Healing Add: Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life

by Thom Hartmann

Book Overview

Offers simple psychological exercises designed to produce positive changes in children and adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, based on the theory that ADD is a survival strategy rather than a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1887424377
• ISBN13: 9781887424370
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Underwood-Miller
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating Mind-Fodder - and Useful, Too!

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!

Extraordinarily useful

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

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!

So Good That I Wrote a Thank-You Note to the Author

Five stars is all I can give this book in this format. It actually deserves a constellation.It was hard to wait until I had finished this book to send a letter (well, an e-mail) of thanks to Thom Hartmann for not only explaining what ADD is but for his instructions on how to deal personally with some of the obstacles it presents. I am a person who has ADD, but when I was a child in the 1950's no one knew about the disorder. I got such a lifetime of negative feedback about myself that even major successes in my adult life (and I have had quite a few) did not make me feel adequate or whole. There was an enormous healing for me in the first few chapters of this book. For the first time in my 51 years I actually understood my mother and the frustrations and pain she experienced having a child like me when there was no understanding or help available. The healing that took place with that alone would have been worth the price of the book. (I wrote my mom a letter saying, effectively, "Considering what you were up against, Mom, you did a pretty darned good job." She is probably going to faint when she gets it!)But then, as though that weren't enough, I was able--immediately upon reading the instructions for the mental exercises--to truly put the past behind me and get it out of my way. Then I was able to "overlay" tedious situations with a level of interest that made it possible to start a project and stick with it for hours if necessary. (That's a tough one to explain unless you're Thom Hartmann, so read his book.) Upon mastering that technique, which took only about 30 minutes maximum, I got up and cleaned up my very messy kitchen--even cleaning out all the cabinets. And I have been transferring the technique to my job all week. I can't believe what I have accomplished!It helps enormously that Hartmann has ADD himself. He is not just spouting a lot of theory and psychobabble. He IS there; he's doing that; and he isn't pulling your leg about anything. Self-help is a good thing. Self-healing is a victory like no other. Thanks again, Thom Hartmann, for showing us ADD folks how to do that. And thanks for interpreting our condition for the rest of the world in an enlightened and easy-to-understand way.This book will not only heal ADD people, but their entire families. I can't wait to read the rest of the books on ADD by this author.

This book is a must for all educators!

This book offers practical exercises that will change the wayeducators look at ADD as well as how they work with theirstudents. The suggestions and exercises in the book were helpful, notonly to my ADD students but to all my students. It offers a healingpeaceful way to relate to and assist students in the classroom. Wish Ihad read it years ago. The class met each new exercise with a realsense of adventure and discovery, taking the the exercises home toshare with their parents. Soon parents were involved and askingquestions. It was wonderful! ...