ADHD and Seasons of Struggle: Embracing Rest, Reality, and Future Self-Care

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Translating ADHD
Episode: ADHD and Seasons of Struggle: Embracing Rest, Reality, and Future Self-Care
Hosts: Asher Collins (Ash) & Dusty Chipura
Date: February 16, 2026

This episode explores how adults with ADHD can navigate "seasons of struggle"—those times when life feels especially hard, growth feels impossible, and simply getting through the day can be a challenge. Ash and Dusty draw from their personal and professional experiences to normalize these cycles, share strategies for self-kindness and rest, and discuss the importance of adapting self-expectations during difficult periods. The episode is candid, gentle, and packed with immediately useful insights for those living with ADHD or coaching others.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

Defining a "Season of Struggle"

• Ash introduces the concept (01:39):
  • Seasons of struggle occur when forward progress or personal growth feels impossible due to difficult circumstances—personal, seasonal, or global.
  • Common for ADHD adults during late winter, especially when compounded by world events and individual life stressors.
  • “It might mean that now is not the time to look for growth or forward progress, but to look more towards managing ADHD and being kind to yourself.” – Ash [03:29]
• Empathy and the world’s challenges:
  • ADHD individuals are often highly empathetic and absorb the world's stress, making tough times feel even heavier.

Permission to Rest and Adjust Expectations

• Rest vs. Productivity Mindset:
  • Dusty describes actively giving herself permission to rest, influenced by cultural reminders (like “witchy” winter self-care content). [03:39]
  • "It's rare that I give myself permission to be as unproductive as I maybe encourage some of my clients to be." – Dusty [03:52]
• Managing Capacity:
  • Both discuss realigning commitments to reflect current, limited capacity rather than best-case scenarios.
  • “I have a tendency to, like many ADHD [folks], assess what I can do at my highest capacity and engage in a lot of best case scenario thinking … I’ve had enough times where I did way overload my plate.” – Dusty [07:54]

Letting Go and Practicing Self-Compassion

• Overcoming All-or-Nothing Thinking:
  • Ash highlights how lowered capacity plus high standards can lead to self-denial of rest and joy, worsening emotional states. [06:50]
  • Strategy: Take stock of what actually got done to counter feelings of total failure.
  • “Rather than letting emotion tell the story, take a moment to sit down and celebrate what wins you did have, whatever they were, no matter how small.” – Ash [10:22]
• The 'Ta Da' List Strategy:
  • Dusty recommends a “Ta Da list,” where clients write down every single accomplishment, big or small, to reframe the sense of productivity. [12:45]
  • “It makes a huge difference on how you feel about your day when you look back and you go, ‘Oh, I did all this stuff.’” – Dusty [13:18]

Prioritizing What Truly Matters

• Limited Productive Hours:
  • Dusty references a podcast insight: most adults only have four productive hours a day, even fewer when burned out. [13:40]
  • “If you have two good hours a day, then you have to think strategically about, like, what is the most important thing, what’s the biggest ball I can’t drop here?” – Dusty [13:55]
• Compounding Tasks and Future Planning:
  • Ash uses the example of keeping up with dishes: “If I don’t do the dishes every day, it can very quickly go to an overwhelming task.” [16:12]
  • Both discuss using bursts of energy on high-impact tasks that will ease future stress.

Logistics and Mindset: Two Sides of Coping

• Balancing Task Management and Self-Talk:
  • Dusty distinguishes between logistical coping (adjusting tasks and commitments) and mental reframing (adjusting self-talk, celebrating rest). [17:42]
  • “There’s the logistics … and then there’s the mental part of how you make sense and how you talk to yourself about it.” – Dusty [17:46]
• Success and Struggle Coexist:
  • Ash stresses that “success and struggle go hand in hand,” and that even small wins in tough times are signs of real progress. [21:50]
  • “Even when struggle is really, really, really high, that’s the opportunity to keep looking for the wins, to keep celebrating where you are being successful.” – Ash [21:50]

Self-Kindness: Gentle vs. Hard Self-Talk

• Framework from 'Rewriting the Rules' book:
  • Dusty shares the “gentle vs. hard” self-talk framework to combat bullying oneself during tough periods. [23:14]
  • Story: Forcing herself to sweep the kitchen while exhausted and in tears, eventually choosing self-compassion over harshness, and finding the task easier the next day.
  • “Sometimes if something feels really hard … maybe I can just leave it to [future me].” – Dusty [25:00]

