ADHD & College: During Life's Major Transitions, Keep Active

Here at Living, Learning, & Writing with ADHD, we focus a lot on the energy of ADHD. This is fueled by my own need to keep my excess energy in check. On weeks that I skip my usual runs, swims, dance & fitness classes, my body simply feels out of whack. Bees seem to buzz under my skin, my legs twitch and kick under the covers at night. I feel extremely restless.

What's great about the hyperactivity of ADHD is that it's hard to be in poor physical shape. You're always moving, squirming, fiddling, jumping...You experience much of the world through your body. The downfall is that you must maintain an active lifestyle, despite time constraints and other priorities.

Susan Martin recently reached out to me about the below graphic (scroll down), which got me thinking about my own transition into college. What fitness regimes did I maintain? Which did I let slip? What was the effect?

In high school, I was a dancer, a cheerleader, a runner. In addition to these, I also lived in the walkers' city of New York, where rarely a day passed without going a mile on foot. This all changed when I moved to Waterville, ME, for my first semester at Colby College. Used to the seasonal routines of sports and dance practice, I hadn't considered what life would be like without these activities built into my schedule. I hadn't realized the loss I would feel without the athletic center as my second home.

Although I dabbled cheerleading in college (it wasn't as rigorous as I expected), participated in the Colby Dancers troupe for a semester or two, what I turned to in college physically was running, biking, yoga, and gymnastics (something I had pursued intensely up until high school). My exercises differed. There wasn't the community of the teams I had graduated from, but I realized that being physically active was deeply ingrained in my sense of wellbeing. When I founded the Gymnastics Club during my junior year, I rediscovered a community of athletes, who cheered on each tumbling pass or swing on the bars, and I made a priority of keeping up that activity as part of my weekly routine. In fact, it's an activity I continue today at New York's own Chelsea Piers.

While your physical sports, hobbies, and exercises likely differ from mine. I hope you keep up your own active routines throughout every major life transition. It's easy to shrug them off, thinking you're cured of that old restlessness you experienced as an ADHD child. But at least in my experience, that never truly goes away.

What activities keep you active in your daily life? And how do you manage to stay active during life's major transitions? Do you (and your body) feel the need to move each day as I do?

Comment below or send me a note at WriteToJulianna!

Here are some tips from Susan Martin and TheBestColleges.org to get you started on the right foot...

created by TheBestColleges.org

For more information about Exercise & ADHD, check out these posts!
ADDaptations: Exercise Your Way to Calm
Olympics 2012: Which Sports Can Someone with ADHD Excel In?

Surviving Middle School (& Life) with ADHD

ADDaptations: Outdoor Activities for Adults with Energy & Spunk!

Thrive with ADHD: Grant Weherley, Co-Founder of Control My ADHD.

At Living, Learning, & Writing with ADHD, we have embarked upon a mission to introduce ADDvocates to you. These individuals have struggled and thrived both in spite of and because of their ADHD, and their stories offer examples for us to emulate.

Along the way, I connected with Grant Weherley, who is on his own quest to share the techniques he has adopted to live a more fulfilling and focused life. At Control My ADHD, Grant promotes "Turning Symptoms in Strengths." His enthusiasm and dedication to this cause resounds through his entries, but also through the videos that he has created to help ADHD'rs on their journeys. Grant particularly connected with my goal of reaching women with ADHD, because of his sister's struggles with ADHD.

I am thrilled to introduce Grant to you today, and I hope you stop on over to his blog to take advantage of the resources he has to offer. Onward and upward, ADHD'rs!

Once upon a time a young woman was completely unable to function in a school setting, and then when she graduated she proceeded to struggle even worse in the daily demands of punctuality and organization involved in her job. Sound like a familiar story? 

Her name is Shannon and she is my sister. 

After a while Shannon was diagnosed with ADHD and had that common reaction of “Finally! Everything makes so much sense now!”. She began taking prescription medication, which helped immensely, and yet she still continued to deal with a variety of ADHD symptoms on a daily basis.

Even a decade later, now in her late thirties, she still can't control her symptoms, and every day is a battle against herself.  

 As I watched my sister go through life, I identified so strongly with her experiences – we have faced many of the same challenges, as I also have ADHD. But when it came to be my turn to be diagnosed and put on medication, I did not react well to it. So you might expect that I faced even more challenges without the boost from the medication, right? 

