Well, I'm so grateful you're on the show with us today, Casey.
And you know, when we say small tasks around the house, I know a lot of us feel like, oh,
it's not a small task.
It can feel really hard to get all the laundry put away or the dishes done all in a day and
take care of myself.
So I'd like a little background about your story, which gives us some context into why
you're doing what you do.
Absolutely.
So I've always been a really messy person, always been sort of artistic and creative,
and I've never been someone who needs things to be neat and tidy.
But it's always been functional.
It's been functional for me to just kind of be messy or to do dishes every three days.
But in two years, I went from living just with my husband in a small apartment where
he was at school to having two children, you know, a family of four in a bigger house
with a husband that's a new corporate attorney.
And we didn't know anybody.
And so all of a sudden, you know, it became evident that my lack of like systems for my
home was not functional anymore.
Like the laundry pile was huge, the dish pile was huge, you couldn't move anywhere without
tripping over things.
And it just wasn't working anymore.
And it was really stressing me out and it was really overwhelming.
And so I had to go back to the drawing board on, okay, how are we going to keep a functional
home in this completely new stage of life?
And you know, when you look to books or online content about, okay, how do I get my quote
unquote house in order, it seemed to me like a lot of the advice out there was really
for a very specific type of person.
It was like really specifically for like neurotypical people who desire to be neat and tidy.
And the way that those systems were put forth was very prescriptive.
And the motivation was like what I like to call like boot camp motivation.
So it was a lot of like girl, just do it, have some self respect, get it together, you
know, tomorrow is a new you.
And that doesn't work for me.
And at the time, I didn't know that I was ADHD.
I found that out like a year into making my content and it suddenly made sense.
Like my whole life just made sense, realizing that this whole time I'm not neurotypical.
Like that's why I was having these struggles and that's why I had to kind of go outside
of the box to find systems and habits and rhythms that worked for me.
And I imagine, oh my gosh, I can only imagine how lonely your experience was when you were
holed up in your home with two kids, like no systems were working for you.
And it's the early time of the pandemic.
So really isolated.
And then secondly, shortly after that, you received a diagnosis of ADHD.
How did you learn that you had ADHD?
How did it come to your attention?
So it's actually kind of a funny story when I started making content about these little
like hacks that I was using to clean my house or get my dishes done.
And what happened was I really quickly got a really big following and a huge portion of
that following were people that had ADHD diagnosis, diagnoses.
I never know what the plural of diagnosis is, but regardless, after doing that for about
a year, occasionally people would say like, do you have ADHD?
And I'd say, no, I don't.
And then people would be like, wait, what?
It'd be like a record scratch.
They'd be like, wait, are you sure?
Cause like these are the first things that have ever worked for me when it comes to care
tasks.
And I kept saying like, no, I don't know.
I don't.
I've never been diagnosed.
I've never suspected.
And I remember the video that I posted where I had said like, I don't have ADHD.
And I was trying to be really clear about it because I didn't want to ever like pretend
like I had a diagnosis for like, you know, clout or like online cred or something.
And I'll never forget the person that commented and said, I hope that you don't find this
inappropriate because I know that this is a parasocial relationship.
But I really think that you should get assessed.
Everything you describe is exactly the way my brain works.
Every tip that you give is exactly the tips that my brain needs.
And it's really common for women, especially to have their diagnosis missed and childhood.
Can you talk about what those pieces were that, you know, you didn't identify with what
most people think of with a stereotype of ADHD and how you might have been missed in
the system?
So the first thing was I consider myself really successful.
Like, I had a successful career.
I went to grad school.
I became a professional counselor.
And so I thought that I was too successful.
And I listened to a lot of people that talk about ADHD and they would talk about ways
in which they weren't able to get through school or they weren't able to create a career.
And so I had a lot of comparison going on thinking, oh, well, then I guess that's not
me.
I listened to people talk about, oh, I was always too distracted to pay attention in school.
