Healing ADD . Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking

2003-01-20
I agree with most of the other reviewers here. It is a thought provoking book which turns most of what we think we understand about ADD on its head. I highly recommend reading both this book and 'ADD:A Different Perception' to give a much more balanced view of what ADD is (and is not). People looking for rules, charts, discipline and restrictions will not find them here. Instead we have a wholistic approach to mending the damage done to ourselves and our kids by a school system and society that wants to produce a whole lot of round pegs for all the round holes out there and who don't approve of people who are different. Here we can rediscover the joy of having an intelligent, happy, affectionate and energetic child without the damaging labels applied by others. Great book!

Extraordinarily useful

2002-12-26
This is a marvelous book. It's readable, full of real-world, useful systems and techniques to heal from the woundings of growing up with ADHD. This is *not* the book that recommends shooting up kids with expensive, radioactive, cancer-causing substances to "scan" their brains: that's a later book by (oddly coincidentally) the same title. Instead, this book by groundbreaking author Hartmann provides practical, solid, and effective ways to resolve old wounds, set goals, enhance communication, and understand ADD/ADHD in a meaningful and useful and effective way. You'll hear its story, see the results immediately, and feel better for having read it. It's useful for parents, friends, spouses, therapists, and even for self-help - things you can do yourself, for yourself. I've used it, my wife has, and we've used it's techniques - particuarly those in the last chapter on family communication - with our family, with great results. Five stars - this is one of the best books in the market on ADD/ADHD and what you really can do about it!

An extraordinary view of NLP applied to ADHD

2002-10-29
This remarkable book not only offers one of the most cogent insights into ADHD (see the earlier long review a few back), and does address "attention" at length (in fact, it's all about how we attend, and to what, and in what ways), but it's also one of the best introductions to the use of NLP as a way of healing from the damage of growing up a Hunter in a Farmer's world.

Filled with practical, real-world exercises and techniques, Healing ADD (this is the first book with that title) really is about healing - coming to terms with what ADHD means in this world, learning new ways to function and position yourself in the world, and recovering from the traumas that virtually every person with ADHD who was subjected to public school carries.

This is a powerful book, with specific tools and techniques, an extensive discussion of how the ADHD attentional mechanism is different and unique for ADHD people, and one of the best introductions to NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) available, ADHD-context or not. Highly recommended, whether you've read the author's other books or not!

Excellent ADD Resource 2002-08-26
This is very well written and thought provoking book. Thom Hartmann really helps his readers to think. This book is full of great suggestions and ideas to help live a more positive ADD life. This book helps the reader to change his or her whole thinking process.

If you are just learning about ADD I strongly suggest that you read at least one of Thom Hartman's books. This man really understands ADD.

not very useful or practical at all... 2002-08-15
the book promises "practical exercises" that can "be readily picked up", yet there are hardly any. those that are there are described in such a vague manner that the ADD reader will just lose interest and not actually get the point.

apart from one or two bits I consider this book largely a waste of my precious time

An interesting and useful read 2006-10-08
I found this book very interesting and useful from many different perspectives.

It gave me a better understanding of those who are diagnosed or labeled as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and the issues faced by these people. In particular, I liked the idea of looking at ADD as `a normal and natural part of the spectrum of human behavior, and that it is not as useful in modern society as it may have been in the past'. That is, a person diagnosed with ADD has characteristics more like a hunter compared to the rest of the population who are more like farmers.

This is an excellent book for students of NLP to see how NLP can be used to assist those who have been diagnosed as ADD. This however is also a short-coming of the book for those readers who have not studied NLP.

The NLP techniques and concepts, presented in this book, are adequately described for anyone who has been trained in NLP. Thus, NLP practitioners can easily use these simple and elegant techniques with their ADD clients and achieve outstanding results. However, for those readers who have not studied NLP, my concern is that the techniques are not presented in sufficient detail nor with the full understanding as to why or how they will assist a person diagnosed as ADD. Thus, some of these readers may feel the techniques are too simple or even flaky.

Stop-- This is a "must not" read. 2005-12-25
You really need to be careful when reading this book. Understandingly, people facing the challenges of ADD/ADHD are stressed out and overly receptive to a voice like Hartmann's. Strangely unprofessional, Hartmann offers a "soft ball" lob to those looking for a feel good camp-fire-like discussion of the challenges of ADD/ADHD. This is not a productive way to approach these challenges. Overcoming these challenges takes discipline, a manner of thinking totally absent in Harmann's writing. I would go so far as to say that the author's writing style, the manner in which he presents his ideas, and the thinking behind those ideas represents the worst, rather than the most optimal aspects, of traits associated with ADD. Beware.

