"Move on,” you say to yourself. And yet, you perseverate. You left work incomplete, you let someone down, you missed a deadline… you’re feeling the burden of those losses and yet, the world continues to spin. How do you maintain composure enough to be able to say with confidence that it’s time to move on, move forward, tackle a new challenge tomorrow and free your mind from the losses of today?
Today we’re talking about perseveration: "repetitive and continuous behavior, speech or thought that occurs due to changes in cognitive skills such as memory, attention, and mental flexibility.” While perseveration is often connected to brain injury, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or aphasia, it has a common connection to, you guessed it, attention.
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by The ADHD Podcast Community on Patreon
Pete Wright:
Hello everybody. And welcome to Taking Control, The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright and I am here bright and early this fine morning with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, Pete Wright. Hello everyone.
Pete Wright:
You’re doing okay?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, doing great.
Pete Wright:
We were supposed to be talking this morning and we did all the stuff. I was so ahead. I’m never this far ahead, where I posted the live stream link a whole day early yesterday because we were getting up early this morning and not our normal time-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that’s right. You were being proactive.
Pete Wright:
I never do that stuff. I was up last night, I made the graphics, I did everything for this episode, wrote up all the everythings and I mean, not 10 minutes after I sent everything out to everybody, we get word from our dear guest that she’s had a family emergency and is not going to be able to make it to the show. And so we pivot. We pivot. So first and fore most-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I have to say my first reaction was, okay, I don’t have to get up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning.
Pete Wright:
Oh, no. You got to get up at 6:00.
Nikki Kinzer:
And they don’t know, Pete’s like, “Hey, we’re going on.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I can’t record now in the afternoon, I made plans. I got other stuff-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
… going on, so we can’t go back. But so we send all that out, but the most important thing is that our thoughts are with our guests. So now who will be on the show another time and I hope that her family situation resolves-
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
… positively in this time when medical stuff is everywhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know, right? Yeah. And she is going to reschedule so that will be good. We’ll hopefully have her on maybe even next week. Who knows?
Pete Wright:
Yes. That’s our hope. We’ll see what we can move around. We may be up again at 6:00 in the morning.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s okay.
Pete Wright:
6:00 in the morning, [crosstalk 00:02:01]
Nikki Kinzer:
I’ve come to terms with that now. I’ve done it once I can do it again.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. We embrace it. You can do it again, that’s right. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is we pivot, we’ve got a whole new thing to talk about today. We’re going to talk a little bit about for pre-separation and what it means to build the skills required, to say, “Hey, move on.” Hope that some of you will relate to this because it’s pretty central to my experience. And I’m trying to put my finger on what we could do to move through. Move through stuff that sticks to us. Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com. You can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show there on the website or subscribe to our mailing list and we’ll send you an email each time a new episode is released.
Pete Wright:
Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @takecontroladhd. And if the show has ever touched you or helped you make a change in your life for the better, if you’ve ever found you understand your relationship with ADHD in a new way, we invite you to consider supporting the show directly through Patreon. Patreon is listener supported podcasting, with a few dollars a month you can help guarantee that we continue to grow the show, add new features, invest more heavily in our community. You can visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast, to learn more. You can get access to our live streaming recording sessions, which is always a fun time. Even when it’s at 7:00 in the morning, you get early access to all of our releases as they are produced by yours truly. You get those early, before they drop in Apple podcasts and the various podcast directories.
Pete Wright:
We sure appreciate all of you. We’re working toward a couple of new goals for 2021. The first is hopefully coming very soon, which is our reference library built in Coda database, allowing you to see all the links and references we’ve ever made in this show. All lovingly touched and refreshed by our very own at Discord mom and Melissa has done a ton of work to bring all those resources together. And the second is a new members only podcast. We’re very excited to do our first spinoff show. So anyhow, it’s going to be a lot of fun and I hope that that is provocative to some of you out there, a new spinoff podcasts for members only. It’s going to be fun. So there you go. Patreon.com/dadhdpodcast to learn more. Thanks everybody.
