What I've seen in two decades of working with kids and adults with ADHD is that it can rarely be managed by standalone interventions. For example, medication can really help some people with ADHD, but not everybody. And for the ones that it does help, they very often need more than just medication to successfully manage it.

In my decades of working with kids and adults with ADHD, as a teacher, psychologist, and more recently a Human Design coach, I've just seen a lot of generic recommendations that are often made and also a lot of misunderstandings about how to best manage the difficulties that come with having ADHD. If you're reading this, the chances are extremely high that you've already tried a bunch of things to help yourself or someone you love with ADHD, and if you're still struggling with it, it's not from a lack of trying to find a solution.

Although the symptoms often look the same, each person experiences having ADHD in their own unique ways. The main commonality that I see is they often feel at odds with the way that their brains work. With this seems to come either a search for things to help themselves, which can often feel like a desperate and fruitless search because sometimes they feel like nothing works, or there may be an avoidance of things and situations when things get hard for them.

So, in your own search to find the best solution to help yourself or someone you care about with ADHD, you most likely have already tried a lot of things or followed experts down paths that did not always work for you or someone that you care about. And you may still be thinking that you need to just find the perfect system, the perfect organizational or time management app or program, and that all will be well as soon as you do, because you'll finally have your ADHD under control so that you can function like a “normal person.”

But I'm here to tell you that what you probably don't need more of is the perfect app, the perfect time management strategy, or the perfect program to help you manage your ADHD. What you probably do need more of is a reliable framework that you can use for understanding who you truly are and exactly how you operate best in the world.

What you probably don't need more of is to follow a rigid behavior plan or to get more accommodations at school or work. What you probably do need more of is to learn better techniques to make your mind your ally.

What you definitely do not need more of is to be “normal.” And probably what you do need more of is to just be more of your true self.

This is exactly where Human Design can come in to help.

The goal of this blog post is to show you a new way to personalize the management of ADHD through the lens of Human Design, in a way that affirms the goodness of who people truly are, helps them to lean into their strengths instead of staying stuck on what they perceive as weaknesses, and helps them ultimately fulfill the highest version of their life purpose.

And I hope you've come to this blog post with a lot of curiosity and a lot of open-mindedness, because using Human Design is a way different approach to managing ADHD, and no one that I know of is actually talking about it.

There is this amazing quote once from Ra Uru Hu, the founder of Human Design, and it’s stuck with me. It goes, “There is no such thing as a handicap in design. There is no such thing as a design that doesn't work, that is bad, that is heavy. There is no dogma in Human Design. There's no morality here. You're not going to find any good or bad. All you're going to find is what's there. And remember that because a human being is fundamentally unique, what is there is perfect. It doesn't matter. As long as they live out who they are, they will get to see the beauty of what that perfection can truly be for them.”

I've been working with kids and adults with ADHD for over 20 years, and I've been using it for the past four years with my clients as a Human Design coach and as a teacher and psychologist with my students. I also have ADHD and was diagnosed at the late age of 28 when I was getting my PhD.

Human Design has helped me deal with my own problems with impulsivity, lack of focus, or hyperfocus depending on what I'm doing, hyperactivity, etc., where other approaches just did not work for me. I think Human Design has helped me so much because it just asked me to be more of myself, instead of less of myself.

I feel like a lot of recommendations out there for people with ADHD really do ask you to fit into a box that has been built by other people, because that kind of box works for them, but it might not actually work for you.

Human Design, on the other hand, teaches you how to build your own box.

I think that Human Design can expand the realm of what is possible for helping people with ADHD, but it is a very different approach.

Also, whether you know a little or a lot about Human Design, it's totally okay to be at whatever level of knowing that you're at. My goal in teaching people Human Design is always to get them to start applying it to their lives right away in a way that's meaningful to them and in a way that makes their lives a whole lot better. But you don't need to know it all before you start applying it. And you might actually never know everything about Human Design.