thinkythink

Getting started is most of the ADHD battle

   Ok, this is true for some of my ADHD coaching clients.

You tell me that whoa! once you get started, everything is a-ok, or even hyperfocus great. But getting started is tough.

Today's getting started for me is full-on anxiety-provoking.  I haven't had all that much time for the work I've wanted to do for quite some time. Clients always take precedence in my work hours, and many of those hours have been nibbled up by other more important issues, leaving only time for my current clients. 

So, I've got my priorities straight. But now I have a little breathing room to do something like write blog posts, and reach out to people interested in coming off my waiting list. But I feel like I'm jumping from the 20-foot diving platform! That is the getting started nerves. The nerves can come after the diversions.

Diversions are not  procrastination in the sense of putting it off so I don't have to do it now. It's more of the slipstream behind the getting-started nerves. Ooh! let me think about how  I am going to get started. Which hours am I coaching? Legitimate question, also a possible roadblock. Ooh! let me organize my inbox so I can make sure I've gathered everything I need to respond to. Legitimate task, but can wash me away from my path. Let me think about the stuff I want to catch up on! Sounds like planning, but planning can also be an island, where you are stuck exploring and aren't actually connected to the dry land of doing.

Only when I get back there, and start moving along, will the anxiety disappear. Then I can step back and see what my next steps are. It is an odd process, because it means thinking once I'm in action, and not thinking it out before, yet also not impulsively going down another path.

 

Self-Kindness

I want to pick up where I left off last week: curiosity and the scientist-mode.

Today I am not feeling so well. Had a migraine yesterday, and migraine effects last longer than an afternoon, even if the meds work. The side effects from the meds may last a while, too. Or, the migraine could be part of a virus.

I don't know which. I do know that my ADHD makes it hard for me to step back and notice what my energy level is, and what my body is feeling like.

Oh yeah, I don't feel great. Oh yeah, I was gonna do stuff on my list. Oh yeah, now I gotta push through or forget about it....

or not. Maybe I need to listen to how I'm feeling, how my mind is working, and see what I maybe can do. I've said this a lot on this blog; that we start with what we CAN do, that it might depend on a lot. But I still have to remember this from moment to moment, when it is easier to criticize myself for seeming lazy or inert, or whatever.As soon as I do that, I have forgotten that the self-criticism is actually an enemy of any kind of productivity- and awareness.

What's the bottom line? If I can review what I have been working on, my open tasks and projects, if only to put them away again because I'm under the weather, that's actually a lot more progress than ignoring the list and hammering at myself instead.

 

 

We Do Well When We Can

I've been giving a blog post to clients to read. It's a blog post by Kyra Anderson about parenting, a  child with Asperger.  After I read it,  I kept thinking about it while talking to clients, because the things the author is figuring out about dealing with her kid are so similar to the things my clients figure out about dealing with themselves.

The post is entitled "Kids (and their parents) Do Well When They Can." The phrase "kids do well when they can" refers to Ross Greene's Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach to "discipline" with something like "challenging" children, as outlined in The Explosive Child.  If you have kids, or work with kids, or take care of kids, and you haven't read the book, you should. If you have ADHD and you have kids who are biologically related to you, you need to read it, because their chances of having ADHD are too high not to parent accordingly.

But as Kyra illustrates in her post, using this approach changes not only how you parent, but how you feel and think- and talk to yourself- while you are parenting.She writes about her son being happy to play a favorite game on the computer, while saying he doesn't have the energy to do some chores.This is tricky because it is so easy to assume that he is resistant because he just doesn't like chores- and even if you were thinking about someone with ADHD who has trouble focusing on something boring, it is just hard to rewrite the idea that they just don't want to do the boring stuff. 

Kyra describes a shift to thinking it may truthfully be about him not having energy to do the chores. Once she does that, she can problem-solve. Then she can help him GET the energy. And then, he succeeds.

I do this with my own kids, and when I make the shift with my kids from thinking "he CAN do this, he's just not trying" to "he does well WHEN HE CAN," and start problem solving about how to help him to be able to, it changes my outlook entirely. I become more pragmatic, more positive, more helpful, and less frustrated. Far less frustrated- right along with my kid.

But I'm writing this to talk about ourselves as adults, not as parents. The message about how we attribute will and effort to kids who aren't doing something we want them do, is EXACTLY how we tell ourselves that we aren't trying hard enough to get something done.

For example, I can start washing the dishes when I put on the right music, or when I have someone coming over, which feels like magical energy I didn't have. A lot of coaching is finding what the strategies and pairings are, yet in a deeper sense it is about changing our assumptions that we aren't doing something because we aren't trying hard enough. When we start to see this as a matter of CAN instead of a matter of TRY, we can begin to problem solve to get to where we can.

