Hi, so this section is on overwhelm. It's an incredibly important aspect of ADHD in in terms of the impact being so significant. And talking about what it is, what to do about it is the core of what we're here to do today. So I am thrilled to have two extraordinary experienced ADHD coaches. They both have ADHD. They have that insight. They are well, they are brilliant. So Katherine Mengardon and Lex Harvey-Bryn. Welcome.

Thank you, Sue.

It's wonderful to have you here, and thank you for doing this. First question, what is overwhelm?

What well, the simple answer would be what is not overwhelmed when it comes to ADHD. And I I think that there's so much of the ADHD experience is about overwhelm overall. And I suppose I mean, I I tend to go I kind of like looking at it a bit as, you know, we know a lot more about the neuroscience of of ADHD as well. And that's something that I find really helpful because I think when we get a diagnosis, the first thing that we are given is basically everything about the struggle. We feel like there's a bit of a feeling of being a bit less because somehow everything is about, you know, this lovely word, disorder deficiency.

Etcetera, which we know are so wrong, but it's And the diagnosis itself is very negative. Right? It's focused on the negative aspects. It's a negative. It's a diagnosis if it's having a debilitating impact. That's what we need to look at and to prove until you come out of it. But but overwhelm itself, like, what does it how does it manifest itself? Are you.

Or you need to Well, the reason the reason the reason why I wanted to mention this is because I think one of the things that's really quite important is the fact that what we know now is that a process that happens from birth like, when we were born, everyone is born with a a 100,000,000,000 neuronal pathways, which is more it's like it's like nature is preloading us to deal with absolutely everything we might ever need in terms of being able to process information. And what happens as we grow up, our brain sort of does all this sort of work of sort of streamlining what it needs and sort of shedding what it doesn't need, and that's called neuronal pruning. And.

One thing that's coming out of the research on that is that neuronal pruning for all neurodivergent people happens less. And so we end up basically with the capacity to process more information. So we're not coming from less, we're coming from more. And so this this thing means that we are able to sort of get a lot more information through our system, But that equally that means that we all have a certain cap, and this is where the overwhelm comes in because we're much closer to that sense of overwhelm. And, in terms of what overwhelm is, it's literally when there is too much input, and we just go can't quite compute.

Quite often people will see our responses to situations and see it as, I mean particularly in education systems, but also generally is this observation that somehow we're being badly behaved with these big reactions, with this big response to what people may perceive as sort of an overreaction. But actually in those moments, what we're experiencing is a raised central nervous system. And we're frightened that our our brains go and our bodies go into a state of fight flight freeze form, and Katherine and I also believe there's flood and fatigue. So we're flooded with emotions, or we become incredibly fatigued when we're in those states as well. So overwhelm can feel.

Well, it it our experience of overwhelm is actually comes from from a space of being frightened and quite commonly that is feeling psychologically unsafe.

What what would it like, if you were seeing someone in overwhelm, what would they look like?

You could have all sorts of different reactions, so then I don't think there's like a single thing. Like everything else, especially with ADHD, we're very good at having lots of ways of expressing things, but we were talking about freeze, so there's like this thing of shutdown where people are literally just like rabbit in the headlights, playing kinda kinda dead. That's kind of one thing. The other one might be just getting very angry or getting really frustrated or seeing, like, you know, great injustice is done, what I call high horsing. Something is terribly wrong. Must must something must happen. So that's something that these sort of big reactions which feel like slightly overblown. So the word over is here again quite prominent.

And I guess the other thing is that the I think overwhelmed for me, there's, like, three reason for overwhelm that I always manage to fit things in those three three categories. So I think we get overwhelmed for things like when things are too much, when there's literally too much volume of something, too much information, too much input, be it sensory, whatever it is, that's a cause for everyone. That's one of them. The other second one is anything that lacks clarity. So that can be a real sort of kryptonite for our brains because, we like logic. I think we're not talking talking enough about the fact that ADHD brains really crave logic.

They might seem like it's a logic of our own, but it needs to be there. So I often think of the the issue with, like, a math problem, and you someone says to you, we've got 63 melons watermelons, and we have five people, and then how are going to make sure that everyone has the right amount of watermelons? And I think, Jenny, the first question will come to me is, why do we have 63 watermelons? I need to know this before I can even go to the next bit. So logic is quite an important thing, and a lack of clarity can also sort of leads us to have open all of these questions, all of these tabs of going, what the hell is going on? And that can be a cause of shutdown and of overwhelm.

And the last one is, I think, in a way, the most the one that's, back to what Lex was saying is lack of safety. And, let's face it, the world is not a safe place. So, we can't make the world safer. We can't make situations safer. And often, we have a sense of not being safe in ourselves. So that sort of sense of safety or or if something feels like it's not quite it it there's any kind of hint of danger, we might also shut down. And sometimes it's a combination of all these three things with one that's leading or the other makes sense. But so you kinda have to sort of look at how you can untie that knot of of different things that could feel like overwhelmed.

Some of the other things I could think about as well sorry, Henry. Yeah. Go on. I was going to you. Sorry. It's it it can feel like no more inputs can go in. You just need to just escape all of those inputs going in. It feels like scattered thoughts where you just feel like your mind's in a motor and it's whirling and it's and it's quite a frightening place to be when we're in that sort of scattered thoughts. Mine's like a motor even more so than normal. But also, burnout I think is the space where we we find overwhelm, where it's been going on for too long. And again I don't think burnout is I I experienced quite a chronic burnout in my mid thirties which was which was misunderstood as a nervous breakdown. Unaware that I was ADHD.

And autistic, I now recognise that I had an experience of chronic burnout, but it was very much misunderstood by the professionals and the people around me. So when we've experienced overwhelm for well, at all, it can often as well look like burnout.

It's important and one of the things I think that's it's interesting, it's important to raise that issue of burnout, which, that link through to overwhelm. When think of overwhelm in the word, so, you know, you are overwhelmed. So, like, there are some things in your life which have essentially then get you into shutdown. And that may be for different and that and that can then result in you, you know, sitting at your desk not doing anything. You're unable to clean your house and unable to do those things that you know you need to do, and you're not really doing anything else. You're not even distracted into other stuff. Mhmm. Like, you are you are shut down. And does that sound.

