120 - ADHD And The After-Christmas

Christmas can be a very difficult time. What do you give someone with a neuro-divergent brain who has difficulty with executive function...to the point where scheduling things and planning things and projects in general are a big pain....how about we give them an entire season of EXTRA hard stuff to do?! FUN!

Let's talk about Christmas...but more importantly, what comes AFTER Christmas.

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Well, happy holidays, you guys. This episode is coming out on Christmas Day. So, what do we do? What are we gonna make? What do we make it about gratitude or something? I mean, that's sort of covered during Thanksgiving, right? So maybe not that. Let's touch on like how to deal with the fact that all the things that we work so hard to create, all the routines, everything, they all get thrown out the window when we go through the holidays. Like, what the hell are we supposed to do post merriment? Let's talk about that. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Russ Jones, author of The Standing to the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of this struggle. Let's learn some stuff, let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the podcast, uh everybody, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. That's like a throw my voice as high as I can. Merry Merry Christmas. Or happy Monday off, if if that's the level to which you celebrate the holidays. Whatever it is, happy that to you. I was gonna talk about long-term goals today, but that just seems more like a next week kind of a thing, like with the whole New Year's situation. So we'll we'll get to that. You know, it's not in my face yet, so I'm not really juiced up for it. What seems pretty relevant uh is how to deal with the fact that for a lot of us, during the holidays, we're out of sync with our routines. The all these routines that we might have worked our asses off to put together for the during the year. We all know how hard it is to build up routines, especially in the beginning when things suck. But man, once we get a routine going, for me, it always still feels like I'm just one hiccup away from completely destroying it. And so the holidays, these wonderful holidays, it's like 'tis the season for habit murder. It can really mess with us. So let's unpack the holidays for our Skull Spaghetti, because I personally, there's a lot that I love about them. I love family. I love when I get to the opportunity to travel and to see them. I love the traditions, the lights, all of it. But it's also a season of extra stuff to do. There's meals to plan, there's presents to buy, there's events to coordinate, there's rooms to clean, there's itineraries to finesse. I don't know, there's like uh, you know, tickets to buy, clothes to pack. It's some hardcore multi-project management shit. And that is just not normally our jam. And yet we are thrust into it annually. So the good news here is that you know, you've already done the the holy, it's Christmas happened, so you made it. So congratulations on that. Or hey, you'll get them next year. I don't know. Whatever it is for you. But what I want to talk about is tomorrow. What happens tomorrow? We've fallen off the wagon, we gave up our routine, we stayed up late, we gave our we have headaches, we overate, or we spent a week on vacation, and everything is out the window. So now we have to go back to reality. And we're like, back to what? What happens now? At some point, if you're like me, you might feel like, oh God, I'm just lazy. Here I am again because I wasn't able to say no to the thing, or I wasn't able to go to bed on time. I wasn't able to do some of that productive stuff that I planned to do while I was on vacation, right? The new business idea I was gonna flush out while I was at my parents' house, or you know, I was gonna one of these three books that I was gonna read, but I didn't know which one, so I should bring them all three, but none of the books came out of the of the suitcase. I read none of them. It was just a whole lot of enjoying people's company, playing games, you know, having fun. But that's not the hindsight that I usually the hindsight is blown opportunity, no willpower, lazy turd, gotta get my shit together. Here's a side note to that. I'm really hoping that there's a world where we can dig our heels into like the sense of fun that we have, and that we can overcome the hurdle of productivity thinking. Oh, God. All the normie buzzwords, do you know that we we have to use? And then when our brains get a hold of those words, it uses them against us. Like, oh, you're not productive, you don't prioritize, you're not delegating, suck it up, work hard. God, I'm like, work hard. That sounds so god dang awful to me. And yet it's supposed to be like a uh we're supposed to champion that, like, work hard. It's good to work hard. How about caring about the work that I do? Like, can I can I care hard? Is caring hard a thing to do? Or playing hard? Something. I'm I'm just pretty convinced that we have to give ourselves the freedom to come up with our own unique way to get these similar normie results. I just the language is not working. I'm more of an advocate of finding the fun if we can and using it. Like having the courage to use the fun, you're right, to have fun and use it to my benefit. I mean, how much funner would it be to have fun? It'd be a lot more funner, funner. That might that might be on my list of 2024 resolutions, you're right. Figure out how to fun up the mundane, you know, like maybe at work. I'm gonna change up, I'm gonna change the font on the Excel spreadsheets at work. You're like, that would I'm gonna totally do that. That is actually one that I'm gonna do. Some of this stuff has to be for us. Whatever makes it exciting, right? Can you imagine? It's like, you know, I'm not advocating for anybody to get fired at work, you know? Like we would create an Excel spreadsheet and they'd be like, who the hell made the font comic sans? Okay, this is a business. We're Times New Roman only or aerial. God damn it, who did this? Now I don't know what uh some jobs don't lead themselves to this, you know. So I mean you can't necessarily put on a clown outfit and do your closing arguments at the murder trial, I don't think. So I get it. But what can I do to make it excitinger, more excitingtized? I think I'm a little bit off track here. Uh I wanted to touch on getting back into routines, potentially what that might look like. First thing that I will always be on board with as a primer for all of this work is the being cool with