Ask Dr B about Distractibility and People's Disbelief that ADHD is Real - 056
May 06, 2018Hey ADDers! Do you have trouble getting yourself to focus on things you need or want to focus on? Do you even know what the right things are to be focusing on? And what about following through? Is that something that comes easily to you or do you have years of projects or tasks that you never quite followed through on and they are still waiting for their turn for completion? If I am talking about your life, then this episode is for you!!
In this episode, I talk about:
- Having a focal point to help you focus
- Distractibility
- How real ADHD truly is
- The importance of celebrating your WINS
Developing your Executive Function Skills and shifting your limiting beliefs is the fastest and most effective way to overcome ADHD limitations, find focus, gain confidence, and newfound freedom in your life!
My mission is to put an end to the worldwide needless suffering of adults with ADHD and those with under-developed Executive Function Skills - whether from ADHD, chronic depression or anxiety, trauma, addictions, or chronic illnesses. And, you don't need a formal diagnosis to know you need help developing these executive function skills in order to greatly reduce your suffering.
Full Episode Transcript
Today is Episode 56 and another Ask Dr B episode.
Hey ADDers! Do you have trouble getting yourself to focus on things you need to focus on? Do you even know what the right things are to be focusing on? And what about following through? Is that something that comes easily to you or do you have years of tasks that you never quite followed through on and they are still waiting for their turn for completion? If I am talking about your life, then this episode is for you!!
So let’s dive in and start with some definitions ala Dr B of focus and follow through. I think about focusing in relation to my days as a photographer. I needed to know what the focus or focal point of my photograph would be. I needed to be focusing on that focal point rather than something else. I also needed to know what I wanted the meaning or feeling of my photograph to be; what I wanted it to say. In fact, most of my photographs have a story to tell, and I want to share a quick little story about one of them with you. And no, I am not off topic here; you’ll understand in a little bit.
In the 1970’s I lived on the Balboa Peninsula in Southern California. There was a small empty field near my apartment that was a perfect “blank canvas” to create an image I had a dream about. I’ll include the image in the resources in case you’d like to see it. The dream was about restriction, limitation, being boxed in, all tied up in knots; it was a fascinating dream. The way the dream played out in the photograph was with friends, neighbors and local kids all volunteering to participate. I focused on each person in the photograph and what their story was and how all the stories of the people tied in together. The end result was what you’ll see in the resources.
This is pretty much what I see in the world around me. People focusing on the wrong things and so they can’t solve their challenges and it’s not for trying or working hard. You need to learn to focus on the right things and what focusing is meant to do for you. You also need to learn to develop your abilities to focus and maintain your focus for as long as you need to maintain it so that the purpose of focusing is achieved.
Following through ties in with task completion. You need to know the beginning, middle and end of each task and the steps along the way before you can focus on them. And you need to get yourself to focus when and where you need to focus in order to follow through. Plus you need to navigate whatever emotional snags come up along the way that might derail you and keep you from focusing on the task at hand. In fact, what often happens is that you end up focusing on something else other than what you need to be focusing on because what you need to be focusing on has missing pieces or problems that need to be solved. This all gets very, very complicated and it isn’t as simple as just stop procrastinating and get to work. If you could, you would. I know that. However, others in your life might not understand that you would if you could, even if you try to explain it to them.
And what about your emotions and the role they play in your ability to focus and follow through? If you are afraid or sad or angry, those emotions might pull your focus and attention to them instead of the tasks you need to be focused on doing. And when “feelings” come up, your thoughts about the emotions you are experiencing, might be a further distraction from the tasks you need to accomplish. In a sense, your emotions and feelings can hijack your focus.
So what gets you to focus? Probably a “pop up” that tells you that you have a message on Facebook. Or someone tells you that you forgot to do something important. And you know what to focus on in both cases because the pop up directs you to the message and the person directs you to the thing you forgot to do.
But what about when it’s you that has to decide where to focus and what to focus on? Are you able to do that for yourself? Are you able to give yourself “explicit instructions,” step by step so you can follow the path and succeed? Many of you aren’t able to do that. Also, are you using negative “identity statements” like, “I’m a totally disorganizer person” or “I’m obviously a very lazy person” that is making this a moral issue and beating you down instead of knowing that you are just missing something – whether it’s a skill, a strategy or even a shift in your perspective about you.
