Episode 13: I Should be Able to Manage This (part 2)

This weeks episode is the Part 2 from a session I had with a client who wanted to clean her fridge but was finding herself putting it off day after day. Last episode we uncovered some of the thoughts that were likely keeping her in avoidance, and this week I'll address the "so now what?" part of coaching. 

Knowing why you're avoiding something is half the battle.  Understanding and validating your reasons for it, doesn't make the thing magically easier to do! So rather than just willing or pressuring ourselves to get going, we have to approach it in a way that actually works for us and sets us up for success. 

We will go over which specific executive functions are needed for the task at hand (hint, it's a whole bunch of them) and different strategies she can utilize to support each one.  

If you're wanting more practical tips for how to help yourself get started on that thing you've been meaning to do for weeks, months, maybe even years, hopefully this episode will provide you with just that. 

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Disclaimer:
This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for coaching, therapy, or any other medical intervention.  Rather it is a resource for you the listener to learn more about yourself and your ADHD.  Furthermore, these sessions reflect MY personal style of coaching and how I was trained, and are not meant to be a representation of all ADHD coaching.

All sessions being highlighted in this podcast are being done so with permission from the client being featured. Some details may be slightly altered in order to keep their identity anonymous.   
 
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Transcript

 Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me again on Monday morning, ADHD coaching. I am your host and coach Emily. And today we are continuing with part two from a session I had with a client who was struggling to clean out her fridge. If you haven't listened to part one, it would probably be useful to listen to that first. It's just from last week's episode, number 12.  And I said, I didn't want to leave you hanging for two weeks waiting for this episode. So here it is.  

So remember we had just gotten to the idea that it wasn't, that this client was incapable of managing the fridge. It's that she was spending so much time and energy just beating herself up for not doing it. That she really wasn't stopping to consider what supports she needed in order to be able to manage it. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. The, okay. I see what's happening, but now what piece of this? The, how do I support myself part? 

I knew she wanted to clean out the fridge today. So first I asked her how much time she realistically had to do it. And her immediate answer was, I don't know. This is typically every client's answer to this question because hi, we struggle to manage time and estimate how long things will take and then plan accordingly. So I had her walk me through her day and list out realistic timeframes for everything.. And realistic timeframes generally means doubling your estimate. Seriously, double it. Worst comes to worse. It doesn't take as long and then you have extra time, but we generally underestimate how long things will take, because we don't take various factors into consideration things like traffic, parking, eating, bathroom, distractions, transitions, forgetting things, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So she walked through her day using this method. 

And when she got through and figured out how much time she had leftover. She said that's a lot less time than I thought I had. And that's why it's so important to run through it like this because when we don't, what we're doing is we're just viewing time as an undefined chunk. In which we should be able to get XYZ done. And when we don't get XYZ done, because we didn't actually have that much time. We just beat ourselves up for not getting it done rather than realizing that it was unrealistic in the first place to assume you would.  So after using this, she came to see that she had one hour. 

This is a strategy to support yourself with time management. Again, support is not just who can help me with this or who can do it for me. It's also, how can I help myself and work through some of these areas that do not happen automatically for me? But also asking a friend or a partner or a family member to run through time estimates with you can also be really helpful because they might be able to provide some more accurate feedback for how long things might take. So that's always an option too.

Then we talked about what she was going to get done in one hour, because the original plan was to get a whole lot of things done. When she got home, which remember she originally had assumed would be way more than one hour. But if she comes home and has that thought, I have to get a whole lot of things done. Then likely what will happen is she will spend the majority of that time, either bopping from task to task, not really finishing anything, focusing on less important tasks that aren't actual priorities or sit in analysis paralysis and struggle to make a choice on anything. So, as I already mentioned, she narrowed it down to the fridge. Now she doesn't have to take any of that time to choose. She just supported herself in prioritizing, which is another executive function.

Then I asked her to estimate how long it might take to clean the fridge, which again may be an unfair question because expectedly, so it was hard for her to answer. Did I mention we have a hard time estimating how long things will take.  And another reason for that here was because she knew that there was a strong possibility for her to go into perfection mode as she started cleaning. And this is really good self-awareness she talked about how she could imagine herself starting to clear it out and then becoming fixated on it being spotless and perfect. And now this quote, unquote quick task could easily spiral , into an hours long project.

I spoke in another episode about how we ADHD ers in general are hard to start hard to stop kind of people adding perfectionism to the mix. And all of a sudden we are convincing ourselves. It will take way more time than we have and will require way more energy than we have. So we'll just do it tomorrow. And I know that sounds completely contradictory to what I just said about underestimating, how long things will take.  But unfortunately we do this too. We're full of contradictions and it adds yet another factor as to why task initiation can be so difficult and why we're prone to procrastination. 

