That time we zoned out

Imagine two neurodivergent friends diving deep into the chaotic world of ADHD, where thoughts bounce around like pinballs and focus is about as stable as a unicycle on a tightrope! They explore the wild landscape of their brains, discussing everything from getting stuck on random words like "Lobelia" to creating entire fantasy conversations that never happened. 
Highlights include:

• Accidentally renaming professors and then mentally spiraling for hours
• The art of task avoidance through elaborate mental daydreaming
• Proving that their brains are basically non-stop comedy clubs running 24/7
• Discovering that "quiet mind" is basically a mythical creature for ADHD folks

The podcast is basically a hilarious support group where they celebrate their neurodivergent superpowers of overthinking, random word obsessions, and the ability to create entire dramatic scenarios in their heads before breakfast.
Pro tip: If you have ADHD, this podcast is like looking into a wonderfully chaotic mirror - equal parts validation, humor, and "Oh my god, that's SO me!" moments.

Follow us on Instagram or YouTube @wth_adhd

Transcript

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Hey, Kelly, yeah, Leti, remember the time you totally zoned out. You Well, hello, ADHD listeners, welcome. Maybe you don't even have ADHD and you're trying to figure out what this is. Run. Go. Run. You want no part of this. Welcome to W th ADHD, that's right where we talk about all the things, but really no particular order, because, no, we have all the ADHD. Yeah, it does seem like I we do have all the ADHD. I try to collect as many of it as I can. I don't like collecting it, but, boy, it just happens. And I think not only have we collected but now we're putting it on display for everyone. I would sometimes I think, is it embarrassing? Is it yes, the stuff that we've talked about previously, which we've talked about, like a lot of stuff, oh, my God, I think could be considered embarrassing. But I'm not embarrassed. I guess it is what it fucking is. You know, I try not to think about it and comfort myself with the thought that is embarrassing, as I feel it is. It's raw, it's real and open, and that, I just hope it helps someone not feel alone, right? Or that they're weird or whatever they're not, is this really, this whole ADHD thing is bananas. It is bananas because it doesn't feel like you're like everybody else, right? There's this feeling of the other that you get all the time, and it makes you think, it makes you think about like, all the things you did or you want to not be here. And that's kind of why we're talking about using fantasy or zoning out, as some people call it. That's a form of stimming. Now we talked about stimming, right, right? And our favorite types of stimming, and those were mostly physical, like, physical manifestations of the sensation of restlessness, right? And some of it is because you want to, you know, later days out of there, I'm a heavy Sire. That was my stimming. You like to bite your cheeks. Move like to, yeah. Move like general move and go do. But what we hadn't really gotten into was this internal stimming or mental stimming, and sometimes they're repetitive. For example, I have personally had the word Lobelia stuck in my head for I want to say money. I don't even want to know what that means, a little purple flower. Oh, and I liked the word. It reminded me of Lady Parts, names, like, I was like, what is that? I don't want to know. I read the, you know, I was looking for flowers to put in the garden, and I wanted something that, you know, liked the shade. And I was reading through at Home Depot, or wherever I was, and I saw the name, and I'm like, Really, I thought it was hilarious. They named it this. I mean, I guess, kind of like little petals, you know, they're small, little, cute petals. But for the love of cod, I could not get that word out of my head, and it was literally Lobelia, Lobelia, and it would just frustrate them back, and I would push it out, and it would come back. Now, some research shows that people who have these more repetitive patterns of intrusive thought or word or phrase or things that are especially if they're patterned in sort of a rhythm, or things like that, are indicative of autism as well, which, you know, I haven't ruled out. Oh, I completely with myself. For sure. Think I have a touch of the tism, because, for like, the last, I don't know, six, seven months, I cannot get pink pony club. Literally, that's it. That's it. Did you just say? Pink pony club, yes. Chapel Rowan song, pink pony club, and that's literally, I image just those three words out of my head. I don't know the reference, but the imagery I'm getting of a pink pony club right now is spectacular. Hold on a minute. Let's go there. Wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, you don't know chapel, Roan song, pink pony club, not the way I heard it just now. I don't know. Okay, first of all, where the hell have you been a under a rock or a suburb? Apparently, because if you heard that song, you would hear, why I hear that repetitive. Usually I would. If it's a song, it'll trigger the song very easily. But right now I just have a disco of pink ponies that is spectacularly fun. And yeah, so basically her song that those three words, not even in the chorus, not even the verse, nothing, just those three words in pink pony club, and that's it. And I goes