This episode is sponsored by Cure Hydration. You know that moment for me, it’s around like 2 or 3pm when my ADHD brain just decides we’re done for the day. We’re done here. The afternoon slump hits, the lights go off upstairs and suddenly answering an email or doing basically anything feels like climbing a mountain. That’s when I reach for Cure Energy. It’s a clean plant based energy drink mix made with 100 milligrams of natural caffeine and electrolytes so I get the focus and hydration boost I need without jitters, without a crash and without that like I drink battery acid Vi vibe that some of the energy drinks have. The peach tea and akai berry flavors are my current go to’s crisp, refreshing and they don’t taste fake y’. All. They don’t taste fake. I’ll drink one before recording a session or when I need to get help through like that afternoon drag. And honestly I I drink it anytime. My brain just needs to cooperate. 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Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting, relationships, working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential, and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristin Carter and you are listening to the I have ADHD podcast. Episode number 51. I miss you. I’m so glad to be back with you. I feel like it’s been forever. I recorded all of March’s episodes in the first week of March. So I recorded five episodes in one week and then I just pumped them out over the last month. And the problem with that is, well, normally it’s not a problem at all, but my goodness, a lot has happened in the last month. Am I right? So I just want to take a minute and say I am recording this podcast on April 6, 2020, the day before it’s supposed to come out. And this is real time. This is my first episode that’s being released in real time in quite some time. And so our lives have all changed so much in the last month. All of us are being affected now by this very interesting virus, COVID 19. And as far as I know, the entire world is quarantining right now. So my understanding is that no matter where you are in the world, you have a circumstance very similar to mine. You’re not able to leave your home unless it’s for something 100% necessary. You are making sure that you are not coming in contact with people. You’re social distancing, you’re quarantining. You are not working in your work. Maybe you’re working, but you’re not going to work. Life looks so different. My life over the last three weeks. When we started quarantining, at first it was lovely. I’m going to be honest, my family is safe, thank God, and I’m also safe in my home. So I live with kind people. And so the first couple weeks were absolutely the best because I’d been working so hard and we’ve been running our kids around so much. Like having two weeks where we Couldn’t go anywhere and where everyone was just home. It was awesome. And then last week happened. And last week I started to really feel it. I mean, really, really feel it. My personality is pretty much split between introvert and extrovert. I am absolutely an extrovert. I identify as an extrovert, but I can be very. I have some very introverted tendencies. So I do not mind alone time. I absolutely love it. I do not mind extended periods of seclusion. I absolutely love it. But all of my introverted tendencies were satisfied in the first two weeks. You know, like it was fine. It was not hard. It was amazing. And then I started to really feel it. And my goodness, this last week I was a hot mess. I wanted to cut my hair. That’s where I’m at right now. Is anybody holding back on cutting your own hair? Because Legit wanted to cut bangs and my husband talked me down off of the ledge. He’s going to have to do it multiple times. Let’s be honest, if this quarantine lasts for longer than, you know, the next couple weeks, we will be having this conversation over and over because I think that I should be able to cut my bangs with my kids scissors and that it’ll just have this like really cute, trendy fringe bang look. And my husband is like, absolutely not. This is not happening. You are not touching your hair with scissors. So that’s where we’re at. My kids just started elearning today. So we had three weeks without educational responsibilities, which, I’m not gonna lie, was such a luxury because that meant that I could kind of adjust to this new schedule without the pressure of also having to homeschool my kids. So I have three school age children. Owen is 11, almost 12, Charlie is nine, almost 10. And then Crosby is six. Six. And so we. They’ve just been like playing. They’ve had an obscene amount of screen time in the last couple weeks. And now though, we are down to business. And I started the e learning process which was fine, totally fine. God bless all the teachers. They are doing a great job of, you know, transferring all of the learning to online stuff. And everybody’s been really kind, at least in our district and has said, like, listen, we know that this is not going to be perfect. Just do your best. Everybody is just trying to do their best, which I really, really appreciate. So my husband is still working. He goes into his office. There’s only three people going in now and he has a private office. So he goes there. I’m doing my coaching calls. I do Calls all day Tuesday, all day Thursday, and all day Friday. And we’re basically just tag teaming with the kids and trying to figure out how to live this new normal. I’ve been through many cycles and I wonder if you can relate. So the first week I was like, this is amazing. This is so special and new. We’re all home together. This is such a luxury. And I realized that thought, like, this is really special was also biting me in the butt. Because every time I, every time I looked at the pantry and I saw the Oreos, I had the thought, well, this is special. This is a special situation. We bought extra alcohol, as if we needed extra alcohol. I’m not sure why. It just