Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the all the things ADHD podcast. Oh
things Yeah. I am one of your co hosts Lee Skallerup Bessette. And I am another one of your co hosts, Amy hope Morrison, the only other co hosts. Actually, if that was confusing, there is just two of us. And one of us will be intro and it was me.
We were you know, it happens pretty much every week we don't have this or that every week actually, every it does happen every week that we bungled. The introduction is just some weeks, there's no recording of it.
Recording we bungled the introduction, and most weeks we fumble the schedule.
Yeah, it's exactly. All right. Um, so, today, Amy, we want to talk about you the user manual, and then not you, Amy, but you, you neurodivergent person, the user manual?
Yeah. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot. I know we were joking last time about you watched it here or listen to it here. First people the birth of another hyperfocus special interest academic publication from Amy and yeah, that's what we're going I'm thinking about am writing about Kripp wisdom and how we don't need to turn all neurodivergent people into some baseline normative version before we can understand how to help, right? Because that seems like most of our treatments are about we're gonna get you to baseline Right? Like so many women, I think you two have had this experience of like trying to get diagnosed with ADHD. And we're like, Yeah, but you're anxious and depressed. Let's deal with that first, and then we can can check about the other things, right. But it actually doesn't, doesn't work like that. And similarly, a lot of the sort of life hacks proposed for people with ADHD largely seem to be about turning yourself into a normal person who can't. And so I've been reading the ADHD adult ADHD specialist, William Dodson, who is the man who brought us the concepts of ADHD motivation, being about interest, challenge, novelty and urgency, right. And he puts forth this idea to that we have to work with the ADHD brain in order to meet our own goals in the world and that the first goal should not be transforming yourself into a neurotypical person. Because it doesn't work on he also suggests that most advice that works for neurotypical people, as we've talked about on this podcast before, does extensively doesn't seem to help neurodivergent people. So I thought we could talk a little bit today, you and I Lee about some of the things that we've discovered, in our own ADHD journeys in writing the user manual for ourselves, right? What we've discovered, can help us push aside some of our own or or obviate some of our own earlier dysfunctions into ADHD ways of getting things done, that are not maybe neurotypical ways of getting things done across a variety of domains. How's that sound?
I think that sounds great. I think you've just like pretty much captured our, our entire podcast in a nutshell, is us fumbling and trying to figure out with the workbook of us, yeah, the guide of us. But you know, I think that that's, you know, and I think it's not just ADHD, but I think neurodivergent generally, right, like I think of of the, the workbook of me, which would be my youngest versus the workbook of me, which would be my oldest, and they're very definitely, again, as we say all the time. I'm surprised that your experience with it is not the same as mine. So I think I think one of the biggest ones, but I don't know, maybe it's a chicken and egg sort of thing. But I think one of the biggest parts for me was just being able to accept the fact that I'm different and that I worked out really liberated me to just be like, Yeah, all right, let's do things differently. Now, maybe you have to find those and see that they work for you before you can find, can sort of embrace that. So again, that sort of chicken and egg but just to just to get to the point where you're okay, with your brain, your style, your modus operandi being different from the normies
Oh, that's the hardest part.
Yeah. Lee Yeah, it is. It really is. And there's no straightforward guide to that. There's like, I blame it on my Fuckit 40s that I wish that I was, you know, sort of did this at this point. But like, you know, a switch went off when I turned 14. I was like, fuck everything. I'm gonna do it my way. But, you know, I mean, it shouldn't have to be until you're 40 that you make that decision. Jim shouldn't be, but, you know, that's how it work for me. But we also only found out in our, at least in my case, my late 30s, that this was the reality. So, you know, and I, I'm hoping that I'm modeling for my own neurodivergent children, that it's okay that they work differently and to advocate for themselves and to create space for them to try and figure out what works best. So that hopefully, they are more okay with it than I ever was. Yeah.