To you about right? Like, well, an example of that. Shut down their real spaces.

Quite often people talk about procrastination, but it's it's so much more than that when you're in an overwhelmed situation. Sorry, Katherine.

I agree. I think the I guess it's back to what is shut down, what happens when we shut down. And it's that sense of panic. It's that sense of, oh, something's not right. And so it's almost like, if you think of our, our system sort of being able to sort of function properly, it's almost like we've just gone off the the grid. And so, like, it's your brain goes your your lovely sort of thinking brain, your pretotal context just basically shuts down. And so what's left instead is your your most instinctive emotive self that is basically going something is wrong, red alert, red alert. And what happens with that is that.

All of your your brain what your brain is going to be doing is literally just going, I need to deal with that situation and I can do nothing else but that. And sort of if it doesn't recognize what that flag is, because overwhelm is also like this, not the capacity to necessarily analyze things because we've shut off that part. When we can get stuck in that feeling of, oh my god, like, something feels not right, but I don't know what it is, and then we literally can't move. So I think it's also quite interesting to think about the physiology.

Of shutdown. We tend to think that it's all like a brain based thing that we can reason through it, and I don't think that's true. I think when you get to that, you have, like, a real sort of nervous system response that needs to be addressed from that perspective as well.

Yeah. That's an that's an important so look. When a client comes to you and they're clearly talking about overwhelm and and being overwhelmed, like, what do you what's your first thing to say? What do you say to them? Lex, do you want to take that first?

Yep. Again, when people are newly diagnosed, a lot of the things that they've been told, the information that they've been given over the years about what they're experiencing can be entirely wrong. They're told that it's depression, it's anxiety, it's bipolar, it's lots of different things. So sometimes, predominantly the first thing, when people talk about their experiences is helping them to identify what it actually is. And quite often, this concept of overwhelm or dysregulation, can feel like it's like a, it's like a revelation. It's a relief in as well in so many ways that people can finally understand what's going on for them.

So and again, with that with that relief that it's the same when you find out that it's that ADHD as an adult that you've got. You have that big sort of wash of, goodness, that's what it is. And then you go, that's what it is. Now I need to work out how to manage it. So helping people to understand the the whole picture and and talking through, minds like ours connect on shared experiences. So supporting with people with understanding how it might feel, what it might look like, how they might be experiencing it, and then helping them to unpick and understand their experience of life, is quite often the first road, that we that that happens when people understand that they are experiencing overwhelm.

Or dysregulation as a result of being neurodivergent. One.

Of the, for me, one of the big signs of overwhelm is when you notice the self talk changing. And you'll have things around, really the the the expectations go higher. The pressure really builds up, and the negative talk goes really intense as well. I'm terrible at this. I procrastinate. I can't do anything. I'm stupid. I'm lazy. All of this stuff seems to come out. And then equally, they're like, but I need to do everything. I do need to do even more than you need to do. So it's almost like when we feel this sort of sense of vulnerability, we just pile it on even more. I think that's a very ADHD thing to do to just go.

I do the hardest thing possible and I will prove that I'm not what I think I am, this terrible self talk. And so there's a there's a brilliant thing by quote by Bernie Brown, which is she's she's brilliant. She's created this atlas of of the heart, which is like a a guide to emotions because we don't necessarily understand. We're not very fluent in the language of emotions. And so she's trying to sort of help us come up with things like that. And one of the entries is on perfectionism. And it's interesting because when you think of perfection, you think, well, perfection surely is what we should all be aiming for. But actually, perfection itself is a unicorn. It's not real. Like, perfection is this moment where.

Everything sort of collides together, luck and circumstances. And yes, it could be some talent and some sort of hard work. But actually, need to have all sorts of things to get to something that is like happens to be perfection. And I think perfectionism so the pursuit of of perfection is something that we suffer from quite a lot. A lot of people might not think that ADHD and perfectionism goes together, but actually, I could say, like, every single person I speak to really has an issue with perfectionism because it becomes this Everest to reach. And if I don't get perfectionism.

Then I'm a failure. So the pressure is as high as it gets. The the thing that Bernie Brown says about this, which I think is really sort of when I read it, I just went, oof, this really hits home. He says shame is the birthplace of perfectionism.

Well, that's where I was gonna come in was that a lot of the reason for a desire for perfectionism is an insecurity from not fitting in from struggling and going, right, I must do this to be absolutely perfect because I keep getting this weird negative stuff, bad, you know, people getting upset with me, things happening, and I don't know why. And often it's because you're neurodivergent, you're interacting with the world in a different way. And and so you're not then doing what people are expecting of you and not matching and then getting that sort of negative feedback. So you're like, okay. If I do it perfectly, this.

I think also as much as perfection is an accident, we also because we we do have when everything's working well, we can work at, like, a 150%. And so we can make unicorns. We're capable of creating unicorns. And because we can do that, we're like, well, I can do that. I did it once. So I'm gonna do that. And I think we create these expectations with people as well. We're perfectly capable of doing that thing. But then when you can't do it again, it's like, well, what's wrong with you? And there's that much sort of energy and adrenaline that gets us to sort of do things in a certain way. Mhmm. And we expect ourselves to sort of always perform at that level. The problem is that so one of the things I often think about is that.

We know we're we're dopamine. We're looking for dopamine to sort of get us going. But when we can't do that, we can still do things. But while we're going instead of going dopamine chasing, we're using our adrenaline. And our adrenaline can get us, like, through quite a lot and really sort of carry us, but the problem is that it has a much bigger cost, and that's where burners out burnout comes in. Absolutely.

One of the other things that's worth mentioning is anxiety. Sorry. Yeah. Go on. Next. One of the other things to bear in mind, again very much comes up in the discussions around shame and guilt and those getting crossed with ourselves is, is one of the things that I I think is really cruel about ADHD is that when we need that skill the most, when we need to access our executive function.

