A Smarter Way to Learn
Adult ADHD
Clinical Interventions
Including for Couples
There's Never Been
a Better Time
Expand Your Skills
and Your Practice
If you have not lived with Adult ADHD—in yourself or a loved one—it’s impossible to grasp the depth, breadth, and sheer variety of potential challenges. That goes double when the diagnosis comes later in life.
Over the years, what started as ADHD in childhood morphed into a murky mix of symptoms, misinterpretations, negative (or at least distorted) feedback, and counter-productive coping responses (along with some useful ones).
Loved ones bring their own variations of misinterpretations and counter-productive coping responses.
Helping ADHD-challenged clients stands out as among the most rewarding clinical work. Why? Because clear and marked progress can be made—and retained. But also because this kind of help is so desperately hard to find.
How To Help Clients
with a Cluster of
"High-Priority" Issues?
We begin by puzzling the pieces of the client’s highly individual experience of this highly variable syndrome. One by one.
This training illustrates how to clearly break out all the moving parts—and re-assemble in a more comfortable configuration.
Now, imagine your clients also taking this training.
We do the “heavy lifting” — providing a strong foundation, tools, and language for working with you to address more complex issues in therapy.
COVID Pushed
Already Strong Demand
for Expertise
Into the Crisis Zone
Pre-COVID, millions of ADHD-challenged individuals and couples were desperate for expertise.
During COVID, need reached beyond that to crisis proportions. Previously marginal coping strategies proved woefully insufficient.
“Denial” started to drop among the the adults themselves and their loved ones. Poorly managed ADHD was taking a clear toll on their lives.
As a result, even more seek help. Now.
Praise for
Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy
Russell Barkley, PhD
ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control and Taking Charge of Adult ADHD
Excerpted from the Foreword:
The counseling of couples in which at least one member has ADHD has received scant research attention. Fortunately, this book draws together not only what is known, but also what methods of treatment are likely to address these relationship issues.
Here we find experts in various approaches to treatment contributing to create the first book of its kind, one that provides a thorough review across a diverse array of modalities as well as detailed guidance on implementing them for the ADHD-affected couple.
Congratulations on having the good sense to read it.
Harville Hendrix, PhD
Getting the Love You Want and Imago Therapy
First came cutting edge theory in Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?, shining light in the darkness for couples living with the amazing complications of one or both partners having ADHD.
Now comes a luminous clinical guide for Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy, helping therapists identify the essential elements of the therapeutic process for successful outcome, including therapy models ranging from medications to cognitive-behavioral to couples therapy.
The thoroughness and clarity of the theory and therapy, and the voluminous sources and research citations, make these two books a seminal contribution to the field.
The Experts
Before creating the first clinical model for Adult ADHD Couple therapy, psychologist Arthur L. Robin and Gina Pera asked themselves two questions:
- How can couple therapists expertly approach the particular but highly variable needs of each person within ADHD-challenged couples—and the relationship itself?
- Given what we know about the bi-directional effect of domestic stress on a mental-health condition and vice-versa, how can Adult ADHD specialists providing individual therapy include the partner in an equitable and sensitive way?
We detail our highly endorsed model in Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy: Clinical Interventions, by Gina Pera and Arthur L. Robin (Routledge; 2016).
Yet, our interventions can even help clients who do not have ADHD—but still wrestle with Executive Functions around communication, long-term planning, co-parenting, chore-sharing, managing money, and more.
When it comes to therapy, these clients typically need an interweaving of pragmatic instruction, emotional exploration, and cognitive restructuring. One without the others typically is not enough.
For more information on our backgrounds, please visit About the Experts
Would You Like to Help
Clients Solve
These Common Puzzles?
- Taking charge of goals large and small, short-term and long-term
- Getting organized—with time, tasks, things
- Honoring agreements
- Managing reactions
- Remembering and preparing for important events
- Getting to bed at the designated time
- Working as a team—at work and at home
- Working more pro-actively with prescribers
- Connecting long-troubling physical issues (e.g. hearing) to ADHD
- At long last: implementing a calendar & to-do system
- Bringing “Time Blindness” into sharper view
- Managing frustration and irritability
- Communicating more clearly
- Acting with more consistent empathy (not under-doing or over-doing)
- Showing appreciation for friends and loved ones
- Having more time for fun activities
- Socializing more easily and enjoyably
- Taking out the trash—with a minimum of pain!
If you say, "That's me!"
to even one of
those questions,
this course is for you
- You’re hearing more about Adult ADHD and thinking it all sounds very familiar ….but still, you’re skeptical?
- You’re starting to think that some clients' “couples troubles” might have a better explanation—and better solutions—beyond standard couple therapy.
- You once had the impression that medication was the only significant treatment but now you're understanding that sometimes medication is only the foundation that makes important clinical work possible.
- You'd love to help more ADHD-challenged clients—if you only had clear and comprehensive interventions?
- You'd love to help more ADHD-challenged clients—if they could come prepared to work on already identified issues instead of your having to provide a thorough education on Adult ADHD?
