Feeling overwhelmed? Let’s be honest: Probably. This week we’re taking on ADHD overwhelm with coach Ian Wahlert as we deal with unplanned transitions, breaking down big thoughts, avoidance, and shut-down.
But first, we have a little follow-up from last week’s show on the question of transitions. Number one, how do medications help when you’re thrown by surprise transitions? Does your relationship with your meds, and all that your meds do for you, help to ease transitions — surprise and expected alike?
From there, Ian helps us navigate overwhelm, shame, avoidance, and shut-down, as we lead up to Nikki and Ian’s group coaching session on this very subject!
Learn more about Ian here, and check out their group coaching session today!
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’m here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
What was that move? Were you cute?
Nikki Kinzer:
I don’t know.
Pete Wright:
It was like-
Nikki Kinzer:
I was like, it was like action.
Pete Wright:
Go for Pete.
Nikki Kinzer:
You’re on. Go, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Go. Roll camera two. That’s right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Roll the camera.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. That’s what we just did. It is another fine day when we can podcast together. And today we are talking about overwhelming ADHD. Plus we’ve got a little bit of a tag from last week’s me show. We’re going to fill you in on surprise transitions. We talked about transitions last week. The bonus section of last week’s show.
What happens when transitions come around that you didn’t expect? How do you deal with those? And our fair cast is going to help us with that. And our guest, speaking of, it’s Ian Wahlert, a new ADHD coach with TCA. We’re very excited to have Ian on the show. He’s a real gem.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, we are.
Pete Wright:
He’s a real shining star. A real shining star.
Nikki Kinzer:
He is.
Pete Wright:
We like Ian a lot.
Nikki Kinzer:
Shiny ADHD star.
Pete Wright:
Shiny, shiny, ADHD star. I think I picked up maybe too much from James Ochoa.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I’ve used shiny, I think 50,000 times this week. So, there we go.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s all right.
Pete Wright:
Before we get started on this very shiny show, head over to takecontroladhd.com. You can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list. And we will send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or Discord.
Join our community, our public community on discord at takecontroladhd.com/discord, and you’ll be taken over to the login page there. But if you’re looking for a little more, become a patron at patreon.com/theADHDpodcast. Patreon is listener supported podcasting for a few bucks a month that you throw our way, we throw you lots of new stuff. You get access to special areas in our Discord community.
You get special sessions with me and with Nikki, and with me and Nicki. And you get access to an incredible, incredible community of people living with ADHD and supporting one another. Visit again, patreon.com/theADHDpodcast to learn more. And with that, I gots to tell you about my favorite, favorite invisible tool in my tool chest, Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, you do.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I do. It’s text expander. That’s my invisible tool in my tool chest, text expander. It’s always there running in the background waiting for me. I just sit on my computer and I type a little snippet. My latest snippet is semicolon, ADHDT. Do you know what that does?
Nikki Kinzer:
ADHDT? I have no idea.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So, here’s what I do. Every week we submit our podcast to our transcriptionist and they send us back a text file. And I take that text file and I have to put it on the website, right? Got to do this every week.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
So, I take that text file and I hit command A on my Mac and I select all. Command C to copy it. And then I go to the website, put my cursor where it needs to go, and I type semicolon ADHDT. And it puts in there because text expander is amazing. I type that little snippet and it puts the title, this is the episode transcript.
This transcript is bought to you up by the support of the ADHD community. And then it unloads my entire clipboard. The entire transcript just gets dropped in automatically. I just type those little keys and I get a bazillion characters of text, including my clipboard that has just been dumped into. That’s how text expander works. You store copy in the text expander library, you type your snippet and then it expands. And then you have text. It works for everything. It works for text, it works for-
Nikki Kinzer:
Text expander.
Pete Wright:
Text expander.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s why it’s called that.
Pete Wright:
It was written on the tin y’all. It’s that good. So, we’re talking a lot about overwhelm today and about overcoming the challenges of living with ADHD and overwhelm. And I’m telling you, as a tech tool for overcoming overwhelm, that kind of thing where you can take and manipulate text the way you can with text expander is a key, key tool for me. I love it. I love it. I love it.
I have had text expander dreams. I’m not proud of it, but it’s happened. So, you should check it out. Again, find it, store it, expand it, and share it. If you’re in a family or a business and you think, “Hey, you know what? We could reduce errors and be real consistent in what we do. If we had our teams using text expander. And marketing copy or compliance copy, whatever you need to put in text expander, it will work.
