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I Have ADHD Podcast
37 BITESIZE | How to Manage Life Interruptions (and Not See Them as FAILURE)
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Time management is one of the most critical issues facing the ADHD community and I am here to help you solve that problem for free. So listen up ADHD er. Have you ever sat down with your to do list and realized that everything on the list feels urgent? Every single task is screaming at you with the same intensity like it all has to get done right now, and no matter what you choose, you usually feel like you're doing the wrong thing. If you have adhd, your brain's executive functions work differently. ADHD brains don't naturally prioritize. Instead of stacking tasks in order, everything lands on one big flat plane shouting at you all at once. This is one of the main reasons why time management feels so impossible for us. But here's the good news. Prioritizing is a skill and like any other skill, it can be learned. That that's why I'm hosting a free live masterclass called Everything can't be number one. Time management starts with prioritization. It's happening Wednesday, September 24th at 12pm Eastern. In this class, I'll show you why prioritizing feels so hard for the ADHD brain, how to finally choose what matters most, and simple ADHD friendly strategies to stop over over committing so that you can actually follow through. This workshop will change the way that you look at your to do list and the way that you manage your time guaranteed or your money back. So if you're tired of spinning your wheels, burning out, or feeling like you're always behind, join me. Go to ihaveadhd.com Time to save your spot. That's ihaveadhd.com Time to save your spot. Because everything can't be number one. But the right things? Those can finally come first. Go to ihaveadhd.com Time I can't wait to see you there. All right, let's get on with the show. Hey what's up? This is Kristen Carter and you are listening to a bite size 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 ADHDers just don't have the patience for all of that. But if you are a die hard listener, think of this as your mid week 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 gonna be talking about how to follow through when life happens. And the reason why I'm talking about this is because for the last two months, all of January, all of February, I taught a course in focused, which is my ADHD coaching program. I taught a course on how to follow through. And if you. In the middle of the course, my family starts to get sick. Everybody. Everybody is getting sick. They're falling like dominoes. I already told you this story. I already told you this story. They're falling like dominoes. And I am super smug, and, like, I'm not getting sick. I'm so much better than everyone else. And then, dun, dun, dun. It hit me. It hit me. And I was not okay. I was not able to work. I was not able to function. I was so sick, Sick. And it was ironic that I'm teaching a course on how to follow through to a bunch of ADHDers who are struggling to follow through. And in the middle of the course, I get sick, and I'm not able to follow through. And listen, adhd, er. Following through is hard enough when everything goes right. Like, it takes so much energy. It takes so much effort. It takes so much emotional regulation and, like, mental and emotional capacity when everything is going right. But what about when life happens? What about when the plan was solid and the motivation was even there, but then a kid gets sick or you get sick, or work throws you a curveball or something completely unexpected, forces you to pivot, forces you to pause, forces you to stop. Whew. I'm getting warm talking about it because it's so annoying. It's so frustrating. And it can feel like all of this effort that you've put into gathering momentum and, like, getting the train moving, it gets wiped out by circumstances beyond your control. I want you to think about. And I've talked about this before, but I love this analogy. If you picture, like, one of those old steam trains. This is such a nerdy analogy, but I'm just gonna go ahead. Okay. If you picture one of those old, old, old steam trains that takes just, like, so long to get moving. It's like, I don't even know the. I'm not. My kids would be mortified right now, but do you know what I'm saying? It just, like, it takes so long for it to get rolling, and it takes so much effort, and there's just so much needed to get the momentum Forward flowing. But then once it starts moving, it's got the velocity, it's got the momentum, and it's just like it's on the track and it's moving. I feel like for so many of ADHD brains, so many of us with adhd, that's what it's like. Like getting started is so hard. And so finally we're like, kind of in this rhythm and we're going, and that's great. But then life happens. Something unexpected happens. Something outside of our control happens. And that disruption, especially when you have adhd, can be super hard to recover from because re engaging with the task after you've stopped, it's like having to start that steam engine going again. And so it feels like starting from scratch. It feels like I'm like, I've been interrupted, my streak is broken, and now I have to use all of this emotional, physical, mental, spiritual energy to get myself going again. And our ADHD brains are always doing a cost