ADHD Skills Workshop
As a psychologist who specialises in ADHD, one of the most common conversations I have after diagnosis is “Well, now what?”. While it is true that there is no “cure” for ADHD, a better understanding of ADHD and how to manage it has been life changing for so many of my clients.
Unfortunately, most of the advice out there for people with ADHD either fails to understand why certain tasks are difficult for people with ADHD or are completely unsustainable, forcing you into cycles of sprinting and crashing over and over.
Intro to ADHD: 50 Things you probably don’t know about adult ADHD
2 Hours / 19th June 2025 / Online / $180
Have you or someone in your life been diagnosed with ADHD? Are you wondering whether you should investigate getting diagnosed? Are you a professional who works in mental health or support services?
This 90-minute course provides research-based, up to date, and easy to understand information about what ADHD actually is, and how it affects people on a day-to-day basis.
No lists of symptoms – this seminar is about what it means to have, know people or work with ADHD.
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Have you or someone in your life been diagnosed with ADHD? Are you wondering whether you should investigate getting diagnosed? Are you a professional who works in mental health or support services?
This 90-minute course provides research-based, up to date, and easy to understand information about what ADHD actually is, and how it affects people on a day-to-day basis.
No lists of symptoms – this seminar is about what it means to have, know people or work with ADHD.
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Great question. Thanks for asking.
Between working with clients, presenting at conferences and teaching my colleagues, I’ve learned a lot about what people don’t know about ADHD and where there are common myths and misunderstandings. This seminar is designed to cover all the major topics that people interested in ADHD or trying to understand their own/someone else’s ADHD want to know about.
Specifically, the seminar will cover 50 myths and misunderstandings about:
1. Diagnosis
2. Symptoms
3. Treatment
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What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.
Making Dopamine Work For You: Structuring Tasks to Suit Your Brain
2 Hours / 26th June 2025, 7pm / Online / $180
My fundamental rule in understanding psychology is that “people have to learn to live in the world”. Whether it’s a difficult childhood or a neurodiverse brain, people learn to compensate and work around their challenges. Unfortunately for most people with ADHD, when you live in a word defined by neurotypical norms everything you learn about productivity doesn’t make sense for your brain. ADHD brains have different incentive structures to neurotypical brains, and this leaves people with ADHD feeling frustrated, exhausted and ashamed when trying to force their brain into being neurotypical.
If you are like so many of my clients who have learned to compensate for your ADHD by using anxiety, avoidance, last minute panic, deprivation of enjoyable activities, punishment, or living a life on the verge of burnout, you aren’t just making your life unnecessarily miserable, you are fundamentally misunderstanding what motivates an ADHD brain – dopamine.
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Have you or someone in your life been diagnosed with ADHD? Are you wondering whether you should investigate getting diagnosed? Are you a professional who works in mental health or support services?
This 90-minute course provides research-based, up to date, and easy to understand information about what ADHD actually is, and how it affects people on a day-to-day basis.
No lists of symptoms – this seminar is about what it means to have, know people or work with ADHD.
-
Great question. Thanks for asking.
Between working with clients, presenting at conferences and teaching my colleagues, I’ve learned a lot about what people don’t know about ADHD and where there are common myths and misunderstandings. This seminar is designed to cover all the major topics that people interested in ADHD or trying to understand their own/someone else’s ADHD want to know about.
Specifically, the seminar will cover 50 myths and misunderstandings about:
1. Diagnosis
2. Symptoms
3. Treatment
-
What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.
Living with ADHD Series
Living With ADHD #1: Relationships, Communication, and Developing Sustainable Habits
Living With ADHD #2: Mental Health, Emotion Regulation, and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
Living With ADHD #3: Navigating Relationship Difficulties When You or Your Partner Have ADHD
Living With ADHD #4: Why Shame, Panic and Punishment Don’t Work and How to Change Them
Living With ADHD #5: Grieving your Diagnosis and the Profound Impact of Being Undiagnosed
Intro to ADHD: 50 Things you probably don’t know about adult ADHD
2 Hours / 19th June 2025 / Online / $180
Have you or someone in your life been diagnosed with ADHD? Are you wondering whether you should investigate getting diagnosed? Are you a professional who works in mental health or support services?
This 90-minute course provides research-based, up to date, and easy to understand information about what ADHD actually is, and how it affects people on a day-to-day basis.
No lists of symptoms – this seminar is about what it means to have, know people or work with ADHD.