It is super, super easy. It is available on Windows and Mac and Chrome and iPhone and iPad. And for listeners of the ADHD podcast, you can get 20% off your first year of service if you visit takecontroladhd.com/textexpander. Now that’s on our website, takecontroladhd.com/textexpander. And it’s going to redirect you to our page over at text expander’s website where that code will be employed.
So, when you enter in your credentials to sign up, you will get that 20% off. The way we work is changing rapidly. Make work, work the way your brain works by saying more in less time, and with less effort using text expander. Our great thanks to the text expander team for sponsoring the ADHD podcast. Nikki, do we have news?
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
We have no news?
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
This is news free episode?
Nikki Kinzer:
No, it’s a news free episode.
Pete Wright:
Oh gosh.
Nikki Kinzer:
Let’s get to talking about overwhelm.
Pete Wright:
He’s behind the velvet curtain. Let me go him.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right.
Pete Wright:
Ian? Ian Wahlert is, he’s here with us today. First and foremost and the most shiny thing about Ian is that he is a new TCA coach and we’re so excited to have him here and to introduce him to you all. He is a globe-trotting ADHD coach. He did his undergraduate at Oregon State University here in our fair state of Oregon. And then he went to Sydney to get…
And that’s not like Sydney, Oregon, right? There’s no Sydney, Oregon. It was Sydney, Australia and got his master’s degree. And then just dove head first headlong into ADHD. Got his coaching certificate from ADDCA. And is here with us ready to go. Ian, welcome to the show finally.
Ian Wahlert:
Thank you. Thank you so much for that introduction. I’m really, really excited to be here.
Nikki Kinzer:
We’re excited to have you.
Pete Wright:
We are excited to have you. We’re going to talk about ADHD overwhelm today. But we’re going to use the opportunity to lead in with a topic that came up in our after show, our members after show last week. Which, last week’s show, if you heard it was on making transitions. And how hard it is to do context shifts with ADHD.
And after the show we started talking about transitions that are surprises. Not just like, oh, I know I’m going to have to leave work at six o’clock. It’s, oh my goodness, something horrific has happened or some surprises happened is changing my day. Nikki, you want to set that up and how that hit us today?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, so it was a conversation after the show. And it was interesting because it never really came up in our conversation in the show about those transitions that we’re not expecting. We talked about everything that we do expect. So, it was an interesting perspective and definitely something that I felt was important that we followed up on.
And in Discord, there were a couple questions that came up. One was does medication help with transitions? And it was interesting, because I did a little research on this and they don’t necessarily specifically say anything about transitions. When they talk about stimulants, what they say is that they are there to work by increasing dopamine levels in the brain.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with motivation, pleasure, attention, and movement. For many people with ADHD, stimulant medications boost concentration and focus while reducing hyperactive and impulsive behaviors. But there’s nothing necessarily about, oh, they’ll make transitions easier. They help us focus, which in some way that’s that hyper focus that we were talking about and why it’s so hard to pull away. So, I don’t know if medication really helps with transition specifically.
It’s hard to answer one way or the other because everybody has a different experience with medication. What I would say is I wouldn’t rely on the medication to necessarily help with transition. But look more towards the different tools and strategies that we were talking about in the show to help rather than really thinking if the medication’s going to do anything. Because we’re not really sure.
Pete Wright:
Well, I do think you list all of the things that we know the medication helps with. And I feel like all of those things are the constituent elements that go into making a successful transition. So, while we might not be making the case that a medication is specifically going to help you with contact shift. If it’s going to help you smooth out the transition because you are more motivated, you’re not dealing with fragmented attention as much, you aren’t dealing with…
All of those things go into being able to make smooth transitions. So, I’ll speak just for me, it’s the same thing with anxiety medication. When my mood is flattened just a little bit in and around anxiety, depression, those sorts of things. It makes it easier for me to cope with surprises and not be completely sandbagged by them. So, I don’t know. Ian, what do you think? Welcome to the show. Here’s your first shot.
Nikki Kinzer:
Chime on in.
Pete Wright:
What do you think?