So, how do we combat this? We want to break it down and do it in parts with the expectation that you aren't doing it to completion. So it can't be perfect. You're just doing a part of it. A part that feels more manageable and doesn't require such a huge amount of energy. 

So then we needed to get clear about what actually needed to get done. Cleaning out the fridge is really vague. And doesn't describe what that entails. So I asked her what the bare minimum was that she could do that would have an impact and really be moving her in the direction of having a clean fridge. Something she could set a timer and do in like 15 minutes. And she said getting rid of bad food. So produce that's no longer good old leftovers and then cleaning up any spills. 

So great. We have a few smaller, more attainable goals. But even this, I wanted to further break down for her because then she would have very specific chunks to do  each of which would make a difference in getting the fridge cleaned. And that can make it feel more manageable, which in turn can make it feel easier to get started. And it also provides good stopping points so that if she had less time than she planned for, she could just do one chunk. But it can also prevent her from veering into perfectionism because each chunk has a very definable done point at which she can stop if she needs or wants to. 

So right now, she is supporting a few of her executive functions, specifically planning and organizing and prioritizing, but also task initiation, working memory, emotional regulation, inhibition. These skills don't come naturally to us and they don't happen automatically. And usually the steps and what we need to do are either just like spitting all over in our brains and no specific order. They're just sometimes playing on a loop, making us feel very overwhelmed, or we fail to think about the steps ahead of time. And then we have to make choices and try to figure out what to do in the moment and switching back and forth between thinking and doing, thinking, and doing. That can be so exhausting and we end up taking much longer because we're not being very efficient or we may give up, we've already used so much energy. So we tell ourselves we'll just do it later. 

So it's such a useful strategy to do the thinking part now so that when the time comes, she doesn't have to call on these executive functions, which can make taking action and doing what she laid out for herself. Feel easier. notice. I didn't say easy. I said easier. will, some of it feel easy. Yeah. Maybe, but I don't want to give off the impression that doing all of this will magically make it feel really easy to do. That's another trap that I will get into a bit later.

So to further support her ability to start the task. I took the first chunk, getting rid of leftovers and asked her what that required. She said first, she had to decide which containers to throw away, then empty out the containers into the trash, then put the dishes in the dishwasher or wash them by hand, but was really hoping to just put them in the dishwasher because she knew they'd be yucky. Then she would have to take out the trash because it would smell bad and finally replaced the trash bag.  

Okay. So can you see why it's important to lay it all out like this? It's more than just get rid of the leftovers that makes it seem like just one step. And then we tell ourselves, come on. Just do it. It's easy. It won't take that long, but it's actually five steps and throw on the sensory piece of the yucky smells and slimy foods. And this was just one chunk of all she wanted to actually get done.  Now this isn't meant to like scare you away from doing it. It's just outlining what it will realistically require and will hopefully allow you to give yourself some compassion for not just doing it. Because you have been seen it as a quick, simple one-step task when it's not. 

And furthermore, someone who is neuro-typical might just be able to open the fridge, scan it and just know where to get started, know what needs to get done and how to do it. And even if they don't really want to do it, They just do, which as a side note still really blows my mind and quite honestly makes me very jealous. But again, and I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, that doesn't happen automatically for us. 

This is what happens in my experience. Okay. I opened the fridge. I see everything because I don't have a deficit in attention. I actually have an abundance of it. So I see it all. I immediately get very overwhelmed. I try to figure out where I should start,  but everything feels important. I might just start taking things out randomly with no real plan of what to do. Then I get frustrated that I'm making a huge mess on my counters and now everything feels more disorganized. I get annoyed with how much expired stuff we have and tell myself I need to rearrange everything so I can see stuff better and nothing will go to waste. But I don't know what that arrangement would look like. And on and on. And it usually ends in one of two ways. With me, either putting everything back in the fridge and saying, ah, I don't have time now. I'll just do it tomorrow.  Or two hours later, I have a completely spotless fridge with zero old food in it, and everything is pretty and organized. But I forgot to eat lunch. I didn't finish my other work. And now I'm going to have to rush to go get my kids and I'm exhausted and annoyed with how much time I just spent cleaning the stupid fridge. And I'm even more annoyed that it's just going to be a disaster again, later in the week. Anyone else? Like, is that just me?  I feel like people listening. Probably can relate to that. 

 So next and you might be like, oh my God, we got it. We have to break it down. We did. Enough. But honestly, we got even more nitty gritty about it. Bear with me and you will see why. So we started with the leftovers. She is going to just take out the Tupperwares full of old meals that they aren't going to eat anymore. And we talked about how she will be tempted to take other things out. But shifting that focus will only lead to shifting more and more and getting off track and away from this plan. So she is going to make a huge effort to just remove the Tupperware and then close the fridge.  This might feel really annoying. And she might want to repeat. Out loud to herself. Something like right now, I am just removing the Tupperware. That is all I need to do right now. 