Which is getting tasks, getting the thing done, getting started on the thing, the very action of us feeling those guilt and those shame and those and being cross with ourselves shuts our executive function down even harder. So we end up in this cycle of I need to do the thing to make myself feel better, but I can't do the thing because I'm because the shame the very act of feeling that guilt and that shame shuts down my executive functioning skills even harder. So that brain off, brain on experience is made even harder by the very act of feeling guilt, shame, low mood, cross with ourselves.

And do you think shame builds into like, it increases the risk of someone's.

Oh my god. It's massive. It's if anything, shame is to me, it's like it's the the most common and the hardest sort of driver of all human behavior. If you think about it, so much is motivated by shame. And shame is very powerful because it's it's about the unspoken or the thing that feels like it's too dreadful to to say. And shame can be applied to so many different things. It can be very small things. It can be just and and and it's really quite devastating. But what's interesting with shame is that you can rob it of its strength the second you start talking it and just going, okay. Collide is not collapsing. So so as much as it's great to know that that's what it is.

They are once you can identify what is going on, if it's shame and it often is shame, then there's real power in working with someone to sort of enable you to explore this thing that feels so dreadful, so terrible. So, like, absolutely, you know, like, you can't actually tell someone that you you are so incapable because the the stories that we build out of shame will be very strong core stories. We I'm basically a fraud. I am I mean, we we hear that so much about the impostor syndrome that happens in ADHD. People just think I want I've probably convinced the psychiatrist.

That I was ADHD, but really, I'm just a lazy person. I mean, how often does that come up as well? And so I think we have this really cool stories that the shame is really thinking there's something really wrong with me, and it feels absolutely impossible to mention that. But, actually, the second you rob shame of its power over you, the freedom that comes with it is extraordinary. And that's, I think, that's the message of hope from this is that we can absolutely work through shame because, generally, shame is based on experiences that have been built up over a lifetime. This is something that, Lex and I explore a lot around.

Trauma, big trauma, little trauma, the trauma of everyday get being fed things that make you feel like you're less than, which obviously the ADHD experience is massively relevant to. But you can actually work through this sort of stuff and start understanding a different side, and that takes a lot of, the courage to allow yourself to be a bit vulnerable and allow and seeing that things have to be you can change the story, basically.

Thank you. That's it. It's it's really it's just so interesting, the aspect of the multifaceted aspect of of one that there are different drivers to it. And then if you're to defeat it, you need to start to unpick. So Shane's one of the big drivers. Overwhelmed with data and information, one of the drivers. Like, do you see it? Like, a lot of people find it's impacting their work that they're looking at a a white page and they're doing they know what they've got to do. They just can't start. Like, how do you how do you start to think about overwhelm and and that, the sort of white the white page of paper?

As in organizing thoughts? That was all that that when your brain is just so full of full of stuff, you need to try and organize and and process that through. Is that what you mean?

I think I'm just saying you're sitting in front of a white piece of paper, and you're just not So doing I'm purposely not that's how I think a lot of the time how someone will will come saying like, this is I just I know what I've gotta do, and I just got the thing open, and I'm not doing it. Yeah. Mhmm. Like and so and I I've got this to do, this to do, I've got I kinda need to start somewhere, like, but I'm not. So what do you say to those people?

I can I mean, where I would start is, is often is organizing the thoughts? Sometimes, when people have experienced dysregulation or over overwhelm, I often talk about it as like you a bomb goes off in your mind and your filing cabinets explode everywhere and there's paper everywhere or or it like all your Tetris blocks have all fallen out of their categories. And so it's a case of, quite often the opportunity to verbally process or or or just talk through all of those thoughts, verbalise anything that's that feels, that feels overwhelming, that feels scattered. Somehow our brains just thrive off of the opportunity to verbally process. It's why things like coaching and, therapeutic approaches are so helpful because.

The the very action of us verbally processing can help us organize our thoughts, enough to be able to sort of start to get some perspective and be able to look at things like reframing. But again, underpinning so much of this is is getting underneath and trying to access or heal or move forward from some of those guilt shame, negative messages that we give ourselves, so that we we stop. I'm gonna pass over to Katherine in a minute because she's really good at explaining this, but where we can stop those cycles of thought where we're we're speaking so negatively to ourselves. But the one of the first most effective things to do when you stick when you're just your mind's.

Book either blank because it's so full of thoughts and you can't catch one, or you're completely shut down is just to start is just to start talking, and and start that process of of of just verbally dumping. Quite often, it can just be people who say, I'm so sorry. I'm just rambling. But actually, my message to them is this is really important. This is exactly what you need to be doing right now, is just verbally dumping, verbally processing with somebody who's gonna help you organize those thoughts is is often an amazing first step to take.

Honestly, you've given me a bit of an epiphany, like, is a personal epiphany. I I have a lot more or less. Like, so so much I don't know. And but we often talk about using verbal processing, talking to someone to work through it. And I think people and by people, I think, me, think, well, I've talked through that, and now we're done. This is never gonna happen again. Job done. And actually, what's what you need to go is like, right. As someone with ADHD, and as you, Katherine, really talked nicely to you, that that we're near overwhelmed anyway. Like overwhelm happens and.

You know, we've got that busy brain and we're sometimes struggling. And so then what's our system for getting out of it and recognizing that we need to build a system? And that system is for some, it's movement by going out and walking. So some people find that really unlocks things for them. And for some people it'll be talking talking through it with someone, but having that process of going right, I'm overwhelmed, this is what I'm gonna go do, and recognizing that that's going to be a repeating action.

Absolutely. Having a of things sorry, having a toolkit of things that you can go to. So and you've got to bear in mind as well, masking has played a massive part in how we respond to this as well over the years. So there's always a need to unpick and understand what you need. There's no secret sauce to all of this because we're all so different. We all have such different experiences that none of us can give people all of the answers. What we can do is say, right.