over and over in my head. You know, how many people will probably hate you for getting that stuck in their head? If they know, oh, my God, my daughter hates me when I just because I can't get it out of my head. Yeah. And I think a lot of times too, a particular word will most certainly trigger song for me, and then that song just plays in my my head. Matthew said to me, you're going to use a lava tree or lavatory. And I got Monty Python's lumberjack song stuck in my head. And for those of you who don't know, you need to know and it just great. Has it on trees meals and uses the lava tree, and it was on loop, and I needed to get rid of it because I couldn't picture that while I was doing that task. So, you know, we do have more neurons and more connections when we have the neuro divergent brain, and part of that makes space for some of these things to occur while you're doing things, but it also means you're a little bit not present, because part of that attention and thought process is being pulled towards this fantasy or repetitive pattern that's going on internally, and it is often used to regulate, because we do it more when we're experiencing something that is dysregulating or hard or we don't want to do it. So one of the things that it happens often with Kelly is tasks. Task daydreaming is what we were calling it, where you have stuff to do that day and the one that you don't want to do, especially right, like, you know, clean up before guests come over. And you think about it. And you think about it, well, what do you think about? What are you thinking about, though, what I have to clean up, and then how does it look? I mean, is it just like a list, like I gotta do this, like it is, or do you picture the whole thing happening in your head? Picture literally me doing everything, and I'm fucking exhausted after that. But do you also feel really good about how good it will look when you're done absolutely right, but I can never get well. So what happens in our brain is we need external, you know, reinforcers, or external motivators, to get things done. And cleaning is one of those things. So someone's going to come over then, then you're you're going to do it real quick. But if that external reinforcer isn't present, then when you're setting yourself up to do the task, you know, you sit down just like everybody else, and say, Okay, what do I need to do? But we don't just write a list. We picture us doing it where we may say, Well, I'm doing this so that I can kind of see if there's anything I need, or if is this the right way to do it. And it slowly warps Into a Fantasy, because as we're looking at the task and seeing how large it feels, there's no dopamine available to motivate you to nothing do it. However, as you're fantasizing, dopamine is being released because you feel good all of a sudden about how amazing that countershine is, or how amazing that report sounds, or how good you're gonna feel closing that laptop knowing you've done all that, whatever it is that you had to do. And therein lies the rub, because the moment that happens, the moment the task is complete, in your brain, the dopamine is done. Oh, that is awful. And you have. Exhausted your motivation for the task literally happens to me all the time, and you feel as if you did it, because it takes a lot of dopamine to get through hard tasks, and then you have nothing. So then there you are. And what do you do? How? How do you get yourself to actually get up and do it? Is what I struggle with. And most of the time I do get up and do it because I have to, because I haven't, you know, vacuumed in a week, and people are coming over and I need to do it, and it would be gross if I didn't, you know what I mean, and that's where my head goes. But after I've cleaned my house, in my head, I don't know where to begin when I actually need to do it right. And there we can use that idea of thought follows action, limiting yourself in the beginning as to how much you're going to give yourself to think about a task, and what is the smallest amount that you can give yourself, where you know you're not going to be frenzied, running around looking for a sponge, looking for a thing, breaking down the thinking about a task, just like you break down a task, is just as important as breaking down the task. And what I mean by that is, if you start thinking about, Okay, I got to clean the living room. What do I need for that? You think about, oh, the bucket, whatever, whatever it is, and you picture in yourself doing it. Go do it, because that movement being in your body will help move you forward. I pick. But usually what happens is is I sit down to figure out what I'm going to start with, and so I i, and then I end up going through the whole entire task. So seems like the breakdown is a sitting down. So can you put yourself in the space standing because you're not going to clean sitting down. Let's just get real unless, I mean cleans that. I know I can try. I can try to do that. I've never done that before, so putting yourself standing in front of where the things are that you need to clean. So you stand in your living room, well, you're not gonna clean with your body, so you need to get stuff for it. So where's the stuff? But what I have to figure out first is what I'm gonna do first. But you already know what it takes to clean your room, because you've done it before. What do you what are the tools you need to clean a living room? You