time to be fully present with yourself.

Keep a list of the things you have accomplished in your life – no discounting.

Write down all the things you have accomplished in your life. Did you play a tree in the Second-grade play, write this down. Do not dismiss this as only a second-grade play. This was an accomplishment for the second grade you. Add up all those achievements and pull out that list for another look during times when you doubt yourself.

Keep a blessing or gratitude list.

Stop thinking that only the things others have matter and you don’t matter. Tell yourself that you have things others only dream of. Do you have a house? Do you have running water and electricity, even if it is just some of the time, this is more than some people have.

Has anyone ever loved you? Have you ever loved someone else? Be grateful for those experiences even if they had to end. Write this list of gratitude’s out and keep adding to it.

Love without strings – unconditionally.

Love as many people as you can as much as you can. Love does not mean being the victim. That is not love, it is bondage. Have you ever had a pet that loved you unconditionally? Look to this memory for a model of what unconditional love should look like.

Forgive yourself daily.

You may or may not be able to forgive others but make self-forgiveness a priority. We all live, we all make mistakes. Accept that this is part of being human and so is forgiving you.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

How to tame and train emotions and feelings.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Man with feelings

Managing feelings.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

3 step process for making feelings a part of your recovery.

There was a time, back in the Victorian days when feelings were suspect and the goal was to stop feeling and to think logically. This approach has resulted in feelings and intuition getting a bad name.

If you have struggled with an emotional or mental illness, say depression or anxiety, it is hard to keep in mind that in smaller doses that anxiety or sadness could have been your friend. A little bit of anxiety can keep you safe in dangerous situations. But if that anxiety beast has gotten unruly, you need to get them back to being well-behaved.

People who have abused substances, taken drugs or drank to help them be less anxious will find their emotions have gotten out of control like a house full of unruly children when the parents are away. Using alcohol to sleep or to not feel leaves you exhausted the next day and beyond.

Feelings can tell you things, provide you with the information you need if only you are willing to listen to them. If you grew up around others that did not pay attention to feelings, yours or theirs, or pretended they did not have feelings, you may be at a disadvantage when it comes to managing your emotions.

Learning to manage your emotions, feel what you need to feel but not let your emotions take over complete control of you requires you to develop a better relationship with your feelings.

Here are the three basic steps to learning to make peace with your emotions

Step One – Recognize that you are feeling.

Many people are accustomed to ignoring their emotions. Whether you are recovering from depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or any other life problem the first step to integrating feelings into your new recovered life is to become aware that you are feeling something.

Our bodies hold on to emotional feelings even when the mind is trying to ignore them. If you say that someone is a pain in the neck, check your neck. If your stomach is upset, look inside to see if there is someone or something “making you sick to your stomach.”

These body sensations are your nervous system’s way of telling you that something is wrong. Remember that you have lots of nerve cells outside your brain. One estimate places the number of nerve cells outside that brain at over fifty percent. You have nerve cells throughout your body for many reasons. One of those reasons is to convey information, especially emotional information, to the brain.

Learn to recognize that you are feeling something. Look for where in the body that feeling is staying. What physical sensations do you feel? Does this rev you up or shut you down.

Step Two – Name that feeling.

When you do not have a word for something it is more difficult to think about that item. To learn to make emotions your friends you need to learn their names. There is a lot of difference between being sad and being angry. Learn to recognize what you feel when you feel it and then name that feeling.

When you first enter a new field you do not have the vocabulary to talk about that field. New on a job you may find the old-timers see and react to things you had not noticed. As you get more familiar with things you learn their names and you respond more readily.

For an example of this take a look at my difficulties in understanding what a friend was talking about when I knew nothing about her area of interest. In this example, I could not remember or talk about something because I did not know enough about it to recognize it when I saw it.

What purple glass? Memory and the expert effect

Step Three – Apply your feeling change tools.

Once you recognize that you are feeling something, are able to describe where in your body you are feeling it, and then are able to name that feeling, you are well on your way to learning how to manage that feeling.

There are all sorts of feeling management tools. Many people are required to attend an anger management class because they never learned to follow these steps. If you just suddenly find yourself furiously angry then you are at a loss to know what to do about that anger once you have it. But if you learn to recognize that anger is coming on and how it is affecting you, there are all kinds of tools you can use to avoid excess anger and to manage that anger once it arrives.

