ADHD Pt 2

In this episode, I talk about some of the strategies I currently employ or am trying to employ to help effectively manage the potential impacts of ADHD on my Gaelic learning journey!

Links as promised:

Breaking Through the Wall of Awful in ADHD

The Wall of Awful

5 Ways to Overcome the Wall of Awful

Gwennifer Raymond - NPR Tiny Desk Concert

An Litir Bheag

Rejection Sensitivity: Managing Feelings of Overwhelm and Rejection as an Adult with ADHD

Instagram and Tiktok: @MichelleLovesGaelic

Music By: Ó hEadhra, Brian & Mackenzie, Fiona: "Latha Dhan Fhìnn am
Beinn Ioghnaidh" (A Day for the Fingalians of Beinn Ioghnaidh)
Performed by Ó hEadhra (vocals), Brian, Mackenzie, Fiona
(vocals) and Vass, Mike (fiddle)

Licensed courtesy of Naxos World

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wall of Offal a metaphorical barrier that gets in the way of doing a task or activity. A nickname for that thing where you need to do something and just can't? This wall is not an exclusively ADHD experience, but those with ADHD tend to struggle more. This episode is brought to you like three weeks late by ADHD and the Wall of Awful. Hello Ahatajen. It's Missha Michelle Hughes, I guess Michelle learns Gallic. Well, give me a hush. But how happy is a shoe after all? Is it like kinda like that question, how much wood would a wood wait, how's it go? How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? How would that work for a shoe? How happy could a shoe be if a shoe could be happy? Yeah, it doesn't really have the same rhythm or vibe. You have no idea how much I feel like I'd rather spend time trying to make that stupid thing work in Gaelic than script this episode. Why? I don't know. It shouldn't have been this hard to write. And I do want to do it. I really do. It's just like I have this super strong internal resistance to doing so, despite knowing that I have even less on my mind to worry about if I just do it. This is where the wall of awful comes in. I'm literally trying to climb over it right now as I write. Sequestered in the library, thinking I'd rather be doing my Gallic homework, which I also like doing, but is probably going to be considered the bigger challenge than basically doing some stream of consciousness writing by most people. And yet here we are. There's a lot from a neuropsychological perspective that goes into how the wall gets built. And if you're interested in knowing more about it, I'll leave some resources for you, like I did the last time. And a quick shout out before I really get into the heart of the matter, or Kinakusha. I'm putting on some music to help me focus, and the most recent NPR Tiny Desk concert with Gwen for Raymond is life affirming, riveting, fantastic, and just the right amount of mental stimulation I need to help me concentrate. Highly recommend checking her out. Astounding work indeed. Alright, alright, alright. I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it. This episode is all about what I need to do to work with my ADHD and to keep it from taking me on 5,000 different side quests on the way to achieving my goals. Or at least keep it from doing that as much as possible. Also, it's about how to use the strengths that ADHD gives me to help me achieve those goals, and how to make sure I'm keeping a fundamental awareness of my feelings in any given situation. Because things like rejection sensitivity and the greater need for dopamine can make things much, much worse. I've made a list and I think it will be easiest to just talk through each point. Honestly, I actually think this will be useful for everyone. It's just that having ADHD may make some of these strategies more important to incorporate. This sounds so exhausting, even to me. But really, I know I already do some of it, but with less structure than I might benefit from. If it will make me better at the actual learning and doing of Gallic though, I'm all in and committed. Ah, crud. I think it means it might be time for me to check in on my clear goal I set a while back. But not now. Let me not distract myself. Okay, so let's begin with addressing and accepting the need for novelty and fun. Long-term language learning requires regular, repeated input and output of the same material, information, whatever, over an extended period of time. Bor. For my beloved friends who tell me about their strategy of listening to the same thing over and over until they understand it, I cannot tell you how excruciating that sounds to me. Unless it's a song. Totally different thing. Because I guess I've just been wired to love and desire music in like every second of my life. And it's not just that this kind of repetition or things that rely on repeated exposure in the exact same format or environment feel painfully boring to me. It's that once my brain encounters it, it's like, ah, hey, we've heard this or seen this before. Not new, who cares? If I already vaguely understand it, for example, that the past sense of a doll is high. Um, you know, this is something I easily conceptually understand and have engaged with for quite some time, my brain will refuse to engage with it enough to really make it stick because it doesn't present a challenge