Pete Wright:
Nikki, move on.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
I’m telling you, so I’ve been thinking a lot this.
Nikki Kinzer:
Do you ever watch Saturday Live
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Have you ever watched Pete Davidson do his, Okay.
Pete Wright:
I’m sure that’s crossed my path. These days I don’t watch the whole show. I watch it in clips because I don’t stay up that late.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, yeah. And it’s really fine. So the whole time somebody will be talking to him and he’ll just be like, okay.
Pete Wright:
You know what? That’s exactly what the show is about.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know, it’s what it reminds me of. [crosstalk 00:05:06] So when you say to move on, I’m like, “Okay.”
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, totally. It got me thinking because of my dog. Can I tell you my dog story?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I hope it’s not sad though. I don’t like sad dog stories.
Pete Wright:
No. He’s a jerk sometimes.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, he’s so cute.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. No, sometimes he just eats poo and he’s a jerk. Look, so there I was doing my dog walk duty and it was rainy, rains a lot here. And so everything’s soggy. I’m walking and he’s not a well-trained. I mean, he’s a terrible intern and he is rude on pets when we go walking, if there are other dogs and chaos and all kinds of things, he goes berserk and barks lot and is crazy. And we try to train him. And when I say we try, we really that’s heavier quotes. We don’t try all that hard. I’m sure if we needed to, if we really wanted to train, we would train him, but it’s fine.
Nikki Kinzer:
Just go on with it.
Pete Wright:
He’s a little dog. He’s fine. So this has never happened before I’m walking the dog and I’m walking down the path and we run into a big dog who is totally polite and my dog goes crazy and I hold him tight on the leash and everything’s fine. And I keep walking and we get past it and we’re about 75 yards down. And I usually have the leash wrapped around my wrist. I let the leash go for a second so I can swap hands because he ran around me and was noosing my legs with the bleak. So I had to change hands but he was pretty chill.
Pete Wright:
I mean, he was just exploring, doing his thing, getting ready to-
Nikki Kinzer:
He wasn’t doing it on purpose. Going round and round.
Pete Wright:
He wasn’t doing it on purpose. He’s maniacal, it’s to hurt me. And so he wraps the rest. So I switched. And in the second that I let go, the leash comes off my wrist. He decides, you know what? I am going to go crazy after all. And he starts running. And for the first time, in three years, since we’ve owned him, he drops out of my hands and he’s gone. And he runs like 75 yards before I’ve made three steps because I am out of shape.
Nikki Kinzer:
You’re not as fast as the little dog.
Pete Wright:
No. So I start running and the nice woman who was walking the big dog, doesn’t hear me coming because she’s wearing some giant Sony noise, canceling headphones, and doesn’t hear a thing. So I’m screaming, gambit, get back here you dirty pisa, you little. I’m running after him. I’m not really saying those thing-
Nikki Kinzer:
In your mind.
Pete Wright:
… but I am running. And I’m a big guy. And so I’m running and it’s muddy and I get to them and I come barreling on this woman. I don’t like run into her, but I imagine when she turns around and sees me running at full speed, that’s going to be terrifying. And I’m trying to make myself smaller so I don’t seem terribly intimidated because she can’t see like white lightning my dog is just a blur.
Pete Wright:
And of course my dog stops because he talks a big game, but he really doesn’t know how to do anything with it. And so he eventually stops and he’s just barking. And I put my foot on the leash and then I slipped and I fall and I twist my ankle and I hurt my other heel and I’ve twisted my back and throw it out. And so that is the daily constant reminder of what a jerk my little dog is.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, Pete, that’s awful. I wasn’t expecting that.
Pete Wright:
I know. So after my injury, I spent some time just recuperating and complaining heavily and I realized, “Oh my goodness, this is one of those examples, isn’t it? This is one of those examples where I let one little thing about a lovely little delightful, wonderful puppy stick to me in a way that is negative.”
