School & ADHD/AuDHD: Hyperfixations, Transitions, and Balance

Good morning, it's ND Out Loud here with Coach Britt and obviously Coach Vida. So we're going to talk about school because it is back-to-school vibes. Like, the southern half of the US, maybe Midwest, is all back to school, and the Northeast is getting ready. They've got about 2 weeks, 3 weeks now before they go back to school. So, and then Some of us are in grad school, so some of us are already in school, and Vy is tutoring kids who are in school.

So, you know, we're all around here.

School is life.

School is life. Learning is life.

So one of the big things I keep hearing is the parents panicking about the transition of their kids going back to school, and they're not panicking about their kids' transition, they're panicking of them dealing with having to transition their kids to go back to school themselves.

I definitely think that's a lot of it. You know, 'cause neurodivergent people don't really handle transition well. Even though I think the transition from summer to school is an easier transition than the transition from like at the end of school to summer.

Right.

Because we already know the established routine that we know the expectation of what we're doing. And when at the end of the school year, when they're transitioning into summer, it's just like, blah, you know, like. They're just so— I really think the difficulty transitioning in August right now from summer back to school is everybody just pouting that they're having to go back to a very structured environment. That's why I think after about 2 weeks, it's much easier. Like everybody slides back into the routine.

Well, it's predictable and ADHDers, we hate routines. We hate structure. We hate, but we need it.

So it's all good. I mean, teachers are the same. A lot of ND teachers that I know are super pouty the first couple weeks of school because it's like, ugh, you know, but you're back into a routine, which they like the routine, but it's a whole thing, right? Like we like the summertime and no one being able to tell us what to do and we can sleep till whenever and we can do whatever, but depending on your perception, your personality, your outcome. Most of your summer may just be spent on the couch like binge-watching TV because it's like a really long time of dissociation, right? It's like 3 months of dissociation.

So what are you seeing, Britt? Do you have any clients in panic over there?

It's interesting because I tend to attract childfree clients either because they have chosen not to have kids, that's just their life, or they just Happen to not, or my clients are just, even if they want kids, they're before that place in their life where they started that journey. So a lot of the back-to-school panic I'm seeing is from fellow adults who are in school and whose spouses are in school, often getting, you know, advanced degrees because I also attract nerdy overachievers. I wonder why that is. But lots of, you know, similar things. to having kids is the household dynamic is about to change because our schedules are about to change. And there is always a little bit of apprehension of, I know I'm gonna be dumped into a schedule and a structure that has already been created. And that's a little bit comforting, but I don't know what that is yet. And that kind of unknown can be very unnerving.

I know Poorvita has been coaching me through as somebody going back to school after, oh my gosh, my last degree was 20-something years ago. So I'm finishing up one— well, I just finished one degree, and then I'm heading into the rest of it, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? How do I, how do I do this? I mean, the panic in me of trying to have a really structured routine, even though I preach this all day long to clients, how to help them do it, can't do it for myself for nothing.

Well, and I think, I just think there's a lot of emotions wrapped up in school. Even if you are a really good student, like I was a really good student and I loved school, but I need a very clear syllabus with due dates. This is due on this day. This is due on this day. So you kind of run the Russian roulette of whoever you get as a professor, because as much as I love little autistic A-type, like gridded out stuff, a lot of college professors are very hippie-dippy about things. And that's no shade. They're just like, oh, We're flexible. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. You know, it's like when you ask someone like, how long does this paper need to be? And they're like, just write until you get it done. And I'm like, I will, I will have a mental breakdown. I need a page limit. I need something. I need, or a rubric or something so that I can make sure that I've covered everything. Because like my anxiety about being a good student is that I will miss something. I will leave something off. I will leave points on the table that were very easy to get. And then really it's an underlying, I have a fear of failure, right? So that's like a lot of us. But at my— as your professor.

