Transcript
A (0:01)
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Navigating Adult adhd. And if this is your first time listening, I just wanted to say welcome to Team adhd. Hi, welcome. I am so happy that you are here. In today's episode, we are going to be covering five things to know and do when you get your ADHD diagnosis. So if you have recently got your diagnosis, maybe you're feeling relieved, maybe you're feeling confused or just unsure where to start. I've got you. Okay, so this episode today, these five things that I am going to share are from a recent checklist that I put together, which is 10 things to know and do after an ADHD diagnosis. If you want to get the full checklist, it's completely free and I consider it like the start here guide of what I wish I had when I was starting out, you can visit navigating adultadhd.com checklist and that will recap the five things that I'm going to share with you here. Also pop them together in a checklist and then it'll give you another five that I think are really important when starting out.
B (1:09)
All right?
A (1:10)
So before we dive in, I just wanted to let you know that your diagnosis, getting diagnosed is just the beginning, right? Everything starts to make sense. It's so good. But ADHD is not something we need to fix. It's something that we need to work with, right? We simply have a different brain. So if you were to imagine that you have been playing a video game, a video game called Life, right, for 35 years, except you didn't know that there was an instruction manual, right? Now that you know you've got adhd, like there's an instruction manual for that. We can learn to work with the ADHD brain instead of, you know, trying to do everything the neurotypical way or fighting against ourselves. So. So learning how to work with it takes time, but it's so worth it. And what I'm trying to do here is help you shortcut that, right? Make it more fun, give you the shortcut, right? Some of the cheat codes, that sort of thing to make it easier, right? So let's get into it. Five things to know and do when you get your diagnosis. Number one, being ADHD means that we have an interest based attention system. And this is good news, okay? Your ADHD brain is wired for interest, right? If something is interesting to you, right? You're all over it. So what that means is we prioritize things based on interest, right? We prioritize things that are interesting over things that are Important. This is a difference. Often our non ADHD friends, they prioritize based on importance, whereas we do not. We prioritize based on interest. Okay, so if you've ever noticed that you can like lose track of time when you're doing something you're really passionate about, hello. That's called hyper focus, right? I once lost hours of time googling how deep the ocean is, what lives down there, all sorts of things. So again, coming back to this interest based attention system, we can actually use that to our advantage. We can help our brain get on board with tasks that we might struggle with or, you know, not want to do by adding an element of interest, right? So there's a tool called the NICU tool. NICU stands for novelty, interest, challenge and urgency. So we can help our brain get on board if we can make a task novel or interesting. Challenging, an element of challenge we like, or add a deadline, some urgency. Okay, so one of the ways in which I do this, because I'm not a big fan of writing, right? And my job requires a lot of writing. I put together workbooks, I send out emails, right? I do a lot of writing and my project later in the year is to write a book. However, because I'm not a huge fan of that, I don't like to sit down and write. I make it interesting, right? And I'll do this by going for a walk and dictating into my phone. So whether I just go for a walk in my neighborhood, we've got some beautiful walks, I live close to the beach, and I'll just dictate things into my phone and my phone will type it up. Then in order to get it formatted, to get it finished or, you know, put the email together and scheduled, what I'll do is I'll create a deadline in a novel environment. So what I do is I charge up my laptop and I leave the charger at home and then I go to a cafe. I've got a favorite cafe, like literally just down the road. And I will go there and I will do the formatting. I will finish getting it all put together. And I don't have my charger, so my laptop's gonna go dead, thus creating a deadline. And of course, being in a cafe is so fun. There's something about being in a cafe that creates this. I have to work because everybody's like watching me work environment thing for me. Weird, but it works, right? Win, win. Okay, so again, number one, you have an interest based attention system, right? Your attention goes to things that you are interested in or might be more interested than the thing that you're doing at this present time. Okay? Number two, having ADHD means that our dopamine systems work differently and effectively. It's like saying we have less dopamine, all right, and we can actually boost it naturally, which is great. Dopamine is a chemical in our brain, a little brain chemical floating around. And it plays a very big role in motivation, motivating us to act, to do things. It also plays a role in focus, our ability to focus and our satisfaction, how satisfied we feel with our life, as well as doing some other important brain things. Now, dopamine is often referred to as the feel good neurotransmitter in the brain because when it's released into our body, when we get some dopamine, it feels very good. Okay? For example, like the moment you click book on the trip to Hawaii, big surge of dopamine. So our ADHD brains, because we've got less of this dopamine, we are always seeking it, right? And things that are interesting produce dopamine. Hence, number one, right? We are interest based. So our brains are always seeking dopamine. But one important thing to note is that not all dopamine is created equal. Okay? So for example, you can get dopamine from scrolling on your phone, from drinking alcohol, from fast food, from gaming, right? Playing games. And you can get dopamine from things like exercise, cold water therapy, being in nature, working on your hobbies or your interests, your goals. Okay? Now, one type of dopamine, right? The quick dopamine that fast dopamine that creates a drop in dopamine when we finish. I'm probably not explaining it too well, but I explained it so many times that I just go really f. So let me come back to this. Quick dopamine and slow dopamine, okay? So quick dopamine would be like getting a lemon, right? If you chopped a lemon in half and you got one half of the lemon and you squeezed all of the juice out, right? That is quick dopamine. So you scroll on your phone for 20 minutes. As soon as you finish, you've got no juice left in the lemon, right? Slow dopamine would be like going for a walk in nature with a friend for 20 minutes. That would be like getting the other half of your lemon and slowly squeezing it, drip, drip, drip, drip. Even when you finish the walk with your friend, right? You've still got juice in your lemon. You've still got dopamine being released into your system. Okay? So quick Dopamine gives you a real quick high, right? Like a spike in dopamine. And then as soon as you stop the activity, right, you stop drinking alcohol, whatever, you stop eating the fast food, it starts to drop, and it drops below the level that you were at initially. Whereas your slow dopamine slowly increases, right? And depending on the activity, it can stay high for a while and then it slowly decreases and it generally doesn't drop below that line or far below your initial line. We call the baseline level, like the amount of gas you've got in your tank, the amount of dopamine you have. Okay? So what that means is that there are certain activities, slow dopamine activities, that if you do them regularly, you can increase the amount that you've got in the tank. So what that does is it helps with your ability to be motivated, right? Your ability to take action and do things, your ability to be more focused and enjoy your life more. So often what I see is those of us with adhd, we're very out of balance and we go to a lot of quick dopamine sources and we have these big spikes and crashes, spikes and crashes. Whereas if we can lean more towards, and I'm saying, like, just tip the scale so it's more 50, 50, if not like 60, 40, even towards the slow dopamine, it can make a massive improvement on our ADHD symptoms, our ability to focus, to get things done, all of that. So one of the pro tips I give is eat high protein, right? So, you know, that's for me, like, I eat a lot of meat. If you can get a really good quality protein powder. Eggs. I always have eggs for breakfast. Like, like there's lots of different things that give you protein. Obviously, that's just where I'm at right now. But high protein, right, because that helps with the production of dopamine. That is one tip straight away.