And I would think, well, I always paid attention in school.
I liked school.
I liked learning.
And when I reached out to, I was seeing a psychiatrist at the time for some postpartum
depression and I asked her about it.
And she said, well, what makes you think that you have ADHD?
And I told her about what people were commenting and I showed her my kitchen and it was really,
really messy.
And I said, well, I can't keep my kitchen clean without really specific visual systems.
And I showed her my fridge with all of my lists and my processes.
And the way I like to put it is that I think to her, I looked like that meme where the
guy is standing at the conspiracy board and there's pictures everywhere, documents everywhere,
and the red string connecting everything.
And he just kind of looks crazy.
That's how I looked describing how I kept my kitchen clean.
And she was like, let me stop you right there.
This is a classic, you know, what adult women in ADHD look like.
And so we started to talk about like, how was my diagnosis missed?
And she said that it's really common for girls that are good at school to get missed
because we're not bouncing off the walls.
We don't have behavior problems.
We are much more likely to be socialized to behave.
And the thing that really cracked it open was being explained to me that ADHD is not
the inability to pay attention.
It's the inability to regulate when you're paying attention and to what you are paying
attention.
She asked me a bunch of questions about my childhood that were really validating for
me.
Like for example, she said, did you ever get diagnosed with any learning disabilities?
And I said, yeah, actually I did.
I dyslexic, dyscalcula, and auditory processing disorder.
And she was like, ah, well, there's a really big overlap between kids that are comorbid
with ADHD and auditory processing of their learning disorders.
And I was like, oh, she's like, you know, when you were a kid, did you ever have any
like vocal ticks or obsessive behaviors or anything that like maybe looked a little bit
at like OCD and I went, you know, come to find out.
I did.
And it was like a period of time where I developed a vocal tick when my parents were getting
divorced.
And I remember when I was younger, sometimes I would flicker a light.
I would think like, I have to do it five more times.
But it was never like that behavior while odd was never persistent enough to disrupt
my life.
So I just never thought about it again.
She'd be like, ah, well, the thing is is that there's a very large overlap between kids
that have ADHD and kids that develop vocal ticks.
And the next one was like, did you ever have any addiction issues?
And it was like, well, yeah, I ended up going to rehab when I was 16 for like a pretty severe
drug addiction.
It was like, oh, well, there's a very large overlap.
And I mean, this went on and on and on and all these things that I had never heard anybody
talk about in relation to ADHD.
When I think about ADHD, I think about a young white boy who can't pay attention in
class who is, you know, shooting spitballs, bouncing off the walls.
And that was never me.
But when she explained to me, school is interesting to you.
Like you perform so well within that structure.
But then when you stepped outside of the classroom, you were incapable of doing your
homework.
You could not provide that structure to yourself, but you were so intelligent and you were so
focused on the lecture that when you were in grade school, where the grades were weighted
so that your tests were so high of a percentage and the homework wasn't.
And when they structured the class so that we're going to lecture to you about chapters
one, two, three, and then the test is on one, two, three, you were still succeeding.
So nobody was catching these gaps in skills that you couldn't do.
And then when I went to college, when I went to high school and then college, it changed.
All of a sudden, homework was a very high percentage of the grade and they started doing
this thing where they would say, I'm going to lecture to you about chapters one through
three, you're going to go home and read chapters four through six, and then we will test you
on one through six.
And I was incapable of creating the structure necessary to do the work outside of class
because I would do all the work inside of class.
And if you ever had a class that was, if you get done with the schoolwork, you can start
on your homework.
Well, I was nailing that because I was wicked fast.
So nobody was catching that what was happening was I was incapable of performing outside
of this structure.
As you think back on all the ways that you were missed in school or in the system, right,
you were even seeking substance abuse treatment in your high school years.
Were there any other pieces that you noticed were missed?
So one really interesting thing is that my psychiatrist sent me the self assessment.
