← Translating ADHD
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Ash. And I'm Dusty and this is Translating adhd.
- [00:08]
B
Before we get started, I wanted to mention I do have a new coaching group coming up in May. The group runs for four months from May to August. It is Thursday evenings and we're looking for people to join it. It's a really cost effective way of doing coaching and it's lots of fun to be with other people with adhd. So hit me up if you're interested in group coaching.
- [00:29]
A
And where can they find you? Dusty?
- [00:31]
B
Good question. They can find me@vancouveradhdcoaching.com so v a n C O U V E R A d h d coaching. Com. You can also go to www.adhd studio ca. You have to put the www.it's a DNS server issue. Don't me, okay? I coach a lot of people in tech. It's an unsolvable problem. Anyway, you can hit me up there. You can hit me up on Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook, not Twitter very much longer probably. So maybe one of the other ones. Instagram, yeah, Facebook, TikTok threads, blue sky.
- [01:10]
A
Right, Dusty. So you want to tell our listeners what we're talking about today. This is, this is probably like of the sort of universal ADHD issues. This is certainly one of them.
- [01:22]
B
We are talking about phone addiction and phone usage.
- [01:26]
A
And that's funny because when I said that I had sleep in my head but like tomato, tomato, remember we decided to do phone. No, no, no, we did, we did, but my statement was about sleep. And then you said phone usage and I went, oh yeah, anyway, sorry. So we were talking about ADHD and phone usage. Where do you want to dive in here? Dusty?
- [01:43]
B
Well, it's a really common thing that I talk to a lot of clients about. It's like, it's very, you know, I mean it's, I think it's commonly acknowledged that universally as a society it's something we're coping with these days that previous generations didn't have to cope with. But it can be especially problematic for people with ADHD who really crave that constant simulation, that short form content. You know, we have somewhat impulse addiction personalities. We struggle with getting things done in a timely fashion and the phone can only further derail that. And so what I see in my coaching clients is like just lots of guilt and shame and like feelings like that. There's, you know, that it's something to be embarrassed about or that they are the only ones struggling with. How about you?
- [02:28]
A
I see similar challenges with my clients. Right. Definitely A lot of guilt and shame and also a lot of frustration with lost time. Just time that seems to go into a black hole into nowhere.
- [02:42]
B
Yeah. And so that's one for sure that I hear a lot, especially as it pertains to mornings and evenings. Right. So a lot of people are using their phone, right? We're, we use our phone as our alarm clocks now. So our phones are in bed with us often. We're using them first thing in the morning, right. And then we lose time when we're on the phone. And then also at nighttime, right. You, you're planning to get a good night's sleep, you're planning to go to bed, you get on your phone to check one thing, next thing it's like two in the morning. Right. From a coaching perspective, like as someone who coaches people, what do you think are, like, what are the big things to consider here when people bring issues around phone usage to coaching?
- [03:21]
A
That's a good question, Dusty. And really like anything else we do in coaching, it comes back to the individual. Why, like what is that cause for this client? And that could be with the phone. It could be any number of things because phones have games, they have social media, they have messaging, they have the ability to go down endless research loops at 3 o' clock in the morning. I lost my septum piercing a couple of days ago, it fell out of my nose and I have a temporary one in. And I sure enough, at 2 o' clock in the morning last night was on my phone, couldn't sleep. Looking at septum rings. Right. So there are just any number of sort of individual reasons or individual. There are any number of individual things we might be doing on the phone and then there's also there's any number of individual reasons we might go to the phone, right? There's that universal thing of it's a dopamine hit. For a lot of us it can be a great way to avoid. Right. I don't, I don't want to think about the thing I have to do next. So let me pick up my phone and take a little break. I think that's a, that's a thing we can often run into is the phone is an easy break. Right. I need five or 10 minutes and this is the easiest thing for me to grab. But then there's no breaks on that behavior. Right. And couple this with the challenge that in modern society you kind of need one of these devices to be able to survive. Right. The. I've, I've actually heavily thought about going back to a Dumb phone. Because I'm not heavily on social media. Most of my, like, contact person to person, if it's happening with the phone is happening via like a traditional text message, not via some messaging service. So I'm more well poised than most people to make that leap if I wanted to. But I think about not having a GPS in my pocket as somebody who has poor sense of direction. A lot of restaurants have gone to QR codes as their menus, and there's just sort of this overall expectation that you have the ability to have Internet access on the go, that living without that would introduce a number of frustrations. Even things like being able to pay back friends via Venmo or PayPal or Cash App or whatever if we're all having dinner together. It's. It's just it. I've thought a lot about it because I do think everything else being equal, it would be a practical step for me and it would be a good thing for me. But I've come to the conclusion that I think it would introduce more difficulty than it would solve for for me. So, yeah, there's a lot in here in terms of A, what can pull us in and B, what we. Why. Why are we going there? Right. And if not avoidance, sometimes it's just habit. Like, sometimes I have found myself in my phone with Reddit open, not even realizing that that's what I've done, or I've picked up my phone to do something else. And I open Reddit because that's what I habitually do when I open my phone and forget what the thing was I was actually intending to do before I even get there.
