Mental Health

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My Current ADHD Toolbox for Dealing With Burnout

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Hello from burnout. I’m about 90% certain I wrote a blog post last year around this time with the exact same opener. It may have even been the title.

I’m currently sitting on my couch completely surrounded by telltale signs of overwhelm. My headphones are on. I’m listening to some binaural beats/nature sounds on full blast to drown out my son’s TV shows that are on in the background. While I’m grateful for the fall weather to come creeping in, my hoodie is less for the cold as it is more because of my need to feel comfort.

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6 Things Helping Me Find Comfort and Relief with Adenomyosis Right Now

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I originally started this blog with the idea it would be more focused on Adenomyosis. But as my condition has progressed over the years, I found I don't enjoy my writing when I'm in the throes of dealing with it all. Not only is the pain distracting and makes it difficult to concentrate, but I just come across sounding like a grumpy, self-deprecating, angry little gnome and/or my self-esteem is so in the toilet that everything I make or do never seems good enough or worthy of posting.

But this last period, I started drafting this list of things I was grateful for instead. And upon re-reading it now when my period is on her way out and the feel-good chemicals are hitting my brain again, I was even able to edit out some of that grumpy gnome who takes over my writing voice.

6 things getting me through this terrible period:

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Advice and Updates to My Teenage Self From My 31- and 40-Year-Old Self

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I was digging through some old notes a few weeks ago and came across two lists I wrote back in 2014. I labeled the first as “some of the things I would love to tell teenagers today,” but if I’m being honest with myself, it’s a list of things I wish I could have gone back in time to tell myself when I was younger. The second is simply labeled “I don’t have all the answers,” and I think it’s a list I made thinking about my present and possible future.

I was 31 at the time I wrote these lists and wanted to share them, along with some thoughts in bold.

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Defining Rest for Increased Creativity and Productivity

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Recently I edited a podcast where the guest was talking about his creativity cycle and how he learned to lean into the different stages. He used the acronym CPR as a way to remember that after Creation comes Promotion, and after that should come Rest.

When I heard this, it dawned on me that this was why I had been suffering from so much burnout back in 2020 — I had continuously put aside rest in order to do what I loved. I felt energized by it and I figured if I needed to rest, I would surely just know to do it, right? Wrong.

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Handling Opinions (Good and Bad) Without Letting It Affect Your Self-Worth

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One night after a recent choir practice, I went out my way to compliment one of the younger members on their solo they had rehearsed that night. They quickly turned away and let out a quick “oh, thanks, shut-up.”

Their mother, who was also in the choir, had overheard said, “that’s not how to respond to a compliment!” Watching “The Princess Diaries” as much as I did growing up, I’ve learned not to take offence if a teenager says, “shut-up” candidly.

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Sorry I’ve Been Busy, I Joined a Choir!

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Over the summer, I started going to church (I actually found it by googling “chuch for agnostics” and learning about Unitarian Universalism) and I ended up joining the choir. We’ve had weekly rehearsals and I’ve noticed my mood is always noticeably improved afterwards. I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time, but I found myself enjoying being swept up in another creative expression hobby and letting my (published) writing go more by the wayside the last few weeks. On top of that, our holiday concert is coming up and we’ve been ramping up rehearsal time.

We’ve been working on holiday songs for the December choir concert since September so I’ve joked that I’ve been microdosing on the holidays for a while now. Since my church has members of a number of different faiths, we have a selection of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule songs. It’s very similar to the holiday concerts I did in public school choir, though Yule songs are a first for me, I think!

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An Invitation to Pause in Nature - EOL002

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It’s been about 3 weeks since writing my post about some recent weight gain and my feelings about it and here’s an update.

I got on the scale for the 2nd time since that post and found I was down 4 pounds! After coming off a particularly uncomfortable period that included a lot of water retention, it was a relief to wake up today feeling better and well enough to get on the scale.

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April Focus: FUN!

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After a long March spent grieving and healing from a friend’s passing, on April 1st, I woke up feeling a bit lighter than I had in weeks.

