ADHD Coach & Academic Strategist | Guiding ADHD, autistic, and neurodivergent clients through lived experience | they/her | #AuDHD | #ActuallyAutistic
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Adding pressure (or anxiety) to get started with task only helps us to a certain point. After that point, added anxiety actually makes getting started more difficult or increases the risk of perfectionism. For ADHD'ers, who often struggle with getting started, this is a super common trap
I need to know more about this idea. right. now.
Little known fact, but the ADHD sleep paralysis demon just whispers AMAZING ideas in your ear and assures you that you'll remember them in the morning 🙃
Yeah, society systematically trains us all to expect the neurotypical way of doing things doesn't it?
I do think that people without ADHD really struggle to imagine the inner world that people with ADHD experience, especially when it comes to executive dysfunction
Getting started with tasks doesn't have to be about starting that one task you're thinking about right here, right now. It can be making it easier to get started later on, through building momentum, reducing barriers, or starting small, for example
Completely agree. I have made pages and pages dedicated to exactly this in my journal. Where I have options presented in a visual format that isn't overwhelming Then I just need to remember one thing (to check the journal) instead of all the options individually ^^;
However... I don't love calling it "planning ahead," but I have a hard time finding the right words. Planning ahead feels like I'm committing to something... it's more like having a template? Committing to a plan doesn't go great for me, but having a template gives me a place to start, you know?
An example, that I was thinking of last night was having an exercise plan. Having something that tells me what I'm "meant" to be doing makes it so that when I want to exercise I don't get stuck in that complete indecision where I don't know what to do or even what the options are
Decision making when you have ADHD can suck so hard. One of the reasons I always need a plan ahead of time is because without a plan, I am constantly lost in not being able to decide what to do ...or not even being able to identify the options
Neurodivergent people often have different (or more extreme) strengths and weaknesses than neurotypical people. These differences can make doing things the neurotypical way understimulating, unsustainable, or even impossible
Being autistic can change the way that we interact and communicate. When these differences aren't considered or accommodated, people (even professionals) can get completely the wrong impression of us, our abilities, or our intelligence
Good, imo~ I think that we should have a diversity of people, experiences, and neurotypes on teams whenever we can, and I think that would result in better outcomes
For ADHD'ers, building momentum that we can use on a bigger task later in the day is an important tool to have in our toolboxes. For me, starting with other tasks that have a similar feel or require a similar skillset, especially ones that are easy wins, work best for building this momentum
I'd lend you a couple of my spoons if I had any left over
Life with ADHD: Task: Send email. Me: That should take... 1 spoon? I can do that! Let's go! My executive dysfunction: Nuh uh. Starting will be 2 more spoons. My memory: ...what were we doing? 1 spoon to figure it out. My hyperfocus: You want to stop!? That'll be 3 spoons Me: Why am I so tired!?
Autistic, ADHD, and other ND people may approach problem solving in different ways than neurotypicals. This way isn't better or worse, but having different people with different approaches working on the same problem can help to avoid dangerous cognitive traps and lead to creative solutions
The ADHD process writing an email: 1) Procrastinate until it's urgent. 2) Draft something super fast and hit send. 3) Undo send, make sure I didn't misspell their name, hit send. 4) Undo send, forgot the attachment, hit send. 5) Undo send, thought of something to add, hit send...
Treating ADHD and/or autistic strengths as if they are "our superpower" can encourage burnout by over-relying on a single way of coping. Having many diverse and context-specific coping mechanisms is actually really important to make coping sustainable
She kept bringing her ball to me and I thought it meant she wanted to play 😭 I think I'm going to have to give her extra treats to soothe my own sense of guilt
AHH! I completely forgot to give my dog lunch >_< I've so thoroughly connected me eating food to feeding my dog, that when I didn't eat lunch I forgot to give her lunch too. At least she gets double dinner? 😅
For many autistic people routine and structure can be rewarding, whereas uncertainty and navigating complex emotions can be incredibly stressful. This has wide-ranging impacts on our lives, including changing how we learn best and even changing the skills we develop
Self-reflection is so important to coping with our neurodivergent conditions better. But self-reflection can't only be focus on our flaws and weaknesses. Self-reflection also has to involve acknowledging our good days and our strengths, and understanding what facilitates them
Hyperfocus is a beautiful, wondrous... double-edged sword. It can feel fulfilling and invigorating, but also make us completely forget about other important or urgent aspects of our lives. We can miss appointments, or even neglect ourselves, our family, or our bodily needs
Too many neurodivergent people feel ashamed of their uniquely neurodivergent experiences of joy. Neurodivergent joy isn't frivolous or cringe. It's a powerful motivational, healing, and restorative experience
I completely agree. I think acceptance reduce the need for many autistic people to mask/camouflage for sure. I don't think there'll ever be a world where camouflaging is eliminated, but any tiny reduction reduces the energy burden autistic people experience and has positive health consequences
Co-regulation--where people work together to regulate their emotions, sensations, or behaviour--is such a super powerful tool for teaching and learning self-regulation skills. It often involves modelling behaviour, social learning, AND guided instruction!