Next, we talked about a few ways she could support her sensory needs for this part. Right. She can wear latex gloves. She can wear an apron. So things don't splash on her clothes. She can wear nose plugs. She could light a candle. My point is she doesn't have to just suck it up and deal with it. She gets to support herself through the icky part. And I think she needed. And maybe you need to hear that too, because she was definitely feeling pretty silly for being so grossed out. Like it was childish or something. No old food is gross. I told her for me, like I can't touch wet bread. Even just saying that makes my body clench. I'm not going to just force myself to pick it up. I'm going to get a paper towel or tongs, or even maybe ask my wife to do it. If it's something that doesn't bother her as much. I'm allowed to be grossed out by it that doesn't make me a bad or ridiculous or needy person. 

Okay next, we got to the containers and she said she hates hand washing them. A it's boring and takes time and B again, the icky factor if residue is left on them or if they smell so first I validated that for her. If throwing them in the dishwasher is a way she can support herself to actually do this, then do it. If telling herself she really should hand wash them. It's silly to put them all in the dishwasher. Don't be ridiculous. If that's going to be the thing that stops her from doing all of this. Or maybe means she will have gross dishes in her sink for who knows how long. And it will become another thing that she needs to get done and shames herself for not doing. Well, then she's allowed to make it easier for herself.  You're allowed to make things easier for yourself.  

Okay. Once we got through those parts. The rest was pretty clear. Tupperware in the dishwasher, food in the trash, take out the trash, replace the trash bag. 

And one more thing. I always recommend to clients as it pertains to tasks like this. Pop on some headphones, listen to music, a podcast, an audio book, something. Cleaning out the fridge is boring and unenjoyable. So make it more enjoyable. There are very few household tasks I do without something playing in my ears. If it's something I have to think about. 

I listen to music. If it's something pretty mindless, I can do like a book or a podcast. Either way, it gives my brain something else to focus on. Rather than the boring or non-preferred task at hand.

All right. We're almost done here. And again, I know it might seem like overkill, but I'm really feeling the need to break it down like this because I bet similar things play out in so many other ways. For those of you listening on a daily basis. And I say that because they play out for me, exactly like this too the things I'm talking about here, can it be applied to so much laundry, grocery shopping, a project taxes, showering, planning, activities, packing this stuff can really be applied to more than just the specific task of cleaning out the fridge. 

So finally, I wanted to prepare her for the actual moment in which it's time to throw away the leftovers. And I do this a lot in sessions because sometimes we feel really good after coming up with a plan, it feels totally manageable. We're almost excited to finally get it done. And it seems like it's going to be easy peasy. But this is the trap I was talking about. 

I remind clients that it feels like that now, because it feels really good to think of ourselves as this person who is totally capable and actually follows through. It feels really good to imagine the task being done. That's where we get a little boost of dopamine, unlike neurotypicals, who get that boost after they actually do the task. And so we assume a) we're totally going to be in the mood to do it. B) we'll want to do it and C) it's not actually going to be that hard.  And I'm not going to say that never happens, but it's actually way more likely when the time comes. You're still not gonna want to do it. It's still a boring task. It's still bringing up uncomfortable emotions. And it still doesn't feel good. 

And I feel like a total Debbie downer when I bring this up because my clients all like jazzed and ready to go. But I want people to be prepared for it because if you're expecting to be motivated and for it to feel good, If when the time comes, you're not motivated and it's still feels hard. You're more likely to just resort to procrastination and avoidance. So it's really just about setting realistic expectations and if you're motivated and it feels good, then, you know, great even better.

So I told her to expect that at two o'clock today, the time she planned to do this, she is not going to want to do this. Her brain is going to come up with every excuse in the book to not have to. I don't have the energy. I don't have the time. It's not that important. You can do this tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera. And when that happens, this is time to just pause. 

Her brain is trying to avoid discomfort. The discomfort of doing something boring or gross, the discomfort of feeling, shame that she didn't manage all the food better. Or the sadness that this is so hard for her and that's okay. Our goal is not to solve for that part or to make all of that disappear. Our goal is just to validate like, yeah, this sucks. I don't want to do this. And I'm ashamed. I let it get like this. I'm sad. this. is such a struggle for me and it just sucks. And I can still move forward with what I want to do because I have set it up in a way that will make it easier. Again, easier, not easy. 

So I'm popping on my headphones, lighting a candle, I'm putting on some gloves and all I'm doing right now is taking old leftovers out of the fridge. That's it.  Next, all I'm doing is empty and them in the trash. And so on and so on. But listen, that is very different from pausing. And just telling yourself this is ridiculous. Stop being so lazy. Stop making this into such a big deal and just do it. I really hope you can see how different that is. 