And what about your sleep? If you’re focused on things other than sleep, you won’t be able to go to sleep. For example, if you experienced a traumatic event and are focused on protection and safety, then you are not focused on letting go and surrendering to sleep. It’s the opposite and isn’t going to happen. And in order to get yourself to go to sleep, you would almost have to knock yourself out or exhaust yourself to let go.
Summing up…what you focus on grows, both in strength and magnitude. And since you are the meaning maker of your life experiences, you want to be mindful about what you allow yourself to focus on. You may not feel that you have control over where your mind wanders off to and yet you do. You might currently have a mind that is untrained or unruly like a 2-year old, however, with the right training your mind can become your friend and lead you where you want to go, rather than astray.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about my thoughts on the impact of your emotions and feeling on your executive functioning. The development of your executive function begins in childhood and can be derailed by many different occurrences such as family trauma, chronic illness or a non-scaffolded style of teaching them. I feel your executive functioning can be hugely impacted by run away emotions – especially those that are often times strong negatives such as fear, anger or sadness. If you embody them, rather than just allowing them to pass through for those 90 seconds or so, they can take root and you can become them. You can become “fear” or “anger” or “sadness” in an ongoing way that can last a lifetime. Or, you can realize that you actually do have some say in how your emotions impact you and what you decide to think or feel about your emotions or other things in your life. That’s actually a lot of power, if you learn how to work with it.
Today’s episode continues on with answering the questions you have about issues or challenges you experience as an adult living with ADHD or Executive Function Deficits, and offering you hope; real hope. How much time do we have? Not much. So let’s get to it.
Today’s episode was created in response to a couple of questions I received about:
1. Distractibility
2. The disbelief that ADHD is real
Now back to being an adult with ADHD or Executive Function Challenges and some questions from listeners as well as action steps and a favorite quote of mine.
Our first question is from Sora in Hamburg, Germany. She shares and then asks:
· Hi Dr B. In one of your podcasts, you mention identifying distractibility patterns. What do I do once I identify them? I typically start to do housework, take a nap or play with my son just when I am supposed to write my thesis.
· I wrote back to Sora because I wanted to know more about her distractibility so I could be of greater assistance as well as provide those of you who might also be having the same challenges value too.
· She wrote back – “I almost teared up when I saw your email. Thank you for asking after me. I’ve been quite good at quieting the noise and managing most tasks such as office and house work and looking after my son, but when it comes to writing my literature review, I get distracted before I start, with:
o Needing to sit and reflect or try to get into a specific mood before I start like drinking a coffee at the table before going to my desk. I mostly don’t land up going and find something else to do.
o Make a ceremony of the kickoff like placing all my documents around the PC, with books and opening the right files. Then I literally just leave.
o My favorite is sketching. I act like I’m going to use it in the document. It’s relieving my professor doesn’t know of this idea because I’m not very good.
· After I’ve started, my tactics are:
o Go on an online site to look for literature at first and then I just land up surfing.
o I’ll get up to make tea almost as if it’s the reason I can’t really start.
o I usually do not write too much during these sessions but I correct a lot.
o Search for even more literature.
o Decide I need to read a book about a completely different discipline because I might find a new research idea.
· I usually do not get longer than half an hour to an hour on the task and this is not my typical cycle as I spend hours on presentations and research at work.”
First, I want to thank you Sora for your original Ask Dr B question, and for your additional email sharing so much of what you are experiencing. I am grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.
First, I love your initial question about what do you do once you’ve identified what your distractions are. So many of us get information or awareness about what something is, but then what? We don’t know what to do about it or with it now that we know what’s going on. My curiosity drives me to go much deeper and ask more questions about what is going on so that I can really target answers and solutions to problems.
You’ve shared the various different situations that occur; all evidence of distractibility or so it would seem. My mind is wondering why you might need to be distracted from writing your thesis and literature review. I read so many different distractions that are taking you away from doing that writing and I keep wondering what it is about the writing or the thesis or the literature review that you need to get away from or be distracted from. I’d love to know.
I am also considering all this procrastination behavior of putting it off and my experience tells me that adults procrastinate for many reasons. They procrastinate at the beginning when they don’t know how to get going or get started. They procrastinate in the middle when they get lost and don’t know how to keep going. They procrastinate at the end when they don’t know what the final picture of the project or task being finished looks like and so they don’t know when to stop.
