This is a Global Player Original Podcast. Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of You're Wrong About ADHD. This week we're diving deeper into ADHD and swing time. If you haven't already listened to the main episode with clinical psychologist and ADHD advocate Dr Gilly Khan, definitely recommend going back and giving a listen.
And that conversation really struck a chord with us, didn't it Sam? We spoke about why people with ADHD are more vulnerable to compulsive strolling and things like how tech affects dopamine and the importance of setting boundaries, etc. Let's talk about how good we are at it. Because I know that I have a love-hate relationship with my friend.
Put it that way. I'm holding it now because it's got the notes on it. Can I watch talk to you about it? You know, so there's no doubt it's a tool.
But it's also something that sometimes I know is a very unhelpful friend. It's the friend that gets in the way of family relationships. It's the friend that sometimes I'm aware I'm using it too much to maybe photograph things when I should just be living that experience. It's all those different difficulties, isn't it?
That you have with it? Yeah, and I think I have to be honest. I found talking to Dr Gilly, it was quite a start warning. I thought we'd have a chat about how it can be a bit of a habit, but don't worry too much about it.
She was pretty clear about what the dangers are. She said, phones, social media can be addictive. And actually, if you've got ADHD, you are especially susceptible. Now, we have to be careful about throwing words around like addiction.
I don't think I'm addicted to my phone. But have I built up some bad habits around it? Yes, I have. And actually, what she was saying was the way to stop that is to cut it out, to get rid of it, to remove it.
And I struggled to do that. And one of the reasons is because it's so useful. It's how do I use it and think this is a really useful tool. But then say to myself, don't look at that bit.
Mm-hmm. Well, especially when it came to social media. I mean, she was clear about that, wasn't she? You know, she came off social media completely for seven years.
And she said how much it changed her life. It's interesting. I have recently dropped out of two big social media experiences. And I have suddenly discovered how much more time I have.
And it's not just about the stuff that you post, but it's the debates that you get involved in, or scrolling through someone else's holiday photograph that you haven't seen for seven years. All of these different things that actually do not need to affect your life. And when Dr Gilly talked about bumping into people, and they don't know everything about you because they haven't seen you in my life, laid out for them on a plate on social media, it does reintroduce back into your life that sense of, I'm just meeting you, I'm having a conversation, and I can ask you questions, and you can ask me questions, and we don't know the answers yet. And I have been thinking about this for a while, but actually, I'm off the back of the conversation with Dr Gilly.
I've tried to differentiate all my social media. I don't really have any social media where I'm interacting with people, having conversations to base anything like that. Have you never done that? I have done.
Yeah, and actually, I sort of said, you know, I need to step away from this. That's not useful to me. However, you know, I do find social media useful. For example, you know, I'm really into football, whatever other interests you've got, looking at things that are going on in the world, whether it's news, whether it's sport that are immediate, and you want to see the news around it or the results or the reaction, social media is brilliant for that in a way that perhaps older media isn't, because it gives you that immediate reaction.
I think then the question is, OK, fine. So that seems legitimate use of it, but how much of that are you consuming and how much do you need to? So do you look at, you know, football news once a day, or do you spend all day sitting looking at it? And I think where it becomes an issue is it impacts on, you know, stopping you to do other things, but also relationships.
And I have more recently been very clear with my children. I will say to them, because they're now old enough to say, you know, I've got a phone. Generally speaking, when I'm with my children, I put my phone away. I don't, you know, I won't be looking at something like that.
I don't need to look at this. And if I get it out, I try to explain to them. I try to say that his phone has got all sorts of different things on here. This is my computer.
So for example, I need to email a builder or something, or, you know, I've got to email somebody at work. I'm just going to do that. And that's what it is. Try and explain to them what it is I'm doing.
Part of the reason that works is one, I'm explaining to them, but also in my head with the explanation, if I can't explain it to them, actually, the thing I'm doing, do I need to be doing? Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Just a moment to talk about myself.
Persuading yourself that this is what needs to happen. If it doesn't, then actually I don't need to be looking at it. It is putting those limits in place. Let's remember what we're always told is at the Tech Rose in California, do not give their children smartphones.
So they know about how addictive these things have been, created the apps and the phones, how they have been designed is to draw us in to make us look at them. And putting those limits in place is really hard. They're shiny and they've got fun things on them and they've got games. I've talked about Sims before, but there was a game a few years ago called Tiny Tower.
I lost a month to it. And during that month, we went on holiday with grandparents. And I found myself one afternoon in my double bed, surrounded by my sons and the nephews all staring at this screen. Whilst I built the next level on Tiny Tower, one put my mother in law, came into the room and said, we wanted where all of the children are gone, and they were all staring at my screen.
And it was a moment of, I have to shut this down just like I had had with Sims before, which is, this is not healthy, and not only am I doing a wrong thing for me, I'm literally modelling to all of these kids. This is how you spend your time on holiday. Awful. Awful.
But to remove the shame and guilt about it, it's about the quantity rather than the action itself, isn't it? Like, you know, I used to play computer games, we used to watch TV when we were younger, and the same conversations happened with us when we were younger before phones existed, which is, you know, you don't watch endless hours of television. My mum always used to say, pick one program. And so she'd come into the room and we'd always go, it's the one after this.
It's not the one after this. Anyway, but it was always that. Or with computer games, it was, you don't play during the week or you only have an hour or two hours. Those limits have always existed for different things.
