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ADHD Negative Talk – Beating Yourself Up Isn’t Helping

There are a lot of difficulties that come with ADHD. One of the most common is ADHD negative talk. ADD negative talk is where you use your brain to chastise and put yourself down. If that sounds ridiculous, it is because it is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Negative self-talk is a common problem for lots of people. It can lead to low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Negative self-talk can be especially problematic for those of us with ADHD.

Where Does Negative Talk Come From?

There are entire branches of psychiatry, biology, and neurology dedicated to understanding the various things that go on in the human mind. One of those things is understanding the seemingly different voices and inputs in your own head. You may already have some sort of definition that makes sense to you. For example, I often divide what happens inside of me as front brain, rear brain, and as a separate entity, my body.

My body is the part that will not allow me to fall asleep no matter what I try, and then has the nerve to feel sluggish and sooo tired the next day.

The rear brain is where all of those thoughts that just pop up come from. Thoughts like, “I’m bored,” or “I wonder if the McDonald’s attached to gas stations ever get gas in the food.” Some of the thoughts that come from the back brain don’t even come through as words. You just know and understand because it’s your own brain.

The front brain, then, is the brain I control. The one that says, what I want it say and thinks what I want it to think.

Perhaps an example would help:

It is 10:00 pm and I am laying down to go to sleep. I tell myself, inside my own brain, “We HAVE to start going to the gym tomorrow.” All three of my brain subparts are fine with this.

It is 6:30 am and the alarm goes off because we HAVE to go to the gym, but my body is EXHAUSTED. It can’t keep its eyes open for even two seconds. My front brain doesn’t want to hear it, but the back brain jumps in. We could go after work, or later in the evening, or not at all. There is always tomorrow.

It is 7:00 pm and I’m a combination of angry, sad, and betrayed that I didn’t make it to the gym today. The anger is from the rear brain; the voice saying “For gawd’s sake we HAVE to start going to the gym or we are going to miss out on an amazing opportunity when we are too out of shape to go. The sick feeling of despair and bile comes from my body. All three-brain parts conspiring to make me feel worse and worse.

Is SoFi any good?

It is 7:30 pm and I feel down, miserable and gray. I order pizza because my body WANTS pizza and NOTHING ELSE. My back brain picks the place. My front brain just doesn’t care because no matter what I do, it never works out.

Negative Talk and ADHD

Right now, you are

a) over it for my little sob story (but you totally recognize it)

b) thinking that this kind of thing happens to everyone, not just people with ADHD.

You are right, on both accounts.

What makes negative talk such a powerful demotivating force in people is that whenever you stop to think about something, you give your brain parts (however you like to divide them up) a chance to grab the wheel and hijack the ship, if I may mix some metaphors. If you have ADHD, you stop to think about something else all the time. This is what makes negative self-talk and ADHD so powerful. You literally stop to think about other things all the time.

Sure, sometimes you just think about how rabbits actually dig with soft paws that don’t have much claws on them, and that’s no harm, no foul.

(Unless of course, you stop working on that thing that was already due yesterday, so you look it up, do some reading, and end up wondering why the prairie dogs in Wyoming near Devil’s Tower are a respected wildlife tourist feature, when in Colorado they deliberately let black footed ferrets loose in prairie dog colonies because that is their primary food… After, of course, they distribute peanut butter pellets laced with plague vaccine around the prarie dog colony so the ferrets don’t get if from eating them – (Don’t even get me started on how a single, small ferret can take down a big ‘ol fat prairie dog.))

Yep.

There is a ton of room for negative talk in that one thought chain (literally about rabbit holes). Imagine how many times per day a person with ADHD changes their chain of thought and how many chances that stupid back brain gets a chance to jump in and derail everything.

Tips to Avoid Negative Self-Talk

Challenge Negative Thoughts: Often, negative self-talk is based on distorted or irrational versions of events. You don’t always order Chinese food instead of cooking. You don’t never go to the gym or do the right thing. Challenge these thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones, we can change our perspective and improve our mood. For example, if you find yourself thinking, “I’m never going to succeed,” challenge that thought by asking yourself, “Is that really true?” and replacing it with a more realistic though.
Focus on Your Strengths: It’s easy to get caught up in our weaknesses or shortcomings. Try to focus on your strengths. You still play well and have lots of fun with racquetball, so you aren’t completely out of shape.
Surround Yourself with Positivity: Negative self-talk can be reinforced by negative influences in our environment. You’ll get a lot more milage out of a picture of a beach in the Bahamas than a self-mocking photo of you eating an 8-scoop sundae.
Surround yourself with positive people and seek out positive experiences and activities. This is NOT permission to dump on your friends. This is about positive experiences. Meet up with a friend. Talk about baseball. Play darts. Go home. You should feel better.
Get some sun. There are multiple studies now that show being in nature helps people with ADHD, AND people with depression. There you go. Two birds with one stone. If you really want to kick it up a notch combing in a hike or walk. Your brain is designed to observe and analyze its environment. will do that a lot more if there is a new, moving environment to observe.

