SHARON SALINE – LIVING OUTSIDE THE BOX

By Melissa Karen Sances | Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography

Published in Northampton Living (March 2025)

When Sharon Saline was completing her doctorate of psychology in the 1990s, she counseled a child who was neurodivergent. The now mainstream term, coined in 1998 by Judy Singer, could describe someone with autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or a learning disorder. But the psychiatrist on Saline’s team had a different diagnosis.

“FLK,” he told her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Funny Looking Kid.”

Saline, now an expert on ADHD and a therapist practicing in Northampton, still bristles when people rush to judgment. Her voice rises as she shares the Cleveland Clinic’s description of neurodivergence: “having a brain that forms or works differently.” She explains that the implication – that differently means abnormally – is “hurtful to so many people, including most of my clients.”

“No one wants to have a disorder,” she says. “So when I work with people with ADHD, we come up with a name unique to their brain: fast brain, foggy brain, dreamy brain, doodling brain, interrupting brain. Part of my mission is to expand what the definition of normal is.”

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by difficulties with executive functioning, or planning and completing tasks, and hyperactivity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15.5 million adults and 7 million children fit the diagnostic criteria in 2024. Her brother was among them.

The author of What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew writes in the book’s introduction:

“I grew up in a family with a younger brother who was hyperactive and impulsive … He struggled, my parents struggled with him, and I watched it all unfold … It was tough for all of us, especially my brother.”

Bearing witness to his experience drove her to study psychology – and to appreciate the endearing qualities of those with ADHD. “The intensity, the spontaneity, the humor, the chaotic quality, felt familiar to me in terms of my own childhood,” she says. “I wanted to help people live more fully with neurodivergence while improving family relationships.”

Theatre has always been a way for Saline to share her unique experience. About 10 years ago, she wrote, produced, and performed her own cabaret, full of humorous moments accompanied by familiar songs. In a video of one act, called Family Foibles, she speaks directly to the audience.

“People ask me, ‘Why did you become a family therapist?’” she says. “This song is the answer to that question.”

Sitting on a stool in front of a piano, she begins a duet with a person on the other side. “Try to see it my way, do I have to keep on talking ‘til I can’t go on?” she croons. By the third word, the audience is laughing uproariously. Her song partner, her real-life vocal coach Justina Golden, sings the second line of the Beatles’ We Can Work It Out, and they’re off with a jaunty riff on family therapy.

Saline, who sang for five years with High Definition, a women’s acapella group in Northampton, met her husband at a summer camp where she co-led a teen group of “traveling minstrels.” She and Kenny were married at the same camp, now called Windsor Mountain in New Hampshire, in 1990.

Today, Saline directs and performs in the talent show at the International Conference on ADHD. She also presents internationally about how to use her 5 C’s of ADHD – self-control, compassion, collaboration, consistency, and celebration – to improve relationships, productivity, and self-esteem.

One of the greatest obstacles for neurodivergent people, she says, is their inner critic, which can echo what they might hear in the world.

“What I’ve found is that there’s great shame about being inadequate, being different, feeling like you don’t measure up,” she says. “You have to accept the brain that you have and treat yourself kindly the way a beloved grandmother would.”

She helps by improving how people talk to themselves and by honoring what makes them unique.

“Dr. Sharon,” a 12-year-old client told her recently, “I’m the weird one. I’m outside the box. But who wants to be inside the box, anyway? It’s so boring.”

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