Ian Wahlert:
It’s hard. I’ve thought about thousand thoughts between the time started until now. Yeah, transitions in medication, I think they, like you said, it is a really unique journey for each person. And the way in which the medication impacts them makes a big difference and the capacity to do things. So, I feel that with some people, it does help them have less noise, less distractions in their brain.
So, they can choose what they’re doing instead of being driven by their ADHD. Being able to take a little bit of control and say, “Look, this is what I want to do and then now I’m going to stop doing that and I’m going to start doing something else.” I feel like for some people it really increases that capacity for them to do that.
But yeah, like Nikki said, I think there’s a lot of other ways to work on that scope and that clarity that’s necessary beyond the medication. You still need to know what you’re doing, what’s the first step and how much time you want to put into something. These are all thoughts that need to happen beyond the medication.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Well, and then another statement came that she said, “I can roll with the unexpected transitions, but I have a hard time getting back to the original task.” Which completely makes sense. Because now you’ve been pulled away and that getting started, executive function is there and it’s hard to get back. And just a couple of things I wanted to address with that is to reduce some of their friction of coming back to the task is to write down where have you left off?
What do you need… Or where do you start again? If you can do it at that moment, that can be really helpful. But something else that I think is even more important is if something new comes up in your day and you’re interrupted, adjust your expectations for the day. Maybe it’s okay that you leave all of that other stuff and do it tomorrow.
I think that sometimes we get into the mindset that, well, just because this new thing came in, we now have to do the new thing and we have to do everything else that was on our list too. And I would say lessen some of those, adjust and be okay with that.
Pete Wright:
I just have to add here because that’s such an astute point. And it’s absolutely something I feel like I am addressing every day and not even really thinking about it. Because I feel like I sort of have to rewire myself a little bit, that if I’m pulled away from a task, I have to consider coming back to the task, a new task again. There’s no coming back to anything anymore really.
I have to muster the same amount of motivation and the same amount of energy and attention to start a thing, even if it’s in progress that thing. As soon as I do that, I feel like I can, to your point, adjust expectations around myself and what I’m able to accomplish. Because I know I have the ramp up period as if it’s a brand-new task. It may be softened a little bit, but it’s softened so little that it might as well be a brand-new thing for my attentional well.
Ian Wahlert:
Yeah, great point Pete. And it is starting a new task. Even doing a task, there’s multiple tasks inside and I think that’s part of that, that ADHD. If we’re doing a task like cleaning our room, when in fact that’s like a million things. This desk and where that thing on that desk goes, these are all little tasks. And the challenges that we do group them all, oh, I’m going to clean my room in an hour.
Well, actually doing the desk, managing what I’m going to do with these papers is going to take an hour. So, the expectation’s very clear. And I think initially putting these out into different segments really helps that capacity to switch back and forth versus focusing on the big goal, the big challenge.
Pete Wright:
And to that point, Ian, I think this is where risk comes in for me, again, speaking just for myself, sing it community, if you feel this way. I find when I’m in the middle… Let’s say I’m in a task like cleaning my room that takes many steps. If another task comes on… Or let’s just say I’ve run out of time because I then have a meeting and I have to sit in that room in which I was cleaning and then he hold that meeting.
The risk is that because I know how much energy it’s going to take to start cleaning my room again, I won’t stop cleaning my room to focus on the meeting. That I will attempt in all foolishness to multitask because that’s what my brain tells me I have to do. Please God, please, Pete, don’t stop doing this last thing because you’re not finished with it. You’re going to be a mess.
You’re never going to come back to it. It’ll be half done for the rest of your life. And so you end up trying to multitask through it while you’re in this meeting. And you end up doing, as we know with multitasking, all things poorly as you are fractionally attending to each thing individually. That’s my sort of lived experience. Anybody, what do you think? You run into that coaches?
Nikki Kinzer:
So, if you’ve lived that, what have you learned from it?
Pete Wright:
Nothing seemingly. I face it every single time. And I’ve been hosting an ADHD podcast about this kind of stuff for 12 years and I still fight that instinct. So, really, I just want to say out loud, it is not something that I feel like I have mastered. Even though I know the things, I know to make notes about where I am in the process, I know all the things.
My gut is always yelling at me, don’t stop till you’re finished because you’re a mess and are going to have trouble getting it back, getting into the same flow. And I think that’s a risky piece for me. I deal with it all the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, you’re telling us you haven’t mastered your ADHD?
