Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of all the things ADHD podcast with myself, Lee Skallerup Bessette. And my co host, Amy Morrison, this is part two of our conversation on arrest, we're going to join myself and Amy, mid conversation where Amy does a really good, you know, 32nd recap of everything we talked about in the last episode in 35 minutes. So, you know, true ADHD forum, why? Why take 30 seconds when you can take 30 minutes to say something, right. So today, we take another about 30 minutes talking about unex how we've had to learn what kinds of rest how rest can sometimes be an unexpected, you can find rest from an unexpected source or an unexpected strategy. And just, you know, really helping ourselves and opening up that conversation about what rest might look like for, for us and for you, and how to engage more interest more effectively don't want to say that, but how we can engage more with rest in so many ways that we don't. So with that, again, we're going to join myself and Amy, she's going to recap and then we'll get into back into the conversation on rest. Thanks, again, everyone for listening.
So rest, then rest is sometimes knowing that you need two hours to get ready for bed rest is sometimes waking up in the morning, and being so upset by circumstances or something happening in your own brain that you understand you need to take a day for self care or laundry. Right? Yeah, and sometimes rest is putting a boundary around your work day. So that you can engage in activities that allow you to feel present in your own life and to derive some pleasure from an activity that is not compulsory, like work or parenting.
Yeah. And sometimes rest like for me, and this is that, like you probably did as an extrovert, this is something that I also had to remind myself is that like, sometimes rest for me is just not talking to anyone.
Yeah.
Like, and that's and that's weird for me, right? Like, and people, it's hard for people to understand because I am such an extrovert and like usually engaging with people. It's I mean, it's not right, but it's, it nourishes, right like I you know, it's nourishing to me, like I get my energy from from that. Sometimes too much. And then I crash but like, but then sometimes I have to, I have to be like, No, no, no, we're not, we're not talking to mommy, today, we're not talking to anyone today, like we're not. Because like it is really, I really need that time to just sort of actually be with myself and not have to worry about other things or think about engagement or I had it's
a month's daily comic that I literally use scissors to cut out of the newspaper. And I have pasted it like on the wall, I'm gonna turn my computer so you can where I have it over here online, behind Deku there and it's from months. And it's the the two main little animals a dog and a cat in a bush in their hiding in a bush in the forest. And you can see some birds on the branches. And the caption, which is from Robert William Lind says, in order to see birds, it is necessary to become part of the silence. That's what you're describing, right? That there is there is something that you can access only when you're quiet, right? Which is like a lesson that you need sometimes to recalibrate from your sort of habitual and successful extraversion. Right? And I need, again, not surprising, the opposite. So we'll have vacation time and Tom will be like, Where do you want to go? And I'll be like nowhere and be like, do you want to go to the movies? And I'm like, No, because there's people right? Yeah, like do you want to go to this like festival? And I'm like you gross? No, I don't want to plan it. And I don't want to be around people and also yuck, but he makes me go and I'm like oh yeah, I do sometimes need to be in lightly chaotic group situations. Like we went to like the the blues brews and barbecues. Like it's like loud music and people are burping. And everybody's hands are dirty from barbecue sauce. But it was like kind of fun. Like I let loose because I don't normally let loose like that. I'm like a very contained person. I mean, I'm an extravagant oversharer. But like I'm very quiet. People can hear me coming right and I can entertain myself with a ball of string in perfect silence for an entire day like cool, but like So Tom has to remind me sometimes that that in order for me to gain my energy sometimes I need to Go to sports ball game, right and be in the crowd. Or I need to go like to a theater show it I'm like, can't we just like watch it on TV?
Is there a version? I can buy that streaming somewhere?
Yeah, exactly where like, I can turn the volume down or like have an app if I need you. And he's like, no, sometimes you just have to experience in the moment like no other people. Right. So. So again, like maybe sometimes rest, like you say is is about maybe going against our habitual inclinations, right? Yeah, I am more introverted and quiet than you are, you are more extroverted and outgoing than I am. And so sometimes you need to intentionally find a way to be quiet for a little bit. And I sometimes seem to put myself out there into situations like I always hate, like the big mixers at conferences, right? It's like you're gonna go and everybody who's here 200 people are gonna go to this like, third location that to get on a bus to get to, which means I can't leave it right away. I have to make awkward chitchat if I see somebody from the conference on the bus. But you know, I always have fun. Yeah, when I do it, and I never want to, but then I do. But is it the, the meme? This isn't an ADHD meme. It's an introvert meme. How to introverts make friends and like then it's a pie chart and like, part of it is like they don't but then the rest of it is an extrovert. refriended you
an extroverted doctor.
