The key to managing ADHD is understanding yourself and giving yourself credit for your strengths, such as creativity. It’s especially important with ADHD to find what you love and do it. How we cope with and internalize negative attention, boredom, and impulsivity CAN be managed so we can meet our true potential.
As an ADHD client myself, I am very in tune to seeing it in others, including children, adolescents, and adults who have not been diagnosed. Signs and symptoms of ADHD vary between boys and girls, children and adults. The DSM-5 criteria cites “persistent patterns of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interfere with functioning or development” as the key markers of ADHD.
Symptoms of inattention include frequent careless mistakes, forgetfulness, poor listening, lack of focus, disorganization, project avoidance, and persistently misplacing personal belongings. Symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity include disruptive restlessness, fidgeting, inability to take part in leisure activity, excessive talking and interrupting, and rash verbalization.
I strongly recommend the following books:
Driven to Distraction and Answers to Distraction, Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. and John J. Ratey, M.D.