Trusting Your Future Self

• Future Self as Caretaker:
  • Ash reframes the notion of always “taking care of future self.” In tough times, trust that future-you will handle what current-you cannot. [28:55]
  • “Maybe … let future you take care of you and you put your focus on how can you be present with where you are right now.” – Ash [31:06]
• Emotional Permanence:
  • When struggling, it feels like things have always been bad and always will be (“emotional permanence”). Bringing in nuance can help forecast a better future. [26:22]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “In a season of struggle, sometimes you don’t have control over the fact that behind might just be necessarily where you have to be.” – Ash [05:03]
• “Once you feel behind, you can’t benefit from rest … every minute that you sit down and try to rest is coming at the expense of later stress.” – Dusty [04:35]
• “Rather than letting emotion tell the story, take a moment to sit down and celebrate what wins you did have.” – Ash [10:22]
• “We get into this all or nothing thinking… the worse I’m feeling, the less executive function I have, the higher I start thinking, ‘I have to do this, I have to do that, everything’s important...’” – Dusty [26:40]
• “Beating myself into the ground about not being able to do it right this second is not going to help me get there.” – Ash [30:43]
• “In a season of struggle, let future you take care of you.” – Dusty [31:04]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:14 — Episode context & personal updates on struggle
• 01:39 — Defining "season of struggle" & factors contributing
• 03:39 — Importance and challenges of rest for ADHD
• 06:50 — Discussion around inability to “catch up” and adjusting standards
• 10:22 — The “Ta Da List” and reframing small wins
• 13:40 — Only having a few productive hours per day & prioritization
• 16:12 — Compounding effect of tasks and preemptive actions
• 17:42 — Logistical vs. mindset adjustments
• 21:50 — Coexistence of success and struggle
• 23:14 — Self-talk: gentle vs. hard; Dusty’s floor sweeping story
• 26:22 — Emotional permanence and breaking the cycle
• 28:55 — Trusting future self during seasons of struggle
• 31:06 — Letting future you help; wrapping up

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Tone and Takeaways

Ash and Dusty model exactly the gentleness and adaptation they recommend. The mood throughout is open, honest, supportive, and practical, with each host affirming the other's insights and weaving humor and real life into the discussion. The episode offers reassurance: it’s natural to hit rough patches, recognizing and adjusting to your true capacity is an act of self-care, and trusting yourself through ups and downs is foundational to living well with ADHD.

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Ideal listeners: Adults with ADHD, ADHD coaches/therapists, or anyone seeking permission to rest during hard times—and practical, real-world strategies to make those times a little more manageable.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Ash. And I'm Dusty and this is Translating adhd. Dusty, we're back.

[B]

We're back. We did it.

[A]

We did it.

[B]

It felt like forever.

[A]

It did feel like a long time. And actually today's topic is going to be relevant in part to our unexpectedly long break. We're going to be talking about ADHD in A Season of Struggle. Before we do that, though, picking back up on our monthly events, I will be doing a coaching Demo on Wednesday, February 25th at 8pm Eastern for our Patreon subscribers. So look either on Patreon or in Discord for the information to join that zoom call. And if you are a Patreon subscriber and you are interested in being coached, shoot me a message either via Discord DM or or via Patreon. So Dusty, as we jump into this topic of A Season of Struggle, I just want to acknowledge that I have been in a huge one myself. So much so that I've let things go that I don't normally let go. So there are several of you who reached out for coaching back in November, December. By the time this episode airs, you will have heard from me, and my apologies that you have not heard from me sooner, at the intersection of my own personal context and my adhd, which is what we're going to be talking about today.

[B]

Ash, when you say season of struggle, can you define what that means or what that looks like to you? Yeah.

[A]

So Dusty, in coaching we talk about this concept called an opening for change, right? Is there an opportunity here for meaningful growth, for sustainable change, for forward progress? And to me, a season of struggle is a time when that may not be be possible due to a number of factors. Number one, this is a tough time of year for a number of people. The January, February time of year, it's cold, the days are really short. There's been some pretty nasty weather across the country. Stereotypically for me, end of January through February is always a difficult time in terms of expecting more than the bare minimum from myself. And that's true for a lot of my clients. Number two, there's the state of the world. It's a tough old world to be living in right now and it is impacting every single one of my clients. As people with adhd, we are highly empathetic. So there's that layer of impact. I have clients in academia and in science based professions that are being directly affected in terms of what types of funding are available, whether or not their jobs or their departments are still going to exist. How they can hobble together the funding they need, which in and of itself becomes a greater tax than it used to be. Just so many global factors at this moment in time that I'm seeing sort of season of struggle as a theme in a lot of my coaching right now. But then there's also individual context, right? Already a tough time of year, already a tough time in the world. And then if your own context is tough on top of that, it. It might mean that now is not the time to look for growth or forward progress, but to look more towards managing ADHD and being kind to yourself.

