That time we freaked out about nothing

The discussion on "WTH ADHD" delves into the complexities of emotional regulation in individuals with ADHD. Kelly and Leti explore the concept of emotional zones, using colors to represent different emotional states, and the importance of recognizing and managing these states. They discuss the impact of dysregulation on cognitive abilities, referencing the limbic system and the amygdala's role in emotional responses. The conversation highlights strategies for emotional regulation, such as practicing self-care, using breathing techniques, and reflecting on past experiences to improve future responses. They also touch on the challenges of managing social anxiety and the importance of having a toolkit of strategies to cope with emotional triggers.

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Transcript

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Hey, Kelly, yeah, Leti, remember that time we freaked out about nothing. I Good morning. Hi, good morning. How are you? I'm good. How are you I'm good. I'm good. Welcome to W th ADHD. What the heck ADHD and emotions today is we're going to talk about a little bit. So what I want to ask you is, yeah, how are you really doing? Oh, well, I have choices of good, happy, sad, mad, tired, right? That's our general response when we think about how we feel, right? Exactly, because nobody wants to hear how you really feel. Well, do you want to hear to yourself? No, really. But more importantly, are you able to identify to yourself how you really feel? So let's talk a little bit about these feelings in terms of colors. Okay, so let's say, if I were to say green is like a general state of what we refer to as I'm good. I'm gonna tell you some words, and you tell me which one resonates best with you in terms of how you really feel right now. Okay. Do you feel focused? Do you feel happy? There's that word, yeah. I mean, are you happy? I mean, sure, sure, maybe. Are you calm? Yeah, I'm calm. Are you relaxed? Yeah, grateful always. Are you really kindly? All right, let's take that back. Great. Do you feel proud this particular moment? No. Do you feel comfortable? Yeah? Are you more comfortable or more relaxed. I don't know I feel equal comfortable and relaxed, but those are different things. Yeah, you're right thinking about the degree that those bring in terms of what your body feels and what your emotions feel. Because relaxed we might equate to an emotional state, whereas comfort, we might think of a body state, but comfort can also be emotionally where you're just kind of hovering at this even you could be content and you could be hopeful. So those are some areas of green zone, sort of regulated feelings that you could have other than just happy or or good. And it's important to identify these and have the vocabulary for these states, because as we move out of this lovely green zone towards what some people who discuss zones of regulation talk about, into our yellow and then red zones, those mad or sad feelings need to also be identified so that they can be proportionally connected to what's actually happening to you, right? Because you're probably not mad. There's probably another reaction or another reason for it. Yeah, it's but that's the only thing you can think of, right? And one of the reasons the only thing you can think of is when you enter a state of dysregulation, when you're starting to have this emotional trigger or experience the cognitive ability of yourself, meaning the frontal lobe area that's allowing you to think through things logically, starts to decline, and the middle of your brain gets really activated. And that's, you know, we think of our brain as this like thing you see at Halloween, like, this big, like two sided thing, right? This, like two lobe thing, and it's got this little Dingle bumper in the back cerebellum, but in the middle of our brain is actually a really complex structure, and that structure, the limbic system, is what regulates our emotions, and we have all these little doohickeys in there, the basal ganglia and in there, and the striatum is where we get our dopamine, produced in substantia nigra. Big words, but when our emotions start to take over our amygdala, your favorite amygdala comes activated, which is what our fight, flight or freeze comes from, right? And that sends out signals for your adrenals to get all that stuff to get ready. Right from that perceived whatever, that height, heightened emotional state, and that also suppresses some of our ability to think things through. And what we get is a really big reaction that may not be proportional to what's happening. I feel like that's my whole life. I've always had a big reaction to something that really isn't that bad, and I've never been able to understand it. I just thought I was weak and was a crybaby, right? So ADHD is really thought of as an attention deficit, because that's how they named it. You have a problem attending to stuff that's important, but ADHD is also an emotional regulation deficit. You don't have the ability to regulate your emotion because the biggest part is the stop. We're unable to stop we can't control our impulses, and whether that's stopping from picking your foot, whether that's stopping binge eat in progress, whether that's to stop doing what you're doing and leave because you're going to be late, the stop is also referring to being able to stop that emotional overreact, that thought cascade, where you just go down this well of thinking you're unable to regulate it or stop it, so baffling to me that that was probably my that that was my problem, like I've always been the person to say I can take constructive criticism you. You want to be that person I do. But then when I get into situations where someone says something constructively criticizing me, why does my Why do my eyes well up and I cry? Well, there's also this thing called rejection sensitivity. So baffling to me. So rejection sensitivity is a term for this dysregulation that happens, this perceived rejection that occurs for some people, and this tends to fall into a couple of neurodivergent conditions, such as ADHD, autism, anorexia, some some of these components our thoughts just we can't