Executive Functions & YOU

Executive Functioning
for Optimal Functioning™
What’s involved and what can go wrong?

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
another part of the Executive Functioning Series

MORE folks on Team EFD than folks with ADD/ADHD

The executive system is a carefully orchestrated combination of processes that, together, merge and mingle to make us human and to make us, well, us!

These functions continually work together to help us manage hundreds of cognitive and practical tasks of life, day in and day out.

Not only that, they do it in the blink of an eye, and primarily below the level of our conscious awareness. At least, they do it that way when everything is on board and working “normally.”

New here? Read What ARE Executive Functions? for more description & detail.

Found HERE

The area of the brain that makes possible many of the wonderful cognitive abilities differentiating humans from the rest of the mammals is the frontal third of the outer layer of the human brain, referred to as the pre-frontal cortex [PFC], right behind the forehead:

• the last part of our brains to evolve,
• the last part of our brains to develop in the womb,
• and the last part of our brains to mature as we grow up

And it’s fragile

The PFC is especially vulnerable to damage — both before and after birth.

The living brain is soft, floating around inside a fluid filled environment keeping it from bumping up against the inside of a hard skull that, in turn, is protecting the fragile brain itself.

Your PFC can be injured very easily bumping up against that bony skull, even when no direct hit to the head was involved in the original incident.

Anything that makes the brain “slosh around” in the fluid in a manner that causes it to come in contact with the skull results in at least minor brain damage, and the PFC is often involved.

Read: How Do Brains Get Damaged?  Is YOURS?

THAT means that in addition to individuals with disorders, stroke or some type of substance-promoted damage affecting the PFC, anyone who’s been involved in almost any sort of accident is likely to experience brain-based executive functioning challenges of one sort or another.

It also means that most adults have at least a few EF issues, not only individuals with:

• mood disorders (anxiety & depression included)
• autistic and attentional spectrum disorders
• TBI/ABI,
• Parkinson’s
• dyslexia & dyscalculia
• more than a few neurological conditions such as
  sensory integration disorders  —

in fact, almost all of what I refer to as the alphabet disorders — as well as, currently, MOST of us over 45, as the memory centers begin to age.

So what does THAT mean?

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More Executive Functions than you probably realize

Found HERE

As I briefly reviewed above, “Executive Functions” are what we call the integrated set of mental skills that make effective management of the cognitive tasks of daily living possible.

Those functions include, among others:

• tasks with intensive working and short-term memory requirements
• anything that necessitates an inner awareness of the passage of TIME
• activities where a reliable sense of direction is important
• ALL tasks requiring adequate attentional skills, which means a relatively strong ability to:

1-focus on the intended object,
2-sustain the focus, and/or
3-shift focus at will

They are all brain-based processes that allow us to be ABLE to do things like:

1. Self-monitor
2. Ride herd on impulse control and emotional regulation
3. Plan, sequence, prioritize, schedule, and activate to task-completion
4. Estimate time to completion and monitor time elapsed
5. Retain cognitive focus despite everyday distractions
6. Switch gears and get back on track when interrupted
7. Analyze ideas and think through concepts, especially as they apply to life-management
8. Keep track to evaluate performance on everyday tasks

Which are foundational abilities to be able to do things like these:

1. Participate appropriately in conversations
   (without blurting, interrupting, changing the subject, or “drifting off”)
2. Apply previously learned information and strategies toward new problems
   (lifelong learning, as well as getting through educational or workplace training)
3. Organize – an environment or a schedule – and maintain it
4. Keep life from becoming a protracted scavenger hunt
   (where we are continually looking for misplaced objects due to
   lack of focus leading to impaired registration)
5. Follow directions & jump through multi-step tasks
6. Understand when more information or assistance is needed
   (relatively clear when, why or how to ask for help —
   with few difficulties accepting help when offered)
   
7. Keep track of and follow through on promises
   (including work and school assignments
   as well as personal promises made to loved ones)
8. Overcome or work around any number of the many of the Challenges listed in a prior article here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com, Symptoms of Attentional Struggles

IN OTHER WORDS, the brain’s Executive Functions consist of a collection of mental abilities that help our brains organize information in a manner that we are able act on it – and DO act on it!