Like that was kind of the first step in getting formally assessed.
And there's these like three or four questions at the end of the self assessment.
I just want to read them to you.
And this is really focusing on like the social aspect, right?
And it said, how often do you find yourself talking too much when you're in social situations?
And I thought, I get like not really not a ton.
I guess I do.
Yeah, sure, I talk a lot.
But then it was like, when you're in conversation, how often do you find yourself finishing the
sentences of the people you're talking to before they can finish them themselves?
And I was like, well, I don't do that to people.
And then how often do you have difficulty waiting your turn in situations where turn taking
is required?
And then the last one, how often do you interrupt others when they're busy?
So those are the four questions on the ADHD self assessment that are related to how things
are showing up socially and social skills.
And when I read those, I remember thinking like, kind of, but not really.
But what's really interesting is that because I went to long term behavior modification treatment
when I was 16, a lot of these behaviors, like the interrupting, the talking over people,
the correcting people, the finishing people sentences, it got pegged as problematic behavior
that was because I was being kind of self absorbed.
And so when they're trying to treat my addiction, they're trying to say like, hey, we want you
to be more mature of a person.
We want you to be a little more altruistic.
We think that if you learn and grow as a person, like you'll be able to address some of these
addiction issues.
And so some of these behaviors got lumped in as, you know, just evidence of my immaturity
or my entitlement or my arrogance or any of these number of sort of character issues.
And there was so much intervention put on me around these behaviors that I learned to
keep my mouth shut when people are talking.
I learned to hold my tongue until someone is done with their sentence.
So fast forward and I'm looking at this and I'm going, well, I don't really do these behaviors
that much.
But when you dig down and ask me what's happening in your head while someone else is talking,
the answer is I still know what I'm going to say in response when you're about three
words into your sentence.
And I am biting my tongue and thinking about nothing except wait for the pause, wait for
the pause, Kacey, wait for the pause.
There's the pause, go.
And I'm not hearing what you're saying because if I don't say the thought in my head, I will
forget it completely.
And if I hold on to it and try to wait till you're done talking, I can't listen to what
you're saying because that's the only thing I'm focusing on.
So that made me really sad.
There was so much grief around like, no, this still happens to me.
This is still who I am just because someone managed to stamp out these behaviors because
they misunderstood where those behaviors were coming from.
All of a sudden it's like, I look like I don't meet criteria.
I don't even think I meet criteria because a lot of it's focused on this external behavior
and not what's going on in my brain.
In what ways do I have a literal neuro type that is different than the way other people's
brains are thinking?
So it's not about do I interrupt, do I not interrupt?
Because for some of us, that behavior, especially if you're a girl, you know what I mean?
Like that behavior has been silenced in us.
The more important thing is what's happening in your brain when you're listening to other
people talk.
Is it hard for you to regulate how badly you want to jump in, how badly you want?
And there's another one in there about, you know, do you have trouble finishing projects?
I remember going, no, not really.
And I was sitting on the third floor of my house and I had just redone the whole third
floor.
And I'm thinking, no, because look, I just redid this whole third floor.
And I hear people with ADHD talking about, oh, I would get halfway through that project
in bail.
And I thought, see, I don't do that.
But I remember getting up and starting to walk down the stairs.
And I have those stairs that have like a landing halfway through.
And I stopped dead because on this landing was my toolbox, my measuring tape, a couple
of pictures I didn't end up using.
And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Oh my God, that's not finishing the project.
I got done with the part of the project that interested me.
And then I sat all of my stuff down and then for weeks, I just stepped over it over and
over and over.
Like I couldn't, like that's the part of for me that's not finishing.
As someone with ADHD, meal kits can be a great solution to making mealtime easier.
But only if you're getting the right meal kit.
Because when my kids are hungry, I do not have time to spend 45 minutes in the kitchen
pretending to be Gordon Ramsay.
