Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hi and welcome to ADHD Friendly. I am Patty. I am an ADHD coach and I support people to struggle less and thrive more with their ADHD. This is episode 251 and just a quick overview. Today I am celebrating a kitchen cleaning hack and then I'm going to update my spending this week. And I'll also share a tip that I read about in a Time article about brag folders. And then my main topic for today is I'm going to share three strategies to reduce transition stress so that stress that comes from trying to move from what you're doing to what you need to be doing next. All right, so let's dive in as we always do with my celebration. And that is I created a kitchen task list and I created just a daily task to do each day. But the thing that I really want to celebrate is that I highlighted three different ways I can do the task. So, for example, if I needed to clean the fridge, which was yesterday's task, then my high capacity plan was to empty out the fridge, wipe down all the shelves and clean out the drawers and throw away anything that was going bad or expired and then put everything back in and organize it. That's like my best energy day. But then I also came up with a medium capacity day where I would just throw out anything that was bad and wipe down the shelves, drawers, just, you know, medium capacity. But then the game changer was the low capacity day, which, truth be told, that is pretty much every day for me when I'm going to do a cleaning chore. And my low capacity was just throw away anything that was bad and wipe up if anything spilled. That's it. And I have done the daily task two weeks straight now because I allow myself to do the minimum and the minimum is still more than I would do if I didn't have this structure. So I just want to celebrate the sparkly joy that comes from creating a system that for now, is working for me. I always say we have good systems until we don't. And when this one is less sparkly, it's something I will tweak and continue moving forward with as I notice what works and what doesn't work for me. For what I purchased this week, nada, nothing. Another week of reining it in, keeping it tight. So this is good. All right, now to my tip for this week. And this came from a Time article that I read by an Angela Hopped H a u p T where she recommended keeping what she called a brag folder. And this is what she defined it as she said, it's a running record of wins, milestones, kind words, and moments of growth that you can revisit when your inner critic gets louder than your memory. Wow. I know that resonates for those of us with ADHD brains. She shared that a brag folder isn't self indulgent, it's about giving your brain more accurate records of your life than it is likely to keep on its own. Now, I have kept my own version of a brag folder for years. I talk about this in previous episodes of this podcast. If you want to do a deeper dive, check out episode 12 and episode 34 where I go into really detailed accounting of how I capture my wins and how like what it looks like. And I share my Expecto Patronum journal, which is what is my brag folder. So if you're a Harry Potter fan, you know what a Patronus is and you know that the Expecto Paternum charm is what repels dementors, which are those soul sucking beings. And that's how I think of our negative focus that our brain tends to latch onto and run away with as soul sucking. It just is so depleting. And my Expecto Patronum journal is designed to repel the negativity. So so it's my personal brag folder if you will. And it's just a name that I named it because it felt like it was doing exactly that. It was repelling the negative thoughts. And it's a way to keep a record of your wins so you can revisit them whenever self doubt creeps up for you. I just wanted to share some of my category tabs that I have for mine. If you are listening to this, I invite you to check out my YouTube show where you can watch all of my episodes and see the demonstrations. So I have a section called Goal Directed Persistence, meaning things that I stuck with over time, which is definitely not a strength for me. So I want to have evidence that I can do that. I have a section called Things I Created which are also paired with evidence I can finish. Again, I don't finish a lot of things. I have lots of projects. Right now I'm looking at a shelf that is piled over whelmingly high like it's kind of defying gravity that it's not falling over of the end of my home office, decluttering an organization plan from 2025 that everything kind of made it out of the office clutter and over to this one cabinet where it's just still there, just lingering. So not finished. Overwhelming to look at. I avoid it. Not. Not done. But I have evidence I can finish in a whole section in here. I have business successes. I have evidence I can soc. I can be social because that was a real goal for me and continues to be where I capture my social wins. I have a lot of stress when it comes to social commitments and kind of putting myself out there and I need to capture those. So I have social wins. I have evidence where I've dared really greatly and stepped outside my comfort zone. So these are really sparkly things that I go into and I just, you know, can pick a page and I can flip through and here I just opened to my evidence I can finish page where I have examples of things I was able to knit to completion. And it's just so fun to have evidence. I capture evidence of progress. So if this is something that interests you, whether it's a a brag folder or your own visual, because a lot of us are very visual with ADHD brains. So I encourage you capture that evidence of your wins. Make it easy to reconnect with by capturing images, writing a couple of words to remind you. If it