Connection Between ADHD and Motivation
ADHD is a complex, multi-faceted condition, and should be treated as such. While the team leader for individuals with ADHD is often their primary care provider or a psychiatrist, working with a full team to identify and manage underlying causes and aggravators can make a huge difference.
I specifically work with a lot of individuals with ADHD who have functional vision problems – issues where they have poor coordination of their eye functions that lead to blurry, inconsistent, or double vision, or significant eyestrain and eye pain to prevent these things, when try to read or do other desk and computer work.
Often these patients don’t consider their vision a problem at first – they’ve bought into the stigma that their ADHD makes them deficient, and it’s simply something they live with, leading to a lack of motivation to address modifiable factors. But vision is a great place to start with improving the signs and symptoms of ADHD.
Visual attention has been proven to be a trainable skill. It occupies much of the same brain area that governs general attention and executive function – the frontal lobe. And by training visual attention and other vision skills, you tap into a sensory system that connects to more than half the brain’s cortex, and is the leading system for how we perceive and interact with the world.
Lack of motivation, procrastination, and ADHD paralysis can all be learned responses. The classical conditioning model shows us that fear and punishment our powerful neuromodulators that can create deeply ingrained behavioral patterns. An individual who has experienced pain from reading, or emotional distress from poor performance in public, will learn to avoid these situations quickly. This is why it is so important to address the underlying causes and find remedies and treatments as early as possible. But even when these behaviors are ingrained, we know from modern understanding of learning and neuroplasticity that even adults can modify their brains through therapies and overcome these challenges.
These are just some of the ways you can get started overcoming ADHD and regaining motivation to move forward:
- Behavioral optometrists that address functional vision,
- Nutritionists to maximize gut health
- Speech-language therapy for auditory processing disorder
If you haven’t already, work with your primary doctor managing your ADHD to find other professionals and therapies that can help.