Tools that are used for anger management work, most of the time, when they are applied to other feelings. One of the early stage feeling management tools is the process I have described above. Learn to recognize that you have feelings, identify what that feeling is, and then decide how you will respond.

Other emotional regulation tools include cognitive tools, changing your thinking and behavioral tools, physical things you can do to manage emotions. For more on tools to manage feelings look at other blog posts here on counselorssoapbox.com and keep an eye out for my book, in progress, which is nearing completion.

Move your feelings from out of control to friends.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Do you believe these happiness lies ?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Happy children

Happy.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Do you tell yourself happiness lies?

Most of us have some lies we tell ourselves every day. You may have been told these lies by others. Some are little ones and keep up hope. The big ones can make you miserable unless you face them.

When it comes to happiness lies a few of these critters can wreck your happiness. How many of these happiness lies do you tell?

Once X happens then I will be happy.

More money, a new relationship or finally reaching a goal all sound like things that should make you happy. The truth is more like, if you are not happy while traveling to this place, you will not be happy when you get there.

Learn to be happy while you are working to earn that money and then you can enjoy the happiness and the money. If you are miserable on the way to the money you will still be miserable when you arrive.

Once you become a success nothing bad will happen.

One thing people in recovery learn is that life keeps happening. You work hard on your issues and then life gets better. But then something else happens and things get tough again. Successful people still get sick. Their families break up and their children get in trouble.

Plenty of highly successful people develop addictions or get arrested. There is nothing out there you can get that grantee’s permanent happiness unless maybe that thing is a proper attitude towards life.

Life is fair or someone should make it fair.

Life is not always fair. Bad things happen to good people. No one can make life be fair. What you can do is learn the skills to get through hard times and how to keep a positive attitude when things look darkest.

There is something you can do to guarantee safety.

You can be constantly on the lookout for danger and still it can overtake you. It is reasonable to take precautions and watch out for danger, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that there are things you can do that will assure your safety. Insurance does not stop accidents it just pays you money to compensate for your losses. Excessive worry about what might happen robes you of the happy moment now.

Not taking chances will keep you safe.

Everything in life requires a measure of risk. Apply for a job and you may not get it. Avoid falling in love and you will not have to go through a break-up. You will also never know the joys of being in love.

If you want to have the good you need to accept the risk of things not always going the way you want them to.

You are or should be in control of everything.

The great illusion of control takes many forms. One is the belief that if you work hard enough and insist loudly enough you can get control over everything and everyone in your life.

No one ever has control of life. It rains whether you want it to or not. Weather happens. People in your family get sick whether you eat the right foods or not. No matter how hard you try to control your children some of them will turn out well and some will not.

You are in control of anything.

No matter what thing you believe you have reduced to your control that control is probably temporary. The only thing that may, in fact, yield to your control is your attitude towards the uncontrollable.

You are not good enough.

You are plenty good enough. We all can do better but do not tell yourself that the fault is that you are inherently defective. This belief is just a sneaky way of letting yourself off the hook and allowing you to stop trying.

The whole world is no good.

There are good people and bad people. Sometimes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. Things keep changing. There is good all around if you look for it. The most beautiful flower may have some dead leaves. Even a weed can have beautiful blooms.

Believe in your worthwhileness and accept yourself scars and all.

The future will never be any better.

There will always be another tomorrow. Some of those will be better and some few may be worse. Do not create a negative future by only looking for the defective. You will find what you are seeking but only if you believe that happiness is out there just waiting for you to find it.

You are the only one with this problem or issue.

Hang out in any recovery program and you begin to swear those people were following you around recording your story. Troubles seem to come at one point or another to most of us. Listen to the ways in which others have struggled and you may decide that you are not so different from others.

You should not have to tell others what you need.

People stay hungry or unloved because they don’t talk up. No matter how hard you try you will not always know what others around you need and want. They will not be able to read your mind. Give yourself permission to ask for what you need. Telling those in your support system what your needs are, helps them to be able to feel the joy of knowing how to help you.

You can’t take any more or can’t stand this situation.

If you say you can’t – you won’t. Most of us can take more than we think. Tell yourself that this too shall pass and much more becomes bearable. If your situation is intolerable take action to change it. Can’t change all of your life obstacles? Work on the changes you can make first and then reevaluate.

Your happiness depends on people, places, or things.

Happiness is an inside job. You can be happy no matter where you are if you permit it. You may wish things were different. You might prefer them to be different, but your ability to find happiness does not depend on having the right things or places in your life. No matter how much you miss someone who was in your life and is now gone out of it, do not let that absence rob you of the good times that you had. Do not let the loss of one person cheat you out of the relationship with the other people who could enrich your life.

