Therapy can help if you or your child experience:
- Difficulty focusing, staying on task, or often losing important items
- Impulsivity in speech, decision-making, or emotional reactions
- Procrastination, disorganization, & difficulty managing time
- Restlessness, difficulty sitting still, or needing constant stimulation
- Difficulty starting or completing tasks at school, work, or home
- Feeling misunderstood in relationships or work settings
- Emotional ups & downs, including stress, anxiety, or low self-esteem
What Is ADHD Therapy?
ADHD therapy helps you understand how your brain works and build real strategies around it. Whether you’re struggling with focus, impulsivity or staying organized, the right therapist helps you stop fighting yourself and start making progress.
Children
Your child is bright and capable, but school feels like an uphill battle every single day. They lose things, forget instructions, and struggle to sit still while everyone else seems to manage just fine. It’s exhausting for them and for you. We help children build the focus and confidence they need to stop feeling behind and start feeling capable.
Teens & Young Adults
The pressure to perform is intense and ADHD makes it feel impossible to keep up. Deadlines pile up, friendships get complicated, and the gap between how smart you know you are and how you’re actually doing keeps growing. We give teens and young adults practical tools to close that gap and take back control of their lives.
Adults
If you have been managing this your whole life but the coping strategies that got you through school don’t cut it anymore. Work demands more, relationships require more, and there’s never enough time or energy. We help adults build systems that actually work for the life they have now, not the one they had at 20.
Our Approach to ADHD Therapy
Our therapists specialize in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), widely considered one of the most effective approaches for ADHD. CBT helps individuals identify unhelpful thought patterns, develop better problem-solving skills, and build practical strategies for focus, organization, and impulse control. Through CBT, you or your child can learn to manage ADHD with proven tools tailored to everyday life.
ADHD is not a barrier to success—it’s a different way of thinking. With the right tools, you can harness your strengths, improve focus, and build the life you want for you or your child.
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Every Brain is Different. Your Treatment Should Be Too.
Mindfulness Practices
Racing thoughts and restlessness make it hard to get anything done. Breathwork, guided focus exercises, and structured reflection give you practical ways to slow down and stay present when it matters most.
Play Therapy
For younger children, sitting and talking is not always the best way to learn. Play therapy meets kids where they are, using the language they understand naturally to build focus, emotional regulation, and confidence.
Family Therapy
ADHD affects everyone under the same roof. When the whole family understands what is going on and has the right tools, home stops feeling like a battleground and starts feeling like a place where your child can actually thrive.
Recognizing Good Therapy
Evidence-Based
ADHD has real, proven solutions. We specialize in CBT, one of the most effective approaches for managing ADHD, so you get treatment backed by research that delivers real, lasting results.
Strong Relationships
Living with ADHD can feel isolating and misunderstood. Our therapists take the time to truly understand how your brain works and build a plan around your specific challenges, always working toward your goals.
Short-Term & Focused
ADHD therapy does not have to go on forever. Our structured, skills-based approach means most clients see meaningful progress in months not years, with practical tools that work in real life from day one.
Client Convenience
Getting help should not be one more thing that feels overwhelming. Evening and Saturday appointments, three Silicon Valley locations, and video therapy mean support that fits into your life, not the other way around.
With convenient office locations in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and San Jose, we proudly serve the entire Silicon Valley community – from Stanford University and the Peninsula to the South Bay, offering easy access for tech professionals, students, and families.
Frequently Asked Questions About ADHD Therapy
ADHD often involves patterns of inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity that impact daily life. If focus, organization, or emotional regulation have been difficult, a therapist can help assess symptoms and develop personalized strategies.
ADHD doesn’t look the same for everyone. In fact, it generally presents in three different ways:
- Inattentive Type – Difficulty focusing, forgetfulness, easily distracted
- Hyperactive-Impulsive Type – Restlessness, impulsive actions, difficulty sitting still
- Combined Type – A mix of both inattentive and hyperactive traits
Each individual’s experience is different. Therapy helps identify strengths and develop strategies tailored to your specific needs.
ADHD symptoms evolve over time. Strategies that worked in childhood may not be effective in adulthood due to shifting responsibilities, brain development, and life transitions. Therapy helps adapt skills for each stage of life.
