My Blog: ADHD Since 1978-

One reason ADHD people are prone to clutter

acquiring things is super easy. I furnished my whole first apartment from things in the trash in Newton and from yard sales. I think the entire apartment from furniture to dishes cost about $150. When I talk to my clients about the concept of stimulation seeking, shopping is one of the categories of stimulation seeking. We get a little dopamine hit when we acquire something. And yes, both impulsive and compulsive shopping can be associated with ADHD. But, as I think I mentioned in my post about my infinite possibilities theory, we acquire things through a variety of means, not just by purchasing them. of course, there is no inherent problem with that. The problem lies and how much more difficult it is for us to organize and then eventually get rid of the things we bring into our world. I once made a client laugh and coined a phrase when I said to her, “do you want to live your life or do you want to be the curator of the museum of your own crap?” This question came out of many sessions of her intense difficulty getting rid of things which I would objectively categorize as junk. and that’s no judgment on this client. I want to be clear that I don’t judge anyone who I work with. The point is to illustrate how difficult it is for people to get rid of things once they are acquired. I think there are a couple reasons for this that are directly related to our adhd. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in the past the idea that we are reluctant to get rid of things because of their potential use. Emphasis on the word potential. There’s this famous ADHD book entitled late lost and unprepared. That tells you a lot…

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The hierarchy of suck.

this is another one of my personal theories about adhd. And it also relates to anxiety. Let’s start with a story about a hypothetical college freshman. This kid hates doing laundry. Why? Duh! Because laundry is boring, requires planning, requires multiple steps, and is far less fun than dancing, playing sports, music, and pretty much everything else. so this kid does everything he can do not to do laundry. He might buy extra underwear. He might turn things inside out. If he’s particularly charming, he might get his girlfriend to do it. But he’s really trying to hold out for the next time he goes home so Mom will do it. And then, midterms. And when confronted with the boring, tedious, anxiety-producing, and not so fun task of studying for midterms, he decides it’s a really good idea to do all his laundry. Why? Because laundry seems more accessible and less scary than studying for midterms. It is no longer the lowest on the hierarchy of suck. I know what you’re thinking. If a bunch of stuff sucks why does it matter which stuff sucks more? Well, the reality is that we are constantly under pressure to get stuff done. The more stuff we need to get done, the longer the list, the more the stress, the more the anxiety. Doing nothing when you’re already reasonably overwhelmed generally doesn’t end up in a good scenario. So, as in most cases in our ADHD lives, we pick the low-hanging fruit. So in this case, the low-hanging fruit is productive. But it’s also a means of avoiding the thing that we need to do the most. The general idea is that we don’t always have to do the thing that is the most important. We can do the thing that’s the most…

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The infinite possibilities theory!

I think I’m going to do a short series of quick entries about adhd-isms that I have developed over the years. Not sure where I’m going with this yet. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be helpful. the infinite possibilities theory is my favorite thing about ADHD people. But it is also one of the things that holds us back the most. As always, it doesn’t apply to everybody. We don’t all present the same way as ADHD people. But there are trends. And this is a pretty strong one under the heading of the average ADHD or is more likely to be creative than the average human. the vast majority of us do not suffer from a lack of ideas. If anything, we are overwhelmed by all of the amazing ideas we have. In fact, that can be paralyzing if executive function and decision making are weaknesses. I always make a joke about the handy guy who sees a broken bike in the trash and says that’s awesome it’s only missing one brake cable three spokes and a gear. I could totally fix that up and have a new bike or sell it on craigslist. Most of my clients smile and identify with this in some way. Your thing might not be the bike. But most of us have a thing or a few things that we get a little dopamine hit from acquiring and a more substantial dopamine hit from the potential Joy of what we can make it into. The problem with having so many great ideas, is that it’s basically impossible to execute all of them. It may not even be possible to execute most of them. I always tell my clients that you may have to endure the pain of letting 97 ideas go in order…

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Getting back on the horse … again!

I know I’ve written this before and recently. But it’s a really good way to get back on the horse, that is talking about getting back on the horse. So if you’re new reader, welcome. This will be brand new if you’re a consistent reader, maybe repetition will be helpful. Or, selfishly, I’m writing this for myself. And there might be a little bit of a different flavor. things have not been great in my world. One of my kids is actually doing a little better. The other is doing significantly worse. A lot of upheaval. A lot of anxiety. A lot of depression. A lot of conflict. And not a lot of additional resources to pursue. Though I will post more on that as we make our way through looking for those resources, in the hopes that we can find them and share with you what we found. Posting here is my main source of marketing. As it keeps me in the top of Google searches. So it’s important. And when I graduate some people, and my client enrollment dips, I am reminded that it is important. But I don’t ever slack off on posting because things are good. And I don’t ever get back into posting because I’m a few clients short of what I’d like. It’s about being consistent. But, there are times that this just isn’t a priority. So really what I’m saying is that there are times where my business isn’t a priority. And that’s a bummer. There’s so much I’d like to be doing. But that’s not the point of this post. even though this is my main source of of marketing, it does feel kind of optional sometimes. When my kids are in crisis almost everything feels optional. I mean, I need to…

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The anxiety Lion.

