Dr Alex George's 5 Tips That WILL Improve Your Anxiety

He says the label “attention deficit” can mislead people into thinking ADHD is a lack of attention, when his view is that people with ADHD can have plenty of attention but struggle with where it’s placed in neurotypical settings; he also emphasizes that only a minority experience hyperactivity and that stereotypes can cause missed recognition (especially in women with inattentive presentations).

He describes how getting diagnosed led to acceptance and a “reverse domino effect” of understanding past struggles (sleep issues as a baby, school difficulties, attention challenges on uninteresting tasks), which helped him stop trying to force himself to be “neurotypical.”

He outlines a personal anxiety toolkit centered on walking in nature, exercise, and cold showers, plus a cognitive technique he calls “zoom out, zoom in” to reduce the felt size of anxious thoughts; he repeatedly stresses building a personalized toolkit from what works for you.

He argues there’s no benefit to alcohol and that alcohol and ADHD “don’t mix very well” in most cases, describing how alcohol can increase impulsivity, worsen anxiety afterward, and mute positives; he suggests stopping and seeing how you feel after months without it.

To prevent overcommitting and impulsive decisions, he uses a “24-hour rule” for commitments and also suggests mentally fast-forwarding to the day you’d have to do the thing and asking if you’d still want to; he applies the same idea to purchases by extending the waiting window.