Ep 107. Why Transitions Are So Hard with ADHD (And What to Do About It)

Why are transitions—like stopping watching Netflix to pay bills or switching from reading to getting ready for bed—so exhausting when you have ADHD? 

In this episode, I break down why transitions are uniquely challenging for people with ADHD and what you can do to make them easier.

We’ll talk about:

• Why your brain resists change (even for things you like!)
  
  
• The power of a “neutral” activity between tasks
  
  
• Real-life examples, like my client “Jenna,” and how small changes helped her sleep more and stress less
  
  
• How to reduce energy drain and stop white-knuckling your way through the day
  
  

✨ I'm an occupational therapist and executive functioning coach. My goal is to help people with ADHD make life easier—so you don’t have to work so hard just to keep up.

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Transcript

Transitions

[00:00:00] hi, my name's Donae and I'm an occupational therapist and an executive functioning coach, and I help people with ADHD just make life easier so you don't have to work so hard.

That's, that's the goal here. 

So let's talk about transitions. What are transitions When I say the word transition, so let's talk about transitions. What do I mean by that word? This is kind of a therapy word. Talking about transitioning between one thing to another. Maybe a transition between a location to another location, activity to another activity.

And what we know about people with ADHD and other folks that fall in this neurodivergent group is that transitions can be tricky. Uh, especially if we're going from something that we really were focused in, honed in, really enjoying to something that is less preferred, we don't really want to do. And when I was working as an occupational therapist, I, I worked with kids.

I would help kids that struggle with transitions. Maybe we, we, you know. This came up a lot, right? This came up a lot. You would have a child that would come to see you for therapy and they would have a hard time transitioning from their parents going back to the gym. And we would have so much fun in the gym.

We'd play, we'd do all kinds of things that they really enjoyed. But that moving from like their parents back [00:01:00] to the gym was hard. And guess what? An hour later, moving from the gym back to their appearance was hard. Moving between those things were challenging even if they knew they were going to do something that was fun.

So sometimes that switching can be hard for us. Well beyond childhood into adulthood with ADHD. And so a lot of us have that experience, especially when it's something man, we don't really feel like doing. So it, especially if you're doing something like, Hey, I'm going to stop. Uh, right, so you know that this is true for everyone.

This is not just an ADHD thing. If you are going from watching Netflix to paying bills, that's not a fun transition. The thing that is different, uh, 

so nobody's going to love stopping watching this Netflix series. They're enjoying and going to paying bills. It's not a fun transition. But for somebody who struggles with attention regulation, when with somebody who struggles with attention regulation is that they might spend a lot more. that's going to spend a lot more of their energy, it's going to use a lot more of their energy to make that transition. Energy making those jumps than somebody who's neurotypical, right? 

And I want to, um. And so one thing I wanted to point out with that example of going from Netflix to bill paying is you're not just switching between one activity to another. That's what it looks like. But what you're actually doing is like what I consider a double jump. You're going from something you really enjoy to something you don't really enjoy at all, so you're not, you're jumping right past neutral, right?

It, it would be easier potentially to stop doing the thing you love to do if you were going to switch to do something that was kind of more neutral [00:02:00] or a neutral positive, but instead you're going, you're jumping right from that neutral. All the way to something that's challenging. And so when we want to work with transitions, we want to look at making that a little bit easier, spending less energy to do it.

Now, back to the example of when I was working with children. Sometimes with a, if a child was really struggling with transitions between activities, we would use a transition object. So let's say we're in the gym and we're having fun, we're playing all these games, it's time to go. Kind of to a boring thing.

Go tell mom and dad like how it went, what we did. You don't want to make that transition. They don't, the kids don't want to make that transition. So we would take, um. So I would use a transition object. I would use like a toy or something that was just fun. They could hold and they could carry that from the place that they were really enjoying themselves to the place that they weren't really looking forward to going.

And so even though we were changing what we were doing, they had a little bit of neutral, a little bit of positive, neutral to hang on to and focus on while we were making that transition. Now with adults. Um. We can use that too, right? We can use this neutral concept, this kind of positive, neutral concept to help you move between things that you, um, are [00:03:00] doing that you're enjoying and something that else that you have to do.

So. 

So what would that look like? So what would that look like? What would that look like with an adult? And I'm going to show you an example from somebody that I've worked with. Her name is Jenna. I'm changing her name, but. Jenna's details will stay the same. Now, Jenna was trying to change some habits. Now Jenna was trying to change some habits.

She was trying to go to bed earlier and she identified that as something that she really wanted to do 'cause she was tired, she wasn't getting enough sleep, she was going to bed later and later. So what she was telling me was happening is that she would start reading what she loves to do and she just can't.

Switch between reading to, you know, gearing down and going to bed. And so we're like, reading is a good habit, but this is really getting in her way of, of sleeping more, of taking care of herself. And so she wanted to do something about it. And so we were looking at what was going on when she was going to bed later and later. So a couple facts about Jenna.

Uh, number one is that this time at night is maybe the only time she has for herself. She has young kids, she has some kids with special needs. She's on call all day long. And so this little chunk of time right before bed is her only her time and something that, uh, she really values and, and wants to extend, another thing that's true for Jenna is that she has a lot of [00:04:00] anxiety around going to sleep because she's dealt with insomnia. She has a hard time falling asleep, staying asleep. So this is not just a neutral thing going to sleep. This is kind of an intense thing and something that's hard for her.

 We're looking at reading this activity that she's doing. She's really enjoying. We're looking at an activity she really doesn't want to do, which is try to go to sleep, like gear down for bed. .

So there's a couple of things you can do here, right? Like when you're trying to problem solve this, and think of this as three pieces, right? One piece is this thing I'd love to do. One thing is this piece that I thing I really don't love to do and in the middle that probably doesn't already exist yet, is this.