regulate them, and so we perceive a no as a rejection of the self. And we can talk a little bit more as to how that actually occurs, but for me as a child, I would cry at everything. I just cry and everything. Tears just well up. I could not control it. Would get mad at me, yes. So then when people get mad at you, what that's telling you is that what you're feeling is wrong, and now there's this huge disconnect, right? I feel this. They're telling me it's wrong. One or two things, they don't understand me. I gotta get out of dodge, right? And just like, avoid, avoid, avoid. Or, you know, that's your flight. You choose to fight. You're gonna tell them, No, this is how I really feel. And then it all comes out. And everything else that all sudden piles up into that pattern. And that time you blah, blah, blah, and you literally, like, go into herbal diarrhea, into Yeah, or, or you freeze and, and then you stuff it deep down inside. I prefer to stuff yeah, my emotions deep down inside. Normally, I do that too. I've only had a, you know, a handful of occasions where I may have, or may, you know, have flipped out. Flipped out, big time. Do you feel that your ability to flip out has improved, as in, you're able to address it versus always stuff it down. The last time I flipped out was at work, and it was a really bad one. It was very bad. Did we talk about that? No, I flipped out on a co worker. Oh, it was, it was ugly. It was really bad. And I'm, I was embarrassed after I could regulate, but the initial like, he, he just, he poked, and Mama bear came out and, and it was, it was ugly, all right, so let's talk about that event in terms of, there's a woman by the name of Caroline McGuire, and she talks about the four R's of regulation and what occurs. So at the time, let's talk about that first R, which is, recognize what was happening. Into your body. Do you remember like clenching your fists? Maybe like clenching your jaw? You was already, I was already in a state of panic. Were you fighting back tears at that point? Like, what was your body doing? My body was, yeah, I was clenched. Your fists were clenched. So that was clenched. I was I went into the situation already heightened. All right? So something had happened, yes, something didn't get delivered. Okay? And then, so we're talking about just, let's say, a small, medium, large problem. How large of a problem was this? In reality, looking back at it, just, oh, it was a quantifying. It was a big problem. It was a big problem that someone didn't do correct, yeah. Okay, so you have this big problem that needs to be resolved, and you go to try to resolve it with this individual, right? Okay, and then was there? What was their response to that large problem? Attitude, back to me, and what did that tell you? What did that make you feel that he had no respect for the process, and why is that so outrageous that he just didn't care in retros? Never liked that with me before. So So then this always very accommodating and helpful. So do you feel that maybe something changed about how he felt about you versus the problem. I thought for sure he didn't like me anymore, and why he said that to me. So when you said, Hey, Joe Schmo, this package didn't get delivered, he turned to you and said, I hate your face. No, I don't like you anymore. Oh, yeah, he didn't say that. What did he say? He said, Kelly, I did and deliver it. Let me look in this. And then after he looked in there and I and I responded to something, he said, Oh, you can't do that. Oh, you can't. And he was pointing to something on his computer with saying how easy it was to actually do that. Well, clearly what he was saying is, Kelly, your face is ugly. You're fat and you're not hate you. Yeah, that's what you're saying. So, you know what I did? Yeah, what'd you do? Oh, my God, buddy, it's so embarrassing. Like, so that's where it so when, when he when that happened, it literally went into my heart, struck my heart, where you did? Your heart start to beat faster, of course, because he lit, I literally felt like he was hurting me, saying that to me, and I went bananas. Started screaming at his name, paint. The same for me. This is an office space. This is an office space with young guys in it, between 20 and 30 years of age, about five of them sitting in a small space and in a professional office and a professional office environment, and what did you bring to the table? In that moment, I fucking started screaming, crying, I mean, literally, like, Oh my god. How dare you talk to me like that? How dare you treat me like that, and I fucking was screaming, crying. One of the guys was trying to pull me back. Were you, like, moving towards and like, want to go? Yes, no. Like, honestly, like, I in those moments, I feel like I could hold my fists up and actually roll it back and punch. So let's pause here. Oh, my God, so embarrassing. It was so embarrassing. So clearly, everyone at this point has turned to you wide eyes dropped what they're doing. Their mouth is a gape, like, like, they're just like, What is going on? Holy shit. This lady's Crazy, right? So what happened inside your body is your amygdala went, Oh, it is now wartime, and it released all this adrenaline artists cortisol, stress hormones are just coursing through your veins, which pick up your heart rate and your your executive function, your frontal lobe to really at this Point, negotiate anything is gone. There is no, no, nothing, zero, right? So you went from green to red in like a second, yeah? All it took was those, those three condescending words, that was it. And my mind flipped. I started screaming, crying, having these young guys look at me like I'm crazy. Finally, one of them got me out of the room, and I went up to my office, or whatever you want to call it, where I shared with people, and I. Was sobbing. Were you shaking? Yeah, yeah. So that was the residual of the adrenaline. And my, you know, co worker, he's like, we got to go talk about this. We got to go talk to because what he said, what he did, was shitty and uncalled for. Yes, what I did afterward was shitty and uncalled for, but I was putting out proportional correct to what he did, right, and I was provoked. So we went, let's so you saying