Why Am I Like This?!
We are a therapist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner and we want to share a simplified view of these complex concepts that are often misunderstood, avoided, and even feared.
This is a podcast about being human, adapting to life, and learning from our unique experience.
We try to provide the answers to question: Why am I like this?
Why Am I Like This?!
Why Can't My Kids Focus?!
Struggling to understand why focus issues seem to control your life or the life of someone you love? Discover the underlying causes of attention struggles, from ADHD and anxiety to depression and OCD, as we dissect how these conditions overlap and mimic each other. By the end of this episode, you'll gain clarity on how stress and overwhelm can disguise themselves as focus issues, helping you pinpoint the real root of the problem.
Ever wonder how to create a calm, supportive environment for a child with ADHD? This episode unpacks the importance of emotional regulation, detailing how parenting approaches can either alleviate or exacerbate a child's impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. We also dive into the impact of technology on young minds, offering mindful screen time management strategies to foster healthy brain development and sustained attention spans.
Learn practical techniques for fostering internal motivation and effective task management in children. From breaking tasks into manageable parts to maintaining consistent expectations and consequences, we provide actionable tips to help your child develop organizational skills and autonomy. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or someone keen to understand mental health and productivity better, this episode promises valuable insights and strategies you won't want to miss. Don't forget to rate, review, and share this episode with anyone who could benefit from these enlightening discussions.
Laura's Free Course on Emotional Development and Regulation:
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This show is sponsored by:
Benavieri Counseling & Coaching
www.benavieri.com
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Hello and welcome to. Why Am I Like this? The podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child? I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.
Michaela:Hi and I'm M Beaver. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner. So, mashaela, why?
Laura :are we doing this podcast?
Michaela:I am so glad you asked. We want to help you understand yourself a bit better how the things you learned about yourself and the world in childhood are still affecting you today. We want to figure out why are we like this those random things about ourselves that we might wonder about. Why am I so jumpy? Why am I so anxious? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I feel like I have to fix everything all the time?
Laura :Yes, and today we are talking about attention and focus and ADHD and all of those things. So we are going to try to answer the following questions what can cause focus issues, how does technology affect our attention and what can we do to reduce the impact of this poor focus on our lives? So let's get into it. Let's start with what causes focus issues.
Michaela:Yeah, so thinking about focus, right. So first we think about ADHD. Right, that's the most common thing that we might think about when somebody is like I can't focus, it must be ADHD. So ADHD is a really common cause. It starts in childhood usually and it's predominantly categorized by difficulties with inattention, difficulty with hyperactivity and difficulty with impulsivity. So that's probably one of the really big common causes. But I think about other things that can mimic ADHD, and so anxiety and depression are big things that can impact our ability to focus. And so you know, if we're thinking about a million things we talked about anxiety last week if our brain is racing and we're just having all these worry thoughts, we're going to try to sit down and do a project or do our work and we're going to be drifting back off to those worry thoughts all the time, and that can feel like focus in attention issues, and it is, but it's not because of ADHD. It's caused by this distraction in our brain.
Laura :Yeah, one of the symptoms of depression is inattention, is the inability to focus.
Laura :Another thing that comes up is OCD the inability to calm your thoughts down and you're constantly obsessing or have compulsions to do things before you can do other things. So those things can be distracting. Another thing is anxiety. Overthinking is a big thing that I hear from clients about not being able to focus, like I'm overthinking about everything and that's almost like hyper-focus right. So I think we can almost get confused. Where we're hyper-focused on something, which is also a symptom of ADHD, is sometimes that absorption right, where you can get hyper-focused on stuff. So, as we're talking about this, I am reminded of the analogy that the DSM, which is our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases and Disorders, that we use to diagnose. Analogy that the DSM, which is our diagnostic and statistical manual of mental diseases and disorders, that we use to diagnose and categorize and classify mental illness.
Laura :It's like a menu. It's like a menu at an Italian restaurant, right, like there's seven ingredients but they're all just mixed up in different ways to get different dishes. Like, is baked ziti, really that different from lasagna? Like not really. If you actually look into it, like if I make those two dishes, I'm using a lot of the same ingredients.
Laura :I'm just mixing them up in a different way, and so, with these different diagnoses that come with the lack of focus and that come with that focus is a part of it's not always ADHD. A lot of the time, the inattention of it is the inattention or the fragmented attention or the inability to focus on one thing at a time. That's a symptom of something, and it's just one of those things where that's a symptom of something. And it's just one of those things where I feel like at some point we can all say, oh, I think I have this, like I must have ADHD. Like how many people say this oh, I'm so ADHD today, or like I'm so whatever, I'm all over the place, right, and so that's actually can be a feature of just stress and overwhelm.
Michaela:For sure. The other thing that I like I really think that one of the things that overlaps the most is actually ADHD and bipolar disorder. Say more about that. So there's so many people that come in and either have been told they have bipolar disorder or ADHD and it might. When we're doing the evaluation, it comes out that, you know, maybe it really wasn't what they thought it was. Um, so you know, I think that like people come in and they're like oh my gosh, um, my emotions slip like this and just at the snap of a finger, and like I'm just all over the place, I must be bipolar. And I'm like, okay, well, it could be bipolar, but let's, let's break it down.