So there's like two, two components to that, right. So, on the one hand, we might say, Lee, that you and I were were unlucky, in the sense that we made it all the way substantially into adulthood and into our careers and into our sort of marriages and child rearing years without that insight into the why, of our own kind of difficulties, or dysfunctions, or special interests or, or unique talents. We didn't know why. And it was difficult for us maybe to, to come to a place of self acceptance when we didn't really know who we were right. And that comes also, there's a resistance there. You know, we've talked a lot about internalized ableism. Because there's a lot of moralizing components to neuro divergence, right? So for ADHD people, it's normally like, you know, you're flaky, you're unreliable, you're too loud, it's antisocial, you have no concern for others, right? You let people down, you're not trying to selfish, you're selfish, because you can, you know, you're you've got a lot of focus for the things that you want to do. Right, but not yet things that you need to do. Right. So that we take those on, and we feel sometimes it'd be like accepting ourselves in our, our diagnosis, when we get it involves accepting that we are bad people in those ways, right? We're sort of like what that what that involves, right? If you're saying that this behavior I have the way that other people have reacted to it, I'm stuck without for life, because there's something in my brain that makes me unreliable and flaky and antisocial and too much and selfish. Right, then well, great. I still wish I'd there's a way I could cure myself of that. Right. So we have that sort of internalized ableism coming from inside our own heads and our kids sometimes, right, you're you're mentioning and I know, this is true of many kids that I know from talking to them, when their parents is that people who are identified early, often resist the accommodations that are offered to them and their IEP is at school. Right? And partially, that's because they don't want to be different when they're younger. Right? You know, I don't want to be the one that you know, gets extra time on tests, because that means people think I'm dumb. Right. But often it's a it's a factor of the accommodations that are being offered or are not actually appropriate. Yeah, right, that there's still this kind of like moralizing focus on kids need to improve their behaviors, right? They need to comply more, and they should take meds for that, but also that they're a little dim. So they need like, extra time on tests, or if they need to do their tests orally. It's because their own little bill, right? So for kids, often they can feel like being made to be special in those ways. Like, teachers will use my kid always called the special voice like, Would you like a little bit of extra time to work on this worksheet? I know you struggle with this, right? Like, I just want to write? Yeah, why would you? Why would you want that. And I remember, I guess where this started clarifying for me was there was like autism consultant at my kids school at one point who was like, you know, we can reduce their workload and give them something less challenging. And I said, No, actually, it needs to be more challenging, right? Yeah, to give something to be interested in. Right. So the first stage here is accepting that you have differences, right? Those differences are pervasive, lifelong, and that transforming yourself to a baseline level of normal so that you can buy all the same productivity books as everybody else and find them useful that that's what's desirable. So step one, I guess is having to let that part go. Yeah, did you find that hard? Leave?
I mean, like it's it's it's sort of like now and not now. Like now I'm like this and not now I wasn't like this. Now I can't tell you how long that knot now period was? Sure. It feels like it happened overnight. Clearly, it didn't. But again, it it's like I really feel like a switch did go off. In in my head at but you know, I had been dealing with depression and anxiety and you know, a lot of other stuff for a decade, right until I got the sort of ADHD diagnosis, diagnosis and writing lot of things and stuff kind of again snapped into place and stuff started making a lot more sense than it did before. And I turned 40. And, you know, I was in a place in my life where, you know, like, there was just this sort of confluence events that made it. That moment felt easy, but I know that it wasn't because it was, you know, a lifetime, but specifically about a 1015 year period in the making. Yeah, of like, of, of, you know, really having the time and the self awareness. And, and I think this is the other hard thing for people who are ADHD is that we are more emotionally in a lot of cases in mature than our peers. Right? So that we are like, I used to say this all the time, where I went to university, and, you know, I was one of the younger people, like who lived in residence, but it was like, I, I was 19, but felt 15, which is actually about right, right, when they talk about the all of that kind of stuff where you know, this is, and it's also a really interesting, a conversation with a parent on our swim team, about their own teenager, who the mother was saying is not behaving like I would expect a 15 year old to behave, right. And I was like, Yeah, but for two years, they didn't have to make any decisions. For two years, they were in their rooms by themselves with the same people, if you had a bubble, or just their family, if you didn't have a bubble, and they didn't have any social interactions, they didn't have any social pressure, they didn't have any, like nothing. And so, again, this researcher around COVID are finding this social emotional lag in children as they're moving through. And I think it's funny again, this sort of cryptologists like, yeah, that's what ADHD people are all the time, where, you know, we're talking about you can do this really well. But you're completely emotionally dysregulated. You know, right. And so it's almost like, my emotional maturity finally, kind of caught up to my age in a way to where I now had the missing capacity to process this in a way that I didn't have because it was delayed. And now again, this is my just me thinking about that, but it put it that is also a part of the process is that we are asking if we're saying to children, or even young adults ourselves, to be able to engage in this process and acceptance is that you are in a lot of cases behind you're the norm, the norm, you're behind the curve. Yeah, that is also okay. So it just might take time. Yeah, what you're
describing is called, like developmental asynchrony. Right? So we talked about, right, you're very you're of a certain age, but you have this sort of like impulse control of somebody five years younger, you have maybe, like, this is often like the case among autistic people, too, that the intellectual developmental age is different from the, from the chronological age, right? So you might be able to read very complex texts, but not realize when kids are excluding you from something, right? That you can pair that it's often emotional immaturity, they are to just a bundle, sort of sensory lack of integration, right? And so you can sort of pair that asynchrony and development or either behind or ahead, which makes it difficult to do peer learning, right? Because the groups are circulating are not at the same developmental stages. You right?
Pair that with Why are you such a baby? And you're like, right, yeah, I
got that to a lot pair that the emotional lability right, which is that to say that we are a lot, we have a lot higher variability and access to emotions,
we feel all the things we feel all at once very strongly.