Some other posts on finding and keeping a happy life are listed below

5 mandatory skills for a happy healthy life

16 Ways to create a happy life

17 Habits of unhappy people

Pretending to be happy?

How to be Happy

Find out the truth about happiness and stop telling happiness lies.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

What causes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – ADHD?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Sad child

ADHD?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What do were really know about who gets ADHD and why?

Developmental Psychopathology is the discipline that studies why one person gets a mental illness and another does not. This discipline also looks at how a disorder develops over a lifetime. Developmental psychopathology has a lot to tell us about who gets ADHD and why.

The picture, when it comes to ADHD and most other disorders is not as clear as we would wish. With all the people currently taking meds for ADHD, you would think that professionals would know what ADHD was and what was causing it.

Both of these questions are fuzzy.

Developmental psychopathology tells us that there are two primary ways of behaving. Some people internalize and hold it all in. They are prone to depression and anxiety.

Other people externalize and let it all out. They are likely to get in trouble, get labeled oppositional defiant, conduct disordered, or even anti-social.

People with ADHD may internalize, externalize, or do both.

What we call ADHD is in essence three different problems and those problems can occur in multiple combinations. First the three problems and then the possible causes.

1. Impulsivity – poor behavioral inhibition is the defining characteristic.

Poor impulse control is a prominent feature of most children. It also affects many adults both with and without ADHD. So if you find it hard to control your impulses you are at risk of getting an ADHD diagnosis.

This makes ADHD hard to differentiate from bad behavior or criminal behavior for that matter. Some have argued that most people in prison are there because they have ADHD. I find that hard to believe.

But when we see the way addicts and alcoholics struggle to not drink and use, then that feature of loss of behavioral control seems to fit a lot of socially unacceptable behavior.

Impulsivity looks a lot like acting out or externalizing behavior.

2. Inattention.

Paying attention, in my view, is a skill that people can learn or improve. We believe, partly based on the existence of the ADHD diagnosis, that there are some people who have difficulty focusing their attention when they try to do that.

Impulsive people have more difficulty sustaining their attention because they keep getting distracted by other things that catch their attention.

Inattention or impaired ability to sustain attention is a characteristic of internalizing disorders. When you are depressed you can’t pay attention. Neither can the anxious person. So professionals need to be very careful to not call depression or anxiety by the wrong name – ADHD.

3. Hyperactivity.

This is a problematic criterion some of the time. What is hyper or excessive activity is in the eye of the beholder. The child who will not sit still in class looks hyperactive when they are in class. The child who sits quietly in their seat looks normal.

But put these two children out on the soccer field and the child that sits down and watches rather than plays looks underactive and the child that runs after the ball for long periods of time, they become the star player.

Increase the amount of exercise and the child that is hyperactive may calm down and sit still. This running to cure ADHD is the precise opposite of the fall-behind-in-your-work and you lose your recess approach.

All three of these factors, poor inhibition of impulses, inattention, and hyperactivity can occur in varying amounts and combinations in any one person. This makes us wonder about the causes of ADHD.

Is there one cause of ADHD or many?

A number of things have been identified as risk factors for ADHD.

There are also ADHD protective factors.

1. Genetics play a role in who gets ADHD.

Up to 75% of the risk of getting ADHD can be accounted for by various genetic factors. Wish this explained something. There are at least 7 different genetic mutations affecting two different neurotransmitter systems that increase the risk. These 7 genes in all the possible combinations result in up to 5,000 different combinations of genes that may increase the risk. But this risk factor does not guarantee you get ADHD and there are other risks and protective factors.

These genes are not specific to ADHD so they may be causing other mental illness and these illnesses may be risks for ADHD.

2. Environment, especially parenting, is a risk factor that may explain the other 25% of ADHD.

For most people parents provide both genetics and environment which makes it hard to disentangle the effects of the two.

One thing we find that helps solve this puzzle is that if a parent has two of the symptoms of ADHD, say dad has ADHD and is inattentive and impulsive, there is a high chance that his son will not only have ADHD but will also be inattentive and impulsive.

The children of parents that have ADHD have a high incidence of the same form of ADHD the parent had.

Things would be simpler if people had one and only one disorder. But most people with ADHD have two, three, or more.