Here's some tool. Let's work through some tools that you can use. So when you recognize you're feeling overwhelmed, look at things like, are your values being compromised? Are your needs not being met? Are your sensory needs feeling overwhelmed? And having an ability to sort of map those out and and assist again, we love logic. Katherine mentioned earlier, our brains love logic. So if we have road maps or if we have a system where we go, right. I starting to feel overwhelmed. I recognize how that feels in my body, and then looking at, right, what's my response plan to that? And it's always it always goes back to.

To you and what you need in those moments. And it might be that you need to focus on your sensory needs. It might be that you need clarity or, or you might need that your justice is raging because we have such a higher sense of injustice, so we need to go and decide what you wanna do about that injustice. But it's about bringing it back to you and enabling you to make decisions about how you want to experience life. And again, part of that process, is unpicking a lot of coping mechanisms that we've put in place because we've spent all those years masking or someone else told us that's how we manage it, and we've adopted that as our our way, but it doesn't work for us. I remember.

People used to say, oh, you're always on the go. You need to go and have a spa day. Can think of nothing worse. It was it was it was the worst thing But.

But that is why I started writing. Realize I wanna do something. Give me, like, a nice defined goal.

Like and a a thing to do, and I'm happy as Larry. But what what recharges my batteries is awful nineties music in my kitchen dancing hysterically. That that recharges my batteries, whereas before I would have tried to stop and come and and stay still because that's what people told me you needed to do. And so it's finding your thing. It's finding helping people to find their thing, their tools that and their things that help charge their batteries.

But that's important point you you touched on, which is you've got to recognize we are different. And the thing that's gonna work for us may well it may well be the thing that works for lots of other people. Also may well be something very different just sort of forced assumption that that work that's what everyone else does. That'll work for me. Like, it's just it it's often a a false one.

Absolutely.

I've got so many things I want to serve.

I've been making furious notes on ADHD wanted to jump in? What the hell?

How could that be? Oh, another thing. Oh, another thing. I I agree with everything we're saying now. And just I guess this there's several things that I was thinking of when we were talking about this that often when we are in overwhelm, the the time pressure really comes in. We go, oh, I've got to do this and, like, you know, the more we sort of feel like we're stuck, the more we feel like there's a time pressure. And that means that anything that feels like it's wasting time.

Like talking things through, like taking the time to go for a walk, like taking a bath, we might just go, I can't do that because actually I need to get done with shit. Sorry. That's what that's the first one. I'm gonna No. You're gonna ruin the YouTube algorithm. We get in a lot of trouble. Like Let's say that I'm French, I said something different. So this is this is what it is. But yeah. So I think time time is a big thing, and I think when we absolutely key is recognize this feeling overwhelmed. And the feeling of overwhelmed is often something that's gonna come from breathing in a very shallow way.

You'll start noticing that you're breathing from here. Some people might feel like, well, I don't breathe any differently. Like, some people are stuck in overwhelm the majority of their life, of their wake because that's just the normal modus of brandy for them. So it's a really interesting thing to just go, what's happening here? And if you're if you're always only breathing from here.

You want to have a look at your nervous system a little bit. You might start having headaches. You might feel like you're sweating a little bit. You might feel really fidgety, like all of these different things. A lot of people with ADHD will go, I have all of these things all the time. Jaw clenching as well. Jaw clenching, constantly having tense neck, back, and shoulders when you're breathing from here. So recognizing once you recognize that, you can go, okay. That's interesting what's going on here. And the first instinct that we should have is not I need to push through because we have been able to do that and we can sort of push through, but it has a massive cost.

So there's another way. The other way is I need to stop here for a second. And when we stop, we might feel like we're wasting work, but actually we're taking this lovely time that was gonna enable us to stop flying again. And and I think for me, there's, there's another thing that we tend to do a lot of, which is that because we are because we think so much, because we have this fabulous capacity, like, tend we tend to always think of overthinking as a bad thing. But actually, we're able to sort of do so many things at the same time. And I think when we are in a rush or in under pressure and this famous sort of crisis situation that we're so good at handling.

We take we start taking on all the roles. So when we have to do something, we want to download the brain, we want to judge the information that we're doing, and we want to make decisions. And I think, actually, one of the first thing to do when you're in overwhelm because there's just too much of stuff is to start breaking down those rules and going the first thing is downloads. That's what I call download. It's literally what is going through your mind. It's that thing around it either you speak to someone or you write it down or you make a list. Whatever it is, just basically I often think of Harry Potter and that scene where they have the pensieve, this lovely sort of bowl.

Where you can from a wand, you can sort of lift a a thought from your mind and just put it in the pensieve, and it's gonna be kept there. I think it's really important for us to download whatever it is and not judge it. Literally, don't think about judging what it is. Whatever's coming out, just put it down because that means you're lit you're literally freeing your brain to be able to process otherwise, it's gonna keep on doing the soup. So once you've downloaded everything.

You can give yourself a little bit of time to go more critically and look at it and go, okay. What is this information telling me? And then you can start organizing it a little bit and seeing what it's trying to tell you. Because, generally, a lot of the questions that have been going in your head, just by being able to do this, you'll be able to start answering some of them as well. And then once you've done that, so this third step would be the action. So it's like, okay. What are the actions I need to take? But because we are very efficient or want to be very efficient, we tend to do all these three roles in one, and that's part of the overwhelm.

So taking that time to break things down a bit more to just go, okay. What do I need to download? What do I need to sort of then assess from this? And what are the actions I need to take can be a really effective way of sort of dealing with that that sense of overwhelm from when it's about volume, basically.

My last notes of the the thing that we were discussing was something about, yes, we are all different, and we're gonna be sort of doing things in a different way. Equally, the tools that we might need to deal with things will be different. And for the same person, for for me, it might be that one day is the list that really works for me. But actually, next day, if I go to the list and it's not working, I need to find a different tool. So I think it's really that point about having a menu of things that you can turn to because we also tend to get stuck on, well, that worked for me before. Why isn't it working for me now? But very simply because it's not the same situation or because you've sort of moved on from it or you have a different need. So I think we tend to just go, I need to always find the one solution and stay with it. And I think that's really unrealistic.