The more we do this, the more we can ever-so-slowly change how we talk to ourselves. Slowly we can internalize this thinking, cultivating a perspective that Kyra describes about herself as a parent- and can be equally powerful when thinking about ourselves:

The first part, being softer and assuming good intentions, could possibly sound like overly-positive nonsense if you are cynical. But it allows a mindset of curiosity, or the "scientist mode" as she describes it. This curiousity is, in my experience, the only way to find what works. As a massive bonus, it feels a lot better. 

 

 

Setting Up New Coaching Groups in the New Year!

It's been an intense year folks, and I do have a number of wonderful people who have been interested in small group coaching by phone. I wanted to let you know that I'll be setting up additional groups after the New Year. So please, if you are interested in small group coaching, make sure you are on my newsletter list(s) so I can keep you posted. 

I would like to have one group focus simply on work-related task lists; we will go through what's on your list and use the time for you to open that list up and think about it. This is a good group for professionals who get things done, but not always the things they wanted to pay attention to!

I also have a waiting list for individual coaching, with slots expected to open shortly.

 

Thanks and happy between-Thanksgiving-and-the-other-holidays!

You don't always need your calendar

It seems like it comes back to the same things when I'm working with my fabulous ADHD coaching clients. Silly things. Like calendars.

I have a wonderful coaching group that has been together for a long time now. We started together working in a targeted way on using calendars and also task lists.

The group noticed recently that several of them are in huge transitions right now. And that they don't always use their lists and calendars. So we talked about this: that's OK.

Here are some times to let go of the lists:

• When looking at the list is only stressful, reminding you of what you can't do right now.
• When looking at your list or planner doesn't help you plan, but you do get caught up in (or hyperfocused on) how to "fix" your schedule or plan or to do list so your life will be "all better."
• When you know what you have to do today, and you know that these are honestly the only things you should be focused on. This isn't about ignoring the other stuff voluntarily; this is about survival mode, crisis mode, or self-care when the basics are already more than a full plate.

And some things that can help in these scenarios:

• You can put stuff on your big to do list that you want to come back to later, if, and only if, that is a good way for you to file it away for now.
• Know that you will come back to the lists/planner when it is time. Your time away does not mean you failed. 
• You can write really short lists or notes to yourself if you are having trouble remembering in the moment the 1-3 things you need to do. This is not a list review or plan. This is a quick way to avoid forgetting the thing you need to do right now. You can write it on your phone, a post-it, or your hand.

As always, remember, lists and calendars and planners and such are tools. Tools are supposed to make things easier, not harder.

 

 

 

 

ADHD Parenting: without expectations

I didn't really have any expectations of motherhood, or of my children.

I chalk this up partially to my own brand of childhood, and partially to my ADHD. Having children- and frankly having a life- feels much to me like going on a trip. Like many adults with ADHD, I find it very difficult to plan for a trip, because a trip sometime in the future is in the not-now. I can't put myself into the experience of the trip enough to understand what I might need to bring. I can't anticipate, think about what I'd like to do, because I'm not there. 

I consider myself fortunate. I don't think I had any grand expectations of what my children would be like. I've watched for signs of certain genetics being passed on- but no sense of what I wanted them to be, other than happy and healthy. That means that even though I'm currently chronically exhausted, I don't consider that my life as a parent should be a different way. I don't wish my children to be different. I will not mourn interests they do not have, or clothing I don't get to dress them in, or needs they do have that I didn't plan on dealing with. 

I'm thinking about this today because of an amazing piece I just read on the Atlantic. I would strive to be as grounded as the author who says:

Maybe it's my Buddhist outlook, but I'm not consumed with worry and frenzy and despair like I'm "supposed" to be. I don't enjoy that my 12-year-old son is still in diapers and sometimes purposely makes a mess in the bathroom. Or that he dumped his Thanksgiving dinner on my sister-in-law's pregnant belly. Or that he screams in the parking lot of Whole Foods until people call the cops on us. On the other hand, he is my son, and he is what I have. And he has a nice smile.

I do not face the same challenges as this author. But I am inspired to add to my ADHD lack-of-future-thinking to be as present as her, in order to keep running at a sustainable pace. 

 

 

Reasons Chores Are Hard When You Have ADHD

I'm not trying to get you to dwell in the negative about your ADHD. I'm actually trying to help you fully acknowledge the challenges you are facing, so you can make day-to-day tasks less daunting. The first thing to remember is that

• Chores are harder for people with ADHD. They are not easy. It is part of your ADHD. "This should be easy" is not true.

