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- [00:00]
A
Hey, listeners, it's Dusty. It's our summer break, so Ash and I are taking this time to plan the future of translating adhd. And I have picked some awesome and fun episodes to rerun for y' all for the summer in the meantime. So we're going to be starting it back up in September. Don't ask me when because I don't know, because I'm super duper organized. But anyway, I hope you guys have an awesome summer, and I will see you in the fall. Bye. Bye.
- [00:33]
B
Hi, I'm Shelley.
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C
And I'm Cam.
- [00:35]
B
And this is Translating adhd. So it's kind of funny that our last couple of episodes have really turned into common, limiting beliefs that we see in our clients, that we see in ourselves, that are really hallmarks of the ADHD experience for so many, many of us. And so today we're going to tackle another one and one that we talked about a little bit at the end of last week's episode, and that is clean slate thinking. The reason this comes up is because clean slate thinking can sometimes lead to cut and run behavior, which I talked about last week when I talked about my best friend. But let's talk about what clean slate thinking means and why it's not a good thing thing. So back in my organizing days, Cam, I can't tell you how many clients, when I would first go to their house and we'd be talking about what the spaces look like now, what they want them to look like, what their goals are, how much they want to downsize, etc. Almost every client I ever had at some point during this session would look at me and say, I just want to put a match to the whole thing. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever just wanted to put a match to the whole thing?
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C
Oh, yeah, I did that with relationships all through the 20s. It's like, let's put a match to this.
- [02:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's cut and run.
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C
A little different interpretation. But, yeah, let's go with. Let's stick with yours around stuff.
- [02:12]
B
So I would respond with, okay, if that's how you really feel, it would be a lot less Expensive to call 1-800-JUNK and have them take everything out. You can literally put a match to it. What do you think? Do you think a client ever took me up on that, Cam?
- [02:35]
C
No, I don't think so.
- [02:36]
B
No. Because once I made that possibility a reality, they suddenly realized that there were things that were important to them, that there were things that mattered to them in these spaces, and that a clean slate Was not going to solve the problem. And in fact, it was going to create a bunch of new problems. Now that's really easy to see when it comes to stuff, but I do want to go back to your example of relationships because there are some other areas in which we find ourselves doing clean slate behavior. Because we can. You can't, realistically, unless you want to go to jail for arson, put a match to your home.
- [03:19]
C
Okay, this is figurative, listener. Figurative.
- [03:23]
B
Right. But you can put a match to relationships or jobs. Oh, man. Cam, I can't tell you how many jobs I had in college, but it was like more than one a month for a two or three year period. Like, my resume was an absolute disaster.
- [03:44]
C
Wow. Yeah. What were the. What were some of the most more memorable cut and runs there with respect to work?
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B
Oh, geez. Let's see. The time that I closed the store in the middle of the day because I was just done. My boss called, he said something real shitty to me. I was the only person there. So what did I do? I locked up the store and I left. I don't think I ever even returned the keys.
- [04:19]
C
I love that. That is phenomenal. My experience was really around relationships. And like, I recall. I recall getting a phone call from an old girlfriend who. I left this. This whole like, group of friends, like, and not did I not. I didn't leave. I vanished. It was like one day, Cam was there, the next, and then, you know, soon after, Cam was gone, like, he was removed. Okay. And I get a call months later from one person in that group who I was dating. And she was like, was the problem me? Did you have a problem? I'm like, no, I didn't have a problem with you. And this is before I knew I had ADD and it wasn't her. It was kind of the complexity. Things were getting complicated. There were a lot of moving parts. And my M.O. when that happened was to cut and run. It was just, it seemed at that time a solution. This is a solution. The way I can get through this is just be done. No goodbyes, no. No closure. Just gone. Walk away and start over. Right. It felt like to me, it was kind of like this. We were talking about this before the call. It was this sort of wanting to cut and run or put a torch to it. Right. Because it's getting too weird, too complicated, too overwhelming. And then this kind of like this magical thinking around. Well, I've just. I can just. I'm just going to start over. So you could just go find another group and start fresh. Clean slate.
- [06:24]
B
I'm glad you brought up magical thinking, Cam, because here's the reality of clean slate thinking and clean slate behavior. One of two things happens when we are stuck in this limiting belief. The first is exactly what we both described with relationships and jobs. Cut and run. Lock up the store and leave. They can mail my last paycheck to me. I just abandon the friend group. I'll go find new people. Cut and run. Now. When we do this behavior, we don't learn anything. There's no growth. It's just a cycle that repeats, that repeated for me through 20 something jobs in less than two years.
- [07:12]
C
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm trying to. I'm trying to appreciate that. And that's phenomenal. I mean, that's amazing.
- [07:22]
B
You know, at one point I had to have my entire job history for something. I don't remember what it was. It was like a background check or something like that. And so if it still exists.
- [07:35]
C
Yeah, Talk about like the worst possible task for someone with adhd.
