EPISODE 1 "OVERWHELM"

[Music] You're listening to You Are A Lot, an ADHD podcast, and I'm your host, Jen Kirkland. In my everyday life, I'm a writer, and in my every waking second of my life, I'm an adult with ADHD. I was diagnosed in my 30s, and did nothing about it, and revisited my diagnosis in my 40s. And I am now with therapy, medication, coaching, and reading everything that the experts write. I'm finally hoping with ADHD in what I think of as a daily recovery. On this podcast, I'll talk about my personal experiences with all of those behaviors, thought, patterns, and feelings that I've lived with never knowing it was ADHD. I'll also pass along what the top experts in the field are saying, putting together research that you may not do for yourself. I want to help spread the word that ADHD is not just about productivity and focus, but it's a lack of executive function which impacts every aspect of our lives, including relationships, and even our self-esteem. If you have been doctor diagnosed with ADHD, self-diagnosed, or people have just told you, "You're kind of a lot. This podcast is for you." And welcome. This episode is called "Overwhelm," because it is about "Overwhelm." I almost called the podcast "Overwhelm," but I took some polls of people on my social media, and friends of mine, and people told me that "Overwhelm" made them feel overwhelmed. So that's why we've got "You are a lot," because it made people laugh, and kind of accept themselves for the ways in which they are a lot. But "Overwhelm" is the symptom, I guess, or the feeling that brought to my attention that something that wasn't anxiety or depression was up. The problem is when I got diagnosed with ADHD, it was my sense of overwhelm that got me talking to a psychiatrist that I was already seeing for medication, for depression, and more so it was panic attack phobia around flying, but he gave me the ADHD test. Oh, did I do well on that test? Got 100%. And then we just sort of talked about ADHD in the standard terms that you hear it talked about. Can't pay attention. Maybe hyperactive. And I didn't quite relate, and then we just never got back to this "Overwhelm," which I don't even know if I used that word back then, but I felt it. And then I went on my way for the next 10 years thinking, "Okay, I have this thing that makes me not able to pay attention that I don't really relate to, and I guess I have 757 other problems that I will continue to work on in talk therapy while ignoring anything I could learn about ADHD." I mean, I'll do an episode someday about getting a diagnosis and not doing anything about it until 10 years later that hopefully will be relatable and might help you to understand your diagnosis better or lack thereof, but let's stick with overwhelm. So, I can only speak from my experience, and I can only speak from what I've learned so far. Obviously, I have so much more to learn. But in this particular episode, I just want to touch on some different ways to look at overwhelm, and there are many different situations that can cause overwhelm. Some of them are neurodevelopmental. Some of them are external, the things that are happening in our life that truly would overwhelm anybody, even a neurotypical person. Sometimes overwhelm is a feeling that we've always had, and that might be related to other comorbidities we have, if we have trauma, if we have anxiety. And sometimes overwhelm is just our default state because we are someone with ADHD, and it may be something we don't have to give into. In other words, I'm not trying to say this is all in your head or just have a positive attitude. But I'm trying to say that I'll be talking a little bit about how, for me, there was a moment where I realized that this overwhelm was not actually real in the sense that nothing was pressing, nothing was overwhelming me actually. I still had to do a lot of work to soothe and redirect my thoughts on this feeling of overwhelm. It wasn't like I went, "Oh, it's nothing's actually wrong." Okay, great, I feel great. No, it took a lot of work, but it was admitting to myself because of the way my brain works, because I have ADHD, I am living with this feeling of overwhelm that's kind of false. And that was a relief. And again, I do understand that you might be listening saying, "No, I am overwhelmed. I have 14 kids and 12 jobs." And of course, there's actual overwhelm. But in terms of the way our ADHD brains are wired for the purposes of this episode, I want to talk about the feeling of overwhelm that may be just a feeling. And then we will get to actual things we can do about it, and what happens when we actually are overwhelmed, there is too much to do. Now, of course, this topic is, to me, the giant blanket that covers every single aspect of ADHD. And so I could do a 35-hour episode about overwhelm, and I could overwhelm myself and all of you. So there are things I probably won't get to in this episode of overwhelm, and we can touch on it in maybe a part two someday. We can always keep adding more information, revisiting the same topics from a different angle, or with more information. But there are other symptoms and feelings and sensations of ADHD that will be mentioned in this episode. And I'm certainly not glossing over them, but they're just not the focus of this episode. And we'll get to them in future episodes. They'll have their own day in the sun. So the issue of overwhelm can be overwhelming because it crosses over into so many other symptoms and behaviors