Choosing Hope Instead of Avoidance with ADHD

In this episode, Megs explores organizing through the lens of ADHD, nervous system regulation, and the human need for comfort during difficult times. She shares a personal story about losing her childhood blankie to illustrate how comfort objects and familiar routines often help us feel safe — especially when life feels unpredictable or overwhelming.

The episode also acknowledges the emotional weight of what’s happening in the world and how collective stress can quietly intensify avoidance, dysregulation, and the urge to retreat or “hide.” Through this discussion, the host differentiates between comforts that genuinely support regulation and those that keep people stuck.

With compassion and honesty, the episode offers practical organizing insights, emotional regulation strategies, and reminders that seeking ease, structure, and hope is not a failure — it’s a form of care. The overall message centers on coming out of hiding, choosing supportive comforts, and remembering that progress doesn’t require perfection.

Article: Exaggerated Emotions: How and Why ADHD Triggers Intense Feelings

Podcast Recommendation: Connection Project 360

Episode Breakdown

 01:21 – Childhood comfort objects and why they matter more than we realize
02:05 – Autonomy, choice, and trust in organizing decisions
04:04 – Why discomfort makes us cling to clutter, routines, or avoidance
07:47 – Emotional reactions, nervous system responses, and ADHD coping patterns
11:47 – Healthier comforts, regulation tools, and practical support strategies
16:37 – Hope, connection, and the role of community when things feel heavy
26:20 – Final reflections, reassurance, and encouragement to keep going

Would you like to learn more about hiring Megs as your ADHD coach? Start here> The Perfect Place to Start