Almost half of all children with ADHD also have a diagnosis of Anxiety disorder. This complicates treatment for children with ADHD. In adults, one thing we are told to recommend to our clients is to reduce their intake of caffeine and other stimulants, like amphetamine. But for kids with ADHD and anxiety disorder, the treatment is to put them on a prescribed amphetamine.

I find this confusing. If it makes you wonder, talk with your prescribing psychiatrist about your or your child’s meds. (Yes there are non-stimulant ADHD meds but they do not get prescribed all that often.) Side effects of prescribed medications can look like a mental illness. If you have confusion, depression, or anxiety and are taking prescribed medication discuss your emotional problems with your doctor and see if your meds could be causing some of your symptoms.

A second disorder that coexists with childhood ADHD is substance use or abuse disorder. Occasionally the ADHD child is doing drugs but a lot of the time it is mom that is on drugs and this increases the risk of the child having ADHD even if mom does not start drugs until after the child is born. Yes having a mother who is using increases childhood ADHD.

Having a depressed or anxious mother also is a risk factor for developing ADHD.

There have been even more studies on dad than mom in the ADHD area. If dad had any acting out problems as a child there is at high risk that the child, boy or girl, will also act out and get in trouble at school and with the law.

We do know that the ability to pay attention develops over time and that there are ways to increase your ability to pay attention other than taking meds. It also appears that the brain circuits that control attention also overlap those for emotional regulation. More on these topics in posts to come.

Did that help explain ADHD and its possible causes?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Top Ten Life mistakes you need to avoid.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Mistakes and errors

Mistakes.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Top ten life mistakes to avoid.

When you are rushing through life there are things that look important and things that look like you can put them off. Eventually, you need to stop and take another look at your life. Avoid these life mistakes if you can. If you have already made some of these changes and do better. There is no time like the present to improve your life in these areas.

1. Do not live your life for someone else.

A well-lived life is lived by doing the things that you want to do. There is nothing wrong with a life of service, service to God, or to your fellow-man. Just make sure you are doing this because it brings you joy.

Do not waste time being and doing what a parent, friend, or partner wanted from life unless that is truly what you wanted also. Live in a way that leaves few or no regrets.

2. Don’t put your dreams on hold till someday.

Someday never comes. It is always today. Live each day the best you can. Do not delude yourself that someday you will do this or that. Enjoy the trip from here to there. If you live your life off in someday you will miss out on today.

Keep working towards realizing your dreams. Small steps taken one after another keep you moving in the right direction.

3. Never rush into relationships.

Do not think that you need to settle for someone who will accept your love. Look for someone you can love who will love you back over the long haul. Do not settle for Mr. or Miss Good enough.

Take your time getting to know people. Invest your time in positive relationships. Some people will be friends for the moment and some will be friends through the ups and downs of life.

4. Do not rush out of relationships.

Do not believe that the problems in a relationship are faults that always are caused by the other person. Change partners and you change problems. Every friend comes with defects of character. Think carefully about which of the problems in the relationship are because of things about the other person you can’t accept. Which of your relationship problems are about you?

Hang in there and work on your ability to create a good relationship until you become totally convinced that there is no way to make this relationship work.

5. Stop thinking that things equal happiness.

Twenty years from now your children will remember the things you did together more than the things you paid for. Buying more things fills up your trashcan, not your happiness.

More things do not equal more happiness. Take a miserable person and give them a lot of things and as soon as the novelty of the new things wears off you will have a miserable person with a lot of used miserable things.

6. Avoid using drugs and alcohol to change the way you feel.

Medications can heal. Medication can help you to live a healthy life if you take them for the right reasons and precisely as prescribed by a good doctor. Street drugs change the way you feel in another way. You take them and you temporarily feel better or more likely you feel less.

Eventually, the drugs stop working. You need more and more to feel just normal and the happy feeling you were chasing moves farther and farther away.

If you become dependent on using a drug to feel happy that feeling will require more and more drugs. We call this illusion – addiction.

7. Not saving enough is a mistake.

It is easy to say that you do not have enough income to save. The more you make the more your expenses. In the beginning, you are too poor not to save. Save a nickel or a dime and eventually those coins will be dollars.

Especially save so that the wolf will stay away from the door. Most people spend when they have it and then go without when they are broke. Having a few dollars set aside will reduce a lot of emergencies to manageable problems.

8. Not spending enough time with your family and friends.

The currency of friendships is time and shared interests. Do things and spend time with those you want to keep close in life.