like seemed to be the thing to do. Well, actually the Pennsylvania state stores were closing in Pennsylvania. You have to like, whatever, we have weird laws here. So we heard that the state stores were closing. So we’re like, oh, we better stock up. And like the thought, like, this is a very special circumstance. That’s not super helpful when it comes to your alcohol consumption. So I realized that it was like more than usual. And I had to really start to notice when my brain was telling me, oh, this is just really special. That’s something that we’re going to talk about later because I do think that we now need to embrace, like, this isn’t special anymore. This is our new normal. So how do we want to show up in our new normal? It’s going to be very different. So now I feel like we’ve had some time to process it and I have been able from, for the most part, to accept reality. I’m still trying to accept the fact that even though I never wanted to homeschool my children, it is now my responsibility. And I have been coached by my coach on that twice now. I’m still getting coached on it because my brain is not really cooperating. It is not happy about that circumstance. I think that’s the hardest thing. I love my kids. I want them to be educated humans. I just don’t want the responsibility of having, having to do it. And yet here we are. So I thought it might be helpful today to just chat through the reality of what is in our new circumstances and just see it through the lens of living life with ADHD in quarantine. Because like, we are for sure in a special circumstance right now. And we also have the special circumstance of having the privilege of having a neurodevelopmental disorder called adhd. That is a fact. And now we have to decide how we want to think about it, how we’re going to feel about it and what we’re going to do about it. Right? So I think the hardest things about quarantine, I just wanted to chat with you about that and maybe you can relate. So from an adult with adhd, my perspective, one of the hardest things about this whole situation in the world right now is the major disruption to my routine. You know, we work really hard as adults with ADHD to establish routines that work for us, and it takes a while for us to do that. So we work so hard to set something in place, to set up a routine, to set up, if you want to call, you know, it, habits. All of the things that we do on a day to day basis that make our lives work. Some of it looks really weird, you know, to the outside world, to the neurotypical world, and that’s totally fine because we just need to do what we need to do in order to function well. However, now that entire routine is completely disrupted. So we have people in our space that are not usually in our space. We don’t have access to people that we usually have access to. We have either. This is very interesting because depending on your circumstance, you either have much more alone time than normal, right? Or if you’re like me, you have much less alone time than normal. So because I live in a family of five, and my husband and I both work and our kids, all three go to school, I am used to having some time to myself. And it’s not like I’m laying around on the couch necessarily. I am, like getting my work done, but I’m getting it done at my own pace, at my own discretion, without anybody interrupting me. And that obviously is all out the window. However, you might be experiencing much more alone time. So if you are not in a larger family or if you are, you know, if you don’t have a partner or whatever, you might feel completely isolated. So either way, we’re just not used to it. Right. Like, most of us are not living life in a way that feels completely normal to us. The second really difficult thing is that, at least for me, the schedule is ever changing. So, you know, when this process started, the kids were gonna be out of school for a week or two, and then it just kept, like, extending and extending and the quarantine restrictions have become more and more restrictive, meaning that that really disrupts, like, who can watch our kids and whether or not we have childcare and what we’re gonna be doing, you know, on our days off or on a Friday night. So it’s just like everything is interrupted and the schedule is constantly changing. So my husband and I finally got into a good rhythm with our kids being home and kind of tag teaming and now we’re starting elearning and that’s another disruption to the schedule. I don’t know about you, but I do not do well when my schedule is disrupted. Not happy about it, doesn’t make my life easier. I really, really have to coach myself on handling it without a temper tantrum because I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s hard. Okay? It’s hard. I don’t like it. Don’t like it when the schedule changes. Also, a lot of you are accommodating, you know, if your work is normally in an office and now you’re trying to accommodate for everything being virtual. There’s a ton of schedule changes that come with that because you’re trying to accommodate different people and their needs and their schedules and zoom and all the things. So the ever changing schedule, not super easy for someone with adhd. The third difficult thing, number three, the unavailability of so called non essentials like the ability to go to the gym or the yoga studio or having an in person therapy session or an in person psychiatrist appointment or all of the things that you normally do to kind of, you know, get through the week, get through the day. All of those non essentials out the window. Right. And so now we are trying to manage our ADHD exclusively with medication and virtual stuff. Right? That’s hard. Okay. Now if you have a coach, it probably doesn’t feel that much different to you because you and your coach are likely working virtually. I highly recommend that you find an ADHD coach. ADHD coaches can help you right now through the difficulty of all of these transitions. But