Too Many Squirrels, Not Enough Focus

The squirrels have been many. As I was leaving the house for work the other day, I thought, “Did I turn off the coffee pot?” Well, I knew full well that I had, I could even visualize it, and remembered performing the act of pushing the off button. I noticed the green “on” button was no longer green. All of the things, yet I still couldn’t get it out of my head whether or not I turned off the coffee pot. Thankfully, I got distracted by yet another squirrel and forgot about the coffee pot. The beginning of this paragraph actually started like” Today, the squirrels were strong”, but I got distracted and didn’t finish, so “today” was no longer accurate.

This is what adult ADHD life looks like, for me anyway. I’m unmedicated and depend on self-regulation techniques to focus and stay my version of “normal”. Let me tell you, some days are definitely harder than others. Focusing is not for the faint of heart but for the strongest warriors.

I don’t consider myself as having a disability but rather having a superpower! Yes, you read that correctly. All of the “things” that a person with ADHD experiences can be seen as a superpower, based on your perspective (I have recently learned). I may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I can create a catastrophe out of a simple thought. I don’t have X-ray vision, but I can see things going really badly in a social situation if I only did one thing differently. I have the power of overthinking and creating false scenarios. And I have the power to miss out on an entire night’s sleep, overplaying all of those things in my head until a scenario where it all makes sense starts to form.

At some point, I started to notice little differences. The self-destructive thoughts in my head, today we refer to them as intrusive thoughts, started making sense to me. I started to hear ”how about not reacting” rather than “I outta…. (fill in the blank)”.

I started using the prompts I would give my children on myself, such as when they wanted to hit each other, and the guidance I would give them was to calm down before reacting. I tried that out on myself after getting upset, and right away, I noticed I could feel the calm. I could feel myself cooling down, and I started to feel as if whatever had upset me was actually not that big of a deal. I could feel the frustration melting and the ability to relax taking hold. At first, I wasn’t sure about it. I thought maybe it was just a fluke, and it was another one of those things that would fade. Surprisingly, it was not.

I took it a step further, and I started counseling myself. Whenever I noticed a behavior starting to form, I would talk myself through it and compare my thoughts with the possible outcomes if I acted on them. More often than not, I would choose a different path to achieve the behavioral outcome I wanted.

An example would be if someone at work said something that would typically trigger me and cause me to start feeling bad about myself, then get angry, I would catch myself thinking how much I would love to tell them where to go and how to get there. I would then choose a different path to the intended behavior outcome. I would use calming phrases to redirect not only the conversation but my own feelings and behaviors. A favorite go-to phrase is “help me understand”. Could you help me understand how that is helping the situation? Or “what I hear you saying is (fill in the blank)”. Directing my negative feelings into positive words gives me time to cool off and puts the person who triggered me into a space where they can think about any further responses and, ultimately, check themselves.

It’s only the beginning! Follow along for more 😊