Now that we have that down, and you remind yourself of it every few minutes,

• You are probably coming up against a sense of shame, helplessness, or worthlessness. It comes from a lifetimes of being told- and telling yourself- that chores should be easy. So doing chores may be a constant battle with those feelings. That in itself is a lot of work.
• Chores are "circular," meaning they don't get done except maybe for now. There's always more. That is hard when you have ADHD
• Chores involve visual overload if things are messy. 
• Chores are boring! Boring means it's really hard to focus if you have ADHD
• Chores involve lots of little decisions, like where to put each object, what order to clean something, what is clean enough, what you really have to get done. Decision-making is hard when you have ADHD, even (and especially) about "small" stuff. This is hard to fathom for a non-ADHDer. 

Good news: if you can stop being mean to yourself about finding chores hard, they get easier!

 

Paperwork Mountains

I am snowed under with paperwork! Actually, my two year-old constantly running to sit on the back steps to "wait for the snow to come" has made me even more aware of it being summer, but that's another story.

We're about half way through 2012 and I've spent a good portion of it advocating for my little ones. I knew that as a parent with ADHD I would be keeping a very close eye on my kids for any areas they could use extra help or needed different approaches to learning. It turns out, that genetics aside, I had no idea I would be putting this much time and energy into it this early.

For the first 4 years of parenthood my work and personal life- or stuff- was marked by a significant decrease in actual use of paper. I started taking work notes on my computer; I finally got an iphone and this helped me continue on this path. My particular brand of roving toddlers meant that I'd never be able to find anything where I had put it down, and that there was no time to bring stuff to a safe location (or tend to it there once it was there).

Recently we hired a weekend day of childcare to clean up some piles of paper in our safe location- in the basement. It took a while though it was much, much easier because we had an existing filing system- we just hadn't been able to attend to it. But it is still there.

But now a new species of paperwork has emerged. Now I know this is a head start on what most parents deal with once kids hit Kindergarten, but it also goes far beyond the paperwork that comes with typical development.

There are reports. And notes. And documents. And forms to fill out. They are many, many pages long. There are a lot of them. They appear randomly in the mail, in kids backpacks, at moments that I'm making dinner and juggling multiple mess-makers.

Point being, I don't have a system for this yet. Some parents I know use high-speed scanners paired with digital storage. Some have file folders. What I know is that I don't have my own yet. And that means the piles stare at me, I stare at them, and I don't quite know the next step. But I'll get there, and it will be worth it to make the rest of the ride easier.

 

 

Workflowy and ADHD

Recently an ADHD coaching client told me that she couldn't read some notes I had emailed her because the visual of the unstructured text was overwhelming.

The next day someone emailed me a link to a nifty online to do list tool called Workflowy. It looks like a  great match for that client- because it makes it easy to control how much you are looking at and it is formatted all pretty.

This not the best tool for other people; it's all about fit. I gave one of my coaching groups the following homework: look at Workflowy for 5 minutes. Set a timer if that helps. Assess it and see if it is right for you.

That means applying what you've learned about how you work. You have to  look past the new-and-shininess of looking at an organizational tool. Hard stuff for some of us. It can mean you decide it isn't for you; it is for some projects (make a note to come back to it); or that it is a good thing to try- and check back after a period of time to see if you like it.

Now you try. And if you're interested in my groups, sign up for my newsletter and I'll let you know when I'm forming a new one!

 

 

 

Tolerations and ADHD

In life coaching we talk a lot about "tolerations." Tolerations are things you have to do on a regular basis, or things on your to do list that haven't been done, that create drag in your life the way wearing a backpack in the water slows down your swimming.

These are things that take extra energy. A classicly used example is a lightbulb you haven't changed. Every time you walk by it you may think about it needing changing (or in case of ADHD, remember again that it is burnt out and needs replacing), and notice it again. That noticing, thinking, remembering, takes energy every time you walk by it. That's the idea.

In ADHD Coaching I talk a lot about doing what you're good at, or comes more easily to you, and trying to minimize or delegate what you're not good at. This dovetails with the tolerations concept; for people with ADHD having to do a bunch of rote tasks that are difficult  is a whole big pile of "toleration." But these are tolerations that you can't finish. Once a light bulb is replaced, it works. Once the mail is sorted, you get more mail. So a big toleration might be the overflowing mail basket that you need some support or structure to get through; an ongoing toleration is dealing with paperwork in general.

The take-away here? Sometimes when you're stuck, it's time to look at your day-to-day repeating "tolerations" and reduce the energy they are sucking so you have more energy to put elsewhere. What those things are may well be determined by your ADHD!