The Inner Meltdown

How to overcome your inner objections to doing the things

Here are some buzz words that relate to why ADHDers don’t do stuff. This is taken from my own inner strife as well as listening to ADHDBB members and 1:1 clients.

I have felt them all, so I’ll just say it’s about me. This is why I used to choose not to do a thing. Because:

• Other things pop into my head as more important.

• I forgot what I was going to do.

• It is causing me to have an inner meltdown.

• I don’t know where to begin or how to get started on it.

• I don’t have time.

• I feel resistance to it.

• I don’t feel like it.

I’m positive there are more, but that’s enough to see that there are many reasons why an adult with ADHD won’t “do a thing.”

I’d love to focus on the inner meltdown, and resistance, as the emotional component of getting started on a crappy task can be tough! To this day I loathe doing the dishes and if I could wear the same clothes every day without anything ever getting dirty, I would never do another load of laundry as long as I live. I have internal tantrums when it comes time to do these simple (technically) tasks.

How to do a thing when I’m having an inner meltdown.

I never rewarded my kids with spa days and breaks and treats when they threw a tantrum. I would say goodbye to the parents at the park, and I would help my kid into his car seat while he screamed and demanded and made all the attempts to NOT do the thing I was asking him to do. We left…even though. “Even Though” works great for this.

If you schedule a task at a certain time, can you honor that even though you are having an internal meltdown? That meltdown means you really don’t want to do this task…totally normal! You don’t have to want to do it. You decided in advance that you were going to do the task. You deemed it worthy of scheduling and planning on it, so let yourself have a fit on the inside and go forward.

ADHD is not about having all your conditions met. It means that important stuff usually sucks and isn’t motivating enough to get us started. It is absolutely a great idea to set your environment and put on music, or do all the dopamine booster thingies to give you a better shot at success…but relying on that is dangerous, to me. If you are able to say “The music wasn’t hitting like I need it to, so I couldn’t do the task…” then you might consider leaning into some ‘even though.’

The positive side of this. It’s momentary suffering. Nobody ever says “I wish I would have NOT done the task I scheduled and planned for. I wish I would have escaped this tantrum feeling and ate a big bag of chips or played video games for 3 hours instead. I need to get better at pissing away my days!” We ADHDers are desperate to have our ‘now’ feel good, and it’s very easy to let our futures selves take the hit.

I find there is a higher likelihood of me ‘doing the thing’ if I accept the fact that I’m not going to like it in the moment. If I expect the crappy feeling, I am better able to ‘Even Though’ it.

I think the ramble of this article is that we are never going to feel like it. We will always feel resistant to shitty tasks. If we truly want to be a person who can consistently move their needle forward and do these shitty things, then I recommend the time to start practicing “Even Though” is now.

See what it feels like to “Even Though” a task. Be ok with feeling awful. Be ok with how gross it feels. See how much time you can put into it before you lose your mind.

Remind yourself in the moment: nobody ever regrets getting shit done. But we do regret letting ourselves down, letting others down, and/or throwing away time to escapist behaviors.

My challenge to you:

Schedule a 30 minute block of time tomorrow where you will do something specific. Pick something you know needs to get done but that you keep kicking forward. Set an alarm in your calendar, and tomorrow, when the time comes, set a timer for 30 minutes and practice working on that thing for 30 minutes…even though something else is more important now, even though you don’t feel like it, even though you feel resistance, even though you are throwing an inner tantrum.

Need more help with this: join ADHDBB.