9. Not investing in yourself.

Don’t believe that you can’t afford the time or money for education. Learning the hard way is more expensive. A person with an education earns more over their lifetime than someone who did not invest in self-development.

Not all education comes in classrooms. Read things that will help you improve your game. Talk with people who know how to do the things you aspire to do. Always be curious and make lifetime learning part of your life.

10. Not developing more friendships.

Friendships and family are the support systems that help you get through rough times. Do not make the mistake of believing you can do everything alone. Growing friendships requires that you plant a lot of seeds, invest time in nurturing them, and weed out the ones that are holding you back.

Make cultivating your friendship garden a priority.

Try to avoid those top ten life mistakes.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

How many kinds of attention are there?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Attention sign

Attention sign.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

You need more than one kind of paying attention skill

One kind of paying attention skill is not enough. From the first day of life, you had to pay attention. As you grew and developed you needed to learn other attention skills. There are reasons why you may have found one kind of paying attention more difficult than another.

In a previous post, we looked at ADHD and how people get the ADHD diagnosis because of behavior. That behavioral deficit gets blamed on the attention paying part. Turns out that we are not all talking about the same thing when we say “pay attention.”

Starting from the day you were born here are the paying attention skills humans need to learn.

1. Alert attention – recognize that there is something out there

From that first day, babies begin to attend to physical sensations. They recognize and respond to hunger and thirst, hot and cold, and all the other physical needs.

You will never stop paying attention to those feelings of hunger or the startle response to loud noises.

Many people have their alert attention volume set to high. The result is that a nose in the next room causes them to jump out of their skin. This can result in an anxiety disorder. Some people get ADHD diagnosis because of anxiety not any lack of attention. They just respond to and attend to sights, sounds, or smells in an excessive manner. They can’t seem to ignore these Alert attention cures.

Life experiences, single or complex traumas, can increase this startle response form of “paying attention.”

2. Orienting attention.

By three months of age, a baby not only alerts to a stimulus but tracks that stimulus. You hear a sound, you jump. Then you look intently for where this is coming from. You stare at the stimulus. In the meantime, you have forgotten all about what you were doing and thinking about.

This tracking, attending behavior, draws you away from what you were attending to in the first place. This easily distracted form of attention tracking can keep you safe if something dangerous is going on but it can be annoying to other people, notably adults if the child stopped paying attention to the adult to attend to tracking this sudden stimulus.

3. Sustained Attention.

This paying attention skill causes the most problems for most people who end up in therapy. Too much or too little of this attention paying skill gets you an ADHD diagnosis.

In sustained attention, you need to keep your attention on one thing while ignoring all others. So the teacher tells you to read your storybook for the next ten minutes. Sustained attention keeps you reading.

People who find that they are paying attention to alerts have problems sustaining attention. Someone in the back of the class starts talking you turn around to listen and you get in trouble for “not paying attention.”

If you are good at tracking attention you might see someone walking by the classroom window and you track their progress. You might even get up and walk over to the window to see where they are going. This gets you in trouble for “not paying attention” to your reading despite the fact that you are getting really good at tracking attention.

Too much-sustained attention is a bad thing.

After ten minutes, your teacher tells the class to stop reading it is now time for math. You, having mastered sustained attention, do not hear her and continue to read. You are now attending to the story and it is interesting. The result is you get in trouble for “not paying attention” to what the teacher is saying.

There is a related phenomenon we see in substance abusers. When under the influence of a stimulant drug, methamphetamine, in particular, they have excessive sustained attention. They refer to this as “getting stuck.” The person may begin to clean the kitchen floor and two days later is still down on their knees cleaning the cracks in the tile with a toothbrush. They have become stuck and can’t shift their attention.

This makes me wonder if some of the benefits of stimulant ADHD medications are the result of “Stuck attention” in which the person can sustain the attention for long periods of time but may not be able to use the other forms of “paying attention.”

What you needed at this point is the next form of attention “Executive attention.”

4. Executive attention is the ability to move your attention around as needed.

With good executive attention, you can attend to what you want to or should be attending to. Sometimes as in the last example these two attention demands are in conflict. You want to continue reading but you need to shift your attention and take out your math book. This attention issue is one you will continue to develop across your lifetime.

Remember your first-grade teacher’s demands for attention when you are retired and your spouse asks “were you listening to me?”

5. Selective attention.

Most attention researchers list three kinds of attention. The trouble is they do not list the same three types. Some researchers include selective attention under executive attention others under sustained attention.