Also, you mentioned that the distractible behaviors are not typical for you because you spend hours on presentations and research at work. And if the work you are doing is as an employee, in other words doing work for someone else rather than for yourself, that could be a key factor as well. There could be distracting chatter going on in your head about you and your thesis, where there isn’t distracting chatter going on in your head when you are doing work for someone else other than yourself.
You also mention correcting a lot and I’m wondering if there is some perfectionism at play here, and if so, again it’s a way to distract yourself from the ultimate goal, which I am assuming is to complete the writing of your thesis. Something else that occurred to me is whether or not you see the entire sequence of your thesis from start to finish. By that I mean, do you know where you are headed or want to go with your thesis? If not, this would definitely be a reason that you keep distracting yourself. I have talked about focusing on the right problem in other episodes and in this case, focusing on being distracted as the issue might be incorrect. It might be that what is missing is the ability to see the sequence and trajectory of your thesis project from start to finish. To know what your idea or thought is that you want to explore and the type of conclusions that you are hoping to find on your way. Do you have a set of questions that you are exploring in your mind when you are working on your thesis? Are there specific things that you want to know or need to know to keep yourself moving forward? If not, then I am wondering what is the structure or format you are using to write your thesis? How do you know how to move from thought to thought or idea to idea or conclusion to conclusion? How do you know what the path is?
The more and more I consider what you are sharing with me and what you are asking, the more I am wondering what is missing for you. If I knew that right now, I would know where to next direct my response. Perhaps you can email me again and let me know some of your thoughts in response to what I have shared today, and I can continue in another episode of Ask Dr B.
Transitioning to our next question, which comes from Mel in California. She shares and then asks:
· “Hello Dr. B., my husband dismissively thinks I'm simply an underachiever even though I tested and was diagnosed to have ADD by a psychologist. I'm getting older, times flies by being a busy mom and I feel stressed about how to get up and running with work again. I also see a lot of my traits in our pre-teen son and want to be able to support him and provide him with the tools he needs while trying to cope with my own focus issues. Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with being a support to my son and my spouse who doesn't validate ADD exists?”
First, I want to thank you for sharing your situation with me for the show, so that I can hopefully benefit you as well as others who might find themselves in a similar situation.
There is a lot of information missing for me that I didn’t get to email you and ask about, so I will need to fill in in order to do justice to your questions. I understand that you were tested and diagnosed by a psychologist to have ADD. You don’t indicate whether your ADD is severe or moderate or mild and how your ADD impacts your life other than your focus. You mention about being stressed about how to get up and running with work again; however, I’m not sure what the stressors are. If they are organization, prioritization, motivation and so on, then we are talking about Executive function skills and strategies, unless the challenges are a direct result of being inattention, hyperactive or impulsive in those times of being challenged and stressed.
Your husband dismissively thinks that you are an underachiever, which is a typical response that many have to family or friends diagnosed with ADHD. And since ADHD or EFD isn’t an excuse, and I don’t hear you using it that way, then clearly your husband doesn’t understand that without the necessary skills and strategies, you will most likely be underachieving until you learn them.
Your question is multi-dimensional Mel, and doesn’t have a simple solution. You asked about how to be a support to your pre-teen son, who shows a lot of your traits. The trait you mention is your own focus issues, so I am assuming that your son also experiences problems with focusing. There is that expression about putting on your own oxygen mask first before trying to help others, and this would apply in this situation. If you are lacking the skills or strategies to effectively manage your own life, then you will find it difficult to model those skills or strategies for your son so he can learn them from you. My suggestion would be that you focus first on yourself and addressing whatever your own challenges are with your ADHD and/or your Executive Function deficits. If you’ve listened to other episodes of my show, you will know that research indicates that those of us with ADHD almost all have Executive Function deficits. What that means is that if you lack focus because of being inattentive, that is your ADHD at play. However, if you lack focus because you don’t know where to focus or what to start with, then we are talking more about deficits with your Executive Function skills and strategies.
So, assuming that what I am hypothesizing and saying is correct, you need to determine which skills and strategies you are missing and learn them, as well as address your focus issues if that is related to your ADHD. For issues of focus that are due to ADHD, there are cognitive training apps that can help with focus as well as exercise, nutrition, restorative sleep and other things including medication that are available. And if medication isn’t an option, there is still plenty you can do to improve the quality of your focus. From there, I hope you would be able to model effective ways to live successfully with ADHD and EFD.