- [06:27]
B
Yeah. So sidebar on that. On that, what you said about needing your phone for everything. There actually is a community in rural British Columbia where the Internet provider stopped providing Internet to that community because it just wasn't profitable enough for them. And the community brought a case against the B.C. government that access to Internet is a human right because they had no access to the Internet. And the government, I think. I think I could be wrong, but I think what ended up happening is the government had to like, provide, like, provide them with Internet or something, because you can't live these days without it. Right? Like, you just can't. So it is actually. I mean, it's a. It's a necessary part of our society these days. You really can't extricate yourself from it unless you're living a very particular kind of lifestyle. But I think what's so interesting about phone usage and moderating phone usage is it permeates almost every aspect of coaching, of what people want to do. Like, whether it comes to getting better sleep, whether it comes to morning routine and getting your day going, whether it comes to, like, quality of like. I know for me, the biggest, the biggest issue I've had with my, my personal phone usage is relationships that people don't like that I'm on my phone around them or they have an idea about what it means that I'm on my phone around them or, or how I can be more present with my child when, you know, she's a baby and she's like, she wants to play the same dumb game for like an hour. And I'm like, okay, I don't want her to see me on my phone all the time. Right? So relationships, right. It can come into play as far as impulse, right. Shopping online shopping online games. I've had clients who spend a lot of money on in game apps or on, you know, Even websites like OnlyFans and stuff like that. Right? Because it's. It's different to sort of consume those things through a phone, which again, is endless. There's no limit versus going to a store, going to a, you know, subscribing to a magazine. I don't know if you can subscribe to those type of magazines, you know, I'm saying. But whatever. But it could be, you know, again, there's so many different reasons that people could want to moderate or change the relationship to the phone that permeates aspects of ADHD and aspects of our life. But I think what's interesting for me is that I've seen a lot of clients that kind of show up with just like a vague sense of guilt that they. That there's something wrong with being on the phone a lot or that it's something that they should be embarrassed about or that is not right that they need to work on. And like, I get it. There are, there are certain areas of your life where the phone is negatively impacting your ability to follow through on the thing you want to do. But I kind of have a bone to pick with like, this idea that just like, being on the phone is bad. Because here's the thing, I. I'm one of those people that's perpetually attached to my phone. I do a lot of things on my phone, but I'm just like, I'm totally on my phone like all the time. And the thing is, Ash, that when I was a kid, I always had my nose in a book. I couldn't eat without reading a book. I couldn't go to the bathroom without reading a book. Right. Like, everything I do on the phone now, I used to do just reading books. And sometimes I still do, like, just. I'll walk around the house reading books, whatever. I read books in the bathtub. Like, I read books everywhere as a child. And if I wasn't reading a book and I wasn't doing anything else, it sure as hell didn't mean that I was paying attention. And the same is true. Like, what's frustrating for me is, like, people think that because I'm on my phone that I'm not like, that I'm. I'm not wanting to participate or give them attention. But if I didn't have that phone in my hands, I would probably be scribbling, like, doodling in a book. Or I'd be, like, reading a book. Or I'd be, like, off in La La Land. Like, just because it's a phone doesn't mean that that's the issue. The issue is that, like, it's hard for me to be present and pay attention for long periods of time in any circumstance if I don't. If it's not something that's really engaging for me. And it's always been that way. So, like, I kind of feel like we're scapegoating the phone a little bit in the same way that, like, back in the 90s, people were, like, scapegoating Marilyn Manson. And they were like, this is why kids are violent these days. Are listening to Marilyn Manson. Are violent video games and Marilyn Manson. The problem here? I don't know. Right. Is it the phone or is it just that, like. I don't know. I'm getting off track here, but you see what I'm saying, right?
