Your Brain's Not Broken

It came out in September 2021 from Revell, an imprint of Baker Publishing Group. The print edition is listed at two hundred and eight pages; one expert review says one hundred and seventy, and I cannot explain the difference in the count. The full title is Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD. The publisher later announced that one hundred and fifty thousand copies had been sold.

I could not find a verified Turkish edition, so I am writing about it under its original title.

I did not write this piece by reading the book from cover to cover, but based on the table of contents, the publisher and bookseller descriptions, interviews the author has given, and published reader and expert reviews. Wherever I have not seen the inside of a chapter, I will say so.

Who Tamara Rosier is, and where she writes the book from

Rosier is not a clinician; she is a coach. According to her author bio, she worked as an administrator and professor at a university, then as a leadership consultant and a high school teacher, set up her own business and moved into ADHD coaching. She founded the ADHD Center of West Michigan; coaches, therapists and speech pathologists work at the center. In an interview she gave at the end of 2021, she is referred to as the president of the ADHD Coaches Organization. She has a doctorate, but none of the pages I looked at say in which field.

I am not saying this to belittle her. I did the same thing in the piece on Akıllı Kadınlar İçin DEHB (ADHD for Smart Ass Women) on this site: if a book is a coach's book, you need to read it knowing that its source is coaching sessions. Rosier does not hide this either; the description openly says the book grew out of years of coaching experience.

The starting idea: not broken, wired differently

The book's argument sits in its title. The publisher's description says the ADHD brain is not defective but wired differently, and then lists time, organization, forgetfulness, finishing tasks, mood and relationships. The target audience is two groups: the reader with ADHD and the person who lives with or loves them.

This framing is not new in ADHD books; the language of "difference, not defect" runs through most of the shelf. What sets Rosier apart is in the subtitle: she puts emotions at the center. On the same shelf, The Adult ADHD Tool Kit works through tasks and lists, while Rosier goes down to the emotion underneath the question "why did I avoid doing this?" It is what I describe in the piece on emotion regulation on this site: emotional flooding is not in the diagnostic criteria, but people who live with it name it as the hardest part.

Let me pass on the ideas the book puts forward from a promotional review written by a coaching professional, because it explains the mechanism: in ADHD, emotion can work like an on-off switch, and because working memory is narrow, emotion can take the place of memory and motivation. In other words, what makes you remember or do a task is often your feeling about that task. Alongside this there is the distinction between scattered thinking and linear thinking: producing many ideas at once is valuable for coming up with new things, but it can also feed overcomplicating and going round in circles in your head; to get started on a task, though, you need linear thinking. According to the book, the reader can practice switching between the two. A distorted sense of time is also linked to not being able to get started. The person who wrote this review works at a clinic that promotes its own coaching and therapy services, so I do not count it as an independent opinion, but the rundown of ideas matches the book's description.

The inside pages: chapter by chapter

The table of contents on Everand gives an introduction, fourteen chapters and five appendices. The introduction is "No More Pretending". The chapter titles are playful and give away the book's tone in advance.

1. And Then Ping! Goes My Brain. 2. Elves, Dirty Babies, and Lucille Ball. 4. Following the Rabbit. I could not verify what is inside these three chapters. I read that readers count the first chapters, that is, the ADHD basics and emotion regulation, as the strongest part of the book. I could not find enough detail to match things chapter by chapter, so I am not doing it.

3. The Case of the Missing Butler. There is a metaphor the author keeps coming back to in her interviews: the prefrontal cortex in the forehead area, which takes on the executive functions, is like a calm butler, and the emotion center is like a frantic neighbor. When the butler is nowhere to be found, emotions run behavior. The chapter title matches this, but since I have not seen the chapter I cannot say for sure what it contains. One reader praised this chapter for its explanation of short-term memory and its tips. You can look at the prefrontal cortex and working memory entries on this site while you are at it.

5. The Monsters We Face, 6. Malicious Motivation, 7. Solving Motivational Murders. Motivation lives in this trio. According to one review, the book says that using anxiety or anger as motivational fuel is exhausting; in ADHD, interest and emotional arousal determine motivation, while avoidance drains energy. One reader wrote that the chapter on bad motivation traps mostly lists what you should not do and gives little room to what you should do; I am noting this.

8. Living on the Grid. The book's most cited tool is in this chapter, and Appendix A is called "Your Life on the Grid". This tool, called the Solve-It Grid, sorts activities on a grid according to obstacles and solutions. One reader wrote that it changed how they looked at activities; another loved the colorful four-quadrant structure; a third had trouble applying the grid because they could not understand the "emotional intensity" measure. In a podcast interview there is also talk of red and blue energy quadrants: going full throttle and then crashing.

9. Predictable Patterns. In an interview the author refers to this as "finding predictable patterns". There are reviews saying it is a tool for noticing patterns of thought and emotion and getting to know yourself. I have not seen beyond that.