[B]

I totally agree. And I feel like a lot of the content that I've been seeing on some of my social platforms lately, like, heading into winter was about, like, how winter is a time of rest. And like, a lot of. There's been like a lot of witchy stuff coming up on my feed. So it's like, oh, you know, this is a season of rest, you know, in nature, and we're not meant to be productive. And I really tried to take that to heart this year because I did need a lot of rest and I took a lot of rest and I was like, this feels right. And it's rare that I give myself permission to be as unproductive as I maybe encourage some of my clients to be, because I like to say that I only need to sit down about half an hour a day. I like to be busy. But there are times where I can feel that I need to. To slow down. And I felt like I really did that this year, like just at the end of the year, and I'm still in that a bit. It's been hard for me to gear back up. And so it's been really helpful to proactively manage commitments and expectations of myself so that I don't end up behind. Because once you feel behind, you can't benefit from rest, right? Like, you can't get that restful feeling if you're feeling overwhelmed, because every minute that you sit down and try to rest is coming at the expense of, like, later stress.

[A]

So, Dusty, I actually kind of want to challenge what you just said, that you don't want to get, quote, unquote, too far behind. Because when we're talking about a season of struggle, sometimes you don't have control over the fact that behind might just be necessarily where you have to be. That's kind of the conversation I had with a client I met with earlier today. So she is in academia. So the state of the world stress definitely applies. The seasonal stress Definitely applies. And on top of that, she's got some chronic health stuff and actually had a surgery last fall that looked like the results were going to be really good. And so far it seems like they have been good. It's trending in a good direction. So was feeling optimistic and hopeful on the physical health front of having some meaningful progress there, but recently had some brand new different setbacks that she doesn't have answers for yet. So her doctors don't know what's going on, but she's having these symptoms that make it physically impossible for her to work when those symptoms are flaring up. And she doesn't yet have a plan of action in terms of how to manage or treat or have a better experience with those symptoms, nor does she even know if that's possible. So we're talking about a very unknown day to day situation right now. And so part of the conversation we were having, you know, she kept using language like I want to get back to, because a lot of the work we did was around building routine and structure in different ways so that she could attend to. She has this job that's very multifaceted so that she could be kind of spinning all of the plates often enough and or attending to what she could delegate or let go of. But the conversation we're having now is capacity itself is different right now and isn't always going to be something that is predictable. And so I think a trap we can often fall into in moments like these as people with ADHD is exactly what you were just saying is, oh, I have to stay caught up enough. I have to do this stuff first. And when we can't, then we also deny ourselves the things that might fill our cup or bring us some amount of joy. So then we're just kind of doubling down on the misery. Right. Well, I can't do these things. I'm not capable of doing these things right now. I'm denying myself these other things. So you're kind of living in this no man's land where your time's going not only not to anything productive, but also not to anything joyful or enjoyable, it's just there.

[B]

Yeah, no, I think we are saying the same thing, Ash, because when I say, like, I don't want to get too far behind, what I'm saying is I want to limit how much I'm committing to for that reason. Right. I have a tendency to, like many adhd, assess what I can do at my highest capacity and engage in a lot of like, best case scenario thinking. And I'M aware of that and it works out pretty well for me some of the time. But I've had enough times where I did way overload my plate. You know, like at a buffet when you're like mostly full, but then there's like so many good looking foods and then you're like, put so much food on your plate and then you go sit down and you're like, oh, why did I put all this food in my plate? I'm like not hungry. And then it's like a burden to eat it. So what I'm saying is because I don't want to get too far. I don't want to have that feeling of being too far behind. What that looked like for me was managing what I was agreeing to do, how much I was committing to so that I could spare myself having to even navigate that feeling. Right.