If you want to provide your son with a direct education of EF skills, you might enroll him in a program that will teach those to him. Learning these skills sooner vs. later will help him a lot. And, it’s definitely not too late for you or any other adult to also learn the EF skills and strategies that you are missing. We are born with the capacity to develop these skills and yet they don’t just develop on their own. In fact, there are many life experiences that can derail their development.
For the second part of your question about your husband and his disbelief in ADD or your ADD, that’s something entirely different. If your husband doesn’t believe that you have ADD or that it exists as a real condition, he is the one who will need to change his own beliefs as you can’t change them for him. I don’t know if he’s been given misinformation or if how the condition was explained to him doesn’t make sense or seem real to him or that it’s you he doesn’t believe has ADD for whatever reasons he has.
What I can say is that many people disbelief that someone they know has ADHD because what they believe ADHD looks like is not what they see in that person. Also, they see them capable of doing something in one situation and yet unable to perform those same tasks in a different situation and conclude that the person isn’t trying or interested in making an effort. It makes no sense to them that the situation makes a difference in your ability to perform yet for many it’s true.
I don’t know if the psychologist who did your testing had both you and your husband come in for a debriefing appointment to go over the results of the testing and more importantly, what the results mean in real world terms. That way, a knowledgeable professional is helping your husband to understand what it’s like for you living with adult ADHD instead of you trying to explain it to him. In fact, if your husband is open to making a list of all the reasons why he doesn’t think that ADHD is real or isn’t real for you, then those beliefs could be addressed by the psychologist who did your testing. Without knowing what your husband is basing his disbelief on, it’s hard to say what to do other than what I have suggested.
It is definitely easier for people to make it about you as a moral issue instead of a missing skills issue because so many of us are used to judging others by what things mean to us, and not by what they actually are. Someone thinking that you “should” be able to do something and you knowing that you would do those things if you could do them, is a huge disconnect.
Thank you again, Sora and Mel, for your questions for this Ask Dr B episode. I love responding to questions; the more the better. So, if any of you have questions, please send them over via the Ask Dr B link in the episode resources. And feel free to include as much detail as is relevant to your specific question, so I can provide you with a comprehensive answer instead of something more general.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge all of you fans of my show for continuing to listen and find me when I was gone for 4 months and not able to produce any new episodes. I really missed our time together and am grateful to be back. Thanks for your loyalty, questions and support, and for being such an important part of my life.
And you know that it wouldn’t be a Dr B episode if I didn’t talk about celebrating your WINS, big and small, since they are such an important part of my philosophy. If you’ve been celebrating your WINS then you know that you can shift your feelings and thinking with this practice; you seriously can. And since what we pay attention to grows, paying attention to what’s right instead of what’s wrong helps to generate more of what’s right. And when you acknowledge and celebrate your WINS with a full heart of appreciation and authenticity, you are giving yourself a priceless gift.
Please don't short-change yourself by thinking that it’s pointless or stupid to reward yourself for all the little things that you’re “supposed to do.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Are you really going to make yourself wait until something HUGE happens to celebrate? Does something HUGE happen everyday? Probably not! But the kind of WINS I talk about can and often do. And from what I see, they are an absolute necessity to getting yourself out of the emotional ditch of whatever ails you and into a better attitude and way of living. Based on the feedback I get, this regular practice of celebrating WINS is changing lives for the better.
Each of us is like a puzzle with so many pieces that need to put together to form the picture of our life and if we get overwhelmed by all the pieces we see in front of us and never put the picture together, it’s a huge loss for everyone. So, please… It’s your responsibility to put your picture together and if you need some help, ask someone – ask me!! And remember…hindsight is for learning from and shaping your behaviors for the next time, rather than beating yourself up about. The past is gone and you can learn from it if you think of it that way. And if you feel that your past is following you into the present, I have to ask you if it is what you’re focused on instead of how you can benefit from your past, because what you focus on grows which means that if your focus is on the mistakes of the past, they are going to become bigger than life to you and contaminate your present time moments.