of ADHD, anger, outbursts, time management, prioritizing, being overstimulated, having emotional sensitivity. And so what I want to start with talking today is just that silent feeling of overwhelm, that feeling that you have so much to do that you can't live a normal life. You can't have fun on your time off from work or school. You have to finish your to-do list. You have to organize things at home. How many times has someone said, "How is your weekend?" And you don't have an answer and you're upset because you're thinking, "I don't have a weekend. I don't know. I was doing things. I was busy. I was getting organized." You know, we were on that loop. I was catching up. I was getting organized. And I didn't even get everything done. I don't know. I didn't have a weekend. And for me, this is something that I've actually had to look at in my life because I have spent weekends and nights and free time chasing a feeling. And the feeling is of not being overwhelmed. You know, I'm obeying my feeling of overwhelm that's telling me you have too much to do and your mind won't be able to think about anything else until you do this stuff. I don't be able to enjoy a movie until all of this stuff gets done. And when I stopped and confronted my thought that there is a world where I can go do things and enjoy myself. And still not finish every single thing that I want to do, you know, get to inbox zero or to do lists, everything crossed off. They can still enjoy myself and not feel overwhelmed because doing and getting all the things done is not going to bring me peace. And realizing that overwhelm is an emotion that I do have some control over. And in the past, the way I would control my overwhelm is usually just fall asleep. I mean, honestly, not even sometimes not even make a decision to go to sleep, but the overwhelm would actually make me exhausted to where I seriously felt like I had narcolepsy. I could just pass out and that's after taking a violence and having a cup of coffee, which again, if you actually have ADHD and you do take a stimulant, it doesn't work as a stimulant in the traditional sense that it makes you busy and awake, you know, it calms us, it focuses us. But I would say that having a stimulant technically in your system in a cup of coffee isn't usually what people do before nap time. And so for me, realizing that when I feel overwhelmed, that I now have to look and say, okay, is there an external force that's overwhelming me? Do I actually have a deadline? Do I have a responsibility? Do I have a phone call? I'm not making to have a tough conversation. And if none of those things are present and it's just this feeling of overwhelm, like I just want all of this done and what is this, I don't know anything. Not even just things on the to-do list, but making the to-do list properly. Things, stuff. And sometimes I don't know what it is, I just feel overwhelmed. I have to go in and confront it. And we can get at the end of the episode into how to look at that. And this also ties in with the mythology of time management that we're ever going to get control over our time, which will be another episode. But in a general way for me, overwhelm was always this, it's a ghost for me. Now this, I'm going to read you something from a book called "Women with Attention, Deficit Disorder" written by Sarri Soldan. Now this applies to all genders, what I'm reading, but so I'll change it to people. People with ADHD often live in a secret world. Some people call it passing for normal. The painful reality is that many of us have moved away from relationships or have at least kept a part of themselves locked away from other people without realizing it. Often our lives have taken on a secret tone is if the way we live is shameful. The inner world is a place that outsiders couldn't fathom, where the simplest activities getting dressed, planning the day or running a simple errand, are extremely difficult and frustrating. The cumulative effect of these daily experiences makes someone with ADHD feel like an outsider, separate from the world in some important way, spending their days coping with the silent thief of time and dreams instead of living life. ADHD is such a full-time job that some people have never had the opportunity to stop and figure out a way of doing things differently. They haven't discovered how to change the rules, what it means to feel comfortable or how to live without feeling overwhelmed. They just don't have the concept. So here's my analogy and this is a classic ADHD person's analogy. It might only make sense to someone with ADHD or it might not, depending on how your brain works, but have you ever taken a surfing lesson or do you know anything about surfing? I took one surfing lesson once and I did not enjoy it. I mean, I'm glad I did it, but I didn't realize that you have to strap the surfboard to your ankle. And that seemed so strange to me because that thing is heavy and I thought, wait, but if I'm in the water and I wipe out, I love that I thought I was going to wipe out when I couldn't even stand on the board, but whatever. If I'm in the water and a wave hits me, isn't the board going to hit me on the head because it's strapped to me? And the logic is the opposite that no, because the board is strapped to you, you always know where it is, it's not going to be able to just fly away and hit you over the head. I still couldn't really grasp that and that kind of fear and inability to look at things the way they actually were was