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You are listening to the Navigating Adult ADHD Podcast with your ADHD coach and expert, Xena. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Navigating Adult adhd. I have got some stuff to tell you before we dive in today. I have been having a time. Oh, my God. So I feel like it's Wednesday morning as I record this, and I feel like it should be fucking Friday already. Okay, so tell me what. Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Yesterday I had a call. I think I had a client at like 10:00am and I'd just been downstairs, and I went downstairs to make a coffee. So I made, like, my beautiful coffee. Soy milk, all the frothy stuff, like the pod coffee, all the things, right? Like, fucking love my coffee machine. Made myself a coffee, filled up my water, and I've got this one, literally glass jar that I drink from. And, like, let's be real, half the time I'm, like, spilling it all over myself. Anyway, anyway, I'm walking back up the stairs to my office with my two drinks because, hi, I've got ADHD and I need, like, multiple drinks at the same time. And I'm coming back to my office all ready for this client call, and, like, I'm dressed nice, I've done my hair and all the stuff, and I trip. I trip on the second to last step and I fall over. And as I hit the ground, my coffee just goes fucking everywhere, right? It went up the wall, it went inside the office because I was like, right by the office door. It went all over the stairs. It went like there was a puddle at the top of the stairs. And get this, it went all through my hair, all over my face, and I was wearing a white top. It was like my white top was now brown. I'm laughing about it now. But I tell you what, I was so close to crying yesterday. Like, it was just like the straw that broke. What is it? The camel's back, Whatever that saying is. I was like, this is too much. So I was late to my call. I was like five minutes late because I had to go make another coffee because obviously I needed the caffeine at that point, but, oh, my God. So that was yesterday. Which, like, this is not that unusual. Like, I'm kind of like one of those people who these kinds of things, like, kind of seem to gravitate towards. But anyway, so I did that. And then today, today I just woke up and this is how I was feeling yesterday. I was, like, just feeling quite flat, quite low. And I woke up and I had down that I was recording this episode for you today. Like, I love my podcast listeners, and I love having a podcast and all the things, but you know what? I just didn't want to today. I did not want to record this episode. Like, I just. I was coming up with all of the reasons how I could justify just not doing it. So I wanted to let you know, I have coached my ass this morning. I have coached myself, and it was like. Like, I feel like there's a whole episode in the experience I had of, like, coaching myself. And my. My own coaching of myself was so fire that I was like, fck. No, I am recording this thing. Watch me. So here we are. But I tell you what, didn't want to be here, but we're doing the thing, right? We are doing the thing. So here we go. So our episode today, my friend, if. If you're a person who, like, struggles with, you know, switching gears or relaxing when, you know, you're exhausted, I think relaxing when you're exhausted is still, like, a really hard thing to do, right? Or if you kind of feel like emotions hit you way harder than other people or you've got some kind of weird quirks and things that you do that you wouldn't necessarily want other people to know about, I feel like this one's for you. Okay, so in this episode, my friend, we are unpacking 10 everyday ADHD experiences that are way more common than you might think. And also, I'm going to talk a little bit at the end about, like, why understanding these is so powerful and kind of can really help to change things. All right, so let's just dive in. I feel like I've shared all the stories already, so let's get going. I've got more stories as we go through, of course. So number one. Number one is feeling misunderstood in conversations. So one Thursday morning after a Toastmasters meeting, one of the people that day had given a speech about. I think it was his favorite band, and I'm pretty sure he was talking about Pink Floyd. And for some reason, I overheard the conversation. There was, like, a group of men who had gathered around him. I think there was, like, three or four guys there, and they were like, you know, older generation. I want to say that because, like, they're kind of like, my dad's age, and this is the music I grew up listening to, right? And they're having this conversation about, like, Pink Floyd, acdc, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, these kinds of artists that, like, I grew up listening to and love. And I kind of like, wedged my way into this conversation. And for whatever reason, I thought that I should just say, well, my favorite. My favorite band is ACDC and then probably Fleetwood Mac. Actually, no, I also love Da da da da da da da. And what I did is I like went in and I just like interrupted. I started talking over them and I told them like, the order of my favorite bands. I don't even remember exactly what order I gave. And I just remember everyone just like stopped the conversation and