Greenpoint Psych and theattentiondoctor.com are happy to announce, after a shockingly extended almost 15 year pregnancy, the birth and bubbly health of our brand new baby therapy product, “Getting Unstuck” Mindfulness/Hypnotherapy Groups for Adults with ADD.
Long name for a cute little tyke, but I’m happy to say that (s)he seems to be thriving. We have now enrolled 17 “foster parents” to help in guiding our little handful; no doubt it will be just as attentionally challenged as all of its caretakers.
All kidding aside now, we here in Attentionland are incredibly excited to be engaging with a community of hyperactive meditators dedicated to designing useful group experiences for the adult with ADD.
To our knowledge, our groups are the first ever to attempt to merge the proven benefits of mindfulness based training with the more varied legacies of Neo-Ericksonian and other somatic therapies, let alone the first of its kind to point these two potent traditions at the specific problem of remediating executive functioning deficits in adults with ADD. What makes our groups even more interesting for our members is our emphasis on intra-group coaching that takes place outside the group. Each member is paired with one or two others. At first that pairing is simply used to assist in making the commitment to create a ten-minute-per-day personally-crafted meditative/reflective practice. They may or may not serve other coach-like functions later on as the members choose various targets for change above and beyond simply meditating (as if meditation were actually simple; of course it is and it isn’t).
Within a few weeks there should an accompanying article describing in some more detail the techniques we are devising and the ideas behind them. We know the aims of our groups, and we’re in the process of bringing these concepts to the attention of the greater public as we speak.
Our next step is to start two or three more groups, sometime in mid April. More than likely these groups will meet on Wednesday evenings in Manhattan and Friday afternoons, probably one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn. Although the groups will be open to all, we have it in mind to specifically invite artists, writers, musicians, and entrepreneurs who have ADD. Further details to follow.
What we think is going to really help us get this program off the ground is our new friendship with the folks at the Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition. The Coalition is a powerful force in bringing health care to long under-served areas of this huge diverse borough, and they have a formidable mailing list that is open at minimal costs to their members. In one blow our outreach multiplies tenfold. Great thanks to my partner Kristin Romano, a therapist with me at Greenpoint Psych for the past years, for her fine work in making this connection and for her handling so many other things without which we never could have reached this moment that we are finding so invigorating.
We are hopeful and confident that soon we will be ready to reach out to professionals who are interested in learning our techniques and to start bringing them in touch with the huge groundswell of interest we expect to receive when the word finally gets around that there does in fact exist an intelligent, measured, comprehensive, affordable, and effective approach to the high-functioning but still somehow malfunctioning adult with ADD.
So that’s what we’re up to. Our First Group is in week 6 and our Second is in week 2 with Groups Three through Five on the drawing board as we speak.
Stay Tuned.
Dr. Don