Pete Wright:
My name is Pete Wright and I have ADHD. That’s right. This is an intervention. I’m at a meeting.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. To that point though, Pete, one of the things that we learned last week about transitions is that they’re always going to happen. They’re not going to go away.
Pete Wright:
Unavoidable.
Nikki Kinzer:
And you’re a…They’re unavoidable. And I think that the one common thing that we need to deal with those transitions is time. We need to have some time to transition. And so I would say that to your experience, which I’m sure a lot of people experience the same thing, is that the awareness piece is a wonderful thing that you have. Because going into it that this is what you’re thinking. And you’re also falling into the all or nothing mindset?
Pete Wright:
Yes, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And limiting beliefs.
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
That you’re not ever good enough.
Pete Wright:
Negative self-thoughts.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, there’s a lot of things to unpack there for sure. So, yeah, I think that you can start something, stop and I think you can also go back and finish it. I really do think that,
Pete Wright:
Right. I’ll say this for my ADHD years out there. I think I can too.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, and you will. Just keep believing my friend. Keep believing. Now this is where we cue the journey song.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I think this also takes us into overwhelm. Because this is our big-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Our big segue. Because it is this feeling of now, I suddenly have two overlapping things and then I’ll inevitably end up with more.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Nikki, set us up. Where do you want to start here?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Let’s talk about overwhelm. So, we’re a little behind in the marketing. I didn’t plan this very well. Next year we’ll plan it better, Ian, I promise. But Ian and I are hosting a coaching group around overwhelm with ADHD. And so we thought it would be a great way to start talking about it on the show. And then Ian and I will be really prepared when we start doing that coaching group. So, there’s a couple of reasons we want to do this.
Pete Wright:
This is homework.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, this is homework. But obviously, overwhelm is a word that comes often with clients that come to us to coaching. Sometimes they don’t know specifically what they want to work on, they just know that everything is overwhelming. And from your perspective, Ian, I’m just really curious to know when you’re working with clients, especially when you start working with clients. How do you break down that overwhelm with them? How do you unpack that?
Ian Wahlert:
Yeah, great question. So, many times you guys have been talking take the words right out of my brain. But yeah, such a high percentage, excuse me, of people come with that feeling of overwhelm and it is massively impactful. And they come and they say, I have overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed I have all these things to do. I have a million things I have…
Too many things to do for the time I have available or the energy I have available. But I also hear people come and they have one task, they have one task and it’s overwhelming. Or there’s noise and they’re feeling overwhelmed or there’s a family event and they feel overwhelmed.
Pete Wright:
I want to just amplify what you just said because I think it’s incredibly important that it doesn’t have to be the number of tasks that creates the feeling of overwhelm. It doesn’t have to be overlapping tasks like we’ve been talking about. It could be the environment that is making that one task feel completely overwhelming.
Ian Wahlert:
Absolutely. And to that point, we think that it’s an action that we need to do to fix overwhelm. It is a feeling. It is not a amalgamation of task that have to be done that can just be done and the overwhelm goes away. It’s a feeling and that feeling is real to quote frozen, sorry, I have kids. And we need to respect those feelings of overwhelm.
That feeling of I don’t have enough energy to do this, or this is too much, or there’s something stopping me. That is a great notification from our bodies, from ourselves that something’s not aligned, that that’s causing these feelings. So, like Pete said, it’s not the number of things necessarily that you need to do. It is the context of the situation that’s creating these feeling of overwhelm.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a good point.
Ian Wahlert:
I look at this thing as a boulder. I’ve mentioned this to Nikki before, that this is a mass of boulder overwhelm and it stops within our track. We have something to do. We have a feeling or a place we need to be or a goal we’re trying to achieve. And we run into this mass of boulder. And this boulder is an amalgamation of tasks to do of pain points, of emotions.
And we run into this and we feel it and then we avoid. We go left, we go, we go on to social media, we go in to do this thing we need to do for ages. And we end up unloading the dishwasher doing something we hate, but it’s better than what we’re trying to do. And this is that feeling of overwhelm, of extreme avoidance of not having energy to do what we’re doing.
So, the reason I just wanted to highlight that before we get into overwhelm is because I don’t necessarily approach it as, okay, what are we going to do about the task? It’s what are the pebbles that come together to create this big boulder? What are the things about what you’re trying to achieve that are causing this feeling of overwhelm, right? Because we can’t do anything about that big boulder.
