I was asked in the comments of gravis' ADHD post today what my ADHD book recommendations were because I was lamenting that they were the best I had, and still only helped me understand, but not really adapt, my world to ADHD.
But then other people found it helpful, so I'll just post it somewhere it's shareable.
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for ADHD (all of these are on Audible):
- Laziness Does not Exist (from the author of Unmasking Autism, mostly pointing things out and saying 'this is you it's not a thing to fight or a failing' and then going into the research. Written by someone in the community, but who also has a PhD. Bridges a good gap between research and community Veers into a screed against capitalism, which is cool but I wish it wasn't padding the book. Some pretty good strategies to redirect things instead of fighting them. Def gave me a better outlook on some of my things, even though I'd been actively working on my ADHD for decades before reading it.
- You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy? written by authors from the community, and not researchers. It's all over the place and perhaps needs a stronger editor, and suffers from being rewritten in 2006 instead of more recently, but it's still worthwhile imo. Also one of the few places I've heard anyone outside of psychiatric research discuss the thing where many ADHD people are desensitized to specifically oral sex for some reason.
- honorable mention to Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, it wasn't helpful to me but it did give me a good breadth of systems to try and fail at, which gave me a great idea of what did and didn't work
for Autism (also on audible):
- Unmasking Autism, one of the best books for "look, here are all the different ways your brain works, here's how to help some of them, and here's how to understand it better". As someone who's been in online autistic and autistic-led-research spaces for years, it had new things even for me. Highly, highly recommended read
(i only have 1 rn but im trying to read more so maybe i'll edit this and expand it in the future)
How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis
A book about accomplishing "care tasks" (phrase for stuff like cleaning, brushing your teeth, organizing, things we might consider chores but hopefully without the baggage of that word). 151 pages of nothing but the important stuff, and if that's too much, there's a shortcut route through the book the author has added. It's written by someone whose in the trenches, not someone for whom these things have never really been hard. Your Marie Kondos and James Clears. It's compassionate, and orientated toward breaking down neuronormative ideals and replacing them with what actually matters. Plus, the physical book is gorgeous. It's easily in my top three favorite covers, just makes you want to read it.
I am pretty skeptical of a lot of ADHD self-help stuff because there are so many hucksters out there, plus all the reasons outlined in the posts that originated this chain. The one book I've really liked is The Adult ADHD Tool Kit: Using CBT to Facilitate Coping Inside and Out By J. Russell Ramsay, Anthony L. Rostain. It's a slim volume that's a companion to a book with treatment advice for therapists, but it's not as dry as you may think, and is constantly citing sources and research conducted with people who have ADHD. Not that I'm particularly great at implementing everything in it (barely functioning rn tbqh), but just picking it up and reading a given chapter is usually enough to spark interest in making some changes.
It's also not super hard to find a PDF copy of it, out there.............. which is nice because there's some handy process flows and lists that are nice to be able to print out.