I think for me right now, like going back to finish a degree I started 20-something years ago was like, what was I thinking? Do I remember any of the things I did before? And I did the placement, like they made sure I did before I just jumped back in. So that was there, but I still was like this inner panic of, oh my God, do I remember any of this? Can I do this? Can I finish this? I only had 2 classes. to take and I finished them both. They were both self-directed.

It was fine.

And I did great. But there was still so much panic in thinking about, oh my gosh, I've got to write these papers. Do I remember how to write a paper? And then I had to write a paper in a different format than existed 20 years ago. Poor Vita. And it just, there's so much, I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail at this. I paid for this thing and I'm going to fail at this. And I'm an adult. I'm not supposed to fail at this. And I'm ADHD and I'm hyper and I'm high achieving. And like, there's that. And it's not people pleasing. It's that internal fear factor.

I think having some time off from school and like having done a lot of self-development and just like literally growing up and completing my, you know, prefrontal cortex since college, it helped me loosen my perfectionism a little bit.

Yeah.

Which is nice because I'm— yes, I want to get good grades because I care about the subject matter, right? And I have a lot more agency in like what classes I'm taking and what I study. So, you know, it's okay if I don't get 100%, but that doesn't mean I don't need a lot of support. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. My current professor is amazing at that.

That's good.

Shout out to David. But like, even not even when it comes to like assignments, But registering for class, right? The prep for class. The system at my school is you get like a time ticket to go register for classes. I didn't receive it for my first like term, so I had to email someone and they had to like in the backend like do it for me. But now I'm panicked because I don't know if and when I'll receive the next one.

Right.

And I'm like, I don't— can you just tell me?

I think taking classes that you were interested in was the game changer for me once Like, once you get into college and you get through that initial roundup stuff that they say is like to make you well-rounded, which it's just—

Liberal arts.

But, um, but once you're able to take the classes that are like your hyperfocus that you're really interested in, like, school was extremely easy because I was interested in it. And then I agree that with Brit, like, now that I'm older, my perfectionism is less. And I remember hearing it in my undergrad, like, C's get degrees, right? Because I was freaking out. Like, I had like an 89 on a paper and one of my friends was like, you know, C's get degrees. And I was like, what? And, but it was true. And granted, as you go through with grad school, you have to have a better GPA and stuff like that. But there was still wiggle room. I didn't— it wasn't 100% or nothing. It was 100 to 70 or nothing, right? Like, that's a lot of gray area.

Yeah. So for me, now that I'm like finishing my other degree, I've got the dumb part out of the way. Now I get to go into what I really want to be doing. So I don't start for— I start next week. So it's, it's cool, but yet it's still terrifying that I've got my whole everything that I've got to do and the amount of papers I have to write and have processing disorders and all kinds of stuff. So writing papers is— I'm actually really good at it, but it's still panic-inducing. So I had to sit down and I had to really look at my schedule as a coach, as a wife, and I had to go, these are the things I can handle doing, these are the things I'm gonna need extra time, and just gave myself that extra time so that I don't even have to like worry about trying to figure that out later. And planning out for the worst-case scenario, I think that helped my brain.

It does. I think you make a good point about like prioritization too, right? Like a school If school and being an involved wife and being an involved coach are your priorities, cool. You're gonna have to plan around those. Like, this is not the time to add in to-do lists and get really clear about, like, in this season of life— and it'll change— but in this, what do we prioritize?

I know.

For most of us and most of our families, this time of the year, school is going to be one of those top priorities. So what can we let go?

I have to counsel my coaching clients a lot on, we are not adding new homework, we're not adding new projects, we are not assigning things to ourselves that are not necessities. And right now necessities are your basic functions plus school, and that's it until we get into a good routine. And then possibly you can add maybe one more thing, but I really think that this Well, one, most of us say yes to everything, but we have a really convoluted idea of time as a construct. Like, we really just feel like every one of us thinks that we just automatically have one of those Time Turners from Harry Potter, can do like, you know, 72 hours worth of stuff in 15 minutes. And so when you sit down and you budget it, you're like, okay, I cannot maintain this schedule. I'm going to have a stroke. You know, I cannot maintain this schedule. maintain this schedule, I'm going to end up burning out with chronic fatigue and all kinds of other stuff because we have to be mindful of ourselves, especially because we are not teenagers anymore. And so it's like, our time is valuable. What are you giving your time to? I read something yesterday and it blew my mind.

