30 Essential Ideas you should know about ADHD, 3A The Five Executive Functions

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Five Executive Abilities that all people have but ADHD people are deficit/delayed in.
1) Can you stop? Self-restraint. A quote “Everything comes to those who can wait!” Can you delay your behavior so you can do the best action?
2) The Mind’s Eye. Mental Imagery. You will recall the relevant past and use the past to do better behavior in the future. ADHD people can’t do this. You lack hindsight, and without hindsight you can do foresight.
3) The Mind’s Voice. You can’t talk to yourself, internally. Starting at the age of five you can separate what you do with what you think, you now have a “voice in your head “to help control your body so you can do better actions that affect your body and your brain.
4) The Mind’s Heart. The ability to manage your emotions so your body and mind work towards your long term best interest.
5) The Mind’s Playground. The ability to imagine dozens of possible futures and pick the best one with the best perceived results. Since you can’t perceive the future well due to the mind’s eye, and you have a working memory problem it is so hard to use the Mind’s Playground to his best abilities.

Not covered in this video, but in the years since the video Barkley has added another executive function which is a combination and expansion of all the previous executive functions. This 6 executive function is the mind awareness of itself.

The 6th executive function is
6) The Mind’s Awareness of Itself, especially through time and space. Self-Awareness of what is happening to you in the past, the present, and will happen to you in the future. This is actually the first thing toddlers learn, how itself interacts with the environment but it is also the last executive function to fully develop for the perception of time and the future self is still developing even in your late twenties.

Originally number 6 was part of the number 2 (the Mind’s Eye and the ability to do hindsight and foresight) but Barkley eventually thinks it needs its own point, for it is so much more than just visualization. It is your sense of TIME, you get so wrapped in things that you lose track of time, you do not have an objective idea of time, it is so subjective and so often wrong with predicting what the future is going to be.

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[paulmryglod]

I am quick to be hurt, quick to let it go, quick to forget, quick to remember, slow to learn from past behavior. He is speaking about my life.

[nickrowan]

I'd love to see stats on how many people added this to their watch later list and how many people actually did watch it later.

[Sara-xrph]

russel barkley drags my entire existence for nearly 13 minutes

[KellyAbarca]

"if you wanna see an adhd person fail, put him in an environment where there are no consequences" - being a total failure during covid quarantine anyone?

[leokeatonn]

Hearing all of these little details (most of which I never even realized were linked to my ADHD) be voiced by a professional in the field of studying ADHD is a form of validation I never knew I needed.

[ScienceisRadAF]

I’d take it one step further.. it’s just not that ADHD is defined by superficial symptoms...

It is that ADHD is defined by how OTHERS are inconvenienced by the patient. Defining a condition by how it impacts those around the patient instead of by what the patient is actually experiencing seems both ignorant and unethical. Even the name of the disorder is from the perspective of others. I wish they’d rename it something more in line with the wholeness of the condition. Perhaps executive function disorder or something similar.

[angel-guco]

i have an inner voice that is literally constantly going, it's impossible to ignore. i tell myself to do things, and ponder new possible methods of doing things, but i literally cannot do them. that is the problem, not that there's no inner speech. it's always been there too, when i was a kid i thought of it as an imaginary friend lol

[softfishy]

I've been suspecting I have adhd for awhile and I definitely understand the whole "won't motivate without consequences" funny enough, Ive always gotten good grades but Ive realized it was because I was always worried about disappointmenting my teachers and parents. Though looking back I think the homework assignments took me a bit longer than everyone else. I never understood why because by definition others would call me smart.

[rachelscomment]

Best speaker on the subject I have ever heard.
HE gets it!

[andrewchoi]

I have a mind's voice; it's just always thinking about random shit

[mikegager]

im an adult with adhd and i talk to myself all the time

[Ken-S]

That's why I suffer for 20 more years and thinking I am different to others. He has totally describe me! Finally I got it, thanks.

[mintoocool]

I am in my early thirties now, and I always would wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Why could I never get anything done on time ? Why could I not be consistent with anything at all ? etc.... The absolute worst part of it all was, at some level I knew that I was disappointing everyone, when I really did not want to... but I not matter how angry I got at myself and forced myself to 'change', it would not work... And I absolutely had no idea why, nothing I tried to do would work. 'All you need is to get serious...', 'Why are you cheating yourself ?', 'Why are you so lazy ?', 'Why don't you think before you act ?' .. etc... is what everyone would say to me ... and I really tried to get serious, not cheat myself out of my time, not be lazy, to stop and think but, it was all in-vain.

Luckily, I was able to get myself out of a bind, save myself from failing a class, by cramming last minute... but I have not been able to learn how to learn... nothing has really stuck. Nothing has. The shame and guilt of disappointing others and myself is pretty unbearable. The amount of anger and frustration I have felt towards myself, because of my lack of following through and delivering something, is incalculable.

In my thirty year ... I did not have a single person in my life, who though, 'hey maybe this kid has something going on with him...', I got zero help... All I ever got was, 'you gotta do better', 'you have the potential to do better, just try...' All that pain, all that self-loathing... I wish someone had told me to not hate myself and that I am not a horrible dishonest person who does not respect his own time... I wish someone had looked at me and helped me instead of lecturing me. It had honestly never crossed my mind that I might have had ADD/ADHD... I had that inner voice... but I would never listen to it... And I pretty much don't hear it anymore. I am pretty much on 'auto-pilot'... I don't know how to feel right now honestly.

[rpcheesman]

8:27 - 9:04 just summed up my life. No matter what I've tried, I've never been able to hold on to doing anything. So much so I simply define myself as 'consistently inconsistent'. Learning to undo this idea with self-motivation and just being more accepting of how I am is really really hard.

[robinsteiner]

I have a severe lack of motivation and my environment is the problem. This guy gets it. The gaming and reading as a kid and adult, now 30, was an escape but also explains my need for gold stars and a ton of external timers. The one more chapter and just one more level are a constant.

[ulthea]

I wish the medical professionals I've seen in the past were half as knowledgeable as this man.

[angieweeks]

I have ADHD (combined type) and I am a master’s level, mental health counselor. 100% agree with all of this! I manipulate my environment to help me with consequences, I struggled with all of these my entire life and still do when the strategies and tools to help me with my executive functioning are not in place. Always enjoy listening to this man!

[Maktheblade]

8:55 "So it doesn't matter what your goals are, you won't get there. Because self-motivation is required for all goal-directed action" - ouch, that one stings. It also explains most of my life, sadly.

[zepecat]

Best video on ADHD i've seen in my whole life.

[theotherview]

Makes so much sense how he thinks about it. Better than "trouble focusing" which you always hear.