That time we stimmed forever

On today's episode, the discussion on "WTH ADHD" delves into stimming behaviors, particularly focusing on how they affect individuals with ADHD and autism. Stimming ranges from innocuous actions like shifting in a chair to self-injurious behaviors. Kelly shares her experience of heavy sighing, which often made others feel dysregulated. The conversation explores various stimming types, including visual (e.g., doodling), auditory (e.g., humming), and tactile (e.g., rubbing fingers). Strategies for managing stimming in social settings are discussed, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and setting alarms to manage time-related anxiety. The hosts also touch on the intersection of stimming and OCD behaviors, highlighting the need for adaptive coping mechanisms.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Stimming and Its Impact
• 3:35 Personal Stimming Behaviors
• 8:21 Types of Stimming Behaviors
• 25:37 Challenges with Stimming in Social Settings
• 25:56 Impact of Stimming on Relationships
• 32:54 Strategies for Managing Stimming
• 40:41 Exploring the Emotional Impact of Stimming
• 47:52 Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hey, Kelly, Yeah Leti,, remember the time that co worker wanted to murder you for sighing. You Good morning. Good morning. Hi, welcome. Welcome to W th ADHD, because what the heck with stimming? Stimming? I didn't even know what that what that was, until we started this whole process, and it was crazy. So like, look at what that is, and how people with ADHD autism, everybody's everybody stims. It feels like yes, so stimming is something that's there for every human, right, and animal too, right? It's a way to self soothe or regulate. For some people who are neurodivergent, this tends to be a little bit more heightened, or we do it more often. And there's really a lot of degrees where it ranges from just something very innocuous, like shifting in your chair, to SIV or self injurious behaviors, where you're head banging and things like that. So there's a there's a really wide range, right, right? I definitely don't do I want to sometimes when it's overwhelming times, but I haven't quite gotten to them. So what is your stimming behavior that you've noticed on yourself? Kelly, well, i Isn't it funny how I've said my whole entire life, I'm just a heavy sire everybody since I can remember, is was affected by my sighing. Because no matter what I did, I had to heavy sigh all the time, good, bad. It didn't really matter, but I was constantly and let me tell you, I felt so good every time I did boy, did I go bad every time you did it. Do you know why? Like that is why? So for me, I'm very in tune to people's emotions, which is also an ADHD trait, to be heightened Empath, or empathetic, or whatever you would call it. And so for me, aside the some sort of discontent, because the way you side was not a release. It wasn't like a Ha, like when you sit down into like a bath that side, it was like a frustration or discontentment. And so key in on that, and you know, you do it once. It could be like an internal kind of thing, right? But when people do it more often, typically, it's because they're very displeased or triggered displeased with you. So here I am, like trying to figure out, what did I do wrong? So there's this, like whole train of self thought and rejection, thoughts and and then I'm angry because I know I didn't do anything wrong, but you're it's this whole cascade feeling completely unreal, things happening inside my head. How many people hated me? So many side so many people hated me, and I'm supposed to make people love me. And of course, you do it at the most inopport. So what moment would you say are inopportune? I mean, at work in opportune moments? Oh, it's long eight hour moment. And my job, you know, a good 12 to 15 hour moment. And what's so weird is I remember I started my last job, and my two friends, I could see them in my head getting married, and then they would Yeah, and then they I could see them. I could see myself, or feel myself sigh, and I could see them look at each other. And I was like, so you would sigh, and then you would notice their behavior, yes. And I was like, I've got to stop, to make yourself stop. Horrible. Describe that horrible place? Could you define horrible? My body? I My body is tense. My body is I need to release whatever this tension I'm feeling in my body. Anxiety. And when does this present more often? Is it quiet? Still, concentration? Avoiding, when did you feel this presenting more kind of think about I'm always in an action. It's never during the silence happening. Yes, I don't, I'll have to look at it, but I don't feel myself sighing when I am relaxing. No, I take that back, because sometimes you're on the right track something, and I'm looking at that, are you watching someone work and you're waiting for them to do the right thing or the next thing, or to notice something? Are you waiting for the work to be over, to keep moving. No, I think I do it as I work. You are You are my project. And something obviously is frustrating me, which happens constantly. So it's a constant difference between, okay, people are right. So there's difference between like that creative load. You know, when you're trying to create something like even if you're just creating a spreadsheet or creating a show, it's a