Yeah, yeah. That's true. It takes all kinds Li there are two kinds of people in this world, people who need to have friends and people who are always looking for new friends. Yeah, right. So true. Yeah. So rest can be going against your inclinations. Rest can be like figuring out what you need on the daily rest can be about setting some boundaries, rest can be about hobbies. Rest can be about sleeping. Oh, yeah. All kinds of rest.
Yeah, sleeping in is is is nice. Typically. I don't, I don't get to sleep in much. Especially. Like, I coach on Saturday mornings. So it's like, I don't even the one day that like you could possibly sleep into Sunday's are sort of the lazy sleeping days or at least like if not sleep in and like, you know, not Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, I'm gonna, and I'm gonna like check social media as well. I'm still in bed and just sort of like a nighttime
swarm, actually. So now that it's summer, it'll be a little easier. But in the wintertime, it's like it's cold. They don't want to
Oh, yeah, I have to take my feet out of this nice warm bed and put them on. Yeah, cold cold floor. No, thank you.
I don't want to. But I just think it's, there's such a, one of the nice things about getting older is this, you know, I can, I can sort of resist or maybe have the awareness. I don't know if it's like the fucking 40s. Or just like, I know, I'm smart enough. No, I so I keep saying I'm like, I'm in my mid 40s. That, like, I can take a day off and sort of be like, yeah, cuz that's what I need. And that's what I want to do. And I can do it. And, you know, no one's gonna make me feel bad about it. You know, it's like, okay, like, we're this is this is this is cool.
Yeah, I mean, the fucking 40s are less about like, like, you don't care. It's more about I care more about what I need. Yeah. Then about other people's thoughts about what I need. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's a gift. And I think that's a gift that is hard won, often by neurodivergent people, because part of what we often lack early in our journeys is insight into the nature of our own difference, right? Yeah. Or a sort of understanding and attention to the signals that our bodies or our brains give us wrong. This is what tired feels like I in a sense, we're all kind of like, toddlers, like you know, they say like, they actually have to teach grownups this too. They'll say like, if your toddler is running around, like a crazy person bouncing off the walls and like screaming bloody murder. They're tired. Yeah, right. They're not full of energy. Yeah, they are tired. They don't recognize that that's what tired is. And as a grownup who experiences tiredness as a desire to slow down maybe you don't recognize this hyperactivity as an artist, but it is tired as put your toddler down for a nap. Right? Yeah. And and so like, I think part of the ADHD journey or the neuro divergence journey for us is like, like undoing of course, the internalized ableism by which we just all we want is to pretend that we're normal so that we don't even acknowledge that we are different, let alone understand the nature of our own differences. And the next part is, like, learning to do those things that we're bad at like the same way we're like very clumsy, because we have bad body awareness. Like sometimes we're very emotionally naive and immature because we have poor emotional awareness. Write about our own emotions. And, you know, since everybody has always told us forever that the way that we do things and the things that we like are wrong, we don't trust our own instincts about what we like, is this a good hobby for me? I don't know. Do somebody else think it's a good hobby for me? And I mean that I don't fault people for that. That's a learned response, because everything you've ever expressed a preference and someone has told you was wrong. Right. So, I mean, I think achieving rest as a neurodivergent person is much more complicated. Yeah. First, really, why don't you just like calm down from it's like telling somebody who's insomnia just like sleep more or somebody?
Yeah. Just stop worrying. So yeah, just stop worry too much.
Yeah. Tell somebody with ADHD like, why don't you like relax? Yeah. Hi. Boring thoughts. My thoughts. I'm like, I have never had a boring thought. In my life, you
might think they're boring, but to me.
