Some of the neuro-normies won’t get this, and I’m not going to speak on behalf of everybody with ADHD, but this is true for many: a lot of us are masking. Our emotions, our actions, sometimes our entire personalities are manifestations of what we either want them to be or the way we think other people want us to be. I’m just going to come right out and say it: this shit is exhausting.

 

Many of us also have an additional spicy symptom called Demand Avoidance. (We’re also REALLY good in emergency situations, so you might imagine how impressive our last minute term papers were in college).  Some of us experience anxiety with transitions, we prefer more control over our environment or our actions, or we might even have a bizarre resistance to ordinary everyday tasks like switching loads of laundry, unloading the dishwasher, or taking out the trash. We might be completely committed to doing something and then the moment somebody tells us we ‘have’ to do it, we’re instantly adverse to completing the task. It isn’t personal at all, it’s just the way our brain is wired.

Most adults with Demand Avoidance have figured out some form of their own coping mechanism for demands. Either they pass (avoid) on the demand, they procrastinate, or they power through. 

 

Hard Pass: The title Demand Avoidance says it all: we’re just not going to do it. An insurmountable obstacle. It could be a giant project, a personal favor, or in my case something as mundane as going to the post office (my own personal hell). Undoubtedly saying ‘no’ is a valuable piece of holding healthy boundaries, so the “Hard Pass” isn’t a terrible idea all of the time, however it isn’t ideal when it comes to the things we know we should do or have to do, like lead generation or calling our clients with updates. 

 

Procrastination: Sometimes people put things off until the critical last minute, and if that’s your speed and as long as you know it’ll get done, you do you boo. You’re a grownup and you’re self-aware enough to know that putting a task on the docket for later might be risky. Risky? Yep. Leaving something to the last minute might compromise the outcome because the activity might be rushed. You might also have some anxiety knowing you still need to get that thing done eventually. More serious, if your ADHD Skittles bag includes “Challenges with Object Permanence,” you might even forget to do the task altogether! Now that would be a HUGE bummer and depending on the task, it could have catastrophic consequences.

 

Powering Through: The third option when given direction or a demand is to just get it over with. Some people try the “might as well” technique, where they tip the first domino and “might as well” complete the task. Other folks find setting timers helpful or even having a person close by as a ‘body-double’ to make the task less painful. I, for one, have mostly figured out how to power through the Demand Avoidance urges as a survival mechanism from deep rooted childhood trauma. Yup. *shrugs* I didn’t know that was a thing for me until a few years ago. I powered through the pain, I sucked it up, and I did the things. The ass-kicking I’d get if the things weren’t done wasn’t worth satisfying the urges to avoid the demands altogether. I overcome Demand Avoidance out of fear.

When most of us power through Demand Avoidance, like with social masking, we’re quite often working against our natural state, which is exhausting. Powering through often goes against what our brain is telling us what is the safe. In turn, we’re raising our cortisol levels, our anxiety, our stress, and we are layering and layering the sticky coats of ‘ick’ every time we do it.

When we do the things have to do, we don’t always feel good when those tasks are complete, either. We’re often stressed, we’re out of alignment, and normally we don’t even know why we don’t feel great, because nobody told us that our brains are different. DAMNIT.

 

First… same.

This might sting a bit, but powering through might still be the best answer for most of your hard things. Sometimes we’ve just gotta buckle up, hunker down, and push forward.  You know what else we get to do though? We can give ourselves what we need AFTER we do the hard things. 

 

Powering through can cut. So what do we need for a cut to heal? Exactly: a bandage. I take my kids out for ice cream after vaccines. Why not give my brain a little treat every now and again then, too?

 

It’s taken me more than forty years to figure this out my friends, and now that I have, I think my head is exploding. 

 

If you’ve been following me at all recently, you know that for the past several years I’ve been setting goals in 12-week increments, and on the 13th week of every quarter I take time to reset. During the ‘reset’, I usually structure the week for catching up, reflection, and then vision casting. This week’s reset was shorter than most, and I only had the last three days to bang it out. 

 

Since Wednesday morning, I had no expectations from anybody, no obligations for attendance, no appointments to keep, nothing. Just myself, my old notes, and a fresh notebook to work through what worked, what didn’t, and what’s next. That’s it. I didn’t try to keep a schedule, instead I leaned into the task function in my Google calendar and wherever my heart told me to go.

 

Listen, I know I pushed myself pretty hard the past few months. I wrote a book. (I WROTE A BOOK!) I lost fifteen pounds. I signed quite a few new coaching clients, and I wrote two new classes for CE credit. I taught my youngest how to ride a bike and I planned our family vacations. I navigated some significant health issues with my dad and I deserve a break, dangit! So before we head out for Spring Break next week (let’s be honest, traveling with small kids isn’t really vacation it’s just parenting in different locations), I decided to give my lizard brain the space it needed to just be for a little while. It yawned, it stretched, and it rearranged my home office. It packed for vacation and raided some Skyrim dungeons. It swam a few extra miles at the gym, painted my toenails, got a haircut, and it hammered out the yard and garden plans for next month. 

 

You know what else it did while it wasn’t in ‘work’ mode? Somehow, when I wasn’t even paying attention, it detangled some pretty significant mental puzzles I’ve been trying to force fix over the past few weeks. That little ninja noodle was given some room to breathe, and in this shorter, unstructured space I managed to have the most productive reset week of my career. 

You know the feeling when you can fully exhale and you didn’t even realize you were holding your breath? Or that blissful moment you shuck your sweaty socks off after a good workout when up until that point you didn’t even notice you had them on? That’s what this feels like. 

 

Yours in Success,

Coach Lins