Jen Kirkman "You Are A Lot" Podcast (AuDHD)

Hey anyone here remember my old podcast "I Seem Fun"? I'll tell ya why I ask in a second....

Go ahead and DM that meme! We don't all have to text all of time.

Do you never plan your own week but just say yes whenever someone asks you to do something cuz technically you're free? That's going to wear you out eventually.

Dr. Russell Ramsay has a system for coping with ADHD emotional intensity. It's to identify the trigger, name the problem, work through worst-case & best-case scenarios, focusing on the most likely outcome. This helps stop catastrophizing & it curbs emotional outbursts. (I've done this. It works!)

I ate rice pudding every day for 6 months until it became my sworn enemy. Now I can eat it sometimes and it's great but the obsession never came back. And that's just how it goes.

The key isn’t to pretend that your imposter feelings aren’t there but to recognize them, let them exist, and still do the thing. That’s how you start building proof that you belong. That’s going to be the start of releasing that constant, nagging belief that you’ve only made it here by accident.

Hey, ADHD/AuDHD family, your shame spiral after oversharing is way bigger than the overshare itself. Are you embarrassed because you think you said too much or...because you think you ARE too much? You don’t have to "fix" the overshare with a follow-up text. Can you consider letting it go?

A Hope Journal can be a visual map for future projects. It doesn’t need to be fancy or perfect. Just one line per day: what moves you forward on your goal, what sparked a future thought, etc. Over time, this journal helps retrain your brain to be inspired during the process of working on a project.

Positive feedback is literally fuel for the ADHD brain,” says Dr. Ned Hallowell. It gives us a hit of dopamine and it’s why a single compliment can motivate us for days. He coined this, Recognition Response Euphoria (RRE) which he thinks of as the flipside to Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD).

Not everyone who sits on a floor or weird in a chair has ADHD but everyone who has ADHD most likely looks like a pretzel sitting at their desk. #adhd

2/ I was desperate to find out what my “problem” was but I had a strong KNOWING of what my problem was NOT. Grateful now to have awesome trauma-informed, neurodivergent affirming therapy and coaching. My self-trust is being restored.

1/ There was a grieving process for a lifetime of misunderstandings that wasted my time and money, exhausted my nervous system before knowing I was also Autistic, (therefore AuDHD). Had a therapist who didn’t believe me when I’d insist her hypothesis about me was wrong.

I hate the Pomodoro Technique, where you work for 25 minutes, then take a 5 min break. I set a timer for 25 mins, use the alarm to task switch and start another 25 min round. I take a 15 min break after 90 mins. A timer telling me to “take a break” even though *I’m the one who set it, riles me up!

Send this to someone who needs to know. #adhd

People-pleasing can feel like a connection, but it's a control issue in disguise. “If I say yes, they won’t get mad.” Or “If I help, they’ll like me” You’re trying to manage how other people feel about you so that you can feel safe, which doesn’t bring about true closeness.

True story. #adhd

If you have ADHD and struggle with self-regulation, try this. Make a list of things you’re absolutely not allowed to do when you’re emotionally overwhelmed. Ex: “I don’t text while angry." When your brain goes offline, look at your list and let your own words anchor you to reality.

Experts say that ADHD humans can fall into “accidental lying” - when your time blindness messes with your memory. You might say something happened to you yesterday when it didn’t, because your internal sense of time is off. Your brain doesn’t flag this as wrong and people might think you're lying.

Hey! Put down that to-do list. You won't get it all done today. You'll be okay.

There’s a neurological explanation for why ADHD humans struggle to focus. The default mode network and the task-related network in their brain are activated at the same time, which creates interference. This is why it feels like your brain is at war with itself when you're trying to complete a task

Adults with Pervasive Drive For Autonomy (PDA) can feel emotionally disregulated when their autonomy is threatened. That can cause procrastination, anxiety, and shutdowns. You may want to do a task but don’t because the structure of the demand to do the task is what’s overwhelming.

Large-scale studies in the past decades show growing evidence that ADHD/AuDHD/Autistic humans are more likely to be non-binary, genderfluid, agender, or transgender. Things like authenticity, discomfort with assigned roles, a tendency to question norms show up a lot as shared traits that overlap.

If you feel twitchy when you’re trying to rest, your body might be reacting to a lifetime of treating productivity as safety. Your nervous system might still associate stillness with danger. But you can retrain it slowly with rest and regulation techniques, and try to be consistent.

Cortisol affects your body in many ways; a twitching eyelid, jaw tension, bloating, random bruises, sensitivity to light, waking up nauseous, or even changes in your period — all of these can be connected to chronic stress hormone activity. These symptoms are often overlooked in ADHD treatment.

Trauma doesn't cause ADHD but having ADHD (diagnosed or not) can be a traumatic experience in unsupported situations like work, school, um, everywhere. #adhd #trauma

Dr. Russell Barkley says that one of the biggest problems with diagnosing ADHD is that it’s still misunderstood by many medical professionals. So even within healthcare, you might run into people who think it’s just behavioral or just needs discipline. It sucks there’s misinformation at every level.

Good advice if I do say so myself.

Saying yes is easy but dealing with the fallout of that yes is hard. We say yes to the party, the favor and then try to figure out how to cancel. If we work on knowing our own internal boundaries, then setting and honoring them, that’s a tool that will help us to think and plan our lives better.

This really works. I had to write a 3 page thing and kept putting it off and then decided to write one paragraph per writing session, twice a day. I judged myself that it wasn't enough but did it anyway . And got the 3 page thing done in a week and on time.

Dr. Edward Hallowell says that ADHD humans live in a survival mode. We use so much energy just to do the basic living and it can become our default mode. At the same time, ADHD humans are visionaries who have a deep capacity for imagination and dreaming, and who get excited about possibilities.