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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.

ADHD Tips – Bookmark Day

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Or Bookmark half-day or bookmark hour. Do you.

Even people without ADHD have a tendency to bookmark things in order to do them “later.” All too often later never comes. But what about those bookmarks? Was there a Tweet that had an answer to a question you have? Was there a link to something new and amazing? Or was there just a cartoon that made you laugh, and you wanted to share it?

Making Bookmarks Part of Organization

Let’s face it, organization tips for ADHD that you can actually use aren’t all that easy to come by once you collect the easy wins. This one could make a big difference.

It is often said that people with ADHD only understand two kinds of time: now and not now. That’s not 100% true for me. I also have wife will be pissed and wife will get it over it. The point is that bookmarking things for later is good. It means that you resisted the distraction and continued on. That is a solid skill for adults with ADHD. Let’s make sure you get the benefit.

Use your ADHD planner or calendar and mark off a time for you to go back to your bookmarks. Make sure there is some “space” around it. Don’t pick something you know will get scheduled over, and for the love of jeebus, don’t schedule it for the day before a deadline. (You know darn well that you will be using that time to avoid deadlines that you procrastinated on.)

I like to do a whole day, but my schedule doesn’t always allow for that. Like most adults with ADHD procrastination is a big problem for me. Knowing that I’m going to need the time right up until it is time to stop working, or turn in a big project, I schedule my half days for first thing in the morning. That way, the time slot won’t get stomped over by work or family deadlines.

Obviously, this technique works for other things. Notebook Day might be a nice thought. Go back through all of those ideas and thoughts you wrote down only to turn the page and forget all about them.

Do you do something like Bookmark Day? Let me know.

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?

Best ADD Tip Ever – The Only ADHD Advice You Need *

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Are you ready for the best ADHD tip for overcoming ADHD symptoms? It is surprisingly easy, and once you see how this powerful attention deficit disorder tip can be for managing ADHD at work or school, you’ll want to use it all the time.

Is there a catch?

Well, did you see that asterisk up there? That means that there is a catch.

Overcoming Distraction to Get Work Done and Be Most Productive

The key concern when it comes to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is how constant distraction can be overcome in order to be more productive at school, more productive at work, and more productive at home. All the other ADHD symptoms are sort of secondary. If ADDers could just get a handle on increasing productivity in the face of having ADD, everything else would be a little easier to manage. (If you were as productive as you are capable of at work and around the house, do you think it would matter as much that you occasionally tune out or interrupt your spouse during conversations?)

To become more productive and improve your standing at work or improve your grades at school, the person with ADD needs only do just one little thing: keep working.

See, I told you there was a catch.

However, hear me out. For those of us with ADD, the symptom of distractibility is one that keeps us from focusing properly on important tasks. When a major report is due the next day, we find ourselves intrigued by something else entirely. When this happens, there are only two choices. One choice involves using all of the ADHD tips and ADD tools that one can muster to overcome one’s natural tendency to have attention wander from the important tasks at hand, to those of lesser importance, or even no importance at all. The second choice involves just going with the flow or allowing the mind’s attention to wander as it sees fit.

* The Catch: (That asterisk does indeed mean that there is a catch. Typically, it means a footnote, which is where some company uses really small fonts to explain how they are going to screw you over, and therefore cover themselves legally by “disclosing” the information that you need to realize that the whole thing is a scam. Here on Addessories, we have no reason to trick our fellow ADDers, so this explanatory asterisk is in full-size font type.) The catch is that in order to follow the path of least resistance and give into your mind’s typical urges to find ever more interesting things to focus on, you have to keep working longer than you would if you went the other route.

How much longer?

That is the essence of the catch. You have to keep working until you have finished that important task. That major report, or that semester-long project that you just started and is due tomorrow, must be finished before you stop working, whether that takes four hours or thirty-four hours. You’ll find that you are happier along the way, but the destination will end up being much further away than it should have.

Whether or not this is a good ADD trick for you depends entirely on whether you are the type of person with ADD who finds the journey more important than the destination, or whether you are the type of person with ADHD who finds crossing the finish line the most satisfying.

Which one are you?