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Foreign hey, what's up? This is Kristen Carter and you are listening to a bite sized episode of the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, caffeinated, regulated and ready to roll. This little episode is one of my favorite clips from the podcast. It's perfect if you're not in the mood for a full hour long listen because let's be real, some of us ADHD just just don't have the patience for all of that. But if you are a die hard listener, think of this as your midweek pick me up. It's Thursday y'. All. Friday is right around the corner. If you love this clip, check out the show notes for a link to the full episode. And remember my friend, drink your water, take your meds, grab a snack. Now let's get rolling. We're going to start off by talking about shame, which is a very common experience for people with adhd. And I'm gonna share a win. I'm gonna start off by sharing a major win. It might not sound like a win, but it is actually a gigantic win. A huge step forward for Kristin Carter's self development. I missed a psychiatry appointment for my son yesterday. It just, I, I forgot to cancel. It didn't work with his schedule. I totally missed it and I didn't feel any shame. I did not shame spiral. I did not beat myself up. I did not judge myself. I got the reminder call and I was like oh shoot, not the reminder call. I got a call that was like hey, we're waiting for you. And it like went to voicemail. But you know how it transcribes it so you can read the voicemail? And I'm reading it and it's like hello, we're here and you're not. And I was just like oh shoot. It was, it was a hundred percent just like a oh shoot, I forgot to cancel that appointment. No shame, no spiral, no derailing me from my day. I was in the middle of my workday and still just continued it was just like, whoops. And I just want to say, I know that might make me sound like an asshole and I don't mean to at all. I'm not saying that we should be jerks. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care. I'm not saying that we shouldn't, like, be, I don't know, participants in society in a positive way. But what I am saying is that a couple years ago, that would have derailed me. I would have been so full of shame for missing this appointment. I would have felt so bad for the provider. I would have felt so judgmental of myself for screwing up my calendar. I would have felt so flawed. And I was just like, ah, oh, well. And so I just want to say, like, we're going to talk about shame and I want to encourage you as we move through this episode that your experience of shame can improve. We're going to talk about shame resiliency, which I. I just love Brene Brown. I'm so grateful to her for the work that she has done. And she talks about shame resilience theory, which is essentially like building up a tolerance for. For the experience of shame. And we need that at each deer. We need that. And maybe you, maybe you're not even familiar with the concept of shame in your body. I know you felt it. We all have. It's a very common experience. But I want you to start to notice what shame feels like. Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that you're flowing, flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging and connection. It's just like there's something wrong with me. Everyone else has it together, but I don't. There's like, I. I am a flawed individual. And let me tell you, if I had missed that appointment, which I've missed many appointments in my life, like, I know you have too. If I had missed that appointment a couple years ago, I would have been flooded with shame. There's something wrong with me. Why did I forget this? I can't do anything right. I'm 44 years old and I can't keep a calendar correctly. Why can everybody else do this? But I can't. That is shame. That is the intense feeling of shame. And then we often have this, like, layered, more layered emotional experience of like, now I feel bad that I feel bad. Like, now I'm embarrassed that I'm feeling shame. So there's like multiple emotions happening at once. It's just a whole stew of disgusting, yucky emotions. And what happens to us adhder if we are not able to recognize it and soothe it and build up a resiliency to it, is that it will derail our whole day. I know this has happened to you where you've had an experience that has triggered shame and then you're just spiraling and now you can't get any work done. You can't connect with your family, you're yelling at your kids, you're just eating ice cream, you're just scrolling on your phone to try to kind of buffer this feeling away. That derailment is what I would love to begin to interrupt. That's why we want to build some shame. Resilience is so that we don't have to go down that shame spiral, so that we can experience shame as everyone else does and move through it in a way that's healthy. People with ADHD face so many challenges with the quote, unquote simple, easy things of life. And I think that this is one of the reasons why shame is such an acute experience for those of us with adhd. We struggle with the basics. We're really good at the hard stuff. Many of us are. Many of us are really creative and inventive and, and, and have an engine that won't quit, right? So like a lot of us are really good at hard, complicated things, but in general, all of us are pretty bad at the basics of life like organization and time management and task initiation and just like walking through life as a, as a fully formed adult. Right. And so society and families will frequently misinterpret these challenges as laziness or lack of discipline or lack of follow through or lack of desire. And that is often kind of placed on us as we are growing up in these families or as we're growing up in the school system. Everybody else can do it. Why can't you do it? I can see that you're really smart. Why can't you just get it done? If you would just be consistent, you would be successful. I don't know why this is so hard for you. Just keep your room clean. Why does it look like a bomb went off in here? What is wrong with you? Your sister can do it. Why can't you do it? Your brother can do it. Why can't you? Why can't you be more like the neighbor's kids? Why can't you be more like your cousin? Hello? Anybody? So it's important to understand that shame actually travels in families. Really understanding that is huge. Shame is going to travel in families. A lot of parents will pass on shame. That they felt in their own childhood experience. And it's just this, like, legacy of internalized badness. I think that it was Dr. Becca Kennedy that talks about that in her book Good Inside, which is great book, mentioned it last week. You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. It's the best parenting book I ever read. Okay, but that passing on of shame, it's not great. It's not what we want. And it is so freaking debilitating. It's so debilitating. There's such a misinterpretation of the ADHD experience because we do struggle with the things in life that are considered to be basic and easy. Let me tell you that the basic and easy stuff is the hardest, hardest stuff I've ever done. I. I've created multiple businesses. I'm on my third fairly