creation, right? There's a process of work. Work is making something or doing something, but there's a level of frustration or a load of something difficult that comes in, that creates a tension. I see this with my patients that I work with, because my job is to increase demand, right? I'm usually increasing cognitive linguistic demand, which is I'm trying to increase communication levels. I'm asking people to do something really hard for them. And when I do that, I tend to see, you know, one of two things, and one is avoidance or escape behaviors, which means they want to go, leave the room, turn away from me, start doing something else that may look like it's important, but it's not some sort of avoidance of the task altogether. The other would be some sort of stimming behavior, which would be for children who are on the spectrum, or even adults lining up object, putting something in order, humming, a variety of other kind of behaviors that are in that stimming category that we'll kind of go over. And then when that's not enough, and I keep increasing that demand because I don't notice, which I do, but let's say I don't, then we swing into our zone of dysregulation, and then we get behaviors that are really big. So if you were to withhold your your size, as you were saying, you feel that tension in your body, and if you do that long enough, then what do you get? Mean, Kelly. Mean Kelly. So what stimming does for you, and one theory, it's a theory still, is that it releases beta endorphins, which are translated in the body as an anesthetic or some sort of pleasure. That's one theory. So you're kind of relieving that displeasure that absolutely yeah, so you had texted me and asked me, what was mine? I don't think I can write a list long enough. Well, this is what I'm saying. Once you start thinking about it, thinking about it, there's I didn't need so much. I know that I do to self predominant one go to and I tend to be my fingers. So I bite my fingernails. Well, I used to have, I've been really proud of my breaking that habit. After 35 years of biting my fingernails, I'll pick up my cuticles. So if there's any sort of imperfection on my hands, feet, body, like skin, my I really gravitate towards sort of picking, or, yeah, picking, I think, would be the overall thing. That's one that I really do when I cannot do that because I can't have hand motions and have to be still. I bite the insides of my cheek or move my mouth or things like that. Yeah, those are my two. Those are my two main go tos. And there's a lot more, but that, I think that would be my two most regulating behaviors. And since I took away nail biting, you know, almost a decade ago, no more, actually more, wow. I've had to really be careful that I don't pick up things that are more self harming and injurious. I did one thing that was, I mean, self harming. I mean, do you cause some sort of break or injury? I Yeah, on my upper when I would get cake, when I would get I'd get tons of ingrown hairs, and I would literally sit and pick out each hair on my thighs, but it created like red welts all over my thighs, and I couldn't, I couldn't show anything. See my recognition of harm, and there's this fine borderline between stimming and OCD behaviors, right? And so there's true a level of compulsion. And I think, yes, my hand, what's your question? Is stimming OCD related? Or is or does OCD cause stimming? Do you see where I'm going right question which I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I'll preface that. So please all our listeners who are correct me, because this is going to come from mine. Letezia withdrawing page number 222, right bottom, hand side of the page, from the level of compulsion, there's also a predictive mechanism where I feel if I do this, something bad is not going to happen. For example, you leave the house, you forget whether you close the door or lock the door or not, and if you don't go back and check, there's the potential of someone entering your home. So you go back home and you check your lock right? But then you develop this habit close the door, you lock it and you lock it again, just to make sure the lock engaged. But maybe next time you do it more and maybe if you do it 24 times, you know that you've counted to 24 or five. Let's go lower. Let's not get crazy. You count to five, you've disengaged the lock, re engage the lock, and you've done this five times now, because you know you counted to five that for sure you completed this task and you're safe, and you create these rituals and habits that make you feel safe, and that's a little bit different than regulating your system. And so got it, got it. And shift from one thing because you recognize that you're disturbing someone to another one of your favorite stimming behaviors, versus being unable to shift off a behavior because you get this terrible feeling of dread and doom if you don't clear your throat again. So all ADHD people, or you don't, if you have ADHD, doesn't necessarily mean you have OCD. And if you have OCD, it doesn't necessarily mean you know all of these things. They lie really close, and they and they're, yeah, that's what, what's so hard to like, my mind was trying to figure out what is actually the difference between correct me. But there is what's called comorbidity, or risk for comorbidity, which means you have a high risk of having these things together