And unhelpful for neurodivergent brains because we like novelty and variety. And when we're doing that, we're denying that as that that that that dopamine that comes from that. So it's really about finding different ways of coming to information and dealing with things, and there's nothing wrong with trying different things.

Something else to bear in mind as well with that is those days where we've got high energy days and low energy days, and we we want ourselves to always operate at well, I don't know about anyone else, but I love my high energy days, and I want to always operate at high energy days. But we also have a mode which is low energy days, and we can find those quite frustrating, but they both have value in how we how we manage our, so having a Katherine and I work a lot on high energy days and low energy days and recognizing what you can achieve in both of those because they're both important. And the more you fight one, the more you get stuck in the other. It's it can be quite, frustrating. But we do experience high energies and low energies.

And we need to honor them and support them the same.

Yeah. I think well, that knowledge of self and understanding how you are is critical. And you talked about the differences between people. And I think one of the things we try and talk to is that everyone is a unique person plus ADHD. And we have good understanding of of ADHD, and it's a defined disorder. Gosh. I hate that word. The the but it's the other uniqueness for us being individual, unique people. It's where that that difference really arises. Lex, earlier, you started to sort of talk through a list of components that you or things you think about when you're looking at overwhelm. And.

I thought it'd be interesting for us to discuss what we think might be on that list. So when funds find themselves, you know, they've hit that point that they're they're shut down. And I think having that ability to step away, to do something to start to process it, which I think was a key part of the earlier conversation. So how are gonna process it, have a plan to process it? And Katherine, your point on, like, the time pressure.

Will mean lots of people will go, I can't do this right now. Can't do it because I don't have the time. You're like, well, basically, buddy, you don't have a choice in this. You are overwhelmed. You can either spend the next however long in the same state or you can do some things to break it, but the time's gone or whatever. And when you talk about it, it reminded me of, you know, when people are suffering from insomnia and as the clock of how much sleep you get ticks down, the anxiety ticks up, making it even harder to sleep and to help remedy your problem. In the same way with overwhelm.

Like if you don't step back then you're stepping in, the anxiety is going to keep going up because your time pressure is going down. Your time is going down. So you started to say you talked about you. You went straight into time was included, but shame like, what you also talked about and I I didn't write it down and then tried to remember. I couldn't completely remember. So I've written conflict, but that's not what you said. But the one of the and it was starting to sort of break apart the components. So.

I'll just start. I'll just start and see where we go. One of the other things when you're looking at this is that everything bear with me. Katherine, what is it? You're gonna have to forgive me. That's one of my coping mechanisms. Alexa's just reminded me it's time for my son to go to bed, so I needed time switch off. One of the things, again, when we're looking at when we're overwhelmed is all the things that we need to do to fix it feel of equal importance. I'm so sorry. Alexa, stop. We're on speaker, aren't we?

Like, you know, play.

Yeah. That's really messed messed with this presentation. So everything in those moments.

That's mine. Alexa, stop. I can't believe I got short short myself in the first thirty minutes.

I think this is so perfect. It's just like, couldn't have scripted this, and it's so good. Yeah.

So for those who know me and have worked with me, the the the a word is real. It's why I'm Lex, actually. It's because I was used to messing with people's houses because I used to be a Lexa. Sorry. Right. Let's change the subject. So, equal of equal importance. When we're when we're in those state of those, these sort of heightened states, well, and actually just quite often a trait of being ADHD is everything feels of equal importance. So when you think, like, where do I start? Everything feels as urgent. Everything feels equally as important. So some tools to kind of break all of that down and go, right.

Emptying the dishwasher right now is not gonna change anything or it's about having that ability to process and think about what's gonna help me right now. What do I need right now? What not what do I want right now? Because we often have that, I don't know about anyone else, but when I go on holiday, suddenly get this utter urge to organize my entire house when I've only got fifteen minutes to pack for a holiday because I've left it to the last minute. But it's that but it's so it's about taking it back down to almost like grounding yourself and going, right, what do I need to achieve in order to get this next step? Because we want to fix the whole thing. We aren't we are often not happy with just.

Taking the the next step. So breaking things down into steps about understanding what you want to achieve initially is is really, really helpful. The other thing that very often keeps us in that space of overwhelm is ambiguity. We've talked about it throughout this session. But ambiguity is an absolute shutdown for our minds. It shuts that if where there's where there is ambiguity, our minds shut down.

It's a What do think that is? What do you think the core for that is?

It's we like Say that again.

I have an idea. For me, it's safety.

Right.

Because if something if something feels unclear, it could be danger. There's something there that we won't understand, so we might make a mistake. If we don't understand why there's 63 watermelons, maybe there's a reason there and there's something that, you know, we don't know. I think we are very acutely tuned into anything. It's that hypervigilance. Like, anything that feels like it might trip us up. And I think the lack of clarity, really, is about that sort of like, oh, I'm I'm gonna get tripped up here.

Hypervision is being very, very linked to having had a tough childhood, like, there's been bullying or difficulties, which for neurodivergent people is extremely common.

Yeah. The other thing also I would say is is we have an inbuilt need for things to be as efficient, as proficient, lack wasting least amount of time as we possibly can. And if this if the next step doesn't feel the perfect so going back to this perfectionism or the most efficient way, we'll stop until we think that we can we can take that and find the perfect system, find the perfect way. So very much, I try to change that narrative and and and reframe it to say we aim for it works most of the time or it's good enough.

So that you so this has to be perfect. The system has to be perfect. If I break it, that's it. It's broken now. I can't do it anymore. But actually what we do is try and work out spaces where where the where the approach or the it's good enough to get going, or it works most of the time. And then it work on accepting that there's gonna be times where we'll break whatever it is, and we'll have to go back and restart. So it's against I think that's also a real space is is where things aren't the most efficient, the most proficient way of doing something because we're wired to create those spaces where things are super efficient super proficient. And also, time blindness as well. Sorry.

