As we grow up, life gets more tangled, and happiness can seem harder to catch. In childhood, joy feels easy, like catching sunlight in your hands. But as we become adults, things…
Do you have relatives or friends who you see have difficulty at work to finish a task and easily get distracted? Those are some signs of Adult ADHD if you continue observing this kind of behavior in them for a long term. In this article, you’re going to learn how to identify the signs and how to treat ADHD in adults.
To be honest adult in this category suffers difficulties to complete a single task because they struggle to do so due to the uncontrollable condition in their body system.
Signs of Adult ADHD
We need to help community suffering this condition by first detecting the tell-tale signs of adult ADHD.
1. Hyperactive Personality
An adult who suffers from ADHD, often gets excited during conversations. They do not realize they often interrupts a conversation before someone else finish talking.
They easily excited and often gives feedback too quick as they are worried, they forgot what they wanted to say. Some people who do not understand the existence of this disorder may find them annoying, but they actually cannot control this behavior.
In this case, they often got misunderstood as the awareness for most of us for this ADHD problem is not realized by many of us.
2. Easily Distracted
Do you know how hard it is for an ADHD-er to actually sit still for just 30 minutes to read a book or do a task which requires just sitting down with not much motion.
They cannot focus on a single task for too long and would often wonder elsewhere in a span of max 15 minutes. Reading books, studying, working on desk jobs with no physical movement is a real struggle for them.
Do not take this for granted, this may seem like an easy task for you but totally hard to them. If this problem is not solved, they will underperform in their career as may not succeed in today’s world which is quite fast growing.
3. Messy and Careless
Staying organized and tidy is something difficult to stay consistent if you had ADHD. Being messy and careless is quite common for them. For example, they will end up being reckless drivers and cause accidents on the road.
Next, looking at their room, it will always turn out unorganized and messy. The responsibilities in adulthood will make their life even more complicated if not handled well.
4. Struggles to Finish a Task
An adult ADHD-er will find it hard to complete a task and often leave it halfway the process. This is because they often wonder off easily.
The mindset is very uncontrollable to them, sometimes they would daydream in the middle of work, lecture, or a conversation without realizing.
ADHD-er usually have problems staying calm and restlessness. This made them lose focus and failed the task in hand.
Tips to Treat ADHD in Adults
Ways to tackle and cure Adult ADHD could be made aware off to improve their condition to change them and maybe some even could be cured in a matter time.
1. Know the Root Cause
Many starts to develop a more severe symptoms of ADHD as they reached the young adulthood milestones. Some of us may not handle stress well, being unable to cope with how harsh reality can lead to adult ADHD.
A stressful environment during the working stage may stress someone who used to live in a fairytale land during their childhood. The sudden drastic change in how real the world is may cause a shock in their mindset and develop stress.
The anxiety that happens with too much worry and nervousness will make the ADHD condition worsen if not taken care of on time.
2. Find a Suitable Career for Them to Succeed in
People with adult ADHD have certain career strengths. Jobs suited for them usually are those high energy, creativity, and more flexibility. These includes artist, entrepreneur, sales, and marketing and more.
The flexibility and nature of the work do not require them to sit still on office desks. The requirements may tire them down as they will be mobile while into the job.
Thus, they may succeed in the correct and more suitable career path based on their personality and condition. Some may even have a hidden talent; some famous people still succeed even with the ADHD condition.
According to the research, the famous Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and popstar singer Adam Levine are both ADHD-er. Life example of those who succeed even with this condition.
3. Family Support and Awareness
If you have a family member or close friend facing this ADHD problem, you should try to give as much love and support for their condition. Be understanding to show care to help them solve the problems they face at school, work or other life elements.
According to Michael Phelps ““I think the biggest thing for me, once I found that it was okay to talk to someone and seek help, I think that’s something that has changed my life forever,” he says. “Now I’m able to live life to its fullest.”
4. Seek a Professional Help
Those who have serious ADHD Adult problem can also seek professional help from a qualified doctor. Knowing by references from your local area would be a good choice if this would be a weekly routine to cure it.
Be sure to do a through research of a qualified doctor to treat your ADHD by making sure important criteria are met. For example: Knowing how many patients with ADHD had this doctor treated and success rate of recovery, how many years of experience this doctor had for the similar cases, the cycle of treatments and costs breakdown.
5. Be Healthy in Eating and Physically
There is no scientific proof that there is food that causes ADHD. However, you may need to take note on Food which triggers the ADHD to help reduce the impact of having this disorder.
Food with simple sugars, artificial sweeteners, synthetic food dyes and preservatives could trigger the ADHD conditions. For more information on the food type, you can read more here.
Besides the food you eat, poor sleep and insufficient body rest could also contribute to adult ADHD. Thus, an ADHD-should take note on proper sleeping hours and rest time.
Start doing more physical exercise, to vent out the excess energy is a good step to help in the ADHD issue. The restlessness from the ADHD could be tire out while doing more physical activities.
According to the CDC Government, some Adult ADHD are not diagnosed and the symptoms may become more severe with all the contributing stress we start to face during adulthood.
Bottom Line
ADHD is not a commonly known term as compared to the word “depression” by many these days, you can ask a random friend at work. They may not even hear of or believe that ADHD exist. Many people would just shake off this truth and not believe the existence of this disorder. Some people may even think you are just overthinking but not until you become a patient of ADHD. Many people underestimate the struggles faced by ADHD, they take it so lightly that the ADHD-er will start to feel lonely and not understood by the world.
Have you ever met a friend or maybe your loved ones who shops a lot? Its not uncommon to see many women who shop every week. The shopaholic syndrome these days is the most common among women.