need your duster, you need your vacuum. You need your pledge to wipe things off. You need, okay, so you wash all the shit on your couches. So think of it like getting dressed. You know how it's going to go. You're going to need some underwear. I mean, maybe at least a bra, because we're, you know, women of a certain age with children, you're going to need a bra. So setting that where you're going to need to go to the drawer, where it's at, or the pile, let's be real where it's at, and that kind of gets that dressing going. Right? Otherwise, you're just planning on what you're going to wear, but if you start already doing it, same thing. So where do you keep these things? And go in there, and as you're pulling them out, you can plan, but you're more likely to do it because you already have the things in your hand, right, right? I guess now that's harder when we do something that doesn't require stuff, for example, if we're writing or working on the computer, because there it's just kind of like opening it up, right? But even then, I think sitting and thinking about what you're going to write or how many tasks you have to do, you're not actually doing it. You haven't actioned the task. So in a way that sitting down, opening the laptop, opening that actual program you need, and starting in that way can help get you into that flow. Yeah, I just feel like I'm such a all or nothing. Preach. I, you know, like two weekends ago, it was Mother's Day, and we were having Mother's Day here. So, you know, I let the household know we have to clean on Saturday so that the house is presentable. And then you mean, they have to clean the house because it's Mother's Day. No, no. And boy, that's not what happened. And then I proceeded to, like, clean the f out of the kitchen and the living room. And I am still mentally exhausted from everything that I did in in now I have hours because it was just me, nobody else work that it's done, yeah, but I was so exhausted after it was because I did everything, dusted, vacuumed, water. Gosh, and that's part of the problem, everything all at once, and I wouldn't let myself stop until it was done. And that's part of the problem where that all or nothing. It was absolutely all or nothing, because nobody was here to help me. Let's be real, they were here, but nobody helped me, because that's my life that just roamed the room. Yeah, as I'm like, fucking bending down and mopping my all the floors in the house, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just like, whatever, and then I have to fight with my daughter just to clean her bathroom and, ah, like, you're in good space right now, and it put everything in a bad space. So that's how that's what happens to me. I always end up putting myself in a bad headspace. And let's talk about that headspace a little bit too, where this other form of fantasy is rumination. You're ruminating over a past event, so part of it can be thinking about someone not doing something, and it makes you mad, and it's a way for you to deal with that feeling of not having had that assistance. But this gets bigger. I think some of us really go over a past event to not only where we're trying to process it, which is a very normal thing to do, it's typical to go over something, you process it, and come out on the other side with some resolutions and maybe some action items that You want to do. But it can also be this form of self flagellation or punishment or that should have. Could have thing where you're, you're, you're just reviewing this moment of shame. I'll give you one. I won an award at Cal State Northridge this past Saturday. And when I went there, it's my old school, and I saw some of my professors there that were there, and my brain pattern seek the whole thing. And when I saw two particular professors, I saw a third one, and my brain just said, Oh, that's so and so, because those three typically go together in the program, but I wasn't associating them with the correct program. And so when I went to say hi to them, I called them the wrong name, oh, and and I did it, and I was even going to stop myself as I was doing it, but it came out my mouth, and everyone else was there, and they didn't. They just, oh, she's getting old too, I don't know. And then we went, they had me go on stage. And there I am, on stage, about to get an award. And all I can think about, yeah, is how I did this thing, yeah, where I've I've hurt their feelings, and I want to die. I want to just crawl under the space, and I'm ruining internally this beautiful moment, right? I'm not being present. And so I had to pull myself out of there. One trick I have for myself when I'm lost in this thought is I go through like a body check, but not mentally physically. So I think about like, the pressure under my foot, the pressure under my thigh, if I'm sitting like, How does my body feel? Coming into my body, tightening a muscle, because that can help you think about what's actually happening, and then forcing my attention a little bit about hearing the words that someone is actually saying right this moment, instead of repeating, oh my god, that person's name, like literally over and over and over again. Have you had those all the time, all the time? My problem is, you know, is getting out of it. I have a very hard time getting out of that. If I've done something, let's say, like, what you did, where you messed up someone's name or whatever, I will suffer from