Being ADHD Demure, Mindful, and Cutsie

Maybe.

And there we are. Hello, hello, hello everyone. This is Danielle and—

Coach Britt.

Coach Britt, and we are here talking about— just because I had to hit the The videos that are actually driving me nuts on TikTok and Reels, the demure, mindful, cutesy videos, they are so annoying. And I'm like, oh, that's such an ADHD thing. So we actually want to talk about how being ADHD and having the quiet moments with ADHD And finding peace in our chaos, because we all are chaotic. Our brains are chaotic, our lives are chaotic, and then we create more chaos. At least I do. I'm definitely the chaos-creating gremlin over here.

For fun. Otherwise I'd be bored.

Yeah. Oh, I would totally get bored with life if I wasn't creating some sort of chaos.

Right? Like, come on now.

So how do you find peace in your chaos? How do you create that for yourself with doing some mindful things and doing things that are demure or whatever it is right now?

I have a certain habit, which is— sometimes I say this to my clients. I'm like, here are the things I do on a consistent basis. And they're like, but how did you do that? That is a separate question, which we can totally address.

Yes.

Um, but some of the things that I do on a daily basis to just help me orient myself— I feel like a lot of the chaos from ADHD comes from not only me getting bored and needing stimulation and wanting to create chaos, um, to give myself some sort of like something, but also because I just can't trust my own brain in a lot of ways to do the things that I need it to do. And I know you can relate to this as well, but also, like, we have chronic illness. So in addition to not trusting my own brain, I also can't trust that my body is going to be consistent with me. So I've created certain habits that really help ground me and Keep me in tune with myself. One of those is a journaling practice that I do pretty consistently, almost every day. Um, and when I was younger, I, I can't tell you how many times I tried to create a journaling practice, but I had created all these rules. It was a very like masked Journaling practice, and now I literally journal whatever is on my brain. It doesn't sound good. It doesn't have to look good. Sometimes it's a to-do list because my brain is like, these are all the things you need to do. Sometimes it's just train of thought where I'm saying things like, here's the song that's stuck in my head. Sometimes it's just doodling because that's what is on my brain. Um, So I do that. That really helps me get in tune with myself. I find that when I'm journaling, even if it is a to-do list or doodle, giving myself that time to sit and process kind of helps bring to the surface anything that I may not be aware of that I can then go ahead and deal with. Um, making sure that I get outside, out of the space that I'm in, at least a couple times a day. Having a dog, Really great for that because I have to go on walks. And really making sure that I am doing all the things that my body needs on a bare minimum. So making sure that I'm eating enough food and brushing my teeth and flossing. And taking my medication. All of those are moments for mindfulness, but more importantly, they just kind of help keep me in good feel.

So for me, journaling is a huge thing. Handwriting everything is a huge thing. And most of you know I do a second brain system. So everything is in my second brain. Everything goes in here. Thoughts, to-do lists, the song I listened to, the sticker I found on the ground at the store. The stickers I had to buy at the store because they were cute. The greeting card I had to buy at the store.

Excuse me.

So getting everything out of my head and captured in one spot is a big thing for me. Not— I tried, I tried to have my journal and then my planner And my project notebook and my ideas for like having individual notebooks that never worked. Like, I always abandoned that after, oh, maybe a day. Um, it never lasted long for me. And having just a planner has never been enough for me. So learning to create and set up a second brain for myself— and this literally goes everywhere. I won't buy a purse that this won't fit in. Um, and my husband's like, why does that weigh 20 pounds? Why can't it just be everything in my brain? And he bought me a beautiful wristlet and I couldn't find a notebook small enough to fit in it. I'm like, nope, this is not gonna work. My husband bought me this beautiful custom leather that I had to go back because I, I just, I couldn't use it because my second brain couldn't go with me. This is an important thing. And it like We go to car meets, the second brain goes with me and I write down thoughts, the person I met, the person I want to call, like everything goes in there because my brain cannot be trusted ever. It will not remember anything including the, oh, I really like that color and I want to paint something that color at some point. I got to write that down.

Mm-hmm.