just says, you know, decluttered the garage, that may not as connect as much, especially if the garage isn't still organized at the point that you're looking at your rag folder. If you have before and after pictures, it's evidence of what you did or the progress that you made. So collect evidence to support your wins and hold on to them more easily so you can revisit them when your brain is seemingly stuck in that negative focus. Great. Now for our main topic for this week. I'm going to share three simple strategies to reduce the stress that comes when we try to transition. So transitions are hard. And with ADHD brain wiring, I know for me that can feel impossible, especially if I'm asking my brain to go from something highly interesting and engaging to something boring. So think about hanging out with friends. You know, your guides are talking, maybe you're watching a show together, but you really need to get to bed. That's really difficult to ask yourself to pull yourself away from something that you are really enjoying and reeling in. But you know you need to go to sleep because you have to get up in the morning and your future self is going to pay the price if you don't. But you're asking your brain to go from something very stimulating to something very boring. It's boring to go to sleep even if you know it's helpful and you need it. So even if you're just watching TV or scrolling on your phone and you're trying to go to sleep. That's a more seemingly simple ask. But anything that is interesting to your brain is going to be harder to shift away from to go to something that isn't as interesting or oh my gosh, like boring. Remember, boring is like kryptonite. So we need to keep in mind that transitions require a lot of executive functioning in order to be able to go from this to that. So to have them work simultaneously to do it, we need to be able to stop one activity, let go of the thing that we're focusing on, hold the plan that you want to do next in mind in your working memory. Remember that your working memory is your short term memory that you're working with and then begin a new action all while regulating your emotions while making the transition. So it's not giving into the resistance of oh my gosh, I really don't want to do that, which can stop us in our tracks. If, if it's like I got to make a phone call and I don't know how long it's going to take or I don't know if they're going to say yes or no, we might really resist transitioning to that. And because our executive functions are impacted by adhd, making transitions is even harder for our brain. So we need to find ways to make it a bit easier to reduce that resistance so that we can make them without requiring as much effort. So when we're stressed, it's going to impact our ability to transition even further. So if you didn't get a good night's sleep, if there's a lot going on around you that you're already trying to manage and you're trying to transition, stress will make it harder on top of the already sometimes really difficult challenge it is without the stress. So let's talk about some ways to look at that, some examples, if you will. So when your brain is under stress and you're trying to remember things in your working memory. So if you are going from, let's say, writing an email and you need to wrap up the email and shift from the email to making a phone call, it's holding in mind, okay, I'm done that, now I need to go and make a phone call, you're holding on to who you need to call, what your goal is in the call while you're shifting. And remember, if we're stressed, the working memory is stressed well and not is able to hold on to what it is you're trying to remember. And that results in our cognitive flexibility becoming less flexible. So it's decreasing, it's becoming more rigid, and it becomes more difficult to regulate our emotions. So we might get overwhelmed, we might get depleted, where we're just like, I don't have the emotional capacity to do this. The more overwhelmed you feel, the harder it's going to be to transition, regardless of whether or not you know what you need to do. So it. It's often that place will get stuck thinking, oh, my gosh, like, I'll do this laying in bed where I'm like, just get up. I know what I need to do, But I'm thinking of all the things I need to do once I get up. And that keeps me immobilized because all I'm thinking about is how much effort it's going to require, how many things I have to do, when is my break going to be? And I'm not even moving. I'm just thinking, thinking, swirling. So it doesn't matter if you know what you need to do. If your executive functions aren't supporting you to make the transition, that's where we want to put some scaffolding around and support them. So three simple strategies that can reduce that stress to make the transition a bit more easy to wade into, if you will. So the first is to create a transition ritual. A transition ritual is exactly what it sounds like. It's a ritual that you create that helps you go from point A to point B. So it's think of it as you're here, here, there's a little body of water in between. It is a little bridge that's helping you traverse that. That gap where the water is without sinking. So examples might be, I go from writing the email, my. My bridge that transition ritual is I get up and I stretch for a minute, and then I make the phone call. It's literally like a palate cleanser to help you go from this to that. Or maybe I put away my planner when I'm wrapping up work. That tells my brain that when I'm done, I close the planner and I put it away. Or for me, I turn the page on the planner to the next morning that tells me I am lined up for tomorrow and I am transitioning away from work. Or maybe if it's time to study, you have a candle or music that you put