What happens is that over time you develop personal rules for how you decide what you will pay attention to. This may have to do with your interests. It may also have to do with how hard you get hit if you do not select the form of attention an adult is expecting.

Worth noting is that problems with selective attention overlap almost all known forms of mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. Defects in selective attention processes are linked to autism spectrum disorders, depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety, psychosis, ADHD, learning disorders, behavioral and conduct disorders.

This makes me wonder if ADHD, or selective attention defects specifically, is a cause of symptoms in these other disorders, or is it a symptom of another problem that is not getting recognized until much later in life? You can have ADHD, Anxiety, depression, and a substance abuse problem. But which is causing which is another topic.

Stay tuned for more posts on the subjects of attention, ADHD, and how you might learn skills to improve your attention.

Keep working on your ability to use all the types of paying attention.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

What do you do if you are allergic to smoke?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Allergic to cigarette smoke?
Photo courtesy of pixabay.

How do you work around smokers if you are allergic to smoke?

This question originally came to me as an email from a counselor who is allergic to smoke. While they love the work if it’s difficult being around people who are heavy smokers. This problem also applies to those who have allergies to perfume or other strong scents. I thought I would pass this along for whatever it is worth. If any of you out there have other ideas feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

This is an extra problem, I believe, for anyone who works in mental health or substance abuse treatment areas. The comments also apply to those who work with the homeless or in social service agencies.

Smoke also affects the family members and children of smokers. When there are children involved we suggest that the smoker refrain from smoking not only when the children are around but also suggest that they not smoke in areas that their children will be.

See the post on Third Hand Smoke to find out more about the lingering effects of having a smoker in a room where others later go.

As an ex-smoker, this is less of an issue for me. I often do not notice the scent of smoke but others may. I am not suggesting anyone take up smoking to reduce the issues they have with being around others who smoke.

I have written previously about how tobacco (nicotine) is the drug of choice among the homeless. See: What is the Drug of choice among the homeless?

Smoking and mental illness.

Heavy smoking is common among those with serious and persistent mental illnesses, substance abusers, and the homeless. Smoking is not the only reason that these clients may have a strong odor. Lack of hygiene facilities makes the problems worse and so do illnesses like depression that make it overwhelming for many people to do their activities of daily life.

The conventional wisdom used to be that smoking calmed down people with psychosis or emotional issues. So if you were trying to treat someone hearing voices or abusing street drugs, why make then give up tobacco at the same time?

Today, more and more places, treatment facilities, and self-help meetings are going smokeless. What we have found is that helping people give up tobacco does not hamper their recovery from other substances and may help improve their mental health symptoms.

Increasingly stop smoking programs are finding their place in the treatment of people with mental illness and substance use disorders.

Here are some thoughts to help those of you who find yourself around smokers who are triggering your allergies.

What do you do if you are allergic to smoke?

This is a serious challenge. I would hate to think that anyone would need to give up their profession because of allergies.  This is a severe challenge for people with allergies since so many clients are heavy smokers and the smoke smell lingers long after they have put that cigarette out. Heavy smoking is common in people with psychosis, schizophrenia, substance use disorders, and so on. I did have a colleague who had severe allergies and even someone wearing perfume or having flowers in their office set off their attacks.

Six suggestions for coping with smoke:

  1. See your doctor, especially an allergist. Untreated this is only likely to get worse. Taking medication may help prevent the allergies from getting worse.
  2. Consider a fan or air purifier for your office
  3. Try to work in larger offices or rooms where the smell may be less overwhelming.
  4. See if you can do some distance counseling work. We have a law here (California) that helps people who are in rural areas, shut-in’s, etc. see their therapist via the internet. Other professionals may be able to do more of their contacts via phone.
  5. See if you can get assigned to a school-based program or work with children. Their parents may smoke but you will have less smell on your clients.
  6. See if you can work in an inpatient facility that has a no smoking policy

Not sure if those suggestions will help you but that is the ones I have thought of so far.

If any of you readers come up with any other solutions let me know.  Let’s see what blog readers can come up with.

Is being around smokers or strong odors an issue for you?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Ways to take care of yourself.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Taking care of yourself

Self-care.

You deserve to be well cared for.

Did anyone teach you how to take care of yourself? Did they tell you that taking care of yourself is being selfish? Don’t listen to that kind of talk.

Taking good care of yourself is not being selfish. You can’t give others something you do not have. How can you expect your children and others around you to take care of themselves when you do not set a good example?