that for days. And part of that is days, because we have so many to us problems, apparent problems, right, that we spend a lot of time masking. Don't want people to see this inner world of messiness and shame and guilt that when, when it creeps out to the outside world, Oh God, this piece of shame comes in, right? It's immediate, and it just cascades. And for some people who also have difficulties. Problems with OCD or depression, this can cascade into a myriad of past failures. Oh, God, really, seriously you could Oh, my God. Oh, going over the past and everything I did wrong, it does come all it needs is one thing for me to start remembering all of it. And fortunately, there I was at an event, so it was really much easier to come into a present space. But if you're alone and it's quiet or it's evening and there's no interruption about to happen, you can go into that for all night, right? Oh, my God, all night long. And this also happens to a lot of people, just once you're about to go to sleep, the brain goes, Hey, do you remember that really stupid thing you did today that everyone, probably everyone in the whole world, saw and is talking about right now? Yeah, everyone's talking about you. Everyone cares about you so much, right? Everyone is looking they're all talking about you had that God that I went to this award ceremony and one of the people said someone's name wrong. Everyone's talking about it right now. It was awful. Like, yeah, everyone gives so much a little booger you had sitting there. Everyone is talking about it. I To me, I just don't understand that. Not everybody does this. Well, think about it though, like, when something like that happens, you you observe it as as a observer, right? You don't talk about it, you know, you just or not even no one gives a hoot. But we think, because we think about something over and over that others might do too, and that is just not true. It really isn't true. Nobody is thinking about it, not that hard. Nobody cares about you. Nobody's thinking about you. They do. But I will say that sometimes people do, and that is when you have someone with ADHD, we can hang on to a word that someone has said and create an entire world, world of fantasy stemming. And that goes right into relationships. You have someone tell you something, and there's a word that sticks with you, or it's a little bit of an ambiguous statement, and you go, Oh, what did they mean this? Did they mean that? I mean? And you come up with 35,000 different scenarios for something that hasn't even happened yet, or it did, but you're trying to figure out what it was right, because your interpretation may be incorrect, and part of it could be that you weren't present at the time, and the phrase caught you, and either you were like, not sure why they said it, because maybe You weren't looking, and they were pointing to something, you know, such a frog. And you're like, Oh, my God, was he talking about me? Is he calling me a frog? Like, what? What the hell just happened? How did we get to Frog? Right? Like, what? What does it mean? Am I ugly, like, right? So these cascades of thoughts occur, and part of it is because we aren't present all the time, and part of it is because we go and try to make sense of things when they weren't overtly clear to us. I find myself constantly, well, not constantly, because I when I talk to other people, I don't talk to other people that often. Oh, my God, what's happening, besides my family. But like when I have other people friends, or when I'm talking to friends at the supermarket, friends come over, which is very often. Now, but wait, wait, it's a little different also. But yeah, go on and and we'll have conversations. And when that person leaves, I will be like, Oh my God. Did I say Did they do? You think they took what I said to be that way when I actually meant it to be this way. Oh, wait, what about, what about when I said this? Do you think they took it as me meaning something mean or no? No, because I really wasn't meaning something mean. I was really trying to be something positive. And then I go over the whole conversation in my head and think if I offended them, that kind of happens. Why a different way where I tend to sometimes just say whatever is inside my brain, and it's not necessarily judgy or anything like that, is just like a factoid correct, there's a wrinkle on the suit, correct, whatever. But if I do it around people who have ADHD. Obviously that factoid can come as in, like, Oh, are you saying I'm a slob? Or, you know, like it's a judge. You're thinking they're thinking you're judging them. Oh, no, it's for real, because it comes back at me, of like, you know, I did my best, or whatever it is, right? And then I'm, I'm going, Okay, how did they take it that way? Right? Like, right, not what I meant. It was 100% not what I meant, right? And then I have to second guess myself. Like, is this how I speak all the time? Oh, my God, am I insulting people all the time? I'm guessing now probably 50% of the time I'm insulting people, but we're not, and that's what's so crazy. But like, Why do I have after every one stick out of a conversation more than the typical conversation? So instead of looking at an overall ratio of that, maybe that happens 1% of the time that I talk to people, right? Or two, whatever it is, it feels like it's 90% of the time Right, right? And I focus in on that and chastise myself, and go over the