Michaela:And a lot of the times, like we come out and we're like you know, there's a lot of misnomers about, you know, mood disorders and mental health and there's a lot of like stigma tied to things, and so, like you know, but just because your emotions, you know, flip, you know, really quickly, doesn't mean that you have bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is really actually categorized by this elevated or euphoric mood tied with high energy, and it lasts for days. Right, you're seeing cycles and patterns. It's not something that flips at the drop of a hat. That's usually, in my experience, other things, but ADHD is one of those things that you can have those really impulsive mood switches like where you're all of a sudden you know things are great and then something triggers you to be irritable all of a sudden, and so you know that impulsive irritability can be a really big feature of ADHD, and so there's a lot of confusion between the two.
Laura :And just a lack of regulation in general, like a lack of the ability to slow down and calm down and bring yourself back to the present. I see a lot of focus issues in clients who have dissociative processes. So our brain is inherently dissociative. We're all dissociative. Everybody's brains dissociate because it's a coping skill. It's the reason why you can drive home and then forget how you got there and I don't mean like when you're driving under the influence or something. I mean a regular, healthy person who is driving and gets home from work. And then it's like, oh my gosh, like I totally don't remember that whole entire drive because I was so distracted by thinking about other things. Like that's a dissociative response. They're in that hypnotic state yes, that's a good way to put it, that hypnotic state.
Laura :And then also dissociation comes up when we are in a great deal of pain and we're trying to. Let's say, I have a super bad headache and I'm trying to close my eyes and think about something else in order to distract from my headache. That's a dissociative process that I'm using Anytime I'm doing guided imagery or meditation. That can be dissociative process that I'm using Anytime I'm doing guided imagery or meditation. That can be dissociative in that hypnotic way where, let's say, I'm using my calm place, guided imagery in my head and I'm saying, oh, I'm going to escape to this other world and just feel the feelings of this other world.
Laura :I'm dissociating, but I'm doing it on purpose, it's not compulsory and it's not outside of my control. So there's a difference between, just like there's a difference between, you know, like, a happy mood and euphoria, and there's a difference between being sad and having depression. Just because we do these things doesn't mean that we have, um, you know, symptoms of, or it doesn't mean that we can really classify ourselves as having this disorder. But anytime our brain is using dissociative processes to kind of get through the day or get through our life, we're going to have a little bit of a difficulty paying attention to the present, because inherently, that's the point of dissociation is to not stay in the present, is to not, you know, notice what's going on around me, to not focus my attention on this thing. It's focusing my attention on something that is a little bit easier.
Michaela:or mindless or whatever. Right, that makes a lot of sense. So I so like that makes me think of, like how do you, how do you diagnose what's going on? Well, you go see a professional who can help you tease this out, to see what's really kind of going on. And we use the DSM criteria to inform decision making and, honestly, most of the time people have more than one thing going on at one time.
Michaela:Like it's very rare that I have a single disorder, single, you know, problem, and so you know it might be anxiety and ADHD, it might be bipolar and ADHD, and so that kind of is hard to tease out on your own.
Michaela:And so talking to a professional about those things, so that we can get a good diagnosis and evaluation to decide how to best treat you, because you know if it's ADHD, it's, you know, one kind of treatment and if it's bipolar disorder or depression or anxiety, it's a totally different treatment plan. And so you know, having that good diagnosis and evaluation is really important. And so usually it's done in a systematic way to kind of look at all of the things that are going on, to kind of kind of have a better understanding of exactly what things, what puzzle pieces fit together. Another thing that I use is technology to can help with diagnosing ADHD looking at, you know, attention, focus, spatial planning, reaction times, the number of errors that you make, how many times you, you know, click when you're not supposed to or not click when you're supposed to, and so kind of like looking at all of those things. It that doesn't that that test doesn't actually make the diagnosis, but it adds information to you, information to kind of help us put those puzzle pieces together.
Laura :Well, and that's another thing that we can use when we use technology to diagnose or to add information. I like what you said it's not the diagnostic tool itself, but it's to add information to help us make that determination. When I use neurofeedback, I am able to kind of take an assessment, like a snapshot of your brain ahead of time to determine, okay, what's your brain doing when it's just asked to do nothing? That's the whole assessment is hey, do nothing and sit there and let your brain do what it normally does, and I'm just going to check out what's. I'm going to take a picture. Basically, I'm going to say, okay, what does your brain do when it's doing nothing?
Laura :And what we see with ADHD brains is often a lot of ironically slow wave activity in the prefrontal cortex and in the frontal cortex, and the reason why that's important is because what's happening is the middle and the back of our brain is sending messages to the front. So it's sending the messages don't start in the front, they end in the front, and once they get to this slow activity, it's like, you know, throwing something into, like jelly, where it just slows. So it's like all the ideas are going in, they're going in, they're going in, but then this like slow jelly sort of just absorbs them. And then they're like oh, like I'm. And then the middle and the back of your brain is still sending all these signals and it's working really fast and these impulsive emotions and things are coming up from the back of your brain and from the middle of your brain and they're saying hey, this is an idea, hey, this is an idea. And then the front is just catching them and slowing them all down, oh my gosh.