Wrong. With medication not an option for me, I looked elsewhere for solutions. Prescription medication can't be the only way to deal with ADHD, can it? 

It turns out that prescription medication only addresses the tip of the iceberg that is ADHD. I was forced to look below the surface, and what I found changed my life. Through learning exactly ADHD works and various strategies for managing it I have been able to structure my life so that, to be quite honest, ADHD is only an occasional annoying rather than this constant barrier in life. 

Why is the individual experience with ADHD so vastly different from person to person? I have spent a great number of years researching, experimenting, learning, and perfecting ways to manage having ADHD, in large part because I did not react well to medication. In fact, this is why I am able to now do things like sit down and write this blog post for example! 

Through my journey of discovering ways to remove ADHD as a barrier in my own life, I observed my sister's experiences, parallel but yet at the same time oh so different. I began to wonder...why has she struggle so much harder? 

The obvious differences:
· Gender
· Age
· Subtype: She is the super hyperactive type of ADHD, whereas I am the combined subtype. 

But I think these are mainly superficial differences that don't get at the underlying issue, which is this: 

The belief that it is possible to manage ADHD through lifestyle changes empowers you to take action to regain control of your life, which is more important than what medication you are on.  

I frequently meet people with the belief that ADHD is something that you just have or you don't – like an on/off switch – and aside from medication there's not much you can do about it. With this perspective, it is easy to just give up and adopt the belief that this is just “how things are”. Medication is certainly important for some, but remember: it is only the surface of things. 

From playing mind games with yourself to amino acid supplementation to sleep habit alteration to meditation, there is actually a whole lot you can do to make things infinitely easier. 

And even beyond this fact, these changes do not happen in a therapist's office, they occur in your home, your office, your school, your bed, your family, your dinner table, and everywhere else. Without these changes, taking ADHD medication alone will still leave you with significant challenges, as it did with my sister. At the end of the day it is up to you. 

To change this perspective of ADHD as this permanent, disabling label, and to empower others to overcome ADHD barriers with (often very simple) lifestyle alterations, I created an organization called Control My ADHD. I would like to share with you what I have learned about ADHD and exactly how it can be managed effectively, through (ADHD-friendly) videos. 

What difficulties do you still have with ADHD, and have you begun to accept these as inevitable? 

I truly hope that you don't. Something as simple as a shift in this perspective can be the springboard that launches you over and beyond the ADHD hurdle, to go on to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish, and live the life that you wish to live, without feeling like you can't just because you have ADHD. 

Let us work to close the information gap between those who have accepted suffering through ADHD symptoms as a permanent state of existence and all those who have truly come to understand how to work with their ADHD: Richard Branson, Dustin Hoffman, Einstein, Will Smith, Walt Disney, Charles Swab... and countless others. 

Having ADHD means that we have certain strengths and certain weaknesses, and it is time to learn how to utilize those strengths that all of us ADDers have, while learning how to manage our weaknesses (which is ok, everyone has weaknesses). Unmanaged ADHD is a nightmare, and ADHD with only a prescription is just a little bit better. 

Throw knowledge empowerment and lifestyle alterations into the mix, and that is a recipe for working with your ADHD to live a long, happy, unrestrained life.

Grant Weherley is a speaker and advocate for adults with ADHD. With a mission of helping millions remove ADHD as a barrier in their life and live to their full potential, he is the founder of Control My ADHD, which offers a new kind of approach to ADHD.


Control My ADHD is an organization which shows you alternative strategies and treatments for ADHD through fun online videos. Turn your symptoms into strengths today.

ADDvocates: What ADHD is like for Me, Lourdes Zalcik.

Lourdes Zalcik, ADDvocate.

I am so thrilled with the outpouring of responses to our ADDvocates series! What better way to give voice to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than by publicly sharing our stories and hardships? Today we meet Lourdes Zalcik (Edmonton, Canada), one of the first readers who wrote to me at WriteToJulianna about becoming an ADDvocate.

Women still have a difficult time finding information on the female ADHD. For that reason, I was so happy to hear from Lourdes, especially because we live in different countries and work in separate industries. Although Lourdes and my experiences of ADHD are unique, her trials resonate with my own, and I hope you're touched by them too.