[A]

Okay, Dusty, now, now I see what you're saying and yes, I agree, that's absolutely one great strategy to deal with a time of struggle. And in fact exactly the conversation my client and I were having today, her practice from a couple of weeks ago was with this brand new set of symptoms and not having any answers was what can I do to sort mitigate future challenge to set myself up well if I do unexpectedly have to take a day off to preemptively understand what my options are. And interestingly enough today she came kind of saying, oh, I, I've been sticking my head in the sand. But when we checked in on that practice and there were five or six different items in terms of things, she could check in on, people she could talk to, questions she could answer for herself, things she could set up for herself in advance if she needed to employ them because she was very suddenly not feeling well, she had done all of them. And so, so often in a time of struggle we can fall into that all or nothing thinking because I'm not showing up as well as I have before, because I'm not being as successful as I was before then I'm not doing anything, I'm reverting back to old behavior and sticking my head in the sand. And there was a time for this client where that behavior might have been very true, where she might stuck her head in the sand and just la la la, this doesn't exist. But that's not the experience she's having now. So in addition to sort of evaluating what's on your plate, evaluating what your actual capacity is right now, also noticing the self talk and taking a moment to celebrate the wins, which can be really Hard to do in a time when negative emotion is more present. We're so emotionally driven as people with adhd. And if we get to the end of the day, Dusty, before we hit record, you were saying. So often I'm having this experience where it's 9:30 at night and I don't feel like I've done the things that I committed to, to myself or others for the day. That's part of my own season of struggle. In that moment, the story you tell yourself is failure, right? Because you're, oh, it's 9:30 and I didn't do the things. And your emotion is taking over and telling that story. So another strategy that has worked really well for a number of my clients who are kind of going through this experience of getting to the end of the day and not feeling good about the day is taking a moment to sit down and capture what actually did happen. Because this breaks the all or nothing thinking. Even if you didn't do everything you hope to do or expected of yourself in a day, did you really do nothing? Did you really accomplish nothing? Or is that a story? And so rather than letting emotion tell the story, take a moment to sit down and celebrate what wins you did have whatever they were, no matter how small they were. I find myself celebrating my dishwasher broke a couple of weeks ago, which just adds to an already challenging time in my own life. And so I find myself regularly celebrating that I did the dishes because it is really, really hard to keep up on the number of dishes that myself and my child produce. Washing them all by hand. And I'm doing it. And I'm doing it. So yes, I can name a dozen other things that I haven't done today that I would like to attend to. But. But I did the dishes and that's not nothing.

[B]

I agree. We often talk about this in the format of a Ta Da list. Right? So people listening. If you haven't heard of a Ta Da list, it's the inversion. Inversion. Is that a word? The inverted form of a to do list, where a to do list is a list of things you should, must, or have to do. A ta Da list is a running list, and I prefer that clients physically write it down so they can visually, like, see just the number of items at the end of the day. Like a running list of things that you did do. And I often will encourage clients to not just put the big things on there. Like, not just like the things they intended to do. Okay, I did it, but like almost everything, right? Like, yeah, did the Dishes, you know, fed myself lunch, like, took the dog for a walk. Because you're right, Ash, it makes a huge difference on how you feel about your day when you look back and you go, oh, I did all this stuff. And it can help because it can be like, well, no wonder I didn't get this other stuff done. There was. I'm not sure how this happened, but I. A podcast just like came to me from the ether the other day. I'm not even sure where it came from. Like, I was randomly listening to podcasts on whatever podcast app is on my phone and I don't even know what podcast it was. I wish I could find it again. But it was some woman talking to a guy. He was a Canadian guy and he's just written a book. He's put out a book recently. And it's about productivity. Like he's some productivity expert or researcher or something. And so he was talking about his book and in his book he said that, like, I don't know if it was like, based on his research or what, but that basically most people have like about four productive hours a day. That's it, right? Like you got four good hours a day on average. And. And so if you're a person going through burnout, that might be two good hours a day. And if you have two good hours a day, then. Then you have to think strategically about like, what is the most important thing, you know, what's the biggest ball I can't drop here? Like, how do you set up your day in a way where when that productive focus time hits that you do the things that you most need to do. And for me, that time is very unpredictable. Sometimes it's in the morning, sometimes it's in the evening, sometimes it's in the middle of the day when I already have commitments. And that can be quite frustrating for me because I can tell that I'm suddenly like, hit, you know, hit the time where I could get a lot of stuff done. But I've got these pre existing commitments and so that can be like a source of tension for me. But I generally, in this season, like my season of struggle, which I've been, you know, I've been very, very busy and very tired lately. I've been trying to really use that time for the things that will pay the most dividends. So like you said, I think you kind of mentioned this, like, some things just have to. Some things just have to wait. Some things just have to get dropped. Some things are just going to have a way slower turnaround. Time than I would like them to have. Sometimes the laundry isn't getting put away. It's just. I'm gonna. It's clean. I'm gonna wear it out of the pile on the bed that I'm sleeping with for the week. And, like, that's good enough for this week. Because the more important thing, like, the. If I can get one thing done a day because I've got two good hours or something, I'm gonna do the thing that's gonna pay the most dividends so that it keeps building capacity and that kind of like doubles and doubles and doubles. Does that make sense, Dusty?