- [10:29]
A
Yeah. So a couple of thoughts on that, Dusty. And the first is, and I saw this years ago, I doubt I could find it again, especially with the. The insidified state of the Internet and search as it is today. But it was a. It was a meme that showed a picture of a New York subway and everyone on that subway on their phones. And right next to it was a black and white picture in the same subway car of everyone in a newspaper or in a book. Right. So there is this, like, moralizing thing we're doing where we're like, oh, look how depressing this is. Everybody is on their phones when it's like, well, like, we. We always did this in social situations like this where we have to, like, be with and around other people. But we may not necessarily want to converse or engage with those other people. That's always been a part of our society in situations like that. It's just the. The medium has changed. I will also add dusty because I'm pretty low phone use when I'm out, and I've always been that way. And I. I like you at home. Like, when I'm under myself, I always had my nose in a book, too. My phone goes to the bathroom with me or a book goes to the bathroom with me. If I am sitting waiting anywhere for anything, it is a book or my phone. And more often than not, it is my phone because I don't always have a book on my person. However, when I am in social situations or, or. Or otherwise out and about, I don't look at my phone hardly ever. And that's just an ADHD thing where I kind of forget that it exists. Right. It's just I tend to leave my phone on silent, no vibrate. So I, I just. It's in my pocket. I forget that it exists. I'm engaged in what I'm doing, and I've had people get upset with me for that. For my. And people who might be meeting up with me in an event that I didn't see their text message. Right. And we had made plans in advance, so I didn't necessarily need to see their text message, but I didn't. Or just for not being responsive enough in certain situations. Right. Because I genuinely forget that my phone exists. So I just wanted to kind of share that. Like, it's. As far as, like, the judgment of other people go, especially in the era of the Internet, where that's so much of what content is, you can't win either way. Right. So I think the very first point that we're trying to make here is this isn't about anybody else and what they think about phone usage, what they think is correct or is incorrect. This is about you and your relationship to this device. And if you're noticing that you want something to change, there's an opportunity there to get curious about what's going on.
- [13:13]
B
Oh, my God. Thank you for saying all of that because, like, okay, two things. First of all, my dad read some article or heard something somewhere. He. He was like, oh, you know, kids these days on their phone. He's like, you know, when your head is forward? He said something about how your head being forward an inch put like 10 pounds of pressure on your neck and how, like, everyone's gonna have, like, neck arthritis. Because he has neck arthritis. And he's like, everyone's gonna have neck arthritis because of the phones. I'm like. I'm like, okay, but, like, what about everybody, like, leaning over reading books? I'm like, you think in the 1800s, people weren't hunched over their desks? We had to handwrite everything. You think that didn't, like, stoop you over? Like, it's not. There is totally this moral thing that just like, oh, it's the new thing, and whatever the kids do is bad. Like, I don't know if you remember, Ash, like, in, like, the late 80s, early 90s, like, TV was the thing. And I remember, like, you know, lots of punk rock bands were, like, singing about how everyone just wanted to sit in front of their tv. Like, it's always something that we're judging everybody on, whether it's tv. I would, like. I would love if my kid did nothing but want to watch TV these days and not be on the phone. Like, I. That for me, that would be progress. But. So thank you for saying that. And then the other thing that you said that's really important here, too, is. Yeah, right. Like, with the advent of being able to instant message people, there's this idea now that, like, you should always be contactable and you should always be responding. You should always be available. And that if, like, people leave your text messages on read that it means something, or if they don't get back to you right away, that they're like, quote unquote, ghosting you. But, like, again, let's remember that that shits differently when you have adhd. And, like, task switching is hard. Right. For me, the hardest thing about communication is that it's task