what made me a terrible surfer that and I can't swim. But it's that primary function of the strap is to keep the surfboard close to the surfer to prevent it from hitting you and also from just washing up onto the shoreline because also you need your surfboard if you're pretty far out to float on, right? And it also, it keeps the surfboard from flying into other surfers and causing further harm. So it's really, really helpful to have that surfboard strapped to your ankle when you're surfing. In fact, it could save your life. Now, just because that heavy surfboard that strapped to your ankle when you're surfing could save your life, it doesn't mean that it's a good tool to use any other time. You would not walk down the street to pick up your dry cleaning with a giant surfboard tied to your ankle because duh, you're not in the ocean surfing. Sometimes, we think we are surfing and we are proverbially weighing ourselves down by strapping a surfboard to our ankle when that is not what is going to serve us in that moment. Now, as I'm saying this, I want to delete this episode. This is the worst analogy ever, but it made so much sense when I was writing it. Right, you tie the board to your ankle when you need it because it keeps you safe. If you're not actually surfing and you're walking around it, it would be enormously distracting, a giant problem, and it would prevent you from doing things. So this is all to say that my overwhelm and that my insistence that I got to do this thing before I do that thing. I got to do this thing before I can slow down and enjoy life. I have to do all these things and I have to do them all at the same time. There's just no other way. It's just I'm overwhelmed. I don't know how the rest of you live, but just I don't know. I got too much to do. Believing that and staying in that loop of no, no, no, no, no, I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to be guys. I don't want to be. I don't like being overwhelmed, but I'm just saying once I dot dot dot do this and that the overwhelm will go away. And then everything will be fine. That day never comes. I'm still walking around the surfboard strap to my ankle as I'm trying to get into my car because I'm obeying the overwhelm. I'm obeying this made up thing that is telling me my reality when it's not my reality. I'm listening to something that's saying you're in the ocean on a wave. I'm not. Dealing with actual overwhelm and actually being overloaded is a thing and it's important to look into that because if you are overloaded, you do also have to make changes. There's no world where I'm saying, oh, but if you actually have a million things to do that are time sensitive, well, that's your life can't change it. ADHD people have a hard time with prioritization and task management anyway. So obviously there's real overwhelm as well. So, but that's what that's the thing for me is is when overwhelm is just in my head. I'm not actually overwhelmed, but I am being bombarded. I'm actually not being bombarded with my thoughts and things are real. You know, maybe my boundaries have been bad and I've said yes to too many things or I have time blindness and I'm like, oh, yeah, that only take five seconds. Yeah, sure, put that on my plate. I'll do that. Overwhelmed, there's kind of a fine line between having lots going on and having far too much to ever possibly finish and for the ADHD mind, we do not know the difference by looking at it quickly. So first off, I would say determine if you're feeling overwhelmed or if you're feeling overloaded because overwhelm is based on emotions, but overload is more like, okay, there's actual things here and I don't know what to do first or second or third. And people could say, well, I mean, that's not ADHD. Everyone gets overwhelmed. Just I want to hear none of us want to hear from you. We understand that everyone can have these feelings from time to time, but for us, it's a constant state, which can be debilitating in our life and it can cause problems in relationships, in our jobs, in our schoolwork, everything, even just sitting on the couch, it's causing problems for us because it's going on in our heads. So this is from a website called TotallyADD.com and this is one of the reasons why people with ADHD get overwhelmed and it's because ADHD is a disorder of executive function, executive function controls everything in our brain and in our life. So whether you have ADHD or not, executive functions in the brain don't do the work, but they organize it. They control the planning and the organizing, prioritizing supply management, setting goals, monitoring progress, costs, blah, blah. They're just making sure that everything runs smoothly in your brain. They don't actually do the work, but they make sure the work of your brain is organized. ADHD brains not only get overwhelmed more often than a neurotypical person, but they also get more overwhelmed than other brains. So that's to everyone who says to you, I get overwhelmed too, we get more overwhelmed. We win, we win, we don't want to win, but we win on this one. It can lead to spiraling and then hitting a wall and that wall is what separates you from what you need to do. And it's been built up over the years, each brick crafted by every experience of criticism, self doubt, unreached potential, failed intentions and missed opportunities throughout your life. Because we're carrying that around with us as well, because many of us adults with ADHD, we're not diagnosed until we'd