[A]

That absolutely makes sense. And that's actually why dishes, as simple as they are, is my. Was the example that I gave. Because especially without a dishwasher, if I don't do the dishes every day, it can very quickly go to an overwhelming task, especially since I have a small kitchen. So there is only so much counter space to hold dirty dishes. There is only so much counter space to hold clean dishes. So if I let that go too long, it can. It compounds on itself and becomes not just a problem of doing the action itself, but it becomes like a logistical nightmare. Right. Where the task gets exponentially harder the longer that I let it go. And so, yes, kind of paying attention to what's going to help me the most today, what's going to serve me well today? Getting out and shoveling my driveway after we got eight inches of snow was one of those for me. Super. Did not want to do that task. It was very bitterly cold outside. I hate being outside in the cold. But I knew that I was eventually going to have to start driving my child to school. School is not going to be closed forever. And if I waited until school was announced to be opened again, that then it was going to be my back's against the wall, and I'm dealing with whatever circumstances which were, by the way, much colder and much harder than getting out and doing it while it was fresh and light and fluffy.

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, maybe it sounds like you and I, coach wise, have a lot of similar recommendations or ways like that we might give clients or ways that we might encourage clients to manage through a season of struggle, which is. Which it sounds like we're also going through. And I. Yeah, from what we're talking about, I'm seeing that there's two parts. Right. There's the logistics of, like, what do you do in a day? What do you commit to? How do you structure your day and your tasks? And then there's the Mental part of, like, how do you make sense and how do you. How do you make sense of this time and how do you talk to yourself about it? And for me, I think it was a real victory over this past holiday season that I was able to really give myself permission to rest. Like, there were some days that nothing got done and some days that I just took it so slow, which is very unusual for me. Like, I like living. I like living in fast forward, but I just really felt the need to slow down, sleep in, be sleepy, be cozy. It was so nice. And. And now, you know, things are ramping back up. You know, school's back in. I'm. I've got work, I've got projects that I'm working on. There are some things that are out of my control and my capacity is not quite there yet. So I'm in a slightly different season now where I'm having to negotiate that with myself in terms of what is the most important thing for me to get done today if I can't get all the things done. And so, like, just the other day, actually, I made a TikTok about this. I just let the house be utterly filthy. All the kids were home from school. They made a huge mess. And I was like, nope, I need relaxation time. So I sat on the couch and I read a book amidst absolute insane chaos and clutter. And I was like, dishes tidying up. Not more important. The kids know where the snacks are. I ain't fixing meals. You guys can get your own food. You know where it is. I'm gonna sit, sit here with a cup of coffee in my book, and I'm not moving for like 20 to 30 minutes. And those are the kinds of little, little things that I'm noticing have been really important to keep myself in a regulated place and to be able to just keep moving forward. So I'm kind of gone on a bit of a tangent, but I see that there's two parts of this, right? There's the logistics and then there's the mindset. Would you agree?

[A]

