Overcoming the Chronic Overwhelm Associated with ADHD Jennifer Koretsky, Guest Speaker Good morning and welcome back, everyone, to the Succeed with ADHD telesummit. My name is Laurie Dupar of Coaching for ADHD and I m hosting the 2 nd annual Succeed with ADHD telesummit this entire week. Already I ve been hearing callers saying they ve enjoyed the last 2 amazing hours of the telesummit. David started us off yesterday with how to tap into our motivation and Alan shared with us his 10 ways to crush ADD and they were terrific. As most of you all know, everyone with ADHD is different; for some they have more of the hyperactive component, some have more distractibility, some are challenged more with short-term memory and others with organization and planning. It s what makes ADHD so amazing and really the people with ADHD even more unique. Over the years that I ve been working with people with ADHD I can honestly say I ve never met two people who are exactly alike with their ADHD or two people that balance their challenges the same way. There are certainly strategies that overall will help and Alan talked about them last night, but there s really not that cookiecutter fix. That s why I have all these different experts talking to you, because they come from different perspectives and experiences. I know there s going to be a tool or strategy to help you succeed and I know this because I work with people with ADHD every day. This morning, I want to introduce and welcome one of my esteemed colleagues, Jennifer Koretsky. She s CEO of ADD Management Group and will share with us her presentation about overcoming the chronic overwhelm associated with ADHD. Let me share with you a bit about her credentials. Jennifer is a senior Certified ADHD Coach and directly of the popular Virtual ADHD conference. She specializes in coaching high achieving adults with ADHD, including business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, creative types, rule breakers and mavericks. Her work has been featured in the New York Times magazine, Times of London, Attitude magazine and on the NBC Today Show. Welcome, Jennifer! Jennifer: Thank you so much, Laurie and thank you everyone who is joining us today. And thank you for inviting me; I m honored to be part of this with so many other fantastic people. I do hope that what I have to offer to you today is something that you ll find helpful, that you ll walk away with a bit more understanding about ADHD. I m going to be giving you some strategies today and challenging you to pick 2 of those strategies.
Let me just tell everyone, first of all, I m getting over being sick so hopefully my voice stays pretty good. I m not going to waste too much time talking about myself, but I want everyone to know that I am an adult with ADHD myself. I was diagnosed in my mid 20 s and it explained a lot for me. I did really well in school and I was the kid who was bored on summer break. I did great in my jobs in corporate America because I knew what kind of job was good for me and I actually enjoyed the work that I did. On the outside, it looked like I had a great life but what no one could see was how much I was struggling on the inside. First of all, I couldn t get anywhere on time to save my life, my apartment was always a mess little things like that weren t coming together for me. The laundry was never done, the refrigerator was never stocked, I was constantly frazzled and frustrated, so when I was diagnosed it made a big difference in my life because it explained so many things about myself that I didn t understand. What I learned along the way is that having ADHD is not a bad thing; it doesn t mean that you re broken or there s something wrong with you. As far as I m concerned, ADHD is a difference it means that we do things differently, we re wired a little differently and we see things differently. And different is not bad. People s differences actually make the world go around and I m one of those people who really, truly believes that if you manage ADHD, you can actually take advantage of those differences. I ve been able to do that in my life; I ve worked with plenty of clients who ve been able to do that and I m honored to be amongst many other people in the community who ve done that as well. I do understand that many, many people struggle and certainly if you don t have the skills and tools and resources you need to manage your ADHD, it can be an uphill battle. Today what I m going to talk to you about is what I think is the hallmark of adult ADHD and it drives me a little bit crazy sometimes; I feel like this topic of overwhelm doesn t get a lot of attention. When we talk about ADHD or read about it, often they ll talk about distraction, hyperactivity and maybe even emotional issues and things like that over and over again, but we so rarely hear anyone talk about overwhelm. As far as I m concerned, overwhelm is the hallmark of adult ADHD. I ve never worked with a single client who didn t feel overwhelmed when they first came to me. We ve got trouble staying organized, managing time, have incidents where we feel like we made mistakes and we feel bad about that; I think there s something that exists called the overwhelm burnout cycle I think everyone that s listening to this can relate. If you haven t been able to overcome it, then I want you to know that you are not alone. This is really common for adults with ADHD and there is a way to