you were provoked. But I mean, if I wasn't, if I was a normal, regulated person, I would say, Aldo, go fuck yourself. Fix this and send my shit. So, you know, I heard you were provoked. You're kind of pulling that shift off you, like he did it to you, but you really did this to yourself. Yes, if I was in and if I was in a better state of mind, like I said, or if you did not have ADHD rejection sensitivity and were able to regulate your system, that's, that's that's what might have come out, and that's what I feel like, that's what I reflected on, right? Framed after. It's so easy to come up with what you should have done once you look at it, but yes, I always, now I think of that situation when I'm in other situations, so that I don't go into that situation again, right? And I've always been highly jealous of people who were able to kind of like, be like, cool Joe, or whatever you like, just be like, Cool as a cucumber in the moment and and do these things. And you brought up something very, very important there with what you just said about like, when you think about it, you thought about it and reflected on it, and then now you kind of use that in future, you know, situations or potential situations. So when we go back to this four R's, it's to recognize what you're going into in terms of your body, and then you respond to this system change, right? And then you go ahead and reflect on it, and then you reframe the situation. But you're not able to do all those other three R's unless you do exactly what you did, which is you went back and you reflected on this thing so that you could kind of reframe of what is really going on. Oh, my God, Letty tell me what the four R's are again, because now I complete what, what? Because I Okay, very I forgot. No, it's okay. We're gonna, like, circle back a little bit, because, you know, I'm putting these R's into the situation as you're talking about that, but we'll circle back a little bit to unravel this scenario and how they fit. So the first one really is that recognition, right? So you were unable to recognize in that moment, those early signs of the clenching and the tears and those kind of things, yeah, going into it, I should have had a way better mindset. I should not have gone into that situation in the mindset that I was in, right? And again, we're talking about hindsight, but it's good that you have that now, right? So those events, while they're horrific and embarrassing. They do serve a purpose to help us navigate these situations a little bit better. So now you have some tools in the recognized category, right? You can actually, like, draw on that a little bit like, oh, like, my nails are digging into my palms. I must be experiencing this emotional shift, because you might not cognitively like, really get it right. You're not picking up in it, but you can certainly feel that physical component. So it's important to practice these recognition states of what that feels like. So even like taking your hand right now and bunching it up into a ball and feeling what that feels like when you're in a regulated state. What does that feel like? How long can you hold it before you get fatigued? You know, clenching your stomach, or clenching your eyes or grinding your teeth. Like, do it now, like, clench your teeth. I can't do it that long. It hurts, right? I don't like it. And so recognizing these things in the green zone when you're calm, practicing them, so that when you're climbing through these stages really quickly, you're more likely to catch yourself. So then in that response, what you could have said? The response could have been like, Could you clarify that for me? Like, what did you mean by that? And practicing a response so you could actually practice both these steps, clench your fists, hold them for a little bit, and with the clenched mouth, say, like, what did you mean by that? To give yourself a little time to see. If, if you're really being rejected, or if this person is like in their head space, looking at their computer and talking to you about nothing that relates to you. Oh, they're not telling me I'm a horrible person and that I'm ugly. They are. I'm the devil. Yeah, you are clearly, because that's what he said, as far as I'm concerned, so you want to practice what to do when you're you're having that response state. You want to practice that in the time when you're regulated, right? You also want to put into this respond category some self care in terms of understanding that you're not a terrible person, that that that's not what the world thinks of you. You're great, right? It's just weird. It's really weird. So maybe that can COVID how you actually can think that you're you're a bad person, and that everyone feels, that everyone thinks you're back if they're looking at you, that's what's inside their head. It's wild. Versus what else could there be in their head? It could be like, how do I help this person? Or why that was uncalled for? Or, you know, like, should I get help? Like, so there's so many other thoughts that people could be having other than this person is horrible, so weird, and so a little self care could come in, maybe a little daily affirmation you write in your planner like, I'm okay. I like vanilla ice cream, just like other people, so I'm not horrible. Whatever it is that you want to put in there that kind of makes you feel part of the non horrible people. God, it's so wild. Yeah, and you can review past conversations when your emotions were heightened, just like we did now, and kind of just, you know what kind of repair you still may need to do. Oh, so this is what happened, right? Tell you what happened after. So afterwards, went and talked to my boss, and was a mess. Talking to my boss, I was still in it. I was still in it, right? So when I got back to my desk for about, I want to say, three weeks, I refused to go down to that area. Everybody brought your word voiding. Yeah, no to me, it was they don't deserve to have me in their presence. How did you shift from your horrible person to they don't you? Yeah, you don't get to see me. So everybody brought my word. Wait, so you were punishing them? Yeah, okay, got it. I mean, that's really super mature, like a no, I'm I'm all