10. Climbing the Ladder: Cultivating Emotional Health. The "ADHD emotional health ladder" comes up in the author's interviews. A separate review lists the book's emotion tools: calming down through breath and the body, DBT's concept of "wise mind", rating the intensity of an emotion from one to ten. I cannot say whether these are in this chapter or somewhere else.

11. Welcome Home: Creating Healthy Boundaries. The topic of boundaries is explained through a house metaphor. Two readers found this metaphor stretched too far, and one said they would find the useful part on a reread.

12. Dancing through the Day: Hacks for Adulting. The everyday-use chapter. Suggestions such as working in blocks with a timer, a daily plan, an evening review and putting hard tasks in the late morning are listed in one review; I do not know whether these are in this chapter or somewhere else.

13. The Island of Misfit Toys: Parenting the ADHD Child and 14. Now What? Writing Your ADHD Story. One reader counted the parenting chapter as a highlight of the book, another found the parenting material short compared with the adult part. The last chapter invites the reader to connect what they have read to their own life.

Appendices: Appendix B is called "Writing Your ADHD Story", Appendix C "If You Love Someone Who Has ADHD", Appendix D resources, and Appendix E "What Is ADHD Coaching?". I have not seen the inside of any of them.

Its strongest points

The grid. This is what readers praise most, and to me too it seems like the most actionable idea in the book: sorting activities by why you struggle with them, instead of putting them all under a single "be more disciplined" heading. This is close to the logic of the social battery piece on this site: energy does not show up on the calendar, but it gets spent, and the cost of an activity is not measured by its duration alone.

The second is the tone. You can tell from the chapter titles too: the book does not take itself so seriously that it crushes the reader. Reset ADHD's review also finds the book serious but funny.

The third is that emotion is at the center. Not treating emotional flooding as a character problem fits the framing I argue for in the piece on anger outbursts on this site.

Weaknesses and criticisms

Sources. The harshest criticism on Goodreads is that the book does not show research to back up its claims. The Everand listing has a "Notes" section, so it is not entirely without references; but the weight of the book is on coaching experience. This lowers its level of scientific evidence: the grid, the ladder and the butler analogy are Rosier's own tools, and I have not seen them tested in an independent study.

Religious references. The publisher presents itself as a publishing group that has historic Christianity and evangelical readers in mind. Some readers found the places where prayer, God and the church come up out of place in a secular self-help book. I have not seen the pages in question; but there may be readers who would want to know this in advance.

Language. One reader found the contrast between a "normal" brain and an ADHD brain outdated and at odds with the neurodiversity approach. Another said the emphasis on individual responsibility leaves social pressures behind.

Repetition and difficulty of use. Psychologist Jason Olin writes that it is hard to find useful information in the book quickly, and that this is a real problem for a reader with ADHD. Several readers say that the strategy chapters repeat earlier chapters. Another wrote that the examples always end with a suggestion to work with a coach.

Evidence for coaching. The evidence for coaching is not as solid as for therapy and medication. I went into this in detail in the piece on ADHD coaching on this site.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

It could be a good introduction for a newly diagnosed adult who wants to understand why their emotions hit so hard. The description targets this reader too; the author herself describes the book as being for adults who have just been diagnosed or who are wrestling with emotions and everyday life. It also suits a reader who is thinking about working with a coach or already works with one: the last appendix explains what coaching is, and I think looking at that appendix's title before choosing a coach is a cheap way to get clear on what you expect.

I would not recommend it to someone looking for a quick handbook; as Olin says, it is hard to pull useful information out of it quickly. A reader who wants sources and evidence should also look elsewhere; on that front, a clinically grounded book like Rethinking Adult ADHD does a better job. It is also good for a reader who might be bothered by religious language to know in advance. For a parent looking for a book about their child's ADHD, the parenting chapter offers an introduction, but the whole book is written for adults; the author has a separate book on the family, which I will come to below.

How I would read it

Not in order from start to finish. I would first read the basic chapters, then move on to the grid, take the grid out of the book and actually use it for a week. I would open the other tools, that is, the boundaries, ladder and daily planning parts, depending on what I got stuck on that week. Actually trying something after each tool matters more than finishing the book.

Its place on the shelf

Rosier's book holds the emotional side of the shelf. For planning and time management there is The Adult ADHD Tool Kit, for the therapists' perspective Rethinking Adult ADHD, and for another book in a coach's voice, again Akıllı Kadınlar İçin DEHB. For a specific emotional topic like rejection sensitivity there is the piece on rejection sensitive dysphoria.

The same author also has later books: You, Me, and Our ADHD Family is aimed at families, a workbook has been published, and a separate version for teens and young adults is listed with a September 2026 date. I have not looked at any of them.

Closing

I would keep the book on the shelf for its grid and read the rest as the account of a well-meaning coach. For someone newly diagnosed who is struggling with their emotions, it is a reassuring introduction, but it is not enough as a single source. A reader looking for evidence should look on another shelf.