That's why I'm so glad that every plate has a whole selection of recipes that gets
dinner on the table in 15 minutes or less.
And you know, meal kits that don't let you choose what meals you want are not for me.
Not with this picky palette.
Thank goodness every plate has 25 recipes to choose from each week.
Plus up to 22 sides, snacks, desserts and more.
And it's not just the meals you pick.
Every plate lets you customize the actual meals to your liking with options to swap
proteins, sides, you can even add a protein to veggie dishes each week.
You do you.
Start with every plate for just $1.49 per meal by going to everyplate.com slash podcast
and entering code struggle one four nine.
That's everyplate.com slash podcast.
And then enter the code struggle one four nine.
Do it now and get your savings.
That is up to a hundred and ten dollar value.
So don't miss it.
Today, I'm actually here to plug a podcast that I was on.
When it comes to your health, everything is connected and you may feel like getting the
support you need is complicated and confusing or that it doesn't fit your lifestyle.
A lot of health advice out there really isn't very good about taking on the nuances of people's
different experiences and context.
Well, Optum works to help people live healthier lives and make the health system better for
everyone until it's fixed.
A podcast hosted by Callie Chamberlain and Dr. Kenny Poole features deep conversations with
medical experts like Optum's Christy Duffy, thought leaders like author Eve Rotsky and
people like yours truly and people in general like you and me.
So join us as we explore the challenges and the changes underway to improve care and create
a healthier world one person at a time.
Listen to until it's fixed on your favorite podcast app or visit Optum.com backslash podcast.
That's Optum.com backslash podcast.
Thanks for watching.
Bye.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
for now.
and did you notice that you didn't even because it wasn't the interesting piece?
you just didn't notice and you just kept moving on with life.
For me, it's partially not noticing and then the other part is like I will start to notice
it but I can't make myself care enough to do anything about it.
So what happens for you when you're like okay I noticed this, this task needs to be done.
But I'm not interested.
Do you have any systems in place to support you in that area?
Yeah so one of the funny, it's a great question because the TikTok that I mentioned earlier
that had everybody going oh Casey please get assessed was the one where I explained
that my motivation, my ability to engage in like task initiation, like I feel like I
have this like energetic river in front of me.
And when it's flowing it is powerful and it is like a rapid and like anything in its path
gets swept up and taken care of with like impressive you know ability.
But if that river is not flowing over a certain task I can't do that task.
And so for example the idea like this is why I have a cup graveyard which is like just
cups all over my house.
Like I stepped away from us to go get a cup and I grabbed one and it had like a drink
in it that was a building and it was old.
So it's like oh that doesn't work.
And what I always say is like I will see that cup, I will know that cup needs to go.
But it's this like random task that's not in the flow and I can't make myself do it
if it's not in the flow.
So what I have to do is put all my energy into making the river flow over that task.
So for example because I am not very good I will literally stare at a cup and be like
pick it up pick it up pick it up and I just won't.
Like I can't make my hand move.
But I can say that every Tuesday afternoon is cup duty and go get all of the cups throughout
the whole house.
I can say that I'm going to get a dishpan and put it on each level of my house and that's
where I can put my cups when I'm done with them and then when it gets full I can carry
it down.
Like I can turn these tiny little tasks into bigger systems that my brain is more willing
to engage.
And I used to joke that like it was really common to go into the bathroom and there'll
be no toilet paper because often when I'm noticing these little one off tasks like oh
I need to replace the toilet paper.
Oh I need to take that cup to the whatever.
Oh I need to hang that thing up.
I'm noticing them while I'm in the middle of doing something else right.
So you're carrying your laundry to your room when you see the cup.
And for me because of working memory issues and all sorts of other issues with ADHD when
I'm in that position if I stop doing the laundry to take the cup down I'll forget about the
laundry or get distracted from the laundry.
And if I say oh I need to come back for that cup and then go to the laundry I'll never
come back for the cup.
