The Struggle to Relax: Why ADHD Makes it Tough

hello brains have you ever felt like you're really bad at relaxing yeah that's an ADHD thing sometimes what my brain needs is a break from self-reg sometimes it just needs a break from a specific stressor like English Babble is great for that because it's engaging and stimulating it's a way for me to get a mental break from something that I really care about but I can't stop spinning on and get my brain spinning on something else for a minute so that I can come back fresh what's great about Babel is it's really interactive but it's also designed by actual language teachers so it's not just fun I really feel like I'm learning this language I appreciate that all of these right now are about me saying I don't understand what did you say I don't understand it Babel is teaching me the grammar and pronunciation of Dutch which is very different from what I'm used to oh wait no that's a restaurant restaurant oh my gosh that's really hard to say okay I'm starting to feel more confident with it and even having a bit of fun and cook guess what that means pancakes I'm still just a beginner but because Babel focuses on real world conversations I already feel comfortable speaking it when the opportunity comes up at the keynote I gave recently for an organization in the Netherlands I was even able to be playful with it I'm excited to keep going with it and see how much more I can learn if you'd like to learn a new language I highly recommend Babel just click the link in the description below or scan this QR code for 60 off your subscription other side and let me know in the comments below what kind of language you want to learn and why a lot of people in this community including me find that they have a really hard time relaxing doing relaxing activities specifically like going to the beach and just hanging out in a hammock and relaxing or doing a puzzle or anything that's like deliberate relaxation activities are very difficult for people in this community as a general rule and there's a couple reasons for that one we get bored really easily you know laying in a hammock and chilling and watching the sunset or whatever that gets boring so fast and our brains do not like to be bored it can actually be more painful than relaxing which is a lot of the time why I think I will start a project if left to my own devices but I realized recently that there's another reason why we have a hard time relaxing focusing on a relaxing activity still requires self-regulation and that is usually what we need a break from because we have a condition that makes regulating our Attention our emotions our behave Behavior our sleep really difficult a lot of the time what relaxation looks like I have learned is taking a break from self-reg we have to put in so much extra effort to get ourselves to focused on the thing that we need to do and to to do the thing and say the thing right and mask our ADHD in certain situations and all of these things engage in so much self-regulation like active manual self-regulation on a regular basis that taking a break from that is often what we need most I have long talked about how it's really important to let our brains and bodies wander wander down a wikihole or like go on a walk and just explore get some green time in just have that kind of effortless Fascination where your brain's just kind of bouncing around and stuff the problem is that takes energy and as I recently learned if you haven't seen that video check it out um when really hyper focusing for an extended period of time like I had energy for absolutely nothing else I definitely didn't have the energy to go for a walk but I still needed a break and so I didn't know what to do until one day my brain was like I can't self-regulate like this I need I need a break from self-regulation and I was like oh that's what relaxing looks like for us honestly just in general like taking a break from relaxing I learned this because there is one day where I just really really needed a break and instead of taking a break or doing anything that anybody else would think was relaxing I started I started a new project I didn't understand it either because I'm like if I had decided to do this project today if I decided to focus on this project then that would have been work but because I didn't decide to my brain decided to I just let it do what it wanted and it wanted to do a project that day and so that's that's something that I've learned like relaxing for us might look different than it does for most people because our energy is put into something different than for most people we put so much more energy than most people do into regulating our Behavior our emotions our attention everything about ourselves we put so much energy into regulating that all the time that we often just need a a break from that and so I I see a lot of times people saying like oh yeah like it's the dopamine right like I'm scrolling through Twitter for the dopamine I'm doing this for the dopamine I'm chasing the dopamine I think it's sometimes that we just need to let our brains off leash a little bit we need a break from trying to focus on the thing we're supposed to be focusing on and just let our brains do what it wants are there times that we are you know chasing cheap sources of dopamine because we're bored sure but sometimes we're just exhausted and so I think it's good to reframe that a little bit and know that if we are doing something that doesn't seem productive it's because we're letting our brains off leash we don't have to be doing a relaxing activity in order to relax we just need to loosen the reins a little bit sometimes yeah it's great to I don't know have the house to yourself and do whatever you want and scream at the top of your lungs and like bounce jump on the bed I don't know be able to literally do