What was it?

Of course, now I can't remember. Oh, it said rest is self-respect.

Mm.

I like that.

And I was like, ouch.

One of the biggest things for me, because time, obviously time, I lose time pretty easily, is I set this up for myself because I'm dyslexic. And you see it's got white spaces in it. And I actually showed this to one of my clients who's a therapist. She goes, you built your white space into your day so that you have nothing on your schedule in those white spaces. And I'm like, no, I just colored every other line because I'm dyslexic. But you know what? Really good idea.

But see, I think everybody should do that. You can set it up in your Calendly. You can set it up in your Google account to where if like if you are really plugged into your calendar, you can set it up so that it automatically schedules like a 10 to 15 minute buffer after every meeting. Schedule time for the things that you don't think take time, like potty breaks, getting a drink of water, possibly eating something. But It's not just that, it's also the transition. You're giving yourself 15 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever, to be like, and I'm closing the book on this meeting and I'm opening the book on this meeting.

Yes.

I love that transition time. I have like a 10-minute buffer for after every call built into my Calendly because it allows me to have a transition time to like decompress if I've had a rough coaching call because Something that I think a lot of people forget and a lot of coaches forget, and I talk to my coaching clients who are coaches, is we have to shed that energy from other people. We're not just there to help. We actually absorb some of that energy at times and we have to give ourselves space and transition time to get rid of whatever we were just walking through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think this reminds me of another like big misconception that both I and a lot of my clients sometimes have about school actually. Is, you know, most of us are not in school for like hands-on things when we talk about back school. So people think, oh, I'm just sitting there, I'm just sitting and listening, or just sitting and guiding, or just sitting and reading. That's not going to take a lot of energy.

Yeah.

But it does. It does.

I mean, again, we take on other people's— that energy that somebody brings in and we're helping them process and work through it and all of those things. And we have to remember that we were in that same energy with our clients, and we need to make sure that we get rid of it at the end.

But I think there's something to be said about, like, for many of us, we have invisible disabilities, right? And a lot of those out there will relate because it's like, yes, I have an invisible disability, so people don't think that I struggle, right? Because it's invisible. Okay, so I need everyone to apply this to invisible labor. Right. We don't think that, okay, like teachers, service providers, coaches, they're just sitting there listening. We think that's invisible labor and we don't put that, like their time is not heavy. It's not expensive for them to spend it, right? Because it's this invisibility. It's the same thing with like, oh, so you're a grade school teacher, like you're essentially a daycare worker. And it's like, no, no, that's not how that works, you know? Or a lot of people struggle with invisible labor, like at home, in their home between partners and spouses and things like that. It's like, well, I took out the trash. Oh, I just saw it magically happen. You know, it's like all these things that because we have not made heavy or expensive to do, no one sees any value in them.

Including us. We forget to have value in the tasks that we do.

Right. It's like if you ever— so grade school teachers take a lot of anecdotal notes. They will write down like 8 AM, Johnny had to go to the bathroom, 9 AM, blah blah blah. They take a lot of anecdotal notes because that's how stay kind of on top of their day and what happens. So I challenge you guys out there to start taking anecdotal notes, even anecdotal notes, even if it's only for like one day, because there's a ton of stuff that you do that you don't think you do.

Mm-hmm.

Like going to the grocery store is not an invisible thing. It is time expensive. You have to drive there, you have to get the groceries, you have to drive back, then you have to unload the groceries. It's a very heavy lifting task. But everybody makes that one invisible.