benefit analysis. Our brains are always trying to decide, is this worth it? Is this gonna be worth it? Like, is all of the effort that I have to put in to starting over, to restarting, to, like, gathering the momentum and gathering the effort, is it gonna be worth it? And this is so often why we just kind of throw in the towel and we give up. Because. Because we decide when we do that cost benefit analysis, and maybe you're not even aware of the cost benefit analysis that your brain is doing in the background, like, behind the scenes. We do that cost benefit analysis. And so often we determine whether consciously or unconsciously, nope, it's just not worth it. This is just not worth it. It is too much effort. And so I just want to say, like, if you are. If you are really trying to follow through on something, which all of us are, like, we want to have jobs, we want to have homes that function properly. We want to have relationships with people. We want to be connected to our communities. We want to accomplish things in our lives. But that. That, like, interruption and starting from scratch can just feel so overwhelmingly difficult. And so I just want to encourage you that, like, life happens and plans will get derailed. That doesn't actually sound like an encouragement, so I apologize. But it is, I promise. Because here's the thing. I want you to really be conscious to remember that it's not a personal failure when life happens. It's just reality. It's just the way of it. It's just what happens. Because we live in a world, like, we just live in this world, and life happens and the faster that we can accept interruptions and setbacks as a part of the process, not like an indictment of our abilities or our intentions or our ability to follow through, then the faster that we can recover. Because when life happens and we say, ugh, I knew I wouldn't be able to follow through. I knew I would get interrupted. I knew it wasn't worth it. I knew, knew it. Like, have you said that to yourself? ADHD or. Cause? I've said it to myself. And then I spiral in shame and frustration and self blame and self loathing. And then all of that extra work is heaped on and now the effort is even more comprehensive. I don't know, overwhelming to get started again because not only is it already hard to start, but now I've got shame and blame and self loathing and all of those horrible feelings. But if I can let go of that and just be like, okay, this is just the way of it. This is just life happening. This is just what happens to all humans. This is not because I'm bad at following through. It's not because I've done something wrong. Like, my kids just get sick. I used to get mad at my kids for, for getting sick. Anyone else? Is anyone else as bad of a mom as me? To actually get mad at your child for getting sick because it interrupted your momentum is so embarrassing to admit, but I hope it's relatable. I hope it's relatable because, you know, I talked about parenting and the emotional regulation involved with parenting, and I really hope that you will join me for, for my masterclass. Because if you are anything like me and have been interrupted by the person that you love the most in the world and gotten so angry at them and then so full of shame for getting mad at someone who's sick, like, literally, they can't help it. Why would I ever get mad at my sweet, precious, innocent child for being sick? Well, in the background, it's because my brain is doing this cost benefit analysis of it costs me so much to be interrupted and to have to restart. And so I didn't have the emotional regulation available. I didn't have the acceptance available to me at the time. And so I would get mad at my sweet little child for interrupting my momentum. But what I wanna encourage all of us to do is to drop the drama. First of all, that applies to like, every area of life. But when we are attempting to follow through on something that matters to us and we have an interruption, if we can just work on dropping the drama and practicing Self compassion in these moments. It will allow us to get back on track without burning extra energy on guilt and shame and frustration and being mad at your sweet, adorable, innocent child that you love the most in the whole world for interrupting your flow. It's so hard to follow through and so many of us struggle because we get interrupted and the starting over just feels like such a burden. But I know that you are good at starting over. I don't even know you personally. And I know that you're good at starting over because I know you have adhd. And as someone with adhd, you've had to start over many, many, many times. And so I know that this is something that you can do. You can start over now. Following through is one of the hardest things that somebody with ADHD can do. And it's not because we don't care, and it's not because we're lazy. It's because our executive functioning wiring makes it incredibly difficult to sustain our action over time. And when that action gets interrupted, it becomes even harder. So we talked about how to handle it when your following through intention is interrupted by something outside of your control. But what happens? What do you do when it actually is your fault that you're not following through? What happens and how do we recover when you know you're not following through and it really is on you, there's no one else to blame. There's no sweet, innocent child