Pete Wright:
It’s a way that is impacting my other jobs. My other things that I do as a dad and as a husband and as somebody who helps run a house and cook meals and all of that stuff. And it wasn’t the fact that I’m limping around the house that can be solved with Motrin and a brace. I’m fine. And it took me 36 hours and I’m okay. Like it’s all fine, but what’s in here in my head, that’s keeping me thinking about this event is the thing that I wanted to talk about today. What is it that causes me to perseverate unintentionally and sometimes subconsciously on stuff that is negative and hampers me from getting the work of my world done. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about that and the impact of ADHD on that experience. What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
That sounds great. So I have a question for you. So when you’re saying you, So you’re saying that you are continuously in your mind thinking about this experience.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. And it’s negative. And is that because you got hurt or where is it a negative experience? I can guess.
Pete Wright:
That’s actually a great question because I think the pain is the thing that reminds, keeps you remembering the event. Every time you stand up and take a step, you’re like, “Oh, that hurts.” Or every time you try and twist and your back hurts or cracks, those are the things that are the reminders that keep you from-
Nikki Kinzer:
That this happened and it hurt.
Pete Wright:
Just a reminder that it happened and it hurt, but I wonder what it is that’s the emotional connection to it because I love my dog. He’s amazing. He’s a superhero and a jerk sometimes, but he’s a superhero. I love him and I snuggle with him and he’s great. But my hunch is that there is some sort of embarrassment, some sort of thing that went on because it was a very crowded area. And I’m running around with this little dog that I can’t keep my control of and fall in front of people. And all of those things that cause me to offset the blame from myself for acting like a doofus and a jerk in front of my dog and all of these people in a way that was negative.
Pete Wright:
But the other piece is that perseveration is a real thing. And I think that it’s associated with neurodiversity, it’s associated with our inability to be mentally flexible. It is a hard thing to do to be able to jump from one cognitive context to another when we are in times of stress and anxiety. And that’s the real piece for me. I realized that when I’m feeling my most anxious, I have a real difficulty moving in new directions. What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I agree. Because that’s what’s holding you back. That’s, what’s keeping you stuck from moving on, is that you’re and myself, I do this too. You just get stuck in the anxiety piece of it.
Pete Wright:
I’m curious what your experience is with it then, because you’re so on top of stuff, you don’t convey that at all.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I’m not on top of anything, it’s a mess here. I thank God, for the January purge.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I find it at night, so I’m trying to go to bed and maybe I’ll fall asleep, but then I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll just be up for a couple of hours sometimes because I’m just rethinking whatever it is that caused me anxiety or that I’m worried about. And it can be a number of different things, whatever’s triggering it. But it is hard to get out of it. And sometimes I’ll just have to stop myself and say, “Okay, I just need to go back to bed. I need to stop thinking about this.” Because it always seems bigger at night than it is in the morning for some reason. So yeah. I know what you’re talking about.
Pete Wright:
I think that’s because it’s quiet at night.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s quiet.
Pete Wright:
When it’s quiet when you don’t have anything else that’s obviously distracting you, I think that rhythm is everything. Perseveration is quote repetitive and continuous behavior speech, or thought that occurs to changes in cognitive skills, such as memory, attention and mental flexibility. And I use the word a lot because it’s something I relate to probably a lot. Often it is increased association with any experience of traumatic brain injury or Alzheimer’s or aphasia or schizophrenia or Parkinson’s, but also ADHD. That attention piece is the real deal. And we’ve already talked about the skills that come with being able to be flexible in how you interpret the world around you, how you read the room. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I have my little hand up, I have a question.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I literally raising your hand, but it’s your show. You can just interrupt me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I know, but that’s rude and I don’t want you to say I’m, you’re rude, angry jerk of us, co-host.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. By next week I may still be thinking about it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. So this is a completely different word though, than perseverance.
