Meditation: the very word may send you running for the hills. For someone with ADHD, what could be less enticing than sitting perfectly still in total silence and attempting to clear your mind? Pouring fire ants down your underwear might seem more tolerable. And yet, I believe meditation is one of the most valuable tools we have in our arsenal. In my own life, I consider it to be the single most impactful element of my treatment.

That being said, my relationship with meditation has been at times contentious. I would have given up many times if it weren’t for my extreme stubbornness. It hasn’t been willpower or grit that have pushed me over the hump, though, but rather, my discovery of different methods of meditation that have worked for my ADHD brain when more popular styles have failed. 

A caveat: there are at least as many different types of meditation as there are types of physical exercise, and they don’t even all work towards the same goals. An inevitable pitfall of writing about meditation is that one person’s idea of meditation will be different than another’s, and arguments can ensue regarding what meditation really “is,” and what the true “goal” is (or, whether one should even have a goal). With this in mind, I will necessarily be speaking in broad generalizations, focusing on how “meditation” most commonly presents itself in the popular culture.*

If you’ve ever Googled meditation instructions, you may have read something like this:

1. Place your attention on the sensation of your breathing.
2. When you become carried away by a thought, simply let it go and return to the breath.

The idea is to train your attention by attempting to stay focused on a single object (the breath, in this case). By noticing when your attention has wandered, and then bringing it back to the breath, you’re gradually training the mental muscles of awareness and focus. Each “return” to the breath is like one rep of lifting the “mindfulness” weight. The results can include increases in self-awareness, impulse control, calmness, and clarity of mind. These are all things that we ADHDers could certainly use more of! 

At the same time, the ADHD brain will naturally have a harder time with meditation due to fundamental differences in our wiring and brain chemistry. It’s significantly more difficult for us to focus on something boring (like the breath), we have incredibly active minds (hyperactive, one might say), and we’re chronically restless and under-stimulated. I believe that most people, including meditation teachers, truly do not understand just how busy our minds are.

For the most part, I found basic breath-awareness meditation to be infuriatingly impossible. It was just too steep of a mountain to climb. Standard instructions will say to just “stick with it,” that even if you feel like nothing is happening, you’re building the muscle, and that the real benefits emerge after weeks or months of practice. Well, as stubborn as I am, I tried this for weeks, months, and even years, quite consistently, and only saw very minimal improvement. For the most part, I was never meditating, I was just trying to meditate.

Typical instructions talk about “returning to the breath when a thought comes up,” but my problem is that thoughts don’t ever “come up,” because they’re never absent. Moreover, I never have just one thought at a time going through my mind. My mental space is a non-stop audio-visual extravaganza, more akin to a waking dream than to an inner monologue. There is always — always — music running through my head, either actual songs, or random music that my brain is improvising. Without external visual stimuli, my mind creates lots of imagery, too: memories of recent events, imagined events to come, or often just random abstract images. I suspect that this is pretty common for ADHD people in general, given our highly vivid and active imaginations. 

All in all, there was just too much going on at once, and with too much intensity, to create any sort of clarity or calmness. My thoughts were so abstract, impressionistic, and numerous that “noticing them and letting them go” was like trying to play whack-a-mole underwater in a tangle of seaweed. I would finish a 20-minute meditation session with no additional clarity or calmness of mind — just the same constant music video, but with the addition of awareness of my breathing. Big whoop.

If the idea is to give the mind something to focus on so that it doesn’t become overgrown with thoughts, then the breath wasn’t nearly strong enough medicine for me. My awareness of breathing doesn’t interrupt the thoughts, and the thoughts don’t interrupt my awareness of breathing. It just all happens in parallel, with everything in the foreground. But then I thought to myself: why would awareness of breathing put other thoughts in the background? It’s a totally different category. Why would a physical sensation “replace” or even reduce the volume of a completely different category of awareness? 

This got me thinking: if the predominant distractions in my mind are musical and visual, why not use sound and imagery as my meditation objects? 

I first experimented with mantra meditation, repeating a chanted word in my mind. This is the technique used by Transcendental Meditation, which centers the mind on a repeated word or sound instead of using the breath as an anchor. At first, this was a revelation: it calmed the inner music! But as soon as I got into a rhythm with it, it would fall into the background, and my mind would start improvising harmonies and melodies around the mantra.

I had found the right kind of medicine, but not a strong enough dose. So, next I tried a more engagingmantra. Instead of a single word or sound, I began using a phrase. This was remarkably effective. I had increased the potency of the attentional object, because it was changing, keeping my mind more actively concentrated.