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Transcript

Megs: 0:39

Hey, welcome back. Now, this episode is gonna be about organizing, but trigger warning. I'm also going to be talking about what's happening in our world and ways to find comfort in what is happening all around us. Because believe it or not, we find comfort in avoiding the clutter and chaos around us. Sometimes our to-do lists, sometimes the craziness of our life, And we keep getting stuck in this cycle where we feel like we can't seem to get out of it. And most of you listening likely have a DHD or have been exploring what it means to have a DHD. So I'm gonna talk to that, but I wanna talk about comforts and I wanna talk about hope today when I was living in Boston and going to school and working full time. I had my blankie from childhood with me. Now, it didn't actually look like a blankie. It was just the edge of the blanket because apparently the interior of the blanket had disintegrated away based on how much it was loved. So it was like the silky, outermost part of the blanket that I would keep with me As a wadded up ball of comfort. I like the way that it smelled. I like the way that it made me feel when I laid down at night and was I a 20 something woman living my life with a blankie? Yes, absolutely. I felt inspired to tell this story because I saw someone share the other day on threads, how they had a professional organizer come over and throw away things that. They were not given permission to throw away, and I just want you to know that that's not an okay thing. Your decisions in your home are your decisions alone, and when you hire someone, it is up to them to help you, encourage you to make those decisions and find the right way to do it, not to force you to do anything that you don't wanna do. So back to the story. My landlord at the time also lived in this place. We had two other roommates and he asked me, Hey, I'm hiring some house cleaners. Would you like them to clean your room? And I was like, no, there's stuff everywhere. I had stuff on the floor. I had stuff on my dresser, I had stuff on my bed. It was a mess. And I'm like, I'm not gonna clean it up before they come. No, I don't want help. This is my space. And when I came home from work. It was clean and it looked really great. It was nice, but I also didn't know where anything was. I was like, holy smokes. My life is in complete disarray now because I have no idea how to function in this space. Not knowing where anything is. That night when I went to bed, I gave a quick look for my blankie, but I couldn't find it and I never did. They must have come in and thought it was trash and threw it away. And I still think about it to this day'cause I loved it so much. It was my blankie from childhood, I actually gave a presentation on having childhood blankies in a psychology class in high school, and thinking back on it. I had no shame. apparently, I'm not as afraid of speaking up in spaces as I thought. But I share that because that blankie brought me a lot of comfort and then it was immediately gone. Our stuff actually brings us a lot of comfort. The stuff that we have, the stuff that we're used to seeing, the stuff that we understand is ours, and it takes a lot to let it go, But I wanna talk about comfort in doing uncomfortable things today. And I wanna share how I found comfort through the events that happened in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago. At first, I was hesitant to share this because. I have a tendency to try to make everyone happy around me by saying the right thing, except that I don't wanna say the right thing anymore. I wanna say the thing that I believe to help people understand what I stand for. And so I'm coming to you today not asking you to leave. If you disagree with me, I encourage you to stay and to hear a different perspective because in a world that is continuously divided, we need more understanding of one another. So if you don't stay for what I believe in, please stay for the way that our A DHD brain reacts to chaos and how it manifests in our world around us. I try to stay off social media on a regular basis. You won't see me posting a lot. I have a podcast and I post in my community, But on that Saturday, my husband looked at me and he is like, don't go on social media. Whatever you do, you don't need to see what just happened. Now, of course. That's the first thing I need to do now. and when I saw what had taken place, my whole body felt like it was rushed with emotions. I started welling up with tears. Immediately my body started shaking a little bit. And I felt this immense sorrow for our nation. One, because this is not something that we should ever have to get used to seeing murders or videos of murders happening on our social media pages. But in addition to that, allowing something like that to be normal, after I let it sink in, the first thing I wanted to do was go shopping. I said, we need to go. We need a bookcase. That is what we need today. We need to go and buy a bookcase. And so we went to the store to find a bookcase and we didn't, but I let my girls buy whatever they wanted. They have their own accounts to spend money with. And I bought a couple of fun things for our house. Within reason. I knew that none of this was going to solve what was happening, but in my mind I was so dysregulated and so disoriented over what was happening, that I needed something to distract me from these uncomfortable feelings right away. And for me, that's a lot of the time been shopping, right? That's how I got into the clutter full place that I was in, in the first place. But my inkling and reactions to things don't go away. I just understand them differently. I even called my best friend and she was adding wainscotting to her bathroom downstairs because she needed a project to distract herself. We all do these things to keep ourselves comfortable in situations that give us really negative, yucky, awful feelings, and we tend to avoid the discomfort because, gosh, it feels so much better than having to deal with it. We keep ourselves comfortable by fighting online. Right. Disagreeing with someone and getting all worked up, we take care of ourselves by running away from the situation and keeping ourselves comfortable by just avoiding it and pretending that it doesn't exist. Some of us have the privilege to do that. Sometimes we just keep ourselves comfortable by staring at it like a deer in headlights, not being able to do anything about it at all. And, and