My ADHD ass really empathizes with that darned rabbit from the tortoise and the hare. If I can get going, I REALLY get going. I make connections quick and act on them super fast... ...then the novelty dies and progress stops or I sprint between tangents unable to actually get to the finish
Source: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
While it's true that autistic people sometimes struggle to empathize with allistic experiences, it's also true that allistic people struggle to empathize with autistic experiences. These differences in empathy are often mutual misunderstanding, not pathological traits
Everyday human experiences that dysregulate allistic people (such as pain, family stress, hunger) also dysregulate autistic folks. But being autistic often adds a layer of stress unique to the autistic experience, such as sensory stress, executive dysfunction, or masking
My partner: I'm going to put these board games away. We won't forget that we have board games, right? Me: ._. ...You underestimate my capacity to forget things My partner: ...we might forget we have board games...
People's misconceptions about autistic, ADHD, and other neurodivergent people are still major barriers. These assumptions can sometimes be difference between being able or unable to access services, supports, or even everyday institutions
I've done SO many of these ice breakers. I can guarantee that it is definitely is cool enough :)
Extra points if you JUST had one before it became your turn, then *poof*
ADHD'ers: [A decontextualized obscure connection that they made between two seemingly unconnected things... followed by a 30 minute attempt to provide the missing context]
Groups: "Let's go around and have everyone share a fun fact." Neurotypical: [A fact about themselves that's quirky in the most beige, unoffensive way possible] Autistic: [A decontextualized deep slice about one of their special interests... maybe followed by a long series of other similar facts]
Chronic masking is a major stressor on the health and well-being of autistic and other neurodivergent people. Finding places where we can put down the mask and be authentic to ourselves and our experience protects our physical and mental well-being Source: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Also , Meltdowns vs Shutdown are heavily racialized and gendered Shutdowns are minimized often because of who has them
This also means that people (many who look like me) who experience meltdowns can sometimes be influenced (subconsciously or not) towards either a meltdown or shutdown based on who's around and the potential consequences. This can make the impacts of meltdowns on other people unequally divided too
I completely agree! There are people for who society deems "acting out" rather than "acting in" more acceptable and appropriate, and that often correlates with other measures of power and privilege
Shutdowns aren't better versions of meltdowns! They are simply two different results to the same circumstances: acute stress that far exceeds our abilities to cope. Both are distressing and disruptive, even if they look different from the outside
Aahhh! My GI tract is quivering just at the thought of that >_<
Fair~
I feel like I'm on the complete other end of that spectrum. I graduated top of my class in University and even advanced degrees have been easy for me historically... But keeping connections who think of me when there are jobs available is seemingly impossible for me >_<
>_< That's a painful thing to be taught over and over again. How the unlearning that going?
Who's they in this instance? Because it sounds like you are talking about something that's build for us, not by us. Is there a way that we can build our own sense of community?
Can we talk about how important community is for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people? Seriously, having a community with people of similar neurodivergent experiences is so important to quality of life, and living in an authentic and purposeful way
NO ONE is born with fully developed executive function. ADHD'ers, who will continue to struggle with executive dysfunction, develop executive functioning skills in childhood too, just differently and at a different rate
Completely! This is something that I think there needs to be more supports around too, honestly
tacky af, bro
Treating ADHD isn't JUST about being better at school or being able to focus, it's also about reducing anxiety and depression, reducing suicidality, reducing car accidents, reducing accidents in general, reducing disordered eating or drug use. ADHD touches everything. ADHD treatment does too!