Piecemeal Strategies
Won't Take Clients
To the Finish Line
A tip here. A blog post there.
A strategy and webinar —or ten.
Maybe even a few books and dozens of YouTube videos.
It all has its place—if one can separate wheat from chaff.
What’s that, though, when these clients are up against pervasive challenges?
Where is the framework for fitting all the pieces together—in a way that makes sense?
That is, makes sense for each client, not some generic idea of a person with ADHD or an ADHD-challenged couple.
Learn more in this overview video
The Big Picture:
Why Four Puzzle Pieces?
ADHD Success Training brings to you an unprecedented training series—Adult ADHD: Solving the Four Essential Puzzle Pieces.
Think of them as a jigsaw puzzle’s strategic four corner pieces. Once in place, they provide a much clearer view of your Adult ADHD puzzle. All that’s left is fitting in the details.
Course 1 is available now—and by itself a foundational game-changer.
Over the next year, Courses 2, 3, and 4 will dive deeper into three evidence-based strategies. Above, play the overview lesson. Below, find brief descriptions of each course.
1. Psychological Education — the foundation of all progress to come (in beta launch now!):
- Make sense of your life and relationships
- Be pro-active in pursuing an evaluation
- Start identifying and revising dysfunctional patterns
- Gain the tools that help you plan for—and track— progress
- Learn all about Executive Functions
- Know what it means to air your actions to the diagnosis
2. Physical Strategies — covering in-depth two major goals toward optimizing brain function:
- Why and how does medication for ADHD work?
- Which are the “best” medications—and how to choose?
- Maximizing your approach to medication so you can get the best results with your prescriber
- Catching up on the latest ADHD-related sleep research
- Addressing any of the various ADHD-related sleep challenges that frustrate and rob you of clear thought and energy
- For each topic, a step-by-step guide to personalize your issues and target your goals
Online August 2021, estimated
3. Practical Strategies — Support Executive Functions and make your life more “ADHD-Friendly” by learning how to
- Use battle-tested approaches to managing time, priorities, and stuff
- Set and meet short-and-long-term goals
- Get on the same page as a couple with collaborative teamwork (not nagger and nagged!)
- De-clutter and organize your environment
Online September 2021, estimated
4. Psychological Tools — A framework for paying attention to how you think and communicate—and creating new skills and habits:
- Actively identify and revise long-running misinterpretations and mindsets that can keep you stuck—in your life and in your relationship
- Streamline your communications so that each person feels heard and seen (a cheat sheet will help!)
- Follow two case couples through J. Russell Ramsay’s cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy approach to ADHD couple therapy, from our professional guide: Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Strategies: Clinical Interventions
Online November 2021, estimated
Your Tour Guide on the
ADHD Roller Coaster:
Gina Pera
In this training, Gina draws from that highly praised professional guide and her other authored works, along with 20 years’ experience in a range of ADHD-related issues, including relationships. Dr. Robin will join us regularly for virtual Q&A sessions.
Click to open these two categories of quick facts about Gina
- My husband was diagnosed in 1999, only thanks to my dogged efforts to make sense of seemingly paradoxical behavior
- Founding and leading for 16 years an online group for the partners of adults with ADHD—10,000 members and 14,000 posts to date
- Leading two face-to-face groups in Silicon Valley for 15 years: One for adults with ADHD, one for the “partners of”
- Attending years of high-level conferences on ADHD
- Reading hundreds of published papers and books
- Conducting the first and most comprehensive, rigorous survey on Adult ADHD and relationships, the ADHD Partner Survey (2004-6), findings of which are included in Dr. Russell Barkley’s clinical guide
- Writing and Speaking
- Publishing in 2008 the groundbreaking Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?— the first and only book to detail:
—The Executive Functions Framework
—The cumulative impact of living years without diagnosis
—The dual nature of “denial”—and how to get past it
—The potential effect of poorly managed ADHD on intimate partners
—Evidence-based treatment strategies, in layperson’s terms
- Winner of four national book awards; endorsed by a Who’s Who of preeminent experts
- By invitation, contributed the first-ever chapter on ADHD couple therapy to the “gold standard” clinical guide edited by Russell Barkley, PhD, a preeminent ADHD expert
- By invitation, produced with esteemed ADHD authority Arthur L. Robin, PhD, the first clinical guide for treating ADHD-challenged couples: Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy: Clinical Interventions
- By invitation, speaking at major ADHD conferences internationally
Accessible
Affordable
Comprehensive
Reliable
This Training Is For You If
- You prefer clearly defined “actionable targets”—not instruction alone
- You are eager to learn from pioneering experts with long track record of “getting it”—and getting it right
- You have never been satisfied with simplistic explanations, such as ADHD being “genetic” or “being low on dopamine”—you want to know what that means exactly
- You've read that specific CBT-for-ADHD models can be very helpful—and now you want to learn more
Is The Consumer Training for
Couples or Individuals?