conversation of how I should have said it, and the person you were talking to didn't give a f. They didn't give a single F about it, but we think that they did, and is this like a reversed ego thing, like, because sometimes people think like everything's about them, but that's because they have an enormous ego, right? But I think everything's about me, that, but only what's negative, right? Why? Why can't we typically, I think that's a lot to do with having received more corrections over our lifetime than neurotypical people, because we are impulsive and tend to stim and fantasy and escape and those kind of things that we do, these behaviors, are annoying to some people and or you could be that girl, which, I know, that girl, that what girl's that? Well, we won't say her name. Who's that girl? Know that girl? Where they that girl, have no filter, but, and so their internal comes out verbally. And you're like, shut the fuck up. Lady like that was me, though. No, you have never been like that. Oh, no. 15 and under, okay, fine. 100% and under. 100% still figuring yourself out. I'm talking about a 3540 year old woman who can't stop verbalizing the internal dialog, so then she sounds cuckoo. And you know what I mean? Well, let's not say cuckoo. She just doesn't make room for others, no? And she gets kind of like lost in her own thoughts. And she turns right. She turns needy. Well, it's not that we perceive it that way, you know, as we're coming up from as children around a certain age, you know, do you see children talking all the time? They narrate all the things. It's just non stop, and then at one point, that external movement starts to get suppressed, because they're learning that we don't just say everything, but you'll see them, they'll kind of move their mouth a little bit as if they're talking to themselves, and then even the muscle movements get suppressed. And that is actually our inner thoughts. So when you see children saying all the things, that's what's still happening to us as adults, it doesn't stop. But for some people who are more what we call pressed for speech, as in, they need to talk, because it's also a form of self regulation. They don't filter that thing, and they're not reading the cues because they're not present. It's almost like a fantasizing, but it's verbalized, it's actually put out, and it's less to do with with being egotistical, and more about not being able to read the cues of others and then not having the neuro mechanism to suppress, to stop. I talk over people a lot, and that's something I work on, because I have a difficult time suppressing when I have an urge to get something out, it's, it's, has to be active for me, even though, like, that's different than somebody verbalizing every inner monolog. But they're not aware, though, that's the thing. I'm highly aware because, yeah, I'm aware one's watching me and you and I talk over each other. Oh, constantly I talk over you a lot more than when I listen to our podcast, you know. And I'm just, I'm just covering my eyes when I listen to it, going, oh my gosh, people are gonna be listening to the. Going, let's Yeah, you won't let her have a word in. But that's so funny. I don't, but for me, I don't. That's the nice thing about being with neurodivergence is we can do that to each other, and it's fine, yes, but when you do it to someone who's neurotypical, it is an absolute insult. Yeah, that's true. They won't let me get a word in edgewise, because they're waiting for those appropriate quote, unquote pauses in conversation to take a conversational turn. And we do not have inside us conversational turns, because we have a constant flow of thought, and even when we're talking, it does not stop. And so we just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can really, like, Riff with someone who's got ADHD, and it's awesome, it feels good. But you can't do that with a neurotypical person. You really, it really doesn't feel good to them, and it's not because they're high and mighty or anything like that. Their brain operates in this wonderful turn. I don't understand how that happens. That's because you don't have that brain. Do you? So people really have that brain. They do for realsies, for realsie 100% and here's and here's the kicker, how do they have that brain? Because they we have this brain. And how do they have that brain? Because they have quiet in their head. It's just bizarre. Let me say that again. Imagine they have quiet available to them in their head. That's like the Seinfeld where Elaine and what's her? Her, what's the dude with the deep voice. They're on a plane, and he's just sitting there staring off into space, not thinking about anything, and she's losing her mind. How is this guy freaking doing this? Right? That's how I feel. How are you staring off into space and not having 300 conversations while you're staring off into space because the neurons aren't firing off trying to bring you dopamine so weird from somewhere in the little nooks and crannies that you may have available when you're dopamine wise and serotonin Wise and neuronepine wise, completely in the right space. You don't need your brain to seek out things to stimulate you. So weird. That is so weird. It's a weird thought, isn't it? Yeah. So then we come into this thing where what's helpful for this is that mindfulness piece, that meditation piece, and those things tend to be so hard for us because we can't get