ADHD Book Review of The Disorganized Mind by Nancy Ratey, A practical guide to ADHD self coaching #005
A podcast of encouragement and strategy on how to make your motherhood with ADHD better day by day. I recommend and share my thoughts and opinions of the book The Disorganized Mind by Nancy Ratey.
Patricia Sung 00:00:03
Welcome to motherhood and ADHD. I'm your friend. Patricia said my mission is to be a lighthouse. Her mother's with ADHD, helping you find your path to success by learning to appreciate your ADHD. As an asset, I'm seeking to change the paradigm that ADHD means your life is doomed to be a hot mess. So I'm sharing strategies and encouraging you in your pursuit of happiness, to love who you are every day of your ADHD life. Hey,
Patricia Sung 00:00:37
Sweet mama. It's Patricia and I am so excited because today is book review day. One of my goals for 2018 was to read more because I just devoured books as a child. And then, you know, you get older and you get stuck reading really boring things for college or for work. And we just kind of lose that luster when it comes to reading. And there are so many great things out there that we can enrich ourselves with. So I just want to talk about some books that I've read recently, and I'll just do one here or there. Hopefully I can give a good enough review that you can know whether or not this is something that you'd want to get into right now or not.
Patricia Sung 00:01:20
And I just think it's so important as moms that we do something enriching for ourselves as well, because we're always hearing about how it's so important to read to our kids. And that's the amount of reading that they get in when they're younger is really indicative of their language skills later in life. But if that's so important for our kids, why is that not important for us as well? And so even if you're just reading for a couple minutes, maybe in the carpool line or the other day I read while my kids were in the bath, we were having a really rough day. And so I just let them play in the bathtub. And I read for a few minutes sitting next to them on the floor. Just find a way to put a little bit of intellectual enrichment into your life.
Patricia Sung 00:01:59
And I was on a self-improvement kick in 2018. So this next book that I want to talk about is right up that alley. It was Nancy. Rowdy's the disorganized mind coaching your ADHD brain to take control of your time tasks and talents. So Nancy is an ADHD coach and she has ADHD herself. So I found that overall, I really enjoyed how she approached things. She's very knowledgeable and because she knows how our brains work, I feel like she has a unique perspective on someone who doesn't have ADHD and is trying to help all of us out. She starts out the book discussing how ADHD affects your life and what areas you're probably going to need help in just generally, what do people with ADHD struggle with and then how coaching is helpful to those different areas.
Patricia Sung 00:02:51
And she walks you through step by step on some improvements. She does a little survey. Actually. It's not a little survey. It's quite a long survey where you of take stock of your life as a whole. So then you take the self evaluation portion where she talks about, you know, the things you're struggling with and how they relate back to your ADHD and where you're going to implement the strategies that she gives you at the end. This book is aimed at adults with attention deficit disorder. If you have a really mature teen, I think they could probably gain some weight out of this book, but I wouldn't say it's for a tween or a, how should I say a less self-aware teenager?
Patricia Sung 00:03:32
Obviously, if you can sit down with a coach one-on-one, that is the best option, but this book's a really great substitute. I think it gives you a better awareness of yourself. It also gives you a lot of tools to tackle many of your issues. Obviously, you know, a book's not going to solve all of your problems, but I think it gives you a good starting point. And I really liked that Nancy is relatable. She's positive. She shares her own stories, but not too much that it gets off track. So she's generally a very action focused writer. I think this book would be difficult if you're not really ready to commit them out of time and work. That's going to go into this. I'll talk a little more about that later.
Patricia SunG 00:04:13
And if you're not ready to do self coaching, cause it is a lot of effort. The other part that I found overwhelming was at the end of the book, she does give so many strategies, which is great, but it can be a little overwhelming. Obviously, if she was sitting down with you one on one, she would give you, you know, one or two strategies to work on and then check back in and, you know, adjust. But obviously without her there, that's your job. And so you've got to sift through all the strategies that she gives you and find what's gonna work best for you with whatever problem you're tackling. And as someone who does a lot of self improvement and learning just as a whole, there weren't a ton of strategies that I was like, wow, I've never heard that before.