Having the guts and determination to keep on pushing forward despite the obstacles is an admirable quality. But eventually, even the superheroes need to rest and relax. Living your life as if the objective is to see how much you can suffer and push yourself is no way to live.

You are only here for one life. Try to get the most out of that life by living a life full of self-compassion.

Here is a list of simple to do self-care acts that can make you a more self-compassionate person.

1. Let yourself rest when tired – sleep.

This one is at the top of the list for a reason. Sleep is not unproductive time. You do not get more accomplished by sleeping less. When needed you can probably get by on less sleep for a few days or even weeks but eventually, that lack of rest catches up with you.

Sleep is the time when your brain cools down, increases blood flow, and cleans out all the waste products. Your brain and nerves heal and memory’s get consolidated during sleep.

Fail to get enough sleep and your daily performance will decline. You may even damage that computer in your head and there are no replacement parts for the model brain you are using.

2. Take care of your body.

Eat healthily and get some exercise. If you are too busy to eat well or exercise you are too busy. Eventually, parts of the body get worn. You need good nutrition and some physical exercise to keep the machine you call your body working well.

Pushing yourself long hours on poor quality fuel results in excessive wear on your body and a shortened lifespan.

Want to get the most done in your career or home. Keep yourself in good shape for the whole journey.

3. Respect how you feel.

Do not ignore your feelings. If something is bothering you attend to it before it becomes a major problem. Talk that issue through with a trusted friend or professional. If the issue is between you and your spouse then your partner is the one you need to be talking with.

Having healthy supportive relationships keeps you mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy.

If your emotions are running rough do not ignore the feelings. Take yourself in for an emotional tune-up if needed. Most people think that seeing a counselor or therapist is something you do after you have a nervous breakdown. Get emotional help in the early stages and there may be no breakdown.

4. Schedule time for you.

Never have any time for yourself? Then you are giving too much of your life away. Make time for yourself, your interests, and enjoying life.

You are the only you there will ever be. Enjoy every minute you spend with yourself. Being alone some of the time should not equal being lonely. Balance the time around others with the time you spend in solitude.

5. Pause to take stock of where you are in life – have goals.

One good habit to get into is a periodic review of your life. Businesses take inventory at least once a year. Are there things in your life that are obsolete? Have a clearance sale and get those activities that are taking up your time but providing no value out of your life.

Are your activities taking you where you want to go? Review your goals and the strategies and tactics you are using to get to those goals.

6. Reward your hard work.

Make sure you build in rewards for the hard work you do. What special rewards will you give yourself when you reach a goal?

7. Challenge yourself to build a sense of accomplishment.

People have comfort zones. When you step just a little outside that zone you feel some anxiety but when you try on a new behavior and are successful you get used to this new area. Keep moving just a step outside that comfort zone and you will stretch out the area of things that you can comfortably do.

8. Give yourself a round of applause for things well done.

Be your most enthusiastic cheerleader. Make sure you notice the things that you do and give yourself a round of applause every time you are able to master a new skill or challenge.

Accept compliments when offered. Do not reject those compliments with a self-deprecating “It was nothing.” A simple thank you to the party that offered you the praise will go a long way in building your self-esteem and theirs.

9. Invest time and money in yourself.

You have a set amount of time each week. You can spend that time wisely or foolishly. Budget those hours and include an investment in yourself as part of that budget. Take a class, read something that interests you.

There is a difference between spending money and time for momentary pleasure and investing in yourself for the long run. Investments in yourself, in learning new skills, or expanding your experiences, pay dividends down the road.

What other ways have you found that help you take care of yourself?

Start taking care of yourself.  

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

What is causing the ADHD epidemic?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Sad child

ADHD?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and why is it on the rise?

ADHD appears to be everywhere. It is spreading faster than obesity. In my therapy practice, most of my adult clients tell me that they were diagnosed with ADHD at some time in the past. Most of them have children with an ADHD diagnosis. It is common for the young people who come to see me to have, as their first diagnosis, ADHD.

ADHD is now something everyone gets. Over a nine-year period, the number of girls diagnosed with ADHD increased by 600% (Robinson et al., 2002.) It is no longer exclusively a diagnosis of children as adults and even senior citizens are receiving the diagnosis.

One author tells us that if the current trend continues, within 20 years, half of all children will be on an ADHD med (paraphrased from Shannon, 2009.)

Why is ADHD so common and what is fueling its spread?