looked at me like, what the fuck, right? So this feeling misunderstood in conversations, I so get this, right? And it could be that you forget what you were saying. Like me, you might like, blurt things out and interrupt and then feel really awkward or even ashamed. And I think that that's why I remember this instance so well is because I drove home feeling so much shame, right? And shame often comes with a should. Like, I shouldn't have done that, right? But also it can be like this fear in social situations, this kind of fear that we have of being either too much or not enough in that situation. All right, Number two is sleep dysregulation, right? So this could look like struggling to fall asleep, struggling to stay asleep and. Or waking up and not feeling like you are rested, right? So for years I would fight sleep. Like, I would fight it hard. And I found that when I did wake up, this was my experience. Like, I can remember this ever since I was a teenager. It doesn't happen now, but like, it went for a long time where I would wake up, look at the clock, right? Back then you had those like digital clocks, you know, like now we have a phone next to our bed. But like, you'd have that digital clock and you'd like, look at it and it would tell you what time it was. And then you'd lie there anxiously counting down the hours and the minutes until you had to get up. And it was like this whole thing would start up in your head. And you know, we've got a busy brain, right? So we start this whole story. But as soon as you look at the clock, you mentally start calculating, well, how many hours do I have left? And then all of this anxiety starts, right? So we can lie awake for hours, right? Oh my God, I'm not sleeping. I should be sleeping. Ah, right? And you know that God awful feeling, right? Like, that is an awful feeling when you start looking at the hours and then you're like awake and you're freaking out, but also like waking up. And this happened to me for such a long time. Waking up to an alarm and feeling like you just need more hours of sleep, like you haven't had enough. You need more hours no matter how many hours you get, Right? Like that was me for a number of years. And then I would power myself throughout the day with coffee or for a long time it was actually energy drinks. And I don't know if the V energy drink is something that's available overseas or if it's just a New Zealand thing. I don't know. But like the green bottle, the V energy drink, at one point I was drinking four of those a day. And I love that I. I sniff it now and I'm like, yum. Like, my mouth waters when I sniff it. Like, I don't drink it, but I'm like, I sniff it and my mouth waters. But anyway, back to sleep disregulation, right? We know as people with adhd, we have or we can have like a delayed circadian rhythm, which can mean that our sleep wakes cycle can kind of be, you know, out of whack or reversed in some cases. We might have, like, be really productive in the evening when everybody else is going to sleep. Right. So again, that sleep dysregulation is number two. Number three, this is one of my faves. Hyper fixations that feel embarrassing. So we're not just talking about hobbies, okay. We are talking about intense, overwhelming, maybe even obsessive interests that you might hide or feel weird about. Right? So I hyper fixated on pickles for months, right? I'm talking the little green, slimy pickles. Yes. I would put them in breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, like every single meal that I could. And I would just like eat them out the jar, Right? Like just pickles. I don't know what it was. I was obsessed with pickles when I am in the United States or other places. Like when I lived in London, where you have squirrels, right? I am obsessed with squirrels because we don't get squirrels here in New Zealand. And I think they're so cute and they're so fun and they move fast. And it just like reminded before it was even like an ADHD slogan. Right? Or part of the ADHD thing that people talk about, like the squirrel, you know, Um, I was just obsessed. I loved them. I found them so interesting. So people, though, people when I'm traveling and I'm like obsessed with squirrels, like, you know, running after them, taking pictures of them, trying to feed them, whatever. People think I am weird. Yeah. And another one I gotta share with you, right? I keep talking about how we, and you've probably heard it here, right? How we can get dopamine from skin picking and squeezing. So I talk about that sometimes in presentations I'm doing. I did a dopamine class recently for adhd, New Zealand. I was talking about it there. I've talked about it on the podcast. So I'm talking about this, right? People with adhd, we can get dopamine from skin picking and squeezing. And what happens is my social media, right? Like my TikTok videos, my Instagram, whatever, right? They start to show me. It's. I think it's specifically tick tock. They start showing me all of these videos of like pimple popping, okay? And I tell you what, like, I never used to kind of watch those, but now I'm like, I can like get right into it. I know some people are so grossed out by that. Like my partner, he's like, that's disgusting. And I'm just like obsessively staring at the screen like, oh my God, that's so satisfying. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm one of those people. And I just admitted it on the Internet, the podcast, whatever. But that's the thing, right? Like, sometimes we can become like. And I've seen this myself in myself before when I've met somebody new who I really thought was, like, really cool and I wanted to be friends with. Like, I can become like, kind of obsessed almost with like, them and thinking they're going to become my new best friend. And that kind of a thing, like, it can be very intense, these, you know, fixations that we might experience, right? And another one is like spending hours researching one thing and then just losing interest overnight, right? I had this recently, actually, where I saw something on TikTok about what was happening in Egypt under the pyramids. Like, they'd found all of the stuff and I don't even know if this shit was true, right? Because there's a lot of like, fake stories going on throughout social media and what have you. But I got really obsessed and like, I had to stop myself after a while because I was like, oh my God. And then no more. And like, I started like googling and researching and searching all of the videos and, like looking at it and I was like, oh my God, what does this mean? Like, yeah, not proud of that moment because it was kind of a real waste of time at the end of the day. But anyway, number four is sensory sensitivities. Okay? So we're not just talking about, like overstimulation, we're talking more about those things that are like nails on a chalkboard to a neurotypical person, somebody without adhd. Okay, so it could be like the tag in the back of your shirt, right? It can be things like background noises, like the checkout beeps. Some people get so upset by the checkout beeps. You know, at the supermarket. It could be certain smells. I was talking about this in our membership the other day and somebody was like, the smell of egg, right? Like, just the smell of egg. Just, I have to leave the room. Like, it's really, really. It can be like physically painful or even enraging some of these experiences, these sensory things that are really difficult for our brains. So it's not just that it's annoying, okay? These things can derail our whole ability to focus or function. So, for example, I got this new pair of like, exercise shorts the other day. Like, like, you know, like leggings. I don't know what they call, but they're. What are they? Like bike shorts, those kinds of things. Right. Like, they're the tight fitting ones, so I got some of those. But they fit great. The fabric is so nice and soft. I love them. They look good. So what am I doing? I'm wearing them on my first walk one afternoon. And there's this one point on our walk, I know exactly where I was. And my partner, he's talking to me, right? Emmett, he's talking away to me. I got no idea, no fucking clue what he's saying. Because all I can pay attention to is the tag in these fucking pens. And I want to rip it out. Like, I was at the point of, like, would I even take these pants off and just walk in my undies? And I was like, no, I'm not at that point. But I thought about it because it was bothering me so badly, right, That I couldn't even function. I couldn't even pay attention. I think we actually cut the walk short because I needed to go home and cut them out. Yeah, we did. We cut the walk short and we went home and I was like, snip those out. Right? All right, so before I go to number five, I just wanted to remind you real quick, if you, my friend, are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a rating, a review. Make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss out. Because we bring you this good every single week, right? I'm extra sweary today. I don't know what that's about. I'm just feeling a little fired up. Yeah, let's go with it. And if you are enjoying this episode and you feel like, you know, you've got somebody in your life who's, like, navigating adhd, please send it to them, right? Like, share the love. We want more of our community to find the podcast, to get, you know, support, to feel seen and heard, validated, understood, all the things. So also, like, when I read your reviews, when I read the stuff that you guys say, like, I got a couple of emails from listeners this week requesting episodes, which, by the way, were epic, like, epic suggestions. But when I get, you know, these ratings and these reviews, I get a massive boost of dopamine. So thank you. Thank you for giving me some dopamine, some love, and also spreading the love in our community. All right, let's go to number five. This is difficulty with switching gears or kind of like task inertia. So recently I have started to trial this new, like, task management. What do we call it? Software system. I don't know. It's called Monday or Monday dot com. Okay. And I'm not. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. So don't. Don't take this as a, like, go out and download it and do it kind of a thing, right? But anyway, it's got my attention. It's got all of these, like, colors and templates and newness and, like, it's kind of like, it's. It's tricky to use because I'm not used to. I think it's called a project management software, A CRM. No, I don't know what all the technical terms are. But anyway, I have not used anything like this before, and I like the challenge. I've got right into hyper focus mode, right? So the other day I was doing this and I was in hyper focus mode, learning this new probe, this new program, setting it up, like, playing with all of the colors and the templates, having fun, right? And luckily I had set an alarm because next minute, my timer is going off and I literally have 10 minutes to get ready for a call with someone. And this is somebody. Like, this call was somebody I was meeting who I've been in circles with and the ADHD circles, and they have ADHD and a business which is great and really complements, like, you know, so much of the work I do with people. And I was like, hey, I'm quite keen on getting this person on the podcast, right? And so this was like, a call I was looking forward to, you know, some in our community. I was like, yay, I get to meet them, hang out for a bit. Get to know them and talk about them coming on the podcast, right? So I was really looking forward to this call, but when the timer went off, I was like, fuck that. Like, I just wanted to keep doing what I was doing. All I wanted to do is keep playing with this new system, right? Because my hyper focus was interrupted, I now felt so annoyed. So when I talk about, like, difficulty switching gears, it's like struggling not just with, you know, starting tasks, but also stopping a task. We can have real difficulty stopping a task, especially once we're in that hyper focus mode. Right. But also our brains don't easily, like, shift gears necessarily. Right. Sometimes it can feel like we kind of get stuck in the wrong gear. We can have that difficulty with going between different tasks. Just like this. Number six is time dysmorphia. Not just time blindness, but time dysmorphia, I'm calling it because we talk about time blindness on the podcast. You know, we've talked about that plenty of times. But when I talk about time dysmorphia, I'm more talking about struggling to estimate how long something will take you. Okay. And having this, like, dysmorphic, like, weird, warped view in your head of what it looks like or how long it's going to take. Okay, so for example, this podcast right here, every single week, I think it's gonna take an hour. Does it take an hour all up? No. Like, if I am researching a topic, which isn't every episode, but if I am, for example, that can be kind of one to two hours. And I love that. I love the research. So sometimes I get in hyper focus. It takes longer. But then, like, drafting the episode notes, that can be 30 minutes. But sometimes it can be longer, right? Recording the episode. Right now, as I look at the timer, I'm at like, 20 minutes. It's typically anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes. Then you've got time for editing, uploading, creating a graphic, writing the episode description. Right? As I'm saying all of that, I'm like, maybe it's more like three to four hours, right? Dependent on the episode, it could be, say, perhaps two to four, probably even longer. Come on. Look, I'm doing it again, right? But my brain. My brain just expects it to take an hour. Even though I'm up to. I think this is episode 109. Okay. My brain still thinks it's gonna take one hour. It shouldn't take that long. Like, it doesn't need to take that long. Like, I don't think about all of the moving pieces. I'm like just one hour, that's enough. And every time, I tell you what, this cracks me up. Every time I get shocked when it doesn't. When it takes me longer, I get shocked. Even though I've done this 109 times. That's crazy to me, right? So also part of this like time dysmorphia is believing I have time, right? Believing we have time and then being shocked when we don't. Right? You know, that whole like, oh, I've got like, I don't need to leave for another 10 minutes, so I'll just go do XYZ and then next minute you're running late, right? That. All right, Number seven. Number seven is intrusive negative self talk, right? So that's the constant like mental background noise in your brain that says shit like you're failing. Oh, you forgot again, right? You can't be trusted. You need to get your shit together. You suck. Right? And of course that's tied to the low self esteem. Now what I often see is, and this was me for a while too, is like the, the low self esteem internally but like looking confident externally. So people kind of think you're confident or you're outgoing, right? But inside your internal reality is like quite different to that. And again, it comes back to that negative self talk that's happening. Number eight is a very low tolerance for both frustration and boredom. So if you listened to last Week's episode number 108, we talked about boredom and some of the, like, the science behind that because it's so fascinating. Well, at least to me, like, I love this shit. I love the ADHD brain. I'm obsessed, right? But if you ever like experience feeling rage when you get stuck in slow traffic, right? Or if you're in a long meeting, right, In a waiting room or having to wait for somebody else, right? Like wait for your, your kid or your partner to finish, like getting ready to go, right? I actually had this just on the weekend. So on the weekend my partner and I, Emmett, we went. I don't know why I always say my partner, but I do. His name's Emmett, I'm sure, you know. Anyway, we went for a walk. Like we, we try to do this most Sundays and we went for this