According to Wikipedia, a shopaholic is someone with a shopping addiction. This is an informal term for someone with a compulsive buying disorder.
This excessive habit of shopping spree can stress out their men partner or people around them. Thus, the awareness when this toxic habit is above the limit should quickly be made aware it is too late when huge amounts of overdue credit card bills come.
In order for us to solve and cure this toxic shopaholic habit, we first need to know the signs of the serious shopaholic syndrome.
Signs of the Shopaholic Syndrome
1. Shopping When Feeling Stress
In life, all of us face stressful moments. We release stress in different ways. Some of us would play games, exercise, play with our pets or sleep to release the tension.
For shopaholics, they tend to start shopping impulsively when they feel stress. This uncontrollable behavior is very difficult to shake off.
This is because this is their habit of releasing stress. A habit is hard to break. For the shopaholics, when buying things, it gave them a sense of fulfillment for the difficult times they face.
This means, they think by rewarding themselves by buying something they see and like. It could offset the bad events that causes stress in their life.
The self-reward system by shopping seems to cheer them up, thus they get addicted to shopping. Plus, with the current online shopping platform which is a easily available made this habit even worse. It is so convenient with just a few click via your smartphone.
2. High Frequency in Shopping Non-basic necessities
Shopping for basic things for living like groceries for cooking, household items etc. is not an issue if it is done frequently. However, shopping for clothes and designer handbags are not basic needs to live. These are luxuries and should not be cultivated in high frequency if you are just a middle-class earner.
Middle class earners who shopped this way end up with piled up credit cards debt. The shopping spree only gives them temporary happiness. Later on, it adds them financial stress which is detrimental in many aspects.
3. Problem paying Debts on time
The common signs if you have a close relative or friend with this shopaholic syndrome is they have problems meeting the credit cards due dates. They will get panic during the due date period and start regretting for the shopping spree they did.
The cycle pay repeat after paying off the credit card debts, thus it’s an addiction or habit important to shake off the soonest possible.
4. Rather Spend Money on Shopping instead of Meals
A shopaholic would rather spend money on materials items as compared to experiences and food. This is because they receive a sense of rewarding when physical items come to their hands.
It is a type of feeling they feel addicted too when adding items to their shopping cart. When shopping online, they get excited when the postman arrives. The process gets more exciting when they get to unbox their parcels in a weekly basis.
Tips to Cure Shopaholic Syndrome
1. Ask yourself the 3 Questions
A shopaholic has a compulsive shopping disorder which make them never think properly before purchasing items. The 3 important questions to make them realize if they are over buying is.
Those questions are: “Do you need this to live?”. “Have you already had one of these at Home?” and “What is the Usefulness of this item?”
These questions should be reminded multiple times during the first phase of change to shake off the impulsive buying. The sudden realization will naturally wake them up.
It will take time but taking a small step of change could create a mountain of effect time after time. Be patient and trust the process, do not give up.
2. Knowing the Root cause
According to surveys, many shopaholics had revealed the root cause of the behavior is they feel a sense of “Something was missing in their life”. For example, some of them mentioned they felt lonely, unhappy in a current relationship they were in.
Thus, they are trying to find a hit of happiness at the bottom of a shopping bag. There will always be a never-ending shopping list. They got addicted to the feeling of after purchasing the must-have item, makes them happy
3. Stop the Credit Card service permanently
Those with really bad money spending habits should opt for only debit card. This mode of payment is much safer during the recovery stage to shake off the overspending habits.
Credit card is causing a lot of debts to people with serious shopaholic syndrome. Money is not owed yet but spent via a loan from banks. Using debit cards will help to give them a realization that they only have this allocated sum to spend and should not exceed the expense.
Debit card could help in the control of the urge, as compared to credit card which gives false impression that we have more money in hand.
4. Declutter your Closet
One important step to realize that a shopaholic had too many duplicate items is to have decluttering session. In this process, they will then notice how much excess or damage done to their money pockets.
If you notice, how much extras you have in hand. You need to consistently remind yourself that you have enough and quit shopping the duplicates.
5. Swap the Toxic Habit with Something Else
In the process to cure this toxic shopaholic habit, we need to divert our brain’s attention to some other activity. Since this habit is a habit to relieve stress, lets opt for something healthier each time we tend to shop.
For example, we can swap this shopping habit by spending time by playing with our pet dog, workout in the park, playing video games or anything else that do not involve money to relieve your stress.
A healthy replacement hobby would be hard at the initial stage of change but starting the small steps would lead to great change to cure your shopaholic habit.
6. Have a Big Goal to Motivate You to Save More
Many of this shopaholic have simple mindset with no big goals. They maybe lack motivation to save money thus, by providing a goal and vision which could motivate them to save money could cure them.
For example, young ladies could be motivated by saving money for their future wedding or future entrepreneurial business plan. Their closed ones should start giving them more talks and advise of a possible future for them to look forward.
This method would be effective because they lack motivation and goal. That is why, having a big goal set for them is important as it could really help them to stay motivated and stay in control.
Be sure to set realistic huge goals that do not disappoint as false hopes are not going to work. If they found out they were deceived, the impulsive buying will come back and could even come back ten times worse than before.
Bottom Line
The shopaholic syndrome is very common mostly among women but also do happen to some men. We should all be aware on ourselves and loved ones if any who is suffering from this syndrome.
Do not scold them for being this way, it is very uncontrollable. They just need another way to vent their stress. Be patient and considerate with someone who is facing this issue.
After all, among all the options to cure the shopaholic syndrome, self awareness and strong determination to change does matter!