I’ve been in ADHD coach for about 12 or 13 years. And I had no idea when I started doing this for a living that I would end up talking so much to people about anxiety. Statistics show about 80% of people with ADHD have at least one comorbidity. The most common comorbidity is anxiety I’ve seen it quantified that way many times. And I don’t dispute that anxiety and depression are very closely related. But they are distinctly different. I guess I think of them as something akin to fraternal twins. In my practice anxiety is tremendously prevalent. I would estimate that 90% of my clients struggle with anxiety in one way or another. But often they don’t realize it at first. I like to think I’m getting better at noticing it. But there was a time that it was difficult for me to figure it out as well. It’s quite sinister how many anxiety traits/symptoms overlap with those of adhd. This might end up being a multi-part examination of anxiety. But today, I want to talk about the lion. The lion represents both fear and real danger, a survival situation. It’s important to understand how our brain reacts when confronted by a lion. It is also important to understand how our brain reacts when we start perceiving things as lions that are not lions. Our brains are pretty sophisticated biological machines. But we don’t always have as much control as we think. Generally speaking, a lot of our higher functions, decision-making, human smarts reside in our prefrontal cortex. That’s why we can think about paying you back next Tuesday if you were to buy us a hamburger today. (If you’re too young to get that reference… It just makes me sad.) of course, as ADHD people, we’re not…

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What’s your self-care routine?

There is no right or wrong answer to this. Well, I guess I would argue that if you don’t think about self-care or make it somewhat of a priority in your life, I could argue that’s the wrong answer. But it really comes down to what is self-care. It’s a super now buzz word. I think it’s one of those things that everyone thinks they know what it is but maybe doesn’t. My self-care routine involves working out ideally, 5 to 7 days a week I always try to get enough sleep. That is sort of my baseline. I tried to meditate for 5 to 10 minutes 3 to 4 days a week. I tried to practice the drums five or six days a week for somewhere between one minute and whenever it starts to feel not fun anymore. Eating well as hard I definitely get all the nutrition and the good foods that I need. It’s a question of making sure I weed out some of the less good foods. But for the most part I avoid sugar and processed foods. I watched soccer because I enjoy it. And I try my best to overcome my insane life and support social interactions as often as possible. My emotional relationship with my wife is also foundational. And sex is a self-care tool. Life often gets away. But we shoot for every other night. (Thought about not including sex. But I think it’s a really important part of a happy, balanced life, that we don’t talk about enough in our culture. Whether you focus on the orgasm, the intimacy, or both, it’s hard to argue it they don’t contribute to happiness.) I also try to spend a lot of time in my garden in the summer. So, you may not that…

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The wonderful world of meditation!

I scheduled time to do blog posts while I’m hanging out in the car waiting for my youngest to finish with his hip hop class. Today I was feeling particularly scattered and didn’t think I was going to be able to focus enough to have coherent thoughts and get them down. But being generally scattered, I thought it was a good idea to meditate. Side note: I’ve been meditating a lot more lately and finding it helpful. I know I have posted about mindfulness many times in the past. I think this post will have a slightly different flavor. I was inspired to write this particular post based on a series of meditations I’m doing on my headspace app. They’re designed to manage a restless mind. While I was away at my ADHD conference last month, I was looking for a different meditation in the app to mix it up. I saw this one and thought to myself, “hey, I have a restless mind.” Though I have been meditating more, I haven’t been doing the 10 lesson course every day. Sometimes I’m not in the mood. Sometimes I don’t want to do 11 minutes of meditation. But I’ve been working my way through it. And I’ve been really surprised about the content. To summarize, it’s not about fighting your restless mind or judging it, or even really taming it. Which I find refreshing, positive, and non judgmental. The emphasis is really just on noticing the state of your mind. A busy mind is not a bad thing. Nor is it a good thing. It just is. I find this fascinating because taking away my own judgment about my ability to do meditation “the right way” was most of what kept me for meditating for decades. Letting go of that was…

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An army of one?

remember that slogan from 10 or 15 years ago? Probably not. They didn’t stick with it for very long. as patients, we are a sample size of one. I can’t remember if I posted on this before. But it’s a nugget that I didn’t want to let go for too long in case I hadn’t posted. large studies. Metadata analysis. Science. Odds and averages. All these things are super important to understanding the overall outline of a disease or impairment. But ultimately you are a sample of one. Trust yourself and maybe try to find a doctor who trusts you. Cuz some of us are outliers and there are a lot of ways you can be an outlier. But if you feel strongly that your experience is valid, even if it’s different from the conventional wisdom I would suggest you own that and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s not your truth… Maybe unless you’re a hypochondriac…

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Making decisions easier.