about punishing people for wrongs. I'm only 51 so for three weeks, we're not gonna be friends anymore because you didn't do it my way. For three weeks, I refused to go down there. Everybody brought my work down there. You had my Yep, no, I refuse to go down there. And then, honestly, after about three weeks, wait, wait, in that three weeks, what do you think was going on inside that guy's head? Oh, I think he could care if I can less, but in reality, because that's what you think. What do you like? What do you really think was happening to that guy's mind? Because I'm sure he couldn't have felt good about that situation either, right? I don't think, yeah, I don't think he felt good about me. When I see someone lose it, I do have empathy for that, and I feel like, you know that poor person is going through something, and if I contributed to that state, I'm gonna feel kind of crappy about it, even if, even if I was in the right because that I brought them to a really awful place, right? And everyone kind of is remembering that. So I'm feeling some shame and guilt as well, right? Guarantee you as shame, I didn't want to go down there either, because I didn't want them to see me. It was like a two way thing. It was funny. It's like, you don't deserve to see me, but I don't want you to see me because you're going to remember what the fuck I just did and how ugly it was. So it was like a double was part of it also, like, you didn't really know what to say to them. Maybe, like, here I apologize. No, no, be right. Like, I didn't think I had to apologize. Oh, you didn't okay. Let me okay. Just let me finish my three weeks. Hold on streaming. Um, no one deserves screaming in the work environment. I just want to put that out there for you. Agreed. I, after three weeks, I brought some work down there, sat next to him, you put on your big girl pennies I did, sat next to him and said, I am so sorry for the way that I treated. To you, and he looked at me, and he's like, Oh my God, I am so sorry for what I said to you. And I said, I'm not mad at you anymore, and I released you. That was it. So it took you about three weeks to process that situation. Yeah, yeah, it took me that long and and him, he's like, I should have known better. I should have known I should have, like, seen you were upset, and I should have been so you must have been displaying some pretty good physical tells about your dysregulated state. The shitty thing about all of it is the reason why it happened was because of something so stupid, because of our job. And our job makes us so stressed out, and the people that we work for make us so stressed out, so that when they stress on you and something didn't get done correctly. Then you then go, already heightened from that stress to find out what the hell happened? Because they're screaming at you, send my stuff. Send it, send it. Send it. And it didn't get sent. Yeah, but what you're you're kind of failing to see in this step this process, rather, is that you're operating at a constant sort of dysregulation because you have ADHD, right? Someone who doesn't have ADHD is going to perceive all of this in a very different way, right? Right now, I'm not saying that the person screaming at you doesn't have some sort of neuro divergence going on to you absolutely or unresolved anger or trauma. Yes, you know, yes. Because really, if you look at the grand scheme of things, no one should be yelling as a grown up at each other at a work space, right? You're not a parent. You're not trying to discipline your child, you're not a child. These are things that should be discussed in a constructive manner, versus creating this hostile environment that's very much triggering. I think a lot of people in that space, as in that parent relationship, or somewhere where you had that happen to you? Yes, yes, a very different space. Yeah. And if you're having these experiences with someone, that individual needs like attention from HR or something, because it's telling you those people are dysregulated. So you're working in a field that draws people who have ADHD, because ADHD people tend to be creatives too, right? We're outside of the box thinkers. So, I mean, I can't put a percent on it, but I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of people hanging out in there who are also highly dysregulated by all kinds of things. And that could be that spinning fan that's dysregulating Your system that's making a little hum, and you're already coming in, like, 5% dysregulated into that meeting, so and then someone smells funny, and then that, that creates another little layer, and then all these other systemic dysregulations that occur that are not even emotional yet, right? They're systemic. We have these body dysregulations, and how well that's regulated depends on your own neurological wiring, but those definitely compound your emotional state too. You know what's interesting, though, and then, as I'm literally listening to you, I have had two but What's so weird is I've had two experiences. So I had that experience with that co worker, but then I had a client, an actual client. Oh yeah, I remember this. Remember this. He actually came into my area where people weren't allowed, where there's a bunch of us who work together. He came into my area and screamed at me. I was sitting at my desk, and he was pointing fingers in my face, screaming at me, and I literally just sat there and listened and took it, because he was screaming at me in front of my co workers for something that was he didn't understand, and I could have embarrassed him incredibly at that point, like embarrassed him incredibly. I sat there. I took it. We Okay. Hold on to the situation. How are you able to do that, right? How did you know dysregulated? I'm trying, well, hold on, so I'm that's what I'm trying to figure out. Is rejecting big time, right there. But it was, but it wasn't because I knew he was wrong and what he was dreaming me. Did you know who's wrong? Because he didn't understand the process, and he thought I was doing something, but he didn't realize i. Like it was a process he didn't understand in this delivery, and he mistook it for something, which is fine. I under I understood that. So there's no