if you are not currently working with a coach, then my guess is if you were seeing a therapist, that’s probably canceled or at least moved virtually, which is going to feel very different. Right. In some places around the world, I know you’re not allowed to be out running, exercising, walking, that sort of thing. So really it just does depend on where you are in the world. But a lot of the things that you and I have used to manage our ADHD are not easily available to us or they’re not available to us in a way that we’re used to. And again, let’s circle back to the disruption. We don’t love disruption. It’s not easy for us. So it’s okay if that feels hard. It’s totally fine for some of us. We have a lot of new responsibilities. Okay. Not all of us, but there’s just a lot of new things going on. So if you are a parent who is used to having your kids in school, well, now they’re not in school, they’re home. And now we have the responsibility of parenting them all day, every day instead of parenting them within the windows of when we’re used to seeing them. That I’m struggling right now because my husband is like, it’s not that different from summertime, but I would like to argue. And I do love my husband. He’s a good man. He is doing all the things right now, but with the thought that, like, it’s not that different from summertime. In the summertime, they go to park program, they go to the pool. We have a babysitter come. So it does, to me, feel quite different from something like a summer vacation because, yeah, like, there is nowhere that they can go. Although they are allowed to go on bike rides, our kids are allowed in Pennsylvania, we’re still allowed to be, like, out and about, just, you know, distanced from people. So my kids are allowed to ride their bikes. They are allowed to go in the backyard and jump on the trampoline. God bless trampolines. My gosh, I am so thankful for our trampoline. If you’re considering getting one, at least to our family, it’s completely worth. Completely worth it. Okay, moving on. So the addition of new responsibilities, like having to parent all the time, even while working from home or something like homeschooling, or even doing your job virtually. I mean, if you’re used to going into an office, being able to talk to people, if you’ve got all your routines set up in your office and now you’re having to move everything home and figure it out, especially if you’re a teacher, my goodness. Like, that is so, so difficult. So those new responsibilities for. For an adult with adhd, very difficult. And then the fifth, and I think maybe the most difficult thing is all of the unknowns. We don’t love them. I don’t think that’s an ADHD thing. I think that’s a human brain thing. We humans do not enjoy the unknown. And there are a ton of them right now. How long is this going to last? Is the quarantine going to get more restrictive? We will my kids go back to school? Will I get sick? Will someone I love get sick? How many people are going to die? I mean, there’s just a lot of unknown, right? And again, I don’t think that it’s exclusive to adhd. I don’t even think it’s necessarily heightened in adults with adhd. I think it’s just a human brain thing where the unknown is difficult. Our brains do not like uncertainty. Our brains like predictability. They like to know what’s coming. And so when we add uncertainty into the mix, it can be very difficult. So if you’re finding yourself struggling right now, I want to validate that for you and say, me too. No problem. You are 100% allowed to be struggling right now. There’s disruption in your routine. There’s a schedule that is constantly changing the things that you’re used to doing, the non essential things. And again, those are in quotes because for someone with adhd, it doesn’t feel non essential. But the non essential things are no longer available. You’re having new responsibilities that you’re having to deal with and there’s a lot of unknown. So I just want to take a second and just like bring all of us together as a community and say, listen, we are all in the same boat right now. This is the first time in my lifetime that the entire world has been in the same circumstance. We are all affected by this COVID 19 virus and we are all having to figure out how to manage our lives within this new reality. So I thought it would be helpful today to talk about five things that can make your life easier right now. Five ways to help yourself be okay in this new reality of quarantining during the COVID 19 pandemic. These are going to be very general and in the next couple weeks, I plan to become more specific. As long as our circumstances don’t change. I mean, if the circumstances change, we’ll move on to new topics. But right now I think it would be really helpful, at least to me, to talk about ways that we can figure out how to function at our highest capacity, figure out how to manage our emotions and our minds and be the best version of ourselves even while we are in this quarantine situation. So the first thing that I think is really important is to accept the reality of what is. I found myself fighting against reality for a while. And so if you’re anything like me, then I think that this concept might be helpful to you. So fighting against reality sounds like my kids shouldn’t be home right now. Fighting against reality sounds like I shouldn’t have to do all of this work online. Fighting against reality sounds like I shouldn’t have to homeschool my kids. Why is this so hard? I shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to. Yes, you should. And yes I should. Because all of us are quarantined right now because this is the reality of our situation. We are in a place right now where we should be homeschooling our kids. They should be home. One of the thoughts that I’ve been practicing, I think this is so hysterical. I laugh every time. One of the thoughts that I’ve been practicing on purpose, like intentionally, is, are you ready