switching. If I'm doing something and somebody asks me a question, I have to, like, load the program of, like, what they're asking about. And, like, I probably don't have the data, so I'm gonna have to go look for it. I'm gonna get them the data. Then I'm gonna have to get back to what I was doing. That's a lot of energy for me. I'm not gonna do that at that time. But I have some clients for whom communication itself is very hard. Like, they agonize over every word and wanting to be understood. And so what it costs them to have this constant influx of communication, you know, is not fair. So you're. You're totally on the money with that. And I think where I'm going with. With this kind of, like, what you're saying is, I think for me, as a coach, when I'm working with clients on why they should change their phone usage. It really is about why. Right? It's not good enough to just be like, oh, being on the phone is bad, and I want to do it less. Like it's. It's easy to, to vilify the phone, but like, just really quickly. The anecdote I wanted to share that I told you before we were, we were coaching or before we were talking. You know, I've been on the board of directors of several nonprofits and I have a really hard time with board meetings because I'm. I'm a very decisive person. I like to talk about things, come to a decision, be like, what's the plan? I have found that I'm not like most board members. I have found that a lot of board members want to endlessly talk about things and then just go around in circles. I have a hard time being part of group decisions for this reason. I'm just. I guess I'm a quick decider. Okay. So every meeting that I'm in in a group, I have got to wait. And it is physically painful to just hear people go around and around and around and around and never get to a decision. And so I used to be part of this organization where we. It was like an anarchist structure, no hierarchy. And so the board meetings were even worse because, like, there was no structure and so there was no decision making process. And everyone wanted to be collaborative, which meant that nobody wanted to disagree with each other, which meant that everyone talked forever and never came to a conclusion. So in these meetings, it was painful for me to just sit and wait to the point at which I could be like, okay, guys, like, what are we doing? What's the, what's the move here? And so I would be on my phone, but I'd be listening. It was just too understimulating to sit and also to continually inhibit the impulse to interrupt and be like, get to the point. And when I eventually kind of parted ways with that organization, I had like a bit of a falling out. And one of the, like, sort of charges that was leveraged against me, somebody said like, oh, and you're always on your phone at the meetings. Like, that was okay. They had never brought that up to me. But also there's a reason, like, that's an accommodation for me. That's an accessibility tool because, like, I cannot participate in these meetings if I just have to sit there. So for me, I think there are parts of my life where the phone is adaptive, where, yeah, I might be on the phone all the time. But I don't care what you think about it because that's how I actually stay engaged. And there are other times where for me, I notice that my phone usage is a problem. Like at night when I get into bed and I'm about to fall asleep, but then I don't know if you've ever had this feeling, Ash, I don't know if you do this, but sometimes when I get into bed, I don't know what I'm looking for on the Internet, but I never quite get there. But I feel like I'm looking for something when I'm scrolling on social media, right? And there's just like, oh, I just need like a little bit more. But I can never quite arrive at like the conclusion, like, oh, I've had enough now, so I can easily lose a lot of time in bed. And when I'm with my child, you know, I don't want my child to see me on my phone around them too much. But it can be hard because sometimes being with a kid is, is either overstimulating or under stimulating. So there are parts of my life where I'm like, okay, here's where I don't want to use the phone. And this is why. And I think when it comes to working with my clients, that's the thing that I'm really interested in is like, what is important to you about not being on the phone? What does it mean to you to be on the phone? And also like, what is the phone doing for you and how are we going to replace that? If it's de stressing you, if it's, if it's stimulating you or understimulating you, if it's giving you a break, if it's, you know, like, how do we get that need met in another way?