ADHD can make it more likely that we struggle with school, sure, but it also makes it more likely we struggle with: * mood disorders, * loneliness and relationships, * risk-taking, * car accidents, * managing a healthy relationship with food, drugs, or other vices
"You can't have ADHD you're doing fine in school." Neat... ADHD isn't a "bad at school disease." It's a lifelong struggles with regulating attention, emotions, impulses, and movement condition. It's a developmental struggles with decision making, getting started, understanding time condition
A lot of autistic people find school, college, and university very stressful. Apart from the academic demands, classrooms can be a very inaccessible places. They can require masking our neurodivergence, involve sensory stress, or executive function demands that take additional spoons
#NAuwu :3 👉👈
Shocker among shockers! When services, research, and communities meaningfully include autistic people, research and interventions become more relevant and higher quality. If you want to support autistic people, make sure the project involves a diverse cast of autistic people
Nothing feels as good as climbing out of ADHD crisis mode alive and (mostly) in one piece. ...it's too bad it's almost always followed by massive existential crisis from understimulation and lack of urgency...
People with ADHD may need longer, more intensive executive functioning supports as we learn how to use our own executive functioning skills. Some of these may become long-term accommodations, but sometimes it's just about adapting to the longer developmental timeline of ADHD'ers
Reminder: There are huge barriers that prevent people from seeking or accessing professional diagnoses, and folks who sit at the interactions of multiple marginalized identities tend to face more of these barriers. Self-diagnosis can be a particularly important tool within underserved communities
Hot Take: The people who hate self-diagnosis the most should be the ones fighting the hardest to make professional diagnosis universally accessible. And the fact that many of them aren't tells you everything you need to know about their actual reasons for hating self-diagnosis
I mean, I'd say you were right there, but you definitely shouldn't be working to the point that you shut down >_< That sounds distressing!
I'm just imagining the conversation with yourself. You: You're going to say a nice thing about yourself. Your anxiety: NNNOOOO! I don't wanna You: What about *starts listing*? Your anxiety: Okay, okay. Uncle! I concede
Getting through involves success! It's okay to celebrate even the small, mundane things. In fact, I'd say it's even more important to, and honestly, it makes for good practice
Stop expecting yourself, or others, to just stop meltdowns. Once a meltdown or shutdown starts, very few people can pull themselves out of it through effort alone. The main way to stop a meltdown or shutdown is to prevent it in the first place!
ADHD struggles with memory can make it really hard for us to remember our accomplishments. It can feel big headed to take the time to note them down, make them visible, or remind ourselves of them, but it's actually necessary to get the sense of reward that encourages us to continue with our goals
Co-regulation often involves the same skills as self-regulation, but in a collaborative, sometimes in a fun way. Breathing exercises are a hallmark self-regulation skill, whereas 'competing' to inflate a balloon with the fewest breathes or to keep it aloft with only our breath, are co-regulation
ADHD impulsivity makes it more likely ADHD'ers act in ways that don't fit our personal values. The emotions, sensations, and thoughts we experience when this happens aren't wrong though. Instead, understanding the underlying emotion is a really important step toward positive behavioural change
This is an impact of impulsivity, or weakened response inhibition. For NTs, impulses are often followed by an inhibition response which tells them not act on them. For ADHD'ers though, inhibition is less reliable, so we can pick up an emotion and run with it before we even process what's going on
We all know that ADHD'ers tend to have big, fast emotions. (We do all know that, ...right?) But having big, fast emotions also means that ADHD'ers can be more susceptible to emotional contagion, where we catch emotions from other people around us
Executive function is not just one skill, it's MANY. Different people can be strong at some areas of executive functioning and weak at others. ADHD'ers often struggle with many of these skill, and the differences between strong and weak executive function skills can be particularly stark
Negative experiences with judgment, stigma, and discrimination are powerful predictors of how much neurodivergent people feel the need to mask. Reducing these negative experience through, say, accepting neurodivergent people has LARGE impacts on community health and wellness
Having an organized space reduces visual cues and can help ADHD'ers reduce overwhelm. However, putting everything away has consequences for our memory. This means it's much more important to be intentional about how we use our space rather than to be organized for organization's sake
Being able to accept our struggles and weaknesses, rather than feel guilty for them, is such an important part of self-improvement. Feeling guilty, cringe, or ashamed of our struggles or the process to overcoming them encourages us to avoid rather than accommodate, grow, or learn
Emotions can be so irrational, especially ADHD emotions, but that doesn't mean we can just turn them off in favour of "rational", "higher-order" thought. Emotions demand to be experienced and accepting them as part of us is an essential part of navigating and regulating them
Yeah, me too. As well as "done is better than perfect" or, from my grad school days "the only good thesis is a done thesis" ...now if I could just get myself to listen to that advice lol
I hope that you can find a place where you can safely experience those emotions in the end. Holding in that emotional tornado can do so much damage over time
When I feel the most empathetic, I'm generally trying to deeply understand another's experience and see things from through their context the best I'm able. That takes more time and energy, but it also doesn't seem to be considered empathy by some people or in some situations, and that confuses me
This pretty much matches my experience as well. I have often found what's considered empathetic to feel almost performative and shallow. Like loudly acknowledging the emotion is more important than feeling it or understanding it.