if one's present or the other's present, but not, not always, and not really. We can't make like a statement about any of these, because, boy, but I just like to know that there's a difference between these two types of, yeah, it's very close, because there's also these avoidances Right, right? That OCD has to for example, it's very evident with children who have OCD with feeding. So they're very specific as to maybe the brand of food. They eat, chicken nuggets, only from Tyson, or whatever, those kind of things. And they might avoid, like, if you start to open a package for them, they can't eat it anymore. They have to open it. Or if you have a slice of pizza and there's, like, a bubble on it, they won't eat it. Can you imagine having ADHD and OCD? Well, that's, you know, being dysregulated is awful, and if you have some systems in place, you can certainly, you know, make these feelings better, right? Of course, yeah. But like, and I think that's part of why we're here to bring attention to all your habits. All right, so well, so habits, all right, you thought were habits and our accesses for all of them, of them, and there's different reasons to do it. So let's go over maybe the different kinds and and we can go, ding, ding. So one of the types of singing, and that would be if you've seen some people who might move their fingers near their eyes, like towards the left side or the right side and kind of look at them, or sometimes flapping, that might be movement, or that friend of yours that taps their finger on the table. But for the visual, they're not making noise necessarily. That could be one or staring off into space is actually visual stemming, and the inattentive type ADHD, tends to do that Daydream staring off into space because it helps you go to a space in your mind that regulates a happy place. Drawing can be a visual stimulus. So those people who have everything drawn all over their notebooks, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, that that need to kind of just even swirls. Doodling, a constant doodling and. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying that it's bad in any way. Doodling can help you maintain focus, too. It just depends on what you're supposed to be doing. So if you're supposed to be looking at a presentation and you're doodling, that's not the right thing you should be doing, then it's not working for you, right? But if you're listening to a presentation where you don't need to look necessarily, but you're processing it, and you're doodling, and then you jot down some things that are important. Then, then, great, that's working for you, spinning things, like pens, coins. My daughter takes a pencil and, yeah, I used to do that. Like, awesome flip when you, like, make a little like, Baton inks, you know, like the, what are they called? Flag, not cheerleaders, but what are they? Flag, drill team, drill team, Drill Team B, B, the you would like, sure, in the baton. I would do that on my fingers, and I still do it, you know, like pass through. Some people are really great at, like, passing things between their fingers. I was never good at that. I wanted to be good at that, but I couldn't figure out the spin. Now, some children on the spectrum will spin tires. So they'll turn over their toy car and spin the wheels, watching fans doing other things that spin, like getting lost in that dryer, just watching the dryer go around, things like that. This would be more visual types of stimming behaviors. So what resonates the most for you on that one I don't have, I feel like I don't have a lot of I do. I draw doodle nerd. I like to to move, not a doodler. I can't. I can't move things through my hand. I wonder if it's like fine motor, if you're really great at fine motor, that might be something you do, right? I'm not good at fine motor, I don't think, but I also don't think I'm good at fine motor, because I've never actually sat down and tried to do something. Why not? Kelly, okay, because I literally can't question why I can't do it. I couldn't. Claudio bought me a guitar. I can't I went and had 10 lessons. Why? What happens when you drive I couldn't practice. Why? What is the why? I don't know what happens in your body. And play my guitar for an hour to practice my power do it. I've tried over 10 minutes over when you would have to sit, you would have to sit and practice. The whole fucking point of learning the guitar and any musical instrument for that matter, is practice. Whatever what happens to you is to what do you feel? I don't know how to practice. Keep I don't like it. Yes, keep going what I don't like practice. I don't like sitting down and doing something over time, Isn't that ironic? So I'm sure I haven't done it. I honestly haven't done it. There's certain things you're not getting it right. Or is it that it's repetitive? It's repetitive and competitive. Keep going, um, God, I'd like to figure this out, because I'd love to break the guitar out and learn how to play, because you can sing the same song over again, and you're really good at memorizing lyrics. You rap really well. Yeah. So how is that different of practicing? Is it because you don't like the tune? Because I like it? No, because I was so excited to learn how to play pink. Floyd, did you learn that piece you were here? And I remember, and I remember learning that was all my teacher wanted to teach me, was