when in the study or learning environment, only in a recall environment similar to a conversation. And that's like literally the worst time to be challenged on something like that because you know you should know it, and you feel like you do know it, but you draw a blank, and then later feel really stupid about it. So how to deal with this? Uh, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. The first is to acknowledge the need for novelty and as such have a variety of resources at your fingertips. The telly, YouTube, songs, poems, books, Duolingo grammar books, anki or other memorization type decks, various events online and in the real world, radio nangail, going for a walk, and naming whatever you can see in Gaelic. I don't know. I mean, the thing is, this is a lot of input stuff, and some of it is just different versions of the same type of input. So it's like only going to be so effective. But high frequency words and grammar will appear in all of this stuff. And so the more contact that you have with it, the more your brain will have to grapple with the fact that this thing keeps appearing and it doesn't want to have to keep rebuilding the information highway for these things every time you encounter them. So, you know, long story short, reinforcement. The second is that if it's boring or you aren't able to concentrate or pay attention, you need to move on to something else. Not necessarily immediately, I mean like try to grind it out a little longer. And if you feel the resistance to continuing or boredom fade away, then keep going. If the feeling persists, it's time for something else. Your brain has already given up, and the return on investment on struggling against it is lower than just coming back to it when you have a little more ability to power through. Thirdly, thirdly, is that even a word? Whatever. Thirdly. Make sure what you're working on is at the right level for you. Yes, we all talk about wanting to stretch ourselves, but the value in focusing on listening and reading material that is around 80 to 90% comprehensible to you is greater than having you know Radio Nungel or BBC Aliba on in the background and understanding maybe 20 to 30% of it. This is because you are able to reinforce grammar structures and vocabulary you're already familiar with while introducing a level of unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar that will not overwhelm or fatigue the brain, nor distract you from your ability to follow along. You'll be able to be engaged for much longer, enjoy the engagement more, and continue to strengthen the neural connections you've been building. Also, I don't know about y'all, but I start to definitely zone out or get distracted if I can't understand enough of what is going on, so I don't even get the benefit of whatever passive listening m might do for one. It can be quite hard to find comprehensible input at a beginner level that isn't books for toddlers or the like. And goodness do I empathize. I will say though, I have been resistant to listening to On Leech Big despite recommendations to do so, because when I first started learning Gallic and it was recommended to me, I couldn't hardly understand anything, and I was like, yeah, this is way too hard for me. And for some reason, that stuck with me until the other day when someone mentioned it again, and I thought, let's check it out. Oh Mohrech, I was so chucked to listen to episode 1091 and understand almost everything. I thought, hold up, have I really learned this much? Have I really gotten this much better? And the thing is, I could listen to it and enjoy it without needing to pause every five seconds or refer to a dictionary. I could largely use context clues to understand the words I didn't know. This same thing happened on my flight to and from New York City for Schaechang, Tartan Week. I had bought the book Farne Schlie by Sheila Kheinbel when I first moved to Glasgow last August, and it was like so freaking hard. I I had no idea what was going on. I was like, I'm gonna need a dictionary to look up every single word. Ugh, I hate this. However, I took it with me to try reading it again, and while I know it doesn't sound like much, especially if you know how much I read and how quickly I normally read on umberla, but I read like 32 pages without issue and have a pretty good understanding of everything that's going on. And that was without the help of a dictionary, because there was no way in Hades I was paying like 20 euros for Wi-Fi on a six-hour Iceland air flight. Ridiculous. Anyway, I would posit that the right time for a more difficult challenge is when you are producing output. Input is when you both reinforce what you know, but introduce new things at a pace slower than what you're generally wanting to. A cup at a time rather than a fire hose to the face. Not everything has to be difficult to have value in your learning journey. Next, I want to talk about how to address my need for stakes and pressure. If you listened to the previous episode, you might recall an anecdote I shared about how I wouldn't write papers that were due for my college classes until like, mm-hmm, 3 a.m. in the morning the day they were due. Or how I couldn't