Today, we're diving into something that might seem a bit out there at first—mindfulness. If you’ve ever thought mindfulness was about emptying your mind (and maybe rolled your eyes at the idea), you’re in for a surprise. It's not about banishing thoughts, but about tuning into the moment without judgment.
Curious how this can help with ADHD? Spoiler: It’s pretty effective! Research shows mindfulness can help reduce inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity by training your brain to be more present and aware. It’s like giving your brain a workout to better manage those ADHD symptoms. Let’s explore how this practice works and how you can start incorporating it into your life.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a mind-body practice that involves paying purposeful, non-judgmental attention to the present moment.
Like most people, when I first heard the term ‘mindfulness,’ I assumed that the goal was to empty your mind - a difficult pursuit for anyone, surely, but for someone with ADHD? Impossible!
Fortunately, that’s not the goal of mindfulness. The goal of mindfulness is to practice being aware. That’s it! Being aware of your body, your thoughts, your environment, all of those things that make up our experience, without trying to do anything with them. I’ve heard many analogies for this - for example, imagining your thoughts as clouds. You notice each cloud as it appears, but you don’t try to investigate or analyze the cloud. You notice it, and then you bring awareness back to your self.
Or, imagining that you’re sitting on a river bank, and each of your thoughts, your emotions, are like leaves and twigs floating along the river. You notice them as they go by, but you don’t try to wade in and pull them from the water.
My favorite analogy for mindfulness compares it to weightlifting. We know that in order to build a muscle, you have to do several repetitions, or reps, of a particular exercise. If you’re doing dumbbell curls, for example, you’ve got the weight in your hand. Your arm goes down, and back up, completing one rep. With mindfulness, your awareness drifts to your thoughts and emotions as you notice them - that’s you relaxing your arm. Then, you pull your awareness back to yourself, like lifting the weight back up. Each time you notice your thoughts have drifted, and you pull your awareness back to the present moment, you are completing a mindfulness ‘rep’ - which over time strengthens your brain’s ability to pay attention to the things you want it to pay attention to. Just like strengthening a muscle!
Does Mindfulness Help With ADHD?
Research confirms that mindfulness can improve ADHD symptoms. In 2021, a meta-analysis of 31 different studies on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), researchers compared ADHD symptoms between two groups of people with ADHD - those who were treated with mindfulness, and those who weren’t. The result? The people who received mindfulness-based treatments showed improved ADHD symptoms compared to those who didn’t receive treatment.
A similar review found that 100% of the studies showed improvement of ADHD symptoms after mindfulness-based treatment. And symptom improvement was maintained for at least 3-6 months.
What ADHD Symptoms Does Mindfulness Improve?
Studies show mindfulness can help reduce several core ADHD symptoms, including:
- Inattention: Mindfulness exercises train the brain to sustain attention on the present moment, which can help counteract the distractibility and wandering mind that often comes with ADHD.
- Hyperactivity& Impulsivity: Mindfulness encourages greater awareness of one's thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. This self-awareness can help people with ADHD practice pausing before engaging in impulsive behaviors or making rash decisions.
- Cognitive Performance: Some research suggests mindfulness meditation may improve certain cognitive abilities like working memory and cognitive flexibility in those with ADHD.
- Emotion Regulation: Mindfulness practices promote emotional awareness and provide tools for responding to emotions in a more measured way.
Why Does Mindfulness for ADHD Work?
Emerging neuroscience research is uncovering how mindfulness impacts brain circuits and networks implicated in ADHD. As detailed in a 2021 review by Gu, Zhu, and Brown, “Mindfulness can help to alleviate the core symptoms of ADHD by strengthening specific “mental muscles,” brain circuits associated with attention, executive control, and related functions.” Mindfulness not only strengthened those mental muscles - it also improved “functional connectivity” in the brain, meaning different brain regions were better able to communicate and work together.
Mindfulness - Your Secret Weapon for ADHD
The research suggests mindfulness can be a valuable tool for ADHD management. Mindfulness practices seem to directly target and improve the core deficits of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity that characterize the disorder. Of course, mindfulness requires consistent practice to build the "mental muscles" of focused awareness and self-regulation. It may also require a few adaptations of common mindfulness practices, so that they work better for an ADHD brain. But for those looking to take a non-pharmaceutical approach, or for those who need additional strategies to integrate with other ADHD treatments, mindfulness is an effective tool for managing ADHD.
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