sometimes we go about it by just trying to tell everyone what they want to hear, what we think they want to hear. I am gonna attach an article below about emotions and A DHD and how we work through them and how we address them, I'm gonna explain to you this from a coach's perspective. I am by no means a neuroscientist, but I'm gonna give you a good idea of what this means. your amygdala, that's in the back of your brain is your emotional response center. It's designed to be there so that if you're being chased by a bear or a saber tooth tiger, your body can react in time to keep you safe in one way or another. And we keep ourselves safe by going into fight flight, freeze, or appease people pleasing as you will. All of those reactions are designed to keep us safe. Safe from whatever danger has approached us. Now we react this way to our clutter because there's no deadline. It's not running after us until we get to that day when we realize someone's coming over and we finally have to face the fact that we've been avoiding making a lot of decisions in our life until this moment. But we're doing that in politics too. What's so interesting about this world right now, and I'm not coming to you as an expert, I was a political science major, but that's certainly not something that I focused on when I graduated. I went into leadership. I focused on communication and project management. But as I continue to grow, I've done a lot of observations. I notice patterns. I see the way that people react and act, and the way that we are acting right now as a nation is pretty fascinating. There are some people that have no idea what's happening in Minnesota. And there are some people that have no idea how many US citizens are being affected by this, and there are people that have no idea how immigrants are being treated in our country. Not people who are criminals, but people who simply just have brown skin. Here's the thing, the more we avoid situations, the more it piles up. Because eventually future US has to deal with the consequences of whatever we're avoiding right now. If we avoid what's happening in the world, it's gonna come right back around. If we avoid dealing with our clutter, it's not going anywhere. And the more stuff you buy, it's simply just adding to what has been there the whole time. You're just adding more decisions that you need to make to understand what's next. The more we avoid, it feels good in the moment, but it does not take care of future us. I am saying this gently and lightly and lovingly because this episode wasn't easy for me to record. I would much rather sit here and tell you all what you need to hear. I grew up in a very conservative household, so I'm very aware of what that could look like, but I also became very progressive. The more I read, the more I understood different perspectives about the world. You can do with that information what you wish. But I also understand that the more I filter myself, the more I'm not being true to my voice. And gosh, freedom of speech is really freaking awesome. The freedom to say whatever you need to say. And it's not free of consequences, right? Whatever we say, someone is bound to disagree with us, but it is important that we speak up, Reacting in these ways that I had mentioned with our amygdala response keeps us stuck. The more we avoid stuff in our home, the more it's going to accumulate. The more we decide to run away from our problems, the harder it's going to be to actually face them because it is accumulating so much. The more we try to people please ourselves out of a situation, the less we're being true to ourselves and the harder it's going to be to actually understand what the hell we want. When we finally come to terms with deciding that we wanna focus on what we want. So getting out of this stuck cycle, so to speak, comes from. Finding more healthy comforts, What are some healthy comforts you have in your life? I will tell you, after those people who cleaned my room, threw away my blinky from childhood. I started using a new blankie, if you're ever in my community, you will see that I will have my purple blanket wrapped around me, especially since it's so cold in the house we're renting right now. Oh, with these frigid temperatures. But you will see me using this blankie in real time. This is my life, right? this is a comfort that brings me a lot of joy. And I sleep with it every night, and I have no problem saying that it is something that I really like. Now, other people find a lot of comfort in different smells. Smells that can remind you of a safe space, remind you of peace, remind you that you are okay in this world. Music brings me a lot of comfort, and I am working on a playlist for hope right now, and I'm happy to share that with you when I have it already. Another way to find healthy comforts is giving yourself a rule on social media. Use it to get that easy peasy dopamine, but. Find a way to limit it because when you are constantly scanning your own environment for danger, and then it's happening at every turn, with every scroll on social media, you are not putting your brain in a good position to be able to grow or to be able to logically handle anything that is happening right now. You could play with your cat or your dog, or any animal that you have. You could download the dopamine menu. I have a free dopamine menu on my website, so I'll link that in the show notes below. But if you just go to organizing an ADHD brain.com/dopamine menu, you can download it by just entering your email. And what that does is it gives you a space to write down the things that bring you joy. That aren't necessarily those quick fixes like your phone or playing video games or things that could take you out of doing things productive for a really long time. You could play a game with your family. We really like playing Uno, although there are some people who can't seem to get a draw for and be okay with it, so it takes time. You could join a community event I've been holding some little workshops in my community where I've met some really incredible people through just showing up and talking about A DHD and the different ways that we can handle, you know, these mundane, annoying tasks. You could invite a friend to lunch and you might say, I don't have time, but also you don't have time not to. And that might put a little pressure on you, but instead of agreeing to, you know, do another event for your kids, maybe you trade that for l with a friend once a month. because it's scientifically