Mindfulness and Negative Self-Talk

I believe in mindfulness, and I believe that the key to mindfulness is some form of meditation or inner exploration. However, I do not recommend going to this well when you are battling negative self-talk. This just gives your brain time to wallow in pity. Do meditate and practice mindfulness, just don’t do it in this case. Wait until you can at least feel good after a deep sigh.

Negative Talk and Beating Yourself Up

A wise woman once said (okay, fine a therapist, but still…) “If beating yourself up worked, it would have already worked by now.”

I like that.

Of course, knowing rationally what to do and think is a lot easier than doing it. It still is hard to go to the gym, not eat the cake, and stick to one serving of mashed potatoes. (Yes, food is my love language. Shut up.) That is the whole point. Assuming you divide your brain up the way I do, you have no control of the back brain or your body. All you can do is control your front brain, but there lies the path to victory.

If you do not feed the negative loops in your head with your front brain, then eventually the other two will give up. Sure, it’s not perfect and sometimes it will take a long while, but beating negative talk is critical to dealing with ADHD and making life better for all your brain parts.

So, write down, “EXERCISE” in your calendar and circle it in read. Set your alarm for 6:30 am maybe once, just this once, when your body is sooooo tiiiiirreed, force yourself up anyway. When your brain complains about how much time being at the gym “wastes” remind yourself that you can put on the latest show that you’ve “been meaning to watch” while you work on the Precor, or bike or whatever. If you can’t think of anything to watch, remind whichever part remembers stuff that you can always watch Eddie play Metallic on top of a motor home in order to rage-attract some demons.

You will never win “for good” but you can get moving in the right direction.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need go rewatch Stranger Things 4.

Watching Training Videos with ADHD

Written by ADDer 1 Comment

You know the feeling. You are pumped to learn something new, or to brush up on your existing skills. Either way, chances are there is a company training video, a LinkedIn course, a Kahn Academy, or just some YouTube videos that can help you out. The problem? You have ADHD. It’s only been 20 seconds, and already that video is going too slow.

ADHD Mind and Videos

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking all ADD is like your ADD. Hang around long enough and you’ll find that nothing could be further from the truth. Just like some normals learn better by reading, and some learn better by hands on, some ADHDers learn better from reading than video. I’m one of them.

I read fast. Really fast. I used to think I was a fast test taker. Turns out, that I just read the questions faster than anyone else. As someone who reads and retains quickly, I hate video, especially when it could have been an article. I promise I can read your 5,000 words faster than I can listen to you say them to the camera. If that weren’t enough, I’m also a writer. You can about imagine how I feel then, about reading versus watching.

Check out my Plynk reviews.

But, sometimes the world doesn’t cater to you and sometimes the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to standard reading documentation. Whatever the case, sometimes you just have to watch the videos.

ADHD and 2x Speed

You know how training or informational videos work. The people introduce themselves and they tell you what letters they have after their name that proves they are an expert. If there are two of them there is some banter. I don’t think you need to have ADHD to be eye-rollingly bored at that kind of stuff. A fast forward or clicking down the video progress bar is easily done.

By now they have started covering the material and it is STILL not happening fast enough. You could skip or fast forward, but the point of this course is to fill in some gaps in your knowledge. Skipping ahead might mean skipping that information you need. At this point, your ADHD brain is clawing at the insides of your skull begging you to let it out. You pick up your phone, or your pen and paper and suddenly, you’re practicing calligraphy or scrolling and now, you might be missing something, and you don’t even get to skip ahead.

Enter 2X speed.

Click that 1x, change it to 2x, and change your ability to pay attention (for a while)

As someone with ADHD and all kinds of advertising and interface blindness I never paid any attention to the icons down in the corner. Sure, if you told me to look at them I would, and I know close captions is down there if I can’t understand someone, but I never mess with the video settings and I control the volume with my speakers, so you’ll forgive me if I never really paid any attention to that 1x down there.

But, one day while watching some college admissions thing, I sat there as my daughter clicked that 1x and something magical happened. It turns out you can watch online videos at twice the normal speed. And the best part is that most of the time, you can still understand what they are saying. In fact, your ADHD mind is basking in the glow of someone, anyone, finally talking fast enough for your brain.

It doesn’t have to be 2x. Depending on what you are watching, you can do 1.25x or 1.5x, whatever speed keeps your mind behind your eyeballs where it belongs while still letting you follow along. Unlike skipping, you see everything, so nothing slips by, and you still get to finish the video in half the time.

Finding ADHD tricks like this makes living with ADHD better turning it into the oft desired advantage ADHD can be if you can understand it and feed it properly. Try watching your next training or video at 2x speed. You’ll be surprised how little it changes your understanding, but don’t expect miracles. Your brain will soon adapt to 2x speed and find it too slow. So far, none of the things I need to watch offer 3x speed, so don’t chuck that ADHD medication yet.

