Whenever I bring up the subject of ADHD, almost every women within earshot immediately lights up and says something like ‘Oh, I’ve got it! I have ADD big time! I’ve really got it bad!’
Most of these people probably don’t actually – clinically — have ADHD (aka ADD). It’s just that they feel so many of its classic symptoms – symptoms like feeling overwhelmed — that they think they have it.
Feeling overwhelmed is a core issue for people with ADD, but it’s also a natural human state of being that most people feel at least sometimes. Almost everybody experiences all the classic ADD issues that people with ADD experience, but to a much lesser extent.
I’ve never had the hours-long, extensive, clinical test that definitively determines if a person has certifiable ADD, but I believe I have it. I’ve struggled, more or less, with many of the issues for years. Issues like feeling overwhelmed; getting distracted from what I’m doing by people, places, or things that highjack my attention and focus; difficulty figuring out what’s most important to me (prioritizing); having a hard time making decisions; having difficulty sticking with what I’ve decided to do; changing my mind, doing things impulsively, and more.
Many factors contribute to feeling like you have ADD: hormonal changes; being slaves to our phones; overexposure to electronic media and its endless focus on all the bad in the world; being in the thick of parenthood; diet; aging; other stressors; and more.
These cultural factors pressure us to do everything faster, which exacerbates ADD. And, in people who don’t actually have ADD, these stressors can mimic the syndrome, which is why ADD is on so many people’s radar. Today, saying that you have ADD is almost code for the effects of living in the electronic age.
It’s hard to isolate ADD factors because they’re so intertwined, but I want to focus on some strategies I’ve used for side-stepping overwhelm.
Here they are.
FIVE WAYS TO LESSEN FEELING OVERWHELMED
Practice Pausing Before Saying Yes When Someone Asks You To Do Something
I generally feel happy around people: enthusiastic, interested, and excited about things. Combined with the fact that I can be impulsive, I sometimes say yes when someone asks me to participate in something or do something before I’ve thought it through. This can land me with additional obligations that I don’t have time for without sacrificing what’s really important to me.
Another way of putting this is that if my energy were money in the bank, I’d be overdrawn: Yet I can still say yes without thinking.
Training yourself to pause before saying yes is great tool. All it takes is remembering to take a moment to think before answering.
I’ve got a few stock phrases I have at the ready to help me remember not to say yes right away. I might, for instance, say “I’d love to help you, but I have to check some stuff, can I get back to you?” Or, “That sounds great, but can you give me a day to see if I can actually fit it in?” Or, you could just be really honest and say, “I’m sorry, but I’m so overwhelmed with all I have on my plate, I just can’t take on anything else!”
Then you can let the immediate situation pass, take time to think, and not get recruited into something that will overload your plate.
Create A Morning Ritual/Quiet Time/Meditation To Center Yourself
What you do in the first moments upon awakening sets the tone for the day. Creating a mindful connection with my deep self/higher power/the Universe first thing in the morning has made a massive difference for good in my life.
Depending on how squeezed you are (i.e. a baby’s crying), you can still do it even if only for 90 seconds in the bathroom.
A morning ritual is powerful at keeping you centered in a conscious intention – or a prayer or affirmation — for your day.
A morning ritual stakes your claim to the present moment and aligns you with the inner realm of source energy, calm, imagination, creativity, meaning, and authenticity.
It’s a powerful practice that not only relieves the pressure of feeling overwhelmed, but also helps you in many other ways.
Take the time to do it, rather than exposing your fresh morning mind and body to the external realities of the news or social media.
Depending on what’s happening with you, what you believe in, how much time you have, and what’s important to you, you can create a ritual in a number of ways.
Various meditations, breathing practices, prayers, affirmations, and even simply sitting quietly without doing anything first thing, all work. As you keep at it, your practice will evolve.
I love to listen to one or another of the spare, guided mindfulness meditations led by Tara Brach. Her website has dozens and dozens available for free. There are even ones that are only three minutes long.
Positive self-talk
Don’t let overwhelm escalate by ruminating about how overwhelmed you are, how stupid you are for being stuck, or how stuck you are!
Experts are all over the map on the exact figure, but it’s safe to say that tens of thousands of thoughts pass through the mind of the average person everyday. For the most part, these are thoughts we don’t choose, they just come.
That’s insane!
On top of the sheer chatter of it all, many of them are habitual, negative phrases about ourselves. Phrases like “Duh! I’m such an idiot;” “What a stupid move!;” or “What the hell did I do that for?.”