for it? It’s super profound. Here it comes. My kids live here. Isn’t that awesome? Like, I have to remind myself that my kids actually live here. This is their home. They belong here. They should be here. So when my brain offers me this sneaky thought of like, they shouldn’t be here right now. You know, when it’s between the hours of 8 and 3, I’m like, they shouldn’t be here. Except yes, they should, because this is where they live. So they should totally be here. So I just want to offer to you that accepting reality is a really good first step. You should be exactly where you are. Your kids should be exactly where they are. You should have to be doing all of your work online. This is just where we are right now. And what’s so fascinating, I’ll say it over and over, it just blows my mind that all of you listening are experiencing the same thing right now. To my knowledge, there are no countries in the world that are not quarantining. So that means that all of us adults with ADHD are in the same boat. And accepting reality is an amazing pathway to being able to find a new normal. The second thing that I want to say is that giving yourself a ton of grace and space right now is going to be very helpful to you. Not expecting yourself to do everything perfectly, allowing for mistakes to be made, allowing for. For the disruption of the routine and the ever changing schedule. Remembering that you are an adult with adhd, remembering that it took a while for you to establish your routines at work, when you were working at work, and now it’s going to take you a while to establish your routines at home. It’s totally fine. That’s normal. That’s to be expected to. Do not beat yourself up. Do not compare yourself to your co workers. You are not your co workers. You are your own individual human being with an adult ADHD brain. And I really want to suggest that giving yourself a lot of grace, being kind to yourself, kind of like parenting yourself in a very nice way, is what is going to feel the best Right now, it is not going to feel good to shame yourself. Beat yourself up, tell yourself you’re doing it wrong. Just give yourself the grace and space to adjust to this new normal. Okay? Third, this is huge because I have coached so many people on this topic. Are you ready? Do not try to add anything into your schedule. Do not believe the sneaky thought that says, oh, we have so much more time. We should totally get XYZ done. Now. If you don’t have kids at home and if you’re laid off and if you’re by yourself and literally are staring at the walls and okay, you’re allowed to add stuff in, but most of the people that I work with are still doing their full time job just from home. They’re also now trying to parent kids and, you know, homeschool and do elearning. And they have, they, they have this thought that they have more time when in actuality most of us do not have more time. Most of us are just as busy and we’re trying to adjust to the circumstances. So again, if you’re laid off, that’s a different story. But if you’re not, don’t try to beat yourself up over like, hey, this is like the perfect time for me to, you know, get ripped for the summer or whatever. It’s probably not the perfect time. Or here’s how you can decide. If you feel like you’ve established an amazing schedule for yourself and everything is running very smoothly for about a week and you find that you have more time, by all means, add something new in. But don’t just assume that you have more time just because other people have more time and they’re posting about it on social media. I want you to really take a good hard look at your own time. Is it true that you actually have more time? Is it true that you should be getting more stuff done right now? That could be a sneaky thought that is just going to allow you yet another avenue of beating yourself up, which I don’t suggest it’s not super fun. The beating yourself up part, I mean. Okay, number four, this is also really, really big. Ready for it? Let the humans be humans. This is a big one because a lot of us are getting really angry. A lot of us are looking around at people and thinking that they’re doing it wrong. A lot of us are looking at government officials and thinking they’re doing it wrong. A lot of us are feeling a huge amount of anger right now. And I just want to offer to you that humans get to do whatever they want to do. Human beings get to say and do whatever they want to. So there are going to be people who handle this situation completely differently than you are. And that’s because we all have different brains and different thoughts and different life experiences and different perspectives. And what my coach has said, which I think is very, very, very true, is that we have the tendency to get mad because feeling mad feels better than feeling scared. Really, usually that anger is just misplaced fear. So we’re all just a little bit afraid of what’s going on right now. We’re all just a little bit afraid. Scared that it’s going to impact us or someone we love and the economy and all the things, right? And so we like to get angry because getting mad at someone feels better than admitting that I’m really afraid of what’s happening. And I just want to invite you to be scared. If you’re afraid, be afraid. It’s totally normal. There is space for that. Make room for it. Feel the feelings. Allow that fear to be here. But notice when you’re having the tendency to get mad at other people, whether it’s your parents because they’re not taking it seriously enough, or your friends because they are telling you that you should be doing XYZ and you really don’t think that’s necessary. I just think no matter what, we all do have the tendency to get angry and point fingers and say, you’re doing it wrong. You’re doing it wrong. And I think a lot of times that is because at least in this situation, we’re scared. We’re just really freaking scared. That’s okay. Totally fine. Okay, here’s the last one. Even in quarantine, life is 50. 