to blame. There's no getting sick to blame. There's no like weird work thing to blame. Like it's actually your fault. Like when the excuse tank is totally empty and you're left with the uncomfortable truth that you just didn't do the thing, or you're actively watching yourself. Have you ever done this? I know you have. You're trying to get something done, or you have the intention to get something done, or you want to get something done and you're not doing it. And you're watching yourself not do it. And you're like, hello, you're not doing the thing. And you're having this conversation with yourself where you're like, yeah, I don't want to do the thing and why aren't you doing the thing? I'm not doing the thing. And you just talk back and forth to yourself and continue to not do the thing. What do you do? Then most of us spiral out again in the shame, in the blame, in the here you go again, just not following through on the thing you said you're gonna do. I can't trust you. You're Unreliable, you're never gonna amount to anything. But I would love instead, because I know that doesn't work, maybe we could just bring some awareness. Maybe we could just sit in awareness of like, okay, I'm not doing the thing and ask a question. Instead of beating yourself up, let's get curious. What's going on here? What's missing? What would actually make it possible for me to follow through? That is so important because for so many of us, we just. We beat ourselves up. We beat ourselves up and we think that beating ourselves up is the way to make sustainable progress. And I'm not saying it doesn't work once in a while. I know it does, but it's not sustainable. It burns us out. It makes us resist doing anything more in the future. And so instead, let's meet some of the needs that are lacking. If you think back to your childhood and what happened when you didn't follow through in your childhood. Were you supported? Were you surrounded by a loving caregiver and said, hey, I noticed that you're not following through on this and I'd really love to help you. What do you need from me to get it done? I'm just gonna let the crickets, like, chirp here because I'm guessing no. Most of us with ADHD grew up in really chaotic and dysfunctional families where we were super, super punished for not getting the things done. And so we were labeled as unreliable and unpredictable and unable to just do simple things. And now we're in this new place. It's called adulthood. And what I want to encourage you to do is instead of shaming and blaming yourself, even when you are at fault, come alongside yourself and say, hey, what do you need? What support do you need here? Is this too hard? Do you need to ask for help? Do we need to break it down into a smaller task? Do you need a break? Do you need a snack? Do we need to go for a walk? Do you need to do some self coaching? Do we need to do some mindfulness and regulation? Like, what is it? What do you need? It doesn't mean that you let yourself off the hook. My son took the practice SAT this weekend, and it was excruciating. It was so annoying. He didn't want to do it. We had made a plan. Sunday afternoon, we're doing the practice sat, and he was like, I don't want to do it. And I was like, I know, I'm sorry, it's not going to be fun. And the whole time he sat there and he was like, I hate This, I don't want to do this. And instead of saying, just shut up and do it. Why can't you just do it? Why do you have to complain all the time? Why can't you just do it? You have no choice but to do it, so you might as well just do it. Just be quiet and do it. I did not say that to him. I said, yeah, this sucks. I stayed in the same room with him and I did my own work and every time he said, I don't wanna do this, I said, I know this is really hard. This totally sucks. What do you need? Do you want a snack? I didn't say, oh, you don't have to do it, you don't wanna do it, that's fine, you don't have to do it. But instead I gave him support so that he could complete the task that he knew he wanted to complete. I mean, he didn't wanna do it, but he wanted to do it. Which is just like all of the T. That's how I feel about everything. I don't actually wanna do it, but I do wanna have it done right. And that is a really good question actually to ask yourself, do you want this? Do you want it? Do you want to do it? Do you want the outcome? Because our ADHD brains will resist things that don't feel personally meaningful. And so doing a quick check in of like, is this actually something that I want or am I just like shoulding on myself? Am I just telling myself I should do it? Am I just doing it because everybody else is doing it? Or is this actually something I want? If it is something I want, it's okay to be like, I don't want to do it, but I want it to be done. And so how can I help myself get it done? If you do want to do it, the question needs to be what needs to change in order to make it work? What needs to change to get that momentum going, to get that steam train rolling, to get me like going down the track and having some momentum? It could be some external structure, some support, a different way of getting started, or, or maybe even a fresh start like starting over. And that's fine because there's no shame in trying again. Thanks for listening to this bite sized 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. I have add.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.