that song. So we got to the point finally, in my lessons, where I learned how to play the first like from Pink Floyd and I did the first 16 chords. So what happened there? Didn't need to do it anymore. You had, yeah, it's like eating your favorite food. You've lost the dopamine feedback for that particular section. And that song no longer gave you the Oh, my God, I can't think of the word motivation. No longer gave you continue that task. Yeah. So what you might think about doing that's fucking true. God, WTA, what you might think about doing for something like that is having several things picked out that you rotate through so that you don't use up your dopamine on it. The problem is really hard songs like Dave and Coldplay. And I Well, boy, look at you. And I so different in the songs impromptu. I am choosing Dave Matthews Band dancing. Isn't that crazy arch. You know what? Letty, I really, really you need to pick guitar. You don't even have to, you don't even have to pick what do I do it? I think what's happening too, is you'll pick the song, and you have favorite pieces in that song that really resonate for you. Maybe it's the chorus, a line, and you're trying to learn this thing from beginning to end. And so I challenge you to pick the the line or the that one thing that you belt out that you feel really good about, don't you don't have to start a song from beginning to end, okay, but here's the No, but you don't need to learn how to play. You need to enjoy playing. That's a different okay. I mean, my guitar is sitting in the office. I have all these Dave Matthews, that's fine. You don't harva. Learn it from beginning to end. It's the joy of it. If you like that line, you know, I'm gonna put this out there on episode nine, that I might learn the chord progression for that one piece that you like. It's a D to the e to the F, whatever it is, only thing that stops me, the only thing that stops me right now that I'll have to get over is the fact that I haven't picked that guitar up in 20 years, and I have to relearn but you already laid down all the brain waves for them, so it'd be so much easier. Yeah, but remember, I don't retain them. I because you could remember the song anything. If you didn't retain I'm gonna have to start over. And that's fine. I will attempt to sort of, if you didn't retain things, you wouldn't be able to remember the song and hum it. You do retain it, you're just remembering, remembering where my fingers go. Okay, it'll come back much faster than if you've never done it. Okay, all right. So there I'm gonna attempt to do that, enjoy it. The point is to enjoy that was crazy. And when you don't enjoy, wind down. I would love to be able to break out the guitar and use that as my stimming and play the other thing I'm gonna be fabulous when you feel your dopamine drop and you don't want to practice anymore, put it down and do something else. Don't push yourself past the point of, I should really do this for more than five minutes. It's okay. Whatever minutes you do is fine. If you want. You can set yourself a timer for 10 minutes just to ease into it. And if you're still enjoying it at 10 minutes, keep going. But don't push yourself. And what's so funny is I have all these, like, archaic ways of tuning the guitar and whatnot. Now there's so much more to help you. I have a tuner like, there's so much out there to help you, like on YouTube and stuff like you don't it's like you have another thing is that you set yourself up for success by placing a visual reminder to do it. So if you can have the guitar out and your dogs don't eat it, place it where you can see it. Or place a little picture of Dave Matthews album somewhere, something to kind of keep you motivated when you feel like you need to relax. So you're using it in a relaxing way. Yeah, that's a great idea, because I usually play games on my iPad, and I've been thinking I need other right? So we're looking for dopamine, and music gives us a lot of dopamine. It's really good for you, so give yourself access to it, and do it until it doesn't, and then that's fine. Don't feel guilty about stopping your practice. It will motivate you to do it more next time. Yeah, like, I can't type, you know, unless you really like the sound. I know that you could take to their keyboard because the clicking and the clacking and the pressure is perfectly aligned, and typing on that keyboard feels so good. No, nothing. Just me. All right, so I'm just gonna be up keyboard for the rest of my life. If I change the keys on your keyboard, would it mess you up in typing like if I swapped your T for your why? I used to do that to my boss all the time, because he was a hunting pack and that's not and he would look down, type with two fingers, and then he'd look up at the at the screen. So when he'd leave the office, I had a little, like, keyboard swapper thing, and I pop off his keys and swap them around. And he'd sit there for like, 510, minutes, type, type, look up, look down, no, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, type, type, and then he would just take the keyboard, unplug it, I would wrap it up and get a new one. You're an asshole. He used to get me too. I could I can type fast, but I can't do what everybody does and look at the screen and type at the same time. I can type. I get lost looking at the keyboard. I get lost because I want the purpose of typing. If