This is a Global Player original podcast. Hi, it's Katie. And Sam. And welcome to this bi-sized episode of You're Wrong About ADHD.
Today, we are sharing some of our favourite tips, things we've learned along the way for handling our ADHD. There's always space to learn more, and we are still learning as we go along, but I use all sorts of different strategies in my daily life, and I'm still picking up more as I go along, as I say. But mindfulness, taking a moment to calm the nervous system. Cold showers as well, they work for me, helping you just to clear a busy mind.
Let's get into it. Everyone has different tools. Everyone's going to find different things useful. So I have made a list, and I'm going to go through it.
And I got this list from my young friend who had ADHD. Some of those he gave to me. Some of them I found along the way. Some of them I've realised I've been doing for years without realising that that's what they were giving me.
But let's start with my meds, because you don't take meds. I do. Let's start with meds, because for me, they have been a key breakthrough. And I have found that if I wake up in the morning, I set an alarm, I have my meds on my bedside table.
They have to be visible, otherwise I forget to take them. The alarm goes off. I take one, and I go back to sleep, and the meds help me wake up and help me put that crucial first foot on the bedroom carpet. So you use alarms?
You use alarms for other things as well? Oh, I use alarms. Oh my God, I use alarms for everything. So this was one of the tips I was getting originally, which is smartphone, smartwatch, smart everything.
And if you can afford it, a good smartwatch is the most amazing thing I have. My smartwatch has a timer on it, on the clock face, and I use the timer all the time. So if I put, say I put a wash in, or I put the dishwasher on, or I've hung out, I wash dry, and I need to remember to bring it in before night. Or you can pick the kids up from school.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Picking the kids up from school. My God, that three o'clock. The number of times I would suddenly find it at 3.15, and I can keep it forgotten.
Now I know. I have alarms already set through the day, and they'd be labelled. I know what they, they would call something specific. They'd be talking to me all day, reminding me about timekeeping.
How else do you set reminders? What other things do you do? Because I've, I've found I've emailed myself, which actually is really ineffective where I'm doing this. I need to find a much better, I need to just start using some sort of diary.
Oh, what are you emailing yourself about? Every time I need to remember something, my to-do list. Oh, God, I do that. Oh, yeah, I do that, yeah, yeah.
So what's your system with lists and reminders? I have, with the one thing I've learnt at my cost is keep all to-dos in one place. I know some things are things you don't need to do till Christmas, some things are things you don't think about till next year, it doesn't matter. They all have to go in the same place, because I, otherwise, I will put things on a to-do list and forget, I put them there, and then I'll lose that list, and it's gone.
All to-dos live in the same place, they live on my phone, it's in a notes app, and I have different sections on that list, there's a pen thing at the top, then there's a, I need to do this now, and then I have a line, and under it is stuff to think about for the future, so often I go down and look at that and then bring it up to the top. What about post-its? I am completely obsessed with post-its. I have one of those Ikea drawers to the right-hand side of my desk, and the whole of the bottom drawer is filled with post-its, because I'm so paranoid about writing out post-its.
If it's something that I need to do this week, it goes up at the top, just above the keyboard, and it's the fact that when I get up tomorrow, and I sit down at my desk, I can look at those post-its, I can move them around, and there is so much satisfaction, having done a thing, from picking up that post-it, screwing up, and it goes on the floor, and at the end of the day, I scoop up all those post-its, and they go in the middle, and it's just the best wonderful feeling. I hate mess, and I hate rubbish, and I even hate just little pieces of paper. I can't even have a post-it, I don't even like post-its. Not being screwed up, I just don't even like them, I can't cope with them, it's too much mess for me.
Going back to planning, I think that actually ties in quite nicely with mindfulness, to go back to that as well. It's one of those things where someone said mindfulness to me, four or five years ago, I'd have been, what are you talking about? Breathing, of course I breathe, that's what I do. But again, having been through a diagnosis, having been through some relatively crisis moments, I'm totally convinced by it.
If I'm getting really overwhelmed or confused, I do a breathing exercise, and it could be just that suddenly there's loads of things to sort out, or suddenly there's a crisis with children, or suddenly I'm just really overwhelmed physically, and my head's flying off line. What this does is essentially say, I'm not going to try and sort the problem out immediately, the first thing I'm going to do is calm myself down. Now logically, it makes absolute sense, because everybody does that. If you're faced with a panic situation, the first thing you try to do is take away the panic.
And essentially the one I use is that I do deep breathing, so you breathe through your nose, and then you breathe out deeply through the mouth, and the idea is just to focus on breathing. Now your head obviously shoots off in different directions. I was going to say, how do you concentrate on breathing? Because what you do is you don't put pressure on yourself.
You don't say, oh, you've failed, or you haven't done it. You just say... And it's okay to have thoughts in your mind. Well, what you say to yourself is, okay, I am worried about that still, I've just thought about that, I'm going to bring myself back to the breath.
And you just keep doing it, and even when your head says, yes, but that fire's still going over there, you know, figuratively, you still say, okay, but I can't sort it out yet, because I am not in a situation where I can. And what you're then doing is bringing your attention back to the breath, and all it does is calm the body down. Now, when someone first told me about that, I was like, this is just some sort of mumbo-jumbo. What it was explained to me was actually being about the nervous system, and about activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
So when you're stressed, you're in danger, your sympathetic nervous system kicks in. So it's like fight or flight, right? So your heart rate increases, blood flows to the body, get ready, you're sort of on edge. Meditation for some people, mindfulness certainly, gets the parasympathetic nervous system.
What that does is calms you down, and it changes your attitude from fight or flight to vicious crisis to, I've calmed myself down. That makes perfect logical sense, doesn't it? Because when you're panicked, when you're fight or flight, when you're heightened, you can't actually deal with things. And it may sound, in all of these things, you think, well, how do we do these?
Because the whole point is about ADHD and I can't remember. And I will be honest with you, I'm almost feeling, I feel almost like a failure listening to you, because, because, I have tried to do, whenever anyone has sort of talked about breathing exercises in the past, they talk about emptying your mind. I can't, I don't know what that means. So what, well, first don't feel like a failure, because look, I don't do this as often as I should.
The idea is that you do it regularly. With all this stuff, the idea is it becomes habit, it becomes second nature. Has it? Do you know what?
When I'm at a crisis point, it does. It would be better, I think, if I could do it more, so I could do it, you know, the rest of the time as well. Just gives you that beat, that moment, to pause before you react, and I find it really, really helpful. That's really interesting, Sam.
Yeah. The other thing I use is, if I'm really, really overwhelmed and over the top, I get a cold shower, and it does exactly the same thing. Oh, well, yeah, cold water therapy, that definitely works. And that is about kind of, you know, switching the brain on and invigorating the body.
It does wonders for the immune system and all sorts, doesn't it, cold water? I love cold showers. I don't love them, but they really, really are. Hope some of those things were helpful to you.
It was great to revisit them and be reminded, actually, of some of the things I've forgotten. If you enjoyed listening to this bite-sized episode and want more, you can find the full episode linked in the show notes or many more episodes like this one on the podcast feed. And if you want to keep up to date with everything we're doing, do check us out on Instagram and TikTok. Just search You're Wrong About ADHD on your socials.
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again soon. You're Wrong About ADHD is made in association with Apex Content Ventures. This is a Global Player original podcast.