Michaela:That reminds me like when I see kids that have ADHD and like you can tell that they have this thought and it's like their brain is going so fast but their mouth cannot figure out like it's gone before they can put it. Say it.
Laura :That's exactly right. It's like. It's like start, start, start, start, start. But they don't like ever finish a thought or finish an idea or finish a complete sentence, like it can't. It doesn't get to make its full circle in the brain, right, it doesn't get to go through the prefrontal cortex and complete its journey into, like, a fully formulated idea or task or action. Because the prefrontal cortex, that's where all the work gets done, that's your executive functioning, that's like your um, that's your breaks, right, that's the stuff that says like okay, yes, execute this idea or don't execute this idea, um, and it's fullest function. And we don't see that happening with an ADHD brain. We see the opposite happening, where the stuff is just kind of floating around in there and it just does what it does.
Michaela:Right, so that we also see that like that can cause if we don't have good working breaks, it can cause a lot of emotional dysregulation because we're so impulsive with our emotions we don't we're having a thought and we don't have the time to just, you know, stop ourselves from throwing that remote control because we're so mad at our video game or that toy or those Legos won't get put together. Or you know, our computer, as an adult, like we can't get our computer to do this technology thing that we it's supposed to do and it's just not working right and it makes us so mad we want to take the computer and just throw it Right, and so it can create a lot of impulsive emotional responses. We might yell at people, we might get, you know, into fights because of these big feelings that we have that we don't have those breaks to stop.
Laura :Yeah, and that can then lead to chronic stress, right? So with our childhood experiences, we need to have some level of stability, some level of attunement and some level of calm, and when we have ADHD, our brain is really chaotic and is really causing us to behave in a chaotic way, and then that can sort of influence our environment to be less stable. When I think about kids who have ADHD, I think about their perception, the people's perception of them, and then the messages that they get back in return, and that makes me feel really sad sometimes because we're blaming this kid for their behavior when they really don't have control over their behavior. We need to be able to execute this attunement, to be able to say okay, I see that this is chaos right now and we're going to slow down and we're going to do that on purpose, instead of the blame and shame that often accompanies a kid with ADHD.
Michaela:A hundred percent. I mean, I just think it's so funny. So our kid does something that is wrong, it makes us angry, and then we're allowed to yell at them, but they can't yell and have feelings back at us. That would be ridiculous, right. Yell at them, but they can't yell and have feelings back at us. That would be ridiculous, right. Like we, we have to create we, we have to purposefully create stability with our own emotional responses to things and we have to be cautious about how we're talking to these kids, because I think that one of the biggest things that I see is that kids that grow up in households where there's a lot of negative reinforcement, it creates a lot of poor self-esteem issues in these kids. So you're saying constantly stop that, don't touch that. Why are you doing that? Oh, my gosh, you can't listen, why won't you just listen to me? And you just get all this negative feedback. These kids just get all this negative feedback and that it can't be good for their self-esteem. Right, and it's hard for us as parents.
Michaela:I, I, I my kid was helping, wanted to help me clean and he accidentally broke the towel holder and I was just like instantly irritated because I'm like why would you pull on the thing? And I wanted to get angry. I wanted to be like, I wanted to yell, but I was like why would you pull on the thing? And I wanted to get angry. I wanted to be like, I wanted to yell, but I was like, no, he's sitting there going. Oh mom, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Michaela:And I'm like, yes, it's okay, you know, and I'm having to rein myself back in. It's just a towel holder who cares, really. But in the moment, you're like I'm trying to do 100 things, you're not helping, you're making it harder for me to do this, and so this is really hard. This is a skill that you have to practice and you're going to mess up a million times, but we have to be able to help these kids. We don't call them names, you know, even though we want to, even though we want to, because they're, they seem lazy, right and unproductive, and you're like just get, just, it's not that hard, just do the thing, just take a shower, you know, and so it's really challenging.
Laura :It is really challenging and I think we can do a better job at being patient with ourselves too, in those reactions right and slow down. Just because my immediate reaction and my instinct or the reaction that is triggered by the break of the towel holder doesn't mean I have to go with that and I'm not in a hurry, I don't have to respond immediately. No one's going to die, even if something's spilling or even if something's breaking. Like I need to make sure that my priority is to educate and to connect with and to make I'm raising a person. I'm, I'm, I'm nurturing this person's mind.
Laura :This person's mind is dependent on my reaction right now, whether or not it's going to be positive or negative, whether it's going to perpetuate this future dysregulation and disruption, or if it's going to be positive or negative, whether it's going to perpetuate this future dysregulation and disruption, or if it's going to potentially act as a bridge to continually building those skills in their prefrontal cortex of personal accountability and also self-forgiveness. Right, those are very, very important things. Your kid already knows that they did something wrong, right? Like you say, the kid's upset. They're like I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know I messed up. I know I messed up Me, like yelling at them and blaming them and shaming them isn't actually going to help them. No.
Michaela:But I think that there are some kids like, if it would have been my other kid, it could have been a totally different reaction. It wouldn't have been a totally different reaction. It wouldn't have been, I'm sorry. My guess is it would have been like anger. Right, it could have been a different response, because they're they're trying to protect themselves, because they already are beating themselves up on the inside. They might feel like they're already bad and so they're like and so then they have to do that defense against attachment type thing.