And so I often felt like I was just like what's that arcade like a pinball like I was just
a pinball like bouncing off of all these things in my house.
There's no flow.
So instead when I decided that okay on Mondays that's when I do the laundry on Tuesdays that's
when I restock my house and I made a list of like all the things in my house that could
need to be restocked.
The toilet paper, the paper towels, the soap dispensers, all these things and then I would
take that little list and go around the whole house and do all of my quote unquote restock.
And that to me like I could get my brain to engage in that kind of system.
First of all I can relate with you.
As someone with a more of a neurotypical brain I can walk around my house and as I walk I'm
picking up and putting away but still see my end goal in mind.
So I'm like grabbing things and I'm taking them to the kitchen while I'm also putting
away the laundry and then I'm going to do this last thing and then my house is tidied
up before I get to work in the morning.
But Casey as you talk about it, sure for your neurodiverse brain there are systems in place
that you can create that you can get on board with and create that flow.
I love how you describe that.
And I can see how this is not only applicable to other people who have a diagnosis of say
ADHD but if anyone struggles with depression or bipolar or even just sleep deprivation,
it doesn't even have to be any kind of diagnostic understanding but even just being like tired
or working in the night shift or juggling a household of kids and working, life is hard
to organize.
So this is really interesting and very helpful to hear some of those tools that you use.
Can you talk some about the difference between motivation and task initiation?
I know that is one thing that you mentioned to me that I thought you could put words to.
Yeah so for a long time when I would think about, you know, okay I know I need to get
that laundry done but I'm just not doing it, I always thought that I struggled with motivation.
And it wasn't until I was actually talking to a psychologist friend of mine, Dr. Leslie
Cook that sort of broke down that there's a big difference between motivation and task
initiation.
And she explained to me that motivation is seeing something as valuable and desiring
to do it, right?
And so if I'm lacking in motivation that I'm staring at a pile of laundry and I might
be saying something like what's the use?
I'm just gonna have to do it again tomorrow.
Or I might be thinking something like I don't even deserve clean laundry.
I might be thinking I just don't really care, like it doesn't bother me to wear dirty clothes.
It doesn't make a material difference and I know it's supposed to but it doesn't actually
make an experiential difference in my life where I have a clean clothes versus picking
something up off the floor, I've worn and so I can't just can't get myself to really care
that much.
Those are motivation issues and we see those.
They're very real symptoms of depression and of schizophrenia and other mental health
struggles.
It's called a motivation.
It's literally on the criteria for a lot of disorders.
However, that's different than staring at your laundry and thinking I need to get laundry
done.
I want to get laundry done.
My life is better when my laundry is done.
Go get up, do the laundry and we don't understand why we feel paralyzed.
We're just staring at it going why can't I get myself to get up off this chair and do
it.
That is task initiation barriers, not motivation barriers.
It's important to recognize the difference because we treat them differently.
If I'm staring at my laundry going I understand the value of this, I want to get this done.
My life is better when this is done.
Why can't I make myself do it?
We're looking at a completely different issue.
We're looking at this issue of executive functioning.
It's funny I was meeting with somebody recently.
We were actually talking about kids and trying to understand kids in their developmental area.
She said in order to make a transition, a child has to go through seven different steps.
Seven, right?
They have to unattach their attention from what they're looking at.
They have to physically hear the cue they're being given by the parent.
They have to form an emotional mental reaction to that and regulate it.
They have to create a motor movement plan and execute that and moving towards that task.
It was like all of these things.
As I was listening to her I was thinking, I understand this because most people would
say the transition from sitting on your couch to going and doing your laundry is one step.
You just decide and then you get up and go do it.
I don't experience it that way.
I experience it as multiple steps that my gears are grinding trying to get through.
In fact, when I started my ADHD medication, the number one thing that changed for me was
going from feeling as though the transition from getting off the couch to going to do my
laundry was very difficult and took a lot of energy and time.