The other big thing for me is taking stock on how my body feels before I get out of bed. I do some really basic stretching of Like individual muscle groups so that I know where I'm gonna be energy and pain-wise for the day. Because if I don't do that first, I will, well, one, either not launch into my day at all because I'm just laying there going, eh, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna do this. Um, or two, I will just launch into day and not—

Mm-hmm.

How I'm feeling and get to lunchtime and go, oh, I needed this medication today to get me through the day, or I should have had more to eat this morning, or, or whatever it is based on how my body feels.

Yeah.

Big thing for me. Um, and for me, my energy level is always based on how my body feels. And unfortunately, my ADHD brain, or the autistic side, depends on what's— who's calling in today, is— can take over and I won't notice my physical needs.

Yes.

That happens to me all the time if I'm not super careful. So I had to learn, and, and it probably took me 40 years to learn. to take stock of the physical body before I let the brain take over.

Took me at least 30.

Um, and those things. And then my, my other thing is, how much caffeine do I need today to get me moving?

Amen. Well, and I think you bring up an excellent point on taking stock of the body. And I certainly can't speak for autism, but with ADHD, we do know that We really struggle with interoception. Our brains are not filtering out information in the same way. So, we're getting everything all at once. This can make it so, so, so hard to understand what's going on in your body because it can take— and this may sound insane to people who don't experience it. But it can take needing to sit down and like check in to realize you're in pain, to realize you have to pee, to realize you are hungry or thirsty or overheated. My brain is getting everything all at once. And if my body's signals are not overwhelming, I don't hear them. And so we do need that time to check in, whatever that looks like for us. For Danielle and I, it looks a lot like journaling, but everybody has their own process. But yeah, that's a huge part of being mindful.

It is. It's one of those biggest things that actually really took me a long time to understand that I had to stop and listen to my body first because again, it's not going to kick in. And mine is so bad that I won't notice I have a UTI or a kidney infection. I get extremely severe kidney infections and have since I was a kid, I think. And I don't notice. Like, I literally do not notice until something like beats me literally over the head. Well, in the back with it.

Ooh.

Till it's so bad that I can't function. I won't notice it unless I take stock of my body.

Amen. Amen.

And I think— and I don't even think this is necessarily an ADHD thing anymore in our busy lives, because I will talk to neurotypicals that will say the same thing. Neurotypicals that are— have kids, are busy at work, are doing 9,000 things, they tend to not listen to their bodies and they forget to be mindful about Mmm, amen.

I think it's compounded by this idea that, oh, we're all tired, we're all hustling, we're all— we all don't have time to sit down and eat a proper meal. And one, that's not true. That's not true.

Uh-uh.

But two, that's horrible. Well, yeah, value in working hard, and sometimes we have to put certain things aside. Uh, sometimes we have to go, go, go, go, go, go, and it is not normal to feel like crud all the time.

The fact that we think that we need to be going so much that, that, that is the thought process that we have is horrible. And again, this is not just an ADHD thing, unfortunately.

There is not.

Um, but it's, it's so important to like listen to your body. And, and, but then we're ADHD, so we have to be careful how How much we listen to our body and we don't let RSD and executive dysfunction take over life and not allow us to take action and things like that either. And that, that's part of that mindfulness is understanding, okay, I have to honor my energy. I have to honor my body's needs of food, drink, sleep, all of that. But I don't have to listen to the chaos and gremlin in the background trying to derail me and cripple life. And that's always the big balance. And for me, that always comes into having accountability. Who do I check in with daily? Who do I make sure that— because that's what helps me keep on track.

Yeah.

If anybody asks me, what keeps you on track and what allows you to do— like, at one point I was running 6 businesses and was homeschooling. Like, I was doing 9,000 things, and people are like, how'd you do that? One, I had a coach myself, even though I'm coach. 2, I have accountability. So I check in daily. I set my intentions every single day for my tasks. And then somebody else responds to me and says, Danielle, that's not possible. What the frick are you thinking? Let's make that more manageable so that I don't get in that shame spiral.

Yeah.

And 3, checks in with me to make sure I'm staying on track and not testing out new software, buying a new app. Right.

A lot of that is like mental delegation, right? I know that my brain is going to tell me I can and should do everything. Having a coach, having an accountability partner, even just having friends who get it, who you check in with, helps delegate some of that decision-making. And when I have someone say to me, that sounds like a whole lot, I can go, oh, my brain's doing this thing again.