I saw this I laughed and laughed and laughed. Monday morning, somebody tweeted, it just occurred to me that spaghetti is just lasagna that's been through a paper shredder. And then, right, I was like, What the hell? And then the next week was it occurs to me. I haven't taken my vyvanse yet this morning.
Yeah,
just think boring thoughts. Try to focus on work. Meanwhile, it's like lasagna paper, shredder brain is like fully engaged while you're trying to read memos. Right. I thought, Oh, my God, that is so so relatable.
In one day. Well, who is it that one day it's swim team. This was a couple of years ago. Like they're doing a set, right? And I'm sitting there and I'm trying to get them and giving them corrections and trying to keep on point and my son stops and looks up at me and goes, do you know record players work?
Right.
Yeah. Like, what? He's like record players. I'm like, just
record players. And I was like,
you even know what a record player is? Right?
Yeah. Well, if you're interested in that lab of fact to share with you about spaghetti and lasagna, right? What this is so like, random, but that's how it goes. Right? That's how it goes. And that's a mindfulness meditation, too, is like, why am I thinking about record players? When I'm supposed to be focused on my feet? Right? Yeah. Why is that a thing I'm doing right now? So okay, you know, I'll come back to later record player. Yeah, right now,
when he was probably eight at the time to write I think was probably about eight, maybe seven, seven or eight years old. So it's like, you know, but yeah, and it was, you know, now, I think there's probably before his diagnosis, and there's just sort of like, Oh, no, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, it's
in one of my online Facebook, like, ADHD support groups. And it was like a parent of a six or seven year old with ADHD, sort of saying, like, how can I help my son at t ball, because he's all great. When it's like, you know, his turn at that. And he's writing the basis and all this stuff, but like, he really struggles in the outfield, because he can't focus his attention. And then he gets bored, and he starts doing other things. And it's really disruptive. And you know, people were giving advice, and I was like, and this mother was like, oh, cuz he's been at school all day. And by this point, as medication has worn off, and I said, Look, you know, maybe t balls, not for him right now. Like, maybe he's just not ready, like, maybe after spending a whole day trying to sit still and pay attention. And he has and like, now his meds have worn off and he can't focus on T ball. Like you can't sort of say like, but T ball will be really good for you. Because sometimes you get to read around, but you need to focus on like, maybe developmentally, not yet. Right? Yeah. Maybe it needs to be one of those like tiny kids soccer leagues, where they just run back and forth up and down the field. Like for an hour, right? Yeah, do that instead. Or maybe like you just play in the backyard. Maybe you like, put up a kickball, like a handball wall or something in your backyard and just let him riff on it until he gets tired and goes to bed like, like, maybe he needs rest, and maybe rest, even for a hyperactive kid doesn't look like play an organized sport. Because you have to stand around a lot of the time paying attention to other people and standing still, right? is not what you need. Maybe Yeah,
no, my son tried t ball. Too slow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really good at digging in the dirt. He loves bugs. And so whatever bugs were in the outfield were a million times more interesting than what was going on. Yeah, mom was like, I
despair. You can pay attention like he paid attention all day. Get the kid on break.
Yeah, no, no, it was it. You know, I was sort of like, he wanted to try it. Right. It was one of those things where all the kids are doing t ball. I want to do t balls. That's fine. We'll do you know, yeah, you need to you know was what 40 bucks or something like that? Oh, yeah. Because people, you know, I was like, but then next summer I he was like, Oh, I want to do to you all or baseball and I'm like, really? Do you really want to do that? He's like, No, I don't
Do you like, go on a hiking club or maybe you join a bug taking club or maybe like you join a group of kids that like goes on long bike rides together so that we get to meet you join
swim team. I mean, that's cheap. And then you just went back and forth and back and forth, back and forth.
Yeah, and you keep going so you don't drown so.