That's I'd I'd put that as a little note to say time blindness, think, is absolutely possible. Pass over to you, Katherine, to to talk about time blindness. Yeah. I think the in the same way that we tend to think everything is on the same level, I think this is also the thing that when we are in overwhelm, we feel like the moment we're in is gonna be the moment we're gonna be in forever. It's like time stops. And I think that you also have sense of being stuck in that feeling. It's like when you're really so frustrated, really angry, you're like you almost feel like you have a sense of clarity that you've never had before. You feel like you're more yourself than ever before. And for some reason, you know everything.

But it it's very sort of stuck feeling and it's it's not your friend, this feeling. Because ultimately, emotions are are very wave like. Emotions actually have I think they've been able to measure how long an emotion lasts. And I think typically an emotion is around fifteen minutes. So if you sit for fifteen minutes, or fifteen, twenty minutes, an emotion will raise and it will fall again. Now I don't think that's something that is done from a neurodivergent side as well because I think when we are locked in a feeling, we can be very good at staying in it for a very long time. And this is the real negative on on hyper focus. Right? Like Yeah. Locked into negativity and not Exactly. So.

But it's often because we feel like once we're there, it feels real and it feels like the only thing that exists. And I think that's that's that state. I often I often think I often think I should have tattooed on my forehead. This too shall pass. The feeling of the high energy, the low energy, whatever it is, it will pass. It will be different because we tend to really sort of and that's that's for time blindness for me.

I was just laughing because, like, of all the things tattooing, which is something that won't pass. Right? It's true. The thing you choose to say this will pass, but it's something that will not pass and is entirely determined.

But going back to going back to ambiguity and how it can keep us stuck in overwhelm is so often people will just feel like the whole that the whole picture is is very confusing. There's there's a complete lack of clarity on everything, and the very act of making some decisions about how to move past this phase or this particular situation can feel insurmountable. Yet, there lies the solution because as soon as we make a decision, as soon as we are clear on what we want to achieve, we're on it. And we are feeling better when we're feeling invigorated and energized. But that journey from ambiguity or or this overwhelm, to that space where we're clear, we've got we've made a decision, and we're and we can we can own it again.

Is is this is so often the solution to the to coming out of those spaces of overwhelm. It's just sometimes that journey in between can feel like we're jumping over a cliff, or trying to jump over the biggest mountain or an impenetrable steel wall. And and again, that's one of one of the things I think that's so cruel is that the solution is the thing that we're actually frightened to make in those moments. And again, quite often that's because of of a lifetime of masking, not being sure what what we need. So having the tools when we're looking at those solutions, having tools.

That that enable people to go, right, well, no, this is what I believe in. This is this is what I need. This is what I'm feeling. So recognizing what your values are and if they're being compromised, so you can go, well, situations at work are quite often some of the things the most common patterns of overwhelm that I see is where where there's, an injustice happening at work and people are like, wow. I just don't think I should have to engage in that. And actually, when you recognize it's compromising your value, you can make a decision on that. They will actually know that's not okay for me. I'm I and these are my options. You can make a choice. If it's the things around sort of your needs as a human being, if you're struggling with.

Needing things to fit we have conflicting needs where we can have, a need for things to be reliable, consistent, and, predictable. But then we also have a very strong human need for things for especially being ADHD, for spontaneity, fun, and play. And sometimes we can flip flop where we're where we're feeling completely bored with life, so we we focus completely on, blowing everything up and focusing on, play and spontaneity and fun and those things that really fulfill us. And then we get completely overwhelmed, then we so we then focus and go into trying to make everything feel reliable, consistent, and predictable.

And then when we get there, we're like, my gosh. I'm bored of hell. So we then blow everything, and we can do these flip flops for years until we understand what we're doing. And in those moments, we're just trying to meet our own human needs. And so what we can do in those moments sorry. What we can do with that is go, right. I need both. So I need to find a space. I call it roots and wings. So we need roots. We need those things that are reliable, consistent, and predictable, but we also need our wings. We need that fun, that spontaneity. It's it's it's that's ADHD personified. It's it's the opportunity to be playful, to be spontaneous, to, embrace the chaos.

So we nurture both. So we work on nurturing both of those and identifying spaces in your life you need, things to feel calm, predictable, and spaces where you want things to be fun and spontaneous, and nurture them the same. And it's all about creating that balance, but it starts from understanding you and what you need. Other things is our sensory needs, and we don't I don't believe we talk about this enough within ADHD circles. I think it's very much recognized. I'm autistic also, I think it's very much recognised that autistic, minds have very high sensory needs, but I think it's an all neurodivergent minds thing. Experiences is recognising that we are, especially ADHD minds, massive sensory seekers.

So some of the solutions to managing our overwhelm is in our sensory seeking and our sensory avoiding. So being able to understand when we're completely overwhelmed and dysregulated, If you need to sense a receipt, what what do you need to do? And having a a things that you can pick from to be able to write. So mine is going dancing in the kitchen, to music that I love. Or it might be going and just resting physically because my physical batteries are drained. It's about having options to be able to say, right, I'm recognizing I'm overwhelmed, my nothing more can go in or I need some energy.

And then focusing and having options. Because in that moment when we're overwhelmed, we can't remember stuff either. So having a toolkit that you can go to go, right, let me get my hot water bottle out. Let's let's try this and see if giving myself of opportunity to sort of calm my central nervous system down with sensory inputs that that meet my needs, again, is a really helpful part of that road map to to looking after yourself. And the last thing I'll say is is recognizing the the role that emotions are playing as well. Because our emotions, due to masking or interception challenges that we have as neurodivergent people, can often have lost touch with, with our.

Interception, our internal, who our emotions, how we feel them. Especially when we're overloaded, can get flooded with emotions, and you just can't pick which one you're feeling because there's just so many of them. So having an ability to sort of take a take a take a pause, look at what's going on for you emotionally, and being able to understand what clues it's trying to give you as well is also an incredibly helpful part of of of mapping out what it is that you need in those moments to be able to either make decisions about well, remove the ambiguity about what's going on for you, and make decisions about what you need now in the short term in order to be able to calm down that central nervous system, to be able to.