Jessica, Jessica just responded on LinkedIn. She said, I had to look up the demure thing. I miss a lot not being on TikTok. No, you don't. Let me just tell you, you are not missing anything. It's one of those sets of videos that actually drives me insane. But I thought it was also immediately funny. So one of the, one of the other things I think is a big, big thing for us is remembering we do not have to be busy every single second of the day. And if you sit down and stare at TikTok for an hour or, or disassociate and stare at the ceiling fan or whatever it is that you do, it's okay. And it's good for you.

Was that you who said, or was it Melanie? I was talking about rest on social media somewhere and they said rest is putting gas in the tank, not wasting it.

No, it's not wasting it. It is, it is resupplying the energy needs that you have.

Yeah, and it's interesting, we're the only mammals— like, if you watch, we have something called Love Nature, which is like poor man's Animal Planet that we play for our dog when we leave the house, but it's fascinating, so we also end up watching it a lot. There's like No other mammal that is going, going, going. I, I, you know, I challenge you to find any other animal on the planet that is going, going, going all of the time and feels like it should be going, going, going all of the time.

And feels guilty if it's not going, going all the time and isn't constantly working, working, working, not relaxing, enjoying life, eating, eating, drinking, sleeping, taking showers, laying.

Playing.

All of those things are so important, so freaking important.

And, and for some reason, especially ADHD women, this idea that we have to like do and be it all to be not even to be the best, but just to be worthy. Just to be average is such an—

to not be considered lazy or, or stupid or whatever these things that we unfortunately we are conditioned because we have been told these things that if we sit and don't and stop that we are lazy.

Mm-hmm.

And then if you add the entrepreneur brain into the ADHD woman brain, that's a whole nother level of insane constant movement, have to be doing something new. Like, it took me— it took me a long time to realize, keep it simple.

Yep.

Take time off to rest. And I'm having to, as I age, I'm definitely having to do this more. I'm really— my chronic health issues are escalating, so I'm having to take more time off. And I actually— and I cried yesterday. I'm Super honest. I sat down with my calendar yesterday and went, I can only handle about 4 hours a day. I have my schedule open from 7 AM. People could schedule with me until 5 PM every single day. And I've had that that way for years.

And they've known you.

So much guilt for me yesterday. Take that down to 4 hours a day. And I had to journal that out. And I made ChatGPT give me some journaling Prompts because I couldn't even, like, I couldn't process it.

Yeah.

And it was huge for me to realize I— my body needs me to only work this limited amount of hours. I can't do all— and I'm in school too, so I can't work and do school and, and, and, and survive. So I had, I had to find where to move things down, and there was so much guilt And then RSD kicked in.

Yep.

And my husband was looking at me last night like I was insane. Like, it's okay. You don't have to do this all of the time. And I think it's important for us to realize that we don't have to be busy every moment we're awake, and we don't have to be awake for 18 hours a day or 27 hours a day.

Absolutely.

So how are you being mindful and refilling yourself? So I want to hear from people today. How are you being mindful and refilling yourself? Please tell us. We want to hear from you.

I will say one thing that's been really helpful for me is I recently started working with a trainer. And she put me on a new meal plan. And like, I haven't tracked my food consistently in a really long time, like a really long time. Um, but since I started doing so, it's helped me be so much more mindful about what I'm putting into my body and Whether or not it will give me energy. It's not about like, oh my God, I want to be so hot. Like, how will I look? What does this say about who I am? It's more about what can I put in my body today that will give me the energy to enjoy the life I'm living? And having that accountability of someone who I know is looking at what I'm doing helps me to consistently engage with that. Um, and I will say my energy has improved quite a bit. It's really cool.

It's amazing how just taking the time to track Something. Moods, energy, what we're eating, what we're drinking, what we're watching. So when I have a client that's like extremely agitated all of the time.

Yeah.