50. I just had an episode about this a couple weeks ago. I highly recommend that you go back and listen to it if you did not do it already. I think that it’s going to be really important for all of us to be realistic and aware of what’s going on in the world, but to also turn our gaze toward the 50% of this. That is wonderful. What is the 50% here? That is awesome. My family is getting so much closer. My kids are getting along. I don’t understand it. I don’t know why, but it is happening. That’s part of my 50%. That’s amazing. I have experienced so many snuggly amazing, like, just really sweet moments with my kids that I would not have otherwise had. That is part of the 50% that’s actually great about this. There are things that are negative. There are things that are scary. There are things that are dangerous, but there also are things that are beautiful. There are things that are working well, even if you look at the economy. I love to think about money. You guys know that I love talking about money. And, you know, I love to think of all of the businesses that are doing really, really, really well right now. So, yes, there are some people that are laid off. There are some companies that are not doing well. There are some, you know, like, restaurants forced to close or just do takeout. But there are some companies that are totally making so much more money now than they ever have. Let’s talk about Zoom, for example, right? Like, hello, how much money might Zoom be making right now, Amazon? If they were making a ton before, they’re making a whole lot more now. Like, that’s awesome. What that tells us is that it’s not all bad, right? Even thinking about the webcam companies, like, my husband has been trying to buy a webcam because he’s a student ministries pastor, and of course, now they’re doing everything by live streaming and virtually. And he wanted to find, like, a really nice webcam. And of course, I have one, but I’m using it all day. So all of them are sold out. All of them are sold out. So, like, that’s a good sign. There are people that are making a lot of money, and that’s good. So I just want to, like, we can be aware of what’s going on, and we can know that there are dangers, and we can feel scared and upset. And on the other side of that, we can see. See what’s good. And we can say and speak the good things. Make sure you are giving equal air time to the good. So that means if you want to watch an hour of the news, you better go spend an hour writing down all of the things that are amazing about your life, all of the ways that you are safe, all of the ways that you are taking care of, all of the ways that you are protected, all of the ways that you are privileged and lucky, right? Because let’s be honest, there’s really none of that on the news. So I’m just saying, if you want to watch the news, you got to balance it with what’s good, the true things about what are good in your life. My husband and I, you know, we’ll watch the news very sparingly. I’m talking like 15 minutes a night, and then we’ll talk about how we are so safe, how we’ve been protecting ourselves, how the people that we love are also safe. No one we know in real life has the COVID 19 virus. I mean, those are all true things. Those are all good things. Our cabinets are full of food. We were able to get toilet paper this week, which is huge. You guys. Okay, this is just an ADHD side note story. Listen up. When this whole thing all happened, I intentionally did not buy toilet paper because I was so annoyed at all the people hoarding toilet paper. So you can see how my personality works, right? I just, like, do the opposite because I’m annoyed. So I’m like, well, I’m just not going to buy toilet paper because we’re fine. Like, we had a whole package of it, right? Well, then all the shelves were out, of course, because people were panic. Buying toilet paper, of all things. Does not make any sense. Anyway, moving on. Can you hear the judgment in my voice? See, I have some thoughts, too. Okay, so for two weeks, we haven’t been able to get any. But yesterday or no, two days ago, my sister and I went to, like, kind of an obscure grocery store near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and bum ba da bum bum bum found toilet paper, which is so awesome. So, like, that goes on my list of, like, true and good. I don’t want to suggest that we believe things that aren’t true. No way. That’s. Our brains are too smart for that. It will never work. But if you can find things that are good and true, that is really, really important. So list the things in your life that are amazing. Do a check in with yourself. Am I safe? If you are, that’s amazing. Am I healthy? If you are, that’s amazing. Are your people healthy? That is really important. To sink yourself into the reality of where you are really, really, really good. Even in quarantine, life is 50 50. Allow for the negative to be there and turn your gaze to the positive. Do not give unequal air time to the negative. Do not turn your gaze and your attention toward the negative exclusively. Allow for the 50% of the positive. Make sure you’re giving equal air time. All right, that’s it. I hope you have an amazing week. Do not forget that you are an adult with ADHD and you get to take really good care of yourself, and you get to essentially establish new routines and set new boundaries and do all of this within your own time frame. You totally got this. I will see you next week. Bye. Bye. If you’re being treated for your adhd, but you still don’t feel like you’re reaching your potential, you’ve got to join focused. It’s my monthly coaching membership where I teach you how to tame your wild thoughts and create the life that you’ve always wanted. No matter what season of life you’re in or where you are in the world, Focust is for you. All materials and call recordings are stored in the site for you to access at your convenience. Go to ihaveadhd.com focused for all the info.