So, what’s it going to be for you today? What are you going to celebrate? Maybe you’ve begun to develop an acceptance practice and are extending a little grace to yourself instead of poisonous negativity; that’s certainly a WIN. Perhaps you’ve taken the risk to see yourself more clearly and are pleasantly surprised with what you’ve discovered; that’s a wonderful WIN. Maybe you received a compliment from someone you barely know, who appreciates what you shared with them; that’s definitely a WIN. You get the point; celebrate all of them; big and small. And none of this “half-hearted celebrating”; you’ve got to mean it. Exaggerate your emotions. YES!!!! WOW!! AWESOME!! You want your acknowledgement and celebration to register in your neurology with the power to move you and shift your state. Many of us need a higher level of stimulation or intensity for things to register. So, if that’s you, give that to yourself and exaggerate your celebration so you can actually feel it.
And listen…you’re not broken or defective or less than! You’re YOU! You have gifts and talents that you may not think much of, like you’re really great at cooking or have a generous spirit or you bring a sense of humor and lightness to situations, because those talents aren’t paying the bills. I get it. And yet these are things that are really great about you and need to be appreciated.
You are a precious “human being” whose value is a given; because I am not talking about you as the “human doing” that most of society views you as. And you may be missing some skills that have been making your life very difficult up to now, and yet skills can be learned. Please know that I am not making light of your struggles or unhappiness; not at all. I want you to know that there are answers to your struggles. You may need to make some changes, and you may be in the very early stages of making those changes. If you are willing to be a student of your own life and develop a deeper understanding of yourself and how you are put together, and offer yourself a lot of compassion and patience, plus the time, effort and energy it’s going to take to make the necessary changes, these things can happen for you. I know this is true because my students are learning skills they’ve been missing most of their life and it’s amazing to share in the transformation of their thinking and behaviors and aha moments.
Please don’t let yourself be one of the 80% of people who don’t ever make it to more permanent change or even the 80% who want to change but never actually end up making the changes they want for many different reasons. There is training and support available to you to ensure, to the best of my ability, that you don’t become one of the 80% who don’t make it. Rather, that you are one of the 20% who do.
The longer I work with adults with ADHD and EFD, the more clear I become that it’s the EFD and not the ADHD that is the most disruptive element. All the executive function skills and strategies are necessary to live a productive and successful adult life. Without them, there is ongoing struggle. With them, the struggle and drama fade into the past. That’s why ADDventures in Achievement has morphed into the program it is today. I started with an eye toward focus, follow through and self-management challenges and realized along the way that I was really talking about EFD and not so much about ADHD. I shifted my focus, re-modeled the program, and now teach executive function skills and strategies to bright, creative adults with these challenges. More specifically, if you have challenges with your working memory or getting started or planning or organizing or shifting your focus, then this is the place to be.
The program was closed for re-modeling and is opening up for enrollment this month. If you want to be the first to enroll, put your name on the Waitlist and I’ll reach out to you within 24 hours to discuss whether ADDventures in Achievement is right for you. And if it is, I’ll offer you the opportunity to enroll right now, before opening up enrollment to the general public. This program is definitely the place to be if you need help understanding what’s been holding you back and want to learn the skills and strategies to help you break free of your stuckness.
A Favorite Quote: Maya Angelou said, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” So, the question I have for you at this point of our journey together is, “How do you feel about yourself? Do you like yourself? Love yourself? Do you like who you are becoming on the way to wherever it is that you are going?” I hope so and if not, then perhaps ADDventures in Achievement is the place to be so you can become that person with the support of our community and the training I provide.
That’s about it for today and my thoughts on focus, follow through, distractibility and the reality of ADHD.
It means a lot to me to know that your life is getting a little bit better every time we get together. I do hope that you will take some positive action because for things to change, you have to change. And that means taking action. Remember, there’s a PDF transcription of this episode in the resources. Plus, I’d love to get to know you in the community group I created on Facebook or in the ADDventures in Achievement program.
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So thanks for listening… Until the next time… Bye for now…
Episode Resources:
- Put yourself on the information list for the ADDventures In Achievement Foundational Skills Program, so that you receive all the amazing emails we’ve written to both educate you about Executive Function skills as well as the details of the program; there is absolutely no obligation by being on the list. You’ll thank yourself for getting informed.
- Free Video and e-Book - Many Mental Health Providers & ADHD
- 13 EF Skills
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Photo I mention in this episode...