So these activities like these are going to often told like, Oh, you know, to help you body Calm down, you should get more exercise and stuff. And I like running because it's boring. And I tend to be kind of anxious, and it helps me sort of regulate my heart rate, because like it's metronomic. When I run Yeah, it's very boring. But I do really like to run in these like segments have run for 10 minutes walk for one minute, because it breaks it up enough for me that I don't get catastrophic, Lee bored at the prospect of running for two hours in a row. I mean, which I could, I'm sure, but I can easily run two hours, if it's 10 minutes of running, and one of walking, it just gives me that little pause where something changes in my body for five minutes, and I get to change the playlist on my phone or something. And so I was telling my coach, like, it's not that I necessarily need the physical break of the one minute of walking, but like, I just don't think I have the mental fortitude to get through two hours of a steady pace run without anything but traffic lights, you know, to offer me a bit of relief there. And you know, maybe some people don't like to run because it's just straight up too boring. And maybe they want to do something a little bit more exciting, like, you know, play soccer, where there's a potentially going to crash into other people, which is my nightmare, or like, maybe you just want to do yoga, or maybe you wanna do hot yoga, because you really want to like, feel exhausted when you're done. Like, there's all kinds of different ways we can do physical activity for rest, but they have to sort of be matched to what your aptitudes and your your needs are. Right. Yeah. And it takes time to figure that out, too. And it's, it's okay to say like, you know, I don't want to do I don't want to go on a long bike ride. I would rather go for a hike. Right? Yeah. It's okay to not like some kinds of activity and doesn't mean that you're resting incorrectly. Right? Yeah.
Well, and I think also that there's, there's a possibility it's interesting. You mentioned exercise, I was talking about the Middle Ages. I just Tracy McMillan, McMillan cotton. She has a new subscription newsletter called essaying and she just sent one out today about exactly this. Yeah, right. How ya know how she is, is now a peloton person. Yeah, like, but she's like, but I'm terrible at it. But, uh, you know, I keep doing it. And I'm actually surprised myself that I'm enjoying it. And she started going on hikes and same sort of thing. Like she's, you know. And she's funny too, because it reminds me of you said it to in large groups where she never likes being in that group setting where like, she says, I'm not good at group work. Yeah. But she's like, but like, being a part of the Facebook groups are perfect. Because like, I get some of the social but I don't have to necessarily engage and
you just sit there and lurk like a creepy person, and no one notices, which is great. And you're like, when the one question comes up that you're like, Oh, I got this right. You can just jump in. I love it. I love socializing.
Yep. So I think that because I think that that's been an opportunity. All right, for during the pandemic is to learn new things about ourselves in terms of, like, surprising ourselves, like having the space to surprise ourselves. Yeah, where, you know, like sewing for me again, still a surprise, right? Like, a year ago, if you'd said you're gonna sell like all your dresses. I would have been like, Oh, you're so cute, right? Yeah, whatever. Like, oh,
yeah, I mean, this year. I started wearing like, lemon yellow eyeshadow. And I have something that I put in my eyebrows to make them look thicker, which is like, I hadn't changed my makeup routine in about like 10 years. I was going for sort of like incredibly minimal. Yeah, so I don't look like squinty eyed puffball. So it was the same makeup every single day, the most neutral thing that I could get that was like minimally acceptable. And like yeah, so one of the things I picked up during the pandemic is like a hobby of experimenting with makeup, which was not something I ever would have expected from myself and I've been enjoying it but like today, I'm talking with you and I will click squinty eyed puffball because I put some lipstick on, but I don't have any other makeup on because I don't care today, right, like so it's still just a hobby, right? Like, just like you can go and buy a dress. You haven't committed to like sewing every single dress you own for the rest of your life. Like it like we could surprise ourselves. And I think I mean, that's I think one of the great qualities of rest is that it opens up a space for surprising things to happen. Right so we're always like so frenetically over scheduled or if we like try to stave off uncertainty and disaster by never letting ourselves slow down for a single minute. We actually never have the opportunity to discover anything new. We don't grow, we stagnate, right. And I think the pandemic has been good for that, that like, everybody's baking sourdough bread, like maybe some people just did that, because they didn't know what else to do. But some people did it and discovered a love. Right? Yeah, baking bread. Yeah. Which they never would have had if they hadn't had this kind of enforced rest period.
Well, and I think that that's particularly challenging for people with ADHD to to, like, find something new, that you would stick with,
right?
I mean, we talked about this on Twitter the other day, right, where we have, we rotate in and out of hobbies.
Yes. Right.