Neutral, halfway happy, uh, thing that we can create. So what we decided to do for her was focus on that middle zone. We, we brainstormed through some things that she think thought she could probably switch to doing that weren't quite as hard to stop as reading for her. And, um, you know, that weren't quite as hard to stop as reading for.

And what she decided to do was switch from reading to some word games before she was actually gearing down to go to bed. And that worked for her. This highly personal, what is one person's "I can barely stop this thing" is somebody else's "this is hard to do" [00:05:00] thing. So this is true for her. You know, if you're doing this for yourself, it's not going to be the same answer, probably.

You have to kind of brainstorm through this and figure out, okay, so these, this is a highly, um, individualized answer. This is highly individualized. This is not going to be the same for every person. One person's thing that is hard to stop for them, it's so enjoyable. They can barely, uh, quit doing it. It's so enjoyable for them.

So for one person, the thing that is so enjoyable for them and they could, you know, just can't even stop doing that, might be somebody else's. This is so hard to start thing it doesn't, isn't the same answers for everyone. But for her, for Jenna, um, reading was just her thing that was just impossible to transition out of.

Um. We can also look at the activities themselves when we're trying to make this easier. Remember, we're always trying to just spend less energy doing the things we want to do. So if we're looking at spending less energy and making it easier to stop this, start this, we can look at this thing that I love doing.

Maybe turning down the dial a little bit, still doing the thing you love to do, but tweaking some things so it's not as hard to stop. Now, that could be endless tweaks that you could make experimenting with. Okay. This made it a little bit easier, you know, with her, with Jenna and her reading. With Jenna and the reading, you know, we could look at genres.

Is it easier for you to stop reading this certain kind of book where this one is impossible for you to put down? Is it easier for you to stop if you're in a different location? Like she was all curled up in her bed with her fun blankets? Well, that is pretty hard to stop when you're in that little comfort cozy zone.

So maybe when reading in a different spot in the day meeting, reading in a different spot would make that [00:06:00] easier. Uh, picking a different time of the day that she's reading. You know, for most of us, by the time we are in. For most of us, by the time you reached the end of the day, a not a lot of good decisions happen, right?

Like you've used up all your energy, all your bandwidth, it is really hard to make consecutive good decisions, you know, at 10 o'clock at night. So was there a different time of day she wanted to read? Those are always that we could kind of tweak the task itself that things she loved to do to make it easier to stop.

Something that is hard to start, we can do the same thing. Like, is there something that we could do that would cut down the anxiety, the intensity, the stress of doing this hard thing?

You know, could we make this somehow more enjoyable? Could we add some things to it that make it more relaxing, less stressful, less pressure? Is there a certain kind of like face wash she wants to use while she's getting ready? A certain kind of music she wants to listen to, a special kind of blanket she wants to snuggle up with?

Is there something that would just create a little more pleasant experience rather than. Pleasant experience when there's something that's just really dreaded. So when we're looking at, so if you're looking at transitions, um, you could attack this from any of those [00:07:00] angles. You could do all three of them.

You know, you could make this thing a little easier to stop, make this thing a little easier to start and look at. What can I do to, uh, create little neutral zone, a little neutral thing. I can step between, uh, transitioning between activities for.

All right, so I want to address an objection that I know you might be having, or maybe if not you, someone, someone else watching this. Um, the objection is, man, that's complicated. I should just do it right? Like, rather than like problem solving all that stuff and talking through all that and experimenting all this stuff.

I just need to do it. I just need to stop reading and, and go to bed and Yeah, you can, right? You can just do, you can just do almost anything. But when we're working with our brains with ADHD, we're. When working with our brains with ADHD or executive functioning, um, challenges, we're working mainly on energy budgets, so you can just do almost anything, but you're using that much more of your energy budget.

So if you're somebody who's struggling with transitions and you say, Hey, I'm just going to like white knuckle this, and just do it and not make it at all [00:08:00] easier for you to do, you might end up using like 20% of your daily energy budget doing that. Um, or someone who's neurotypical. They might only need like 5% to make that tough change.

So what we want to look at doing, so the reason why we go through this kind of, um, convoluted process of problem solving, uh, just to make. So there's like kind of a method to the madness when you look at, um, how can I problem solve around a situation rather than just like, I'm going to just really work really hard and do this thing.

You can always do that. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes there's things that you have to do in your day. You have to make a transition. You don't get to. Play around with it or problem solve it. But when you have the option, if something's really difficult for you, uh, allowing yourself to problem solve, play around with that and uh, find a solution that requires less energy, less struggle and stress on your part is good.

It's a good strategy. It's a good, it's good. It's a good way to approach it. Um, looking at saving your energy budget as a whole with ADHD. So I think that's it.

So trust yourself. You know, if something is difficult for you, rather than tell yourself, well, this shouldn't be difficult, I need to just do it. Just buck up. Right? We, we've heard that around us probably all of our lives. Um, just do the thing. Trust yourself if it, if you find this very hard to do, there's reasons why, you know, usually, um.

A lot of people don't have the benefit of somebody who's coaching them and talking them [00:09:00] through all the reasons why things are difficult. But I promise you, people will come to me and say, I don't know why I'm not doing this thing. I don't know why I'm struggling here. Once we dig in, there's lots of why's, always.

It's never like, oh, no, no. Couldn't think of a single reason why you would do that. This is, this is the process and you can do this for yourself too. So, um.

So you can do this for yourself too, and, and find real sustainable solutions, uh, when it comes to transitions or, or you, so you can do this for yourself too and find real sustainable solutions if transitions are hard for you. So that's it for today. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you next time.