Healing AD(H)D symptoms with Shamanic Energy Healing

How are you going to live well if you cannot rely on your concentration?

Narrating one of my personal experiences with shamanic energy work:
healing AD(H)D symptoms

In a previous blog, I shared my personal experience of healing an eating disorder through shamanic energy healing. After that pattern left me, I waited a while before returning to healing. This time, I wanted to address the cluster of symptoms we call AD(H)D.

With the eating disorder gone, which had been a more debilitating pattern for me, and, with that, my ability to rely on my body restored, I now saw AD(H)D as the overarching issue. If I wanted to move forward with my life, it was foundational for me to resolve my inability to rely on my own concentration.

The condition exposed

I was a dreamy child, yet I still did very well at school. Looking back, that showed me I was capable of focusing and learning when the conditions were right for me, meaning the material was not challenging and/or I had all the time in the world. Therefore, it wasn’t until 23 that my AD(H)D diagnosis came.

By then, my life looked very different. I was studying law while training for a half marathon, doing charity work, working as both a student and research assistant, managing a bar, and trying to remain stable in a relationship that met none of my emotional needs. Beneath all of that, I was carrying years of unprocessed experiences and was managing my weight obsessively.

During that time my responsibilities increased, expectations grew, and effective time management became essential. Planning was never my problem. I could prioritise, organise my work and be on time.

What became increasingly difficult was relying on my concentration to actually perform during the time I had allocated.

I would sit down fully intending to work, but my mind would drift elsewhere. Intellectually, I could handle it. Concentration-wise, I couldn't.

My mind just didn’t do what I wanted it to do, so I ended up doing what it wanted. Meaning: getting lost in mental distraction.

Also, the more time-pressure I felt, the harder it became to stay present with what I was doing.

In the past I had all the time in the world to do my concentration work so my frequent zone-outs were not really a problem. But having to take on a more mature schedule, with more deadlines, efficiency and structure, exposed a problem to me I didn’t really know I had.

My attention wasn't constantly pulled away by external distractions, as AD(H)D is often described to do. Instead, I was distracted by my own internal mental landscape. The source may have been different, but the result was exactly the same: I couldn't reliably focus on what I needed to concentrate on. 

People often romanticise daydreaming, and I personally agree with that. Letting the mind wander into reveries has been, and will always be, one of life’s greatest pleasures for me. I see it as a hallmark of a rich inner life and the catalyst for personal transformation and creative output.

What I experienced, however, wasn't creative wandering. It was an inability to remain present, despite wanting to be. 

Life on methylphenidate

Not being able to rely on your concentration is surprisingly frightening and definitely caused me anxiety, more mental loops and paranoia. A new fear had entered my life. 🎉

Every assignment or research task became about more than the task itself. I wasn't just wondering about how to solve it, I was wondering whether my concentration would last long enough. 

I began to picture my concentration as a small hourglass. Every time I started working, I felt as though I had only a limited amount of sand before it ran out. Once it did, my mind would disappear into itself, whether I wanted it to or not. 

This was around the same period that I was struggling with an E.D.. So many invisible, abstract struggles demanded my attention simultaneously, yet I had no idea how to solve any of them. So I turned to meds.

With some reluctance from the psychiatrist, I was prescribed methylphenidate. It relieved some of the anxiety because, for a few hours, I could finally concentrate. But it introduced an entirely new set of problems.

People rarely talk about these side effects.

What is just me or does this medication make you incredibly socially awkward? Also, whenever someone interrupted me with an email or a question while it was working, it felt as though the med-induced-concentration simply disappeared. It gave me tunnel focus, but zero mental flexibility. Now my days had become a constant exercise in protecting those short windows of focus.

The medication undoubtedly improved my ability to concentrate for a while. It also produced a nice dopamine lift every time I took it.

People often say that if methylphenidate gives you a ‘buzz’, you probably don't have AD(H)D. I've never found that convincing.

When your mind finally clears after hours of mental clutter, doesn't that shift itself feel rewarding?That calm brought clarity, and with it, motivation. That motivation was stimulating.

Then came the evenings.

I felt hollow. Listless. Emotionally flat, yet somehow also depressed. Tired but wired. Nauseous. Disconnected from myself and from everyone around me.

This was far from the life I wanted.

Every day demanded enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy: it felt as though I constantly had to manage myself before I could manage my life.

A new chapter

Eventually, I made what turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life: I left the legal career path in order to heal myself.

I don't think I would ever have overcome any of these patterns if I hadn't created the space to do so. I needed time, free from pressure, to understand what was happening inside me and to explore whether conditions that people considered lifelong could, perhaps, be resolved.

Around the age of 25, I wrote down two goals:

Find a way to heal my eating disorder.

Find a way to heal my AD(H)D.

It wasn't the most inspiring vision board, but those goals became my North star.

When you can't rely on your body and you can't rely on your mind, two things most people take for granted, life becomes incredibly hard. For me, healing did not feel optional. It became the most important project of my life.

A real neurological condition or ‘just’ a list of symptoms?

A couple years later, I had already experienced something I could hardly explain: my eating disorder had disappeared after shamanic energy healing. That experience made me wonder whether the same approach could work for my concentration.

But before I sought healing, I wanted to understand what I was dealing with.

I made a list of the symptoms associated with AD(H)D. Some of them described me well: needing an external dopamine source in order to concentrate, losing things like my keys, a mind in overdrive, mental clutter, difficulty following instructions, and struggling to transition from one task to another.

Other symptoms didn't fit me at all. I didn't struggle to prioritise, organise my work, meet deadlines or keep my house orderly and clean. I wasn't chronically late. I could sit still for hours if I needed to. I wasn't overwhelmed by everyday responsibilities.

That made me realise something important.

AD(H)D isn't one single thing. It is portrayed as a neurological disorder. For me it was not that at all. I saw it as a collection of symptoms that can arise in different combinations. Two people can both receive the same diagnosis while having very different experiences.

For me, that opened up another question.

If AD(H)D is diagnosed from a pattern of symptoms rather than a neurological scan, why not broaden the conversation? Why not look beyond the question of ‘what is wrong with my brain?’ (of which you have no scan acknowledging that something is indeed wrong) and explore what else could be contributing to these patterns?

For me, that meant experimenting with looking at the symptoms as expressions of energetic blocks rather than as a physical brain condition. Focusing on energy blocks is, after all, what ultimately healed my E.D.: stop trying to figure it out mentally (which is nearly impossible with such a vague issue) and just ‘pull it out’ and be done with it. So why not try to heal AD(H)D with it? Stop trying to see it as something physical and just ‘pull it out’.

So I went to the shaman again and asked him to efficiently remove whatever prevented me from concentrating. Could it be that simple?

Read part 2 here.

If you feel you’d like support with your AD(H)D, you can reach out to me. I’d recommend doing multiple sessions, with homework in-between. The sessions will include everything I did to heal: shamanic healing with systemic work influences, parts work, stream-of-consciousness writing and deep bodywork.