But when we get down to the little pebbles, the little tasks, the things about those tasks. We have to email someone that we’re nervous about the feedback or we’re late on something. Or we don’t have clarity about what we need to do, or whatever it is, it’s related to family things or to speaking to someone on the phone. These are the pebbles that are attached to these tasks that come together to create that feeling of overwhelm. So, your question was originally, how do I help people with overwhelm?
How do I bring them back from overwhelm? Is we have to discover, we have to be curious about what those pebbles are. And then we need to create clarity. So, we get curious about it and then we create some clarity about them, about what it is we actually need to achieve. And then we create some intentional actions that we’re leading towards some meaningful impact.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, before the intentional actions, you’re looking at what’s causing the feelings of overwhelm. Give us an example of a situation where someone might be overwhelmed. The holidays are coming up. So, what if you have a client who is overwhelmed around these social gatherings? So, would you ask and dig a little bit deeper around what the emotions are?
Ian Wahlert:
Absolutely. Those first steps of curiosity and clarity are really the first things that go when we don’t have excess energy. We’re feeling overwhelmed. We’re like, oh, let’s sit down and think about this. How does it make me feel? What is it? Is it my mom always judging me?
Or is it that my aunt is coming and she’s always making comments about my pasta? It could be simple things like this that make us avoid these situations. Or it gets so noisy in my house at holidays that I can’t be there. And I can’t communicate because I’m overwhelmed by the stimulation.
And that feeling of overwhelm, yes, it is making us difficult to prepare for the holidays and we feel like it’s taking it away from what we need to do. But first we need to understand what it is that’s activating this overwhelm. What are these pebbles that are stopping us from starting these tasks?
Nikki Kinzer:
Curiosity and clarity. I like that. Because it really does… It puts a name to it too. Because it’s kind of like with anxiety sometimes I’ll feel anxious but I don’t really know why. I don’t know what the cause of it is. But then when I sit and I kind of really dig in and think about, okay, what could it be? It puts a name to it so then it feels like I can actually do something about it. It’s not so vague. It’s like okay, I get it, I see where it’s coming from.
Because even when you said, my mother is going to be judging me like that was, oh whoa, that could be real. That could be something there of feeling like someone is judging the way you host the holidays or what you do with your children or whatever. So, that’s interesting. So, curiosity and clarity. Two really important things.
Pete Wright:
There’s an interesting connection. I had the opportunity to interview a Buddhist teacher who was just very, very wise and was introducing us to the concept of Vipassana as a meditative practice for insight. And one of the things that they were teaching was specifically around this nature of curiosity. The example was, oh, your nose is itching.
What happens if you don’t reach up and scratch it? What happens if you don’t take the scratch method? And instead just ask yourself with all intention, “Look at that. My nose is itching. I wonder what that’s about. I wonder why it’s itching.” And it does not take very long for the itch to go away.
That’s the thing that’s sort of magical about it. This curiosity reduces the impact of discomfort in this particular teaching. I’ve never made this connection with ADHD overwhelm. But I can absolutely see how approaching the pain parts of overwhelm with curiosity might reduce the emotional weight of those feelings.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, it’s interesting. But now my nose itches. So, it did the opposite for me.
Pete Wright:
We did it wrong. Yeah, we totally did it wrong.
Ian Wahlert:
Supplementing that curiosity is kind of what we do and then you can do with someone else as well. But now that we have a little bit of clarity, so now that we have seen where the feelings come from, what is it that is on your to-do list? What is it that you’re trying to achieve? And really making clarity of that. And what are the first steps?
So, I’m going to do this, but then, oh, I see where that pebble comes up. I see when I’m doing this process, when I show up, it’s going to be after the first day I’m going to get this feedback from this person. So, this is the point where the pain happens or whatever it is, the frustration happens. So, what do you think we can do to support that space?
Or to feel less anxious about that or reframe what they’re saying. And in that case, we can really prepare ourselves for these experiences so that they’re not consuming us for the whole time. So, we can actually be present and enjoy what we’re trying to do and not be overwhelmed.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I want to lean in a little bit on the extreme end of overwhelm. Like approaching overwhelm from a coaching context and from an emotional context when you’ve already reached the point of avoidance and shutdown. Where you are emotionally suddenly ill-equipped to break the pattern that you have gotten yourself into around feeling overwhelmed. What’s your method for approaching that for folks?
