Springboard Clinic

This month, a few of our team members had the opportunity to go see the “ADHD Project” as part of Toronto’s Fringe Theatre Festival. They were not disappointed.

Recently Melissa Orlov, author of The ADHD Effect on Marriage, shared an article by Springboard’s Laura MacNiven. In this short piece, Laura talks about the impact an ADHD assessment can have on your life, especially when you are willing to be vulnerable and open.

Recently the Globe and Mail published an article about how judgemental Canadians continue to be about mental health diagnoses. You can read the article here.

As mental health clinicians, it made us ask this question: “Exactly, why are mental health diagnoses so stigmatized? Do people think it is an act of weakness to go to therapy, or to seek help for mood issues?”

A Springboard client, who was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, once described his life like this:

“I feel like I have always been walking through tall grass - my whole life - and every time I take a step, a blade hits me in the face.”

ADHD signs and symptoms, like with so many other mental health diagnoses, change and evolve with you. As you get older and take on more responsibilities in life, you may find that your symptoms are no longer held in check by your coping mechanisms.

If you have untreated ADHD, you might feel like you can only get things done once they become urgent in your mind. You might struggle with decisions and task management over and over again in a day. And you might assume that this is the way everyone lives - from rushed thing to rushed thing. You may be so used to this way of thinking that you don’t know how it could possibly be different. Perhaps most importantly, you may not even be aware of how often you are bringing stress on yourself in order to get what you need done, or to get to the place you are going.

It can be so exhausting to live in a state of chaos.