- [18:44]
A
And dusty, let's bring it back to not all phone usage is bad. I had a client who worked in social media who became pretty disenchanted with working in social media, right? For, for all of, all of the reasons that most of our listeners can imagine, right? As somebody who is politically left and who just sees, sees the tides turning, right, Social media has gone from this very organic thing when you and I were young to this thing that's very algorithm driven and very marketing heavy and she just wasn't loving the work anymore. Coupled with social media consumption about current issues, as a, as a queer person, as a person of color, it's that I know for me, as a queer person, social media is like my kryptonite right now. Like it is the quickest way. And I only read it like I do not exist anywhere else on social media. That is by design. That is good for me. That is one of the best decisions I ever made for myself. And I'm not moralizing that for anyone else. That is what has been good for me. But I still read it. And the quickest way for me to get myself worked up in my body to start to feel anxious is to go to the all section of Reddit because my feed is pretty well curated and see all of the craziness that's going on in the world right now. It's just, it's not. I know that that's not healthy for me. This client was similarly re evaluating her relationship with the Internet and social media upon leaving her social media job and noticing those negative impacts, but also noticing where she was missing interaction. Because what she got into social media for and what she's really passionate about is media, TV shows and film. She loves talking about those types of things. She loves dishing about that type of stuff. And prior to it becoming her career to do so, she had a presence on social media that was just part of her personality. Just as something she enjoys doing. Not for any. Not to build a personal brand or for any any additional reason. It's just something that she enjoys is engaging with these communities in this way on the Internet. So for her, it was about kind of stepping back and reevaluating and like recognizing where there's value and where there's not value. Right. Two things can be true. Like social media can have value for you. It has had value for me in the past and I'm sure it will again. I am sure that I will not, I will not remain as off social media as I am in this moment. But for her, it was about distinguishing, like, what is time that I want to be spending and time that I don't want to be spending. And on top of that, you spoke to like the, the endless scrolling, the looking for something. Yes. When I. As soon as I click all on Reddit, that's. That's the place I'm already in. That is 100% the place I am already in. And feeds never end. They never end. So we can scroll forever. And so I had another client whose issue was more I do want to engage with this particular social media because I engage with it around my hobbies. Like, I enjoy that and I don't want to lose that. I enjoy these discussions that I have. It adds value. But the problem for that client was that would eventually turn into the second thing, right? Once, once he had kind of checked messages and replied to the things he wanted to reply to and seen what he wanted to see, then it, it turned into the scrolling that never ended. His solution was actually pretty novel and it's one that I've suggested to other clients with some amount of success and that was to pick up and hold something. And in his case, I think it was a rock that sat on his desk. But to just pick up and hold something before he started engaging in that way as a physical reminder that once he was done doing the things he actually wanted to do on the Internet, that he wanted to stop and move on to something else versus slowly pivoting into this endless scrolling. So listeners, the opportunity here is to not just be curious about what's not working, but also be curious about what you do enjoy. This doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition.