quiet, when, in fact, the practicing of quiet is extremely beneficial for our brains. My husband and I just had a conversation how we can't meditate because our mind does not shut off, and I can't shut it off. So meditation for neurodivergence, I think needs to include a component of stimulation that is conducive to shutting off your mind. For example, some people like to listen to a sound that's repetitive to help them get into this space where they can slowly start to push away gently thoughts. You let it happen and you let it pass through, but you're not sticking on them and thinking about them and letting that thought continue. Is that why people do those bowls with the sounds, with the and they, you know, you have a sound bath. So for people who are more into that, where it ticks off the dopamine in your brain, some people really love that vibration and sound, right? And it works for some people. For many others, for whom That's not the thing, there are other pieces you have to find. So for me, because I'm a movement person, when I'm in physical distress, my mind is in flow state, but it is not overwhelming, and I can push thoughts away, for example, really hard hot yoga, I'm uncomfortable, and I have to be in my body and tolerate it. So there's this like, like resiliency piece that kicks in that lets me know I can do it, because that's an area of strength for me, and I can go through that class and afterwards feel very grounded and clear because I didn't have time to think about. The task, the person, the thing, the blah, blah, blah, the fantasy. None of that is able to get to me, because I'm concentrating on keeping my body in some way same for like when I'm running, or anything like that. That's that's causing my heart and lungs to work hard, and that works for me. Maybe I should exercise. Well, that's part of the problem. That's part of the problem of becoming middle aged, because you've you've in your 20s, you have all the time in the world, you really do. And if you're in your 20s, I'm telling you, you have no idea how much time you have when you get into your 30s and 40s. And you're doing the child rearing piece. As you get into your 50s, you're doing child rearing and you're doing Parent Care, taking more and more. What's happening is you're exhausted because you've been working, you've been rearing children, you've been doing all this stuff, and you're more and more tired. Plus, of course, with our lovely perimenopause and menopause, we get exceedingly more tired easily. This is when we need to exercise the most. And if we were neurotypical, we could be those people in their 50s who look amazing, who are doing all this stuff we don't receive motivation, and it's hard for us to get into exercise. That's my question. So people who, because I've been thinking about menopause and what happens to our bodies during menopause, and how different some women's bodies are, and how some women can really just exercise, yeah, like, like, no problem. I can me, it seems like no problem. And they're fit, they're taking care of their bodies. And I'm just like, why can't I fucking do that? It's part of it is the routine based activity. We thrive on routine based activities, but it is the hardest thing for us to do, because it's it's the best for us, but it's also the worst for us. We hate predictability because there's no dopamine in it. Oh, my God, so true. And so getting yourself to the gym can only happen if you mindlessly build it into your routine, unless you have some kind of reward mechanism built in there that if I go to the gym, I get my favorite whatever. If I don't, I don't get it. It depends, though, because you can be like, Well, I don't want it anyways, or I'm just gonna have it anyways, even if I don't go to the gym, that double whammy of all or nothing, if you've missed one day in that routine, it's kind of like diet too, right? If you messed up, once the whole thing is done, I'll just restart on Monday. Instead of what would happen to a neurotypical is they'd go, Oh, I missed one day. That's okay. I'll go tomorrow. And we just don't say that to yourself. We just say, well, there you go again. You can't keep anything up. Can you and your week, even though it's Tuesday and you miss Tuesday, your whole week screwed up. You can't you get for me, it's like, gotta start again on Monday, but so I take the whole fucking week off. You can go to the club on a tuesday if you're a pink pony. Oh, Pony Club. Oh, God, that song, this last piece of this room, this rumination fantasy and all this stuff is the actual fantasy, fantasy that we use as internal stimming, which is, I have so much. Oh, good. Would I look if I actually did all that working out, or what my life could be if, blah, blah, blah, thinking about all these different ways your life could be and how you would feel if you're a famous author or whatever it is that that gets your kicks, right? And this, this long term fantasizing, is a really great way to regulate. It really is, but it's also a really great way to fucking do nothing. It is a fantastic way to do nothing, and it's kind of like when you're binge watching TV, right? You're going into the story of the other and we tend to connect so well with some of our favorite characters and things, and we want to know what's happening, and we're living it. It's almost like a little bit of that fantasy is with us, right? And it's really easy for ADHD ers to binge watch, whereas a