successful company. That's so much easier than just maintaining an organized home. Right? And so I don't know what your story is. Like, I would love to invite you to think through, like, what are the complicated, hard things that you're able to do, but then look around at the basics and just be like, oh, my gosh, why can't I keep my car clean? Why does my car look like a bomb went off? Or why does my closet look like a bomb went off? Or what does my home look like that? Right? Like the, the basic organization or self care. Like, I. You might struggle to shower, you might struggle to eat, you might struggle to just like, move your body. The quote unquote, basics of self care are the harder things. Whereas, like, you're talented in so many other areas. I'm parenting a kid who is so, so talented in some areas and struggling with the basics. I have an opportunity to tell him, what is wrong with you? You are so good at X, Y, Z. Why can't you just do this easy stuff? I don't get it. What's wrong with you? I could totally do that. Or I can say, you're so good at so many things and I'm so proud of you. Who cares about this stuff? Who cares? Who cares if your room is messy? I don't care. I'll help you clean it. Who cares if you struggle with organization? Who cares? We'll figure out a way to deal with it. But honestly, who cares? Like, who freaking cares? That's the kind of messages that I want to send to my kids. Okay? So. So that's not the message that most of us got. An internalized shame can really hinder our self esteem and exacerbate our ADHD symptoms, because it's so distracting and debilitating to be in that shame spiral. Now, healthy shame is a normal part of being human. It's actually a very good thing. It shows us when we've crossed the line. It shows us when we're out of line, out of alignment with our values. It's what helps us understand our limits and live in community. That's. That's not a bad thing. But toxic shame, it says you are the problem. Not just that you're having a problem or that you're struggling, but that you are a problem. And in families, this looks like children growing up feeling like their feelings and their needs and their mistakes make them fundamentally unworthy or defective. And so if that is your experience, I want to just pull you into the room a little bit closer. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what your life is looking at right. Looking like, right now, But I just want to. I want to pull you in a little closer. This is a common shared experience among adults with adhd. When we look through our past, when we look at what it was like to be in a friend group, what it was like to be in a school system, what it was like to be in a family that didn't understand you, the experience of shame, of feeling fundamentally unworthy or defective, that is a very common experience. And one of the things that we're going to talk about as we move through this is just like just knowing you're not alone is so important. Just knowing that you are not alone is so, so important. So it's crucial. One of the things as we're kind of like understanding shame and unpicking it and unraveling it in our lives, it's so crucial that we begin to separate moral value from your ability to perform a task. So I want you to think about the way that things were talked about in your family. Like, I can remember being told that cleanliness is next to Godliness. First of all, what in the world? Like, what is that? I don't know if that was also kind of like in your family lore, but that was something that was kind of just like, out there in my family, that cleanliness is next to godliness. That is absolutely putting moral value on something that does not deserve it. Okay? Like, being messy has nothing to do with morality. And yet so many of you look around your home and you. You are feeling shame. You are feeling like there is something wrong with you. You're feeling like there's a huge problem. You're the problem because of a mess. I really want you to think through what, what kind of basic self care or like organization or just like everyday tasks, are you actually accidentally making moral issues as if you're a bad person if you're messy and you're a good person if you're clean? Like we need to erase that from our thinking, from our vocabulary, from, from our psyche. We, we've got to erase morality when it comes to just like basic self care. You're not a better person if you're clean and a worse person if you're. It has nothing to do with ethics, it has nothing to do with morals, it has nothing to do with character. There are a lot of really, really horrible clean people, let's be honest, there are a lot of people with clean and perfectly organized homes who are extremely unethical and horrible people. Right? And so I want you to think through like am I feeling shame because I am connecting morality to basic tasks? And are you willing to unpick that? Are you willing, are you willing to unravel that a little bit there? There's so much morality wrapped up in basic self care and that cleanliness is next to godliness. Attitude needs to be trashed. It needs to be destroyed. We need to rise up as people with ADHD and be like, no, absolutely not. I can be disorganized and an amazing at the same time. I can be messy and extremely wonderful at the same time. And just because someone is clean and tidy doesn't mean that I'm going to trust them with my kids. Like what? That makes no sense. Okay, so by reframing these perspectives, we can approach tasks with a lot more self compassion, a lot more understanding, a lot less paralyzing shame and we can reduce that burden and promote better mental health. And what's so fascinating about this is if we relieve that burden a little bit, if we take the morality out of it, if we just look at the task as being like totally neutral, like my house has got stuff in it or my house doesn't have stuff in it. Either way, I'm a good person. Maybe I'll have more capacity to actually engage with my stuff. Maybe I'll have more capacity to actually organize. Maybe I'll have the capacity to actually clean if I'm not weighed down by the burden of shame. One resource that I do wanna recommend to you, if this is a spec if like your home is an area of shame for you and you just feel like you'd like to do something about it, but you're just not sure how Casey Davis has a great book called how to Keep House While Drowning, A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing. I highly recommend it. It's so small. It's so easy. It's just the tiniest little easiest book ever. And it is so. It's so encouraging. It really, really helps to pick apart morality from just like the stuff in your house. And it really gives people. I think it could give you a really nice starting place for figuring out how you want to interact with your home and your stuff. So that's called how to Keep House While Drowning Foreign thanks for listening to this bite size episode of the I have ADHD Podcast. If you enjoyed this clip, you'll find a link to the full episode in the show notes. And don't Forget to visit ihaveadhd.com for tons of adult ADHD support. All right, my friends, I had a great time with you today and I cannot wait to talk to you again next week. Bye Bye.