To all of a sudden it was like somebody had greased the wheels.
I could just go, I want to do my laundry.
Then all of a sudden my body was getting up off the chair and I was walking towards it.
It didn't feel like walking through mud anymore.
I think the best way that I have found is that medication in conjunction with lifestyle
accommodations, creating these systems because there are ways that I can create momentum
for myself.
I needed to clean my house recently and I set aside a whole day to do it.
I remember sitting there and being like, I can't make myself do it.
I had to break down these small ways of creating momentum.
The first one was turning the heat up.
I had to tune into my body and go, what resistance am I feeling in my body?
The first one was, I'm cold.
I don't want to get up from under this blanket.
I turned my heat up.
I was like, what's the second one?
I had on fleece pants and a long shirt.
This does not feel conducive to moving around in my house.
I need to go change my clothes.
The next thing was, I put on some upbeat music and I found a podcast.
It took me literally three hours to do just those steps, but I was slowly moving myself
towards this goal of feeling full of energy ready to do things.
It's those things in conjunction with the medication that have created so much more
functioning for me.
That was one of the things that my psychiatrist pointed out was that your diagnosis has been
missed because you have been engaging in such intensely high compensatory behaviors
your whole life that at first glance you don't look that different from other people, but
what people can't see is that you're working ten times harder to do the same tasks that
other people are doing automatically.
Right, and that is not all evident by behavior, but every single gear you're trying to shift
within your mind, which I imagine you talked about just feeling like you're just going
through mud and it would feel really challenging to do that.
I'm so sorry that you lived for so long with that experience in your brain, probably feeling
really confused by that experience without having anyone validate it externally until
you were able to get your diagnosis as an adult.
That took a lot of courage for you to pause and start asking those questions and to really
seek out answers.
It's really, really amazing to see how you've grabbed a hold of this label and it seems
like you don't feel shame about it and instead you talk about it, you use it to your benefit,
you take your medications and then you create systems in place that can really help you
thrive.
Well, and I've learned that it's really common for late diagnosed adults to kind of be bopping
along okay and then we hit a wall and it's usually a situational wall.
So you're okay and then all of a sudden you hit college or you're okay and then all of
a sudden you hit for me, motherhood.
And so for a long time, I thought that the answer was just that I was failing at being
a mom because there were a lot of ways in which having a career and not having children,
there was a lot of ways in which momentum was being created for me.
And so you wake up, you have to be at the job at a certain time so you necessitate the
urgency of brushing your teeth and putting on your clothes and taking that shower, you
get there, you do your work, now it's off, you come home, you're coming in, you've got
your shoes on, okay, do a couple of things and then sit down.
And all of a sudden I transitioned from okay, now I'm a stay at home mom, I have these two
kids, none of the external structure is there anymore and I can't function.
And so for a lot of late diagnosed people, they're sort of an event, maybe it's grief,
you've lost someone, it's a transition into a career or motherhood or parenthood or something.
And all of a sudden, and that's why I think there's also this barrier of, well, I can't
be ADHD, I've only been struggling for the past five years.
And it really takes someone that knows their stuff beyond just stereotypes to help you
untangle, wait a second, maybe this is something that's actually been there from the beginning.
We just really need to investigate the different ways those things have been showing up and
maybe there is this sort of golden thread that we can find through your whole life and
explain why right now it seems so much worse.
Okay, see, you talked about having some depressive episodes early on in your motherhood.
When you look back, do you feel like it was like the chicken or egg situation where now
knowing you have ADHD that was causing any of this depressive heaviness that you were
feeling or do you see those as more like isolated experiences?
It's funny because there's lots of mental health experiences that I've had that I now
look back and can see them all being related to ADHD.
The two times in my life I've experienced a depressive episode.
I remember thinking like, I know I'm depressed, some a therapist and I know what the criteria
is, but I don't feel or look like anyone I know who's experiencing depression.