Yeah, so our feelings can change quite rapidly, quite dramatically, and quite frequently, right. So you've pair that with emotional immaturity, which is developmental, like immaturity. Again, like feels like a moralizing? Yeah, we're right. But it isn't. It's just like, if you think a lot of the work that toddlers are doing in their bodies actually is learning to integrate the sensory environment so that it makes sense, right? And as they're doing that they're already beginning this process of pruning, through the neurons in their brain into patterns of things that make sense and don't right and that's part of the the developmental disorder of ADHD is an autism as well as that that pruning in the brain doesn't happen. So you're still getting way more sensory information in unintegrated way as you physically age, but your brain is not doing the types of activities that allow other children to tune out the things that they don't need to notice right and
to figure out when things are awkward and inappropriate or?
Yeah, yeah. So step one, then that is the hardest part or is like I had a therapist that used to say I said it was simple. I didn't say it was easy, right is to come to this place of self acceptance is that many of the things that you have noticed about yourself or that others have pointed out to you about who and how and what you are in your interactions with others, or in your personal habits, you know, call you like a slob or like, whatever it happens, because you don't do enough laundry or whatever, like your windows didn't get replaced soon enough, or whatever it happens to be. To sort of say, yeah, that actually is who I am. Right? And then release yourself of the moral judgment there. That's hard, right? Yes. So that is the first thing. Once you get there, I think there are three ways are you ready? I actually wrote a list.
No, this is. So before we started recording, Amy showed me she's like, I wrote notes. And I have a list and I wrote something down, and I even printed some stuff out. And I looked at her and I said, So what are you trying to avoid doing right now
are many things. Like I had a plumbing disaster at my house this week, people online can probably see the photos but we lost all the water to our hosts on Saturday because our water softener like dyed extravagantly blasting resin beads throughout the entire plumbing system, destroying every last tap in the house, we had no water at all. And now I need to replace like four different faucets. We've replaced the showerhead. We need a new water softener like it is a disaster at my house. And I just wanted to focus on something that was interesting to me that I could accomplish. And so I made a list and it was a subordinated list and I had a handout. Now I'm ready. I needed to feel in control of something today. So y'all are getting organized any today not riffing, ami today. So here we go. It's like underlying bullet pointed list. When we want to achieve our goals in the world, which is something that ADHD people struggle with, doesn't matter what the goal is. So I'll say in general, we struggle to achieve our goals, because we have learned ways of achieving goals or been told ways of achieving goals that we cannot activate, right? We just can't do it. So we need to find ways to get things done. Maybe it's work. Maybe it's a parenting goal. Maybe it's like a hobby goal. Maybe it's a personal development goal. You may have a lot of goals in your life that you authentically really want to accomplish and yet find yourself sitting wrapped up in a towel on a footstool outside of your bathroom. Reading Apple news for an hour and a half and never getting in the shower. Right. Sounds about right. That sounds about right. Right.
So there are three the time I had to take a day off so I could take a shower. Oh yeah,
I've that will live in infamy. And that will live in this podcast because Yeah, girl same right in there. Done that.
I thought because my plumbing exploded just cuz. Well, yeah, I
can't even have a shower in my house. Well, I can now dodgy for a bit. I don't wanna think. But yeah, I spent 20 minutes wandering around the house looking for my office keys because I knew I needed to come into the office to work because if I stayed home, I was going to be too distressed by the plumbing implements all over the house and my piano was there and other things I like to waste time on. So I want to come in and then I spent 20 minutes wandering around the house looking for my keys getting angrier and angrier because I was not getting to campus right. I was wandering around my house with my outdoor shoes on and my mittens and my purse, but I couldn't find my keys. And I came here and I had to get security to let me in. Which was embarrassing, because there's no staff members here. And then yeah, my emergency keys were in the drawer and my main keys were hanging on the hook right next to the door where they should be. So I won't forget that. Yeah, when I leave, right? And then I was like, just angry anyhow, how do we get things done? There are three ways I'm going to propose to you one of them. Three strategies, three categories of studies. One is removing simple barriers. That's the first one second one is make whatever task you have to do more attractive, right? And then the third one is make whatever task you have to do less aversive. Right? So your self want it more or make it less terrifying somehow. So the first one is easiest. Remove simple barriers and we've talked on this podcast about that before so I will give you one and we'll see what which ones you can think of so they might be sensory, right sensory issues. I had to go get my taxes done. Yesterday, the place that we take it is like loud and chaotic and the people are often very irritating. So I brought my knitting and I brought my noise cancelling headphones because like I do not listen to it's always Bryan Adams I don't like every radio station you turn on within five minutes it's going to be Drake or Bryan Adams are like both on baby right and con buzz like ADC was also the Eurythmics and stuff anyhow, I put those on because a barrier to me I'm going to do that was every time I go there, I leave with a headache. And I'm bored and enraged the whole time. So I thought if I bring it in, I won't be bored and enraged. And if I were my noise canceling headphones, I will not get the headache. Because the radio there is so bad, it just makes me want to die. Right? So that's a simple barrier to me getting something done that is not that hard for me to do except the sensory environment there. It just crushes me. So I've removed a sensory barrier. Are there parts of your life where you have a sensory or organizational self accommodation?