And even if you say these things to and about yourself in a quasi-playful way, your unconscious mind hears them, remembers them, and sets to work making them manifest.
While we’ll likely never eliminate this stream of nearly unconscious thoughts, a good way to start chipping away at them is to consciously insert some positive statements into your flow.
At first, it’s helpful to choose one statement and set a goal of saying it throughout the day. It’ll be hard to remember! You could anchor it to some action to make it easier to remember, like before each time you eat. Or, if you drive a lot, at every stoplight. Or you could set a smart watch or phone reminder.
Starting to use positive self talk syncs really well into your morning ritual. It will set in motion an inner awareness of a deeper part of your being that is compelling and feels so good to connect with. Your phrases for the day could come from your morning ritual. And, in fact, your morning ritual will help you get going using some positive self-talk.
Do Some Deep Work on Identifying What’s Most Important To You
Maybe you’ve heard this, or maybe you haven’t.
All the goal setting and productivity gurus talk about it: The difference between doing things that are urgent and doing things that are important. So often, especially if we’re overwhelmed, we get paralyzed and can’t get started on anything. That state of mind leaves us susceptible to doing whatever comes up – usually some randomly impulsive thing that feels urgent. This robs us of time that could be used to do what we really value.
I spent a lot of years bouncing from activity to activity like a ping-pong ball, taking action on whatever came my way, or whatever impulse carried me off. And, while living like that might result in owning especially pretty throw pillows, or having had a lot of fun times screwing around with friends, it doesn’t take you where you really want to go. Without digging deep and asking yourself what you really want to build with your life, time will just slip by and so will your life.
Establishing your priorities – both lifetime, long-term ones, and smaller, closer-in, yearly, and daily ones – cuts through the paralysis caused by a long to-do list like nothing else.
I mean, on your deathbed (sorry if that sounds gruesome but the mindset helps me focus), I’m pretty sure I won’t care if the kitchen was always clean. But I will care that I spent time with the people I love, worked on becoming more compassionate, called my family and friends on a regular basis, learned how to speak a foreign language, danced more, and nurtured my health, to name a few.
If you’re new at this, I like starting by doing what I call a brain dump.
Take a notebook, sit down, and write absolutely every single thing that’s nagging at you to be done. Do this for an hour, at least. Put everything down, from the tiniest little thing, to the biggest, most out there fantasy: from cleaning off that black mark on the wall behind the living room chair, to saving for a trip to Thailand. Everything from losing weight, to finding a therapist, to going to the gym, to vacuuming your car, to making your bed every morning. Stay with it, and with it, scanning your mind for every single thing that nags at you: Be kinder to strangers; End your friendship with a person who’s a bummer to be around; polish your shoes; clean your closet; find a place to go dancing with your girlfriends.
If you do this, you will feel a lot of relief. You can keep at it after your first session, adding anything that comes up.
Once you’re emptied out – at least for the time being – look over the list. Hopefully, it’ll be pretty apparent to you what’s important and what’s not so important.
You can use this as a basis for writing down your top life priorities.
From that list, you can begin to fashion daily priorities.
Small steps everyday are what end up amounting to dreams fulfilled.
We’re never going to be finished doing all the small stuff in life: the dirt just keep accumulating on the bathroom floor. But, if you can accept that, you can start to focus on allotting at least some of your daily actions to building what’s most important to you.
If you need help breaking down your big life priorities into daily tasks, get help. Friends who are naturals at this can really clarify things for you. Or, go to a therapist/life coach for a while. Or seek out help from goal setting experts online or in books.
Keeping Your Head Where Your Feet Are: Doing One Thing At A Time
By now, most of us have probably heard that multitasking is a big joke: a joke on us.
Yes, you can talk on the phone and peruse your Facebook page at the same time, but neither your phone nor you virtual friends are getting your full attention. Science says that we can’t focus on two things at once, and what we’re really doing, when we multitask, is switching our focus very rapidly from one thing to the other.
Doing one thing at a time – with your full attention — turns out to be a profound spiritual practice!
Being present in the present is a vast enough effort to occupy monks, sages, priests and other holy, monastic, and meditative initiates their entire lives.
Which is to say, it’s likely we’ll never get there consistently, but the more moments we spend focused and open to what we’re doing in the moment, the more peace we’ll feel and cultivate.
And the more peace we cultivate, the less overwhelmed we’ll feel.
For more on all these, check out my short Kindle book, Help for Women With ADHD: My Simple Strategies for Conquering Chaos.