proven to bring you more happiness when you meet with people. You could go sledding unless you live in California. Then you could go slide down a hill with a cardboard box. We used to do that in Virginia. you could sign up for an art class through your local community and meet people that way. I right now am taking a singing class and I have loved the relationships I'm building through singing. You could have a dance party. Dance parties are so incredible. You could get a weighted blanket and they even make these blankets that like go on top of you and they have sleeves on them to like just bring you this feeling of being grounded. they're really cool. You could rewatch your favorite TV show and maybe you pair that with folding your laundry. You could read a book. Maybe you've got a book that you've been wanting to read for a long time, but haven't made the time to do it. But with all of this comes discomfort of doing something different than we've been teaching ourselves to do for so long. And I'm gonna use the phone as a really good example here. Oftentimes we go to our phone because the people who have designed these phones and the apps that we're on get paid a whole lot of money to keep us stuck there for very long periods of time. So what if that wasn't our norm anymore because we're taking care of ourselves. We are being a part of society again, we are creating community where we see that it's been lost in so many different places. Because here's the thing, like when it comes to organizing, you can't simply stop your life to organize and then just wait to be organized in order to start living your life again. You must do it now. Your life is now. The journey is now, and part of the process is going to be decluttering and understanding what matters to you. Now, you don't have to be at a certain point in order to do that, but find some healthy comforts along the way. The ability to show up for yourself is one of the greatest gifts you could ever give yourself. And I wanna share with you right now some hope that is getting me through. That is reminding me that we live amongst some of the most incredible people you will ever experience in your life. There are good people out there. There are kind people out there. There are people that will not stand for racial injustice any longer, and there are people that simply just want peace in this world and for our country to keep moving forward. I learned recently about a beautiful church and what they're doing to support their neighbors. One thing they do at the end of service is the pastor will come and hand out fake money and the amount of money that he hands out to the parishioners. Is the amount that they have in their giving fund. And he puts out these different bowls where you can decide which places you would like to donate the most. So depending on what that church is advocating for, you get to have a role in deciding where those funds get allocated to. I thought that that was beautiful. I'd never heard of anything like that in my life and it gave me so much hope for my community. I have a group that I meet with every Friday. It's called a Dream Lifting Group. It's hosted by my friend mayor, who is incredible. She has a podcast as well called Connection 360, and I can link that in the show notes below. But each week, myself and a group of women aged early thirties all the way up into our seventies meet to talk about the things that we want to achieve in our life, our dreams, our things that help us grow, and not just, I wanna win a million dollars. No being present with our children or understanding what lights us up or being confident, sharing our voices, And those are just some examples. this group gives me a lot of hope and a lot of perspective because oftentimes I can get really lost in my head and what's going on that it makes it difficult to understand the world from a different point of view. And these women help me, which is really awesome. Something that gives me hope is being present with my children, knowing that. I'm helping to raise the future generation of this world, and they are kind and they are learning how to regulate their emotions in a really healthy and beautiful way. And we're learning together, let's be honest, because there's a lot of mistakes that are happening at the same time. But gosh, when I'm present with them, their laughter is infectious and the things that they have to say and the way that they see the world is beautiful. We were driving the other day to Boston to see my acapella group perform, and we drove by a couple of protesters that had a sign that said, ice equals bad. And my daughter Charlotte, who's eight, was like, yeah, she got really passionate about it, but we also don't talk about that stuff with her. We've talked a little bit about it, but kept it very, very high level as far as you know, what they need to understand right now in our world. And I said, oh yeah, Shar, tell me more about how you feel about ice. And Cora was six chimed in and she goes, well, I mean black ice is really bad. And Charlotte goes, yeah, ice is really slippery. And then they started saying, oh, but sometimes ice is good like in your drinks. It just brought so much humor and love into the situation that we're in right now. Another thing that's giving me hope is seeing the people in Minnesota show up for their city. I saw a video the other day of peaceful protestors singing and giving a different perspective on what's happening. We are just people trying to live our lives and we don't want you to come and terrorize our neighborhoods. We simply want to continue to live and live peacefully My hope is also in seeing the ways that I've grown, not only on this podcast, but in the way that things affect me, in the way that I can show up differently based on the way that I've worked on my own regulation, based on showing up as a coach and what I've been able to accomplish. Even just seeing how the community is growing and the things that people are learning. Last night we talked about letting go, There was one woman who shared that previously. She would've had so much shame looking at her stuff, but because she's been doing this work and showing up. she's able to compartmentalize this in a different way and say, no, that's something that I can do. I'm able to control this situation. I have the power and I don't need to shame myself because it's simply data and simply more information that allows me to move past where I've been and where I'm going to. I have incredible