Pete Wright:
Well, it’s the same root. To persevere is to continuously move through, keep going perseveration is just the negative context of the same word. You keep going through negative thoughts by roles and things.
Nikki Kinzer:
Interesting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. For me, I think the real, none of it is that stress and anxiety drive perseveration. And we are coming off of a high stress, high anxiety week as we record this, last week was a rough week in our nation. We’re kind of in the liminal space, the gap between that and whatever comes next in our political discourse here in the United States, it’s confusing and frustrating and hard. And the pandemic is weighing on all of us around the world as we try to figure out what is going on with vaccines and what can we do? What can’t we do.
Pete Wright:
There is reason for heightened stress and anxiety. There’s justification for it certainly. Social anxiety also causes us to be unable to read the room. We’ve talked about this before. When you find yourself driving a conversation forward, you keep talking about the same stuff long after the topic has changed, because you’re in your head, you’re stressed about the fact that you’re actually speaking in front of people and you just start paddling and ride it all the way down the hill. And you miss the fact that the road changed. And you’re still talking and everybody else is just watching and waiting because you can’t read the room. I know I’ve done it. You’re fixating on projects long after your stamina indicates that you’re not effective anymore. You’re still working at one in the morning on this project, and you’re not effective. You’re not doing good work. And yet there you are still plugging away.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s definitely connected to ADHD.
Pete Wright:
It’s that hyper-focus. I think hyper-focused and perseveration can be kissing cousins.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s hyper-focused but it’s after the focus has gone. because you’re saying you’re no longer effective. So the way that I’m looking at that is somebody is just going to keep pushing themselves to finish that to do list or to finish this thing, even though they are probably going to be better off if they just went to bed and did it in the morning, or did it later that next day, because when they’re fresher and they’re more at their best, because they’re going to do a better work, or they’re going to be more focused when they’re at their best than when you’re just trying so hard to get through it. But there’s that pressure of, “Oh, I’ve got to get this done. I’ve got, I wasted my whole day.” Or whatever you’re saying to yourself.
Pete Wright:
Right. It’s the stress and anxiety. That’s the language and in fact like the way that language works, I think we have to be so careful because it’s, we talk about limiting language, limiting beliefs, the language of limiting beliefs. We have to be careful because the language we can use for ourselves or on ourselves when we’re in this context, is probably limiting language, masquerading as positive self-talk. Like, I have to get it done. I know I can get it done. I know I can get this job done, even though I’m exhausted and I can’t keep words moving from my head to the page or whatever it is, when we’re stuck in this high stress, high anxiety mode, we cannot see straight the tools that are working against us.
Pete Wright:
The attention part hurts our ability to create intentional mental flexibility under stress. We can’t control our ability to redirect and redirection is exactly what we need. So I feel like those are the things that are working against us. How do you pivot and get yourself and-
Nikki Kinzer:
As [inaudible 00:19:39] said, “Pivot.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, pivot! How do you pivot and shake yourself loose? This is the thing we talked about at Chad last year in our presentation. What is the thing you need, that’s going to kick you out of this particular bind of perseveration when you’re in the cycle, and you can’t say to yourself, “I’ve got to move on. I’m stuck. I have to move on.”
Nikki Kinzer:
Very similar to RSD.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think it is. The things that the professionals say is that the stuff, we talk about all the time. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you going to get for exercise? Are you drinking too much? Are you eating well? Do you have any sort of mindfulness practice? Like all of those things, we talk about a lot, but in this particular case, one sticks out at me. And I’m curious your thoughts on it, maintaining contact with friends and family. How are you doing on that right now?
Nikki Kinzer:
Connecting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s good for the soul.
Pete Wright:
Well, it’s good for the soul. It’s good for the brain. And it’s good for the brain on a number of different levels. First, there is an energetic and chemical connection, a chemical thing that happens in your body when you’re connected with people that you care about and that you love, but there’s also the very practical, we need practice talking to one another. We need practice engaging with people who care about us. And will talk to us about important things that we don’t have to fear or repercussions when we’re talking with people about important issues to us.
