Pair of Ducks

Hello, hello, hello everyone. I hope you're having an amazing day. So we're talking about paradox today, and I learned this illustration, believe it or not, at our training before we went to Africa from military guys. They called it the paradox. So paradox, pair of ducks. And I actually have a pair of ducks. And you've got your cute little duck who always can keep swimming and does it in style, of course. And then you have the part of ADHD that sucks. You feel like a zombie. Your eyes are falling out. You're falling apart. And when you're neurodivergent, life often feels like this. And there's a reason why we talk around here about the superpowers and the duality of having superpowers of being neurodivergent. And I don't care what your version of neurodivergence is and the frustrations of it.

Yeah.

So real story here. There are days that you can get up and you can get right outta bed and get right in the shower and get up and get ready and be a functional adult. And then 2 hours later, you can't get yourself outta your chair to like answer the email, to answer the phone, to, to do all of the things. We feel like that off and on all day long, but we're not broken.

No, we are just out of energy and stuff at that point. I think that this is just my opinion. I think that the main difference between neurotypicals and neurodivergents is we just have to be more mindful of our energy expenditure. It's like in video games, you know, like you see the— like in Super Mario, right? He's got his little energy bar. Every time he gets hit, it goes down, right? That's us. But occasionally we'll get one of those stars, right? And the stars give you a super boost of energy and make you invincible for about 30 seconds. So you're just running through the board, collecting stuff, dodging people, they're bouncing off of you, and then the star quits. And then you're just like a normal person, and then you get hit by something and you shrink down a little bit. Then you— it's very much our energy is finite.

Our energy is finite, and our energy, it's that, that whole overwhelm. Do you understand where your overwhelm is? Because if you have a little bit of overwhelm here, can become big overwhelm over here just because it's this little teeny thing, because overwhelm adds up. And our ears get overwhelmed, our eyes get overwhelmed, our skin gets overwhelmed, our hair gets overwhelmed, our everything gets overwhelmed very easily.

And the things that overwhelm us don't overwhelm other people. And so it's being mindful of that. So we're susceptible to all kinds of things. Like if multiple people are talking at the same time, I get super overwhelmed. Like autistic meltdown for that one thing. Like, because I can't handle all the auditory sensation coming at me at one time.

So I thrive on auditory sensation but can't handle physical touch. I am touch-averse. I am very touch-averse. I don't like my dog laying against me. I don't like my husband touching me unless I ask. I don't like to be touched. And understanding that that is a thing I can decrease that overwhelm.

Mm-hmm.

Vita, with sound being a thing for her, loop earplugs are fantastic. I know I have a couple clients who visually lights overwhelm them, like too many, being able to see too many things, so they wear sunglasses all the time.

See, I do that too. Like even, and I, that's been a relatively new thing, but when we go grocery shopping or something, because I started, I would get Sick inside of Walmart and Costco. So I started wearing my sunglasses inside because I'm super light sensitive. And the other thing is too, it's like there's things I'll do like at home if the TV's going and then all the kids are talking and stuff, I'll just pause the TV. Like everyone turns around and looks at me because then they realize they're talking while the TV's on. And that's not what I'm doing it for. I'm pausing it to lessen the cognitive load so I can hear them and pay attention to them. They think I'm making some comment on the fact that they're talking. Yeah.

And it's just that I can't do both things. I can't hear you talk. I can't do this thing here. Here, I'm overwhelmed. And it's understanding that we can be both of these things in exactly the same moment.

Yes. Yes.

And there are days— I mean, Vida and I, we coach on this all day long. We talk to people. As ADHD experts all day long, we help people overcome their overwhelm all day long and live on our own. And it's okay. It is completely and totally okay. And it's understanding that you have to have accommodations for yourself. And it keeps— I want you guys to notice it keeps coming back to the same thing. How are you accommodating the ugly duck in your life? How are you accommodating for the ugly duck in your life? Because we all want to keep swimming, and we want to keep swimming the easy way. You will notice that I have her on an inner tube because she doesn't have to work hard to swim.

No, I'm so jealous of that duck.

Because what does she have? She has an accommodation, right? The swimming easier. How do you Accommodate the things that are overwhelming. Again, we all have our pair of ducks. It's okay to have your pair of ducks. Paradox. The paradox of being neurodivergent. And there are so many paradoxes. We're talking about sensory issues, but I can, when I like something, I can learn every single thing there is about it. I can remember it forever. It is in my head. It is never going anywhere. And I can read the same sentence 2,000 times when it's something I don't want to know about or is annoying to me, and I won't remember it. I can write it down, I can read it, I can find it in a video to hear it, I can do 9,000 things and it's never going to be stuck in my head. Or I can hyperfocus on something and learn every single thing there is about it and never miss a detail and have every single detail in my head forever and ever and ever. Amen. You could ask me about lifetimes worth of hyperfocuses and I could tell you all of the things.

Yeah.

So how do you accommodate? How do you accommodate? You've got to find your accommodations. And often accommodations— what accommodations do you always suggest to somebody who's really, really struggling with everything right now?

My accommodations are— I mean, there's always the one we hear, right? Be kind to yourself. We struggle a lot with that, I think, as a neurodivergent community because we've had so many internalized messages. Now, As a parent, there is a difference between being kind to yourself and enabling yourself. And that is what people have to find out how to do. It's okay to have an inner monologue that coaches you and tells you to do things. And the problem is, is we have trouble— Coach Ron said this— we have a problem with temperance, right? We allow ourselves to do too much. So instead of just being kind to ourselves, We're either super indulgent or we're super shameful. So there's like, I work with this with my husband, right? He's always like, I should be doing more, I should be doing this. And I'm like, according to who?