-
Have you or someone in your life been diagnosed with ADHD? Are you wondering whether you should investigate getting diagnosed? Are you a professional who works in mental health or support services?
This 90-minute course provides research-based, up to date, and easy to understand information about what ADHD actually is, and how it affects people on a day-to-day basis.
No lists of symptoms – this seminar is about what it means to have, know people or work with ADHD.
-
Great question. Thanks for asking.
Between working with clients, presenting at conferences and teaching my colleagues, I’ve learned a lot about what people don’t know about ADHD and where there are common myths and misunderstandings. This seminar is designed to cover all the major topics that people interested in ADHD or trying to understand their own/someone else’s ADHD want to know about.
Specifically, the seminar will cover 50 myths and misunderstandings about:
1. Diagnosis
2. Symptoms
3. Treatment
-
What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.
-
This course is for anyone with ADHD who wants to create a sustainable and achievable relationship to their ADHD and become more effective in their daily life, work, and relationships. People with ADHD have spent their lives, often without knowing, being forced to fit into a neurotypical world, with neurotypical expectations. They learn that if you keep shoving that round peg into the square hole, eventually it will fit and if it doesn’t, it’s the round peg’s fault. After a while, it is hard to not feel either helpless or ashamed.
This course is about agency and making informed decisions from a place of acceptance and compassion. This starts with being able to identify tasks that are challenging for people with ADHD and why they are difficult. Then, instead of trying to force your brain to be neurotypical, we will instead learn how to structure and approach tasks in a way that works for your brain. Then, we will identify which tasks can’t be structured in that way and learn to scaffold those tasks instead of avoiding or setting yourself up for failure.
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ADHD diagnosis is complicated and blocked by many costly and time-consuming steps. To me, the exact label matters much less than (a) that you’re struggling or want to improve in certain aspects of your life and (b) that you deserve support irrespective of the label. You may even find that understanding ADHD better throughout this course helps you to identify why it is or isn’t a useful label for yourself, and develop skills that will help you either way.
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When I designed this course, I didn’t want it to become a list of “tips and tricks” to “hack your
ADHD”. Easy answers and oversimplifications only serve to set people up for failure and then feel like it’s their fault when it doesn’t work.
Additionally, people with ADHD face challenges in multiple domains in their life. ADHD affects not just work productivity but relationships, mental health, self-image, and countless other aspects of daily life. There are many invisible challenges that you may not even realise are related to ADHD that you deserve support in managing.
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Here is a shortened version of the course outline. Please note that this does not include all aspects of the course but is instead a sense of the breadth of topics we will discuss. While not all topics may appeal to you, you may be surprised by aspects you relate to that you don’t realise yet and this course is designed to have many transferrable skills.
13th November 2023 - 11th December 2023
$850 total
4-10 participants
Run by Michael Susman,
Clinical Psychologist (Registrar)
Mondays, for 5 weeks
6.30pm-8.30pm
Carlton, Victoria
ADHD Skills Workshop
Starts Monday 13th Nov, 2023
course outline
week 1
1. Psychoeducation – ADHD symptoms
2. Managing Symptoms – The basics
a. Routine
b. Sleep
c. Managing limited resources
3. Psychoeducation – Introducing Mindfulness for people with ADHD
week 2
1. Psychoeducation – Hidden Struggles/Identity
a. Why we are focusing on psychological impacts first.
b. Growing up with ADHD
c. Shame/laziness/stigma/relationship issues
2. Psychoeducation – Shame
3. Self-Compassion and Mindfulness
week 3
1. Psychoeducation – Dopamine and Rewards
a. The role of dopamine in ADHD
b. Multitasking
c. Reward sensitivity
2. Managing Symptoms – Productivity
a. Gamification/Working to time
b. Dopamine as a limited resource
c. Task blindness
d. Lists/Scheduling/Planning/Procrastination
e. Accepting when things are hard.
3. Activity - Productivity Planning
week 4
1. Productivity
2. Managing Symptoms – Relationships
a. Does ADHD affect your family/social/romantic relationships?
b. What challenges does it pose?
c. Linking back other issues to challenges in relationships: emotion regulation, forgetfulness, chores/responsibility sharing, communication.
d. Communicating about your ADHD – clear communication of intent
e. Managing stigma/judgments
3. Activity – Problem solving relationship challenges
week 5
1. Reflections on what we’ve learned/lingering questions
2. Grieving/Accepting ADHD
3. Bringing it all together
ADHD Skills Workshop
Starts Monday 13th Nov, 2023