The ADHD Question

Why the Cause Matters Less Than the Solution

The question haunts every parent sitting in a pediatrician's office, every adult finally seeking answers after years of struggle: "Is ADHD real? Is my child overdiagnosed? Are we just medicating normal childhood behavior?"

It's the wrong question.

And Johann Hari, in his controversial exploration of attention in "Stolen Focus," discovered this too when he interviewed over thirty experts about ADHD and found they disagreed on even the most basic questions—including whether ADHD actually exists as a biological illness. What every expert agreed on was crucial: everyone being diagnosed with ADHD has a real problem. They aren't making it up or faking it.

Here's what I've learned after years of coaching hundreds of families through this journey: the cause of your ADHD-like symptoms matters far less than finding solutions that work for your brain. And those solutions? They're remarkably similar regardless of whether your attention challenges stem from genetics, environment, trauma, or our modern world stealing your focus.

The Twelve Faces of Attention Struggle

Hari identifies twelve distinct causes contributing to our collective attention crisis, and several directly impact what we might call "ADHD symptoms":

Environmental Factors:

• Poor nutrition, particularly processed foods that impact brain function and focus

• Rising pollution affecting our brains' ability to concentrate

• Sleep deprivation reducing our cognitive abilities

• Technology designed to fracture our attention

Developmental Factors:

• The confinement of children, both physically and psychologically, reducing their natural development of attention skills

• Lack of unstructured play time that historically built focus and self-regulation

Neurobiological Factors:

• Genetic predisposition to ADHD

• Executive function differences in brain development

• Trauma affecting attention and self-regulation

Sociocultural Factors:

• Educational systems that don't match how many brains learn best

• Work environments that demand constant task-switching

• Social expectations that pathologize normal neurodiversity

Here's the revolutionary insight: it doesn't matter which combination of these factors is affecting you or your child. The solutions remain remarkably consistent.

The "Make It Stick" Principle for ADHD Support

The authors of "Make It Stick" discovered something profound about learning: retrieval practice, spacing out learning, and making connections between concepts creates lasting change—regardless of individual learning differences. This same principle applies to ADHD support.

Just as effective learning techniques work across different types of learners when they address how the brain actually functions, effective ADHD strategies work across different causes when they address how attention-challenged brains actually operate.

Why ADHD Coaching Works Regardless of Cause

For Genetic ADHD: Coaching provides the external structure and systems that compensate for executive function differences. We create environments that support your brain's natural wiring rather than fighting against it.

For Environmental ADHD: Coaching helps identify and modify the environmental factors stealing your focus while building skills to navigate an attention-hostile world.

For Trauma-Related Attention Issues: Coaching (alongside appropriate therapy) develops self-regulation skills and creates safe, predictable systems that allow your nervous system to settle enough for focus to emerge.

For Sociocultural Mismatches: Coaching digs deep to find the disconnect between your brain's needs and your environment's demands, then bridges that gap with practical strategies.

The Coaching Advantage: Meeting Your Brain Where It Is

Here's what sets ADHD coaching apart from other interventions: we don't start with the question "What's wrong with you?" Instead, we ask "How does your brain work best, and how can we design your life around that?"

This approach works whether you have:

• A formal ADHD diagnosis

• Suspected ADHD without diagnosis

• Attention challenges from any other cause

• A child struggling in school regardless of the reason

• Workplace focus issues

• Life transitions that have disrupted your attention

We create successful environments by:

1. Identifying Your Attention Profile: Understanding your unique pattern of strengths and challenges, regardless of their origin

2. Designing Systems, Not Willpower Solutions: Just as effective learning requires structured practice rather than hoping for inspiration, sustainable attention improvement requires systems that work automatically

3. Building on Strengths: Every attention-challenged brain has areas of hyperfocus and natural ability—we leverage these rather than focusing solely on deficits

4. Creating Scaffolding: Providing external structure until internal systems develop, then gradually transferring ownership

5. Addressing the Whole Person: Considering sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress, relationships, and environment—all factors that impact attention regardless of ADHD's cause

The Truth About Diagnosis

Should you seek a diagnosis? Often, yes—especially for children in school who need accommodations, or adults who might benefit from medication. But the diagnostic process can take months or years, and life doesn't wait.

Coaching can begin immediately because we work with the brain you have, not the label you might receive.

You don't need:

• A formal diagnosis to benefit from ADHD strategies

• To wait for the "right" medication to start building better systems

• To figure out the exact cause before implementing solutions

• Perfect conditions to begin improving your daily life

Making Change Stick in an Attention-Hostile World

Research shows that lasting change happens through repeated practice in varied contexts, with feedback and adjustment. This is exactly how effective ADHD coaching works.

We don't just teach strategies—we help you practice them until they become automatic. We space out learning across time. We help you retrieve and apply skills in different situations. We make abstract concepts concrete and personal.

Whether your attention challenges stem from genetics, environment, trauma, or modern life, this approach creates lasting change.

The Bottom Line

As Hari discovered, even the experts can't agree on ADHD's exact causes, but they all agree the struggles are real. What matters isn't settling the nature-versus-nurture debate—it's getting the support that works for your brain.

ADHD coaching meets you where you are, works with how your brain actually functions, and creates sustainable systems for success. It works whether you're 8 or 80, diagnosed or self-identified, struggling with homework or work presentations.

Because in the end, the question isn't "Do I really have ADHD?" The question is "How can I create a life where my brain thrives?"

And that question has answers—real, practical, life-changing answers that don't depend on solving the mystery of what caused your attention challenges in the first place.

The brain you have right now, reading this, is worthy of support, accommodation, and strategies that help it flourish. That's not a medical opinion—it's a human right.

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Ready to start working with your brain instead of against it? ADHD coaching provides practical, evidence-based strategies that work regardless of your diagnosis status or the cause of your attention challenges. Because every brain deserves to thrive.