Who said so?

And it's according to him. He has an idea in his head of what he needs to accomplish. And I'm like, okay, well, if you share that with me, then I can help you. Like, just in our house, like, there are things I can do. Like, I can do the grocery shopping on the weekend. He doesn't have to go with me. Like, it's not that big a deal, but But if he needs time to accomplish something, like, we can divide and conquer, right? But he thinks he should be able to do all the things, much like all the rest of us do. And so then what happens is we do like maybe a 10th of the things, and then we don't feel like we've accomplished enough.

Mm-hmm.

So be kind to yourself. Like, and here's the other thing, I think you have to be realistic, right? We have— it's the magical thinking, like, I can do all of this in an hour, I can do this, I can do that. But it's the real realism of like, okay, I only slept 4 hours last night, I'm not gonna get everything done on the list today, let's shoot for 3.

The other part of it is supporting, again, accommodations. What accommodations do you need today? If you didn't get enough sleep, then you can't do as much. Or maybe you need to take a nap in the middle of the day. And I have adults say, I can't do that. That's not something I can do. Why the F not? And even if you have a job where you're working in an office somewhere, go out to your car, set multiple alarms if you need to, and go take a nap on your lunch break and snack on the way at your desk instead.

Yeah.

Get the rest that you need. What accommodation do you need to make today good? Often, almost all Almost all, not all, but almost all neurodivergent people need community and accountability every single day. So those are accommodations that we need.

Yeah.

The funny thing is, is they talk about, and I've been hearing, seeing a lot of news stories for just the normal people out there, that we don't have our third place any longer, especially in the US. And the third place is in other countries. Do you know that they meet together before work, after work, for lunch? And rest in a group and build community and friendships, and they do that multiple times a day. We don't do that here in the US, and for some reason we think that that's not a thing. It is a thing. It's a thing that we as humans need. So wanting to build a community and having accountability is a human experience, not a neurodivergent experience. So what things as a human do you need today to accommodate yourself? And I'm gonna tell you my accommodations today. And Vita would know this in 10 minutes after we're done anyway. I need somebody to remind me and keep me on track today. My head is buzzing so bad that I can't function. If it's quiet, there's— Danielle's gonna do nothing because I'm listening to all the voices in my head and getting distracted. So I need somebody to say, hey Danielle, what's on your list today? What are you doing? I need that today. There's nothing wrong with that. I know that that's what I need today. It's recognizing my patterns. It's knowing what my accommodations are. It's, it's accepting that I need accommodations today.

And I like, for me, I like to do in the morning, you know, some people do journaling or mindfulness. I technically do that, but what I'm doing is making my to-do list for the day because it helps me be mindful. That is my journaling. What do I need to accomplish today? And then it's kind of a running list. Now what I'm not super great at is marking things off. And sometimes I have days like Danielle, it's like my brain is super buzzy. I'm gonna get a lot of stuff done, but it may not be anything on my list. But that's where it's— you're having to hold yourself accountable to— like, I always go back to 3. 3 is the magic number.

Mm-hmm.

If you can't get— if you can't get the whole list done, that's fine, but try to get 3 things. If every day you are consistently getting 3 things done, that's a lot of consistent productivity.

And it's a big— anybody who thinks that planning is boring or planning is like all of these things, one of the first things that I teach almost all my clients to do is how to plan correctly for their brain. Everybody's brain is different. So how do you plan correctly for your brain today? Today my brain is not gonna be able to bullet journal, 'cause if I bullet journal today, I am going to go down the sticker and coloring and making it look perfect rabbit trail, and I'm not gonna actually work on any tasks. I know that's not a good thing today. So today I'm going to use, what is this called? I don't remember what this is called. My fox something. Clever Fox Planner. Because my Clever Fox Planner has everything all written out for me, and I don't have to create any of that. That's going to be my necessity today. You will notice I have not done that yet. There are other days that I do all of the cute things with all of the stickers and all of the fun stuff, and that's fine, and that I can do that that day, and that gives me dopamine and all of that. Today I designed backgrounds for BeLive that I didn't need to do, and it was not on my list, but it made me happy and I got it done. It was something that did need to be done though, so good. But do you know what you need to accommodate yourself today? If you don't know, if you're just struggling and you're like, look, I can't do anything today because I can feel my eyelashes in all of this, tell us. Let a community help you. Because part of understanding how all of this works is being able to build your accommodations. What are the accommodations you need today? What is the pattern that you need to recognize for yourself today? And sometimes somebody from the outside needs to do that for you. We can't do it ourselves. So what do you need today? What's your accommodation? We all need accommodations. So Vida, what's yours?

You.

Vida and I are gonna body double a crap ton today because we need it. Nothing wrong with that. So if you're part of our program, we have a full session here at 9 AM Central. So 1 hour from now, we have a whole entire session for you to come get the support and help get the accommodations that you need. Come do it. You get 2 weeks free, so you could join right now and dive into today. We've got something Monday through Thursday every single week. There's something going on every single day to get that community and accountability and accommodation support that you need.

It's April 1st. Like, it's a great way to take stock of your month and see what you need.

That's true. It is April 1st. Can't believe it's April 1st already. Have an amazing day, everybody, and we will be back. We probably, uh, just all of you in our Facebook group, we are not gonna come live every single day like we have been. We are going to start going live over on YouTube instead a bit more often because, well, growth, and we're trying to reach a bigger audience, and we're putting a lot of time and effort into the podcast and our audience every single day. So come join us for that. Have an amazing day, everybody.