I look at the keyboard, I have to just look at my screen, all right. I can't not that we digress at all. So we're discussing different types of stemming. I had to look at my notes to remember what we were talking about, because this was really fun. So there's verbal and auditory. Auditory would be your side. Some people hum. I have definitely a lot of patients on the spectrum who enjoy some sort of verbal stimming. It might be a repetition of a word or just vocalizing. How are you? How are you like those kind of things? What do you do? Do you other than the humming? Do you I for sure, if we're talking very. Herbal. It could be excessive, giggling, no, constantly cleaning your throat. I have a gigantic thyroid. Teeth grinding. Always. Some people enjoy the sound of teeth grinding. And I find that with some of my patients, just, yeah, I don't, I can't, you know, moving saliva in your mouth, squishing it around that sound. Yeah, no, scratching something for the sound of it, different types of fabrics and things. So no, those are some, some of the auditory things you can do, whistling. I had a friend whose husband tapped, whistled, hummed and moved throughout the house constantly while we were like, trying to study four finals, and I just wanted to murder him all the time. We all in this house. For me, sure, I'm very sensitive to sounds. I have hyperacusis, so I don't do any of these things if possible. I try to be quiet. But I do know that I used to be a really loud giggler, like excessively loud, and I didn't realize how loud I was. I'm a loud person, and I am realizing that I think it's voice I unless I went on a loud person, no, and I'm always loud, like people hear my laugh. People I'm loud, but I always thought it's because I had a hearing problem, and then I got my hearing checked. So it might be stimulating for you to hear yourself at that level, whereas for me, maybe I like, I like the lowness. It feels nice. The only time that really swaps out is if I have a lot of energy and I'm trying to get people up to that level, I'll be loud. Or if I dis inhibit my inhibitions even more by drinking alcohol, then I get really loud and at it like just too much. I feel like me and like my friend Laura and I when we're at work, we're like, ridiculous, smarter, loud, we're annoying AF and we but it's like, we have so much fun. We were like that at the bakery too. We were loud, we were annoying, and we would say stupid shit, and we would dance, and we would, you know what I mean, we very like feed off each other and and that's true. We like when we feed off each other, like when Laura and I, we would, we would just freaking fall on that more laughing, dying people who really get that open, yes, you know, do it. It's awesome. No inhibitions, just you all right or left. I think the important part of this particular segment right here is, it's okay to stem it's great to feel good. Do it. The problem is, is when it you're doing it in a setting where that behavior is unexpected by others and it makes them feel uncomfortable. And when you make people feel uncomfortable, they don't want to be with you, near you, work with you, talk to you. They don't want anything to do with you, because you're unpredictable to them, or you're dysregulating to them. Yeah. And I want to bring in a little like, I want to bring in a little language, God Lara word. I want to bring in a little bit of inclusive wording. Here, if I say to you, Kelly, your sign is so loud, like you're just so loud. That's really not a great way to phrase it. A better way for me to phrase it would be, you know, Kelly, when you sigh so much, I get a little bit unsettled inside, and it's making me feel dysregulated. And what that does is it changes the conversation. Now, instead of you trying to stop yourself, you become aware of my discomfort, and you might either change your sighing, or you might remove yourself. There's things you can action based on your will, or I'm gonna say Tough shit has nothing to do with you. Get over it. I have to sigh, but I'm also horrible about yourself, because I'm making it about me, because I'm the one responding to that whatever you're putting out right? So I think being careful how we phrase other people's impact on their behaviors impact on ourselves is an important shift to make, because we just tend to like, oh my god, stop shaking your leg. You're like, shaking the couch, which is what I say to members of my family, is that I should be like, you know, every time I feel the shaking, I think that an earthquake is coming and I feel panicked, and that lets them, like, make a choice at that point to do something else. Or, if not, then I've kind of voiced it, and then I can deal with it too, okay, going back to types of stimming. There's also tactile rubbing fingers, rubbing textures, shaking, tapping, chewing, biting nails or cleaning the inside of cheeks, picking on skin. Uh, head banging. These are all like tale shifting, constant. I'm a constant shifter. Can't sit still rubbing so funny, um, I rub my feet together, cricket, when with no socks? Yes, honestly, if we're watching movies. If I'm in bed, if I'm just sitting on the couch watching TV, I have to take my socks off and run. People do that before going to sleep. They rub their feet together. So good. I love it. Like I could just go get a massage and have someone massage my feet. And like I