Laura :So now I'm going to be angry. So that cause I know you're about to get angry, so I'm angry already and I've learned that response from you is going to be negative. So I'm already so like the anger that I'm displaying is really anger with myself for being so stupid that I broke this thing and I you know cause I know that that's going to be the response from the adult. So a lot of time, negative self-talk in children it's really mirrored from the negative self, negative child talk that they've heard from their adults that have been taking care of them, and chronic stress. You know we're talking specifically about kids who already have ADHD and who are dealing with this stuff. But let's say, a kid is just dysregulated and struggling and is like emotionally having these big feelings and is really difficult to get to calm down. You know, if their environment is chaotic and if a child's environment is unsafe, if a child's environment is terrifying, if a child's environment is unstable, they're going to develop similar symptoms they're going to have because what's happening is that their brain isn't getting the safety that it needs in order to develop properly and the prefrontal cortex is the very last thing to develop and it's not going to do that very well in an environment where it's chronically stressed and toxic instability. Because, again, those messages from the back of my brain only need to go so far in order to survive. They're all survival instincts. Those are happening from the core and the only thing I need to do is I need to act, and I need to act now, and that's what my brain is learning is the priority. It's not saying, hey, slow down in your prefrontal cortex is the priority. It's not saying, hey, slow down in your prefrontal cortex, use the brakes. It's not saying that because survival requires gas, right, and then, every now and then, survival will require, like, a freeze mechanism and a shutdown mechanism, but that's not activating your prefrontal cortex. That's activating something totally different. That is a distress response. And so you know, we need to make sure that we're thinking of our children.
Laura :I heard this analogy recently where, as parents, we need to be gardeners instead of carpenters. But carpenters are focused on perfection and outcomes. And you have this blueprint and you're following. If I follow every single instruction exactly the way that it's supposed to be, then I'm going to have this perfect outcome, right, which is probably true when you're doing like woodworking. Right, you're building a table.
Laura :But the difference is, when you're gardening, you're saying, ok, what is, what nutrients does this plant need in order to thrive? What kind of sunlight, what kind of environment does this plant need? And then I'm going to plant the seed and I can't do anything after that. All I can do is I can watch it, I can sing to it, I can give it, you know, a nice spritzing of of cool water, and I can, you know, give it a humid environment. I can, I can influence this, this's environment, in order for the seed to then thrive. And then I'm going to be wonderfully surprised and thrilled with the results. Right, because I'm a gardener, whereas a carpenter is really focused on following these perfect instructions to get a perfect outcome. We need to be thinking about it from the other direction.
Michaela:But sometimes the sun is really hot and it makes me wilt a little bit, right, and so it doesn't always look perfect until maybe the end, right, there's going to be good days and bad days, and that, and I think that you know, I love that analogy. That's really, that's really good. I think that's good. I'm going to use that.
Laura :Yeah, well, I stole it from whoever I stole it from. So you know, I think when we think about a child's mind, they're blank slates. They have nothing until we give it to them and, depending on the environment that we create for needs, an environment that's going to support their particular learning and their particular growth in order to build the skills and tools that they need in order to have their attention be able to you know, they can exercise that. That's a muscle, that's a skill that they're going to have to learn throughout their whole life. You know, we can talk later a little bit about treatment options and different ways that we can sort of help them. But you know we can talk later a little bit about treatment options and different ways that we can sort of help them.
Laura :But you know, one thing that I see causing a lot of harm is technology. Yeah, you know, when we're using our screens, all the time we are practicing inattention, so we are constantly being pulled into all of these different places with different alerts from different apps. I think when we talked about anxiety, I spoke about this as well, where you can have over 100 alerts on a phone in one day and so every single time you get that alert, you're being sort of this cycle of inattention is starting because you're like, oh, what was that? So I'm not fully present with you because I just got this alert right and so I love turning off all alerts. I highly recommend Just don't turn on alerts. Check your phone at designated times, you'll be fine, right, like you don't need to have every single app be able to tell you a push notification.
Laura :Like, push notifications are stealing your attention constantly. That's their job. That's the reason why they exist is to make whatever company runs the app, make them money by getting your attention. So there there's this term attention economy. Like attention is your, is the commodity that these, that this technology is really trying to steal, and it's doing a great job. And so we have to intentionally counteract that by teaching our families, by teaching our kids, that that's not the highest priority and that they can wait until they have a fully developed or let's not say fully, because then we'd all be waiting until we're like 30, but a more sad, like a more stably developed prefrontal cortex, before we give them access to all of that stuff, to giving them access to the full, the full range of apps that can start stealing their attention Right, we want to wait until they're a lot older.
Michaela:Well, I think about, like I think we've talked about this on one of the other podcasts Well, like, I think of all of the shorts and all of the things that, like you know, um, if you go on Disney and they have like the Spider-Man and they're short videos and they're literally like so short and I'm like how is that already over, right? Um, but there's, you know, tiktok shorts and YouTube shorts and and all of these things are geared to drag people in and then keep them there because it's constantly changing. You're like what's coming next, what's going to be next? Right, and it's and it's altering.