I asked my client, what was the thought that might be helpful to her in this moment? And she said she felt like telling herself it's okay. That this is hard. Would be really helpful. And we even joked that it's not her life's purpose to clean out her fridge. It's okay. If she's not great at it, she has a lot of really other amazing things to offer this world.  And we also added to this thought, but I know exactly what to do next because she did, she wrote it all down. 

Okay. I thought it was done, but. The final thing I told her was that she was welcome to send me a message once she finished getting rid of those leftovers. Because we don't always get that feel good reward when we finished something that dopamine that makes us want to repeat those actions again, in the future, we tend to be like, great. I finally did that thing that I should have already done so long ago. And there's still so much more to do. What's next. It's very annoying.  So sometimes we have to manufacture that good feeling. And telling someone else that you finished can feel really good, especially someone who knows it's something you were planning on doing. I was acting as her accountability buddy, but keep in mind, this requires nothing of me. I don't even need to respond to her. That's not the point. It can just feel good to her. To take a photo of the fridge and send it to me or send an email saying done also helps give her a little motivation to get going, knowing she can let me know when she's finished.  

And next week when we met, I asked her how it went. And she told me when the time came, she reminded herself. I'm not going to do everything. Just the leftovers. But then, because the leftovers actually ended up taking about five minutes. She did get to throw out old produce and wipe up a few spills. 

And I just love that because this is so often what really does happen. We had this huge thing built up in our heads and we get so overwhelmed with all it entails. So we have avoid doing any of it. And then when we really break it. down and prepare ourselves to know exactly what we need to do.  It can end up being pretty quick. Not always, but sometimes, and because we started with a very small, manageable step, now we have some momentum going and doing the next thing actually feels pretty easy.  But also because she had those next steps of throwing out produce and wiping spills. It's still like these smaller chunks. She was still able to stop afterwards. Instead of going down the perfectionist pathway of cleaning out the entire fridge. She even told me, oh my gosh, , it was so simple and I didn't go crazy. I didn't like take out all the drawers or, you know, do all this stuff, but it made a big difference and it didn't take that long. So it was a win. And yes, it was totally a win. 

Okay. So I think that really is at. This was a long one, and I know this is going to make it longer. But I kind of wanted to do a quick recap. And this is going to be from part one as well. Just cause it was a lot of information. So I want to see if I can kind of break it down.  

So number one, stop beating yourself up for putting something off instead, get curious about what is making a certain task feel so hard. This will help you gain awareness around why you're avoiding it in the first place. 

Number two, validate those reasons dismissing and gaslighting yourself will do nothing except make you feel a whole lot worse and likely continue to keep you away from the task at hand. Your reasons are not excuses, their explanations. See, if you can recognize which executive functions are needed for the task, it's usually a whole bunch of them. Because that can help you. Not only see the areas you need support with, but also allow you to have some compassion for yourself, because there's nothing wrong with you. You just need some support. Your brain doesn't function the way you and others are always expecting it to.

Number three, get clear on how much time you have double your estimates for things throughout the day. Maybe cut in half. How much time you think you'll have for something. As you continue to work on time estimations, you might not have to do that every time. But for now, it's probably something to consider. 

Number four, take a part of the task. If it's a big one. That you could realistically do in that amount of time. Remember, we tend to overestimate how much we can do and underestimate how long something will take.  Sometimes it can even be. helpful to say, what can I do in 15 minutes?

And to help with this, you can move on to number five, which is break it down. You can start with kind of bigger chunks. Remember those give good stopping points. And then get super duper clear about what you need to do for each chunk and break it into the smallest possible steps. and remember the more thinking you do now, the less you will have to do later and the easier it will feel to just take action. Think of what supports you might need for each step. I like to ask myself, like, how can I make this easier? It's okay. To make something easier. We don't always need to do something in the hardest way possible. Watch out for those should thoughts. I should be able to hand wash them, you know, thoughts like that. Because it's probably a clue you're stopping yourself from getting support or making something easier.  

Number six expect you still won't want to do it. Expect it still won't feel easy. Expect you still might try to get out of it. That's okay. Your brain doesn't always like hard and uncomfortable. And so you notice that happening. Just go back to the pause, sit with the emotion that is coming up. Breathe. Turn that volume down and then remind yourself. It's okay. That this feels hard. And I know exactly what to do next. And if you find you still put it off, try again tomorrow, the fridge will still need to be cleaned tomorrow. 

 Uh, so I'll be honest. I kind of just made up that recap and hope that it lines up with everything that I just spoke about. I guess we'll find out when I listen back to this. Um, but I, I hope that was a pretty good summary of everything I've talked about in these two episodes. So I will leave it there. 

I hope you got something out of this and maybe if you have a big or a little thing you've been avoiding, these two episodes might act as, I don't know, sort of a guide to help you move forward with it. And I will see you next time.