I think one of the bigger things that I learned, and somebody taught me this a long time ago, and it's something that I work into that second brain system that I teach everybody, is every half hour write everything down that you've done. Just bullet points of empty dishwasher, order groceries. I mean, everything that we do, personal and business. For those of you, keep a bullet point list every day in your second brain system of What you've done, because you really can see where your time goes. And I actually had this conversation with a client. They're like, I am losing an hour every day and I can't get this work done and I don't understand. Well, let's, let's review this. And she couldn't for the life of her write things down. So she turned her— is a business phone and a personal phone. She turned her personal phone on all day and just recorded her whole entire day.

Wow.

Next to her on the desk. And she found that people are stopping into her office. Like at least twice an hour and then it took her wandering around and going to the bathroom and getting a cup of coffee and getting some water and stuff to get back to work every single time somebody stopped to ask her one quick question.

Wow.

And she was self-accommodating, which is fantastic so that she could get back on task, but that's how you lose a whole entire hour.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what are your current hyperfixations? We all have them. I asked this last week and I think this is gonna be a favorite question every single all the time now. What's your current hyperfixation?

Staring at wedding dresses on the internet.

Oh, that's a good hyperfixation though.

It's nowhere near time to even start shopping for a wedding dress.

It's already there.

What?

But your brain is already there.

Yeah, my brain is there. I have like a giant like Pinterest collection and I'm like, this is so far away. I love it though, but I'm having fun.

You're having fun. It brings you joy. It's very easy to get sucked down into the dopamine, right? It's like, oh yeah.

So, Bita, what's your current hyperfixation?

Probably checklists, because I have a child that just is back at school, right? He's in a hybrid school. So, uh, basically it's like I homeschool him and we check in with his teacher and we go back and forth. And so checklists are my hyperfocus right now. So instead Instead of making notes to make like, what do I do all day? I make a checklist of things I need to do so that those are already budgeted for and I knock them off. And then I have openings to add in the various other baloney that pops up during the day.

I love that. Various idle— various other baloney. Why did my brain want to say idle?

I like that.

I do like that. So for me, I got a combination of hyperfixations. One, I accidentally started taking notes a couple weeks ago in a sci-fi book and then went, you could do annotation. And then I watched 900,000 videos on YouTube about annotating fiction books. And then because I watched 9,000 videos, I had then to go buy every color flag I could possibly find on Amazon. Then I actually got a brand deal. So my second hyperfixation is I have a brand deal with Erin Condren, and I've got to start recording videos on that. And they also sent me a coffee pot and candles so I could like— because they, they saw some video that I did about talking about setting the scene for focusing and getting things done and planning my day and all of that. So they sent me all of them to do that.

Awesome.

Except for now I have to record videos. Doing all of that. So I have to— I realize the part of my office that y'all see is usually very clean and very cute. Um, the rest of my office isn't. And guess what? I gotta record using the rest of my office. So yeah, Danielle has to clean and get her office organized and get set up. And so that's my hyperfixation, is try to— how do I want to set this up so it looks good and is functional?

Because I'm also going back to school.

I start school again in a week. So I've got all of these things all at the same time that I have to figure out. But it's a good hyperfixation because I'm cleaning and I'm not shopping on Amazon or staring at my screen or watching a million videos that I— annotation videos that I don't need to be watching any more of. I think I've watched every version of anything that exists, but I keep watching them because they're very interesting.

I love annotating books that I'm reading because I'm having a conversation with the text. So as a former English teacher, it's like you have a conversation with the book. It helps with deeper meaning and all this other stuff. And I weirdly like to read books that other people have annotated because then I get to see like how their brain works. I feel like it's so enlightening. But I'm the only one in this house that likes to do this. So when I annotate books, like my husband goes, it's ruined. I can't read it because all I hear is your voice, like, all the time while I'm reading it. And I'm like, well, you read it first and then I'll read it. Because, like, we've tried to do it before, like, where we read the same book and I would annotate and he would annotate. But if I did it first, he was like, I just—

it's just you.

No.

And see, I'm over here like, oh yes, make notes in this book. I want to read, like, oh, you liked that quote? Why did you like that quote? Like, I'm so curious. And so I just made it very unsexy for everybody.