There is always room for more ADDvocates. If you or your child would like to participate in this series, please scroll to the bottom of this post and read the instructions: 

1. At what age were you diagnosed with ADHD?
My doctor reluctantly told me that "my symptoms are consistent with ADD" when I was 44, after four years of treating me for depression and anxiety.

2. Does anyone else in your family show signs of having ADHD?
My son has ADHD.

3. What’s your profession or what industry do you currently work in? What are your strengths or weaknesses when it comes to working with ADHD?
I am currently working in several industries. For one, I am a translator and interpreter, and I run my own business because I excel at translation and interpretation. I also work as a sales associate at a retail store because I need physical activity that is not possible to have with my translation and interpretation work. I am also working in the test-marketing for a product that I am developing with the help of a partner.

Lourdes at Zalcik Translations.

4. Do you have any specific memories of when ADHD was helpful or harmful?
ADD has been helpful in regards to being able to accumulate significant knowledge about different subjects and learn several trades well enough to successfully excel at positions involving that knowledge.

The harmful part of ADD comes with having to stick to time constraints. I am not talking about the big deadlines or delivering for clients. I am good at delivering on time and showing up punctually. It is more about the many time reminders that people naturally follow, like paying the bills on time or submitting my hours or reports in a timely manner. That can be the worst nightmare for supervisors because in their time-counting control methods I will always show as non-compliant even if the work I do is actually excellent.

I also have problems staying on task or being able to remember commitments if I am extremely stressed.

5. Do you see a psychotherapist to help with your ADHD? Has she/he helped you?
I was seeing one until not too long ago. I was able to learn how to manage a lot of my issues, especially depression, anxiety, and memory lapses. My memory lapses were getting so bad that even my psychotherapist became concerned and ordered a test for me. I forgot the date, time, place, and the name of the specialist for my memory test! That is how bad it was, but I was accidentally reminded by my psychotherapist on the day before my test because she called to reschedule our next appointment. I managed to find the correct address and get on time to my appointment using a mix of intuition and detective work. 

That test led to my diagnosis of ADD and the prescription of the medications I currently take to manage my ADD.

6. Do you take medication for ADHD? If so, what type? How has it helped you?
I take Celexa, Bupropion, and Straterra to manage my symptoms. When I am on those medications, I am able to snap out of my thoughts and focus in reality, which is very important if you want to accomplish anything.

7. What is the biggest challenge you’ve had to deal with with ADHD?
Pleasing supervisors who base performance on time management over other qualities of the work.

8. What activities, habits, or hobbies help to ease your ADHD?
Meditation, prayer, and yoga. Hobbies provide a creative outlet for my ADD. A knitted sweater, a finished project, or some home improvement are a better product of my ADD at the end of a hyper focus outburst than a history of hundreds of visits to different websites or hours and hours of video gaming.

9. What do you like most about having ADHD?
I am very thankful for my ability to learn and do so many things.

10. What would you like to improve most about yourself?
I would like to improve my decision-making skills.

11. Any other questions, tips, tricks, or comments to share?
My son has ADHD. If anyone has another family member with ADHD or ADD, make sure you always stress the good part and keep promoting positive values.

12. Are you an ADHD Superhero?
I think I am.

ADDvocates Questions

Send me your answers at WriteToJulianna.

Include if you'd like me to change your name to a pseudonym.

Attach any photos that you'd like me to post.

Together we can create a new face for ADHD.

1. When were you first diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? 

2. Does anyone else in your family show signs of having ADHD?

3. What’s your profession or what industry do you currently work in? What are your strengths or weaknesses when it comes to working with ADHD?

4. Do you have any specific memories of when ADHD was helpful or harmful?

5. Do you see a psychotherapist to help with your ADHD? Has she/he helped you?

6. Do you take medication for ADHD? If so, what type? How has it helped you?

7. What is the biggest challenge you’ve had to deal with with ADHD?

8. What activities, habits, or hobbies help to ease your ADHD?

9. What do you like most about having ADHD?

10. What would you like to improve most about yourself?

11. Any other questions, tips, tricks, or comments to share?

12. Are you an ADHD Superhero?