make like. I make bethia, my the girl who does my toes. I make her massage my feet, and I make her massage my feet hard, because I just, I need it. I need it and it, it, it feels all those data for you. God, I feel so good. I don't mind it unless I get it like I can't hear people rubbing their like, the sound of rubbing either like skin or cloth. It just anything repetitive like that. For me, I have a threshold of how much I can hear it, yeah, and I get that. I get that. I don't, I don't think I have a like a problem. You don't, because you're listening well that no and I can just tune it out. Yes, when someone around me has a tapping or a thing like someone hitting the wall with a hammer. I don't know. I don't hear it anymore. Like I said with my with my old office mate, she clickety clacked on that, on that keyboard, you wouldn't believe. And it was like music head of ears, I guess. I don't know. OCD and her thing was, aside from closing drawers, closing drawers like repetitively and locking things. She had a vocal tic, and I would sit there and count how many times per minute, all I could do was stare at the top of my computer and wait for the next one, the next one. But I see I don't use my time like that. So dysregulated in other ways. And even if I put like over, yes, I get it, I get it totally. Get it like it makes sense. Um, it's totally the question, I guess, is, is this bad? Is it bad to stem I don't in my world, it doesn't seem like it, if it's regulating your body and making you feel better, I think people around you might have a problem with it, because they right and they're in line the road people, especially behaviorists. ABA behaviorists, the theory is to take stimming behaviors and extinguish them, and we're hearing from people who have grown up with ABA, and they talk about, sure, applied, excused, got it. I see it everywhere. Okay? It's your people, to help people in the activities and to transition to routines and things like that. And what happens is, people in the spectrum can get dysregulated by transitions or ADHD people have difficulty with transitions by to start them, and that gives you anxiety because you need to start it. So then you'll engage in stimming behaviors too. And so as they're teaching you how to transition, they'll also work on extinguishing certain stimming behaviors. Now, if it's self injurious, like your head banging, obviously you need to replace it with something that's not going to harm you, but there's been this backlash towards really taking away lining up toys and things like that. Because when you know these children grow up and they talk about it, it's really just regulating, and you don't necessarily need to take it away. Why? Well, you have to take because so it doesn't serve a function to line up things in terms of doing activities of daily living, like brushing your teeth, getting dressed, and if you're just engaging in a repetitive behavior, then you're not doing the things you're supposed to be doing, right and and there's there's a better way to move through these that we need to explore to help maintain regulation and allow people to actually move through their day feeling good about it versus being extremely stressed and dysregulated as they're moving through their things. So stimming is good, and you should do it if you need it. However, you should also understand that you can highly dysregulate others around you. Do so your sighing dysregulates me, right? So what do I do? I can put in some loops, these little like dimming earplugs that take off some noise. If I got to be an office environment, I'll take off 25 decibels from my environment while I work, because I can't function with the stimulus. So I need, I need loops are like the best for people who have really hyper accusers, and then you can take some of the behaviors that you enjoy. So if you have identified, if you're a visual, auditory, tactile stimmer, what can you do? Right? So let's take one. Let's take one. I pick one, I go and no one Kelly, while I flip my pages of manic writing of when I want to we're not stopping. The important part is to not stop. The important part is to create a strategy that you can still do to regulate yourself. But let's say you're in a meeting. Well, I'd have to be the heavy side, because all my other stimming is fairly quiet. I rock back and forth when I'm standing. You do pace, by the way, when you have to wait, oh my god yes, because I would get distracted when I'm working and like, I was finishing up a cake, right? And you're now I'm thinking, which for me doesn't exist. You're like, we gotta go. And then I would be finishing a cake, and you're just going, pew, pew, back and forth, back and forth. So then every time I'm trying to work on this thing, I'm watching you move, because I'm attracted to movement. Leti, when we were coming to your house on Friday to celebrate, I it took everything in my power. We had to be at your house at 530 in my head, I have to leave by five, correct. Literally, live eight minutes away. Okay, in my house, I have to leave 510 latest to get your relaxed social in my head, not an appointment. Yes, not an appointment. No, no, Lenny, no. And I waited until high of 20, and it almost hurt my body, and I still got there one minute before. So what did I learn from this experiment? If you were like and I was starting at five, I was in Okay, in a mode, in