Area of focus
Therapy for ADHD
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for adolescents and adults living with inattention, impulsivity and disorganisation — who have tried to fix it through willpower more often than they'd care to admit.
The first conversation is to understand what you need and see whether working together makes sense. No commitment.
Adult ADHD rarely looks like ADHD
The popular image is a child who can't sit still. In adults it usually shows up differently: the twenty-minute task that sits on the list for three weeks; hyperfocus on something interesting while the essential thing stalls; the constant sense of running behind; the unanswered email that becomes a moral debt.
Many people arrive without suspecting ADHD at all. They arrive saying they're anxious, or lazy, or that they've "always been like this" — carrying a layer almost nobody mentions: years of accumulated self-criticism.
Signs that often appear
- Difficulty starting tasks, even important ones you genuinely want to do
- Deadlines met only under last-minute pressure
- Frequently losing things, missing appointments and bills
- Organisation systems adopted enthusiastically and abandoned within weeks
- Hyperfocus on areas of interest, with difficulty disengaging
- Internal restlessness, difficulty settling without stimulation
- Impulsivity in decisions, spending or conversation
- Mental exhaustion out of proportion to the day
Important: no single item here indicates ADHD. Several of these appear in anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and periods of overload. That is precisely why assessment exists — to distinguish, not to label.
What therapy works on
1. Understanding how you function
Before any strategy: mapping how your attention actually behaves — at what times, with what kind of task, under what conditions. Without that, any method is guesswork.
2. External structure instead of willpower
Building supports that don't depend on remembering: task breakdown, environmental cues, anchor routines, deliberate use of deadlines and other people.
3. Procrastination as an emotional problem
Much ADHD procrastination isn't a time problem — it's escape from discomfort: boredom, fear of getting it wrong, not knowing where to start. We work on the emotion driving the escape, not just the calendar.
4. Emotion regulation
Irritability, intense frustration and sensitivity to rejection come up often. This is where DBT skills come in, with practical training.
5. Undoing the self-image of incompetence
Possibly the most important part. Someone who spent twenty years hearing they have potential but don't apply themselves tends to believe it. Restructuring that reading is part of treatment, not a nice extra.
ADHD in adolescence
It's common for the picture to become clear only in adolescence. While someone else organised the routine, it was possible to compensate; once school starts demanding planning, long deadlines and independent study, performance drops — often abruptly, and with no obvious explanation for the family.
What comes with it weighs as much as the inattention: conflict at home, falling self-esteem, and an already settled sense, at fifteen, of being someone who disappoints.
- Age-appropriate psychological assessment, drawing on information from carers
- Routine, study and sleep structures built with the adolescent rather than imposed — the difference between a system that lasts and one more abandoned attempt
- Psychoeducation for the family, replacing "he isn't trying" with a reading that works
- Managing conflict at home and easing pressure that has stopped helping
- Work on self-image, before a reading of incapacity sets in
- Referral and joint work with psychiatric care when needed
The goal isn't to turn anyone into a hyper-productive person. It's to reduce the cost of living inside your own way of functioning — and the energy spent on blame, whether it's yours or an adolescent's who has already heard too often that they could try harder.
How is adult ADHD assessed?
Psychological assessment combines a detailed clinical interview, a developmental history going back to childhood, standardised scales and, where possible, input from someone who knows you well. The core question is whether signs have been present early, across more than one setting, and causing genuine impairment. Formal medical diagnosis involves a physician, and I refer when that step is needed.
Does therapy help if I already take ADHD medication?
Yes, and they do different jobs. Medication acts on attention and impulsivity; it doesn't teach you how to structure a week, address procrastination driven by emotional avoidance, or rebuild the self-image of someone who spent years believing they were incompetent. The CBT literature for adult ADHD addresses exactly that layer.
Why do productivity apps never work for me?
Because most were designed for brains where initiation and prospective memory already work well. Any system that depends on you remembering to open the system tends to fail in ADHD. In therapy we build structures that lean on the environment rather than your memory, and test each one against your real week.
Please read before booking. Sessions are provided from Brazil by a psychologist registered with the Brazilian Federal Council of Psychology (CRP 03/22210), and are governed by Brazilian professional regulation and law. This is not a licensed health service in any U.S. state or other jurisdiction, and it does not replace care from a provider licensed where you live. Booking a session means agreeing to this arrangement, which is also set out in the service agreement.
Next step
A conversation before you decide
You don't need to arrive with the problem explained, or know the name of what you're feeling. Send a message describing it in your own words, and I'll explain how the work would go from there.
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