neighbors. That have reached out to me, that have baked us cookies, that have asked questions, that have checked on us to see how we are, and they keep us going. We have these incredible neighbors next door to us that gave us a shovel so that we could shovel our driveway when we first moved in, and we did not have one when the first snowstorm came around. I have hope because the in-person community that I've created in my own world, we meet once a month And there was one gentleman who came and said that because he had come to the first session, something he's been incorporating into his life is understanding how what he does now impacts future him. And so by doing it now, it actually takes care of his future self. So future self doesn't have to do it. And that was pretty cool to hear. I have hope because my online community is so incredible and people are showing up because they want a different life for themselves. They wanna do it differently than what we've been taught or what we think we've needed to do for so long. My clients. My clients are so incredible. These are some of the most amazing people I have ever met in my entire life. They're showing up, they're doing the work, they're trying new things. They're trying things that they never would've thought of before to help them learn how to work with their own A DHD Brain. And it's really awesome. My singing teacher has a child who has pronouns that are they them. And she uses those pronouns with such ease and clarity in the way that she talks. It gives me hope because every time I met someone who had pronouns with they them, it made me feel uncomfortable because I'm so not used to saying that in regular speech. But what's interesting is that some people might take that discomfort and say, how dare you make me change? Whereas others acknowledge that discomfort and say, I see that this could help you. So I'm happy to be uncomfortable for just a moment so that you know that I respect you, because respect is such a huge thing when it comes to understanding our neighbors. But what I thought was cool is when I mentioned that to her, she said that it was really hard for her at first, she had to work really hard to learn how to use they, them pronouns in regular speech. And now that she's doing it, it comes natural to her. But it gave me hope because language is just a natural thing that changes over time. So of course we're gonna learn new things as we evolve as a society. The only constant in life is change. It's now up to us to learn how to change with it by also showing up as the change we wish to seek in the world. and of course, another thing that's giving me hope is the Bad Bunny. Halftime Super Bowl show. one of the things I taught my girls as we were watching that is I'm so excited to learn so much more about what all of this means when people on the internet decide to explain it to us. Also, we're taking Spanish right now. We've been taking it for about a year, and while I have a little bit more knowledge under my belt, it is so darn hard to learn a new language. I was thinking about that the other day. People coming to this country. Trying to make a better life for themselves and then getting beat up for even trying to speak English, but having it be broken. I did an episode a couple months ago about how two things can be true at the same time in that our world is going through a really big, messy middle right now. it's really messy and it's awful and it's gross and it sucks. and there's so much information getting thrown down our throats every single day. And it is also imperative. It is a requirement that you find your joy, that you find the glimmers, that you Find a way to keep going. Find a way to show up regardless, we owe it to our kids. We owe it to our neighbors, we owe it to our friends to show up and continue to find joy. Because when you find joy and when you find ways to lift yourself up, you find ways to lift up other people around you too. Yeah, sometimes I think to myself, well, how could I possibly be happy right now when there's so many people suffering in ways that I can't even imagine them experiencing right now? But if I allow myself to suffer through it with them, I can't do a damn thing. It's up to me to find joy. But to also find ways to show up for my kids and shine my light, because when I'm able to shine my light, the brightest, I'm able to help others shine their light as bright as well. This episode took a lot of courage for me to record today, and I'm saying that to you because finding a voice right now in a world that feels so divided. It feels wrong. It feels like we should just shut up and hope that it all blows over, except that's the last thing that we need to be doing right now. The last thing we need to do is to keep our mouth shut because the truth is, is that none of this is going anywhere and we cannot hide from it. Your clutter's not going anywhere. The stuff you've been avoiding is not going anywhere. There's no day like today, but to start facing it. But that does not mean that you don't get to experience joy throughout this time too. It's so important that you find comfort in your family. It's important that you find comfort in your day to day and that you find happiness because those are the things that are going to keep you going. And one way you can show up for yourself is by taking control of your home. One thing at a time, one piece at a time. And if you want support through that, come join my community. We meet at least once a week to do something productive or to talk about different ways to understand our brain. But if it's not my community, go join one. Find one that feels interesting and feels powerful to you because being in community is everything right now. Find your people. You're not alone in this. And we've got to find a way to connect with the people around us. If you stayed this whole time, sending you lots of love your way. Thank you for supporting the podcast when this episode goes live. As of this episode, I will be at a hundred thousand downloads since I first started the podcast. And thank you so much for listening. This is also part of my hope to be able to have a place where I'm able to use my voice and share what I know and help you all declutter too. And figure out some peace in your life because you so deserve it and that you're not broken, that you're allowed to trust yourself in the life that you're building, even if it looks messy for the time being, sending you lots of love and some strength, i'll see you next week