I do it in like coaching books that I read, like new protocols I'm learning, new things I'm learning. So I've always done it in things I'm learning, but it never occurred to me to carry that over into fiction. And I just accidentally did it because I have been— I was taking a theology class and everything I took and every note I took ended up In my Bible because that's how my brain works. And it just made it easier to learn all of the content to be putting all kinds of notes in the book. And then I picked up Crescent— I'm reading Crescent City, and then I picked it up and I was just automatically doing the same thing. I was like, but now I'm remembering things.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm— for taking notes for school, like, I use planner stickers and things like that to take notes on and colors and things like that because it helps me remember the notes that I've taken because I'm engaging and reading with it and stuff. But I never— I reread the same books over and over and over and over and over again for fiction because I forget about them.

But I'm going to tell you, and this is the thing, all my English teachers out there, this is how you get people to understand, comprehend, because they're having a conversation with the text the entire time they're reading it. So they are making those connections, they are highlighting things that really stand out to them, they are thinking about it deeper.

My inner monologue is going anyway the whole entire time I'm Right. Or reading something or whatever. So why not just write it down?

Right.

Because the inner monologue is there. I'm neurodivergent. That inner monologue is there. Why did they write it like that? That was stupid. I wouldn't have said that. Well, that was cheesy. You know, sure, they— you know, you see those TikTok videos of people reading romance novels and making— trying to make the faces that are written out on the paper. I'm always doing that because that drives me nuts. Like, that's not a thing.

Seriously.

You know, I think it's been one of those hyperfixations that—

one, I don't usually have little hyperfixations like that. It's usually learning something. It's learning something. But this was like totally for learning how to read fun books that are meant to be brainless. And now I've turned it into a project. My husband's like, you could— only you could turn reading a book that's supposed to be like downtime for your brain into a project. I'm like, yes, but it's fun.

Do either of you use Perusall in school?

No.

Is that the one that gives you like Cliff Notes for the book?

No. So Perusall is like— it like, it uploads the documents or the books, like whatever the reading is, and it allows everyone in class to like highlight and comment and like engage in conversation. Ooh, that's cool. So it's kind of like what you're talking about, Vaida, with like everyone's, um, thought, but also like a lot of us are just putting kind of like our inner monologue and then starting conversations around that. We're doing that. I've just learned about it in this semester. It's really cool. P-E-R-U-S-A-L-L.

Okay, I'm looking it up.

Yeah.

Creating engagement with social learning. I like it.

Yeah.

This would be so cool cuz we're starting a, we're gonna be reading ADHD is Awesome in ADHD Upgrade Academy soon. And that would be cool to do that with them.

Yeah. It's, I, I love it. I think it's such a cool invention and like piece of technology. And like our professor can go in and like pre-highlight things and ask questions and like make comments.

That's awesome.

You can ask questions. It's just— you can search within it. There's a dictionary in it. You can generate a citation in it.

That's really cool.

I'll have— I'm gonna have to really— I mean, I have it up, so I will check that out because that would be really cool for those of us that are distant from each other, like reading the same books and stuff.

Yep.

That's very cool. So which one are your big goals for the week?

So there's some beginning of the year stuff we have to get through for—

What? Is what? Sorry.

No, you're fine. So there's some beginning of the year stuff we have to get through for my son, and so that is my main focus. Like, we have to take, you know, his beginning of the year test to see where his levels are, so then we can use data-informed instruction to get him where he needs to go. It's very nerdy. So those are my goals this week, and my husband is one of those pouty teachers that's, that's going back to work and He has learned about this thing called Vet Tix. So if you are a veteran, there's a thing called Vet Tix. A lot of places, venues have tickets to events that they set aside for veterans. Some are free, some are like a lottery type situation, some are whatever. But so that is John's hyperfocus right now. So he has like, we've been to a couple concerts and we're doing some stuff and I'm like, can you like Look for September because August is really full. I need you to stop with that.

So.

