Chad Perman, LMFT

New research reveals how ADHD sparks extraordinary creativity Researchers have discovered that ADHD’s hallmark mind wandering might actually boost creativity. People who deliberately let their thoughts drift scored higher on creative tests in two large studies. ...

"Mind wandering is one of the critical resources on which the remarkable creativity of high-functioning ADHD individuals is based. This makes them such an incredibly valuable asset for our society and the future of our planet."
#ADHDAwarenessMonth

Circular flowchart. “Too anxious to start on anything” leads into “stressed about not getting anything done,” then back to “too anxious to start on anything”—creating an endless loop.

This x 100000 = mood

#ADHDAwarenessMonth

"It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial... It began to occur to me that unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness & learning, I would do better to rely upon the client for the direction of movement in the process."

- Carl Rogers

People with ADHD may have an underappreciated advantage: Hypercuriosity ADHD is officially a disorder of deficits in attention, behavior and focus. But patients point out upsides, like curiosity. Research is now catching up.

“What really struck us was … people talking about how navigating the challenges of ADHD had actually made them more empathetic, more accepting of others [and] better at handling adversity.”

- @neuranne.bsky.social

"It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluable become soluable when someone hears; how confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is understood."

- Carl Rogers

Stifled Creativity and Its Damaging Impact on the ADHD Brain Creativity. It’s often cited as a valuable (but tough to harness) benefit of having ADHD. As it turns out, creativity is more than a perk; it is a requirement. To be healthy and productive, you must c...

“Inside every person I’ve ever met with ADHD is a wellspring of creativity — a creativity so integral to who we are and how we’re made, that our health and happiness seems to hinge on embracing and expressing it fully.“

Trying to! Because, sadly/amazingly, even many therapists aren’t aware of it. It’s almost always one of the first things I check in around/talk about with new clients—and something that helps explain sooo much to late-diagnosed ADHD people.

the ADHD ability to go from “i’m a genius” to “what if i never amount to anything???” in under 3 seconds

Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System Into Turmoil (Gift Article) A chaotic restructuring order threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

My heart breaks every day. So much gratitude to all the VA clinicians out there who serve veterans and help them recover from the harms of service. Veterans and their clinicians deserve better than this. 💔. #psychscisky #therapistsky
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/u...

I do this all the time, and it really, truly helps! Take the big scary project you've been avoiding & do it for 5 minutes. The big scary thing becomes, instead, simply an unfinished task—which your brain will then much more likely want to figure out how to finish.

Long live the Zeigarnik Effect :)

YouTube video by How to ADHD How to Cope with Rumination: Don't Feed the “Demon” (Default Mode Network)

If you struggle with excessive rumination, this conversation between @howtoadhd.bsky.social & Dr. Ned Hallowell might just be the best thing you watch today:

"Everything in ADHD has two sides. The most wonderful gift we have is our imagination; the most horrible curse we have is our imagination."

ADHD may have been an evolutionary advantage, research suggests Traits associated with the neurodevelopmental disorder could have helped early humans when foraging for food

This is an oversimplification, of course, but it’s worth noting what recent studies have found:

“ADHD can be a serious problem but it’s a problem *in large measure* because of today’s environments.” www.theguardian.com/science/2024...

As societies changed their values & priorities over time—set up, largely, by neurotypical brains who are better at organizing and building society & bent towards “productivity” as they defined it—those of us with ADHD-type brains were suddenly more problematic, our strengths reframed as negatives.

For more than 90% of human existence, humans mostly lived as hunter-gatherers. ADHD brains, especially, thrived and were highly valued in tribes and villages. But then came the Neolithic Revolution and a slow transition to agriculture, which gave rise to cities and civilizations, & a new way of life

Seems silly to have to say, but there’s enough misunderstanding out there, so:

Neurodivergence in human brains is a good thing, and a net positive for humanity and the world. We need all types of brains in a group/village/community, and always have as human beings. 🧵

“We have shown, using a large sample and a second independent clinical sample, that emotion dysregulation is a core symptom and a route to ADHD, which may not respond to the current pharmacological treatments for ADHD.”

thank you! 🙏

The Power of Family Stories | Hidden Brain Media There's a tradition around many Thanksgiving dinner tables that's as consistent as stuffing and pumpkin pie: the family stories that get told year after year. Sometimes these stories are funny; someti...

After Robyn Fivush got married, she noticed something about her then-husband's family: they told the same story every year, without fail, at Thanksgiving.

“And it had to get told the same way, with the same punchlines, every year.”

This week, how family stories shape who we are.
bit.ly/4eM0Cmc

Would love to be added, thanks!

“Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

- Sarah Manguso

amazing jesse!! 📚 💪

My life is pretty much just wildly swinging between:

• too close to boredom, better do more

• too close to burnout, better do less

Ever felt so stressed you didn’t know what to do next? Try talking to your 'parts' 'Parts work' or Internal Family Systems is a type of talk therapy that’s surged in popularity. Here’s how it works and how it can help with stress.

So cool to see IFS taking off the past few years as a treatment modality. I wrote my graduate thesis on it almost 20 years ago, but back then hardly anybody knew what it was!

www.addept.org/living-with-...

Shout-out to all my fellow former gifted program, straight-A kids out there for whom excelling was your whole thing and are now beset with a chronic, underlying sense of guilt for not being ENOUGH in adulthood. +10 if you had undiagnosed ADHD. Welcome, friends! 🍻🙃

The 6 biggest questions about adult ADHD, answered by a neuroscientist

www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-bo...

My feature for BBC Science Focus magazine, all about ADHD in adults and what everyone gets wrong about it, is now available to all on the website.

So, go check it out?

#ADHD #MentalHealth

would love to be added!