a mode, all right, in a in a way. So I here, I thought I was being better and waiting until 520 to leave instead of 510 and I put myself in a way. And I know you saw me in the way at your house. I was in a way the whole night. I was in that way. Actually didn't that. I couldn't shape master it well. I I, but it's my mask. I masked it well, but I was in a way the whole night, and I need to learn how to not do that anymore. Strategy, in a way. I'm gonna give you a strategy. It really puts me in a bad way. It really ruin everything. I'm going to give you a strategy Ready, set an alarm, but you need to set alarm, and until that alarm goes off, there's another strategy you need to use, okay, because you're perseverating, which means that you're having an intrusive thought that doesn't go away about having to be somewhere at a specific time, all you can do is check the clock. What time is it now? How many more minutes? How long is it going to take? Is there going to be traffic right for separation and perseveration? Is not being able to let go of a thought? It's not, is that a stim? Yeah, so we're off. We're off subject, um, because you might introduce a stim here to help regulate this might be the time okay to use your heavy sighing to create that feeling, to release those beta endorphins, because at this point, you're not getting any dopamine, you're not getting serotonin, noone. You're not getting any of those chemicals that make you feel good. You're just adrenaline, cortisol. You're just feeling bad. And the only way to make that feeling stop is if you complete the task of getting to your destination, right? But the problem is that's in the future, and you stop existing in the present, because your mind has now time traveled somewhere that doesn't exist yet, and you no longer Kelly on another dimension. So I was gonna leave this for last, but I'm just gonna bring it right in here a little bit and touch on it. There's a thing called mindfulness, and I'm allergic to that word to a degree, because I don't operate under normal realms of time, but in another way, it's what actually keeps me really grounded. And helps me function. And those really being present. And so that was really hard. You see me long you're in that way, in a thing, I'm being very present, so you're not paying attention to them. So it's a degree, but it allows me to pass time without worrying about time. So while mine tends to get a little excessive on one end, and you're my yin to my Yang, and you swing on the other end, I'm bringing your attention to practice of mindfulness. So you Okay, well, I don't have to worry. You do have to you are, and we don't want to make that go away, because if you're denying those feelings, they're going to come back and they're going to come back stronger. You know that? So what you need to do is practice when you're regulated, when you don't have somewhere to go, mindfulness practice of getting ready to go. What can you do if you have five minutes before you have to leave? Give yourself a little list of tasks that you could do that would take five minutes, sighing, petting Jedi, checking the dishes. What's five minutes? What's a 10 minute task that you can do that would make you feel good. What's a 15 minute? A 20 minute? What is the increment that you need to survive waiting 30 minutes to leave the house and feel good? So maybe wet yourself a little, waiting to leave menu and give yourself little pieces, and you're like, Okay, I have a 30 minute window. And you look at all those things and they're like, I don't want to start any of those things. Pick a five and a 15 minute thing. Make yourself a little menu and being present, focused on that, and you can relax if you have set the alarm. So maybe at the top of your menu you put set alarm for out the door time now, and you do that, and whatever that time is, and then come back and pick some stuff off your dopa menu, if you want to call it that, things that feel good, that take me five minutes, rub your toes together. What is it? What do you need? And practice that when you don't have somewhere to go. So I would say, set a 10 minute timer. Okay, sit down, look at your list, and do 10 minutes of feel goods on there, and then put it away. And then this way you've practiced what it feels like to have done that when you have that stressor having to be somewhere. Gosh, I need to do a similar system, but mine's different. Mine is not ignoring an alarm. Mine is because I don't understand how long task takes, right? I can't have a little task on there because I get lost in a task. So mine are things like so for me to get here on time, what I have to do is place all the things I need to bring by the door, you know, put my coffee in a to go container right make sure I have my notes sit down for 10 minutes and do notes prior, so that I'm preparing for the session, and that helps my mind move towards this task, so that I'm not lost in another task. I'm already in this task in a way, and then that way, when my alarm goes off, I can get up and go, this is, this is going to be tough for me, so we'll revisit this. I already feel anxiety over episode you don't have because, unfortunately, this is a big, this is a this is a reason why I don't go out. So, yeah, I'm just sitting here thinking, going, Wow, Kelly, so this might go out, but let's this is for a whole your activities of daily living. It