Pete Wright:
And right now that’s hard to find, especially if you’re doing the pandemic lockdown thing and you are stuck in this, with the same faces and the same voices of just your close family. And you’ve been with them for many months now, how well are you reaching out and contacting the people that are important to you outside of your home? How well are you keeping up with people on FaceTime and Zoom and making those intentional connections with others, to keep your brain sharp and to talk through issues that are important to you so that you can release them from the perseverative cycle.
Nikki Kinzer:
I just have to say, I think that, that’s one of the benefits of having a Patreon membership. When you have discord, and you’ve got people who also have ADHD and understand where you’re coming from and understand exactly what you’re saying. I think even having a community that are like-minded can make a big difference, because the way that you perceive something could be very similar to somebody else with ADHD, without, but not the same with somebody who doesn’t have ADHD or somebody that’s too close to you. But I really just want to talk about this, or this is what I’m struggling with, and you’re going to get it, you’re going to understand it.
Pete Wright:
I think that is a great point. It was on my mind. We used to hear more. I feel like we went through a process or a period where this was a little bit contagious, where people in the community were reaching out to one another to have on video, like one-on-one accountability sessions, where they would have those connections. And I just want to remind people, you can do that, reach out to one another and get on video, using the text community is great. But looking at somebody in the eye as best you can over video and-
Nikki Kinzer:
You get to know them. I mean, even thinking about the happy hours that we have every month, seeing people that we see in the discord community, we see the names, but actually seeing the people and talking to them, it does make a big difference.
Pete Wright:
I’ll tell you one of the things that will help to shock me out of my perseverative cycle is being able to think about other people and what they’re doing. And I find myself looking so forward to those happy hours for that very reason, because we hear, we get the catch-up on the stories. We hear them in their own voices, and we get to share our own stories and the things we’re dealing with. And I think about them. And I think about their stories between happy hours, it is important, I think just as human beings to have those connections with other people, to keep us from perseverating on ourselves.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I can just imagine you mean the connection and the feeling, the inclusiveness of just being with other people. But I also think it’s a great distraction, too. I mean, when we’re talking about something that’s really bothering you to be able to, I just think of certain friends that are very lighthearted and me talking to them would really just lift me up. It’s like really pinpointing who would be the people that would really get you out of it. But I can also tell you, there’s a couple of people that probably would bring-
Pete Wright:
Would not.
Nikki Kinzer:
… down. I really don’t want to make that call at that point. But I think that, yeah, I see what you’re saying is it helps you get out of that, even if you’re not even talking about it, but you’re just talking about something else and you’re able to switch that focus to something that’s more positive, which is what we talked about with joy. We were talking about that joy, the difference between joy and happiness is joy is something that can happen at any time. And it can just be a moment where happiness feels more like, are you happy? Are you happy all the time? The burst of excitement or for joy. And I think that that’s an important thing to remember is that when you’re feeling that way, the gratitude, I don’t know if they said anything about gratitude, but I would say gratitude and joy are things that you can certainly look at to shift that focus in your mind.
Pete Wright:
The important thing here, and it’s the thing we sort of uncovered in our research with the joy conversation is that these are things that distract you from your current state.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that’s what you need.
Pete Wright:
That’s exactly what you need. Something that jars you from the cycle that you’re in and puts you in on a new path and anything we can do to give ourselves that freedom and flexibility. It gives us practice on that sort of mental agility that we need.
Nikki Kinzer:
I was just thinking the other day I was watching a video of these two dogs. They were these two beautiful golden retrievers, and they’d never been in snow before, or at least they hadn’t been in that deepest snow before. And so they opened the door and it was like three feet of snow. It was the cutest thing, watching these two dogs play in the snow and trying to figure out like why it wasn’t a solid thing? But I laughed. I laughed out loud. I showed it to my husband. I was like, “Look how cute this is.”