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B
Oh, terrible, terrible. But I did it. So if. And I. I kept the list for a really long time in case I ever needed to do it again. So I'm curious if I still have it. I will look and see if I can give you a concrete number. But it was a significant number of jobs in a very small period. So that's the first thing that can happen to us is this sort of repeat cycle of, okay, clean slate. It's going to be different this time. Things are going to be better. And then rinse, repeat, things aren't better. We're still our same ADHD brains currently unmanaged in this magical thinking of clean slates. Wash, rinse, repeat, over and over again.
- [08:24]
C
Right.
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B
Second one, and the one that I saw with organizing clients is we stay stuck. We stay stuck in the fantasy of when I'm organized, when I have more time, when all of the things are done, there's this magical land somewhere in the future. It's always in the future because it doesn't exist. It can't be in the present where the to dos are done and our stuff is together and we're organized and we're not overwhelmed and things are easy and life is good, but it doesn't exist. And as we just talked about, there's no way to force it to exist. Putting a match to it is not going to create the clean slate that you're looking for.
- [09:14]
C
Wow, you're just bringing up so many memories for me, Shelly. Thank you so much. Oh, my goodness. You know I didn't know that this was going to be therapeutic too, but it certainly is. And when you talk about sort of wash and rinse, repeat, I always like to bring in the Bill Murray movie Groundhog's Day. Bill Murray's the Weatherman, and he's a jerk. And the magical thing that happens is that he has to learn and get this through his thick skull. So every day he wakes up with none of the learning from the previous day. And this is one of the challenges when you have adhd, is linking past experiences, learning to what you're doing going forward to change that behavior. There's a breakdown because of attention, because of memory. We can't recall that. And so then we have this dynamic of being caught in this almost like a movie like situation where we're just damned to repeat the same behavior. Also, I mean, I think it, I think we've said this before is that when we don't know about our ADHD or even when we do, we still have these coping behaviors that are so familiar. And it goes back to, I think, two things in particular that can, that can happen. One is overwhelm. You're overwhelmed with the decisions that have to be made. And that's when they. The person called you as an organizer is to help them with these decisions. But they're at their end, they're tired, they're overwhelmed, and again, the prefrontal cortex has gone offline. And that's when they're sort of like emphatic about, can we just put a match to it? Can we just make it go away, clean it off? And that's not how things happen. That's not how change happens. One of our earliest episodes was around how to create positive and sustained change. And when you look at all the different change models out there, it's about contemplation, it's about awareness of a need for change and then taking action to create that change that you want to have happen. Well, if you think about the perfect place where ADD shows up and throws a wrench in, it's around building that awareness or that understanding and then making that change happen. I would also say that I think that there's the overwhelm. There can also be boredom. I think that a lot of our listeners will have this sort of, again, the novelty's worn off and that wherever they are, it's just not stimulating, it's not exciting anymore. The grass is greener somewhere else. And it's this kind of desire to jump and cut and run to something more exciting. That continual Change is stimulating, but then we never really get into this place of being, building, developing, investing, whether it's in a skill set that you learn in a job or in relationships, or having a life that fits, having a life and having an experience that really reflects your values. Because I would bet that many of the people that you work with have that clutter and want to put a match to it, actually have values that are in conflict with their reality, that they really desire simplicity, they really value a spartan way, and they can't have that. And that is the irony of living with adhd. There's lots of people out there struggling that their outward appearance does not match up with what really matters to them.
- [13:21]
B
Absolutely. And I see this a lot with my clients, that integrity comes up as a value, as something that is core to who they are. And it's so difficult because so many of the things we struggle with as people with adhd, deadlines, being on time, doing what we say we're going to do, living up to the promises that we've made, can put us out of integrity. And it's really. I can't overstate how awful the experience is to be that far removed from your values. And when you don't know it, and most of our clients don't, they come to us. They don't know. They know that they're in pain. They know that they desperately want something to change or give or be different, but they don't know the source of that pain. So you're living outside of your values and you don't even know it. I was certainly living outside of my values when I was going through a job a month or more, or when I was abandoning relationships that were important to me. I was living way outside of my values. But I didn't even see the behavior. I knew I was miserable, but I didn't have the words cut and run. I didn't recognize that as a pattern of mine. So, as you said, awareness is the place we have to start.
- [14:57]
C
Awareness is the place to start and then to bring in our process of understand, own and translate. And what you just said there, that ability to articulate your experience, is putting words to it. There's something that I learned just recently myself is that we can have sensations or feelings and don't have language around it because it's not in the language center of the brain. And part of that understanding and owning it is to start to give it language of what is it? What is this? Is it something that I'm doing that is to my benefit of What I want to achieve. Going back to our recent topic around Big Agenda, we talked about Big Agenda in a recent episode. And I think that starting to get a sense of what matters, that context piece of what really matters, and starting to think about limiting scope. So two things in particular here. If we're going to kind of move into, okay, what do we do about this? Is that okay?