overcome it but not get rid of it. I don t think that managing ADHD means that you ll never have another challenge again but you ll know when you have a problem and you ll know exactly what you need to do to get back on track. The overwhelm burnout cycle, this is the way I describe it. When you re in the state of overwhelm, you get up feeling like you re behind on life. You get out of bed and it s only a couple of minutes before you realize all the things you need to do, all the things you didn t do, and all of the things you think you should do and all of the pressure. And then you spend all day trying to catch up and the to-do s are building, the pressures are building and the guilt is building. Some days you run around frantically and try to get things done, and then other days you still feel guilty but you can t get things done but your mind feels hectic. Then you go to bed feeling like you re further behind when you woke up your life is completely about your to-do list and you feel awful. You re not enjoying life; you re completely overwhelmed because all you can think about are all the things you think you need to be doing. On the flipside, you can only be in this state for so long before you reach burnout, and here s what that looks like. You don t want to get out of bed, you wake up and think about that list of things; maybe you get out of bed but you don t want to. Then during your day you have a hard time getting off the couch and doing anything, or you get stuck on the computer on Facebook because it s a nice little escape and it keeps your mind from all the things you need to be doing. And of course, the guilt is even worse, you feel bad about yourself, and this burnout stage, it can last a day or a week I ve even seen it last for a month with people, where the overwhelm and the stress are so great that you mind and body just shut down. Now, I really want to be clear; I m not talking about depression. Depression is where you really don t want to get out of bed, you sleep a lot more or not as much, you feel things are never going to get better, you feel weepy or completely numb and you just don t feel like yourself. If you feel any of those things, I would encourage you to get some help because the burnout phase I m talking about is different from depression. I ve seen so many people suffer needlessly from depression; we have wonderful therapists and medications to help you get out of depression and sometimes it s a biochemical thing. I don t think there s anything wrong with getting some help I ve been there myself and the only thing I see wrong with it is when someone is suffering needlessly and the people around you are probably suffering too. The burnout stage that I m talking about is more short-lived; you ve been so stressed out that everything needs to shut down for a little bit because you can t take it anymore. I think the vast majority of adults with ADHD know what I m talking about; they know what it s like to be in overwhelm and burnout and what it s like to be in that
over and over again. Today I want to help you break out of that. In my book, I mention 5 skills and I really believe that you can t really learn how to manage your time, learn how to get organized, and so on until you first learn how to manage the overwhelm. I m not saying that you can t make little changes; you absolutely can but if you want them to stick long-term, managing the overwhelm is a really important piece. What we re going to talk about today are a couple of ways you can manage the overwhelm things you can get started on right away. We re going to talk about a couple of things today. When it comes to breaking the overwhelm burnout cycle, we re going to talk about understanding that stress management equals ADHD management, we re going to talk about slowing down, about making self-care a priority, and a few minutes talking about being a maverick. You have to embrace your differences and do things the way that they work for you and not worry about what other people say. Why don t we start with stress management? If you are doing something else right now where I don t have your full attention, give me your full attention for 2 minutes. If there s one thing you walk away from this presentation with today, it s this: Stress management = ADHD management. Remember that. Think about it; the more stressed out you are, the harder it is to manage your ADHD and the worse your challenges you are. Think about the last time you were really stressed out; did you also have a hard time getting to where you were going on time? Were you losing things more? Did you have a hard time concentrating, focusing or listening to what people were saying? Of course you did. On the flipside, think about how much easier it is to leave the house and get to where you re going on time when you re feeling calm and centered and not stressed. It s much easier. The more you control your stress, the easier it is to manage your ADHD. It s just one of those facts of life a given. A lot of what I m going to be talking about are ways you can manage your stress. These are little steps you can take things that aren t going to feel really big and no doable. When we talk about managing your stress in order to break the cycle of overwhelm, the first thing we need to talk about is slowing down. I know that sounds counterintuitive; when you feel like you have so much to do, no time to do it and no energy, you re probably thinking No, you don t understand. I need to speed up. I completely understand where you re coming from but here s the thing: until you learn how to slow down your mind and operate from a place that is calm and centered and relaxed, you re going to continue to have a hard time. Alan Brown talked about this yesterday as well.