way for you to really interpret it as a rejection to you. Or he, honest to God, you're just like, Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. Like, oh my god. Like, are you done screaming at me? Like, fucking finished screaming at me. So I can explain to you why the you're you're wrong, right? So he screamed. I explained to him he calmed down. Went back to his Bay to continue his work. What I did was I said, everybody, excuse me, because there was literally probably nine people there that he was screaming at me in front of. And I got up, I walked into the bay. I went right in front of him, and I said, You will never talk to me like that again, like so how can I do that? I said you will never speak to me, you will never come back to my department. You will never walk back there again, and you will never scream at me in front of my co workers ever again. And he literally melted into a puddle of goo and was apologizing up and down, but he's a serial offender. Yes, he's a serial offender. So he might have Rome like his, like rage issues, major rage issues. But guess who didn't get rage anymore me after that, because I said to him, I will not tolerate it, right? And that was calm, so I can tell you why, cool. And I was collected, and I did it in front of nobody, actually the editor, I did it in front of she was freaking out. But other than that, and then I said, there's no need to apologize. There's no, there's no, I'm sorry. There's we're this is that was a very regulated. Kelly, how weird. How can I do that? Weird? Do that because you didn't trigger that rejection system. Hi, because I know I was right. You were You're right. So you were in that green zone. You were able to, at that point, like, recognize what was going on. You were able to get to that second R, which is bond, bond, right? You were able to, like, kind of like, listen, yes, yes. And you reflected, and then you gathered your thoughts and you took it to him, and you told him what your boundaries were, right? You were able to do that because you weren't dysregulated. Your cognitive processes weren't suppressed by your amygdala, fight or flight or freeze, so you didn't need to re regulate. You were in that state and and for the most part, people tend to stay fairly regulated, or they'll go yellow and they go back to green, right? But for and I'm not saying people don't get dysregulated who don't have ADHD, we certainly do, and a lot of that is also trauma induced. If you've had childhood trauma or complex PTSD, those things are really quick to flip up own episode in itself, yeah, for sure. But you weren't triggered into that state by what was happening, because you cognitively had an understanding up front so wild. There was no ambivalence, yeah, that could be interpreted, yeah, in that, you know, rejection, sensitivity domain, and that's why you were able to walk through it, because they lovely of an app about him, right? Well, not just that. It was because there were the interpretation was clear. Now, let me ask you something else, though, based on that scenario, the next time you flipped out and weren't able to regulate, were you like thinking to yourself, like, why couldn't I just have been like, how is that, that one time when that guy yelled at me? You know, I haven't thought about that situation till now. In a while, I had forgotten about that situation, so I haven't used it as a reflection tool. Yeah, I haven't used it as I forgot about it until now I started talking. So this is really great to kind of go back. And I think sometimes we're really afraid to think back on these moments of dysregulation because we're so embarrassed, right? And it's very, very important to take one when you're kind of feeling you have a little space to do it, reflect, go back on it, on that situation, and think about what your triggers were, what your body did, what you said, however you want to die and crawl under the deepest hole in the earth. I definitely can what maybe you could have said, Oh, there's always woulda coulda shoulda said, there is woulda, coulda, shoulda. But there's a difference between regret and constructive looking at, okay, these are some sentences that could have come out my mouth and practice saying them so that they're less new, that they're somewhere. Are, you know, crawling around in your mind that you may be able to reach for if you're not super dysregulated yet, you mean, you scream, how dare you do that to me. I never thought you would something to the effect of late, like, do you want to come back and talk to me about this in a little bit when you're more calm? Right? Practicing these things. If people yelling at you bothers you, you should have some kind of script available to not necessarily shut down that individual, but just let them know that maybe they need to take a minute like I need to tell me to take right? Yeah, those are also, I'm going to come into that strategy a little bit, because there are some things you can do when you're in that sort of yellow stage of dysregulation. We've moved past the fisting. In the balling of the fists. We have moved past fisting. Wow. This is rated our show now. Wow. Thank you. So when you when you have that physiology has now shifted you emotionally into that next stage. There's some things you can do. One, you can focus on your breathing. And I know it's like, oh yeah, breathing, breathing. No, no, really, you really need to do because as as your amygdala switches on, your fight, flight or freeze, you're going to have physiological changes that respond to the release of adrenaline. Your heart rate is increasing, which means that your breathing is going to get a little more rapid. But if you're in the avoidance or trauma, maybe you might get more shallow in breathing. So really trying to regulate that breathing to be a slow you know, 1234, in. 1234, out. Just focusing on that for a minute is really helpful to bring that level a little bit down, because then maybe your body is not perceiving a threat, because you're still controlling that breath. I have that on my watch. My watch has a breathing Great. Another thing you can do is just count to three before you actually open your mouth and respond. Well, why would we do that on