already lived half our lives or lived a bunch of adult years using coping mechanisms that don't work, which then caused conflict, which then caused shame. And so we're still dealing with that baggage that comes with us as well as dealing with, hey, the day to day thing if I'm overwhelmed. Okay, let me take a look at this. What's actually going on? So continuing back to this article, ADHD brains do not filter information, stimulation and other incoming data. It doesn't sort out the unimportant things, leaving you to only have to deal with key details. Instead, your brain is smacked with every single piece of data that comes your way. And because your brain also doesn't regulate the intensity of your feelings very well, it feels and experiences that wave of data full force all day, every day. And because the ADHD brain doesn't filter information or stimulation and because it struggles to order, prioritize and organize, it can be overwhelmed by almost anything in life. The top six forms of overwhelm that are seen, according again to this article that I'm reading on this is from adept.org, ADDEPT, I'll put all of these links in the show notes. The top six forms of overwhelm are too much stimulation, too many thoughts, which is cognitive overwhelm, too many feelings, emotional overwhelm, too many tasks to do list overwhelm, too much stuff, clutter overwhelm and too many logistics, logistical overwhelm. So when you have ADHD, which again is a form of being neurodiverse, it can feel like your life is constantly in chaos. You can feel like you're always behind, this can be extremely overwhelming and can lead to a lot of anxiety. And again, emotional regulation, which is part of executive function is difficult for people with ADHD. We can have impulsive tendencies, we can take on more than we can handle because again of that time blindness, which also causes a lot of stress and anxiety. And all of these factors can contribute to feeling overwhelmed. So what do ADHD people specifically get overwhelmed about? This is from psychcentral.com. It can be finding things, being on time, meeting deadlines, following your health routines, it could be reading a book, it could be accomplishing goals. And again, as people could say, well, I'm getting like that, too, but it's every day. If you want even more from this experience of listening to my podcast here, you are a lot in ADHD podcast. You're going to love what I'm offering on Patreon for just $5 a month and you can get a seven day free trial right now if you want to check it out. So here's how you do it. The link to the you are a lot podcast. Patreon page is patreon.com/a lot ADHD pod. And you can find a clickable link to this in the show notes on whatever podcast app that you're listening to this on. You can also go to genkirkman.com and right there on the homepage will be a link that can take you right to Patreon. So what is included in your subscription for $5 a month? You get ad free episodes. You don't have to listen to me, pitch the Patreon. 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So I'm not really in the mindset of this episode being about to do list overwhelm because that's a real thing and that has to do with time management and time blindness. And prioritizing and that's a whole separate episode. That could be a few episodes. I'm talking more about sitting down and realizing this this phantom feeling you have of being overwhelmed is one of your ADHD symptoms. And I don't know about you, but for me, when I've realized things that just feel like something's wrong with me or a symptom of ADHD, I can kind of relax because it means I can manage it. And it means there's a name for it. And it just means, oh, okay. So once again, my brain that's wired a certain way is going to kind of default to overwhelm, but I can do a few things about it. If I'm willing to give up this sense of overwhelm because again, if you've been doing this your whole life, it's kind of part of your identity. It can be scary, even if you don't want to feel this way, it can be scary to try to give it up because what if it's good that I'm overwhelmed? Well, what happens now is, you know, what could you feel if you weren't feeling overwhelmed all the time? Maybe it would be great joy relief. Maybe it would be a problem that you haven't looked at in a long time. And that's why this is not a therapy podcast, but that would be something you would want to look out further on your own look at in therapy. But a lot of times our constant racing or more like looping thoughts can, you know, we're used to them. They suck, but hey, it's a thing that sucks that I'm familiar with. But I do want to validate that like, of course, there are real reasons why we can get overwhelmed, but I also want to validate that even though I'm calling my overall sense of overwhelm a phantom, it's real. It's intense. It's a real feeling, even though it's kind of about nothing. Thomas Brown, who's a PhD. This is from a website called chad.org, chad.org, describes the overwhelming power of emotions that people with ADHD feel when they call it overwhelmed as flooding. Emotions can use up all the available space in the brain and other thoughts and other feelings are displaced. He also mentions that the individual with ADHD has issues shifting from one emotion. To the other, so it's therefore possible to kind of just get stuck in an emotional state. Over time, this can affect our self esteem, creating a downward spiral of emotions, which can impact daily