Yeah, Dusty, I agree. And just as a reminder for each of those things, like with the logistics, the important thing here is recognizing that lower capacity. And you, you talked about some ways that you've recognized lower capacity. The idea of you taking that much rest time for yourself, knowing how much you like to go, that's a huge win. If you were my client, I would really be celebrating that win because I know that that's hard for you on multiple fronts, but you're tuning in. You're listening to yourself, you're recognizing that capacity is different. Same with the tidying up. I know that even though your. Your life is chaotic, meaning you have a lot of people in your household and there's always a lot of action, you staying on top of that is very important to you. And so being able to let that go, being able to adjust and take rest anyway, and I think that's such a struggle for us, right We. That the shoulds are always going to be there, and they're never louder than when we're struggling. And so being able to truly set down the should and take meaning full rest is huge. Is absolutely huge. And then on the mental side, I always say to my clients, and I believe this to be a hundred percent true, even though my season of struggle has been very, very, very, very struggleful, that success and struggle go hand in hand. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. So even when struggle is really, really, really high, that's the opportunity to keep looking for the wins, to keep celebrating where you are. Being successful. A decade ago, this season of struggle would have had me on the couch doing actually nothing, just watching my life slowly fall apart and being truly unable to take any meaningful action in that direction. And I know that because I've been in that place before. I've talked about it on this podcast before, talked about the early days of Cam being my coach and being in what we call hoth, which I'm not going to re. Explain here for the. For the sake of time, but more or less just being in a completely frozen state. Truly, truly frozen state right now. The headspace right now feels really similar. Like I feel really stuck. I feel really frustrated with my inability to engage as often as I would like or to engage with. With the things that I need or want to engage with. But the difference is much more than nothing is happening. I'm not completely stuck on the couch. I have learned some things along the way about my own adhd, about how to take care of myself, about how to give myself permission to take good care of myself in times like this, to strike a different balance. Is it the balance I want to have? No. But can I recognize that it's the balance I'm capable of right now? Yes.

[B]

Good. Okay. Here's one more example from my life personally with my clients. I often. I often talk about the framework of hard and soft versus gentle and firm. And this is a concept that I learned from the book Rewriting the Rules by Meg John Barker, which is a book about relationships. But this. This chapter was about the relationship to the self. And I found it a really, really helpful framework to explain to clients how to shift your self talk to be more empowering and to stop kind of like getting into your own adrenaline response cycle. Anyway, so the example from my life that I will often tell clients is one time during COVID when my daughter was quite young, I was having a day, you know, it was more towards the evening. I was feeling tired, lots of executive dysfunction. And I needed to sweep the kitchen floor because the kitchen was dirty and my kitchen wasn't like huge. But for whatever reason, I was just like, my body was like, no, like I did not want to sweep the floor. And I was like, okay, you need to sweep the floor. No, didn't want to. And I was like sitting there, like bullying myself, trying to get myself to sweep the kitchen floor. And I was being very hard on myself. I was saying a lot of mean things like, come on, what's wrong with you? Like, what kind of adult are you? Like, how are you going to hope to ever keep the house clean if you can't even sweep a floor? Like, it's not that hard. Just go do it, dummy. You know, like being very mean to myself. And so eventually I got up and I started sweeping the kitchen floor, but I was like weeping. Like, I was weeping and sweeping. I was like. And then I stopped. I don't know what happened, but I was like, wait, what the f. I was like. I had this like, moment where I was like, wait a minute. I know for a fact that I have swept the kitchen floor before. And it didn't feel this hard. Like, it doesn't always feel this hard to sweep the floor, but something feels hard about it right now. And so I just had this little, like, come to Jesus moment where I was like, is it possible that tomorrow it won't feel this hard to sweep the kitchen floor? Is it possible that tomorrow dusty is more similar to, like, past versions of Dusty who didn't find it hard to sweep the kitchen floor? And like, maybe I can just leave it to her. So I was like. And I just put the broom down and I went to bed. And lo and behold, the next day I walked into the kitchen and I was like, oh, yeah, gotta sweep the floor. Sweep, sweep, sweep. It was done in five minutes, maybe not even. And I was like, oh, okay. I can just. Sometimes if something feels, like, really hard. And I know this is a slippery slope, I'm not advocating for like, ongoing procrastination, but I'm just saying sometimes. And this is being Gentle. This is on being gentle versus hard. Because I was being hard on myself. And the price, the cost of sweeping the kitchen floor was not worth it because it was coming at the cost of my like nervous system. Like I was bullying myself, I was crying. And so that's where it was important for me to be gentle on myself. And to say this actually doesn't matter that I do this right now. Does it matter in the long run in general, large scale that I like keep the house in a state of, you know, enough sanitariness that it's accessible and usable? Yes. But is it important that I sweep the kitchen floor right this very moment?

[A]

No.