Um, so I will say, This is my shower story. I removed the step of actually having to turn on the shower and somehow that it's right, like, I just get in after my husband leave the shower on he'll leave the shower on. I don't know why that works. Maybe it's also the accountability where it's like he's there. And he goes, Okay, get in the shower. And you're like, because he's gotten the bother
of saying like, Lee I'm out. Yes, you and you like, oh, okay, I want you to do this for me.
Thank you so much. Let me get in the shower. Yeah. You know, and then so that's, that's one of the ones on, like, I'm thinking about my son around not necessarily sensory, like he uses his noise cancelling earbuds and that'll help and but it's pairing a task with another task, and maybe this is the makeup more enjoyable one.
Yeah, I'm jumping
ahead. So like one? Like, yeah, I don't know. So that that shower one's a good one. I think that like, I don't have as much like the the barriers are more. Like it's just the test.
We talked once about like your front hallway, right about how you're trying to get your kids toy? Yes, they're stuck. Yes. So that your your front hallway, it's not that you have to clean it all the time. It's that it doesn't get messy. Right. And I had talked also that
still isn't working. It's not working at all. It's uh but ya know, I mean, I think that there's, there's one of the one of the other one of the other parts, and maybe this isn't this is sort of not necessarily removing barriers or making it more pleasurable, but just creating stable routine.
That's a barrier, right? Yeah, we talked about that, I think last time, because that's something nice with is making some time. Flexible. Yeah. Which I don't do. So having a routine is a simple barrier, right? Because it removes from you the executive function of having to be like, not like, What day is it? Now? I know what to do. But like, What day is it? But what day of the month? Is it? Let me check my calendar, because every day is completely different. Yeah, is harder to manage. That's a barrier to try.
And seven different off road attempts. Right? Oh, I have to check my calendar. I pick up my phone, I forget that I'm gonna go check my calendar. But look, I have this email on my calendar now. And oh, my goodness. Now I'm, I'm, oh, well, I checked my email. Now it's time to go on Facebook. And then you're just like, Wait a second. This is not why I picked up my phone. Yeah. And when you've missed your first meeting. Yeah.
So you're like on Facebook, and you're like, God, I'm such a bad person. Why am I on my phone? You put your phone down? You go back to your computer? Like I was supposed to check my calendar. Right? Yeah. So you're mad at yourself for like screwing around on social media? You because You forgot that you had a reason when you have to write. So that's really great. Like, so what you're doing there the barrier that you're removing? Is the barrier of self distraction. Right? Make a routine that I won't have to keep checking these things. Yeah.
And, and I look like I'm thinking of yours too, which are more passive. But like, what are my subtle reminders? Right, like you were saying, like, you know, it's a certain time that you're on campus, because the posters are all up, or you know, that it's department meeting time, because everybody's walking past? Yeah. Yeah, like having those kind of routines and reminders that you either set up for yourself or, or being mindful of them being set up for you. Right, yeah. But like, it's, it's the, again, the barrier of, like, it's a barrier of not knowing what to pay attention to. Yeah, ultimately. And so it's like, how can we create cues in our day to help us right, stay on task and it's not because the task is boring is because we don't necessarily want to do it. We just got distracted from it. Really.
It's a little bit like, like habit building, basically. Right? You want you want to be thoughtless about some of these things, right? We had talked after the pandemic when we were faced with going back to the office about like my major barrier of like having my bag packed because it'll take me an hour and a half to find everything I need to put in my bag and then I'm going to leave half of the stuff at home anyways. Right? So like, what is preventing me from leaving the house to get to the office on time? It's because like, oh, like there's no food services open so I have to bring a lunch but I don't Have any lunch that will fit in this purse but I don't have a backpack that I want to bring. But I have a second computer but will I need my textbook and I've burned up so much executive function energy trying to think about what I have to bring to school and where it is in my house and what bag Am I gonna bring with me? And does it go with that outfit? Do I need to change my outfit? Because the bag is heavier. So I can't wear that skirt? Because it's gonna get hitched up the side right, I need to pick my outfits out the night before or it's amazing how much time I wasted so younger like you the shower, right? Like Marie gets out and like, it's like, okay, now I'm going in. And what was an insurmountable barrier before is now not a barrier. Yeah, right. And it's
the same reason I wear dresses all the time. Because one choice of what dress to wear. Plus underwear infinitely easier than shirt plus pants or a shirt plus skirt. Yeah,
I was bragging about that. Literally Wednesday, we're recording on Friday, Wednesday. I like a big thing I had to do in another department. And I like want to look like a professional for a change. And so I wore a dress because it's like, oh, yeah, this is smart. I even had like leather boots that match my purse. I was like a plus. And I was bragging on one of my friends. I'm like, Yeah, I look really professional. But really, it's just a dress and underwear. And guess what Lee had my dress on backwards? From like, Yeah, from 8am to about 2pm. I was done teaching.
