DUBAI // When it comes to treating adults with ADHD, the psychotherapist Jared Alden has a lot of insight.
He struggled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in his childhood but it was not until his late 20s, when studying the condition as part of his psychotherapy training, that he recognised a lot of the symptoms in himself.
“I thought ‘wow, that sounds a lot like me’,” said Mr Alden, 52, of the German Neuroscience Centre in Dubai Healthcare City. “I went through testing and it came up with ADHD hyperactive type.
“It made a big difference to me. Anyone who meets me, even now at my age, knows I am hyper and full of energy. When I was younger it was really extreme. It was nice to know that it was a brain thing and not a character issue.”
The condition is typically diagnosed in childhood.
“It was not really a very well-known thing at the time,” said Mr Alden, an American.
“What makes it very hard is that for most people their first experience of having ADHD is in school. But schools just don’t have time for that student who is different, so we tend to not get a good experience of our early schooling. That tends to affect us throughout life – some people will think they are dumb or any number of different things.
“For me it was unrecognised when I was a younger student. I found assignments really hard in a specific way. It would take me a long time to form the ideas; I would understand it, but the hard part was putting it down on paper and explaining what I knew.
“I really struggled getting other people to understand what I was trying to say.”
The diagnosis gave him more compassion when dealing with the ADHD adults he now sees weekly.
“It gave me a lot of insight,” he said. “You can spot people very quickly. It is the person who tends to be just a little bit different. It can be in their language – they can talk about things differently. They have different ideas.
“We have a very hard time sitting still and we don’t like doing things in a ritualistic way. We always like to bounce around and do things our own way.”
He believes the condition can bring many benefits and many can use it to their advantage to be more creative, driven and independent.
“It has certainly made me more driven because I have had to work hard for my academic qualifications. It means I am a pretty good worker generally.”
Mr Adren said people react to his ADHD in different ways.
“I think a lot of people are surprised by how much energy I have. I tend to be thought of as a little bit strange because I have different ways of looking at things. Sometimes I can tell people don’t really know what to do with that.
“I don’t think people are always comfortable with someone who is different. And I am certainly different.”
jbell@thenational.ae
