A Swell Review—And Book Giveaway Contest

You know that marvelous feeling you get, when you stop hitting yourself in the head with a mallet? That’s how I felt on September 31, when I turned in a manuscript to Routledge Press. The subject? A professional guide for couple therapists treating ADHD-challenged couples.

That was one tough assignment—there is no existing professional guide for couple therapists treating ADHD—and it took two years of solid, thoughtful, painstaking, and collaborative work. But my co-author (Arthur L. Robin, Ph.D.) and I, with the help of several esteemed contributors, produced one heckuva book, if I do say so myself. Our goal was to leverage our collective knowledge in helping couple therapists guide the thousands (millions?) of people who are desperate for ADHD-informed couple therapy. More about that book in a future post.

I tell you about the agonizing two years of writing because, six years after my first book, Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?, was published, it just received a very well-written review at an entertaining new website devoted to great reads: GimmeThatBook.com. Despite the book having 175 five-star reviews on Amazon, and having received thousands of letters from grateful readers, it’s always nice to know that someone “gets” my work and the effort that goes into it. In fact, to celebrate finishing the couple-therapy book, I’ve offered the website’s founder, Kyle Wendy Skultety, five copies for a book giveaway contest.

An excerpt:

This book is put together very well, and operates under the premise that ADD is not “so much of a disorder of attention as it is a disorder of self-regulation”, according to psychologist Russell Barkley, who wrote the foreword.  The theme of the book is the ‘roller coaster’ that both ADD’ers and non experience on a daily basis, and so the chapter headings are related to our favorite amusement park rides.  There are three parts; first, what is ADHD and how it affects you/your partner, second, what happens when you hit rock bottom and either decide to get treatment (or not), and three, how to succeed in building your relationship back with different strategies.

As you read, you get the sense that you are part of a support group, as you read others’ stories and get to know what lessons they have learned along the way. The difference between this book and the one I mentioned above, is that this goes into much more detail, with explanations as to WHY these things happen, and HOW to fix them. I found myself highlighting sections, seeing how there are common threads among ADD’ers and their significant others, and even learning more about brain function.  Each chapter contains a few ADHD Partner Snapshot graphs, which show the results of surveys taken from 162 responders.

There are chapters devoted to denial, medications, finances, therapy, co-existing disorders, sex, coping skills, and more. Understanding the spectrum of ADHD takes patience, time, and teamwork, and that is the author’s intent….

 Read the rest—and sign up for the contest—here!

Thanks for reading,

Gina