Do you have any tips for dealing with those days when you get stuck in an ADHD executive dysfunction cycle? I feel like I’ve been having a lot of days like that recently. Thanks!

thebibliosphere:

I’m honestly not the best person to ask cause I’m only really just now starting to come to terms with this myself. I kinda thought I might have ADHD for the last year after some lovely, kind people pulled me aside here on tumblr and made me aware of it, (whilst telling me to stop beating myself up) and then my new therapist did some evaluation things with me and kinda went “hrrrmmmm yeeeeeah, that’s pretty much adult ADHD textbook” and the wave of relief that washed over me was immense.

I am not in fact a lazy and horrendous fuck up. Huzzah!

Some of the things I have been doing in the last year, has been breaking things down into smaller chunks to make them more manageable. So if doing the dishes seems overwhelming, I will set myself to goal of washing as many dishes as I can in the time it takes for the kettle to boil. Which is ten minutes with my kettle. And what I have typically found is that I can clear most, if not all of the dishes in that time frame, so what my brain automatically dismisses as “impossible task, hours of intensive work”, only actually becomes like, a real, measurable thing. And that measure of my time is 10 minutes. And 10 minutes is doable. I can plan ahead for 10 minutes…

Same with eating. I really struggle to feed myself because my food is so bland and restricted, but I have to do it. So I will set myself the goal of “in the time it takes for you to make food, sit down and eat it, we will listen to one (1) podcast” and usually by the time the podcast is over, I will have managed to have accomplished my goal.

Doesn’t always work mind you when something throws me for an absolute loop (like waking up sick today) but it helps. Like I had legitimately failed to eat today because my brain was like “need food but we need to make food first” and I couldn’t get over that initial hurdle of how much effort it was going to take, but eventually I geared myself up enough to put a podcast on and just Did The Thing.

Another thing I find helpful is counting  down from 5. If getting up to do something is overwhelming me, I will attempt to count down from 5, because it forces me to make the decision. If I fail to get up, I have to count down from 5 again, and if I am still failing, I will change the goal from “I will get up and do laundry” to “I will get up and dust that shelf over there”. So long as I break the white noise of static in my head and do something that’s all I’m really concerned with these days.