I also hope your 15 year career has shown you how very few non-autistic people take the time to understand autistic people, deeply listen to us and trust what we say, and meaningfully support us in even tiny, no-cost ways. If more people did, the world would be a lot easier to be autistic in, imo
I'm glad to hear that you feel like you've been able to empathize with the autistic experience! I hope it's led you to understanding your own social, sensory, and executive functioning support needs and being a great resource for others in your life :)
Completely agree. Empathy is not a characteristic to determine autism, one way or the other. There are other criteria that diagnostic that can impact how we experience empathy, but "too much" or "too little" empathy itself is not diagnostic
"Autistic people lack empathy" Oh? Then show me how good you non-autistic folks are at empathizing with the autistic experience. I'll wait.
Also, here are some resources that might help :) embrace-autism.com?s=burnout leedsautismaim.org.uk/wp-content/u...
The world is so loud and overwhelming, and autistic burnout comes from needing to constantly regulate that. If you can reduce that as much as possible, that'll help. That also means when you do it to yourself! Do the low energy safe foods for a bit. Drop any guilt about eating 'healthy' or whatever
What this means in practice for you is going to unique to your experience, but some examples are: * Setting up a sensory nest with all the good sensory experiences and none of the bad ones and hanging out there. * Limiting contact with people you need to mask around (both online and in person)
It's a really tough place to be, and there isn't really a generally applicable answer that I can give that you probably haven't heard. The general rule is: Do less. Expect less. And find/relish safety. To expand on that, you need more time in places where you don't need to mask or struggle
Both viewing neurodivergent traits as pathological deficits AND viewing them as superpowers misses the mark, imo. Differences in neurology, behaviour, or sensory experience do not need to be good or bad, better or worse. They can just be, and we can respect them and the people who have them
Neurodivergent support needs are real and important to address and accommodate, AND that doesn't make the underlying trait is pathological. It's 100% possible to recognize different brains work in different ways without making a value judgment about whether one specific way is good or bad
Ah... the relief of hyperfocusing to completely plan out a project. Now that it's planned out, I'll definitely start it tomorrow, right? ...right...?
Other forms of burnout, such as occupational burnout or caregiving burnout, are serious conditions in their own right. But because the cause of autistic burnout is the world generally, it can have a much larger and long-lasting impact on all aspects of our lives
Burnout is caused by chronic stress, overwhelm, and unmet needs in one or more areas of our lives. When this chronic stress, overwhelm, and unmet need is from being autistic in a world not designed for us, the resulting autistic burnout can be magnitudes harder to identify, prevent, or avoid
INCOMING 2am hyperfocus!
The individual journey of self-improvement is an important one for a lot of autistic and/or ADHD people, but it isn't the only possible intervention. Community building, advocacy, and changing disabling social conditions, even in really small ways, can massively improve our wellness as a community
Its just constant, eh?
Yeah :( I like to delude myself into thinking that people really do understand it when they sit and think about it, but they so rarely have the opportunity to sit and think about it. The cynic in me though does not believe that at all
On average, autistic folks experience worse physical and mental health than their allistic peers. While this is often attributed to being autistic, it much more accurate to attribute to social conditions such as discrimination, exclusion, lack of support, and other social determinants of health
I'll accept people writing blog posts, quoting me, talking about how they changed how they think about this topic after seeing my post. Show me the impact. Not in hypotheticals. Show me the impact.
I'll say it explicitly: ADHD is a neurotype. ADHD isn't a disease that we caught one day. ADHD is a lifelong, congenital, genetic difference in neurological development. ADHD changes how and when we develop cognitive and executive function, and it changes how we view and interact with the world