But sometimes, and especially when you've got kids, you know, they know, all we don't always rotate back, is sometimes the upfront investment in said, Yeah, like, there's, there's a, there's a real challenge to that, because, you know, we've all had it, there's like, I'm gonna do this thing, and you buy the things and then you're just like, I'm not actually I'm not gonna do this. And I think the only reason I was able to sort of say, you know, what I'm going to give my hand at sewing is because we already had a sewing machine, because my daughter went through a hot second of thinking that she wanted to sell. And so my mom went out and bought her like a starter sewing machine and some stuff. And so, you know, if I had to purchase the sewing machine, and never what happened,
right, right. Much of an investment and also Yeah, to like, do a task. With the
doing of the task. I would have, you know, that wouldn't have been so bad because like, you know, especially I'd like shopping it would have been like a great little buzz from shopping. cart finding a good Yeah. Add To Cart purchase now. Yeah. shows up. He
opened it up
like, Fox. Yeah. But But again, it's, you know, it's, it's that trusting yourself, right? Can I trust myself enough? That this is something I'm actually going to do? Or is this just an idea I'm having? Because I'm bored?
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's another element of rest is like finding it in yourself, then to sort of manifest the fortitude to like, truly interrogate whether something is a momentary win, or whether it is the dawning of a hobby, right. And to sort of control yourself enough to like ramp into it a little bit at a time. Right, like so. I, I don't know. I don't even remember why I thought that my sister and I should do paint by numbers, right? Oh, I know why, because of Instagram ads, that will happen. And I was like, This is okay, this Okay, then. I was like, Well, I'm not good at art. But like, this is basically just coloring but with paint brushes, right? What I like to do that, and I like looked into the price of some of them at Michaels for like $14 Canadian, which is about 45 cents American. And I could pick it up and there's a Michaels like his walking distance from my house. And I thought, even if I hate it, like $15, I can invest. It wasn't like I need to go buy, like, you know, hogs hair, artisanal paint brushes, I need seven of them. And they're $45 each, and then I need like a fully Canvas, like whatever I need, like, you know, archiv grade blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to try this hobby for $700. Like no, was no. Right? Like, yeah, and then like, so that's part of it is like don't go all the way right away. And then the second thing is to try to stick with it long enough to see if you actually like it. Yeah. Right. So it's easy to give up on so a when like, you snap the first needle because you're like, Oh my god, I don't even have another needle in the house. And now I can't do this anymore. I hate it. I'm not good at sewing, I give up. I'm gonna go eat some worms, right. Which is like something a lot of ADHD people struggle with right here that, like if we can't do it perfectly the first time, then we can't do it. And so we're never going to do it because we're always so afraid of being exposed as frauds and dum dums that we don't want to fail at anything, right? So yeah, like a hobby, that's going to be probably the most rewarding and ultimately, restful is one that like, probably you can't 100% succeed at, like on your first attempt, because that is so interesting that it becomes like you would the swimming now. Right? You'll see that I forget what I'm doing. And I'm not paying attention anymore, right? Yeah. So we have to learn to sit with that challenge and to understand when something is an appropriate level of challenge or maybe to become accepting of being terrible at something. I'm good at lots of things like I'm really not good at playing this. Burg Mueller. Piano a to Opus 109 number 25. The gypsies suck, right? I mean, I'm better than somebody who doesn't know how to play piano. Right. And I'm having fun trying. Yeah, no, I'm never going to be recording quality at it. I might be able to play it for my family. And they'd be like, Oh, that sounds like a song. Right? Yeah. It wasn't. I didn't like my husband said Is this a Diana Krall concert because we're always joking about Like Diana, krall's main move is like, take a song and make it 10 times slower, right? Oh, yeah. soulful. So he's always like, Is it a Diana Krall concert here and I'm like, Fuck off. Bad, I'm just bad at this song.
It's hard song.
