The Gift of Adult ADD

It came out from New Harbinger in October 2008. The print edition is about two hundred and thirty pages; some e-book records show 248. Its full title is The Gift of Adult ADD: How to Transform Your Challenges and Build on Your Strengths. The "ADD" in the title is an old abbreviation. In those years, the picture we now call predominantly inattentive ADHD was also called this, and the book has kept the name.

I could not find a verified Turkish edition; I write about it under its original title.

A note: this review relies on the book's table of contents, the publisher's description, the author's own writing and published reader reviews. I will not walk through the chapters page by page; I will describe as much as the titles and what the author has said elsewhere show.

Who Lara Honos-Webb is

She is a licensed clinical psychologist in California. According to her publisher biography, she worked on a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), taught graduate students and wrote more than twenty-five scientific papers. A 2005 university magazine story describes her as an assistant professor at Santa Clara University.

Before this book, she wrote The Gift of ADHD for parents. She also has a book on depression called Listening to Depression. According to her author biography, her books have sold more than 125,000 copies in total.

The starting idea: a framework carried over from child to adult

The adult book adapts the idea of the child book to adults. The publisher's description says so openly: symptoms such as impulsivity, daydreaming and difficulty focusing can also be connected to creativity, intuition and energy. The aim is to turn symptoms into strengths, and to do so in relationships, at work and in parenting.

The author's idea was not born overnight. In the Santa Clara magazine story, she talks about noticing that students with ADHD at the university struggled with classic exams but said things in class that made her think. The same story reports that she argued ADHD is diagnosed more often than it should be, and said that giving a child Ritalin is easier and cheaper than nurturing the child's strengths.

I note this because, to discuss the book, you need to know what ground it speaks from. This is not a neutral introduction; it is a thesis book.

The book's age should not be forgotten either. It was written in 2008, five years before the DSM-5 (2013). Recognition of ADHD in adults was still only beginning to settle in those years, and the name "ADD" was common among the public. A reader who today calls this picture predominantly inattentive ADHD may find the book's language a little dated. The framework itself has not aged; on the contrary, it has become even more widespread on social media.

The book's skeleton

The table of contents consists of two parts and ten chapters. The first chapter's title is a question: Is it just me or is the whole world ADD? In other words, is it just me, or does the whole world have ADHD? Judging by the title, the book opens by asking how much of what people complain about is personal and how much is the condition of the age.

The first part is called Getting Ready to Rumble, that is, getting ready for a fight. It has three more chapters.

The second chapter is Find Your Sweet Spot. Find your own sweet spot. The title's promise is this: first look for what you do well and in what setting you do it well.

The third chapter is In the Workplace: Now Patch Up Weaknesses, in the workplace, now patch up your weaknesses. The word "now" in the title gives away the order. Strengths first, weaknesses after. I think this is the book's most defensible structural decision. Patching up weaknesses is a bearable job only if you have solid ground to stand on.

The fourth chapter is Relationships, Parenting, and ADD: relationships, parenting and ADHD. The publisher's description also names relationships, work performance and parenting as its target areas.

Five gifts

The second part is called The Five Gifts of Adult ADD. Five chapters are given to five gifts. The five traits the author listed for the child book appear in public sources as follows: creativity, sensitivity to nature, interpersonal intuition, energetic enthusiasm, emotional sensitivity. The chapter titles of the adult book match this list.

The fifth chapter is Creativity: Cultivate Your Daydreams, creativity: nurture your daydreams. Judging by the title, absent-mindedness here counts not as a flaw but as raw material to be worked.

The sixth chapter is The Trailblazer: The Gift of Ecological Consciousness. The trailblazer and ecological consciousness. In another piece by the author, this gift appears as concern for the environment.

The seventh chapter is Interpersonal Intuition. Reading people's moods.

The eighth chapter is Translate Hyperactivity into Exuberance, turn hyperactivity into exuberance. Note the verb in the title: it says "translate," not "declare."

The ninth chapter is Your Emotionally Expressive Gifts, your gifts of emotional expression. I wrote in the site's article on emotion regulation that emotional intensity has a cost. I cannot tell from the title how much this chapter takes that cost into account.

The tenth and last chapter is Promise and Pitfalls, that is, promise and traps. After it come a short "Final Thoughts," a section pointing to the author's work, and a bibliography. It is good news that a separate chapter is given to the pitfalls. I could not see its content, so I cannot say how honest this chapter is.

Its strongest side

Loosening shame. The heaviest burden of an adult with ADHD is often not the symptom but having heard the sentences "lazy," "messy," "not living up to their potential" for years. In the site's article on shame and self-compassion I wrote about why this sits so close to the center. A book in which every sentence is built on deficit adds to this burden. A book that starts from strengths can take some of this burden off.