Ian Wahlert:
Yeah, usually a way that hits a bit of resistance actually is to breathe. To be honest with you, if you’re nervous system is so tight and you’ve had such an experience where you don’t have any capacity left to be curious. Or to create clarity about what you’re trying to achieve or create an action, all we can do is step back and take a breath. And I really work with clients and I’ve seen huge impacts of building in little micro breathing exercises throughout their day.
And not just responsive, but okay, you start your day, we find a breathing app that works for them, for example. And they just practice a bit of breathing. And then oh, they’re going to go into work and they get overwhelmed at work. So, before we go into the office, let’s do a little breathing. And then at lunch let’s stop and take a few breaths.
And we’ll just give our nervous system a chance to reset. Because life doesn’t stop. The demands don’t stop, work doesn’t stop, family doesn’t stop. But we need to make intentional actions here to help calm our nervous system down. And then when we have a little bit of space, it enables some room for that curiosity for building in that clarity. So, that tends to work pretty well with people.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. Well, and I can tell sometimes when I start a session with a client when we need to just do the breathing first. Because you can see that they’re really hyped up around this or whatever it is that they want to talk about. And doing that breathing to set the tone of the session can really make a big difference.
I’m glad that you bring that up. And so much of what we talked about last week too, Pete. And the week before with James Ochoa was around that breathing. And how important it is to help us reenter ourselves when we start to feel overwhelmed.
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah. And again, I like way you present it, Ian, is that your nervous system is wound up. Breathing is not just a woo woo thing. It’s a thing that physiologically is going to help you approach the world in a different way. Because again, you’re going to break the pattern of tightening that you’ve gotten yourself into.
Which is only too natural I think for us. And that was something I was thinking about. Both of you as coaches, the idea that somebody is coming to you and is totally relaxed and absolutely chill about what’s on their plate. It’s probably a little rare.
Nikki Kinzer:
Not a real likely.
Ian Wahlert:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Ian Wahlert:
No, it’s about transitions. To bring people in transitions. And transitions create overwhelm because it changes the demand on your executive functions, the way in which you’re functioning. And those can be a new job, a new child, a family event. Or they can just be switching from an email to a phone call or speaking to someone you like speaking to someone you don’t like, these are all transitions. They’re all [inaudible 00:31:31] attention and the purpose of your executive functions.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, I want to go back to the person who has shut down, because I see that a lot with people. And it most likely has something to do with shame around whatever it is that they need to follow up on. So, this is, let’s say that email that needs to be sent or if you work on your own and the invoice that needs to be sent but is late.
Now you don’t really know if you should send an invoice because now you feel like you aren’t worthy of that invoice, whatever might happen. So, when that happens, Ian, what are some things that you do to help clients work through that when you know there is something specific that they’re avoiding?
Ian Wahlert:
Sure. And that’s where I try to supplement their curiosity. That’s where we do a little bit of digging, a little bit of, so what is it about that email? Is it the beginning of the email, the end of the email? And then we move towards things like, what’s the next step we can take? So, what is the really specific next step?
Let’s send the email. Well yeah, that is a step, but what is the next step? The next step is being comfortable with what’s written. Because I feel like a perfectionist, I have to get it right. I look at it 10,000 times and I pick a whole day and then I don’t even send it. So, you haven’t sent the email. So, what little bit of control I think is another interesting conversation to have about this overwhelm space.
That I’m going to take that thought, put it on the side for a second. What is it we control in this situation? You have an issue or you have a challenge sending this email. Do you have any resources of anyone that you can send a draft to? How can we reframe the purpose of this email and write it as a draft?
So, I had this thought, what do you think? And send it in that kind of email. Or do you have a colleague, they you can say, “Hey, what do you think about this email?” Or something that really takes a small step that we can control to start making progress on this. It’s not about sending that email, it’s about getting a bit of momentum and a little bit more confidence in your capacity.
And ideally, the next step would be a bit of a framework. Because you have to send more than one email. It’s not like you send this one email, you never have to send one again. So, when these emails come up, what are we going to do? How are we going to approach them? Because that anxiety is going to kick in until we feel more confident in them.