To answer this question there a number of factors we need to look at. What is ADHD? Even more basic, what is Attention, and what is hyperactivity? We also need to know is attention abilities something you are born with or does it develop over time? Are there things you can do to improve your attention or is this just the way you are? Are there alternatives to taking stimulant meds and do those alternatives really work?

The relationship with other mental emotional and behavioral disorders is also important. There is a lot of overlap between having ADHD and having Autism, depression, anxiety and substance use disorders.

There are also cultural factors in ADHD. Certain population groups are more likely to get the ADHD diagnosis than others. Who gets diagnosed also is affected dramatically by who does the “testing” and who gives out the diagnosis.

There has been a lot of research on ADHD and its treatment recently. As I am able to read that research I want to report back to you what I find out and how you may be able to apply these ideas to your life or the life of someone you care about.

From the day a child is born there is pressure to behave in certain ways. Some children are more active than others. Some from day one have better abilities to “pay attention” but genetics is not the whole story of why some people are diagnosed with ADHD and others are not.

Learning to pay attention.

Regardless of age, a person can learn skills to improve their ability to “pay attention.” We can also learn skills to reduce or increase our behavior. Let’s begin our review of the ADHD phenomenon.

ADHD is not one thing but several.

We professionals used to have two separate diagnoses for these issues, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) If you go back farther in the psychiatric literature these issues had other names.

The idea was that some people, mainly children, were not good at “paying attention.”  Mostly we thought that this was a lack of effort on their part and that they just needed to listen better. Most people with a predominantly inattentive issue did not cause anyone any problems and so did not get noticed until they were much older and came asking for help. Sometimes this inability to “pay attention” was written off as low intelligence or a learning disability. Sometimes those things were factors but often they were not.

We have studied attention a lot and it turns out there are a number of different skills that we call “paying attention” and that those skills develop with time and can be learned. More on the subject of what attention is and how it develops in upcoming posts.

Most ADHD diagnoses are about Behavior!

Most ADHD diagnoses come about because the child’s behavior is upsetting an adult. The child does not stay in their seat, talks too much, and generally disrupts the classroom. Some parents tell us that their children are “hurricanes” and are always in motion. So if the child does not stay in one place, moves a lot, and causes problems for adults, this gets them evaluated and probably diagnosed.

Hyperactivity is very situational. If a child runs all through the soccer practice and is fast at running around the track, they get A’s from the coach and may become track stars or pro soccer players. That same child who is never in their seat in the classroom will get in trouble and probably placed on meds.

To avoid this ADHD diagnosis the child needs to develop the ability to regulate his behavior. A whole lot of factors, like diet and opportunities for physical activity, can affect a child’s ability to sit still. When most people lived on farms and in rural communities there were more opportunities to “work off” that energy. Now, most people on planet earth live in cities and they stay inside a lot more.

Some of my clients have told me they are not allowed to go outside because of the gangs and the drive-bys. Their parents tell me they are scared to let the kids out of the house. One client has two bullets in him from drive-bys. Any questions why his kids never leave the house?

One theory is that ADHD, the hyperactivity part, is a failure of human evolution to keep up with our changing environment. This may also be true of the inattentive part as we will talk about in the future.

ADHD also coexists with depression and anxiety

Many children’s first diagnosis is ADHD. They are then placed on stimulant medication to treat this hyperactivity on the premise that the behavior problems are caused by an inability to “pay attention” meaning a failure to do what the adult says.

It does not stop there. Before long, because their behavior is causing adults problems, we change this diagnosis to “Disruptive Behavior Disorder.” Eventually, this may run the gamut of “bad child diagnoses” to Oppositional Defiant Disorder or even Conduct Disorder.

In the teen years or adulthood, we then discover that this person was depressed or had an anxiety disorder all this time.

One treatment for anxiety disorders in adults is to tell them to avoid caffeine or other stimulants. This is a conflict if they are taking stimulant meds for their “ADHD.”

I fully believe that there are children who warrant the diagnosis of Disruptive Behavior Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or even Conduct Disorder. They and the others in their lives need help. Just saying that we professionals and society need to be looking for depression and anxiety issues also.

So the next stop would need to be this area of attention. What is the ability to “pay attention” how much are we born with and how does it develop.

The day you were born you had some ability to “pay attention.” In the next attention post, let’s look at this day-one ability and how your attention abilities change and develop over time.

Please think about how you learned to pay attention or what the barriers to that were.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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