If you are constantly running, running, running, thinking, thinking, thinking, you re not in a good place to attack the things that you have on your list, you re too stressful. I promise when you learn how to slow own your mind, things will speed up because you will be more efficient and effective in what you do, but you have to come from a place in the present moment. When it comes to slowing down, one of the things you can do is take 30 minutes of down time every single day to relax and recharge. If you can only do this for 5 minutes a day starting out, that s fine. Start with 5 minutes, and when that s comfortable, move to 10 minutes and keep building up. This is something I suggest to all of my clients because it really does make a difference. The ADHD brain runs out of fuel a lot quicker than other brains. It s not the most pleasant thing to hear but it s true. We need to recharge and if you re allowing yourself 30 minutes a day to relax, recharge and step back from the stress of everyday life, you really will feel a ripple effect for the rest of the day and into the next day. Life is not supposed to be about constantly doing, doing, doing it isn t. With ADHD, sometimes we get caught up in that and think that s what life is supposed to be about, but that s not really what life is supposed to be about. If you have children, would you want your children to think that their life is just about their to-do list that they re not allowed to have any fun but be productive 24/7? Of course not. If you don t have any children, think about one of your family or friends; would you ever turn to them and say You re right. You shouldn t have watched TV for an hour? Of course; everyone needs down time. We say that to other people and think that but for some reason, we don t think about ourselves. Jennifer: That s too true. It s a double standard we have. Think about, would you tell someone else this? You d never say it to them so don t say it to yourself. Going back to the 30 minutes a day to recharge, there are so many things you can do but make sure it s not productive. With that, I mean don t have an end goal in mind. You may say it s relaxing to iron, but choose something where there s no chance you can say Wait, it s been 20 minutes and I only got 3 shirts done. Take a shower or bath, take a walk with a friend or your spouse; I think it s totally fine to pick up a craft just be really careful that you re doing it for the sheer enjoyment and not just to get something done. It doesn t matter what you do, as long as it takes you out of the stress of everyday life and gets you in the moment. Computer time, I m sorry everybody, is not down time. You re not in the present moment; you re somewhere else and not in the present moment and it s too stimulating. This is really something I suggest to all of my clients this 30 minutes of down time is something you really do deserve to relax and recharge. When you do that on a consistent basis, it really does help manage your stress. Think about if
you did that at the end of the night and went to bed feeling good and not having anxiety about not getting things done. Everyone thinks they don t deserve it but I would certainly argue that; if you think you don t deserve it, I will give you an argument to counter that. Trust me when I tell you that taking the 30 minutes a day to relax, it will slow down your brain and you will get more done. Think of it like an investment it will help you be more relaxed, more stress free, more efficient and more productive. Also, I want to talk about mindfulness; it s a really, really great way to slow down. This is a form of meditation and people are talking about it a lot right now. This is not the kind of meditation where you have to sit on the floor with your legs crossed and your arms posed and your eyes closed; I do that but it s not for everyone. Mindfulness meditation is something you can do when you re doing anything it s just about bringing your mind into the present moment. You can be doing dishes, you can be taking a walk, or even listening to me; it s just about bringing your attention into the present moment. Those worries, fears and anxiety are not about the present; it s about the future, what you think you need to be doing later, what you should be doing, etcetera, or stuff in the past. The worry, the stuff that goes on in our heads, it s either about the future or the past it s not about the present moment. The more you can bring your mind to the present moment and practice that, the easier it is to control your stress and to fight that stress off before it takes over. If you can take a few deep breaths and really concentrate on your breathing, be aware of how you feel in the present moment, you re slowing yourself down you re brining more oxygen to your brain and muscles, and you re slowing your thinking down, and it decreases the stress in your body and mind. If you start to feel yourself really tense up in your shoulders and you can breathe and relax, you ll relax your mind as well. And, like I said, mindfulness meditation is really very simple it s just about bringing your awareness to the present moment. If you notice it slipping away, you bring it right back again. It s a tool that you can put in your toolbox and pull it out whenever you need it. I highly recommend it. Moving on, let s talk about making self-care a priority because this is the other piece of the puzzle. These are the ways that you learn how to manage your stress and by managing your stress, you both manage your ADHD and break the cycle of overwhelm. This is really about making self-care a priority and unfortunately, many of us don t do that. It s usually like the last thing on your mind. When you take care of yourself, you re in a much better position to tackle all of the things that you do need to get done.