really is like, I'm gonna cry right now, so we're gonna just wait, yeah, like, it just hit me really hard for you to slowly unpack journal. Yeah. Like, I'm Oh, I'm sorry for making you feel weird. Wow, this is really weird. No, but it's weird. This is good. It's good, but I'm just kind of like, you're having a little epiphany, right? And that's okay, and that's good. And I think what we need to do is, no, I'm so tough for it. Let's put it in the let's reframe this. No, because I think this is a subject for something else, for sure. And in in our time is up for stimming. And I swear to God, we'll come back to this. Let's go into zones of regulation right here. Let's use our our last topic. No, because I honestly, I want to, I want to sit with this for a minute. I need to sit with this. This is this is interesting. It's very because you're feeling two things at the same time. You just got an answer for a very long, drawn out difficulty that's giving you a lot of anxiety and self hate talk, and it's giving you relief at the same. Time, it's giving you anger, because why couldn't you have done this before if you'd only known so it's giving you a lot of mixed feelings, which is why it's difficult for you to unpack this. So thinking about this, you're very present right now, and you're also a very past right now, you're you're going into your past time warp, because you're pulling out all these things you could have done all these things and the Why couldn't you have and you've just triggered that self talk that typically happens during that wait time. So we're going to shift this a little bit. Okay, so first of all, take some heavy size. Take off your socks and rub between your toes. Okay, great. So the size are good, all right, yeah, tell yourself. I'm gonna explore these new tool tools. Definitely, I'm definitely it just because I feel that way. I figured that out for Friday, and then yesterday, when everyone was coming over for Father's Day, I fucking lost my mind. And you don't have to operate in that space, no, why? Because that's the beauty of it. You don't have to, right? You have some tools that you can dig into. Yeah, I just, I need to like it. Just it ruins your it ruins things for you. It makes you not have a good time. It makes you not enjoy the present. It's like, I really have a hard time enjoying the present. Okay, we gotta end this. Just end it like this, because our lovely listeners are gonna now worry about you. Hey, fine. It's actually really the word fine. It's actually a really talk about some emotions. Yes, I I have open triggered something, uh huh, and I want to explore it. Okay? And I think this is gonna take you on a really good journey, just like much of it has in terms of getting diagnosed with ADHD and understanding that this is part of it. This is the first time I've cried really the diagnosis. Yeah, with the diagnosis, like one of the things that has contributed to this feeling, yeah, and I'm crying is gonna be good. So when we get off, I want you to finish all that crying and let it out so we're not suppressing that feeling. You can cry in the bathroom all by yourself. And then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna just put together some of this mindful and other things that you can do to replace some of these behaviors as well, and then you can take your time and put it together, because you can actually harness some of these, these stimming, right? I want harness, I don't to help you get through those times that are anxious and tough. And I will put on very specific strategies in our show notes for what we can do if we have a hand fidget need, if we have a foot fidget need, if we have a whole body fidget need, and if we have this kind of mental need, which is that mindfulness. So I'll put in very specific things that you can do to help you at the office or at home anywhere, honestly, and it's everywhere. It's okay. Stimming is good. Use it to your I like benefit. Wow. People off if it matters. You should, if it doesn't matter, whatever. All right, fine, wow, I'm in a way, and I'm gonna go explore that way. My husband, w, T, H, ADHD, oh yeah, and thank you for being with us. If we've touched on some things that are triggering you, take a minute. Yeah, this was a wow. These last two minutes were kind of wild. So there you go. See it's a con. It's like a constant is constant. It is a constant, constant, and that's because we're alive and our heart is constantly breathing. That's so it's okay. You're right. Change is constant, and that's okay. Do you like change? So do you know? I really do? Yeah, do. So, all right, we'll give you a little update when we get back to see what strategies we've employed for our stimming behaviors, and if you have employed some things through self discovery, reading or whatever, or if you've used some of the tools we've put up there and and you've changed some things, let us know about it and let us know about other stupid behaviors that we haven't touched on, that we can talk about. Because people need to know that you're okay that weird thing that you do, it's okay if it's really weird, maybe, maybe change it. But. Well, that's, yeah, that's at a meeting. I don't know. I mean, that's not private. Yeah, you can, you can't pick yours. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, we'll see you. Bye. You. This has been a hiats, me ADHD production.