Mississippi too, Mississippi, really. With Mississippi too. Um, you can choose a minor flight, which is, just go for a walk. You're like, you know what? I'll be right back, and remove yourself from that situation until you can kind of come to a better space. Cognitively. You can, if you're home and you just are having a phone call, or someone is is in your space, creating this. You can pet your pet, your dog, your cat, something that kind of brings about feelings that help pull you back down. You can drink some tea. You can meditate. The goal is to go back to your green zone, or as close as you can. But in order to do this, you need to figure out for yourself what are some things that do bring you down. And in order to do that, you have to notice and recognize like, you know, when I drink this tea, I feel, you know, pretty, pretty calm. I feel really Zen about it, or whatever it is. So you need to have a little list for yourself, sit down, take a minute. What are some realistic things? I can't meditate of 10,000 thoughts. I can't do it, but I can certainly pat my cat, and it makes me feel really, really good. So knowing what your regulators are, and then practicing those in a green state and saying it, I'm going to be right back. I'm just going to go for like five minutes, and we're going to continue whatever it is. You have to practice doing it, because then your brain has seen yourself doing it right, easier to do, right? So when you're in that red zone, there is no space for resolution. You can't respond. You can't pick up the phone that person's calling you back. You can't text back. There's no responding. You need to stop because you will not be able to perceive that situation correctly. You are not seeing it correctly that you're just misinterpreting 100% so anything you do at that point that's a response is going to just create further confusion and misunderstanding, and it's going to get wilder and wilder. So if you're able to stop responding, it's yeah, yes, yes. And I'm not talking about suppression, right? I'm not talking about you suppressing your feelings. No, you just can. You need to take a minute. I'm really mad right now. I'm gonna go for a walk. We're back because I'm gonna say something I regret, right? And I know I think things that aren't logical in the moment, I know they're not real, I know they're not correct, because my thoughts get very cuckoo, and you don't know that in the moment. So the really the thing to walk away, maybe have a key phrase to yourself, like, disengage, whatever it is, so that you're able to at least pull out, go in the bathroom, whatever it is, so that you can kind of call on those strategies that help you regular. Laid a little bit better. I wish I would have had this when I was younger. I mean, seriously, it's stop it. Like, stop it. That's what you get when you're younger. Stop it. Yeah, right. And it's funny because parents, you know, like when a child is having a meltdown, and if you've you have ADHD, you've had meltdowns in the store, you've had, you know, unable to control your emotions. You wanted that cookie. You couldn't get it or whatever it was. And what's interesting is parents feel that they're being judged by their child's behavior, and so they wanted to stop. But the funny thing is, research shows that people actually judge how a parent responds to the tantrum much, much more than the child actually having that thing, because they it's kind of expected that kids have tantrums, right? But if the parents having a tantrum and they're starting to yell at their child to stop it, that's going to be looked on more poorly than if the parent is kind of trying to take that green zone approach, right? Like, Oh, I really hear you're mad about that. Are disappointed giving those really good words to that child, right? So teach, they learn the difference between mad, disappointed, right? Sad. What are the other what are the other words for red, sure, so mad, angry is good too. Furious, that's great word. Oh, terrified, panicked, you know, out of control, wild, because red can also be, like, overjoyed, right? It doesn't have to be a negative word. There'll be a really big dysregulation with the elation. And that was me. I'd get like, super happy and so excited for change, because I was like, oh, dopamine is coming, and I and I get crazy, but in a different way, I'd be bouncing off the walls or doing really silly, stupid things and and picking up stuff and flailing it around without thinking about, I'm going to take someone's eye out or break a lamp, right? Because I'd just be in the state of red, right, correct, a different kind of red. So red doesn't necessarily mean anger. It just means that you're not regulated emotionally. You're not able to see the consequence of your behavior, whether that's yelling, whether that's being silly, and like messing up someone's hair and doing all these things that are getting them really out of their comfort zone, too. So don't think that, you know, red is just anger. It's, it's very deep and complex. So as a parent, you know, I take a lot of time to make sure that I'm really trying to help identify those feelings that the child is having when they're coming to me with some kind of reaction like, you know, you look really like, overstimulated right now, or whatever it is, and seeing if that fits, if they're not agreeing, I might say, like, Oh, are you like, also really tired? And then I might get a Yeah, and I'm like, Alright, I'm in the right neighborhood. Are you like, you're also, like, really hungry, so now maybe they're hangry. So helping the child navigate these emotion words is really important. You read the yellow words too, because I feel like that. That's where my kid lies in the yellow words. And you know what I'm referring to here, as a speech therapist, dysregulation is something i i deal with all the time, right my patients. So I like to use this wonderful author, who is Leah creepers, is her name, and it's the zones of regulation. And in there, part of the system is learning these vocabulary words. And we will, like, make little, some sort of will make like a little flippy chart, or some way to kind of help identify these different feelings in the particular