Let s say you stay up all night on the computer because you can t tear yourself away from Facebook and you end up getting 5 hours of sleep. Now you have to wake up and do whatever you have to do and you re tired. Already your day is not starting off well. What do you do? You down a big cup of coffee for the caffeine, you don t feel like eating a healthy breakfast so your body is craving sugar and carbs so you eat a bagel. Now you feel a little more awake but it doesn t take long before you start to crash and now your energy is really low and you re tired and grumpy again. Now it s difficult to do what you need to do, so you reach for some more caffeine, more carbs and sugar you start putting more stuff in your body that has no nutritional value and has you searching fro that next quick fix. It s an awful cycle to get stuck in and it definitely adds to your stress, doesn t help you get things done or manage your stress. Making some small changes in self-care can really go a long way and I think the best place to start is with the basics of sleep, nutrition and exercise. I m going to give you a couple of strategies that can help you make improvements in these areas. Small steps go a big distance in this regard. When we re talking about sleep, one thing you can do to ensure you get a night s sleep when you have ADHD is to remove stimulation an hour or 2 before bedtime. What do I mean by that? You don t want to do anything that s going to wake up your brain. I think we all know what it s like when your body is so tired and you want to go to sleep but your mind is going, going, going. We all know what that s like. Part of the problem is that if you do too many stimulating things before bed, it is going to keep your mind awake. If you cut those out, you give your mind the opportunity to slow down. What I mean by that is use your head; don t make a phone call an hour or two before bed if you know you re going to get stuck on the phone gabbing with somebody. Reading is fine, but don t read a book that you re really, really invested in; don t read the kind of book where you say Just one more chapter. TV shows, if you re watching a thriller or suspense show, also probably not a good idea right before bed. And try to avoid fights with your spouse before you go to bed I know that s a lot easier said than done but if you re headed to a fight, table it and pick it up in the morning. Anything that s stimulating and going to wake up your brain is going to detract from your sleep. One of the worst things is the computer; I love technology as much as everyone I m not the type of person that doesn t own a TV or a cell phone; however, I do know that having ADHD, I have to have limits on those things. Technology is just too stimulating to the ADHD brain. If you want to be online, have your fun with it but shut the computer an hour before you go to bed and turn your phone off an hour before you go to bed. I know it s difficult but it really will make such a difference, and I think the computer is something that gets in the way for a lot of people.
Talking about nutrition, when I was talking about grabbing caffeine and carbs to give yourself an energy boost, one thing you can do to improve your nutrition is to avoid those foods that don t have a lot of nutritional value. It is a hard habit to break but if you were able to make better choices, after a couple of days, you will see a vast improvement. If you drink coffee, have that in the morning but drink a lot of water after that. Rather than reaching for pastry or a bagel, reach for the protein dairy, eggs, and nut butters are great sources of protein and that will sustain your energy a lot longer. Similarly, if you can fit protein into your meals and snacks all day long, you will find it helps sustain your energy and you won t be tempted to reach for that caffeine or that sugar. And when your energy is more sustained, you re in a better mood and pleasant to be around and things get done because you have the brain power to do them. Exercise is another one. We all know about the benefits of exercise; we know that exercise is good for you and why it s good for you, but when you have ADHD you spend a lot of time in your head thinking about the things you should do, should have done and so on. Exercise can get you into your body and out of your head and that can go a long way to managing stress. If you like going to the gym, you can go to the gym; if you like walking, go walking. If you can get out of your head and into your body, you will see tremendous benefit into managing stress. I ll save the other arguments for exercise for the doctors, but this is the reason why it s really good for ADHD people. One other thing that I want to talk about, when it comes to these strategies, when it comes to slowing down and making self-care apriority, I think it s important that you do things in the way that works for you and you don t worry about what other people think. This is where being a maverick comes in. And being a maverick just means you do things your own way. You kind of grow up feeling like you re different than other people and somehow we internalize that to mean bad, so many times we re in a place where we constantly worry about what others think. If you want to manage ADHD and overcome overwhelm, you need to get to a place where you are comfortable with where you are and not worry about what other people think. So what I mean by that in terms of all of these strategies is that you may find that let s say mindfulness really works for you and you do this at work for a few minutes and a co-worker comes by and says What are you doing there? Who cares? Who cares what your co-worker thinks? No big deal; you don t have to worry about what