So, we need to build a relationship with someone that we can bounce back and forth emails with. Or a different framework in which we write them in, or find a template to follow them. So, we need to get a bit of control so you don’t feel that overwhelm as much. You have something to do, you have a movement to make.
Nikki Kinzer:
I like how you’re talking about kind of building that confidence. Because I think especially as coaches, when we’re talking to our clients and we’re asking those questions, a lot of times I see the client with a kind of aha moment of, wait a minute. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think it’s going to be. Maybe I am thinking that I’m going to get fired, but that’s not really going to be what happens.
Because I think a lot of ADHDers are verbal processors. So, when they’re talking it through with someone else and being able to just talk it out and not just think about it, they do come to their own kind of realizations of this is where I can have some control. And feel a little bit more confident about it. The control part, talk a little bit more about that.
Ian Wahlert:
Yeah, the control one is an interesting one. And more interesting is the feeling of a lack of control. And I think it can go hand in hand with the overwhelm. I have too much to do, I have too many things. I can’t control what this person is going to say to me or this thing is going to happen. And so I don’t know the next step. I don’t know the right thing to do.
And we lose control. And it goes hand in hand with the concept of learned [inaudible 00:35:55]. Where we try things and we fail or we just don’t feel like we have any control over the situation so we stop trying. And then that’s going to really activate avoidance when we don’t feel like anything we’re going to do is going to make this better. And we don’t know what the next step is going to be.
But I know I have to do it. The anxiety is still there, the pressure is still there, it doesn’t disappear. But it’s this really conflict between there’s nothing I can do and I have to do it. You go back and forth, back and forth and then you just find your avoidance outlet to do that. So, finding that clarity, finding that next step, finding something that you can control in the situation kicks a different relationship.
And recognizing that action can give you that little bit of, oh look, I did this. Oh look, at that. I can do this then what’s the next step? I can do this. The big scary thing still might be there, but we’re getting closer. And as we get closer to that boulder, it gets smaller and smaller. You’ve seen those optical illusions where thing and then you get close. Or is it the other way, it looks small. That’s a bad example.
Nikki Kinzer:
It works.
Ian Wahlert:
So, the closer you get to it, you realize it’s just like a coat hanging in the closet, not a monster.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Ian Wahlert:
We can do something about this. When we’re far away it looks like a big scary thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
It looks like a big scary thing.
Pete Wright:
Can you guys reflect for me just briefly on managing overwhelm of interpersonal relationships specifically? It can be challenging I think with ADHD to feel like you’re able to manage a group of close friendships. That maintaining the communication, the activity, the relationship in itself is become overwhelming or becomes an overwhelming set of tasks. And yet, we also know that having relationships is key to emotional psychological health.
How do you balance those things when someone comes in and says, I just don’t have room for more than one or two close friends? In spite of people wanting to be my friend, I don’t have room. I have to shut them out and risk hurting people.
Ian Wahlert:
It is an interesting one and my bridge goes back to curiosity. What is it that you want? What does the individual want? What is this feeling is people pleasing? What is this feeling that I’m only valuable if I meet everyone else’s needs?
What is it from other people’s pressure that’s not even pressure, but their interest even than you, is activating this? Versus what kind of relationships do you want? Where do you get value from the relationships? And how do you create clarity on what you want to be bringing to these relationships?
And being able to map this out so that it’s not again, a big boulder of they have this and I have this and that and that. How do we suss this out a little bit so that we can be making educating actions, intentional actions about these relationships. And not just reactive. Does that make sense?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And I definitely think I agree with finding out where’s the people pleasing coming? Do you feel obligated? And also, where do you have space and time for these kinds of relationships? We were talking about this in our GPS group about me being an introvert. And the conversation came up where we had a neighborhood gathering out in our cul-de-sac. And, Pete, you know my husband very well. He loves those things.
He loves… He’ll go and talk to anybody anytime, for however long they want to talk. But this happened to be on a Sunday afternoon and I was not in that space. And I did not have the energy to talk to them. And I really wanted to stay home and do what I was doing. And for me, it was okay to save that.
I felt like I was doing something that was good for me, even if it was at the expense of maybe connecting with these neighbors. So, I think when it comes to relationships, friendships especially are a two-way street. The communication needs to go both ways. And if you feel like you’re always reaching out and that person isn’t reaching back out, then maybe it isn’t the right friendship. But I also think that we have some responsibility too to connect with others that we want to connect with.
