Danielle RalstonFounder, How Capacity Works · Founder of ND Hive | Building the productivity hub where work actually gets done | Execution spaces, body doubling & community accountability

Realistic Self-Care: Accommodating Neurodivergence in Daily Life #selfcare #adhd #ndoutloud

5 Jun 2024 · 1 min

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In this conversational segment, the speakers discuss practical self‑care strategies for neurodivergent individuals, especially those with ADHD. Speaker A emphasizes the importance of sharing goals with supportive partners so tasks can be divided—e.g., one person handles grocery shopping while the other focuses on their own objectives. They caution against the unrealistic “magical thinking” that one can complete a long list in a short time, especially when sleep‑deprived, and advocate for kindness toward oneself by setting attainable daily targets (e.g., aiming to complete three items instead of the whole list). Speaker B adds that recognizing and requesting specific accommodations for the day is a crucial part of this realistic approach. Together, the dialogue highlights collaborative task management, realistic expectation‑setting, and proactive accommodation‑seeking as key components of sustainable self‑care for neurodivergent people.

Chapters

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 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. 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?