You made me feel bad about myself. Or like, just laughing. But that's another thing with the piano too is like you can't play it at the speed it's supposed to be played at because to learn it actually, the the recommendation, the way they teach you is you play it as slow as you go to play correctly. And it's embarrassingly slow, right. And only when you can play it flawlessly, at this incredibly slow to slow temperature is incredibly slow speed, then you slowly you know, move it up until you start making mistakes again, and then that's where you practice. So it takes like aeons, and you suck at it for most of it, but like, and I think a lot of us don't really have the patience for that type of thing, or, and so I think rest activities that are this type of activity can also teach us that like, some things just have a longer process. And you could enjoy it, you could enjoy not being perfect at something, right that there. Maybe you are advancing, if slowly, and maybe you can enjoy it even when you're not good at it.
Yeah, well, and I think it's, again, goes back to that question of presence, right? Am I present in this moment? Rather than thinking, Oh, God, it needs to sound like this. I'm gonna just focus on what it sounds like right now. Or, you know,
or like, this is gonna get way better before they're gonna book me at Carnegie Hall, right? Because you're already thinking you have to the future. Or you might think like, when I was younger, I could, you know, play this one, you know, played it on an exam, and I got a good mark. And I wish I was like, or, like, I wish I could run as fast as I did, like, or I could bend over as far like, whatever it is, right? You're either thinking about some glory day in the past or some glory day in the future. So they're
both at the same time. That's true. That's true.
But what it means is, at the same time, the present moment is never enough, right? The present moment is something that's just an unanticipated and unpleasant barrier in between you and the desired state. And that's the opposite of rest.
Yeah, right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's been, it's been interesting to try and find that space for rest to write. Because, you know, when we're even talking about, like, how I was saying, way back, way back, the beginning of the pandemic, over a year ago, where, you know, I was saying, It's unsustainable for me to be working at this level, right. But then how do you how do you ramp down from that? How do you rest from that? And how do you sort of like, because, because it's, it's either, you know, again, for me, and this is my ADHD, but also just how I sort of set up my life. I'm either really, really, really, really busy, or like nothing, right? And when there's nothing, I'm like, I don't know what to do with myself. And just being able to say, Well, I can rest like, No, no, no, no, I
will explode. You're like the bus speed. Right? If it drops below 55 miles an hour, Sandra Bullock is not going to be with us anymore. Right now. We're Kanu. Let's be Kanu. Yeah, I know Dennis Hopper just be like chuckling maniacally in the background somewhere. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's hard to cope with, like the sort of all or nothing, right? Like, I can go at 150%. And then I collapse. But if I come out of that collapse, and it would immediately go back to 150%, then I will die. Right. So the inability to scale it like another one of these reasons that I got this paint by numbers set was because I found I was starting to play the piano too much. Right? I was like, I need more than one hobby. Yeah, right, that it just does not become an obsession. And then it's not restful, because then I'm doing kind of like obsessively thinking about it all the time. So if I sort of spread my efforts around, because I tend to not I tend to have a model maniacal focus on things. So for me, it's important to learn how to manage several hobbies at the same time, at a level that's not like eventually I will turn this into my job, which Tom jokes about all my hobbies is eventually they become revenue opportunities for me because I reach a level of expertise, where now people like you should be teaching this class and then inevitably I do so
it's like, so that's what yoga turned.
That's what yoga turned into, like you just wait pretty soon I'll be like teaching piano lessons and stuff. I'm like, Oh, my God, like stop doing that. Me. Right. Well, but, but I saw a blog
yesterday. And I mean, not because I'm trying to monetize because I just write everything down. But, you know,
I'm like, yeah, people will sponsor me.
Yeah. Maybe I'll get a better sewing machine. Yeah.
Or they'll give me free fabric. Oh,
that would be great. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, so. I need to spread my interest around a little bit other people who tend to like, you know, start 400 things simultaneously need to find the energy to commit to one thing a little bit more seriously, instead of like, I'm going to play piano for five minutes. And then I'm going to go for a five minute run. And then I'm going to be on the rowing machine for five minutes. And then I'm going to like, put eyeshadow on one of my eyes. And then I'm gonna, like, you know, bake half of a cake like, you know,
because a lot of us have those tests. That's me in the kitchen.
That's me in the kitchen.
Yeah. The kitchen is just yeah. Yeah. And and you're never then. Yeah, and then get distracted and end up burning things like,
yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, some of us need to rest by undertaking more activities. And some of us need to rest by learning to sit still with one activity a little bit longer than they otherwise would be inclined to. And,
and it not be 2048.
