Progress is not a straight line. If that is your expectation, you will disappoint yourself. And, likely you will eventually stop trying to make progress. Setbacks, backsliding, and “relapses” are part of the progress. Three steps forward and two steps back exist as an aphorism for a reason. It is part of the human condition. We, as ADHDers, are no exception to that. In fact, we are double vulnerable because we crave and often expect instant gratification. But progress is a process. It does not happen in a day. It is rarely a smooth and rutt-free road. 

This is triply true of ADHD humans who struggle with depression and anxiety. As a setback can trigger all the negative thoughts and feelings in our heads that send us deeper into a shame spiral and take us further away from the process of progress. I have learned over the years to judge my progress in many areas not by whether or not I fall off the proverbial horse, but by how quickly I get back on it.A bad week is better than a bad month.  A bad day is better than a bad week. A bad morning when you can recover and have a good afternoon… well, that’s just not so bad at all. 

So, be kind to yourself when you fall. Dust yourself off. And get right back up. Eventually, it’s worth considering why and how you fell, especially if it is a pattern. (Maybe talk to your coach about it.) But in that moment getting back to the process of progress is the biggest victory you can achieve. 

Standard Disclaimer:  In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts much… if at all. Please excuse and typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is infinitely better than a perfect post that goes unfinished.

I may have had an epiphany of my own when working with a client last week. He and I got very specific about how he was feeling and differentiated his anxiety from his shame. And, what I realized is that they have different behavioral levers and can cripple in different ways. I’m still exploring this. But I figured I’d share what I’m working on with my 24 devoted readers and you hundreds of bots that Google keeps telling me are real people trafficking my site every month. 

Anxiety is a sinister and crippling problem. I deal with it in a myriad of ways. Pharmacologically with my antidepressant and with benzodiazepines. I also use exercise, self talk, mindfulness, meditation, generally self care, and other ways. I’d estimate that about 80% of my clients also deal with anxiety. Over the years I think that has made me somewhat of a lay expert… if that’s not an oxymoron. I’ve also done some training in CBT which I have incorporated into my coaching for many years now. 

What I know about anxiety, particularly in how it affects ADHDers, is that we put things off because they make us anxious (and because of the ADHD reasons that we put them off.) But there are two competing anxieties at any given time. There is the anxiety of doing Thing A and the anxiety of not doing Thing A. Because our time sense is wonky, we aren’t good at the concept of “later.” So the anxiety of not getting Thing A done is relatively low as we put it off for a period of time. Meanwhile the anxiety of not doing Thing A slowly builds based on our theoretical knowledge that we should do it, that we might not have time (whatever that means,) there will be consequences eventually if it doesn’t get done. As the deadline approaches, our time sense activates, the deadline becomes real, our fear response kicks in, our lizard brain produces adrenaline, and that adrenaline produces dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. Boom. Attention. At least that’s how the ADHD side works. The anxiety side depends on the fear of not getting it done to eclipse the fear of doing it at some reasonable point. 

To understand that, It’s useful to think of this from a CBT framework of exposure therapy. Anxiety about Thing A exits. It increases as we initiate the activity. It peaks as we fully engage. It usually begins to recede as we realize Thing A isn’t as bad as we thought it was. But even if it is, the anxiety fades as we complete Thing A and then it’s gone once the task is complete. A total win. Anxiety Vanquished!

But what I realized is that once you get SHAME involved the dynamic is completely different. Shame isn’t alleviated by the performance of Thing A. In fact, the easier Thing A is, the more shame one might feel about not having done it sooner or faster or better. And that shave persists, even if the anxiety abates. Often that shame begins as soon as the Thing A hits the radar and isn’t done immediately. And as that shame grows, it gets out of control so quickly that there is almost no amount of positive outcome from doing Thing A that can counteract it.

LIke I said, I’m still working on the ramifications of all this and how to coach a client through it. But I feel it is important enough to start talking/writing about. I hope y’all found it interesting. I’ll keep y’all updated on where I go with this in the future. In the meantime, don’t shame yourselves. It’s not worth it. 

Standard Disclaimer:  In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts much… if at all. Please excuse and typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is infinitely better than a perfect post that goes unfinished.

Accountability is a very important part of coaching. In large part is my job to figure out how much accountability to offer/provide. I think I’ve lost several potential clients lately because I’m very upfront in my consultations about not providing too much active accountability. My goal is for you to not need me. How can we get there if you are depending on me for accountability? It is always my goal to teach you to be accountable to yourself. Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t that what we are all looking for? Not to say we don’t have people we rely on in many aspects of our lives. I think of it like a WWII bomber crew. (See a great, if schmaltzy movie, Memphis Belle.) We can’t “put those bombs in the pickle barrel” on our own. But don’t we want to be the pilot, the officer, running the show?

Of course we use experts and we outsource and we create a team if we can. That’s life in a highly specialized world. You might take a cooking class. I’ve taken classes in small business accounting, woodworking, Microsoft Excel. I have a gardening consultant because I can’t learn everything from books. I outsource my bookkeeping because that small business accounting class only served to educate me to the fact that that is not how my brain works. I have a tax attorney who does my taxes every year. Pre-pandemic I outsourced some of our laundry. 

On the other hand, I grow most of my own produce in the summer. I do a lot of my own butchering, I do a lot of plumbing, some small carpentry, painting, and a little bit of electric. The point being that I run the show. I make the decisions about what I do and what gets outsourced. And, these things change over time based on resources, both professionally and personally. 

But this isn’t actually the reason I wanted to write this post. I’m burying the lead. Check out this quote from a 20-year-old who I’ve been working with for about a year. Wonderful young lady. But she’s got a history of fighting me on making necessary changes until recently. But she’s really having some life-changing epiphanies lately. Maturity, perhaps? Anyway, the quote: “Being accountable to yourself goes hand in hand with loving yourself even if the answers you get don’t give you instant gratification.”

That came straight from a place of pure honesty and power inside her. I don’t think I could ever have drawn that out of her by having been her surrogate mom for the last year. I’ve been honest with her, a little tough on her, very supportive, and positive about all the progress she has made. And, one day she comes out with this wisdom beyond her years and the intention to put it to good use. I’ve helped give her the tools, but she’s been on her own journey to be ready to right here, right now, ready to use them. She’s now devouring the tools I’ve taught and am still teaching her to manage her ADHD and EF challenges in a new way. I can’t wait to see where she ends up in this world.

Standard Disclaimer:  In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts much… if at all. Please excuse and typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is infinitely better than a perfect post that goes unfinished.