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s those little moments that will definitely get you out of that. But whatever stress and anxiety, because this is what I’ve learned about anxiety, is 95% of the time, it is so not in my control. So if I can just let that go and know that this is not in my control and have enough belief in myself that whatever happens, I’m going to be able to get through it, that and just keep, that’s the positive feedback.
Nikki Kinzer:
Not limiting beliefs, just I know I’m going to be able to get through this. I don’t have control over it. Something else that we’ve been doing in our, well between my husband and I, because we have two teenagers and teenagers are not easy human beings. Talk about being jerks sometimes, but I love them unconditionally, but that’s something that we’ve been asking ourselves is, is that our problem?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is that our problem? That definitely puts things in a different perspective because some of it is, some of it is our problem, but then other things nope, has absolutely nothing to do with us and whatever consequences they get, they get to their problem. We’ll be here when they fall.
Pete Wright:
That’s right.
Nikki Kinzer:
But yeah. So anyway, I know that was off subject, but-
Pete Wright:
No, but I think it is, I think there are a couple of things and I want to go back to the mindfulness practice because I blew past this, but we talked about yearly themes last week, maybe the week before. It was in our Q&A episode where we talked about yearly themes. And I think I talked about several years ago, my theme was, have fewer strong opinions. Did I talk about that?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
This, this goes into it. I think moving on is central to that, to my experience of it is my ability to free myself from having a strong opinion about it. And so I had to cultivate that by actually putting signs up everywhere that asked me, “Do you have a strong opinion about this?” And just stopping and saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t care.” The act of saying, I don’t care about whatever it is and practicing saying that, not in a dismissive, sarcastic way, but as a genuine, authentic practice of separating yourself from things you really do care about and things that you care about only because it seems like everybody else cares about it and it should be important, is critical, for me.
Pete Wright:
It is so important to be able to say, “I don’t care.” And when clients ask me things and they asked me for my opinion, if I really don’t have an opinion to not be afraid to say, “I don’t have an opinion, I’ll do whatever you want.” For people who, when they pay me for opinions that matter, I don’t want to dilute them with opinions that don’t.
Pete Wright:
If there really is not a reason to care about this, then we could do, we can act on taste. We can act on preference. It’s fine. But that means that when I do care, I know it in my gut. I can feel it because I have sifted out all of the other junk, I’ve sifted out through a daily, intentional practice of saying, “I don’t care about that thing right now.”
Pete Wright:
That thing right in front of me, I don’t care, do what you want. It’s okay. And that’s been huge in my ability to create a practice around breaking those cycles of things that I do and don’t care about. And I notice when things like the dog, let’s a circle all the way back to my dog experience. When things like that happen, and I find, I’m still thinking about it three days later, I know I’m falling out of practice for whatever reason, pandemic, politics, whatever I’m falling out of practice. And I need to be put back on the rails.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a good point.
Pete Wright:
That’s why we’re talking about it today.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s interesting.
Pete Wright:
What do you think? Is that helpful? Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good job. Pete Wright, for putting this together and last minute.
Pete Wright:
This is why we podcasts Nikki Kinzer. It’s for our introspective experience of the world. I hope that helps somebody else. The dogs and the ridiculous, he’s not set. He’s never running for office. Let’s just say that. So this has been great. Thank you everybody for hanging out and joining us for this pivot, this last minute pivot. And again, we’ll get back on track and we’ll let you know, as soon as we have that rescheduled with, so now it’s going to be a great conversation and she’s a fantastic person. So we look forward to getting that rescheduled. Thank you for downloading and listening to the show. Thank you for your time and attention. Don’t forget if you have something to contribute to the conversation, jump over to the show talk channel, in our discord server, and you can join us right there, but becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level on behalf of Nikki Kinzer I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you right back here next week on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