At last, I had found an effective meditation object for my overactive musical mind. However, my attention on my mantra didn’t keep me any less distracted by my inner imagery. So, I applied the same principle: I added a visual object to my meditation. As I recited the mantra in my mind, I visualized a candle flame in the center of my mind’s eye. Just as I had done with the mantra, I made the visual object more engaging by making it dynamic, imagining how the flame flickered around as I breathed in and out.

Finally! I was experiencing meditation as it had been explained to me. I was able to maintain singular focus for more than a nanosecond, without the constant background noise. I was able to actually notice when other thoughts began to arise and distract me, and then, by returning to my object(s), the distracting thoughts subsided. I was able to go back and forth like this, retaining attention on the object of focus, noticing when distracting thoughts arose, then letting them go and returning to the object. I was actually “lifting the weight” of mindfulness rather than just sitting there at the weight bench pushing against an immobile dumbbell, being told that if I kept trying, eventually I would be able to lift it.

I had stumbled upon three principles for meditation with ADHD: first, the meditation object should match the type of thoughts that are most distracting to you. Second, the object should be dynamic, so that it’s easier to retain our focus. Third, if necessary, engage multiple streams of attention at once.

With these modifications, I began to finally experience the fruits of meditation. I’ve seen definite improvements in calmness, relaxation, and clarity of mind. The biggest change I’ve noticed from doing this practice, though, has been an improvement in attention regulation. When I was younger, I felt like I was totally held captive by whatever grabbed my attention. It might have taken 5 or 10 minutes of zombie-like distraction before I suddenly snapped back into consciousness. Now, I catch myself much more quickly. In fact, in my better moments, I can even catch myself before I shift my attention to the object of distraction. I notice the impulse, and without getting caught up in it, I return my attention to my intended object or activity. Of course, it’s not like I have “cured” my ADHD, nor should anyone expect such a miracle. I’ve simply moved a little bit closer to freedom.

ADHD brains are not too busy to meditate, even though it may feel that way when we try to follow traditional instructions. We simply need stronger medicine for the job. Our minds are less capable of focusing, filled with more mental content, and more restless. Instead of just trying harder than the average person, we need to make the task easier in order to have any success. This means following any or all of the three principles I have discovered: choose the right meditation object, make it dynamic, and engage multiple senses. These principles, either alone or in combination, all serve one function, which is to require more active concentration of the mind in order to keep it engaged. The more actively engaged the ADHD mind is, the easier it is to stay focused.

There are countless ways in which these principles could be applied, and it may take a little experimentation to find what works best for you. My particular method may or may not work well for someone else. For example, some people are more visual thinkers; some can’t summon any mental imagery. So, my recommendation is to start with the breath, and then keep adding layers on top of that corresponding to the type of distracting thoughts you have.

Let’s recall how mindfulness instruction is typically presented:

1. Place your attention on the sensation of your breathing.
2. When you become carried away by a thought, simply let it go and return to the breath.

Here is how I would modify these instructions for ADHD brains, to make meditation more accessible:

1. Place your attention on the sensation of your breathing.
2. As distracting thoughts arise, notice what kinds of thoughts they are. Inner speech? Inner music? Mental imagery? All three at the same time?
3. Choose a mental object(s) that correspond(s) to the type of distracting thoughts you experience. If you have an overactive inner monologue, try reciting a short phrase in your mind. If you have lots of inner music, try chanting a mantra. If you have lots of mental imagery, try a visualization. Combine as needed.
4. When you become carried away by a thought, simply let it go and return to the object(s) of attention.

If you’ve struggled with meditation, I’d be very curious to hear how these accommodations work for you, or if you’ve found something else that works. Please leave a comment and share your experience!

*Broadly speaking, most forms of meditation can be grouped into two main categories: focused attention (or “concentration”) and open monitoring. Focused attention is like “zooming in,” where you concentrate your attention on an object of focus, like the breath, and when distractions arise, you return your attention to the object of focus. Open monitoring is like “zooming out,” where you step back and watch your stream of consciousness as a detached observer. Open monitoring is a bit more subtle and nuanced, and while some schools emphasize it, focused attention is often taught first as a preliminary step, and is often what you’ll first encounter if you search for “how to meditate” or walk into a basic mindfulness class. For many people with ADHD, concentration practice can be essential for stabilizing awareness before getting any benefit from open monitoring. That said, some people with ADHD find great success with open monitoring after struggling fruitlessly with focused attention. I do hope to address open monitoring, as well as other forms of meditation, in future articles.