Many people don’t recognize ADHD until later in life. Therapy can help you process your diagnosis, understand past challenges, and build strategies for managing work, relationships, and daily responsibilities.
Yes. ADHD in girls and women is often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed because it tends to present differently than in boys. While boys are more likely to display hyperactive or impulsive symptoms, girls often have more inattentive symptoms, which may be overlooked or mistaken for shyness, daydreaming, or emotional sensitivity. Recognizing these differences can lead to earlier diagnosis and better support tailored to their needs.
Yes! Medication can be an effective tool for managing ADHD symptoms, but therapy provides additional skills and strategies that medication alone cannot address. Therapy can help with:
- Developing executive functioning skills (time management, organization, follow-through)
- Improving emotional regulation and impulse control
- Addressing challenges in relationships and communication
- Building self-awareness and confidence in managing ADHD symptoms
- Creating sustainable coping mechanisms tailored to individual needs
Many people find that combining medication with therapy leads to the best long-term outcomes for managing ADHD effectively.
ADHD can impact relationships in several ways, often due to differences in attention, communication, and emotional regulation. Common challenges include:
- Forgetting important dates, zoning out during conversations, or struggling with follow-through on commitments
- Speaking without thinking, interrupting conversations, or making spur-of-the-moment decisions
- Strong emotional reactions, difficulty managing frustration, or being highly sensitive to criticism
- Challenges with planning, shared responsibilities, or keeping track of details in daily life
However, ADHD can also bring strengths to relationships, such as creativity, spontaneity, enthusiasm, and deep emotional connections. Therapy can help individuals and couples develop better communication skills, set realistic expectations, and create strategies for navigating ADHD-related challenges together.
ADHD can make it difficult to stay engaged in structured conversations, but therapy for ADHD is designed to be interactive and adaptable to different attention styles. If engagement is a concern, we may adjust sessions to be:
- More dynamic – Incorporating visual aids, hands-on activities, or movement
- Goal-oriented – Using structured plans and immediate problem-solving strategies
- Flexible in format – Breaking sessions into shorter discussions or using real-life examples to keep engagement high
- Interactive for children – Using play-based methods, storytelling, and structured rewards
- Collaborative for adults – Focusing on practical tools, real-world applications, and actionable steps
Yes! Many people with ADHD also experience anxiety or depression. Therapy provides tools to manage both, helping you feel more in control and resilient.
ADHD and anxiety can sometimes look similar, especially when it comes to restlessness, trouble focusing, and feeling overwhelmed. However, they stem from different causes:
- ADHD is primarily about attention regulation, impulsivity, and executive function challenges. People with ADHD may have difficulty starting or finishing tasks, staying organized, or managing time effectively.
- Anxiety is rooted in excessive worry or fear that often leads to avoidance behaviors. Someone with anxiety might have difficulty focusing because they are preoccupied with anxious thoughts, whereas someone with ADHD may not be able to focus because their attention naturally shifts frequently.
Both conditions can occur together, and therapy can help differentiate between the two while providing strategies to manage each.
Yes! We offer in-person and video therapy sessions to make support accessible and convenient.
What Our Clients Are Saying…
Palo Alto Therapy does not just provide talk therapy, but focuses on teaching skills to maintain therapy. You have a genuine interest in the client’s well-being and you offered a new way of thinking about or means of addressing my issues.
What Our Clients Are Saying…
I liked the emphasis on doing concrete things to get results-writing down negative thoughts, trying to say things to counter those thoughts…Thank you for helping me make my life better.
What Our Clients Are Saying…
I found the homework exercises to be very helpful to me. I’ve been able to use techniques I have learned from those exercises to slow down my thoughts when problems arise and work through whatever the issue may be, OCD or otherwise.
Meet Our Team of Therapists in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, & San Jose working with ADHD
Janika Filipe, AMFT, APCC
Hannah Bodin, AMFT
Deborah Brewer, LCSW – Clinic Director
Get Support for ADHD Today
The longer ADHD goes without support, the harder daily life tends to get. For you or your child, the right help can change that. Contact us today to get started.