yourself aspect of all this. Self-awareness, sometimes it comes with a side order of self-loathing. So, like giving myself some grace, you know, I think I have to recognize that it's okay that I went off, right? I had a blast, I let off steam, I indulged, neat. Now I'm back home and I want to get back into my old routines that feel so distant now. It's tough, right? Because now I have that taste for whiskey again. So I want to drink, or I had those sodas again, or those chips, or I didn't meditate, and so now I'm like, whatever. Or I didn't watch my finances, so I'm scared to even look at them again. You know, maybe there are routines for our finances or for our eating, and now we feel like we're starting from scratch again. It's like in the normie world, I believe the methodology is, you know, you just gotta wake up and you gotta say enough is enough, right? You know, I'm gonna suck it up, man. I'm gonna man up, you know, whatever that translates to. I'm gonna up myself as a man. I'm upping my manhoodness. I'm using an upward motion for my male humanness, you know, and I'm sorry, ladies, but I don't know how that would work for you unless uh unless womaning up is a thing. You should probably want to apply that if that is, okay? You know, just do it. Basically. This is basically it's that's the tried and true approach, right? Um, and I think that's silly. And here's my experience with the silliness. It's basically that we know or that we're hyper familiar with right now. We are right now, folks. And right now, uh, I sucked at my routine, you know, and I'm not liking myself. Like right now, I'm not that which I wanted to continue being. Holidays, you gosh darn holidays, you know, you got me again. So, in my world, the turning point decision, that's pretty much mission critical, and it's the thing to do as soon as I possibly can. I recognize that I'm off the rails. So I'm gonna declare that I'm gonna place the train back on the tracks, right? The train doesn't just take off from where it is. You don't just get up and start the train. The train's derailed. There's some rerailing to do. I think that's the term. If the train derails, like you'd you'd think that you'd have to rerail it, right, in order to get it moving. So, what is rerailing the train look like to you then? Is it revisiting the routine, making a new commitment to yourself or to your accountability buddy, you know, or getting an accountability buddy to get you going? Yeah, so we're doing ADHD Big Brother Forum is ripe with that accountability. But what is that for you? And don't be afraid to take things smaller than they were before the holidays. I can't believe I just said don't be afraid. Oh my god. Yeah, you're scared to turn your badass 45-minute work session into a 15-minute work session to get back into it. You big chicken. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? That's so stupid. Don't be afraid. Uh all right. I'm sorry, you guys. That's sometimes my mouth and my brain don't always connect the way that I'd hoped. Okay, there's a connectivity issue going on right now. So uh rerailing. Sometimes there's a process for me where I would beat myself up because I can't do the thing at the level that I was doing it at, even if it was just recently. Like I was, oh, let's say I was working out and then I went, I went on a vacation and now I'm not working out. And it was like, wait, I was just working out two weeks ago. But it's that that break that it's sometimes it's feels so like a massive setback or something, or like I failed. Um, but if I move away from judgment, it feels a little easier for me. And I still need all the ADHD tools, the hacks, the external accountability, but it's easier in terms of getting back into something, rebuilding a routine. And I guess that would be like my challenge to you guys this week, uh, would be post-holidays, you know, or if you're listening to this in the far future, whenever you find yourself off the rails of your routine, how soon can you make that turning point decision? Get the train back on the tracks. And I'll use myself right now. This is a full disclosure of me, who I am as of today, which is Christmas Eve. Um, you know, as I've come out of a depressive episode, and it still has its moments, right? For me, it's like uh the other day I was laid up for a while, uh, just taking nap after nap after nap. Um in general, I feel like I'm coming out of it. And it's just for your reference, but I've been having a hard time exercising, which I know is amazing, I know will help. I know that's wise. I know that it is good. Yes, it is a thing that you do to make yourself feel better. But right now, I'm all the way back at stretching for like five minutes, and I can barely do that. It's just I'm just something to move my body, and it's really it could be embarrassing. Uh I don't know why I'm not embarrassed right now saying it to you guys. Probably because you're you're not actually physically here. Uh I don't know. But I it's like five minutes of stretching. That is my Mount Everest, and that's just the way it is. But I say that for the people who are depressed and still want to move forward. Uh, the fun challenge would be to keep going smaller until it's doable and then start there. And then tomorrow that's your baseline. And maybe you could do more, maybe you could do less tomorrow, whatever that looks like. But at the core, it's moving forward and giving ourselves all kinds of grace. That it's not about the intensity, it's not about how much we get done. It's literally only about what we can do to move our needle forward for as however long as it takes just to get ourselves doing that. And that's my challenge for you guys. I hope that helps. This is a quick holiday one for you. Ultimately, the holidays are tough, man. They're tougher than normies. And so it can be a massive struggle for us NeuroDivergos. So my Christmas wish for you is that you can get through it without any of that scraptastical self-judgment. And if you're needing help with your turning point decision, reach out. If I can help you, I will. I answer every email. Um everybody can get one of those free 30-minute Zoom chats with me. If you just need some ADHD big brothering, doesn't have to be about working with me. It could just be, man, I need some ideas on turn this turning point decision. Help! You know, I'm here to serve you guys. It would be my pleasure. And with that, please set your timer for 15 minutes with the specific task of breaking down all those boxes and chucking them in the trash andor recycling. And I hope you have a fantastic week. And I will talk to you later.