G. was seven years old when he was brought to me. By then he already had spent a year in various institutions. He was unruly at school, and
Taru van den Born is a Dutch blacksmith with a degree in Psychology, who offers training to ND folks, which he believes is therapeutic in many ways. He is doing a wonderful thing for ND folks. Folks like me, as I have ADHD.
I feel the same concepts and benefits could be found in woodworking, or any number of handcrafting/trade fields like smithing and woodworking.
I've certainly found woodoworking immensely beneficial for my ADHD. I didn't even get diagnosed or treated until I was 32. I spent my life before that being terrible at everything, and never sticking with anything for long except music, which I still wasn't very good at. I never understood why and assumed I'd always be a mess. Couldn't even hold a job for very long.
I got into woodworking shortly after getting help for my ADHD. Getting therapy and meds was profoundly life changing. Woodworking (or any craft) is no substitute for proper treatment and I wouldn't be where I am without out the support and good work being done by the docs at the Adult ADHD Clinic at the Hope Centre in North Vancouver. It's the only clinic of it's kind in Canada, a pilot project where adults with ADHD can get help entirely funded by public healthcare.
Woodworking had given me something I can engage with and focus on. I can lose myself in it for hours working on some small detail, existing only in the space between the wood and aris of the chisel. It's grounding, and very gratifying.
It requires a degree of planning and organization. I've gotten a lot of use out of the organization and project management skills I learned in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but also refined those and learned a lot more through woodworking. It's taught me a lot of patience as well.
It's also diverse enough to keep my ADHD brain filled with novelty and change. One day I might be carving dovetails, the next restoring an old tool using electrolysis, the next doing some basic metalworking to make a blade or a thread cutter. There's always new techniques and methods to learn or research to do. Maybe today I'll go down a rabbithole on Victorian furniture decorative carvings, or some obscure facet of making iron age lyres. I've even translated books from Swedish and Finnish just to learn the minutae of Tagelharpa and Jouhikko bowed lyres.
So it gives me a universe of things to explore while staying in orbit around that central point of woodworking.
In the end, I have a physical object I created, or someone else does, but I made it. I can see my progress in physical objective terms. There is something deeply satisfying about that. Its creative but also very functional and practical. I'm engaging my artistic side by making something that is beautiful, or makes beautiful noise. At the same time its something physical which serves a practical purpose.
I never thought I'd be good at anything, but I'm getting good at this, and getting better every day, and that simple thing alone has been so good for my ADHD brain.
Of course, at my job most of my day is just making simple components, customizing doors, or replicating pieces for customers, but its still grounding and satisfying. Sometimes that includes restoring 150 year old doors or replicating Victorian moulding. Replicating or making custom components often requires creativity as I need to work out how to do it, and occasionally design new jigs and guides specific to that component. Sometimes I get to make new tools or equipment, such as a router table, for the shop.
I have to give my company a lot of credit for being a supportive environment that's helped me grow and put up with my constant screwups. This is very much a form of privilege that many of us ND folk can only wish for, and I wish we could all have. Taru van den Born seems to be fostering that kind of environment, which is just as important as any practical skill he might teach there.
I think we all, ND and Normie alike, could learn some things from his example, and I don't just mean how to forge metal.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
