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ADHD in adults: diagnosing & treating this common problem

I only recently came across the important article "European consensus statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD: The European Network Adult ADHD" published in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry last autumn.  I suspect that most mental health professionals working with adults are poor at recognising and treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - and I certainly include myself in this company! 

Behavioural systems (attachment, care giving, exploration, sex & power): hyperactivated, hypoactivated or just about right?

Overall - along with 50 to 60% of the population - I qualify as "securely attached".  I was fortunate in being brought up by loving parents who left me with an internalised "secure attachment script" that runs something like "If I feel a bit insecure or threatened, there will be others who I can turn to for comfort & support.  I'll then feel better & successfully be able to tackle the challenges I face."  Our attachment style spreads out to affect many aspects of our lives - especially how we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others.  I've written quite a lot in the past about attachment.  See, for example, "Attachment, compassion & relationships" and "Assessing attachment in adults".  In the latter post, I said " ...

Embodied cognition: what to do

  This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file.

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!"
                                                                                attrib. Goethe/William Murray

Embodied cognition: muscle & willpower

This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file.

Introduction: 
Lying very comfortably in my warm bed early this morning, I knew I wanted to get up but it was hard to do.  I waited a little, then tightened my right hand into a blade shape, "cutting through", and got up simply and easily.  Fascinatingly tightening almost any muscle group would probably have helped in "boosting my willpower" to get over the obstacle of inertia and short term comfort in order to achieve a longer term gain.  Hung & Labroo have recently published on the results of a series of very interesting experiments exploring this muscle tension/willpower boosting effect: 

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