Patricia Sung 00:04:55
There was a lot of, a lot of familiarity, but I think it's good to go back and review things that we know, but have forgotten about and were not utilizing. And also just to hear that encouragement of knowing you're not out there alone, you can do this, et cetera. That's I think really important for us to feel like we're not on an Island. So really what I gained the most out of was the middle of the book, where she talks about the relationship between attention deficit disorder and then the problem that you're struggling with, it just gives you a new insight. So that's the part I really felt was most helpful. I think the two biggest things that I gained out of it was that connectivity that I wasn't aware of, for example, my I'm a very perfectionistic person just by personality, but my ADHD puts a magnifying glass on that and kind of sends it into hyperdrive.
Patricia Sung 00:05:51
And I never noticed the connection between being a perfectionist and getting distracted because I get caught on. What's not important. I over-focus on it being exactly the way I want it. And I lose the enjoyment and I'm not paying attention to the whole point of the activity, which is to enjoy my life and the activity that I'm doing, my kids. So I'm just learning to like, let go and not be so focused on, well, this craft project is not going the way that I thought, and now it's a total mess and it's totally worthless. Why I even start it and said, just focusing on, okay, well that didn't really go like I planned, but we still had a good time.
Patricia Sung 00:06:35
Yes, it was messy, but we built some good memories on it. And so just being able to shift that focus don't get distracted by it being exactly the way that I had perceived it to be and focusing on the important part. So I thought that was a really good connection that I needed to make is in staying focused on what's important. One of the other parts I really enjoyed was just her discussion on communicating with your spouses and family. She does give some good strategies, especially if you have older kids on how to like keep the family together. And in the loop, I did talk with a coach probably about a year ago and one of the best pieces of advice that she gave me was never expect your spouse to understand how your brain functions, just let it go.
Patricia Sung 00:07:22
It's not going to happen. Obviously their brain works differently than yours. So don't get caught up in why don't you understand me, but instead focus on communicating what you need. And I think just that reminder, I really need to communicate better with my husband, what's going on in my brain and keeping us on the same page. So that self evaluation section in the middle really, really did give me some, some good insights in terms of what I wish had been different. I really, I wish she had focused a little more on the talent portion because the subtitle of the book is coaching your ADHD, Brene to take control of your time tasks and talents. And I really do feel like she did a great job on time management and tasks, but I wish there had been more about the talents.
Patricia Sung 00:08:08
I mean, she kind of intersperses it into all the different sections, but I wish there had been a little more meat on that personally. So overall I recommend the book. I enjoyed it. I felt like I got a lot out of it. I took copious notes on this book, which to me means I got a lot out of it. I'd say probably double the amount of notes that I normally take in a book about like self improvement in order to get the most out of this book, you've need to be ready to learn about your ADHD. Be committed to applying what you've learned. As I mentioned before, really the difficult part of this is that you're taking on all of the roles of coach and student.
Patricia Sung 00:08:52
And so you've got to put down information, analyze it, figure out what you're struggling with, make a plan with the strategies. Then you've got to be the one who executes the plan and then circle back and review. What's not going well, what's going well, what changes do I need to make? And then execute the updated plan. And so it is a lot of effort to be doing all those steps by yourself. And you've got to have accountability to stay on top of that. So you need to be ready for that level of work. I think this is a really great place to start. If you're ready to make some changes, I think you can get a good foundation of what you want to work on and you can start working on the ones that you're capable of doing, and then you can whittle it down to the things that you actually need professional help on.
Patricia Sung 00:09:43
So I think you would get more bang out of your buck if you were to meet with somebody one on one, because you already know these are the things I was able to improve on my own. And these are the things that I was not able to do without professional help. If you're ready to jump in and do some work with Nancy ratty, I highly recommend her book. The disorganized mind. I will put a link to it in my show notes so that you can go grab you a copy. And so you can hopefully take copious notes too and find some great strategies on improving your life. All right, successful mama. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
Patricia Sung 00:10:18
Thank you for listening to motherhood and ADHD. For more resources, head over to our website, www.motherhoodinadhd.com.