they think or whether they approve, you re doing what you need to do to take care of yourself. Let s say you want to take your 30 minutes at the end of the night and go for a walk by yourself. If somebody says Can you come over and help me with this rummage sale? It s perfectly okay to say Sure, but I ll be there at 7:30 instead of 7 because I have something to do. You don t need to say what you re doing, you don t need to explain why you re doing it you just have to do what works for you. And if it works for you to take a walk at 7 o clock, it doesn t matter what anybody else thinks. You just have to worry about what works for you. The same thing with self-care. Somebody wants to know What do you mean you re closing down the computer? It s only 10 o clock. Again, you don t have to explain yourself or feel like you re doing anything wrong or people are scrutinizing you; you have to do what works for you and not worry about what other people think. We re not talking about harming other people here; we re talking about doing what you need to do to manage overwhelm. You have to get to this place in your mind where you re really not concerned about what other people think; what matters is that you feel good, that you re stress free, and that you think you re living happily and successfully in your life. To wrap everything up, if you take nothing else away from today, remember that stress management = ADHD management. If you don t want to use my suggestions, you don t have to but find ways to manage the stress in your life. When it comes to breaking the cycle of overwhelm, remember: slowing down and making self-care a priority. Here s the challenge for everyone: Pick something you can do tonight for 30 minutes to relax and recharge. I don t care what it is as long as it allows you to step back from the stress of life. Try it for one day and see what kind of effect you get from it. The second challenge is to pick one item from the basics that I talked about when it comes to making self-care a priority sleep, nutrition and exercise. Pick one, whether it s making sure that you drink enough water, eating a breakfast with protein in it, or shutting down the computer an hour before you go to sleep. When you make improvements in one area, you ll see improvements in other areas as well. Those are my challenges to you and I want ou to believe you can do it. It s doable you can break the cycle of overwhelm and live happily and successfully with adult ADHD. Thank you, Jennifer. It s wonderful!
Jennifer: Jennifer: Jennifer: I m glad you liked it. I hope everybody was able to follow me okay. Let me ask you; I want to make sure we get a couple things in here. I m going to save my comments to make sure the listeners have access to some of your work. You mentioned a book is there some way they can get a hold of that? Sure. It s Odd One Out: The Maverick s Guide to Adult ADD and it s available at Amazon. Great. The other thing is, you re a maverick when it comes to doing the virtual conferences. Tell us about the conference that you have coming up; I know you have been doing your own for several years. Tell the listeners about that so they know what s coming up for you. Sure. The Virtual ADHD conference, we re going into our 5 th year and it was born when a colleague and I talked about how we loved going to conferences but a lot of our friends and colleagues couldn t afford to fly there, stay in the hotel and so on. That s how the virtual ADHD conference was born. What we do is for 4 days October 1 through 4 we bring the experts to the people. We ve got over 20 speakers and new this year is Rick Green from www.totallyadd.com and we will be announcing the list of speakers later this week. There may be someone we know that might be on the agenda but we ll have to see at the end of the week. We try to make it as affordable as possible and make sure that the people get everything that you would get from a physical conference online; we re there to give you the skills and tools and resources to succeed with ADHD. If you re interested, it s www.adhdconference.com. We just opened registration and the first 50 spots are at a super-super discount; we just opened the registration last night and half of those spots are already gone. If you re interested, you ll want to sign up. Jennifer: I appreciate you sharing that with the listeners; I think Alan was giving a scoop in on something and some of the other speakers are presenters. I know it s a wonderful virtual conference and it s everything but going there and staying there. It s a great event at the beginning of October. Again, you re such a role model to me and I appreciate that you came on and shared with people the difference between burnout and depression and how we can look for those things. Often, there is a crossover there and we need to check ourselves out And there s nothing to be ashamed of. No, it s just one of the pieces of it all. I love the way you talked about how every person has to pick what works for them. And that you ve gone through this for
yourself, you ve come to the point where you say This is what works for me and how I take care of my life It was great to hear that and thank you for sharing yourself with us and the listeners. (session wraps up here)