on that signals your brain you're transitioning to a study or a focused work period. It's creating a cue that lets your brain know that you're going from one activity to another. So that's it, just a transition ritual. The second simple strategy is to reduce the number of decisions you have to make to complete that transition. So instead of just get up and start the day, say, I just need to get dressed, right? And maybe the getting dressed part is easier because you've set out your clothes the night before. So, you know, like for me, laying in bed, knowing I already have clothes out to put on totally lowers the resistance to getting up and getting started to transitioning from comfy laying in bed to starting the day. So if I know I don't have clothes out, it is disproportionately more difficult to get up because I have to make more decisions. I have to get up and decide what I'm going to wear when I've done it the night before. I've already looked at the weather, I've already decided what activities I have going on, what do I need to wear that day, it's done, I can just get up and start moving. Or maybe you pick two, one or two breakfasts that are your standard things that you eat so you don't get up every day, like hungry and depleting all of your energy going from what you need to do to eating. You already decided what you're going to eat, so it makes it easier to transition to. Now I am eating what I need to for breakfast because I've already decided what that is. Make it easier by reducing decisions. That's the second simple strategy. And the third is to just build in some buffer time. So instead of expecting yourself to kind of like snip, snap, go from one to the other, think about supporting yourself to transition from this to that. Especially if you are trying to transition from something that you are enjoying to something that, that you may not be looking forward to as much. So even if we think about if you have kids or if you remember when you were a kid and you're telling them, okay guys, it's time to go. If you didn't give them a warning, it was going to be time to leave soon. You're probably getting a, at minimal, some pushback if, you know, you're my kids, a full down, full out tantrum. So I always had to give them a, hey, five minute warning. And then I do, okay guys, two minutes. Start thinking about, you know, you want to go down the slide one more time, whatever it is, we're going to leave in two minutes. And then when it's time to leave, they've had time to prepare for that transition. They understood it was Coming, they could mentally kind of like, okay, I wanted to, you know, just go swing one last time or I wanted to go say goodbye to my friends or whatever it was. So instead of expecting yourself to shift from one thing to the next, it's building in maybe 5, 10 minute buffers in between what you're trying to shift to. For me, I have that 10 minute built in time between clients so that I can kind of wrap up what I was thinking about with this client, take any final notes, get that information finalized, and then do a quick stretch, maybe run to the restroom, come back and I'm ready for my next client. My brain has shifted. I'm not holding on to lingering thoughts. I have that transition buffer to help me to move from one thing to the next. It gives my brain time to disengage and then re engage. So just an overview again, the transitions do require a lot of executive functioning and stress will make the executive functions that you have available to you work even less efficiently. So ask yourself if you're trying to transition a question instead of judging what you're not doing, maybe just explore what would make this transition easier, asking yourself that question and allow yourself just to explore what it might look like if it was easier. That's where we get to how we can shift for ourselves, our brain, from one thing to the next a little bit more smoothly. All right, final thing, we're at the Book of the week. This week's book was a heavy one, but I really, really, really highly recommend it. It's called the Great Hunger. It's by Cecil Woodham Smith and I'm just going to read you the description here for the subtitle. It is the story of the famine of the 1840s. This is from Ireland, which killed a million Irish peasants, sent hundreds of thousands to the New World, and influenced history down to the present day. I picked this up when I was in Ireland and I was going. My husband and I were on a tour back in June and we learned about, I heard about the Potato famine, but I never really knew exactly what, how it happened, what it looked like, how long it went on. And so I found this book when I was there and it is, it is a pretty hefty read. I'm not going to say it was an easy read. It was emotionally hard to read because of, it was just horrific. But it was such an interesting period of history and how Great Britain and the, the politics involved all made a terrible situation horrendous. And if you're interested in history, interested in that period of time. Highly recommend this book. It was really, really eye opening and definitely worth the mental effort to learn a bit about this period in our world's history. All right, now for my quote of the week. This is from Mary Pickford, an actress. She says all the water in the world can't sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. All the negativity in the world cannot sink a person unless it gets inside the mind. Oh my gosh, Mary Pickford. That is so stinking spot on. So remember, rag folder, expect a Patronum binder, whatever works for you, to capture your wins so that you can stop that negativity from sinking into your mind. Block it out with your wins. That's it for this episode. I'll look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, tally ho.