walk out. Gosh, what's it called? I can't even remember. It's like a 30 minute drive, right? So he drove out there and I was like, oh, cool. You drive out, I'll drive back. But anyway, he drove out there. We did this like really cool walk. It was like about an hour. And then we were driving back home and he was like driving super slowly, like way under the speed limit. Like it's a hundred and 100 kilometer area and he's doing like 80. And this happened multiple times where I was like, are you like, do you know it's 100? Like, I dropped little hints. Do you know it's 100? Like, is there a reason you're going so slow? Like, I was trying to be kind of nice about it, but I was like, come on. But that right when he's driving super slow like that and he just says to me, oh, I'm feeling so relaxed. I'm so chilled out. I was like, yeah, cool. I just want to get places. Like, let's just do this thing, you know? But just something like so innocent and simple like that. Like it was starting to kind of like brew rage in me. Brew rage. That's an interesting sentence. But yeah, that's what was happening, right? But to come back to this, like low tolerance for frustration or boredom, it's like the tiny delays can equal like a massive emotional overreaction. And that's what I was experiencing, right? Like if I had stopped to coach myself, which I didn't, right? I just reacted. I was like, come on, let's go. Right? Like those tiny little delays can really, can be something like that. We react quite, quite big. Bigly. Let's go with it. Bigly. Too. Bigly should be a word. Just saying. All right, number nine, emotional whiplash, right? Emotional whiplash. If you've ever had whiplash. I had it when I was a teenager. It is nasty as. Right, so because we're all about the stories today, what happened was my dad was driving the car, I was a teenager, and this guy behind him, I don't know, was acting stupid or something. So my dad decided to slam on the brakes. Luckily, we're only doing 50ks. This guy saw and my dad goes, oh, shit, he's not going to stop. So I turn around to look at this car behind us, which was like a ute, right, with like bull bars and shit, right? And he just smacked, bang, right into the back of our car. It was. Our car was a write off. But because I was turning to look at the vehicle coming as it hit us, what happens? My neck spun around back to the front and I think I hit my head on the dash of the car, like had my seat belt on and everything. But that's whiplash, right? That right there, whiplash. In case you didn't know, there's My little story. So emotional whiplash. So this is like high highs, low lows, right? Mood swings. Not just daily necessarily, but sometimes hourly, right? Feeling like ecstatic about something and then crushed by a tiny comment like an hour later. Okay, number 10, difficulty relaxing even when you are exhausted. So I shared recently in the episode I did about, I think it was like my lessons of burnout. It was a couple back now, but I experienced this myself. Like, I was, like, exhausted, right? Like I was in burnout. Like, I kind of hit the wall. And still it was really, really hard to kind of let myself rest and unwind like I had to. I learned so much in that process. It was. It was great from an educational, learning perspective, but it was difficult, right? When we're physically tired, mentally tired, you know, maybe even emotionally tired, but we're still kind of like our brain is buzzing and we kind of feel like we. We're. We should be doing things right, but also having this busy brain, right? This brain that doesn't necessarily switch off, right? Sometimes that in itself can be really, really exhausting. So again, difficulty with relaxing, difficulty with resting, like, even being on holiday. I've had so many people say to me, like, they go on a holiday, right? And all of their family or whoever they're with is relaxing and having a great time, and they just get more and more wound up. Like, they really struggle to, you know, sit on the beach and just unwind and read a book like that. Just. They just don't relax in that way. Like, that's very difficult, right? All right, we made it through all 10, my friend. So if you recognized yourself in a bunch of these, okay? Hi, welcome. You are not alone, right? This is the reality of having an ADHD brain, right? And learning how to work with our brain, right? Learning how to work with these traits instead of kind of fighting against them. That is really life changing, right? And that's exactly what we do inside the membership, the Navigating Adult ADHD membership, right? We help you to understand, manage and thrive with adhd, right? We take everything you learn right here on the podcast and we apply it to your life. So if you are ready for support like that, that fits you, your ADHD brain and your life. Make sure you get on the wait list. All right? Head to navigating adadhd.com membership, right? And you can join the whitelist. Doors open in June, all right? And I cannot wait to welcome a new bunch of amazing adults with ADHD in. Okay, my friend, that is a wrap for today. Huge love to you Take care. I'll speak to you soon. Hey friend, if you want some more help navigating and thriving with a ADHD and some help applying everything that you're learning here on the podcast, then head over to our website navigating adultadhd.com.