Yeah.
Oh, my God, I'm so good. At this game. I post my screen grabs, sometimes the people like holy shit, you need to put the phone down. I'm like, No, I'm only halfway through those game. I'm like, Yeah, a million. And I've only got two rows on the bottom. But how did you do that? I'm like, hours of practice. Yeah. hours? Oh, I don't know. Because time disappeared. What? Yeah, all of
a sudden is three in the morning. And I'm like, why am I still awake? Without that, I think there's, there's something to be said about that. But I mean, there's I don't know. I'm, I guess I'm trying to like retro actively justified by son's obsessive video game playing, right? Like, you know, he's like, you're not a gamer. And I'm like, I play games all the time. He's like, those aren't real games. And I get really upset because it's like, you know, and then we're making the argument. Like, they're not really games. They are but but there's something. Hit for him. Gaming is how we social. But it also gives him a sense of, like control in a way like that. There's, there's, you know, he can get in there and just sort of like, it's a contained space. It's a controlled kind of space. It's, you
know, yeah,
he can get mad because somebody else shoots them or anything, but there's a certain level of expectation, right? Like, yeah, the rules of the game do not change. Well, dramatically.
No, do that. Because he's gaming online with his friends that the gaming part of it is kind of like me knitting during meetings and you cutting patterns, it is the mechanical activity that allows him to focus on the socializing, right. Yeah. So like, maybe that's, maybe that's how it works, right. But like, the thing is that we have to know like, for me, video, gaming is not restful. It's, you know, hypnotic, and maybe for your son. It is a way that he can socialize. It's like my kid uses their Instagram lives as a way of collecting all of their friends together at the same time, and they're drawing together, right? Like, my sister and I are going to do FaceTime tonight and co paint our respective paint by numbers, but that's essentially what my kid is doing. Like with their Instagram Live, right. So sometimes it's not the the medium or the thing that's being done. It's like understanding what role it serves in your life and then having the sort of wisdom to know, like, whether this is like a maladaptive coping strategy or an actual coping strategy, okay. Which,
which is also hard to during a pandemic to sort of figure that out.
Like, not sure it's working for now, I don't know if that's maladapted or not, but like,
well, unlike speaking of coping strategies, I don't know if you can hear it through my microphone, but my neighbor's yard services here and the gas powered leaf blowers have kicked up. And I can no longer hear myself think. So I think I have to draw a recording session to close today.
That's fine. We had a really good talk because of the leaf blowers.
I know I'm cold they do ours doors, the doors at eight o'clock in the morning.
Oh, yeah. My, my across the street neighbor. That's like a commercial design house. They every Monday at 7:30am. They come but yeah, anyhow, that's neither here nor there. My memorizing of everybody's yard work schedules, but less gas powered leaf blower team is here. So I should dip before I lose my mind. Yeah. And take a rest. Take a rest.
Yes.
I hope you have a restful rest of your day.
Thank you. I am going to be driving in Friday afternoon. Northern Virginia traffic. So driving, you know, on Friday afternoon, Northern Virginia traffic. Okay. All right, like well, you will enjoy driving into Toronto on the 405 that's why that's what I'm going to be doing. But then I'll get to the beach and so that's that's the that's the aim
that Oh, okay, well, I
hope you enjoy it when you get to the beach.
I lay some time away now. Yeah. I'm going to go be restful and finish getting ready. My daughter's done school in 20 minutes and we're hoping to hit the road. So awesome. All right. Thanks, Lee. Thank you, Amy. Thank you everyone for listening and I'm ready writing she's Did you think you can always email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com. And again, thank you to everyone who has emailed and tweeted us, we really do appreciate it. Somebody who emailed was amazed at the speed at which I guess it's like the fastest response I've ever gotten. I'm like, well, that's me.
As promised, right. Oh, my God. Well, stay rested. Every Yes. Stay
rested and share with us how you rest. Share us on Twitter, how you receive your email list and say how you rest because there's always we're always trying to maximize our restfulness right. That's what that's how it works, right? Absolutely. Okay. Bye, everyone.