whatever you want because there's nobody else around but even if there's other people around I think it's important to like not be like I'm just not self-regulating everybody can just deal I did have to do that at one point uh in writing the book and I was very careful to like let people know hey I'm gonna be a lot right now I can't I need a break from self rig I need to I need to not self-regular right now I might be a lot I might be loud I might be silly I might be I don't know I'm gonna be a lot I'm going to continue to be a lot but you don't have to be here for it like and if you know if I'm bothering you let me know if you need to to leave and go do your own thing like that's totally fine I just can't like I was at that point where I was completely burnt out but what I realized coming back to work and just in my normal day-to-day life applying this new understanding there's a lot of ways that we can take a break from self-reg there's a lot of ways we can do that even partially so I've been a little bit more mindful of like hey I'm starting to get tired I'm going to take a break from self rank in this one aspect I'm in a meeting with somebody who it's okay if I sit weird on my chair so I'm just not gonna care about that like I'm gonna sit on my chair however I want to sit and I'm not going to monitor that behavior I'm not going to like try and sit in a professional way I'm just gonna I'm gonna take that little bit of my brain off leash I'm gonna unmask that part of my ADHD taking a break from self-reg does not mean deliberately doing something relaxing it means letting your brain do what it wants to do even if that's the exact same thing it would have been doing otherwise I think that's the key like that's why it's so confusing that's why I thought I was so bad at relaxing for so long is like yeah I got bored and I immediately started doing something else that was definitely not a relaxing activity well because when my brain's off leash it doesn't want to do a relaxing activity because it's boring the point is like not forcing to do something that it is not in the mood to do that's what taking a break from self rig looks like so if I want to sit you know right now I'm like I want to sit cross-legged cool that's what I'm doing we can at least in little ways start to give ourselves a break from the self-regulation that we have to do a day in and day out and here's the thing if we don't give ourselves that break I feel like we're gonna take it anyway you know if I don't let my brain off leash now and that if I don't recharge that you know that ability to self-regulate at some point my brain starts to Rebel or I can't keep it anymore and I'm gonna be reactive to something or whatever um it's really important for us to take that time to recharge because if we don't like our brains are going to take it anyway it is not realistic for us to be able to to perfectly manage our attention and behavior and um and emotions and everything 24 7 it's just not we need a break like mindfully give yourself a break and be like I'm not gonna ask my brain to do something it doesn't want to do right now I'm going to let it do what it wants because I know that I'm gonna need to to be able to focus later I know that I'm gonna need to um to to be on tomorrow and so like today I'm gonna give myself a break that's I think what meds do too is like it it makes it easier to self-regulate like that's what my meds do for me and so um on days when I don't have my meds when I can't take my meds when I'm out of meds whatever I let myself I let my brain off leash a little bit more because it is more effort for me to self-regulate on those days but I just wanted to put it out there like I think it would be really cool to have that vocabulary in our community like do you want to do a fun relaxing activity or do you need a break from self rig because I think those are two different things and I think by trying to relax correctly we are unintentionally not giving ourselves the break that we need at least speaking for myself and I do see it a lot in in the community too so I hope this was helpful thank you to my brain Advocates and all my patreon brains for helping me support this channel so that I can talk about what I want to talk about and do videos that I think are going to be helpful for the community I think this is going to be something that's really important for a community to like think about and be aware of I'm curious what you do like that you actually find relaxing like if you give yourself a break from self-regulating what does your brain naturally want to do because I think it'll be different from person to person in the community but for me it often is starting a project doing something creative or uh I don't know like thinking deep philosophical thoughts that's what my brain wants to do a lot of the time so um it seems like work but if it's not scheduled if it's not something that I'm trying to focus on it doesn't feel like work it feels like a break so I think maybe that's the the takeaway is like take a take a break from self right now and then like see if that's relaxing and and notice how that feels compared to trying to do something relaxing and like which actually feels recharging what actually feels better to you like subscribe click all the things and I will see you next video bye brains thank you again to Babel for sponsoring this video click the link in the description or scan the QR to get 60 off your subscription [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: How to ADHD

Views: 266,452

Keywords: add, adhd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, jessica mccabe, how to, attention deficit disorder, mental health, neurodiversity, adult adhd, how to adhd, mental health awareness, relaxing, struggle, relax

Id: X9WSVb1A9Mc

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023