functioning for some people. Stuart Shanker, who is a PhD in a child development expert, wrote a book called self-reg, which is a book about self-regulation from the perspective of understanding the role of stress in childhood and in parenting. Again, this is strictly an ADHD for adults podcast because I do not have any experience with children in ADHD. I do believe I had it as a kid looking back. We can talk about that in a future episode, but I'm talking about adults with ADHD, but the stressors that can lead to overwhelm are biological. There's stressors in our environment. You know, you could have a sensitivity to light or sound, you could have insomnia, you could have allergies, emotional triggers, intense emotions that come up in a relationship or an argument. If you are criticized from someone else, whether that criticism is real or perceived, cognition, you could be slow to process things, you could have a lack of interest in a topic, you can get information overload. Our executive function affects our memory issues, our reading and our comprehension, our planning and prioritizing. There are social issues involved with feeling overwhelmed. You can be an introvert at a party. Again, you can have real or perceived social rejection. You can have discomfort in initiating conversation in a group, jealousy. And there's pro-social, which is embarrassment over being late, neglecting your self-care to care for others, internet dating, perceived failure of meeting other people's expectations, feelings or needs. So what if you are actually overwhelmed, meaning you have taken on too much and you're starting to burn out? So the first thing is you want to notice the signs. And the signs of being overwhelmed or on your way to burn out might be things that you're so used to, you don't think of them as signs of, oh my god, I'm about to burn out. But do you get a headache? Does your vision get blurry? Does your thinking just go kind of foggy? Like I mentioned before, do you just fall asleep, even if you're not tired? Do you just want to run screaming from the room? Notice your red flags and learn to accept these things as red flags. I don't want to say should not. You do not have to feel these things every day. These are really heightened states of distress. So if you are noticing any of these signs of burning out or overwhelmed, wherever you are in that moment, if you can step away, if you're with people, take a walk, just give yourself space from anything that might physically be overwhelming you, if it is light certain lighting, certain sounds. If it's just cognitive overwhelm in your head, and I don't mean to say just, but if there's nothing to walk away from because you're going to take your head with you, if you go for a walk, can you play loud music, do some dancing, jump in a hot shower, jump in a cold shower, drink a glass of water. Can you just sit and think, stop, just sit and think, stop. You know, a lot of this is from anxiety work I've done in the past, but it does help with ADHD overwhelm, which does feel similar to anxiety, except I would say for me in my past, I actually think I was misdiagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, I think I've always just had ADHD. But there are things that obviously help ADHD as well as generalized anxiety, and it's really about staying present, and I think that because we can hyperfocus, I mean, we can spend four hours without stopping to eat or pee or talk to anyone if we're, I don't know, googling something we're really interested in, whatever it is. But that's hyperfocus, which really isn't being in the present, but getting into the now, you know, what is something nearby that you can touch? Taking, I hate the word deep breaths, I feel like that's so much pressure, just breathing, you know, sometimes we're just sort of shallow breathing and holding our breath, can you just exhale, let all the air out and just start breathing again? Can you do literally, I'm not kidding, a 60 second guided, I don't even want to say the word meditation, as if to be meditation, just guided anything, just listening to something that tells you what to think next, you know, can you take a walk, even if it's just around where you live inside for 60 seconds? Can you just get out of paper and pen, get on your computer and just write every single overwhelming thought that's in your head, whether it's true or not, don't start censoring yourself as you're writing and think, well, actually, I actually really don't have to get that done, just write. Oh, my God, what am I going to do? In fact, I have to pay the bills and I have to just keep doing that, just do it, do it, do it, set a timer, stop after 90 seconds if you want, doesn't have to go on and on, and if you want to keep going, keep going. But that just sort of stops and gets you in touch with, okay, is this a feeling or am I actually overwhelmed? Is there actually too much to do? And if there is too much to do, there's also a need to self-sude as well, right? I mean, in general, it's like, stop, start to self-sude and then thinking about looking at what your list is telling you that you have to do that's causing the overwhelm. Cut out everything that is truly extra that no one needs you to do except you. Cut it out for now. Even just today, if you can do a week, put it aside for a week. Recognize if you're imperfectionism, which does not mean I'm a perfectionist, does not mean I do everything until it's perfect. It's actually a negative term. It