neurotypical can just watch a episode, turn it off, and then go do whatever it is that's next. And I don't know how that's done, but that happens. Apparently, you know, What's so weird is, ever since I had a child and did all that, I used to be such a television person like, you know, back in the. Day when you had DVRs and all that kind of stuff, my DVR was filled to the brim because I watched, you know, 17 different shows when I was in my 20s, and I to do not bear I barely watch television anymore. See that for me, reversed in my 20s, because I was doing so much, I was very active. I was still active, but I'd stay up late watching all the stuff that I DVR. Like I never missed an episode, but I could work till 10 o'clock at night come home, and I'd have to get at least two episodes of something in because I had 35 episodes on my DVR, and I had to get rid of some of them. Oh, I could get the other ones. I busied myself with people. So, yeah, I didn't really have space for even sleep when I'd get home or things like it was a lot of issues like exhaustion, sleep and things like that. Yeah, no, I watched so much television when I was younger, and now the only thing I consistently watch is like three shows I watch more now because I'm more tired and need more space to regulate, and I feel like when something's on, it can kind of help me just not Think about things and be in that escape, right, right? So much easier than to think about all the things that are next to me. So it's also form of escape, right, right? I know that I have to maybe organize this or that, and I don't want to look at that, because that wall of awful is there of not being able to do the task, and it's so much better to drift off of that and to watch something else take my mind out of that space I'm in. Right? I don't do that as much anymore. It's so wild. It's weird for me to think about how much television I used to watch versus how much I watch now. And I do watch. How are you filling your time? Then, honest to God, please, if I'm not watching something, or if I'm not doing something, I I play games on my iPad, so you're still doing it. Then, yeah, it's just in a different way, I guess. And those things are more repetitive in a way, because they're loving people. I love it. So you're stimming big time, because I love, like, actual game, you know, where you have to move actual games. Like, do you like, like, actual games, or like, non actual games, actual games, you know? And it's something that now, it's something that started during the pandemic, right? And I guess that's where everything you're still watching. Though, true, you're still watching you're just doing something that is to God, though, like, you know, because of my eyes, it's very hard for me to watch TV. Like, there's shit programming, there's a lot of crawlers, really good programming, too. Side my eyes do not allow me to see far away. You know, it's so much easier watching on your iPad. But here's the thing we I like to watch with my family. Okay, so like last night we watched, because a ritualized component for you. Then to watching last night we watched mission, impossible part one of the final thing, because we have movie tickets Saturday morning, 9am to see the final one. I sat here last night and watched the it was almost three hours. The movie so fucking good, and my eyeballs were killing me. I have an eye disease that causes double vision and lots of other stuff. But did I sit there and go, like, squint my eyes and somehow try to relax so I could at least watch a little bit of the movie? And I have to convey this, when you made that so hard, it was like, Oh my God, is so hard. Windy eyes. I'm so sensitive. I'm so sensitive. I'm not making fun. I'm trying to explain to people. I'm very sensitive about my ugly eyes. Well, you can ruminate on that for like, you know what's so funny? I don't ruminate on it. I think because I see it on the daily. Well, also you probably more accepting of things about yourself than you were. I have to be, that's the thing. So the thing about this is I have to be accepting of it, because it's going nowhere. I was gonna ask you this, have you ever had the fantasy thing where you've had, like, an all out fight with someone in your head? Oh, thing that never happened, but you have this conversation, and you go, as if you've had like, you feel like you had it, and then you look at that person the next time, and you're like mad at them, even though you're the one who said all the things, because it's your head. Oh yeah, but no, I have. I am so so I am the queen of scenarios before they even happen, and then going. Into the whatever it is, and it being not, not any of the 3000 scenarios I made up in my head. So I want to kind of leave this particular episode with a favorite quote of mine. Okay, I listened to Alan Watts, Kelly. Are you looking around? Because you're baffled that 45 minutes? I'm bi very scared right now. I don't I was thinking it was 20 minutes. No, I had a timer, and it went off on my wrist, and 45 minutes has passed. I'm very confused, okay? Like I'm literally looking around, going, wait, what? Okay, go on. No, that's a good thing. It means you were having a good time, right? Oh, yeah. Alan Watts was this Zen Buddhism kind of front runner who brought that to the West in the 70s, 60s, 70s and 80s. And he was just amazing guy. And one of the things he talks about is that talking to yourself, and I just