read a book if I was told I had to. I hate this internal resistance I have because I know much of the time, it's not to my benefit, and in the long run, it means that I tend not to get everything out of something that I could, and that I rely on immediacy and fear of failure to motivate me. But like only at the last minute when it feels like the stakes have finally become real. So fundamentally, this means I need to find a way to create some stakes and pressure in a healthy way that get me to do the things I need to, such as signing up for a workshop or an event where Gallic is being used exclusively, or that Gallic is a, you know, at a level above mine, because I'll want to participate fully and I'll not want to impact the event for others in any way because they're having to adjust too much to accommodate me. So I'll prepare well. I might still do some cramming because that's like one of the few study methods I know and I'm well trying to break out of. But I'll feel enough healthy pressure to review and study and make sure I'm on top of my game. This is like one area in which Uncursor Intrigue and Uncursor Urtish with Salmore stake, I think really get it right. You're in a class with five to six other people who are generally at the same level you are, and you're speaking Gaelic pretty exclusively, especially at the first error or two of Uncurs Intriguy. I think you generally feel the need to keep up with the rest of the group. Or at least I do. You don't want to be the one student who is just completely lost or bringing down the class for everyone. Is that just a me thing actually? I don't know. But it certainly helps. Another way that I create stakes and what I think is reasonably healthy pressure is accountability partners or networks. For example, by telling y'all what I want to do and about my goals with this podcast, Marsha Natursh, I'm trying to create some accountability. I want to achieve fluency not just for myself, but to share my experiences on that pathway because I think we all have something to learn about others' journeys toward shared goals. Maybe all you'll get from this is a thought like, whoa, that's not how I do that. But yeah, okay, fine, because it's still informing your approach, which means there was some value in me doing this. But also, I really do my best when I feel like I don't want to let others down. It's much more motivating to me than not letting myself down. Is that healthy? I don't know, but being in service to others is really important to me and quite motivating. So it definitely works in this regard personally. Rejection sensitivity is widely understood as a key component of the ADHD experience, and it basically comes from the combination of feeling emotions much more intensely than neuronormal people, and experiences since childhood where adults or peers had highly negative responses to the ADHD child rather than trying to support understand them. If you'd like to learn more about this, I'll share a link in the episode notes. One thing that is important to understand is that while nobody likes rejection, the way it is experienced by those with ADHD or other neurodivergents is much more intense and engenders a much different response in the individual, often leading to very unhealthy coping mechanisms. For myself, this has resulted in a highly perfectionist mindset over the years. You may be surprised to hear this since I might seem to be fine making mistakes publicly, going with the flow, or you might get a whiff of chaos from me based on how ADHD will also have me running four different tangents of thought in a conversation at any given time, and my pink hair, general lack of organization, etc. etc. However, it has taken an extraordinary amount of effort and reflection to get to this point. Because while I would still have this same presentation publicly, my internal dialogue was so unkind to myself. I had a lot of shame, embarrassment, anger, fear, self-loathing, and a lack of confidence. Honestly, it wasn't until I started managing other people in the workplace and trying to help them be kinder to themselves about mistakes and to not spiral about potential consequences of mistakes that I really started to work on my own inner dialogue. And also, back to the point I made earlier about being of service to others, I realized that modeling certain behavior, such as the willingness to be publicly wrong, the willingness to admit I am wrong about something publicly, apologizing if I got something wrong publicly, to sometimes even make mistakes in real time and show how to learn from them. Was not only a great way to create an environment that felt safer for my direct reports to do and experience those same things, but the responses when I did genuinely display these behaviors actually helped me work through a lot of that perfectionist tendency and the rejection sensitivity that came along with it. It doesn't mean it's not still there though. If I make mistakes when speaking Gaelic or I misunderstand something in class, I immediately feel a flush of like shame and like people might think I'm stupid or incompetent or maybe not want to talk to me. Even though I can see that this is an overblown and irrational