Both Plus
We created this training so you can better guide:
- Couples
- Individuals:
- Adults with ADHD (already diagnosed or not), in a relationship or not
- Spouses, intimate partners , and other loved ones (parents, siblings, adult children, friends)
Key Issues Covered
- The Diagnosis of ADHD and its potential relevance to a client’s life in particular—a client’s particular experience of this highly variable syndrome
- The “emotional baggage” associated with late-diagnosis—and helping clients revise cognitive distortions and counterproductive coping responses
- Working within your license purview to help adults with ADHD and their partners be more pro-active with medication treatment
- Guiding couples in developing joint strategies that increase cooperation, good will, and follow through—with “nagging” sidelined.
- Helping parents of adult children with ADHD reframe their experience through the ADHD Lens and adopt helpful approaches with their child.
- Validating the experience of the partners of adults with ADHD before expecting them to adopt ADHD-friendly strategies-
Couple Therapists Should Know:
- ADHD affects individuals—it’s important to identify how it’s affecting each individual
- Teamwork is important— so is tracking (and celebrating) progress
- Providing the emotional space for clients to air their reactions to the diagnosis can be crucial to lasting progress
- Published research and high-level clinical expertise have shown specific strategies and tools to be effective
Help is Hard to Find—Anywhere
Friends and family members want to help. But their advice might fall flat—or even compound shame and isolation.
Standard therapy—individual or couple—lacks an orientation to ADHD’s neurobiological challenges. Therefore, it risks misinterpreting dysfunctional patterns’ causes—and exacerbating them.
Coaching can be helpful—but even the best efforts can’t “land” on a foundation of entrenched confusion and conflict.
Even well-qualified ADHD psychotherapists often lack the knowledge to extend their expertise to relationships in a fair and equitable way. For example, recruiting the “partner of” as a secretary or helper can be a recipe for resentment on both sides.
Based on the work of Baucom and others, there can be a bi-directional effect for adults with a mental-health condition who are in a relationship. Relationship stress can exacerbate that condition, and the condition can exacerbate relationship stress. Each partner—and their relationship—benefits from evidence-based clinical approaches.
A Merging Of Evidence
Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy™ merges evidence-based principles from both couple therapy and Adult ADHD therapy:
ADHD-challenged individuals and couples—and other loved ones, too— need a larger framework for “explaining the inexplicable” and “managing the unmanageable.”
In fact, maybe the relationship is strong, though weakening under stress. Such couples benefit not from therapy but from training in doing things differently—with less stress, more fun.
For couples with extra challenges, imagine how much better therapy will go if you’ve already pieced together the ADHD portion of your unique puzzle.
At its core, our Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy™ model depends on a strong understanding of the:
- Science
- Common dysfunctional patterns and how to revise them
- Approaches proven to work for individuals with ADHD—expanded to include a partner in a fair and equitable way
- The fact that there is no “one size fits all” for adults with ADHD or their partners
This Course is
Especially Recommended for
Professionals Who:
- View ADHD couple issues as simply being that of "ADHD vs. Neurotypical"
- Tend to see a "controlling spouse" instead of a person attempting to cope with a partner's unrecognized ADHD symptoms.
- Believe that ADHD is caused by traumatic experiences—rather than being a highly heritable condition that, in and of itself, almost gurantees traumatising experiences when left unrecognized.
- Were trained to see "won't" rather than "can't" (yet).
- Were trained to see "narcissistic" behavior that is not amenable to change rather than ADHD-related impairments.
- Consider ADHD a Big Pharma conspiracy invented to subdue wildly intelligent and creative people into being compliant drones of the Medical-Marital Industrial Complex
Imagine How It Feels:
Offering Clients
Solutions to
Annoying, Life-Draining
Seemingly Inexplicable
and Pointless
Life Challenges
What is the Format?
- Streaming videos, available 24-7, within our website
- Focused topics divided into clear sub-topics, 10-30 min per video
- Easily track progress and quickly scan topics for re-viewing
- Action Step Guides, to personalize lessons (complete on your device or print)
- Resource folder, for expanding upon cited research
- Weekly virtual Q&A meetings via Zoom for first 3 months
- Case couples walk you through key concepts and interventions
- Access for the life of the course (at least 2-3 years, probably longer)
Sample Course 1 Views
9 Major Steps
34 videos
16 hours
Bonus Introductory Module
2:22 hours; 13 lessons
You’re Among Friends—and We Get it—knowing they’re not alone, that their problems aren’t particular to them, that’s the first step toward relieving stress and paving a clear path to progress
Take a Sneak Peek from Course 1: The Double Triple Whammy ADHD Roller Coaster—not a moment too soon, a framework for making sense of life in the context of ADHD—as an individual and/or a couple
Meet Our Six Case Couples—all experiencing different types of common ADHD-related challenges: Can these relationship be saved? Use your Action Steps Guide to note observations and questions (consumers are encouraged to write their own case profile).
Take Another Sneak Peek from Course 1: The Adult ADHD-Focused Couple Therapy Dysfunctional Interaction Cycle ™ — because right away, clients benefit from a solid but simple model for de-constructing their confusing conflicts—and beginning to turn that cycle in a more positive direction.