Heal through that that overwhelm pathway that you're on, and get back to more solid foundations. Does that make sense?

Yeah. It was very very interesting. Katherine, do you like, what else like, do you have anything to add to the, like, things to think about as you try and deconstruct the overwhelm?

Things. And, I mean, I'm nodding seriously to everything that that Lex is saying. I think that's it's that that experience of I think we we tend to live so much in our heads. It's like we are, like, almost, like, hovering heads without a real body. There's almost, a feeling of dissociation sometimes when we are just bent on stuff. And that's why it's so important to sort of get yourself back in your body. But your point about interoception is that, you know, that's where so many of us find it really difficult to know when we're thirsty, when we need wee, when we are hungry, when we are in pain and ignoring all of these things because we tend to just really just live in our head so much. And so there's a real sort of important thing about.

Bringing yourself back to to your body, which is a really important thing. And I was thinking of that this thing around the part of the tools. Yes. The hot water bottle, etcetera. I think to me there's two things that ADHD people really are bad at doing, and, and they think they they're not allowed to do that. And one of them, if you're in a situation that doesn't feel right to you, if you're in a situation of overwhelm or conflict or whatever it is, you can leave. You don't have to stay. You can literally either if you can't live physically, you can remove yourself mentally. You don't have to present for everything that doesn't feel right to you.

And I think that's a really important tool. So many people swear, I get really overwhelmed by the situations that you're allowed to leave. And people if you leave and you said to people, I've got to leave now, they're not gonna think you're a terrible person. It's literally that's what you need right now. And the other one is, I think we have a real compulsion to find the perfect answer. So if someone says something to us, then, you know, that that sort of like back to that sort of conflict aspect and then, RSV rejection since this dysphoria is also such a big part of this. We we tend to react really strongly to certain things. That's a form of overwhelm as well. RSV is definitely part of the overwhelming.

And I think that we tend to think that whenever someone says something to us, like, they might say let's say someone says to me, you're really lazy. And the first thing I will just go is that, oh, I will just take it really to heart and just think that belongs to me. They're seeing me. They're talking to that core story. But actually, when someone says something like that, it says more about them being quite judgmental and not really understanding anything. And I think it says more about them than it does about the person that you are. But the other thing is that we always often feel like we have to respond and find the perfect comeback. And I think that can be a real, a difficult thing for us because, like.

In French, we've got this brilliant expression for it's called esprit descaliers, so the staircase spirit, which is once you've had an argument with someone, let's say, you're on your way home, you're climbing up the stairs with your baguette under your arm and you just go, that was the perfect comeback, but it's like it's two hours late. And so that's really, really frustrating. And I think there's there's two solutions to this one. One of them is, first of all, when someone says something to you, you do not have to necessarily respond. You don't have to sort of have the perfect answer. You can just say, I'm gonna have to let one this one sits. It's like, this is what you're saying. I'm just gonna think about it.

You don't have to have the perfect comeback. I think it's an important one. The other one is that you can do the reverse staircase spirit. It's that if you know you've got situation that's always gonna come back, you can sort of pre prepare things that you can say to people ahead of time. If you know you're gonna be triggered by certain situations that are gonna feel overwhelming or a little bit, sensitive, you can sort of chat with yourself. And I think we're very good at doing the self chatter anyway and just think, okay. If someone was to say something like you're lazy, I'm gonna have something prepared that I can respond to say, well, actually, you should have done what I you should have seen what I did yesterday.

Whatever it is, or you should see the state of my brain. But having these little things can be a way of sort of making us feel a little bit safer in our own body as well.

And I think just to add on as well, sorry, Henry. I'm gonna interrupt there. Is there's there's also some clues in the ways that we react. So when Katherine's talking about the if someone says to you, oh, you're lazy and and you take it and you you you sort of take it on board, They can often be glimmers of.

Unhealed things about or things that we don't understand about ourselves. Because if someone were to come and say, you've got blue hair. There's a great analogy where someone talks about having blue hair, and you you haven't got blue hair. You just own it. And you say, well, I don't have blue hair. You don't take it on board because you know that you don't have blue hair. But if you if there's something in you that still believes that, that's another space to be able to something else to to sort of work through and understand about yourself as well. We take these things.

And make them our own, but actually we can also take them and go, clearly that's telling me that there's something unhealed and I need I can I can explore that and look at look at what's going on there?

I I have the great privilege of working almost entirely with neurodivergent people. My world is essentially that. And then I'll find myself in quite a different arena where they're not, they don't have that understanding. It's it's quite jarring. But to your point earlier on, like, the judgment of others and ignoring it or recognizing that that's about them. For me, it's so jarring. It's it's become very obvious. Like, you don't know anything about this. This is, you know.

I recognize it's them. But it's but obviously, my world is very like, as I imagine yours is too, like, you know, we spend a lot of time with neurodivergent people and the acceptance that goes with it, that it's fine to talk over and jump in and that's not that big a deal, and and it's it's a nice comfort. We're we're starting to run out of Donna.

There's so much more to say. We need to overwhelm everyone here.

Yeah. That's just to overwhelm the audience. I'm I'm gonna have a crack at a wrap up. Do you want could you give some yeah. I think you guys have the final word. So I'm gonna let you, whilst I attempt to wrap up and say what has been gone. I've got an extraordinarily tidy detailed note of everything that's sprinted this one and this other one. Have a think about your final words, like, what you'd like to say to people as they think about overwhelm, what your sort of final thoughts are. So I when I listened, genuinely, thought this was fascinating. I thought breaking down the parts. And that core bit that we talked about at the start of simply having a system, recognizing.

Right, I'm overwhelmed. This is my system. And having it worked out so that you've got this, you know, this scaffolding of right, I'm overwhelmed, this is what I do. And not getting lost, which I thought was a brilliant point, of not getting lost in the like right, the clock's ticking down, I don't have time for this. The fact that you've got no choice, you've got to go, you've got to spend the time to unlock yourself or you're locked and it's gonna just get worse. And the frenemy that is adrenaline, just relying on that at some point to pick up the pieces, it's a terrible strategy. It is another strategy, but it's an awful one. And it's not reliable.

