We Have To Suffer

How to do it more effectively

This one is for the adult with ADHD who is suffering alone in silence. The one who is trying to figure it out on their own. The one who has little faith in their ability to show up for themselves, because they always let themselves and others down. That sucks. Let’s fix this!

I get the whole cocooning thing, going off to try and internally change and get some motivational spark that changes us. I used to do that. Never worked. But I reeeeeaaaalllly had a hard time admitting failure. I got so tired of announcing plans for success and then sucking at it and admitting defeat. That’s quite an awful feeling.

I blabbed on and on about it this week on the ADHD Big Brother podcast if you are interested. Here’s the link.

Now, I don’t want to throw shade on the inner work. I’m all for it. How do we do stuff, though, while all that other inner work is being worked on. Inner work takes time. I don’t want to wait years until all my childhood trauma is sorted out to consistently do my laundry. I don’t want to wait until I finish years of meditation practice, shadow work, or until I can finally say “I love myself” with a straight face before I set and achieve goals. I want to move my needle forward on stuff!

Unfortunately, ADHD does not give a shit about how much transformational work we do.

Try this. Spend $10,000 to go on a retreat with a world famous motivational guru. Then come home and watch how easy it is to not do your laundry, or the dishes, or go to the gym, or whatever you learned at the retreat slowly or quickly fades away….Watch how ADHD shits all over your beautiful plate that you made for yourself, as the juice of the retreat wears off.

But I bet while you were on the retreat you got a lot of stuff done! Meaningful stuff! While the content of the retreat was probably profound and amazing, game changing, mind blowing, the secret sauce there was ‘other people’. Other people were there. You were doing something together, right? You were with others. You probably juiced each other up. You probably shared your answers. You probably copied other people’s answers because they were brilliant. You were body doubling! That, is an ADHD tool that works: OTHER MUH-FUDGIN PEOPLE!

There’s an effective way to suffer

ADHD is managed on the outside, not the inside. We cannot quietly fix the debilitating aspects of ADHD by doing inner work in my humble opinion. If we promise that we are going to clean up our mess, or be on time this time, or turn our work in without asking for an extension, or pay all the bills on time…these don’t get fixed secretly, quietly, by drumming up some inner fire that manifests into executive function skills. They happen with external scaffolding. And that scaffolding sucks in the moment.

We have to suffer.

Normally, we suffer later. We tend to opt for non-suffering in the moment. Who wouldn’t?! Suffering sucks. And because of our brain wiring, future suffering doesn’t really affect us in the moment. We drink alcohol because it feels good now. Connecting the future dots doesn’t allow us to make choices in the moment. Same with doing long term goal activities. Exercising now because I’ll feel good later doesn’t compel me to work out.

Bizarre, isn’t it? On those times when we make good choices, have you ever regretted it? When it comes to quitting alcohol, for example, I have never once woke up the next day and regretted not drinking last night. I’ve never said, “Oh man, I wish I would have drank last night. Why did I say no?! I need to be better about drinking more!”

If you didn’t scroll on instagram on Monday, would you regret it on Tuesday? Would you say, “I’m wasting my life! I can’t be letting these days go by without seeing relatable memes or beautiful vacation spots or AI cats doing funny things! When am I going to commit to doomscrolling mor?!”

It’s only in the fleeting moment that we suffer. In the moment, this moment that we are all trying to live in, this moment that we meditate for years to be mindful of…this present moment is fraught with tantrums and strife at doing things that we know are good for us. But it’s only in the moment. As soon as we get through the suffering, it always feels better. The new moment usually feels better, doesn’t it?

So if we are doing the math right here, this work is about how to suffer. How to allow ourselves to suffer now, instead of later. We tend to opt more often than not to suffering later. We want to feel good now. And later, is foreign. It’s not touchable, so we opt to deal with later, later. Right now, let’s feel good.

But if we do that for many things in a day, we are going to find ourselves in a perpetual state of suffering. We are upset now because of what we put off yesterday, and now we have to deal with additional discomfort for this new thing we’re trying to do. We’re stacking pain onto pain and rolling it into one craptastic now. “Somebody get me a beer, or my instagram…I want to escape this ugh feeling!”

The best way to start building a tolerance to suffering a little is with the help of other people. Get your body doubles going, join your communities, make some commitments with your nonjudgmental people and try and make a game out of the discomfort.

If we have to suffer, let’s make it as fun as possible.

I can speak from experience when I say that repeatedly getting on the other end of chosen suffering (tasks that suck), feels quite amazing. Confidence: BOOSTED.