means that you don't even attempt things because you need to get it perfect. Perfectionism is a cognitive distortion. It is not a good quality in somebody. Are you procrastinating and that's why you're overwhelmed? You actually only have one thing to do and you're putting it off and procrastinating and it's causing this intense overwhelm. Can you look at the big picture of what you are overwhelmed about, whether it's one thing, 50 things, or truly nothing, and get realistic about what actually needs to be done that will affect the quality of your life. Okay, if I don't do this, I'll get fired. Do you have a support system? Are you someone who thinks, well, I would ask for help, but then I have to explain how people can help me. And I sometimes do that. Are you there? Is there a way that you can call text a friend and say, I need help with something, but here's my problem. I'm afraid it's going to take too long to explain what I need help with and I could just do it myself anyway. Just dart the conversation, get into the gray area, not the black and white predicting. So I'm not going to do it and just talk to someone and see how that changes your sense of overwhelm. Can you body double? Do you have a lot to do? And you don't need someone to hold you accountable and say, did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it? But body doubling is one of my favorite things to do as someone with ADHD. It's something I used to do with a friend of mine. I didn't even know what it was called. It's just, you know, let's say you have a couple hours and you really do need to do your life administrative stuff. You got to pay bills, you got to return emails. You also want to have coffee with a friend and you know that you really, it's just one of those days you can't have it both ways. Except, you know, you can't get coffee and then also do your admin. You don't have four hours you have two. Okay, can your friend come over and sit with you quietly as a body double? They can bring their stuff. You do your stuff like when you have study hall in school. And you both do your things. It's just sometimes another human there affects our nervous system and helps us get things done. It's not an action buddy, though. It's not accountability partner. Those things do exist and those can be helpful. That's not quite how I like to do things. I just want that peace and calm of someone there. While I do tasks because again, we don't have a normal amount of dopamine in our brains. And that's why if we have to sit and return an email, obviously nobody's like, wow, I love returning emails is like going to Disney World. Nobody feels that way. But for ADHD people, we almost need it to feel that way to get us to do it because the lack of dopamine we have anyway does not carry us through being able to return an email without being like, oh, God, I'm going to do this. People that look at us and go, what's the big deal is return an email. They have a normal amount of dopamine. It's like, it's almost like if you had asthma and you have a friend who's taking deep breaths and you're over here going and wheezing and they're going, what's the problem? You have different capacity in my lungs. So you might need to puff on your inhaler. For me, a body double, it just does something somebody being there does something to my dopamine. I have enough. I can send the email without being like, oh, my God, you know. So again, it's normal to feel overwhelmed from time to time. But what the purpose of this episode was, have you thought about the fact that this overwhelm is an ADHD symptom in and of itself? And that you don't have to give into it every time you don't have to believe it. You know, you know, those friends that you have and they're always whipped up about something they come in. Well, I mean, if you're not going to believe it or they're posting on Facebook, this person at work is just, she is always trying to undermine me and they want you to get all whipped up on their behalf. And you're like, okay, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, she's sorry about your friend sharing at work. And they're like, no, but you understand what she did, right? She took my sandwich out of the fridge. And you're like, yeah, no, that sucks. And they're like, I can't believe you're not as upset about it. Like that, your overwhelm is like, come out and let's get overwhelmed. And it's got to get to a point where you're like, I see you overwhelm. And you're probably always going to be here. But no, I'm not actually going to go nap. I just got up an hour ago. I'm not going to be overwhelmed right now. And in future episodes, we can talk about actually having too many tasks and what it takes to prioritize and strategize. And that will be many, many episodes, because again, there are so many little tiny things about having ADHD that we could do entire episodes about. And they all kind of crossover. So again, self soothing strategies to help that we know that feeling of overwhelm does affect your nervous system, right? Your cortisol is going. That's your stress hormone. You could even be in fight or flight. Even if you're not having a panic attack, your body can kind of be in fight or flight. And so, you know, people are probably everyone's telling you to meditate, right? I'm not telling you to meditate. You don't have to meditate. But something I've really enjoyed in my life is progressive muscle relaxation. And if you just Google that YouTube it, you can find so many different