- [16:11]
B
It is, but I'd like to interject before we make that shift, if you don't mind, I have one more thing to add. So, listener, what I want to add in here is if you find yourself desiring a clean slate, I actually believe that that is a signal for a lack of awareness. You don't know where your pain is coming from, if that is the solution you're seeking. And the reason I believe this is because of what worked for my organizing clients. Again, back to their statement, I just want to put a match to the whole thing. And my response of, guess what? I can make that happen. I can get a bunch of guys in here and have them take it all away. We can do that. And it will cost you less money than hiring me to help you organize it over time. Let's do it. What that did, bringing that into reality clarified things for my clients. And what it clarified was different for each client. But all of a sudden, what they really wanted out of quote, unquote, being organized, what that meant for them became very clear. And then we were able to talk about what their goals were, what the work was going to look like, and that kind of thing. So if you're stuck in clean slate, I just want to put a match to it. I just want to cut and run. There's some key awareness that you need to dig for. What are you running from? What do you want to be free from in this clean slate world that doesn't exist.
- [17:48]
C
I appreciate you saying that. And to look at this really is an opportunity to learn about yourself and what matters. There's also another piece here that I think is at play, is what we pay attention to, grows. And if we're focused on launching the new thing and when we struggle with, say, finishing or completing, that can be an area where we don't have a lot of practice. Number one, we don't have a lot of awareness. Number two, I think that that's another thing that can happen is it's sort of like that now, not now, experience with time. There's now and there's not now. The same thing goes with any kind of engagement with work, relationships, with the stuff around Your house, kind of taking things to a completion point. I think one of the reasons why we don't kind of finish or have that closure is that we don't have a lot of experience with it. Number one, we don't have a lot of awareness of it. And if we don't have awareness of it, how can we place value on it? So starting to kind of think about, okay, maybe you're stuck or in a tight spot and, you know, you're tired of a task, a project, and you really just decide this, this, you just want to put a match to it. It's like, how can I. How can I extract? Do I have to see this all the way to the completion that I set forth way back in the past? Because that's another thing you can do is you can modify the outcome. That's fair game. Just because you said you were going to do something three months ago doesn't mean you have to do that thing. And that's another thing that we do is, okay, we name it. It's like, I got to do this, and anything else is failure. As you get in, you realize, oh, this is not exactly the way I thought it was going to be. It's harder. It's more decisions to make. We talked about utilizing resources. We talked about utilizing supportive people. Can you pull someone in to help you get to that place of completion and closure? And what can that look like to start, to become a student of finishing up? It might be that you do leave a job or relationship, but it's doing it on your terms and not on this kind of magical thinking of, oh, I can just put a match to it and start anew. The other thing is, I like this whole concept of limiting scope, which the ADHD brain does not do, right?
- [20:45]
B
No, not at all. I see this with my clients all the time because they know my background is in organizing. They sort of see, snowball out. I'm going to get it together, and they snowball out. And the number of things involved in feeling like I have it together becomes insurmountable. And we don't realize we're doing that to ourselves. We're bad at limiting scope and we're bad at setting realistic expectations for ourselves. Because that's the other thing is the magical thinking of this magical future place just isn't about what isn't there. It's also about what is there, what we think will be there. You know, our life is so together. I'm so together. My house looks like it belongs in a magazine. I've Been in a lot of houses, most of which belong to neurotypicals. Okay, okay. Nobody lives that way. Nobody lives that way. The very few people that do live that way make themselves insane same living that way because it's an impossible standard, but yet it's what we envision which.
- [21:57]
C
Is that perfectionism, that black and white thinking and to limiting scope can be kind of feel like this settling. I am settling. Or less than. I like this analogy of, of a snowplow. And you know, I know it's summertime now, but a snowplow, you never see a snowplow with like a blade that can push across seven lanes. You don't see it. You don't see it because it's just physically impossible for a snowplow to move snow that much material across seven lanes. But with adhd, it's typically that's often what we will do is like I hired you, I want the whole enchilada. And anything less is not success. But limiting scope is if you want to get to that completion point, to get to that point of finishing something, to have your space reflect your values. It's picking and choosing time, attention and energy. The acronym is TEA T E A Time, energy and attention are finite. And that's another place to move forward. Part of that magical thinking is informed by thinking that those three elements are infinite listeners. I'm sorry, they are not. You do not have infinite time, energy or attention. So it's a matter of making choices. And we've talked a lot about this about when you choose where you say yes to certain things, you have to say no to other things. And developing that powerful no to focus on where's your snowplow going to plow and choose that you don't have to clear the whole parking lot. Really. Your paths. And what are those paths for you?
- [23:54]
B
I used to tell organizing clients that this organizing project needs to happen in the context of the rest of your life and not the other way around.
- [24:07]
C
Like that. Oh, I like that.
- [24:09]
B
And it's true. And we do the same thing in coaching. We work with our clients to create a life that fits, but they still have to live their lives. There is no pause button. There really is no pause button. We know that because we got kind of a pause button in the last few months. And guess what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't work. The path to change is not pausing and cleaning this late. It's just not.
- [24:40]
C
That's well said. Very well said and likely a good place to finish up. Don't you think?
- [24:46]
B
Sure. If you like what we're doing here on the podcast, you can help us out by leaving a rating or review wherever you listen. If you have feedback to. To share or a topic that you'd like to hear, please hit us up on the website translatingadhd. Com or on Twitter at translatingadhd. And until next week, I'm Shelley.
- [25:06]
C
And I'm Kim.
- [25:07]
B
And this was Translating adhd. Thanks for listening.