I thought you were gonna say you forgot the? No, my
mom did that once. She had to call me story for a different time. So I was like, what?
My dress. Last thing you expect to hear from your mom? Oh, no, absolutely.
And she woke me up. Well, I'll just tell you I was asleep because I despair in them. I was like a self accommodation in grade 13. I was like, No, I'm gonna take my spare first thing in the morning. And so I would say my mom worked at an elementary school nearby, like, We're all walking distance to everything and, and she called me at like, like, 820 or something after she had just got there. And she's like, hi, though, sell out the cell phone that like cordless phone was asleep as a wall. And she's like, hi. I know that. That's what she calls me. And I was like, what? And she's like, okay, so I'm at school. And if you're on your way into campus, if you could leave in enough times did you bring me some underwear? And I said, What? Okay. And then I hung up and I went back to sleep for another half hour. And then I woke up with a boy that was really weird. I'm, I don't, I don't want to go to like Sacred Heart School and go through like a front and find my mom's classroom and be like, Mom, I brought you some underwear and then have her be like, What the hell are you talking about? So I call back and like this is before cell phones have to call the main office and pick the Secretary to page my mom and my mom comes in. I was like, Mom, she's like, Yeah. And I said, Did you call me asked me to bring you underwear? And she said, Yeah. Are you come in? I said, Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to confirm and she's like, Well, okay. But I'll tell you when to why she wasn't wearing underwear. She wasn't wearing underwear because her morning routine got disrupted because my aunt phoned her while she was getting dressed. So she managed to put a slip on under her dress, but not underwear because her routine got interrupted. Yeah, right. So hashtag relatable. Yeah. Is the thing there.
Yeah. And so like those are that's the other thing is like removing, but like removing barriers, like you said, a self accommodation. Like, you know, if you know, and we've talked about this before, if you know that you're no good in the morning, then don't schedule important things in the morning. Right? Like if you know that you are a night owl. But and but need to sleep till nine o'clock, then, you know, schedule accordingly. Right or plan accordingly. Yeah,
don't keep trying to put yourself to bed at 10pm. So you can be a morning person because now you're wasting the morning and the evening. Right? Yeah, stop trying to change who you are. Right? Yeah. So that first category, then removing the simple barriers is about making our lives not impossible. Yeah, that's just to get you to the start line. I'm never gonna go to parent teacher night unless I can have headphones. Because I gotta wait the hallway for 45 minutes and I want to rage punch everybody's headphones. Okay, makes it not impossible for me to do. The next thing is to make it less aversive right? To make it not awful, or terrifying. Right. So I wrote an article about this today. We I did write only one. Only one right? So a lot of work on procrastination actually, is is pretty interesting here. And I say interesting and not 100% useful because again, most of the research literature into procrastination is done on neurotypical people. It's the type of research from which you would be excluded if you're a neurodivergent divergence. Diagnose right so yeah, so there's a lot of scholarship on how do you stop procrastinating a lot a better understanding now of people's procrastination as rooted not In a lack of caring, but it's an obsessive anxiety, right? It or perfectionism or all of these things, so it's reading a post by nose souls giver, who's kind of an expert on this on like how to, you know, make things less awful. And here's a couple things that did not work for me and will not work probably for neurodivergent people. So there's four strategies, one of them, let's hear the bad strategies, let's go, the bad strategies are, you know, sit down and give yourself a minute to think about how this task you don't want to do aligns with your values and goals in the long term.
Oh, gosh, why don't you just tell me to pick up my phone and think about a billion other things?
Well, I mean, I can do that doesn't mean like, I sit here, and I know I have a deadline coming up. And you know, if I don't, whatever it is, I would if I don't get my grading done, it's just gonna pile up and then become impossible. And it's hard to grade presentations when you don't remember them. And I, I know that and I value giving timely feedback to my students, right. And I know that it aligns with my values that I've spread my grading across the terms that I don't wind up in giant crunch times. And I built the, you know, I know all of those things. No, but do I do the grading? I don't know. Right? That doesn't work. Right?
That's additional bad about yourself.
Like again? Yeah, do that. Just that just double
shame spiral? And it's like, well, that Absolutely. Anything else?
Yeah. So similarly to that, that align it with your vows, values and goals, like if your values are like, I want to be a good team player in this workplace. So I should get this thing done that I said I would get done. And you're still not gonna get it done. That's just not not going to work. Right? No, it's not gonna work. And all you're gonna have is more self hatred, the
stop trying self stop thinking it's gonna work this time. Yeah, just
stop thinking that if you just hate yourself that little bit more, if you sort of internalize all of that moral judgment and outline for yourself in all these very specific ways that you are failing to be sufficiently attentive to the needs of your workplace, or your colleagues or your family or
yourself and your own values.