Like I'm meeting the criteria, but the biggest difference for me was I never felt sad when
I was in a depressive episode.
I always just felt emotionally flatlined or numb and I felt bored, but I never could say
that out loud because boredom seems like, oh, just deal with it.
But to me, the boredom was painful.
It was sucking all of the meaning out of my life to where every day I would go to bed
and I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a shotgun thinking about just waking up
and doing the same thing tomorrow.
And I had a depressive episode when I was postpartum with this last baby and I had one
when I was single and living overseas and they were completely different times in my
life, but I could recognize that the impetus for both of them was the same.
It was isolation, understimulation and boredom.
That's a really interesting observation and I'm curious if you can jump in to talking
about the stimulation piece and how that relates to ADHD.
So it's interesting.
Like I find that, I mean, everybody no matter what your brain is like can experience being
overstimulated, like we've all been at the fair or somewhere, maybe a kid's birthday
party and just been like, ah, there's too much noise here.
And we all know what it feels like to kind of be understimulated, I think, by way of just
maybe being bored.
But the threshold for overstimulation and understimulation when you have ADHD is really
different.
So if there's a lot of sensory things going around at the same time, I get really easily
overwhelmed and it's hard for me to emotionally regulate.
So I'm snapping at my kids.
I'm really angry for no reason.
But the part that really blew my mind was the understimulation.
Dopamine, which is like the happy chemical in our brain, I don't want to oversimplify
it, but it plays a really important role, not only in experiencing pleasure, but in mood
regulation.
And we know that one of the things happening with ADHD is basically a misregulation of
many things, one of which is dopamine.
This is why there's such a crossover between addiction and ADHD is because there's something
going on in the pleasure center of our brain that isn't really firing correctly.
And so for me, when I am understimulated, it's not just being bored, but it literally
brings on feelings of intense pain, intense existential dread.
It can be something as simple as that's sometimes why it's hard for me to pay attention.
If I'm sitting in a lecture, I often am feeling like I'm not stimulated enough to pay attention.
And so I have to do something else with my head.
This is where fidget's come in.
And that's why it's because I'm understimulated.
And so if I find a way to stimulate my senses in some other way, I can regulate that attention.
If I can find a way to stimulate my life in another way, I can regulate that mood better.
And so when I find myself, okay, I can't leave the house.
I can't engage in meaningful activities.
I feel kind of a loss of identity.
I don't have a lot of social interaction, whether it's because I'm living overseas or
because there's a pandemic lockdown and I have a new baby, the other mental health symptoms
start to just domino.
And when I started making my TikTok channel, all of the sudden that was creating stimulation
for me.
So it was I have an interest.
I have a hobby.
I'm watching feedback come in and on comments.
I have something to think about.
People with ADHD tend to hyper focus on things probably because we get so understimulated
and it was funny to look back on my whole life and go, Oh, everyone's always kind of
thought of me as someone who just gets very passionate about things and then loses interest.
And I was like, Oh, I can basically trace my whole personality by just one hyper fixation
after another.
And I need that I need something that is sort of tickling my brain that is novel, that is
something to figure out.
And that like, I don't know how to describe it keeps me on track having the right amount
of stimulation.
So you describe that and I'm wondering how you create that sense of stimulation while
also having to do these really mundane care tasks and sometimes live that like groundhogs
day life, like get the kids to take care, do the same job tidy up the house, take a shower,
right?
Like all these things that we have to do in a day.
So how do you do both?
And what advice do you have for our listeners?
So for me, beginning to try and create systems that work with my brain and not against my
brain has been key.
Because when you systematize something, it creates enough interest for my brain to latch
on.
I think of it like a ski lift, right?
Like I'm standing there and I'm ready to just be scooped up by the ski lift and go.
So in my five things, tidying method, you know, I visualize that there are only five
things in the room, trash, dishes, laundry, things without a place and things with a place.