zones. And if you're in the yellow zone, which is where you're kind of ramping up a little bit, you can just be excited before you're overjoyed, super happy. You could be frustrated enough frustration is not being able to control something and frustration can lead to the feeling of out of control, right? So it's a degree of of emotion, but it's the same emotion kind of thing, but you're now at a different space of it nervous can shift into anxiety, which can shift to panic, right? So identifying that you're nervous first is really important to maybe stay out of that anxiety zone. Because if my nerves are my very first, I feel nervous immediately, and that's how I know something Something's off. So when you feel nervous, you should be practicing your strategies that you practice in your green zone. Can I just take a Xanax? No, oh, because that's what I did. But no, you should, if not something that you medical really, really need. But medication is great, but medication alone is not necessarily functional if you're not doing cognitive behavior. Behavioral therapy to help manage these events, because the brain relies heavily on patterns. The brain is a predictor machine. If the dog barks, the next thing that's going to happen is he's going to bite me, because that's what happened to me in the past. Therefore you're going to get scared every time the dog barks, because your brain's sending out that predictor. So if you get nervous and you reach for that Xanax without using strategies in combination, or strategies first, depending on the level you're feeling, then you might that like that's the loop. If I feel any nerves, then I'm going to need a Xanax. And you need for Xanax might increase based on your brain's pattern. I haven't used Xanax in quite some time. And on Friday, we had a funeral to go to, and I was going to see family that we haven't seen since before the pandemic. For some reason, the second I realized that my nerves, I could feel it rise through what you have done, that's what I need to think about, because my first reaction was, fuck those nerves, Papa, Xanax, right? So what you might have done is mentally prepared for that funeral, right? Who might I expect to see there? Who could trigger me? How would I feel about even looking at that funeral, the casket or whatever, like kind of walking yours? You know? What that's funny is, I did think about all that because none of that bothered me. I just, I haven't, because you were limiting the stuff that might bother you. So you have to kind of allow yourself also to enter those spaces that might perturb you, instead of just looking at the stuff that you're like, oh yeah, that's not gonna bother me. I'll be fine with that. I think it was a long time coming. I think it was more i The fact that I was going to be around a lot of people, and there's going to have to large groups a lot, and also large groups that social occasion, right? So kind of framing it that way to help you prepare yourself of that's what it was. It's like I have to be on today. So you just reflected three hours, great. So you just reflected. So thinking about that, let's, let's use this. This is perfect, right? So let we've reframed this. Now it was really about that social anxiety versus really the funeral content, yeah. So in being reflective and reframing it, what might be a strategy you could have used up front. What could you have told yourself? Okay, Kelly, great people, or I'm gonna beat them in a while. And no, no, no, you're skirting off because you identified it as a social anxiety, because you're gonna have to perform an act. So Kelly, you're about to enter a situation where you're going to have to be on for three hours, prepare yourself, right? So thinking about what it is that's actually creating the root of that anxiety, and that was that social that you really well identify? Yeah, I have that an issue with that, so you forgot that as soon as it came out your mouth. So it's also important that when we're reflecting, that we're kind of journaling it or writing it on a sticky, whatever it is to help you read right? Because we forget stuff that comes out of our mouth. As ADHD people, we're not even realizing it that it's out of our mouth. So if you're going to use a strategy to help you do better in terms of regulation at a next event, do have some kind of writing that's yours to help guide yourself? Good idea. So we talked about love, about that for the yellow you could also be worried and anxious, which is a little different than nervous. Nervous might be because you're not sure how things are going to go, whereas, where you're worried and anxious, you already have scenarios playing that are not real interesting, right? You're running through these scenarios that lead to all lead to they're gonna hate me. You could be silly in that yellow which then leads to that over action class clown, right? You're ramping up. You could be just annoyed, and annoyance can turn into anger in that red zone. You could be embarrassed. An embarrassment can bring shame. It could bring shut down. It can bring those tears, oh, yeah, or lash out, or a punishment, yep, you could be overwhelmed. So overwhelmed could be mentally, but by your thoughts, you could be overwhelmed by sensory what you're feeling or what state your body is in. You could be a combination with the both, and overwhelm is a really great fast track to dysregulation, and that overwhelm is a red Word. To me over being overwhelmed is awful, right? Yeah, for me, it's I gotta, like, get out. I got, I feel like it's a red, but so, but overwhelm isn't that big, right? There's a next level, I guess there is. Yeah, right? Right there. Once you become overwhelmed, then the bad shit, the bad things, come out. The next thing is going to be your red, your red, whatever that to make that overwhelm stop. So recognizing overwhelm and then have some strategies. When I'm overwhelmed, I need to put on my loop, noise canceling earplugs, or I need to put on some music. When I'm overwhelmed, I need to take a drink of water, whatever it is that, depending on where you're at that you need to have some strategies for that overwhelm. I'm going to rub this really soft thing that I keep on my key chain, whatever