response, it's still the one I have. So how do I deal with this and not let it get in the way of my learning and speaking Gaelic? The reality is that by choosing to learn a new language at any age, this means you've got to have some emotional fortitude and resilience, or you're gonna have to build some. One tactic I like to employ is naming my demons. If I make a mistake and I feel really dumb about it, or if I feel embarrassed about how terrible I'm doing in any given moment, I say so out loud. It's not for anyone else's benefit. And it's not to have people say, oh no, you're doing great. Oh they do because people are generally awesome and lovely. And even I will give the same encouragement when others who are speaking in Gallic with me do the same. But naming the monster pulls it out from me and separates it from me so that it can kind of, I don't know, disappear into the ether rather than living inside of me and growing until I am genuinely having to struggle with it. Another thing that helps is finding those ways of being able to kind of qualitatively see improvement. Like I mentioned about the book Farnishli and Unleacheth Veg before, I can tell how much better my understanding has become. And it's so thrilling. Conversely, I feel like my conversational skills have been in the gutter lately, and I'm really trying to figure out why that is. Also, I would have normally been absolutely dying inside because in my most recent newsletter, I may have made a big dumb error in Gallic. But then I just have to keep talking myself through it. Nobody expects me to be perfect, and if they do, they have unrealistic expectations. I want to be authentic, that's the best version of me I can be, even I don't like perfection. Dealing with rejection sensitivity is something I will probably have to keep working on for the rest of my life. But finding welcoming environments, incredible friends like I have, and actively openly practicing what I preach so that others feel safe as well helps a lot. Some less heavy things that I want to just quickly run through, because you know not everything requires me to bore you with my life story. Writing things down instead of typing them. This forces me to slow down and for my brain to actually have to digest what I am learning. Or at least more so than it might otherwise. Taking breaks. Like for real, do something that's not Gallic, that doesn't have any pressure attached to it. Your brain needs a break to process things, and if it doesn't get breaks regularly, and yeah, either silence or things in your native language, you're gonna get so burned out and then do nothing for a couple of weeks, like I did at the start of the year. Lean into hyperfixations. To a point. Gaelic song is definitely something I can find myself hyperfixating on. I love it so much, and can just get sucked into reading lyrics and listening and trying to learn for hours. And there's definitely a lot of benefit to doing this in language learning. But you can't turn it into something where you completely sacrifice all other things that you need to be doing to be well rounded in the language. Another thing I sometimes fixate on is grammar. I'm one of those weird people who actually like reading about grammar and language structure and rules. I find it really interesting, and I tend to be disappointed when I don't get as much of that as I would like. William Lamb's Scottish Gaelic, a comprehensive grammar, is a favorite book of mine. Positive self-talk. As previously mentioned, but still important. Don't tell yourself Gaelic is difficult. In reality, it's no more difficult than any other language. Instead, think about what parts are interesting or not so difficult for you, or how it's like other languages you've learned. For example, I just kind of really recently figured out that inversion, uh, was it Imalajik? Is a it's quite easy a concept for me to do and and execute in Gallic because it makes the structures be quite similar to structures in Japanese, which are basically always subject-to-object for or yeah, subject to object verb. And so I have this like um instinct to put objects before verbs. So yeah, that's that's pretty cool for me. Um, and that was a neat thing to realize. But yeah, having negative feelings about your abilities is natural and common, but it's much better to say I feel stupid than I am stupid if you feel like you need to say something so negative. Because it's not an inherent quality about yourself. Trust me, I know you aren't. But it's a way we all sometimes feel, and it's okay to acknowledge that. And if you need to, follow it up with something positive like even though I feel dumb or incompetent right now, I know it just takes time and effort to get better, and I will. Play to your learning style. Yeah, I know. I said I was gonna put things on social media about how to work with your own differing learning styles, but honestly, I kind of forgot. Let's blame the ADHD for that one. And if you'd find it useful, let me know and I'll go back and do it. Adapt and adjust. Every day is different, and so is our capacity to do things. If you are feeling like you can go all in one day, embrace it. It's an awesome way to feel. If all