- [23:08]
B
Yeah. And I mean, I think where I'd like to go with this is maybe just talking about some of the things that I have seen work for people, you know, and just kind of like. Because once you get clear on your intention, then you can kind of, I think that's it, right? You have to be clear on your intention to figure out how to get there. And like, what are the, what are the steps? Like, what are the ADHD hacks here? Right? Because like a lot of these phones have these built in sort of like focus modes or like time limiters. And the thing I hear so commonly is like, that's not going to work for an ADHD brain a lot of the time. And the, the time, the screen time limiter things don't work because they can be very easily bypassed. Right. They require you to, in the moment when that little limit pops up, you have to remember that you care about it. And like in that moment you're like, no, just don't interrupt me. So I've had to, I've seen people get pretty, you know, pretty creative with how they, they do limit their screen time. And I'll just say one of my favorite ones and I'm not. This is not like a sponsorship pitch or anything, but like there's this one app called One Sec. And what I really like about it is, is it's not a screen time limiter, it's just like an if this, then that function where it. Anytime you go to open a certain website, it pops up and if you get the free version, it just says like, oh, take a breath. And then it shows you how many times you've gone on social media on that one, right? So it'll be like, oh, you've opened this app like 10 times in the last 12 hours. Do you. And then it'll ask you like, do you really want to go there? So you have to be like, yes, I really want to go to this website. But if you get the paid version, I think you can, like, if you get the paid version, I'm pretty sure you can like, customize it. So what I like about that is, for me, what I see is like, there's, there's two versions of every person with adhd. There's the version, there's the person who like, has the intention, like, oh, I don't want to use my phone. And then there's the person in the moment who has to carry out that intention, who has very different priorities than the person who set the intention. Right? And what I love is something like this creates a bridge between the two people, right? If you can customize your one sec to say, like, hey, hey, Dusty, like, don't go on your phone right now because you want to be present for your child. Remember you're with your child right now. Then I, I can have that moment where I with myself, where maybe I don't even notice. Cause there's that low self monitoring, there's that impulsivity, Maybe I don't even notice that I've whipped out my phone again. But as soon as that pops up, it goes, hey, hey, remember what you, what you care about. And it's like, oh, yeah, like, I love that it can deliver that message to you in that moment. So that's one that I think is pretty cool and, and certainly for me has been really helpful and for some other clients as well. But there's such an interesting, like a range of ways that people have worked around this. And that's the thing is I think ADHD success with the limiting phone usage looks like A, understanding your ADHD and getting curious about, like, what happens in the moment, and B, like looking at what types of things tend to work for you. So really, I think managing phone usage is more about you understanding your own ADHD and motivations than it is about the phone itself. Do you know what I mean?
- [26:06]
A
Absolutely, Dusty. Because my solution looks completely different from your solution. And this, and this may really only be applicable to the elder millennials listening. Younger generations often don't even own computers, much less desktop PCs. But I use a desktop PC to this day. So my computer lives in a place, right? And I grew up in an era where the Internet lived in a place. And so my solution over the years, even when I was more on social media, even when I did have a presence on Twitter and I was spending a lot more time both on my professional Twitter and also on another Twitter account that I had that was related mostly to jam bands, is taking the apps off my phone, right? And so my engagement was in a place, in a chair, in a time and place and largely that has remained for me, right? I, I do very little on my phone. I am hesitant to install an app on my, any type of social media or communication app on my phone if I don't have to. The only, the only apps I have on my phone for those purposes are my messaging app and Discord because I use that professionally and I do also I'm part of some service organizations that use it as well, but I'm careful about what other Discord servers I join. Anyway, the point being that for me it's a very low tech solution of the Internet lives in a place and that place is not your phone. That place is. You have this big nice monitor that you could be looking at instead. And so that becomes when I'm sitting here, that is the time for me to do Internet and social media activities. Not, not when I'm out and about, not when, not when it's just the phone. When I'm out and about. My phone is a tool. It is there so people can call me and people can message me and I can be in contact with who I need to be in contact with. If I'm sitting waiting for something, I can pull up Reddit and read it, which is the one like non practical app that exists on my phone these days. And by the way, that's not necessarily the solution for everyone. That's just the solution that worked best for me. After trying a number of other ways to, to gate my time to, to leave the phone in another room to whatever else. I just remove the apps and I don't reinstall them and I don't use a password manager on my phone. So I don't know the passwords to those apps off the top of my head. So even if I want to download them and install them, I can't.