it is that helps you. There's jealous. Jealous is a yellow one. Jealous can lead to rage? Yeah, absolutely, there's upset. Upset isn't really mad. And upset could be that you're really not sure what it is, or you maybe you're hurt, or you're going into that rejection sphere, right? But it's a smaller word. It's definitely manageable. You can manage upset, yeah, absolutely, that's a really cool response right now because you're looking at me with those like, whatever look that you got going on, I'm kind of upset by that. If you stop, I'm gonna get like, rage on you. Yeah, you better watch out. Scared. It's also a yellow zone. Scared is not fear. Scared is the starter, or the precursor, right? It's a smaller scale of it, which can get into fear, which can get into anxiety and panic, right? There's different levels. So identifying that you might be scared because you feel threatened, this could be because you're in a space that is not shared by allies, so someone who might not understand you and get you. You could be scared for your body. You could be scared because the situation is unknown. They're just and it's very small, but you need to recognize it so you don't get into that next step and that you can reach for some strategies. So what are some things you can do when you're scared? You might need a body. You might need someone who does make you feel safe with you. You might need to call them and get them there so you know something's coming to help you. You might need to change your location so you feel safer, right? So there are some things that you need to put down on paper for yourself that you can practice in this green zone. If I get scared, I might a do this. What are some things? And then maybe only one works, or whatever, but there's something you can do, and you're less likely to feel overwhelmed, you're less likely to feel nervous or worried, which then jumps into that devastated, terrified, out of control anxiety, right? So then looking at that, the small words you could be confused, right? Yes, what would you say? You missed half of something, and you heard a word and you're taking it very personally, because maybe it was at you, but it wasn't right. You're just confused. You didn't get it. Something's confusing, or something shifted, like a situation changed, like people are looking at something all of a sudden, right? You're confused, and that confusion can lead to panic, big time, or it can lead to anger, right? Because it depends on the source. So if you're confused, well, what's something you can do? Ask a question, maybe, what's going on? What's happening? Oh, oh, a pigeon crashed. Okay, that's fine, right? You need to, I don't know. That's what everyone's looking at in my head. Messenger pigeons have crashed, I guess, yeah, because it's 1392, and the messenger pigeons, what flying across Paris? Who's this pigeon in 2023 I do because I'm me. So if you're confused, have a strategy in place and practice it when you're in your green zone to help like, that's, that's the big thing is to have some strategies. You've got to write them down. Two things you can do and you're confused, ask a question, get the heck out of dodge. Whatever it is to help you. You're really trying to get out of that red zone, or stay out of that red zone, and the only way to do that is to have some strategies prepared. So in the show notes, I'll put the resources in there and help you guys kind of look over it. I know this is a lot to unpack, but there's some really great talk about it, a lot more too, just to because there, there's a lot, there's a lot with this, I'm gonna lose it. I'm not saying. I won't. I'm definitely gonna lose it one time, two times, 300 more times, yesterday, on Mother's Day, I lost it all day, Saturday. Yeah. So no, I like, I was gonna like, but I had strategies in place for that particular situation. I talked it out, so that was really helpful to kind of re regulate where I didn't feel I was in the space that was so isolated in that particular situation. I need you to realize that you really what you did a lot. Right to learn from that situation. And I need you to just, yeah, realize that in very proud of yourself or being very well, no, you just silly things that make you have to, you know, contemplate different things. And it was, you know, emotional dysregulation comes in all forms, and that's really what we're talking about here, that we have a poor ability to manage our states of regulation when we have ADHD, so we have tools. It's a process, I think, identifying that this is an area that needs support throughout maybe the day, and it's just and it's not going to happen overnight, and it's going to take a lot of work to really just to continue. I mean, yeah, and it's and things are still going to happen in regard, you know, I think people are sometimes put off by the word work. So I think, yes, using that word can be kind of like practice, especially for ADHD, like, I don't want to do anything regularly. I don't want to even want to practice either. So how about save yourself, yeah? Like, this is, actually, yeah, it's like having potato chips, you know, you just keep having one after another. That's what the work is. Is that what it is, yeah, it just makes you feel good. Yeah? The word this, this kind of work makes you feel good. Actually, it is you feel good. So you know, get yourself a bag of potato chips and go through dysregulation. There you go, done and done chips solve everything. And with that, this has been brought to you by w, T, H, ADHD, thank you for joining us on our journey, and hopefully this has brought you some insight into what might be happening to you, and if you've had a really, really great moment of dysregulation that you'd like to share with us, we'd love to hear from you and talk about it, so that you guys can see that this is not something that's unique to you. You're not alone. You're actually normal with that. That's a normal thing that happens so well, you know, potato for 80 for ADHD? Yes, it's within the realm, yes. So don't feel alone. We're here with you. We're going through our own dysregulation. We'll do it together. We'll eat that bag of potato chips together. This has been a hiats, me ADHD production.