love this thing, and he goes, but you know, if you talk all the time, you will never hear what anyone else has to say, and therefore all you have to talk about is your own conversation. The same is true for people who think all the time. That means, when I use the word think, he says talking to yourself or sub vocal conversation, a constant chit chat of symbols and images and talk and words inside your skull. Now, if you do that all the time, you'll find that you've nothing to think about except thinking. And just as you have stopped talking to hear what I have to say says you have to stop thinking to find out what life is about. And the moment you stop thinking, you come into immediate contact with what is so delightfully the unspeakable world, as you said. Korosinski called I don't know how to stop thinking, though I would love to stop thinking. Well, you don't have to do all or nothing on this. You can stop thinking for small periods. How does that work? You focus on your breath. You focus on a thing, meaning you're you're engrossing yourself, just like you would about thoughts into something other than your thoughts. And Alan Watts here talks a little bit about if you're naming things. For example, if you say the word leaf, yet that's a leaf. That's a couch. The leaf becomes this image that's black outlined, and it's green filled, and he's like, leaves don't look like that, right? Because you're labeling it. If I say couch, you're picturing something that is in your repository of what a couch looks like. So by not labeling purposefully, you're just taking in the things so you can look around you right now and look at the things, but don't name them. Don't talk to yourself about them. Just let them be and then do it for a very few minutes. You know, short minutes. It might make you feel uncomfortable, because you're pressed for speech. We all are. We're just constantly pressed to talk inside or out, which means that we're not making room for it. So take a moment and whatever that comfort is at that's what you do it, and the next time, just a little bit more, and see how you feel afterwards. Do you feel better if you're uncomfortable. That just means you have a little bit more learning to do discomfort or feeling uncomfortable, hearing that because I literally don't think I can do it. You're uncomfortable because you don't know it yet. Once we're comfortable and don't feel anxious or things like that. We have we know the thing learning feels uncomfortable and dysregulating, and so leaning into that for just a little bit and understanding that it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's different than what you do all the time. You sleep, because you need to give your body a break so that you can heal yourselves. The same goes for your thoughts. It's healing. Give yourself a minute, if that's all you can do is 30 seconds, 10 seconds. Give yourself that see how you feel and go on about your business. Come back again. Try a little longer and then congratulate yourself for doing it 10 seconds longer, because you have to then verbally tell yourself, congratulations, Letizia, you have just done that in place of the little dopamine reward centers that we don't have. Like, go have a cookie. No. Yeah, seriously, because you do need a little bit of something, something, it's okay to have a little reward mechanism in place for you that's external, because we need it. All of these things are okay. It's not okay if it's happening without your knowledge and it's impairing your ability to feel happy and to actualize your best self and to get the stuff you need done. We got to get out of our heads. We got to do it. I literally think that's impossible for people with ADHD, but I do think probable, maybe impossible. I was gonna say there are definite things to help you. It's just remembering them and practicing them, which is the hard part, I think. And we can reap the benefits of ADHD, which is that outside of the box thinking and all these crazy things that we can do in short amount of time, but we definitely need the downtime of the brain as well as the body, which are both very hard to get with ADHD. That's crazy. It's crazy. Wow, crazy. What? How fast is that? Wow. You just woke me up. Sorry. It was like I was getting into this like mode, because now we're right back up. You know, Alan Watts always gets me into this headspace that I just love, and so that's my Gong, or whatever thing, I can really meditate listening to him and not be in my head about it. So it depends on what works for you. You just have to explore it, though. If you never explore it and you just go on about doing what you do, then you're just being this ant that goes back and forth, right? I'm an aunt. Yeah, you're cute little hand. All right. Well, thank you guys for listening to us and and hopefully you can learn a little bit about yourselves too. Yeah. I hope some of this stuff resonated with you. And, you know, take it, take it in for 10 seconds, see how that goes for you. You know this is, this is something we do for us to help us get through this new world of ADHD, and hopefully it'll just let you all out there know you're not alone and that this is all just kind of part of this ADHD battle, or not battle. I mean, I'm not having a battle unless it's in a fantasy. I bet that happens a lot. Thank you for listening to W th ADHD, we'll see you next time. Bye. This has been a high. It's me, ADHD production.