Michaela:In a kid, I think, you know, there's probably some pruning of their brain that's going on there.
Michaela:So, like, when we don't use something, we lose it.
Michaela:And, especially in our childhood, our brain is getting rid of things that it doesn't need, right to help prepare us for adulthood.
Michaela:And, and in that, if we are never sustaining attention on things, if we're always seeking to be watching something, that you know be engaging in something and being entertained constantly, that's altering whatever's going on in the brain. That's altering our dopamine response in our brain as well, because we're getting these really high hits of dopamine and I don't I don't want to say it's always addiction, right, because people can utilize different things and not get addicted per se, but it is potentially altering our dopamine response and you know, you've talked about before, teens have lower dopamine response at baseline, and so you know we're, we're making things worse by constantly having some kind of thing that's driving that dopamine up and then low, and then up and then low. And I think that, like video games are so fun for them, right, they're so fun, and so like taking a shower or doing laundry or the dishes or coming, even coming to eat food is much less desirable for them and that's going to make it harder to engage in things and have enjoyment.
Laura :It's true, and when you talked about the video games, it reminds me of just being engrossed in this world where you don't actually have to get up and exert any energy or work for anything. You're just engrossed in a world where the rewards are just coming at you with very little effort. The pleasure is constantly there, you have no sacrifice, you have instant gratification, and that really increases your receptivity to the impulsivity. So it's perpetuating this cycle of addiction and impulse control issues because there is no practice. Like you said, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you're not practicing calm waiting, if you never have to wait for anything, you're not going to have that skill. If you never have to work for anything, you're not going to use that skill.
Laura :If you are just getting fed these rewards and you don't actually have to put in any effort or work. I mean, I understand that playing the game in and of itself is the effort, but that's not the same kind of work that we're talking about here. We're not talking about the gratification of a clean kitchen after scrubbing down the counters or cleaning a sink full of dirty dishes and putting them all away, and you have this nice, clean kitchen, cleaning a sink full of dirty dishes and putting them all away and you have this nice, clean kitchen. That isn't being learned in that pivotal time of childhood. When the time is being spent on so many video games and on so many screens and outside of the real world, we're not embodying the effort that it takes and the gratification and the response to having succeeded at a hard task.
Michaela:We have to do hard things in order to learn how to tolerate difficult experiences, and so we really need to be mindful of the amount of time our kids that you know, even just in ADHD, I think that you know these kids aren't able to focus and pay attention to things, and so it's a really big challenge. They haven't learned, so they're not learning the skills of how do I study, they're just skating by right. And so when I start working with adults that never got diagnosed as a kid, I tell them a lot. I'm like this medicine that we're going to try is going to help you. It's going to be the thing that helps you sustain attention on that task.
Michaela:It's going to help you overcome the motivational issues that will to accomplish it right, because you're like you might be like I really need to do that, and you're like, nah, later. Right, because it just doesn't sound. I don't have enough dopamine to get myself to do it right. So the medicine is going to overcome those things, but it's not going to make you have a clean house. It's not going to help you learn how to be organized, and so you have to learn the things that you didn't learn as a kid because you weren't capable of learning them then you weren't, you know, pushed and encouraged to learn those skills. Then you have to do it now, because the medicine's not going to do that for you. It's going to help you sustain what you choose to do longer, but it's not going to make you, all of a sudden, an organized person.
Laura :It's not going to give you skills that you didn't learn in childhood. So, going back to the gardener, we need to be good gardeners and teach these skills and do hard things and say to our kids, like I love that you're having so much fun on this game and our time is up for today. It's so exciting that you get to play again tomorrow. I love that and it's really really hard. As somebody who my kids dabbled in like literal professional gaming Okay, I get how difficult it is. Trying them away from the computer was not an easy thing to do, but we do have to make those sacrifices and teach the kids that their sacrifice is worth their time and and start giving their brain the realization that dopamine can come from other places too. Oh, man.
Michaela:But the hardest thing for our ADHD all kids, but especially ADHD kids, is getting off video games and switching tasks and it can create such big angry feelings. But you know, I think that it like I I think that made me think of it from like what you were saying. It's like, hey, it's okay to be frustrated, it's going to be angry about this. I get this. You seem angry. Let's go bake some cookies, right. Let's go do something different. Let's go, you know, hang. Let's go do something different. Let's go, you know, hang out. Just because you can't play video games anymore Doesn't mean that you're, the world is over, right. Let's go do find something else to do. Let them have their feelings. Sit there with them, help them through it. It's not the end of the world for you as the parent either when they're having those big feelings. You just need to support them with those feelings. And it's hard and it's ugly sometimes, right, like I hate you. You're the worst, right, and we feel bad when our kids talk to us like that.
Laura :Yeah, it's the most heartbreaking thing when our kids lose control and they do say those things and it really hurts and then we use to. We need to be able to talk to our adult support system and be able to get our feelings out about that. But when a kid is having a meltdown, you know, I use I say oof all the time. I'm like oof, this looks hard, this looks like you're having a really hard time. I'm with you. You must be really upset to have said that when I know that you don't mean it. Or you must be really upset to have said that when you know that it's a hurtful thing to say right, because you're a kind person and that's that's outside of character for you. That must you must be feeling really, really like this is too much right now, right.
