As one of the oldest types of therapy, talk therapy is exactly what the name implies: It's an extended conversation between you and your therapist, with the goal of helping you better understand why you think, act, and behave the way you do.

Talk therapy can take many different forms. Throughout insight therapy, you examine your motives and your past behavior for “ah-ha” moments. During support therapy, you and your therapist look for ways to bolster your self-esteem and rein in negative thinking. During group therapy, you address adult ADHD problems as they affect your ability to have healthy interpersonal relationships with your family, your spouse or significant other, your children, and your friends.

Insight or Psychodynamic Therapy

The underlying premise of insight therapy is that our actions are the result of many conscious and unconscious factors, some of which likely stem from childhood experiences your conscious mind may have completely forgotten about, but you still react to on an emotional level. The goal of insight therapy is to uncover the motivating factors behind what you do, and find ways to adjust them for better results.

For instance, maybe you routinely put off paying bills until the very last minute — or until your providers turn off the water, electricity, and gas, and you're forced to make a payment.

Why you do this is another story. Are you putting it off because you can't find the bills, hate the drudgery of putting the bill in the mailbox, or because not paying the bills creates a sense of excitement and drama?

You may have deeper or hidden motives for not paying the bills on time. Maybe you unconsciously resent your wife for making you pay the bills and think she should do it instead of you. Or maybe paying the bills makes you feel anxious and insecure because they remind you that you're not earning as much money as you know you could be making.

Fortunately, an insight therapist is trained to listen closely and carefully to your real and fabricated problems and excuses and help you untangle them so you can come up with a solution to the problem before it destroys your home and marital life.

It could be as easy as making sure all the bills are in one place so you can find and pay them promptly, or putting visual cues on your computer or refrigerator to remind you that bills are due. If you're avoiding the bills to create excitement, your therapy can help you find more productive ways to create drama in your life that won't create household chaos.

On the other hand, if you're not paying the bills because you resent your wife for making you pay them, your therapist may recommend you both see a couples counselor so you can air your differences and get to the root of the problem.

Your therapist might not always be able to help you correct or eliminate the problem at hand, but he will probably be able to help you arrive at a compromise that you and your loved ones can tolerate and live with.

Focus on Supportive Therapy

If an insight therapist serves as a detective to help you uncover and understand unconscious motives, a support therapist acts more like your personal cheerleader.

After years of living with the disappointment, rejection, and failure of ADHD, you may feel like you need someone to help you pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

Many ADHD adults are also mired in negative, doom-and-gloom thinking, primarily because they've spent a large part of their lives internalizing the reams of criticism hurled their way because of their ADHD symptoms.

If you're one of them, a support therapist can help you replace your negative thoughts, self-criticism, and low self-esteem with strategies that lead to more positive thinking. Here are some tried-and-true strategies support therapists use to help patients derail negative thoughts and a poor self-image.

• Catch yourself in the act: The minute you start thinking something negative about yourself, imagine it's a beast dragging you down to the pits. Becoming more aware of your negative thoughts can help you gain the upper hand on them.

• Stop playing that broken record in your head: When you repeatedly tell yourself “basic truths” you believe are true about yourself, such as, “I'm too dumb to be employed” or “I always screw things up with women,” the limiting self-talk can make you give up before you even try. Your therapist can help you practice saying affirmative things to yourself that are probably a lot truer than those old, negative songs that have been on auto play for years now.

• Get some perspective: Another problem with ADHD adults is their tendency to magnify their own shortcomings. Maybe you always think you're to blame, no matter what the situation, or you emphasize the negative and eliminate the positive when it comes to your past and present accomplishments. As an objective party, your therapist can give you the reality check you need to readjust your attitudes about yourself.

• Learn to reframe: Just like a beautiful picture frame can enhance rather than obscure the beauty of a painting, putting a positive spin on things can turn a mistake into an opportunity for improvement. So you forgot to pick up the dry cleaning? Instead of telling yourself you're so stupid you can't remember simple errands, state the obvious in a nonjudgmen- tal way: “I forgot to pick up the laundry.” Then ask yourself what you can do to remember to pick it up tomorrow.

• Get rid of the absolutes: If you're constantly beating yourself up for “always” being late, or “never” remembering important dates, focus on the many things in life you do right. Replaying that endless (inaccurate) record in your head that says you do “everything” wrong is the sort of negative reinforcement you need to banish from your life.

• Be nice to yourself: As an ADHD adult, you've already had your share of self-criticism and rejection. It's time to treat yourself right. Work with your therapist to find ways to nurture your soul, whether it's listening to inspiring music, reading empowering books, taking a restorative walk through nature, or getting a relaxing massage.

Improving your self-image takes time and patience, but once you get the ball rolling, your positive self-talk is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you gain self-confidence and self-respect, you'll make changes to improve the quality of your life, feel better about yourself in return, and success will beget success.