- [28:31]
B
I was about to say like, wow, way to, way to advertise. Get your, Someone's going to gank your phone out and be like, ash doesn't have any password managers. Let me steal this. But I see what you're saying there. I was going to be like ash, don't tell everyone you don't have password manager. I get it, I get it. It's so funny. This is like a great example again of like, how we're so opposites. Like, I think for me, one of the other reasons that I realized that social media and using the phone was an issue is because in my downtime, when I wanted stimulation, picking the phone was like the easier what Cam would call like the bigger signal, right? Than something else that was more meaningful and meant more to me with my identity. Like listening to music, playing music, reading a book, you know, doing something. Like, it was always like, I'd rather just go on the phone, which isn't even that fun, versus like put on a record or something, right? But what I realized is I actually ended up having to use the phone to reach those goals. So like, I got really into this app called Goodreads, which is like just a book app, but like, lots of people had reading challenges and I found that you could track your progress. And so I used the Goodreads app to really motivate myself to put the phone down and like read a book. And same thing with like figuring out new music to listen to or like wanting to practice music, right? Like, sometimes practicing music feels hard. You have to plug things in. You have to go sit in a place, right? So going to navigating to like YouTube and looking at like videos of other bands or getting really inspired by musicians that I like and watching some watch like passively consuming some content was often like sort of the ramp up that I needed to be able to. So like, so rather than just having it be one or the other, I'm like, what if I can use the one thing in service of the other? And that's how I kind of ended up doing it. Rather than just getting stuck in social media forever, just.
- [30:18]
A
Just want to toss in one more thing about how, how opposite we are. And dusty, you can actually see this because you're, you're looking at my background here in my office is when it comes to music, I've actually again gone completely the opposite way. I have gone back to CDs. I have gone back to physical media because they're and, and not just physical media, but CD is because vinyl has gotten really expensive. CDs are dirt cheap. I actually still have a CD player in my car. So that thing you were saying earlier about the difference between being able to access it instantly or like having to go to a store, like, I like going to a record store and digging around and seeing what I find and picking something up. And just throwing it in and seeing what it's like. And I like that it's disconnected from the phone and from technology, but that's, that's me. Right. And so again, here we are, two totally different, Totally different solutions to a similar challenge.
- [31:13]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I think at the end of the day, like, I see a lot of news articles about studies regarding our attention as a species and how it's our, like our, our, our fundamental way of paying attention is being shifted by the Internet. And like, I'm sure that's true. I haven't read any of those studies and I'm sure it's a thing. And, you know, teenagers are getting less sleep because of the phone, yada, yada. Like, there's lots of scary headlines about, about our attention and our focus on the Internet. And I think for me, like, if you're a person with ADHD and you already struggle with guilt about not focusing and not paying attention, like, just approach those things with caution. Like, yes, in a global sense, it's important that we, that we have some intention around our focus and around our attention and around wanting to be able to cultivate it and have more of it and have more presence when we want it. But, like, guilt and shame isn't the way. And so if you're already feeling like that's hard for you, you don't need to, like, really stress about it. Like, it is what it is. You're gonna do the best you can. You're gonna get there, go at your own pace. It's just not gonna be helpful to, like, get into the sort of panic, doom and gloom of like, oh, no, the horrors of, of the Internet and social media are ravaging our attention, you know. Yeah. Like, when I was a kid, I had just the same amount of tension as I do now. It just went to, like, books and daydreaming and maladaptive daydreaming and like, making up stories in my head and doodling on paper. Like, it. I wasn't paying any more attention than I was now. So I'm just not going to, like, get into a moral panic about it. And I just don't want people with ADHD to feel even worse than they already feel because, like, it is hard. Just do your best and don't beat yourself up. That's what I want to say.
- [33:00]
A
Well said, Dusty. And I will add, as somebody who is a little lower technology by choice, like, all of those things you named, including doodling, are things that I still do. That meeting scenario that you described earlier, I would 100% make sure that I had a notebook with me that I could doodle in during that time, lest that same scenario would drive me as crazy as it was driving you. Is the medium presenting the challenges a new thing in our society? Yes, it is. Are these challenges new, particularly for people with adhd? No, they are not. So instead of focusing on the scary headlines or the shame, turn your attention towards why do you want to change this? Why is this important to you? If you were my client and this is what you were bringing, that's the first question I would ask you is why is this important? Let's start to link to some of the positive outcomes you're looking for, and then let's figure out how we're going to get from here to there. So rather than focusing on the thing you don't want to do, what's the thing you want to do instead? What are rather than what we're moving away from in terms of phone usage, what are we moving towards? Why does this matter? So, listeners, until next week, I'm Ash and I'm Dusty and this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
- [34:15]
B
SA.