you have in you after a long day at work or school is a few minutes of duolingo, well that's not nothing. Do what you can, knowing tomorrow is another opportunity. Remember your why or to whom you are accountable to for achieving your goals. And I really mean people outside of yourself. In talking about this, I first want to thank you for listening to this podcast. You are a part of my why for learning Gaelic. Kind, wonderful, inspiring, friendly, knowledgeable. The kind of people that make up this community of Gaelic learners is like my favorite kind of people, and I'm so grateful to have you in my life. And that does a lot to keep me going. Also, as I've said before, Gaelic has given so much to my life that I would never trade for anything. And as much as it is about continuing to have those things in my life, it is also about trying to find ways to give back to it as well. And I know competent and hopefully one day beautiful use of the language with others is one way to do that. Have short-term goals and celebrate small wins. Listen, ADHD and five-year plans are like oil and water. So take that big goal and break it down. And have some really small, silly ones that you know you can easily achieve. Like introduced myself in Gaelic, knew I made a mistake when I made it, but also knew how to fix it in real time. And celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. It's gotta feel fun and rewarding. And sometimes when you are in the thick of it, just reward yourself for sticking with it and showing up. You deserve it. Prepare yourself for risk taking like a coach before some, I don't know, sports game, football, soccer, whatever. Hype yourself up, commit to doing your best, have a strategy for when you get in a tough spot, but remember to have fun. And yeah, I'm basically talking about having a conversation in Gallic with strangers here, but it often feels like super scary and risky to try and do. Do so because it makes us feel exposed and vulnerable. So win yourself that Coach of the Year award, not because you won every time, but because you knew how to talk yourself through the hard times and persevere. It bears repeating. It has to be fun. Yo. If you aren't enjoying yourself like at least 80% of the time, well, I mean, I don't want to discourage you, but it's at least worth looking at your learning methods and strategies. There's gotta be another way. Being fun doesn't mean it's not challenging or sometimes a struggle or sometimes not very fun, but you should like the process of learning and most of what comes along with it. One-on-one tutoring. I'm actually trying this for myself for the first time starting next week. I've never had a tutor in my entire life, so I kind of have no idea what I'm getting myself into, but I am committed to 10 sessions, so let's see if it helps. It will do a sufficient job of raising the stakes for me because I can't stay silent and let other people take over when I'm not wanting to. It's just me and my tutor, and I really have to lead the tutor towards what it is I'm I feel like I need to focus on, which means I really need to be dialed into my own sense of language competence and lack thereof. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this at a later date. So yeah, I think that there is a lot I need to contend with due to my ADHD, but the strategies that I need to engage may actually be helpful for those without ADHD too. The only difference being that the consequence of me not having these strategies and, you know, self-awareness can derail my entire learning journey or set me back greatly. I think one thing we don't realize when we set out to learn Gaelic, or, you know, any language or skill as an adult is how much you really have to own your own journey. No longer being in traditional educational settings, a variety of approaches available to us. Much of our time learning spent on our own, and then if you're neurodivergent, having to take even more responsibility over how you're going to find success, because while you may be in a class with a caring teacher or tutor, they may not have the skills to manage your extra needs as a student, especially as they're unlikely to have the necessary training for that. Like, it's a lot. Also, I think at least a solid 25% of the time spent learning is just trying to figure out a system that works for you and helps you achieve your goals and that you'll stick to. It is worth continually checking in with your approach to see if it's still doing what you need and want it to. It can be really overwhelming sometimes to think about all this, and perhaps you don't want to because Gallic learning is more of a hobby for you than something you have to have big goals towards, like I do. That's totally cool too. I do think that most learners go in with a desire to have a high level of competence one day, and we benefit from trying to understand and take advantage of our own psychology in order to see as much success as possible. Well, well, Khajin, I think that's enough about ADHD for a while. I would love to hear from you if you have any particular learning strategies that you find helpful. Please do share them with us. Until next time, let's get better together.