Yeah, look at me, let myself down right here like, Wow, if I just hate myself a little bit more, I'm sure I can get out of this rut like it's never worked. Right. So that doesn't work. Does
it? Just as just as maybe what your question about the self acceptance part? Um, I think I just got so tired of hating myself. Yeah. Like, I was like, it's exhausting. And it didn't serve any purpose. And so like that was, I mean, you know, it's easy to like go up clearly not because I held on to it for so long. But like, at a certain point, like it it certain breaking point, it was just like, I'm tired of doing this to myself. Like, why? Why am I doing this to myself? Like, it's just not worth it. So, I need to stop. Right? Right. I've
What? So maybe I'll try this strategy anyways. So that one doesn't work. That
one doesn't work. Here's another one that doesn't work. Promise yourself a reward. Once you're done. Great. You know, Lee, if I submit my receipts to the University of Alberta, or a keynote that I gave at a conference in May
of Yeah, I was gonna say this sounds like it was a while ago. I remember a while ago.
Yeah, I would be getting back. Close to $3,000 in travel expenses, plus a $1,000 honorarium. That would be a great reward having that money, right. I'm still not doing it. I'm not doing it because it's going to be irritating and I hate doing
even afterwards, you got a cookie right away. Yeah,
even if afterwards I got a cookie right away. Like I just dope back into it, like absolute worth it like how much money have I left on the table in my life, because losing the money seemed to me a better option than doing the thing that was aversive. Right? And here, like waves hands around, I recognize the immense privilege in my life that I am in a position of financial security such that I can do that and not like be homeless, right? Yeah. Or failed to pay things like I haven't I don't nobody has enough money to waste like this. Right? Yeah. But for me, often the calculus is like, I hate myself so much when I attempt to do this task that even the reward of $4,000 is not sufficient to get me to do it. Right, which is crazy. So promising yourself a reward. So that's a big one. Like right there. For me, I'm saying I won't do these things, even though I'm gonna get $4,000. You can see this, if you have neurodivergent. Kids, if you're like, you will get a bowl of ice cream, if you will just do this one worksheet. Right. You ever need, try to get your child to accept the promise of an extravagant reward to accomplish a simple task and have that fail? Again? Yeah, and again.
Yeah, usually it only works if they come up with a reward. Already have a very specific
like, right, and then they're just basically like the reward the boss level is the thing that they want. get from you. And they just have to grind through the tasks together. Yeah, they're so motivated. Yeah, for, right. But if you're they also
feel like they've manipulated you and you're like, get away. Yes. But also, you did the thing. So
you feel it's like the way my kid used to negotiate for bedtime stories would be like, Okay, time for bed three stories, and they'd be like, No, six, and we'd be like, three, and they'd be like, No, two, and we'd be like, Okay. And they'd be like, Oh, hi, one. All right. Good job. You pulled one over on me. Now you have fewer stories. Like, and I'd like mentioned that to them the other day, and I like Yeah, but I won. I was like, okay, as a Pyrrhic victory, I think, all right. Oh, promising yourself a reward. I'm sorry, if the house is on fire, I'm not gonna leave it. If I'm doing something, you know, like, just the, the reward will be, you know, you'll get this ice cream. If you just fill out this one sheet of paper, your teacher says, Oh, no. Now we're going to fight for two hours about it. And I'm going to eat on screen. Right? While crying after the fact. Yeah, exactly. So and then the judgment there, right. Like, I don't know why you're resisting this. Like, you know, most people can do this without ice cream. And like, we're being very reasonable. And we're like offering you prizes for this. And you still won't do it, which is like, the story of me as a parent a little bit, but also me as a person just doesn't work. Right. Yeah. So two of the things that do work, I think of this. So they have four strategies, and like, this is how you beat this. And like, nope, some of them don't work. The one that does work, make it a game. Yeah. Like, how can I like I like to sort of set the timer and be like, how many things can I pick up in? 20 minutes, right. Or can I get this stuff done before my sister gets there? Right, like, Poppins, a spoonful of sugar? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you're, you're making it fun. While you're doing it, right. You're like, I wonder if I could do this before the end of the commercial break? Do you remember? Like, you'd have, I would always say to my mom, like she'd like wash the dishes. And I'm like, No, I'm watching. I'll do it on the commercials. And she's like, you're gonna write. But if you made me wash all the dishes before I was allowed to watch TV, then you would know Yeah, the dishes and I would watch TV, I would just maybe be sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper for like, two hours because I just didn't. But if it's like, well, you can if you can get it done during the commercials of the first show. Right. But like, how many commercials because I don't want to be getting up during commercials. Let's see how fast I can do this. Yeah, I needed a gate. Right? So that works. Are there things that you make games of? For you to make it work? Leave? Um,
it's more pairing?