Well, how much time are you spending watching the news? How much time are you spending watching this, this, this, like all of that? And most of the time, I have a client who's inputting Things that are stress-causing. So I have a client that I had— funniest thing, I have a client who was watching a cartoon with her kids, and I'm not gonna name the cartoon because there's nothing wrong with the cartoon, but the noise, the sound, the music, and the sounds on this cartoon were causing her to be agitated. And every day for about 2 hours after her kids watched like an hour of this cartoon, she was extremely agitated. Oh my gosh. So by writing things down, she now knows she's wearing noise-canceling headphones when her kids watch this show because it was a sensory overload issue. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the show, or it wasn't like anything or anything like that. It was, it was just causing her sensory overwhelm.

Amen.

And my husband and I will often sit next to each other on the couch and do 2 totally completely different things. Because he has one set of sensory needs and needs to decompress, and I have another.

Oh.

And it's okay to do that in your own home, even with a close relationship. And spending quality time with someone doesn't mean watching their, their movie that they want to watch, their videos that they— my husband plays pool, as in billiards, and is at professional competition level, so he's constantly watching instruction videos and all of that. That it makes me very agitated because I get annoyed. It like, are you serious? Are you watching this again? So we have learned that he does that, and I put my noise-canceling headphones in, and I listen to my music, and I read a book.

We are spending quality time together doing two completely different things, and that's okay.

And I think a lot of people play. A lot of neurodivergent people in relationships forget that they can do that.

They do. They absolutely do.

So quality time doesn't mean doing the same exact thing all the time. And my husband loves to go to car shows, and they bore me to no end. And so I watch TikTok videos as we're walking around with one earbud in.

Here we go.

I'm happy or distracted, something, and he's happy and we're all good. It's okay to do separate things in the same space. So to tie up, we always ask a goofy question or what our hyperfocus is, but we've talked about that. What is your biggest ADHD blooper recently? Because we have to do something cutesy, of course.

My biggest ADHD blooper.

So I'll share mine. I'm getting ready to do a huge brand deal, and I'm, I'm getting my office all situated. I have a new coffee pot in my office, and I love these things. So Keurig, don't turn your Keurig on and push the button until you know where a coffee cup is. Because I put it in my office. Guess where there are zero coffee cups?

I totally have done that before.

And so I, I had a waterfall, and before I could take care of it, my dog is climbing up the shelf over here licking everything, the coffee off of everything as it's overflowing.

Coffee dog.

I have a coffee dog. And then you want to know what happens to a tiny little terrier mix when they have coffee? We have zoomies at midnight.

Boom boom. Oh, honestly, I'll take zoomies over tummy troubles any day.

He did not have any tummy trouble, which I expected because he got a decent amount of coffee.

But, um, buddy likes coffee too. I don't under— I'm like, why do you like this?

I, I don't— I really don't understand, but he— we didn't sleep very well that night because he was very hyper and he wanted to play.

Oh, Bubba. I think my biggest ADHD blooper recently, um, I have some like hand numbness and sometimes I get like really like not Hand trouble. And sometimes I get really hyperfocused on things. So I was really hyperfocused on doodling in bed, but I don't have the same, like, physical awareness of my fingers and stuff sometimes. Um, normally when I'm not hyperfocused, I'll pay attention to that. No, no, no, no. I finished doodling and I put the pen down and I realized I had drawn all over my hand. And I looked like I had just murdered a Smurf. And I was like, all right, cool, cool, cool, cool. That's fun.

I will find myself mindlessly doodling sometimes, especially if I'm really agitated somewhere, and I actually doodle on my hands.

I believe it. It's comforting.

It is. There, there's a sensory piece that goes with that for me, but only with a ballpoint pen. If I'm using a felt tip pen, I would never do that because I hate the way that feels.

It is a very distinct sensation. Yeah, it is.

So I want you to really think about how are you being mindful, demure, and cutesy with your ADHD and enjoying the chaos that comes with it. Because it's not always about all of the negatives. Sometimes we enjoy the chaos of drying all of our hands, pouring coffee on the floor, but journaling our way through life, being accountable, all of those things. So how are you enjoying your ADHD life today? We want to hear how you're being mindful today. So tell us all about it. We want to hear, and Brit and I will answer questions if we have them, anything at all. Reach out to us. We're always happy to answer your questions and we're all over the place.

Find us all over.

Have an amazing day, everyone.