Certainly for the day to day, using adrenaline data is not good. You then talk about downloading the issues. So step one, have a system, this is the system. Recognizing that time's gonna be lost and you need to do it. Downloading the issues to start to sort of break them down. And in particular sort of saying, you know, what is it that I need to do right now? Not what's the what's the now stuff?

And just to use that to trance thinking to stop thinking everything's important, which I I certainly recognize an overwhelm I've had. They're like, what do I do now? That's important. That's important. That's important. And it's very easy for people to say, oh, just pick one and start, and then it'll all go great. That's ignoring the fact we hit hyperfocus, and now we blink. It's 3PM. We've done a lot of that, And not a lot of other things. And actually something I wanted to say to people listening is if that is something that's a big concern, that's where a timer can be quite useful, where you do say I'm gonna be doing this for an hour and the time is gonna go off. And for a lot of people putting a timer somewhere quite inconvenient.

Works pretty well because then they have to get out of their chair and it just helps them break out. But the nervousness of dropping a time to focus on control is there. We then talked about then once you've got like this is what I need to do right now, then looking at the components that are stopping you and the ones that we highlighted was any shame associated with it in terms of like going wrong or like, building to, something bad. If we got conflict, and that can be the justice that we think this is there's a much better way to do, a much better thing, or and unlocking that and going, this is what that is. And looking for ambiguity and getting rid of it. And, you know, the reason I'm not doing this is I'm not quite sure what.

I'm doing, exactly what I'm doing, what process and what part. And I think we talked about just just then, you know, one of the things that I went into the shame part was the judgment of others that are touching it. But that looking at the components, there shame judgment, is there conflict justice, is there ambiguity, lack of surety, and seeing like what are blocks of the view to going right, how can I unblock it? Like do I need to go talk to someone and go, I need clarity on this, what is it? Okay. Hopefully, was so incredibly engaging that you just like completely forgot or you actually ignored everything I said and wouldn't focus on. You've got the big screen, Lex, so what are your final thoughts?

The things I would add on, I'm just just some some hints and tips to add on to sort of follow on from what you were saying. Some of the things that we can do is we get into that should mode. I should do this. I should do that. It's it's well known term we shoulding all over ourselves. Whenever you find yourself saying should questions, turn it into a could. So I should be doing that, and and it's a that's a that's a shutdown opportunity to shut down. I should be doing this. I'm cross with myself. Try and change it to a what could I do because then that very much puts our brain back into, narrowing down ambiguity gaps.

The other thing is when we cross with ourselves and we're going through those what's wrong with me, why am I like this, and we're getting angry with ourselves, answer the question. What's wrong with me? You've got ADHD, you're having an executive function challenge right now, we have a plan, let's get it done. So sometimes answering those questions of those negative and being fact filled about it, again, takes us back to a place of safety instead of just that whirling.

Why am I like this? Why can't I get this right? Just saying, well, the reason is is because I've got ADHD, and I have a challenge with my executive functioning skills, and this is how I can move past it or these are my these are my options, these these these are this is my plan. The other thing that we we actually haven't talked about at all today, but I think it's worth dropping in right at the very end, I do apologize, is our is demand avoidance. Again, very much understood within the realms of, being autistic, but we also all AD all areas of other minds have a struggle with demand avoidance. So sometimes the way we talk to ourselves, like, you need to go and have a shower.

Don't wanna have a shower. I would normally swear, Henry, but I'm not swearing. So I don't wanna have a shower. Or you should be doing this. I don't want to do that now. So sometimes just changing the way that we talk to ourselves, one of my favorite sayings is what would my future self thank me for? And so I then do I need to I would like to have a shower. I will know that I will feel really invigorated after I've had a shower, and it just takes away that internal, I don't wanna do that. And it take and it then becomes about.

A a decision that you're making as opposed to you feeling that you're giving yourself a demand. Demand avoidance is not just other people telling us what to do. It's also how we talk to ourselves as well. So just to follow on from you, you're brilliant. Love of what we talked about. Those would be the things that I would also add on. They were your points. They're like, maybe the.

So the brilliance is all the I love that point about what will future self thank me for. It's a much better version of the one I have, which is future self is an unreliable so and so. Do not ask future self to do stuff. Very, very much can't be trusted. That is also when I said about It's not nice to me. I'm saying like, be nice to future self.

Isn't that much nicer? But that's also self And again, if you know that if you know that's if you know that about yourself, you can rely on the fact that you're not your future self isn't reliable, then again, motivates you, and it gives you that parameter to go, right. I just need to do it now because I know I'm not gonna do it in the future. I have this have a similar thought, Henry. My brain does the same.

I I do have some the the I'll be super quick, but I think there's something there's something really important to say is that overwhelm is the twin sister of a very agile brain. And I think for every trait that we have that feels like a struggle, there's also a strength associated with it. And I think this is what's going on here is that we are really capable and sometimes we are gonna get overwhelmed, and that's okay. So when we are overwhelmed, it's not that we are failing. It's that literally we are in overdrive. And so the main thing there is to recognize that, be kind to yourself, and knowing that your reasoning brain is not always going to be the one that's gonna be available.

But amazingly, your body. You can do things to ground yourself back in your body that will really help with that too. That's a whole different chapter that I wish we had another hour to explore.

This one this has been absolutely exceptional. It re really has. It's been so interesting, and I think your insights genuinely like, I've I've had my own little epiphany moment where it's really moved my thinking. I've absolutely adored it. You are very wise, kind of very thoughtful people and people you care for are lucky to have you. You're fantastic. We're out of time and got to go. Thank you so much. Thank you, Henry. Thank you, Katherine. It's you're awesome. I have to say goodbye to you now to do the Thank you so much. It was such a joy. Thank you. Absolutely.

Bye.

And that's the sign of this session, so I need to hand over to Lex. Thank you for joining.