Michaela:I know it feels that way right now. You know it's okay, I still love you.
Laura :Yeah yeah, validating statements is not the same thing as agreeing with them, right. And when we are able to attune to and connect with our kid when they're having a meltdown, the meltdown will go by much, much faster. And I don't know. Go outside, do something in. I know it's 1 million degrees here in Arizona right now, but you can go outside. Go outside, take a walk in nature, listen to birds, listen to the water in like a river or you know a waterfall, or have some kind of have some kind of connection moment that you can just shift the attention to something. That's using your senses, your sounds, your smells, your sights. You're doing something different with different textures. Maybe you're touching something because we want to activate the body, to sort of slow down the mind and sort of get out of this like internalized situation of I'm miserable, I can't deal with this because I have to switch tasks. We want to get out of that internal stuff and get into the external stuff. So taking a walk outside can be really helpful.
Michaela:And so they might need to do this thing before they can go on to the next task that you really want them to do. This thing, before they can go on to the next task that you really want them to do, you know they might need something in between the task switching to help them calm down, one of the interesting things that I've been trying with my kids. So, you know, all of us that have kids can empathize with, like the fighting in the background, right, like you're driving in the car and they're they want to hit, they want to yell at each other, they're angry, right. And it's been so interesting to see even just one kid that's dysregulated in the background. Like I'm like, okay, can you point out all the things that are green right now, find all the things that are green. Oh, good about blue. What's blue, what is blue? And no joke, if at least one of the kids can get engaged, like they will just start saying things and then boom, done, they're not fighting anymore.
Laura :it's like yeah, and you didn't even have to address the fighting, right? Oh, not at all, it's wild. So that's a grounding skill. Yes, you're using grounding skills because the fight isn't the problem, the dysregulation is the problem, and so when we recognize that the the content is not the problem, the process is what we need to address. We need to address the process of a dysregulated nervous system and a dysregulated mind, and we can do that by focusing on something that is easy, that is accessible, that is sensory, that is something completely different than what was going on before. So we're not talking about the fight, we're not logicking, we're not lecturing because PS, that doesn't help, right.
Laura :A dysregulated kid and then trying to have a conversation and make them say sorry, it doesn't really go that well, it really doesn't, and all we're teaching them in that moment is to be quiet or lie appease. We're saying please and appease Right. We're saying stop with your emotional response. You need to please and appease this other person Right, which I don't love that.
Michaela:And your feelings don that matter and your feelings don't matter. Yeah, which is not our intention, right? We just want it to be over with, because we can't handle them yelling and screaming at each other anymore for the 18th million time today. That's right.
Laura :We are all good intentions no, I say this all the time but parents aren't just jerks. We're doing the best we can. We have good intentions. We're not making these mistakes because we just don't care about our kids and we're complete jerks. That's not what's happening at all. We do care about their feelings, we do care about their happiness and we do care about their wellbeing, and that's why we're so intent on helping them achieve wellness and helping them achieve happiness and helping them achieve a wellbeing. But we don't necessarily realize that our words and our actions are sometimes counterintuitive towards our goals.
Michaela:Yeah, I mean, kids are smarter than what I would have ever given them credit for, like, as a like, you know, non-parent, right? I didn't understand the value of the words that we use and the way that we say things, and you know how it can make a huge difference. You know, even just the fact that kids need choices was something that really, really I didn't ever think about before, right? So kids want autonomy. Even my seven or my four-year, almost four-year-old, thinks that they're grown. They think they know everything already. They're not even teenagers yet and they think that they know what's best for them. And so we need to be giving them choices so that kids have choices, so that they can have that autonomy, to be able to feel like they have some control over their lives. And that's really really important in ADHD kids, because they specifically will ignite that counter will and from Gerber Mate, and so that counter will is something that I have learned a lot about having my own children.
Michaela:They, even if they want to do the thing that you want them to do, if they don't feel like they have choice, they are going to fight you on it more likely, and it's going to be a big deal. And so if you just offer them, would you like to get in the bath now or in five minutes? I'd like to do five minutes. Can you set a timer? Sure thing, I will set a timer for five minutes and they won't argue with the timer. Most of the time, most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time.
Laura :And it's so. I love that. You said kids' choices, by the way, because the question wasn't would you like to get in the bath? Right. Would you like to get in the bath now or in five minutes? Right, because that's the choice. The choice is not whether or not they do the thing, so you know. Going back to technology, would you know, are you ready to get to stop playing your video game? That's not the question, right?
Laura :We're going to ask them different questions. We're going to say would you like to stop now and help? You know, right before you know, or would you like me to get you five minutes before dinner? Maybe it's only six minutes before dinner, who knows, but we're going to get them up. You know what I mean. Like, we're going to give them those choices that make sense and that are actual kids choices that they, they can answer and we can grant them the authority to make that choice and we can respect that choice. So we don't want to give them false choices. We don't want to give them choices that we're not ready to uphold. For example, bedtime Never ask a kid if they're ready for bed, unless you're literally curious for bed. Unless you're literally curious, because unless you're asking out of curiosity. It's not a valid question.