Right. That's temptation bundling, which is the other strap works. Why don't you tell us about temptation bundling? Well,
I mean, I'll put on like, if I have to do tedious paperwork, or that kind of stuff, it'll be like, what fun podcast and or TV show? Yep. Can I have on like, I used to always, like it was, like clockwork, I was when I taught freshman writing. I would grade their papers to RuPaul drag race. Yeah. Right. I would save up all the episodes, and I would just binge RuPaul drag race while grading student papers, right. And so that or like, now it's like, I will do this tedious thing, but also watch Deadliest Catch. You know, like, there's so I the those are the things I tend to do the game. I mean, the game is more with the kids than it is with me. Right? But no, I I? I do. Yeah, that that one has worked before in the past, but like, let's see how many I can do. Yeah, like a little challenge based stuff like now it's like, Ooh, let's measure things. Yeah.
Or like something. How much of this can I get done without having to look anything up? Or like, however it is, you set yourself a little challenge about something right? But yeah, temptation. Bundling is another one, right? I will get stuff done. Especially if I have a podcast series. I'm trying to binge. I will get a lot of housework done because I can't sit still and listen to a pot. No, oh, God, I can't do chores. without something to do with my brain. I just can't. I'll just sit down and start reading like, yeah, a random piece of paper because my brain is so bored. Right. So yeah, that's temptation bundling for me, I will listen to music really loud on the speakers when nobody is home, and then I'll get stuff done. And that's fun. Or I will listen to a podcast. You know, or if I have to go to like meetings and I'm like really trying not to have a emotional breakdown at meetings or yell at people or put my hand up too often. I knit, right? That's a bit of temptation bundling for me. I'm like, well, that's my knitting time. Right. I put on Twitter. Last night. I don't know if you saw it. It was like my day of sitting still as a knitting visualization. Right. And I marked on the like this part. I knit in a two and a half hour meeting. I was Stuck in yesterday that was like very, very fraught very long, very difficult meeting with a lot of people in it and made sure decisions to be made. And I did half of up front for a sweater and then had to sit for like an hour and 15 minutes at the tax place yesterday. And I did like the rest of the knitting. There's like, yeah, the only reason I got through this with my sanity intact, is from these things temptation, bundling. Right? So those are the strategies. Yeah.
And I wanted to go back to I want to go back to the smoothing of this, because this is something that I've said a lot is a strategy. And I think this is a smoothing strategy is the whole idea of outsourcing. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, I just like, again, it's an incredible privilege, but it's sort of like in the cost benefit analysis, you might want not want to admit that you need to pay someone to do your administrative tasks for you. But at the same time, like it's still less, it'll cost you less in the long run than all of the money, like you said, that you you've done. And, and that's also kind of, you know, getting over to a sort of level of internalized ableism, realizing the privilege and the access to resources that you have, and saying how can I best use all of my resources, not just my resources in terms of my attention, but my resources in terms of my network in terms of my financial situation? And in terms of my familial or professional situation? Right, yeah, you're right. Not most, you know, back in the day, you know, we're rewatching madmen, right? Didn't have to worry about any of this stuff. Because the secretaries did it. All. Right, what do they do when they have to move all of the business elsewhere, but nobody understands anything, they got to bring Joan back, because they're able to do their great work, because Joan was taking care of everything else behind the scenes. So there is also a shift in in the labor that is expected of us, particularly women. Where I think that smoothing the way can also include just saying no, and setting boundaries and saying no that like I, you know, it's been long established. I've said this before that, like my husband takes care of all the finances. Yep. Because it's too much anxiety. For me. I don't know if it's my ADHD, it's probably ADHD, and childhood trauma, and all of that kind of stuff worked up into one, it's a lot on package. And it's like, I don't have time for that right now. But what I do have is a husband who doesn't mind doing it, and is actually really good at it. Yep. But like, why should I just so that it's fairer, more equitable? Or like, I have a modern woman? You know, if he, if I had to do it, I could do it. Right. But like, let me outsource that, right. Like if we pay, like you and I both pay have the privilege to pay someone to come and clean our house. Why? Because like, it wouldn't get done otherwise. Not really. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
well, yeah. So that is like a removing of barriers, there are going to require some kind of holistic view. Yeah. Right. Yes. Like, maybe like if I'm going to spend or someone is thinking about spending X amount of money to have their house cleaned every two weeks, or even once a month, depending on like your financial situation or what you need. But that frees up the emotional energy and cleans up your counters so that you're not late for work all the time, because you can't find your keys because there's somewhere on the counter on a pile of newspapers, right? Like there are ways in which the domains Connect. Right? Exactly. I was just texting my husband earlier because I said, Oh, I'm in a major frazzle. Today, I'm not getting the things done that I want to and I can't find my keys, but I want to stay at home because the plumbing stuff is everywhere. And I'm like, I can't find my things because the house is too much of a mess. And I'm not getting anything done because the house is too much of a mess. But since I'm not getting anything done, I'm not cleaning the house. And now the whole thing has become aversive. And it's like bad for my mood to be in this place. It was like everything is connected and like so this past Sunday, when we had no water. I arranged for the plumber to come. And because I had been on the phone all night with the city before I was doing all this research into what could possibly be the cause of like, I was like went into my deep plumbing special interest. And I mean, obviously it's early February. And so what my husband did on Sunday was take down the Christmas tree, right? In early February. Because like that's his job now because I will decorate it. I will put the decorations up. I'll put most of the decorations away. I just find it really really hard to take the tree apart and put the ornaments away. It just makes me unbearably sad and I hate it and so he did that while I was like marching around the house with the plumber crawling underneath, like the laundry tub and stuff. And that's like, are we evolved? I don't know. Did I feel bad that I need him to do the Christmas tree? Yeah, but did he feel bad that I'm doing the plumbing? No, no, right? No. Right. So we're working on this together now but like that's another thing. It's like my brain got a little bit full of that. Right? Yeah, no.