Graphic of Dr. Thom Brown’s Categories found HERE

STRONG Executive Functioning skills, as long as we have sufficient motivation, enable us to plan, organize, remember things, prioritize, pay attention and get started on tasks relatively quickly and easily.

With weak executive functioning skills, and without help developing strategies and work-arounds, handling even the simplest of tasks can frequently be complete stoppers.

Recalling a specific term, name or date (or the reason we walked into the next room) for example, could be almost as big a challenge as completing an assignment or adhering to a schedule!

What do I mean by complete stoppers?

• Avoiding tasks & activities that require information you don’t have readily at hand – for an unusually long time.
• Procrastinating “endlessly” because the tiered tasks of finding what you need to complete something you need to do makes you hesitant to even begin it.
• Moving on to something else “for now” – and only much later realizing what you intended to do instead is still undone – reload, repeat!
• Hyperfocusing on something less urgent or important until you run out of time – day after day. (Um, didn’t you promise your wife you would begin cleaning out the garage as you headed out the door? So why are you detailing the car?)

Everything is fuzzy when the PFC is doing a sub-par job!

(Don’t forget, helping clients work around and overcome EF Challenges
is what I DO – privately and with groups!  And I’d love to do it for YOU.)

More to come

In future posts we’ll explore more about Executive Functioning struggles and their implications, along with what’s needed to learn to swim with the current, so stay tuned. Getting real about what’s going on just might allow you to let yourself reach out for help.

Check out some of the links above and the Related Content below for self-help and a few success stories. Life doesn’t have to be so hard.

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IN ANY CASE, do stay tuned.
There’s a lot to know, a lot here already, and a lot more to come – in this Series and in others.
Get it here while it’s still free for the taking.

Want to work directly with me? If you’d like some coaching help with anything that came up while you were reading this Series (one-on-one couples or group), click HERE for Brain-based Coaching with mgh, with a contact form at its end (or click the E-me link on the menubar at the top of every page). Fill out the form, submit, and an email SOS is on its way to me; we’ll schedule a call to talk about what you need. I’ll get back to you ASAP (accent on the “P”ossible!)

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You might also be interested in some of the following articles
available right now – on this site and elsewhere.

For links in context: run your cursor over the article above and the dark grey links will turn dark red;
(subtle, so they don’t pull focus while you read, but you can find them to click when you’re ready for them)
— and check out the links to other Related Content in each of the articles themselves —

Related articles right here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com
(in case you missed them above or below)

• Brain-based Coaching with Madelyn Griffith-Haynie
• Group Coaching Information LinkList
• Private Coaching Formats & Fees

• Memory Glitches and Executive Functioning
• Procrastination’s link to kludgy Executive Functioning
• Brain-based Coaching Paradigms

A Few LinkLists by Category (to articles here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com)

• The Optimal Functioning (Challenges) Series of articles
  (about the Inventory & articles from each category)
• The Executive Functioning Series
• The TaskMaster™ Series
• Time & Time Management articles
• The Transition Tamer™ Series

Related Articles ’round the net

• So What Is Executive Dysfunction?
• It May be Deeper Than “Laziness”
• 7 signs of executive dysfunction after brain injury
• Executive Dysfunction and Panicking from Demands
• Executive dysfunction
• No Sticker Charts Please – Try Understanding Executive Function Instead

BY THE WAY: Since ADDandSoMuchMore.com is an Evergreen site, I revisit all my content periodically to update links — when you link back, like, follow or comment, you STAY on the page. When you do not, you run a high risk of getting replaced by a site with a more generous come-from.