Michaela:I'm sure that there are kids out there that do say, yeah, I'm ready for bed Not mine, but I'm sure that they exist out there somewhere.
Laura :I'm sure they do. I have met very few of them. I don't know any kids who will say, yes, I'm ready for that. But it's really important that we are recognizing that motivation right. The laziness we talked about, the lack of motivation that we see in kids with ADHD and a lot of kids and teens and humans. Motivation comes from internal motivation, at least, comes from purpose, autonomy and mastery. You have to have those three elements in order to achieve internal motivation. So external motivation might be like rewards or prizes or something like that. That's what you're getting from the video game, that's what you're getting from the computer, that's what you're getting from the phone. Is this external motivation? And so we want our kids to be motivated internally. And in order to have internal motivation, we have to have purpose, autonomy and mastery. So how do you teach?
Michaela:your kids. How do you help your kids learn how to develop those skills? Because that sounds really important. Because that sounds really important.
Laura :I mean you start with purpose, which is consistent expectations. Purpose is I know what I can do in order to achieve success. I know what I can do in order to not achieve success, and so I have to be really, really consistent. And so when we talk about consistency, I mean down to the letter. If you say, if you do that again, I'm not going to let you continue to play with that toy, and then they do it again and you still let them play, you've gone off the rails.
Laura :Now this is very difficult. Let me just classify this. But one thing that I've said to parents and kids in this moment is you deserve for me to mean what I say, and say what I mean and be a person of my word. And so I told you that if you do that again, I have to take that toy away. I'm bummed about it too, but if I didn't, what kind of message would I be sending to you? That's not even fair to you for me to not take this toy Now. I told you that would be what would happen. So that means I gave you the opportunity to be successful.
Laura :Now, if I don't uphold my end, which is taking away the thing, then you're never going to know how to be successful, which would have been to listen the first time. So we're learning an important lesson here, right? So if I don't take the toy now, I'm saying, I'm saying you may or may not win in this situation. It's a gamble which leads to that behavioral addiction kind of process, right, it's like if you don't know whether or not the response is going to be good, but there's a chance that it goes fine, I'm going to take that chance almost every single time, right? And so it's like why I hit the slot machine button again after 17 times of losing? Right, I hit it again because there's a chance that it goes well for me. And so we need to not be the slot machine. We need to be consistent every single time. We say what we're going to do and we do what we say.
Michaela:Which is why it's important to pick your battles with these kids.
Laura :And be careful what you threaten these kids and be careful.
Michaela:be careful what you threaten, right? Yeah, well, that makes me think too about like video games and having that conversation about boundaries around, or like being consistent around them and like the punishment fitting the crime kind of situation. Like you know, um, making sure that you're like, oh, you went over five minutes on your video games again. You know that that means that you're like, oh, you went over five minutes on your video games again. You know that that means that you're going to get five minutes less tomorrow because you already spent the day right. Like that's a natural consequence type of situation that you, you pre-discuss with them, you know beforehand, absolutely, so they know how they can be successful.
Laura :That's their purpose. They know exactly what they can do. Now the autonomy is that they're given the opportunity to succeed or fail, and we have to be the accountability here. If we're not the accountability, then we've taken away their autonomy to succeed or fail, so we need to be able to let them do the thing without reminding them 17 times.
Laura :Oh, you went over five minutes, okay, well, we're starting five minutes. Okay, well, we're starting five minutes later tomorrow, right, if you get video game time between five and 6 PM, well, now you're starting at five. Oh, five, yep, right, and you end sharply at six. So you're taking the time off the beginning, by the way, not the end. Um, yeah, so just saying I didn't think about that. So that's good. Good, when we are shaving time, we shave it off the beginning, not the end, but anyway, when we're so, we have that autonomy of like. Okay, you are in charge of getting off of your video game, and then I'm going to come and check on you after five minutes just to make sure that you did what you were supposed to do, right, and if they didn't do the thing, well then we're going to shave that time Now.
Laura :If they consistently cannot do the thing, maybe they're not ready for the autonomy and we need to go back a step to purpose and we need to say remember, let's do the reminder, let's do the timer, let's do all the things in order to support you in being successful. Right, so that's your purpose, your autonomy, and then your mastery is hey, great job, you did the thing, you set your timer, you used your timer, you got off the game and you did it perfectly, and so that means you're going to have all your time tomorrow, and everybody's so excited about that. I love that. You can play for the full hour tomorrow. I'm so happy for you, because that's all I've ever wanted for you is you to achieve your goals. I'm so happy for you because that's all I've ever wanted for you is you to achieve your goals, right, right so it's a different way of looking at things.
Michaela:I like that. So what else can we do to help with? You know, people with focus issues? Let's say, maybe it's.
Laura :ADHD? Maybe it's not ADHD. Dr Dan Siegel says time in. So time in is a mindfulness practice that basically gives you an opportunity to practice focusing your attention on whatever it is you're doing. He calls it time in. So you're in your focus, you're in your mind.
Laura :So, like, let's say, I'm focusing on this microphone that I'm looking at right now. So I'm just noticing it, I'm noticing the pattern on it, I'm noticing the color, I'm noticing the shape, I'm noticing the you know, the smoothness of it, the everything about it. So I'm like really focusing my attention on this. Um, that's an external thing that I can take time into. Like, maybe think about my thoughts about this microphone. Like, maybe I am having questions about it, maybe I'm, but I'm staying on this topic of the microphone.