Yeah, and I mean, like that's, we see that um, There's talking about this, like the, you know, like I was even saying about decision fatigue, like where are the points where decision fatigue or stress becomes around a certain task or topic becomes So, like that it that, like that's the barrier, right? The dirty houses of the barrier, feeling bad about there being a dirty house is the barrier, right? Like that's, it's so it's understanding that and then being able to say like, Okay, who How can I outsource this? How can I facilitate this? How can I get somebody else to do this thing that I'm not good at? Or that will become a barrier? That then you know, that then like just causes? You know, the chain reaction, right? Like the the cascading? spiral of shame. Yeah.
And it can be, it can be difficult to put those into practice some time, right? When we were we have the episode, where I was like, super angry, angry, but the things I should not have to do, like book the tools apparatus for my grad students. Yeah, difference, right that, that that's exactly the type of thing that in my personal life, I would outsource, I would recognize that I'm not good at it. Yeah, but recognize how much it costs me in terms of executive functioning, or decision making or self control, right, such that I would use it all up on that thing, and then have none of those qualities left. For anything else, right. So it can be very frustrating. I want to acknowledge for our listeners, sometimes in our personal lives and in our work lives, where we know exactly like what we need to help with or what the simple barriers are, but it is not in our power to use them. Right. And that's maybe something we can talk about in another episode, I'd like to explore that maybe a little bit more. But right, so removing simple barriers, some of them are sensory, some of them are organizational, it's too loud, I can't go there. It's too cold. It's too itchy. Or I can never find my keys, I need to pack my bag the night before and pick my clothes up. Right? So yeah, simple barriers are just the things that are preventing you from starting, and then making a task less aversive. Right. So it's like if removing the simple barriers is about making it not impossible to even start making it less aversive is about not making it terrifying, right? So that you're not having like a panic attack or a rage attack, or you're crying about it when you you do this tasks, right. And some of the advice from procrastination experts is going to work for neurodivergent people, but a lot of it isn't Yeah, just isn't. And
destination. Again, our procrastination looks different than Yep. Normal people's procrastination, right? Like some of the underlying causes of the same like anxiety, like, you know, but some of it is it a lot of it isn't right. So like the same strategies just aren't gonna work.
Yeah, so in both of these categories of barriers that we're talking about right now, it does really rests on the foundation of understanding yourself right of understanding the owner's manual of you, like not great in cold weather needs a block heater, right? Like there's things that you have to do or like right in the morning window down. But you got to give it a little bump with your palm of your hand first, right like so. Everybody's operating instructions are going to be a little bit differently. And the first barrier to remove is our unwillingness like a learned unwillingness or fear of acknowledging the profoundness of our differences from others that are not changeable. Right? Yeah. I'm never going to be great at packing my bag in the morning unless I have a perfectly tidy house. And if I get stressed, then my house isn't tidy and everything goes to hell. And then I cry a lot. That just doesn't bother other people. Right? It doesn't disable them away, disables me and that's always gonna be who I am, right? You are always never going to want to get in the shower. Right? You're gonna want to at a theoretical level, but if you're really loving down the hall and taking your clothes off and getting in like the warm wetness you're like not you know what, just five minutes on Facebook, right? Yeah, I'm just gonna. Yeah, right. I'm just gonna I know. So an entire dress while thinking about getting a shower because I can't leave the house while you shower. I guess I'm a hermit now. Right? Exactly. I guess I've never leaving the house again. Yeah, so it's weird. And we don't like that about ourselves. We're like, normal people can do this. And yeah, they can. And no, you can't. So you have to accept it, and then work to remove the barriers. Yeah. If we were going to cut the episode, we would cut it here. Before we got third thing.
Yeah, we probably will though because like we have been going on for 15 minutes,
so we've not so let's imagine this is cut.
And look, I did the cut. So join us next week for part two of the discussion and part three of what we're saying about you the guide book neurodivergent you as always you can email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com Go check out our socials. I'm ready writing Amy's Did you want we have our website all the things adhd.com And hopefully I can figure out how to edit the second episode because the GarageBand has been weird and I don't like it at all anyways till next time Take care everyone