2x Speed and Accents

There is a funny bit I wanted to relate. I have been watching this one lady’s training course. It’s a series of several videos and I have watched them all on 2x speed. Then, we hit a bit that I wasn’t quite getting. So, I went back and then selected 1x speed. I was shocked to find out she had some sort of Australian or British accent. It turns out that speaking faster eliminates accents.

Who knew?

Do One Thing – Overcoming ADHD Once

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

Depression and ADHD are comorbid indicators. They often go together. Adding the apathy of not wanting to get started on anything, along with the inherent procrastination that comes with ADHD, and sprinkling on a top of distraction just waiting to happen and it is no wonder that many adults with ADHD find it difficult to get things done.

There are many methods of time management out there for people ADHD. They range from great ideas like Eating That Frog to dumb ones, like blaming everything on perfectionism. The reality, however, is that you are unique, you always were. You were unique before you realized you had ADD, you were unique when you started treating your ADD, and you’re unique now, when you are living with ADHD. It’s not wonder then that other people’s solutions don’t work for you. You need your own unique solutions to living with adult ADHD.

Just because you need to build up your own unique ADHD tips and tricks to get through a life that requires you to things and to do them on a schedule doesn’t mean that other ideas won’t work for you. You just have to find your arrows and load them up in your quiver, metaphorically speaking.

Sometimes, the stock photography gods smile upon you 🙂

Do One

One method that with my ADHD that I am tinkering around with is the idea of doing one thing. Similar to the concept detailed in Eat That Frog, the idea is to commit to doing one thing from a list of dozens or even hundreds of things. Unlike the eating that frog, where you jump in with the worst, or most dreaded task of the day, I’ve had some success working with my brain instead of trying to force it to do something it doesn’t want.

As I arrive at my desk each morning, or even upon returning from a trip to the coffee pot, or from lunch, I often find that my brain looks around and has one thing that it wants to do. Many times, that one thing is something productive. Rather than trying to save that motivation and harness it later, I jump in with both feet.

My brain feels like finally cleaning up my desk? Let’s clean my desk.

My brain feels like writing that technical writing proposal? Let’s write the proposal.

My brain feels like rescheduling the dentist, ordering my meds, or filling out this month’s writing calendar? Let’s do those things.

My brain feels like writing an article on doing one thing? Hey! Inception!

How To Do One

If I were trying to turn this one idea into a book, as so many time management, and organization self help books are wont to do, I would add a swear word and start writing the 150 pages of backstory, history about myself, and obtaining the epiphany that goes into turning an idea the length of a pamphlet into a 300 page book that you can stick on the shelf at Barnes and Noble (irritation Segway!) A name like Do One Damn Thing! or maybe One F*cuking Thing!

You’ve seen the books. You know what I’m talking about.

Instead, let’s just keep it real among fellow adults with ADHD, or those of you without ADHD who have reached the intelligent conclusion that if it works for people with ADD, imagine how well it would work for someone without ADD.

The secret to how to do one thing is to let yourself. Give yourself permission to do what your brain wants to do. Often, you will find that the one thing is not what you should be doing, or what would the the most productive thing you should be doing. That is okay. You can come back to that thing later. Heck, if if works for you, promise yourself that that will be the very next thing you do.

The point of doing one is to harness your motivation if only for a moment. Finding motivation with ADHD can be really, really, hard. Give yourself permission this one time each day (or a few times, however, you want to use this) to enjoy the motivation. You will find that much like procrastinating forward, doing one thing results in more things being crossed off your ADHD to do list than fighting against it. After all, a list with 30 things on it gets shorter whether you cross off #1 or #28.

Me?

Well, I broke my own rule.

My brain wanted to clean up my workspace and I was going to let it, but then I thought about what I was doing and got distracted (nach) by the thought of writing up an article about using your motivation to do that one thing and here we are. Writing about ADHD when you have ADHD is a nonstop adventure in inception.

Try doing just one thing and let me know how it goes for you.

BTW, I ended up cutting and pasting a bunch of what I originally wrote here into a new article where I have noticed that I can write for clients about the same topics I write about for my own websites much faster. The differing factor that I’m noticing is that I write their stuff in Word and then just send it off to them. Maybe, just maybe, there is something about writing inside of WordPress that stifles my brain or otherwise slows it down.

It might also be that without thinking, even in the back of my head, about linking, SEO, keywords, length, or finding stock photography that my brain just cranks out text further. So, I’m trying something that I am very, very nervous about. I created an “In Progress” folder where I can do the Just One Thing when it is writing something.

My fear, which I’m sure that many of my adult ADHD tribe can relate to is that many “in progress” things end up becoming “never finished” things when our ADHD brains move on. But, I crave more success than I have been having and doing more/getting better requires trying new things, so here we go.

As always, wish me luck. I do the same for you.