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.

47 of 50 found the following review helpful:


Fascinating Mind-Fodder - and Useful, Too!  Apr 08, 2005 By fast_matt
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!

27 of 28 found the following review helpful:


An extraordinary view of NLP applied to ADHD  Oct 29, 2002
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!

26 of 28 found the following review helpful:


Extraordinarily useful  Dec 26, 2002
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!

134 of 161 found the following review helpful:


I like Thom Hartmann but question the effectiveness of NLP.  Jan 07, 2000
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.

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