And as I'm going through each category, just focusing on that category, it almost feels
like it's been gamified.
So look for the trash, trash, trash.
And it almost reminds me of like when you play those first person shooter games where
there's like a little bullseye that's like scanning the environment and then they're
like, dee dee dee dee dee, like locking in on something.
That's almost what happens in my brain.
Then when I get all the trash up, it's like, boom, that's a finish line.
That's that little like hit of dopamine.
And I find that when it comes to feeling motivated, there's really like three or four
things that do it for me.
And that's pleasure, patterns, panic.
If I have to have the thing clean because you're coming over in 20 minutes, okay, I can get
it done.
But I also find that patterns really do that for me.
And so if every time I want to clean my room, I have a predictable pattern of five things
I do in a row, it's much easier for me to engage that.
For some reason that is stimulating to my brain versus like walking around and just
picking up random items.
That's a really fascinating solution.
And one thing I really like is that your solutions seem to be really creative.
That we've been given this narrative that this is what your day should look like.
And then for some people, that is just not going to work.
So can you talk about what that has been like to shift from the rule book into thinking
more creatively?
Yeah.
So the, I would say that the main point of my whole platform and my book and my TED Talk
and all of it is the idea that care tasks are morally neutral, which means that the way
you do them, whether you struggle with them, it has nothing to do with your character.
Whether you're a good or bad person or whether you're worthy of love or shame or belonging
or derision, none of those things have anything to do with you being a worthwhile human being.
And I think a lot of us are trying so hard to quote unquote get on top of things from
a place of desperately wanting to be acceptable and not feel so much shame.
And I think that that puts us on a hamster wheel that never ends because we're constantly
just trying to get it under control and trying new systems and then they fall apart within
a few days and then we feel shame and it just keeps going on and on and on and on and on.
And what I want to do is I want to refocus us from this idea that care tasks are this
external measurement of your worthiness as a human and instead focus on the idea that
regardless of your level of functioning, you're a human being that deserves kindness and that
you deserve to function.
You deserve to be clean and comfortable.
You deserve to have clean dishes to eat off of.
You deserve to be able to come down the stairs in the morning and do the first few things
of the morning you need to do without the extra stress of not having a functional space
to do them in.
And when we change our thinking from, you know, being worthy to already being worthy
and I think we'll find that most of us do want to function.
And when you get away from that, you have a lot more freedom.
When you get away from that sort of like it has to be this way or else, you get a lot
more freedom to go, why am I folding this laundry?
Or why am I sorting the laundry before I put it in?
Why do I feel like I have to have, you know, a certain number of dishes, whatever it is,
recognizing that you can design your life and your home any way that works for you.
You can break all of the rules and you don't have to have it figured out tomorrow.
You don't have to have a bazillion systems tomorrow.
I have a system that I call closing duties left over from when I used to wait tables.
And it's basically this list of four or five things that I do every night around 730 to
get my space functional for the morning.
And it does not make the house clean or perfect or any of that.
But it does make sure that when I wake up in the morning, I have enough dishes to eat
off of.
I have a clean trash can and I have enough counter space to make breakfast.
And I do that because I'm a person that deserves that in the morning and I don't have to worry
about everything being perfect.
But when I started closing duties, it had one item on it, which was unload and reload
the dishwasher.
That is literally it.
And some nights I did what I call survival day closing duties, which was literally just
take the children's bottles, shove them into the clean dishwasher and run it again.
And I think that that is the key.
It's like it's okay to do a little and do it because you're a person that deserves to
function.
If you're a parent, I invite you to join us at the Mindful Mama podcast where it's all
about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent with sometimes hilarious and always
thought provoking experts and friends at Mindful Mama we know that you cannot give what you
do not have.
And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children.
I'm Hunter Clark Fields and I can't wait to see you there.
Listen in to the Mindful Mama podcast.
♪♪♪♪