The second plus: the order. First find the sweet spot, then patch up the weaknesses. I reached the same intuition in the site's article on "which jobs suit better": it is not the profession but the features of the work that decide. I think fit comes less from a trait of the person than from the meeting of that trait with the setting, and the book's concept of a "sweet spot" grasps this from the right place.

The evidence problem

This is where the real debate about this book lies. In her own piece in Psychology Today, the author defends the idea of the "gift" both as a description and as an intervention. As a description: people with ADHD share traits such as creativity, exuberance, emotional expressiveness, interpersonal intuition, environmental concern and leadership. As an intervention: focusing on these traits improves self-esteem, motivation and outcomes such as grades, work and relationships.

Separating the two claims is actually an honest move, because each is tested separately. But the support I saw in that piece is mainly clinical observation and client stories. I could not see a controlled study.

Looking at the descriptive side, the picture is mixed. White and Shah's 2006 and 2011 studies found that adults with ADHD did better on some measures of creativity, but the samples were small and the 2011 study was done with university students. The review in which Hoogman and colleagues gathered thirty-one behavioral studies in 2020 says this: the advantage in divergent thinking appears mostly in people with high symptoms but no diagnosis, not in diagnosed groups. Reports of real-life creative achievement are high in both groups. There is no advantage in convergent thinking. I discussed the details in the article on ADHD and creativity.

On the intervention side, the same question stands: for whom does the sentence "focus on your strengths" work, for whom does it not, and over what period? Someone who reads the book and feels better may experience this as a real gain, and I do not belittle that. But felt relief and a measured outcome at work or school are not the same thing. If the book offers evidence of the second kind, I cannot see it from the titles.

For sensitivity to nature and interpersonal intuition, I am not in a position to point to a body of research with the same care. I could not look at the book's bibliography. Without looking, I will not say "there is none" either.

There is also a term: in the glossary it appears as the strengths-based view. Used in the right place, it is helpful. Used in the wrong place, it makes the picture look lighter than it is.

The medication question

In reader reviews, the book's distance from medication was found distracting. I could not verify this from the text; I pass it on as one reader's comment. There are two things I did verify: what the author said about medication in the 2005 story, and that in her Psychology Today piece she says her approach is separate from the medication debate. In the same piece she also implies that some experts have financial ties to drug companies.

You make the medication decision with your doctor; a book does not make that decision. But a book's view of medication is one of the three things I look at when I put it on the shelf. The Hoogman review found no evidence that psychostimulants harm creativity in general. For someone who puts off treatment out of fear that "medication will take away my creativity," this is important information. The site's article on medication or therapy explains why the two should not be set against each other.

Who it is for

For the adult who, in the first months after diagnosis, wants to read something other than "the list of things that are broken in me." For someone tired of always describing themselves through deficit, but who does not believe in superpower sentences either, the book can offer a starting framework.

Who it is not for: someone looking for a treatment method. Judging by the table of contents, it is not built as an intervention protocol. For someone who struggles to start tasks, build systems or stick to a plan, I do not see a full toolkit in the titles. For that job, The Adult ADHD Tool Kit is far more fitting.

My suggestion on reading order is this: look at the titles first and start with the second and third chapters. The most applicable part of the book is most likely the chapters on the sweet spot and on patching up weaknesses. The five-gifts chapters are healthier to read as a list of claims: at the end of each one, ask yourself, "do I have this, and if so, in what setting does it come out?" If the answer is yes, good; if no, that does not make you lacking.

There is one more person the book does not suit: someone who, in a period that is already going badly, does not want to read the sentence "use your gift." On those days this framework, instead of helping, can create a second feeling of failure.

Its place on the shelf

Among the books on the site, this is the clearest representative of the strengths shelf. ADHD 2.0 also leans on a similar framework, and there too the question of evidence is a separate one. The difference of Honos-Webb's book is that it puts this at the center of its thesis and that it was written as a continuation of the child book.

At the other end of the shelf are books that put deficit and evidence first, such as Rethinking Adult ADHD. Reading the two side by side helps you see where the strengths narrative begins and where it turns into harm. I tried to draw this distinction in the article on the question of strengths in ADHD.

Where I stand

I have a reason to like the idea, and a reason to take the book down from the shelf. For someone who has spent years in shame, turning the framework around is valuable. But the value of a framework is measured not by how good it makes you feel but by what it explains correctly. This book does well on the first measure. On the second, I cannot give my approval without seeing its evidence.

If you are going to read it, read it like this: take the gift sentences as a hypothesis, as something to be tested in your own life. For a few weeks, note what you produce in which setting. If your notebook confirms the sentence, good; if it does not, it is the book that was wrong, not you.