things to listen to. I personally cannot recommend anything specific because the sound of voices bothers us doesn't bother us. Do you want the sound of the ocean with your progressive muscle relaxation instructions? Do you want chimes? I mean, you'll find it. But it's basically just you lay down or you sit down and your thoughts can do whatever they want. But somebody is saying to you, tighten your muscles, you know, it starts one body part at a time. Tighten your shoulders, hold it for three seconds and release it. And you just do that throughout your whole body. And it just so regulates your nervous system. These are two things that I'm pretty much obsessed with in life right now is regulating my nervous system is never a bad idea. Because when I get in some kind of heightened emotional state where I feel like there's an emotional emergency when there isn't that's going to lead me to my bad tools like let me call the person that just hurt me and ask them to soothe me. Let me go off on a friend, you know, and talk too much and send a 50 page text or let me get angry at someone or let me just lay in bed all day. You want to do these like quick things that soothe you, but they actually don't regulate your nervous system. And I always find if I can regulate my nervous system, then my brain kind of clicks back online and I can make better choices about how to handle the feelings that I feel. When my nervous system is calmer, then I just get to feel the actual feeling that's there. Oh, I'm sad. I feel guilty. I'm a little angry, but when my nervous system isn't also whipping me up in a frenzy, I can kind of refocus on one feeling at a time. And then from there, do what I need to do to cope or get through the day or finish the project I'm doing or whatever. So again, it's like there's a lot about ADHD that isn't just, oh, have you thought about getting a key ring and hanging it on the door right next to the door when you come in. It's like, yeah, we know about that. We know about those kind of solutions, but I'm talking about when you come in, you see the key ring that you can, you know, you see the loop that you hang your key ring on and you don't do it. And for some reason, you toss your keys on the couch. You forget you did it because you did it so unconsciously. Now they're between the couch cushions and you're leaving to go out and you're running late anyway and you're like, where the hell are my keys? I swear I put them on this hook because why wouldn't I have put them on this hook because I put this hook here to put my keys on. Oh, my God, are they in the door? Okay, I know I have them because I got in the house, but and you have no memory of putting them in the couch cushions. Now you're running late. Now you're beating yourself up. Whatever that is. Okay. That chaos is ADHD and it lives inside of us emotionally. So no wonder we're freaking overwhelmed because we've been doing things that neurotypical people have told us to do in order to solve our problems without them really even understanding what the problems are. The magical day of your overwhelm going away because you did something to obey the overwhelm and validate it and then get everything done. That's maladaptive. The magical feeling, the feeling of overwhelm can magically go away if you do the work of challenging the assumption that there's anything to even be overwhelmed about and realizing, oh, this is a symptom of ADHD. Okay, so I might have this feeling, but maybe if I go get a cup of coffee with a friend, the feeling might take a back seat at the very least. It may not get out of the car, but it's going to take a back seat, which by the way, sometimes when things take a back seat, it feels just as good as if it got out of the car. And then you don't have to go into that shutdown, which is that thing I described earlier where I can just fall asleep on a byvans and a cup of coffee. That's that stuck frozen feeling, right? We don't want to shut down and we don't want to totally obey the overwhelm and let ourselves believe that we can't do this until we do that. Again, that magical day is never coming, but the end of this episode is coming right now and the magical day when you get another episode will be next week. And until then, just remember, I'm a lot you are a lot and that's totally cool. Thanks so much for listening to you are a lot. If you want more information about some of the subjects I talked about on today's episode, don't forget that I cite and source all of my research in the show notes. Everything will be a clickable link and you can find the show notes on whatever podcast app that you are listening to this on. Speaking of your favorite podcast app, if you are able to rate and review this podcast, please do. I'd love a five star review and some kind words. If you'd like to send an email to the show, please write in at a lot ADHD pod at gmail.com and your email might be right on a future episode. Reminder you can join patreon for five dollars a month and get a seven day free trial to check it out head to patreon.com/a lot ADHD pod and you can read about all of the perks of joining. And you can find me Jen Kirkman on social media on Instagram at Jen Kirkman and go to my website Jen Kirkman.com for all things related to me and again, this show. Just a reminder, this podcast should not replace getting formally diagnosed, taking medication, doing ADHD coaching or attending therapy. This podcast is for entertaining and educational purposes only. Bye. [Music]