That's awesome. Right now our big goal this week is unfortunately my son and his wife just got separated. So we're dealing with a lot of helping them get their house, helping him get house situated. And he has a roommate that's moving in the next couple of weeks and just there's a lot of big emotions and all of that stuff. So working on that. I'm reading through Crescent City and I am annotating and I'm having fun. And I have to get this office cleaned and set up and making sense for using all of the amazing planners and stickers and my pink coffee pot. I have to say, I was thrilled to get a pink Keurig. I don't need a Keurig, but I—

Everything's better in pink.

Yeah, I have that same coffee pot.

I have a black one out in my kitchen at my coffee station, but now I have one for my office too, which my husband's like, that's a very ADHD thing because your coffee station is 10 steps that way. Instead, you don't have to move at all and you can stay in your chair. And I'm like, yes, yes, because if I move 10 steps that way, listen, I may not get back here.

The world is gonna change.

I know. So now I'm looking for cute pitchers so I can have a pitcher of water in here and creamer in an insulated thermos so I don't actually have to leave my office at all.

I love that. Okay, so I'm having a hard time thinking outside of my goals for today. So my goals for today are finish a paper, a paper on scientific racism in the— from the colonial times to the early 20th century in the United States of America, most specifically as it relates to eugenics. Um, so, you know, just like It's real light and fluffy. Oh, I need to finish that. And I actually have— for those of you who don't know, I'm also an actress, weirdly.

I did know.

But I have an audition tonight, so getting through that will be fun. It's the first time I've had to have a monologue at an audition in a really long time. So long that my age range has changed for monologues. So all of my previous stuff was like high school, college student vibes, and I just can't pull that shit off anymore. So I had to learn a big girl monologue. So that's fun. I guess my goals for the week are make sure our food is in order because I never buy enough groceries because I— we always eat more than I think we will. So I guess like figure out the food situation.

Okay, so I will just tell you that you will never Buy the right amount. You either buy too much or not enough, but it is a neurodivergent curse.

It is.

Or, and then you buy something and then you're like, your brain's like, I don't want that.

Yes.

That's why you never get it right.

Because the one week that you buy enough, you've got it down portion size, blah, blah, blah. It will make the week. That is the week that your brain's like, I don't like the taste of that hyperfixation food anymore.

Anymore.

Hard-boiled eggs. And I'd been really lazy buying them already done and peeled. And stuff like that.

By lazy, do you mean you've been making them accessible?

I've been making them very accessible for myself because I can't— and it's the same thing with fruit. I don't buy fresh fruit that isn't already chopped and in a container for me to just pull it out piece by piece. If I have to wash it, chop it, do anything to it, I'm not gonna eat it. That's just a realization I came to years and years ago. But for the hard-boiled eggs, I was eating like a package of them a day for the last, oh, year and a half. I bought 4 packages last week. Guess what makes me gag every time I open them now? So my husband is like, so I'm eating hard-boiled eggs.

And like, yep, at least until these are done.

There's only 4 packages in the fridge. You can finish.

There are lots of nice recipes you can make with hard-boiled eggs. There are.

And I was adding them to salads and I was making egg salad sandwiches and I was putting them like doing things with like a lot with them. But now I'm just like No more.

Done.

Yeah, please no more.

I still have 2,000 pounds of oats. I swear I vacuum sealed them so they'll last for like 20 years on my shelf. So eventually I'll get back to that hyperfocus, and I hope I remember they're there because there's like literally a whole entire pack, 24-pack of jars of oats in my pantry because that was a hyperfocus like a couple years ago.

Wow, that reminds me, I have oatmeal.

I hope you guys have an amazing day. Thank you for joining us for the random chats we always have. If you have questions for us, if you would like us to talk about something specific, please ask. Please, please ask. Always happy to basically do a live coaching training thing and not just hear us randomly talk about things, but we're happy to answer your questions at any time. Ask those questions.

We're happy to To support you.

That's why we're here, even though we're hanging out and having fun. You guys, I have tagged everybody below, so if you want to find their accounts, go find them online.