But I also think it’s okay to keep your circle small if that’s what you need. And for me, being an introvert, my circle’s pretty small. And I can be extroverted when I need to be. But I also know what I’m capable of. It kind of goes back to that spoons thing that we talked about a long time ago, Pete. How many spoons do you have to give to people?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I get five a day.
Pete Wright:
Black market spoon trade is just blown up since that conversation.
Nikki Kinzer:
And Sunday afternoons, man, I’m going to protect that time. So, I don’t know if that helps answer your question.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think it’s interesting and I think because there’s so much kind of natural instinct toward black and white thinking with ADHD. Like coming around and stopping and saying, “Look, I got room for three people in my life.” And when a new person comes in, that’s fantastic new shiny, then some something’s going to give. And I’m going to shut down an old relationship because I just don’t have space.
And that is probably going to be unapplied shutdown. I’ll just stop returning calls because of my attention is now elsewhere. And that can be a painful sort of overwhelm I think to experience. Which is I’m letting people down but I’m letting people down so far in the back of my mind because my attention is here. That’s challenging.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, in friendships especially, it can be really seasonal too. I mean, I think depending on what season you are in your life, right?
Pete Wright:
Truly.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know that I’ve had really good friends in a work situation. But as soon as I either left that workplace or they left that workplace, that friendship didn’t really last. So, I think it does kind of depend too on what kind of season you’re in.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Ian Wahlert:
Interesting point about time and ADHD and time and now and not now.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Ian Wahlert:
Thinking, oh, to be valuable in this relationship, I have to be engaged all the time and now is important. And then the next now is important as well when in fact there is time and people understand.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Ian Wahlert:
And they understand your barriers. And I think it’s when we can become more clear on these and more confident in them or have an intentional action around them, people respond a lot better. I’ve hit my maximum today guys, sorry, I have to go like it’s too much. Or saying, “Okay, cool guys, I’m going to come for three hours.” But having these clarity and putting things in place really enable you to maintain these.
Because otherwise, you just disappear, you ghost, you shut down. And then people start interpreting things differently. We think people are interpreting things differently and it start that ruminating. Oh, I should have said this. But setting these boundaries beforehand, creating clarity for yourself and thinking about this can really enable them to have more healthy interactions.
Even if it is only for part of the time. If you only to go to the barbecue and say, “Hey guys, lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for coming. My husband’s here and my friends are here. I’m going to have to go now. But please enjoy whatever.” If that’s something you’re up for.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Ian Wahlert:
That is a boundary setting. That is an action that supports you with a relationship but also respects your need for peace.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that also lands hard in the spirit of always leave them wanting more. We learn this from PT Barnum. Set the timer for two hours on a five-hour party and get out of there because they’ll want you back next time.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
You’re taking care of yourself and your own showmanship. It’s outstanding. That is great.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, this was great. Thank you so much, Ian, for being here.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Ian Wahlert:
It was my pleasure. Very honestly, great subject. And I’m really looking forward to our group sessions.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Ian Wahlert:
Looking forward to working with people. And I love group sessions because sure, we have a lot to bring, but just the value that comes from all the individuals that show up and share and are vulnerable. And it’s just this weird magic that happened at group sessions.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Ian Wahlert:
Really looking forward to them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yep, and we’ll do more. So, even though this one is closed, we will do more. So, get yourself on that waiting list.
Pete Wright:
We didn’t actually say that upfront. This one is already closed. So, we’re really sorry that we’re introducing Ian to you now.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
And not before.
Nikki Kinzer:
Timing was terrible.
Pete Wright:
I know. We kind of screwed up our recording schedule. But we’re really excited that Ian is here and with us. Don’t even need to ask him for a plug. He already did a great plug. So, hey, we’re just thrilled that he’s here.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right. And if you’re interested in coaching with Ian, he is on the website too.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Nikki Kinzer:
He’s taking individual clients.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. Very, very exciting.
Ian Wahlert:
Thank you guys. Way to leave them wanting more, Pete. I think you really enjoyed that quite well.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. Don’t forget if you have something to contribute about this conversation, we’re heading over to the show talk channel in the Discord server. And you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level. On behalf of Ian Wahlert and Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright. And we’ll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