[B]

That can be a problem for tomorrow. Dusty and starting to recognize where you actually can push things down or where you can let go of standards a little. Because when I was sweeping and I was crying, I was like, I need to be gentle on myself. Like this is not more important than my well being. And I was right. Like it wasn't as hard later. And I think that that's a really unique thing that happens with ADHD is we get into this all or nothing thinking. And the more. You're exactly right, Ash. The more we're experiencing executive dysfunction, the greater uptick we're going to have in ADHD symptoms such as black and white thinking and like lack of nuance. And so as my capacity goes down, how hard I am on myself tends to go up. Right. The, the worse I'm feeling, the less executive function I have, the higher I start thinking, like, I have to do this, I have to do that. Like this is so important. Everything's important. Oh my God. Like this is life or death. Like sweeping the kitchen floor is not life or death. But it often will feel that way when I'm not in a good head space. And so it's very unique, I think, to the ADHD experience that like when we're at our lowest, we're also putting the most pressure on ourselves and things are feeling the most intense. And it's very hard, I think, to get to that place where you start to recognize like just cause things feel. Everything feels really important right now. Just because everything feels life or death doesn't mean that's actually true. And what it requires is this really sophisticated ability to get out of the moment. Right? To get out of that, like I've heard it called emotional permanence, where however you're feeling now feels like it's colored all the ways that you've ever felt forever. Like if I'm feeling like life is Terrible in this moment, I will recolor the past with that and go. Life has always been terrible. And then I'll look to the future and I'll go and life will always be terrible. And that's a horrible, hopeless, sinking feeling that's really hard to navigate. But that tends to be what happens when I'm. When I'm feeling sad, when I'm feeling happy. Life is great, always has been great, always will be great. When I'm sad and I feel like I'm not, When I feel terrible about myself, well, I've always sucked and I'm always gonna suck, right? Like it's this emotional permanence where everything becomes the same. So to get out of that, get my head above the water, or for a client to get their head above the water and be able to look to the past and say, actually, I know that I have not felt this bad in the past or this hasn't felt that this hard, whatever the case may be. So let me like future forecast that and remember that the future is probably going to be different. So I don't have to panic. I don't have to put this pressure on myself. I just have to wait out this feeling. And that's on distress tolerance, which is hard.

[A]

Dusty. When we're doing growth and change work in coaching, especially in ADHD coaching, we are so often talking about things like taking care of your future self, right? Because with adhd, if we can't see the immediate results, for example, with something like exercise or eating differently, you don't necessarily see the results after doing it once, but over time, you start to see those results. You see how it paid your future self some amount of dividends, and that kind of reinforces the behavior. What I love about what you just said is it kind of contextualizes okay, in a time of struggle when there's not that opening for change, how do we think about the future self? And what I heard you say is, let's trust our future selves. Let's step back and distinguish. And again, this is, this is not the same as like permanent procrastination, which is certainly an ADHD challenge. But being able to step back and say, okay, today me can't do this, but some version of me will be able to do this. And I hadn't thought about it in those terms before, but that certainly what my self talk largely looks like is, yes, things are hard and bleak right now, but there's also a trust that they're not going to be hard and bleak forever. And that I will eventually get to these things that the ship will be righted. And beating myself into the ground about not being able to do it right this second is not going to help me get there. Taking as good of care of myself as I can and doing what I can do to make it less hard on my future self by keeping up on what I can keep up on and moving forward what I can move forward. That's what I can do right now.

[B]

That's exactly it. It's trust in the self. Right? You nailed it. That's exactly it.

[A]

Yeah. So kind of flipping the script to maybe you don't have to take care of future you at this moment in time, even if that's the work you've been doing, maybe.

[B]

Because future you is going to take care of you.

[A]

Yeah. In a season of struggle, let future you take care of you and. And you put your focus on how can you be present with where you are right now. I think that's a great place for us to wrap. Dusty, what do you think?

[B]

Hell yeah, buddy.

[A]

All right. Well, listeners, we are so happy to be back and we should be back on a relatively consistent recording schedule. Dusty's got some personal things that may disrupt our next. Next couple of weeks, so if we don' we don't nail it right away. Don't worry, we are back. We might. We might miss a week or two here or there in the coming weeks, but for the most part, we are back and we are not looking at another huge gap.

[B]

Yes, we have a baby coming, and so I will do my darndest to be consistent. And also, I might be in the middle of helping to deliver a baby when we're supposed to record. So we'll see what happens.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But this is. This is related to positive life transition rather than season of struggle stuff. So we are both through enough. Our season of struggle. That we are. We're here, we're back. So be looking for us Weekly. Ish. Moving back towards a weekly schedule shortly. So until next week or the week.

[B]

After, I'm Ash and I'm Dusty and.

[A]

This was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.