Laura :Um, he uses a great example in one of his books uh, when you're doing the dishes, like, oh, I'm doing this dish, I'm noticing the soap is blue. I'm noticing the water is warm, I'm noticing the way it feels on my hands, right. So you're taking time in, you're really noticing what's going on in that moment and really it's I don't know a minute two minutes depends on how many dishes you have but you're spending a couple of minutes just noticing what's going on, and if your mind starts to wander, that's not a big deal. But you want to try to bring it back, because what you're learning is how to bring it back. That's the exercise. That's the practice is to bring your mind's attention back to the thing that you originally set out to focus on.
Michaela:Right, and when you're doing mindfulness, it's really important not to beat yourself up that your mind wandered, cause I heard that a number of times. You're like well, I just must not be very good at it. Or like I was really mad at myself, like, no, your mind is going to wander.
Laura :Right Minds wander.
Michaela:That's what they do, right we're just trying to get stronger by strengthening the connection of staying focused.
Laura :That's right. So if I'm trying to exercise a particular part of my body, that doesn't mean that it's not okay to also, you know, do some squats. You know, in between my pushups, like I can shift, I can do multiple things. It doesn't have to be this one thing. But what I'm doing is I'm remembering oh, I'm going to focus really hard on my pushups today, and then I'm also going to maybe go for a walk or I'm also going to go for a jog. So, like, your mind is capable of doing many things, there's nothing bad about that.
Laura :What we want to do is we want to practice one area, and that's what we're trying to kind of accomplish in that moment. And there's nothing bad about any other stuff that comes up, because you can jot that down or you can change your focus and you can say, oh, this is much more fun, I want to focus on this that I just came up with, and then you can reset your timer, right, if you want to really practice. Okay, I'm going to focus on this for one minute, all right, great, start small, start short, start slow, like 30 seconds a minute. I've started clients with three seconds. I mean, come on, it's fine, anything is fine.
Michaela:Yeah, well, and I think that, like, we talked a lot about motivating ourselves to do things and, you know, outside of one, definitely finding the internal motivation and how to strengthen that in yourself as an adult and help encourage that in your children. But also like just telling yourself I'm just going to do it for five minutes, do it for one minute, I'm just like the task that you don't want to do. Right, I'm just going to start, because starting is typically the hardest part, um, and so if you can just get yourself started, that's great. Other things that you can do that help pay for that dopamine is a cold shower. Those are really hard to come by here in Arizona right now. Fill a tub up with ice.
Michaela:There's plenty of places out there, um, even the gym down the road has like an eight, like a cold therapy thing. So there's plenty of places that have cold therapy options. You can, you know, do a cold shower. You know, if it's winter time, you can get in your pool. Um, most people are not going to do that, but some people do. Um. And then also exercise. You know you talked about pushups and things like exercise actually is a great thing to to help with building up paying for that dopamine and so doing something harder than whatever it is that you were trying to do, that will help it become less hard.
Laura :Absolutely. I love that and I think you know there's so many ways that we can give ourselves a little bit more credit. That, I think also really helps. So when you do the thing, credit that I think, also really helps. So when you do the thing, be excited about it right, Tell your brain that was awesome and that's important. And so what you're doing is you're reminding your brain hey, look for more opportunities to give yourself credit, Look for more opportunities like this, because you're saying to your brain hey, that's really important. By intentionally acknowledging something good, you're teaching your brain what to look for in the future.
Michaela:I love that. Everything that I think about for helping with ADHD is that we're starting a lot of times from a place of extreme disorganization and it's overwhelming to think about trying to get organized. I remember, like when we moved here a couple of years ago, all my office stuff I had so many papers from like college I'd been out of college for a while now but never wanted to go through them Right, but never wanted to go through them Right. And so, like I, just every day on my break, I would just shred something Right. And so slowly, slowly, over time you whittle it all down Right.
Michaela:So you're not going to try to unpack your whole room in one sitting. You're not going to try to go through that old file cabinet of taxes that have been sitting there for 15 years. You're going to. You're not going to do that in one time. You're going to say, okay, well, every day I'm going to do five minutes of this. Or, you know, on the weekend I'm going to spend 10 minutes each day and I'm just going to do this thing, and so it's going to get done over time. You're going to have to start by just trying to organize your pantry first, and then maybe your closet, you know. So you kind of have to pick and choose the things where you need to start, but just finding it and just saying I'm just going to work on it for this amount of time. I'm not going to try to get to a point where I've done it all in one.
Laura :Yeah, I love that time. Boxing your tasks and choosing something small, taking one thing at a time Um, those are all really, really good. I think we have some good tips here and good reminders for us too, so thank you.
Michaela:Yeah, I don't think you have to have ADHD to do these things either.
Laura :Cause you know I think these are helpful for everyone. Well, thank you for listening to. Why am I like this? If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the show and share it with your friends. This episode was written and produced by me, laura Wood and Michelle Bieber. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thick as Thieves, and a special thanks to Benefairy Counseling and Coaching and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.
