Customer Reviews

Healing ADD : Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 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!

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!

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!

Thom Hartmann is probably my all-time favorite writer on the subject of ADD. I am a 36 year old woman who was diagnosed with ADD 3 years ago. Mr. Hartmann's book, 'ADD, A Different Perception', has probably had more of a positive effect on me than anything else I've read on the subject. His positive views on ADD as a unique but misunderstood form of brain wiring have caused me to view myself in a much more positive light.

However, that being said, I've also done a bit of research on NLP, and I've found that empirical, scientific evidence for some of the ideas it espouses is lacking.

First, I rather doubt that humans can be so neatly grouped by their thinking in one primary sensory 'mode' (i.e., visual, auditory, kinesthetic etc.), being the complex creatures that we truly are. If you have read the book, then you probably took the test that summarizes the primary sensory mode in which you experience the world. I tried some of the exercises in the book, but only found one of them to be applicable to my own situation. The rest of them were decidely not very useful for me.

Not to say that this book won't resonate positively with the great majority of ADD people who read it, but I personally found 'ADD, A Different Perception' to be far more insightful and less time-consuming to get something out of, and it remains for me the best book ever written on the subject of ADD.

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!

This book offers practical exercises that will change the way
educators look at ADD as well as how they work with their
students. The suggestions and exercises in the book were helpful, not
only to my ADD students but to all my students. It offers a healing
peaceful way to relate to and assist students in the classroom. Wish I
had read it years ago. The class met each new exercise with a real
sense of adventure and discovery, taking the the exercises home to
share with their parents. Soon parents were involved and asking
questions. It was wonderful! ...

This book really gets into YOUR experience of your thought processes and tells you how to correct the snags. For example: Are you always late? Close your eyes and take a look at how you visualize your personal time-line. Stretch your arms out using your right arm for the future and your left for your past. Open your eyes and take note of where each arm points. Your right-futrure arm should be pointing slightly up and slightly forward, to your right. Your left-past arm should be pointing slightly down and slightly behind you, to your left. If this is not the case adjust your arms and rearrange your visualization to these new angles. The book gets into the symbolism and dicusses it in detail.

I recommend this book to people with or without ADD. It really helps clear up some cloudy thinking that all of us have developed toward many, or just a few, of our daily habits.

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.

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.