So actually looking at your phone, looking at something you're interested in, learning a language, those things are not illegitimate. It's just, are you doing it constantly? So how do you feel about what Dr. Gilly said about, you know, the way to cut that down, because we're extra susceptible because of ADHD, the way to cut that down actually is to put your phone upstairs, to not have it with you, to remove it.
How do you feel about that? Uneasy. And it's partly because I don't care. So my phone rings at least once a day at the moment about my dad.
And so I can't put my phone away because my father has dementia, he's in a care home, and I know sometimes that call involves me getting in the car and going to see him. And of course, there's also my brother, the dad's in a care home. So I don't have, I like to say, I don't have a privilege, actually, but in my phone way, which makes it much more complicated because I then have to learn to put the limits on how I look at it. And actually what she said about turning it over, doing that with it, I have found very, very powerful because then you can't see when it likes up.
I have done that before and I do do it. And especially if I am with people. I mean, there's nothing worse is there than going to the pub with your friends and they're constantly looking at the phone, they're constantly looking at their phone. And I sometimes will grab phones out of friends hands and just go, will you put that flipping thing down?
Because you don't need to look at it. I'm pretty disciplined around other people because that's the check on me. The problem I have is when I'm on my own and I've not got anything specific to do, if I actually get some free time, it's one of my doing with my free time. That's the biggest waste for me, I think.
Yeah. And I would also argue, Sam, it's your free time. So there is also an argument for allowing yourself to enjoy something that makes your brain wave slow down a bit and relax at you as long as you are choosing to look at those things and those things give you enjoyment. You know, if it is something like a language app, for instance, that's not a bad waste of 10 minutes.
It's not. Do you remember when we talk to Dr. Sophie Bechsberg? Yeah.
Episodes in the archive, go on this and back. It's one of the most enlightening episodes of both of us. Brilliant for me because she said, yes, it's okay for you to have your phone. Well, she said, it's okay for maybe five to ten minutes because it can be a distraction, it can calm you down.
But she said the problem is when you go beyond that and you delay sleep. So what she said was, if you look at your phone and it relaxes you and it's just before you're going to sleep, that won't make a lot of difference. But if you get to the point of being tired of wanting to drop off and you carry on looking at it for another hour, that's when it becomes an issue. Yeah.
And I think fundamentally what we're saying here is that phones are really useful and are okay in moderation, but we are looking at them far too much. And I don't think even listening to us talking now, I don't think you and I really have a solution to how we're going to sort that out. I agree with that. I was doing some decluttering over the weekend.
We talked about that before as well on a previous episode with my wonderful friend Amy who helps me declutter. And we were talking about this very thing about the use of phones and addiction and that kind of thing. And she has a client who has two phones. So she has a smartphone that she uses for all of the things that we use our smartphones for.
But when she is out and about when she's out with the kids, especially, or with friends, she has what she calls her dumb phone, which is a really cheap, sexually burner phone that has the ability to be able to call the police for family members to get in touch with her, etc. But she is not totally rooted to this device in the palm of her hand that makes her think differently. I think that's one quite clever way of looking at it. My son, my youngest son has all of these special things set up on his phone and his laptop, where if he tries to log on to certain addictive areas of his device, like social media, it logs him out for 10 minutes and he can't wait to make him think, actually do I really want to go there?
And it's really frustrating. Oh my goodness, if I go, or could you just have a quick look at your laptop? And he goes, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, we're now just going to have to wait 10 minutes. Whilst I work out whether I really need to go there, and his devices are black and white.
I mean, he really has worked very hard. He's 19. And he's worked really, really hard on making these things less attractive, I think. And I have huge admiration for him because I don't think that that is something that I could do, or actually, if I'm honest, I want to do.
I get a lot of enjoyment out of my phone. And there is an element of creeping into my life too much, but I don't feel it is too much. I don't feel it's taken over. And at the time, when I just want to go, I want to completely unplug, I want to sit down, I want to go, right, I just don't want to think about anything else.
I have one of those days where everyone's wanted a piece of me. Do you know what? I just want to look at my phone. And that's a choice.
And that's why I say, you know, we all have to look at how things affect us and as we do with everything with ADHD. I think for me, I feel like I'm wasting too much time. I think I'm going to, in lieu of getting two phones, which is a great idea, I think I'm going to take on board some of the advice from Dr Gillian and say, you know, what I'm going to have some specific windows where, as you know, you work and then you clock off where I'm looking at work messages, maybe I've got a little bit of time where I'm going to look at social media for entertainment. And then I've got blocks of time where my phone is in a different room.
That I think is what I'm going to do, go forward. Yeah. And maybe using those apps that my son uses during the hours when you don't want to be doing those things. So that it does make you think so.
It does make you question and it makes you think twice because that's the thing, isn't it? You have, as an ADHD certainly from my point of view, you have the thought and the action happens immediately. It's like, oh, what's happening on that social media? Click on and then it's 20 minutes gone.
Whereas if it's in a different room, you have a moment to think, do I really want to go and get out. Yeah, absolutely. And I think like so many things that we discuss when you're on ADHD, it's about awareness. It's about not picking up your phone mindlessly.
It's about not just reaching out for it and it being something that you don't think twice about. And again, a diagnosis helps with that, doesn't it? Because we know now we have an addictive personality. If this episode has struck a chord with you, please share it with someone who might find it helpful.
And as always, we love hearing from you. You can get in touch with us at adhdpodcast.global.com, share your experiences with ADHD or proper to question any time. Thank you so much for listening to You're On about ADHD and we'll see you next time. You're On About ADHD is made in association with Apex content ventures.
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