Don't have a cue what to do!!! Read the book! 2005-10-17
Thom Hartmann has written a series of books related to ADD/ADHD.

They all are wonderful easy to understand and useful books.

They introduce a powerful perspective to those labeled ADD/ADHD. ADD/ADHD, being based on labeling behaviors is challenged in many ways by these books of Hartmaan's.

Thom Hartmann's books provide a useful tool to help people recognize the psychological coping mechanism that are associated with ADD patterns of behavior. This was very helpful to me since I am not ADD/ADHD and had no idea how to relate or what I was relating to!!!

This book Healing ADD gave me some useful tools for me and my daily life! That alone was worth the cost of the book!

Bottom-line these books helped several people I know and love.

So this review is one of a personal point of "been there done that!" I learned much as did my family and friends.

These books of his help!!!

Yours in good health

nieema

Fascinating Mind-Fodder - and Useful, Too! 2005-04-08
This book is an amazing self-improvement resource; only rarely does a book impress me, but... I'm impressed!

Hartmann has an extremely engaging writing style, and displays great deftness in walking a very narrow path; most books gravitate toward either theories that are interesting but engender no action, or strident calls to action that would do a nagging parent proud.

Instead, his phrases twist, and turn, and *slide* through that narrow gap, right past all sorts of carefully-developed defenses, and inspire the amused reader to actually TRY some of the exercises he suggests. For some of us, believe me, that's no small task! As an added bonus, this book is also the best USEFUL quick-and-dirty introduction to NLP I've seen... I've toyed with experimenting with my internal programming before, and even seen some useful results when guided by a friend that's proficient in it, but Hartmann's descriptions and exercises immediately made sense and intrigued me.

An example - he talked of how most of us have a spatial representation of time, and picture the future extending in one direction and the past in another. Those with a less-than-functional internal sense of time have usually shifted them to a less-than-useful location and sure enough, I found my own representation to be within reason but somewhat skewed. After trying the associated mental exercise in the book, I suddenly found myself getting up, two mornings in succession, the *first* time my alarm went off - usually I'd hit "snooze" for at least an hour. As if that weren't enough, on the third day my alarm clock failed... the outlet was bad, and the alarm didn't go off. I STILL woke up at the appropriate time. This is fascinating stuff; next I'm going to play with resetting some old anchors and creating some new ones.

Whether you consider yourself to have ADD, consider yourself not to, or think it's just a negative label created to minimize people who shake things up a bit, this book is worth a read. Doubly so if you're an iNtuitive Perceiving personality type; it's a quick, entertaining, and very likely useful read... well worth a try in my book!

Sounds nice, but no help when dealing with serious ADD 2005-04-07
I read this book and several others on the subject to help myself recover from a painful life-long relationship with an untreated, undiagnosed ADDer. My goal was to understand, and have compassion for those with ADD.

This book seems to be aimed at making those who have to live with ADD or ADHD feel good. In an attempt to make the ADDer feel better, he takes the approach that ADD is an outdated human survival mechanism that causes problems in our more organized society, therefore, it is not a "defect" or something that needs to be treated with medication.

The tendency to pile on fat is also such a mechanism, but that is no reason to consider it a "gift" or not seek ways to overcome it. The reality is that such things can pose very real health risks and the danger is that such opinions can assist those in denial to ignore the consequences of ADD/ADHD behavior on the family's health, happiness, and survival.

He also blames a lot of the increase in ADD on a society that watches TV, and an education system that stifles creativity. Many people try to link ADD with creativity as though one relies on the other. However, there are a lot of us that have grown up in the same environment as those with ADHD, but we manage to remember to pay the bills, we can maintain a job, and we manage to maintain healthy human relationships. And there are many artists, musicians and creative individuals who do not have ADD, and are no less successful for it.

If you are the parent of an ADD/ADHD child, there are some good tips for parenting. But if you are a spouse or child recovering from a disastrous relationship with someone with undiagnosed or untreated ADD, or if you are currently in a relationship with an adult with untreated ADD this book won't help you a bit.

There is no doubt that our society has been bad at helping those with ADD and our attitudes toward the behavior of ADD have caused self-esteem problems. However, the same is true of the overweight issue.

The bottom line is that ADD and ADHD has caused an untold amount of unhappiness for the person with ADD and the family. The behaviors of risk taking, the communication problems that manifest in relationship problems, and the impulsiveness and lack of self control that can lead to emotional or physical abuse are far too serious to be ignored. The exercises in the book are fine, but for anyone facing serious issues because of ADD behavior, think about medication to get the worst of the behavior under control. If medication can help treat it, I say, go for it. Then we can all sit in a circle and sing Kumbayah and rejoice in our "differentness".