Decision making is not an executive function. But I’m sure I have posted in the past about how difficult decision making is for some ADHD people. It is definitely executive function adjacent. It really requires attention, working memory, managing anxiety, managing impulsivity, and sometimes other executive functions like organization and planning. So, pretty much, everything that we suck at. Congratulations! But I’ve had an epiphany recently that I’ve been sharing with a lot of my clients in regards to decision making. We know that in real estate it’s all about location, location, location. I always say that ADHD management is all about planning, planning, planning. I know I posted recently about the idea that the most important time you spend is the time you spend planning how to spend the rest of your time. (Feel free to reread that. It’s a mouthful. For me. Maybe an eyeful for you…) As I dive deeper into teaching planning to a variety of different kinds of clients, with differing emotional relationships to the idea of creating a plan or a schedule, I realize that decision making plays such an important role in our function or dysfunction. Decision-making will always be easier when we limit the decision set. We tend to get overwhelmed when we have to choose between everything and everything else. We get overwhelmed when we have to choose between a variety of very different things. And we get overwhelmed when we have to choose when we are not at our best. So how do we make choice easier? Planning! Really, what planning is, is front loading the executive function. So it may be uncomfortable or difficult to sit down for 15 or 20 minutes and plan your day. I am not saying that it’s not difficult. Especially at the beginning it…

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Squirrels & hamsters

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But I had a client a couple weeks ago who made a remark that stuck with me. He said that, “everybody talks about the squirrel running by the window that distracts us. But nobody talks about the hamster wheel inside our own head.” Just in time I figured out where I was going with this. I do think it’s important to differentiate between internal and external distractions. I am the classic hyperactive boy. I am what society thinks about when they think about ADHD. My dad always referred to me as “shot out of a cannon.” But research consistently indicates that I am only one flavor of ADHD. But I don’t think it’s an accident that my flavor was noticed first. My symptoms, at least some of them, are very externalized. I am distracted by my physical being and the physical world around me. Whether it is someone talking behind me class, or even the soft tick of the second hand on a clock in an otherwise silent library, those things derail me. Internal distractions are just as difficult to manage. But they are happening inside an ADHD person’s brain in a way that you can’t necessarily see without visible hyperactivity symptoms. In the age of flat earthers, Holocaust denial, in general nincompoopery, it’s really important to remember that a lot of things exist that we can’t see with the naked eye. I think we are getting better at recognizing ADHD in inattentive but not hyperactive folks. But I still don’t think we really talk about what’s going on with those people. Enter the hamster. I think average neurotypical people would have a hard time understanding what it’s really like inside our brains. I don’t think they believe or could even comprehend…

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APSARD conference…

it’s an ADHD professional organization. Google it. just got back from 5-day conference. My brain is full of add information. I’m going to spend some time in the next few posts doing some takeaways from the conference. They will probably be in bullet points. And I will likely do some posts on specifics in more depth after having a chance to watch some of the recordings. I think I’m going to start with some personal takeaways. — sitting still and paying attention is hard. I believe that my medication works about as well as one can expect. And if obviously made a career out of managing my adhd. So, I didn’t expect it to be quite so draining. But unlike other conferences I’ve gone to, the slides were not available online. So I couldn’t follow along. Many of the lectures were overcrowded. So I was jammed on a tiny seat between other people. I did my share of standing up on the side. But there were definitely times I wish I could have sat on the floor against the wall and still seeing the screen. Reflecting, it was actually the sitting still in a small place that was harder than the paying attention. But the combination was a doozy. I actually broke the fidget toy that I brought. Apparently I squeezed it one too many times and it actually exploded. I’ll post a picture of that later. — my tried and true strategy of planning a workout in the middle of every day of lectures worked beautifully. There were actually two days I think that I worked out twice. A really hard hour on the spin bike or lifting weights between 3 and 1/2 hours of sessions in the morning and 4 hours of sessions in the afternoon was not…

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feeling stupid is irrelevant

so many of my clients have a difficult time admitting when they don’t know some thing. This often leads to missing opportunities or not succeeding at some thing. And that seems pretty silly to me, especially when there’s a legitimate and real solution right there. Ask the professor. Ask your boss. Check in with a colleague. Ask your dad. Phone a friend. If you need the information to move forward being embarrassed is a relevant. I’m going to a conference in a couple of weeks. It’s a super academic affair mostly for doctors. There were multiple words on the itineraries that I had to look up. And then I had to send the following email to one of the organizers. Susanne, Hi I have a couple more summer embarrassing questions about the conference in a couple of weeks. I am not particularly well-versed in the academic jargon of professional conferences. So here goes… Thanks in advance, Matt There was a time in my life when I would have put off sending this email because it made me feel uncomfortable that I didn’t know these things already. Thankfully, I have moved past that point in my life and I just don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about me. And that’s really helpful. Because I’m gonna get the answers to these questions and be able to have a much better and lower stress conference experience

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