I’ve always loved April. It’s my birthday month and it usually signals the end of our long, cold winter and the beginnings of Spring. It’s only the first week and it’s been such a change to hear birds loudly chirping in the mornings again and little buds start appearing on the gray, bare trees we’ve been staring at for months on our drives.

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Courage in March

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MY WORD OF THE YEAR WAS COURAGE. WHAT TOOK COURAGE THIS MONTH?

No one prepares you for when a close friend dies suddenly. I didn't need to search hard for what gave me Courage in March — my fear of losing someone close was realized and it threw me into a tailspin. Courage was what helped me find self-compassion to sit with the big heavy feelings and know I could make it through.

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Courage in February

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MY WORD OF THE YEAR WAS COURAGE. WHAT TOOK COURAGE THIS MONTH?

Seriously considering going to grad school and opening up to my partner about this little daydream.

It’s been an inkling of a thought ever since graduating college, but I had a hard enough time finally deciding on a major in college that making a commitment to even higher education would mean finding something that I truly, truly wanted to go into tons of debt and give my precious time to.

Even writing that, I am amazed folks do this. I’m pretty sure ADHD is why I was never able to give a consistent answer to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

For a while, I told myself that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up because back in the 1980s, no one had ever heard of a podcast. And maybe that’s true. But also, I’ve started questioning if I wanted to be in podcasting for the long haul and what that would look like.

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Yoga for Every-BODY: How I Developed A Daily Routine I Love

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Sometimes I get embarrassed talking about yoga and how much I love it. A lot of people have very strong opinions of yoga I’ve found. I also get a lot of up-and-down looks when I say that I do daily yoga as if someone who does daily yoga should look a certain way, which I do not.

Sometimes people jump to the conclusion that I’m going to talk about how yoga is the be-all, end-all cure for everything. For the record, I try to stay away from that kind of talk about anything — I truly believe people need to search for what works best for them for their health.

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December Focus: Relax & Reflect

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After last month’s focus on Writing and creating this blog, plus all the other life happenings lately, I really felt like I had no choice but to declare this month’s focus to be Rest and Reflect.

Most Decembers, this mode seems to happen automatically and I've learned to keep the holiday season from getting too overwhelming and overbooked. With the extra stress of my mom’s health being up in the air, plus the ongoing stress of parenting through a pandemic, I know this is as good a season as any to take it easy and not push for a big project.

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Life Update + November 2021 Roundup

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I took this photo the other day in the hospital while waiting for my mom to get back from an MRI. She had a seizure the last week of November after a mini-stroke/TIA a few weeks earlier. Her health has been up in-the-air and, to be honest, it’s been a really difficult time.

Like last month, I’m still sitting in what I now call my little Kitchen nook to get the sunlight first thing in the morning to help my mental health, but with so much that seems out of my control right now, the overwhelm has meant a few more dark days. I’m using flowery language a bit. I’ve had days where everything is just f*cking terrible and feel like they kick my ass.

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Scaling Back on Productivity During Stressful Life Events

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This week has been a very scaled-back week for me in terms of work and productivity. My mom’s health has taken some turns over the past few weeks and there’s a lot of uncertainty about her. The heaviness of all the emotions, plus the general stress of being a parent during a pandemic has really made me aware of how much stress can impact my motivation, energy, and focus.

I’m not a productivity expert (though I did write show notes for The Productive Woman podcast and that may have been one of the best experiences I could have had as someone with ADHD and who also wants to get a lot accomplished in her lifetime. One thing I learned from the host, Laura McClellan, is that different seasons in life require different forms of productivity and planning.

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What a Night of Terrible Roller Skating Taught Me About Growth

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One night a few weeks before the holidays I was exhausted after spending loads of time with our youngest who had announced that morning that he was sick — every parent’s worst nightmare to wake up to.

I was mentally exhausted, but after sitting through the editing of two podcasts that day, I knew I needed to move around. I decided to roller skate for a little while to get some practice in and give myself a bit of a mental break, like skating always does. As I stretched and warmed up by doing my usual yoga routine, I noticed I was feeling a bit wobbly.

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Coaching Myself Through Unexpected Weight Gain

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As someone who’s struggled with my weight my whole life, I have had times when I was a slave to the scale and it’s only been recently when I have been able to answer truthfully that I forget to get on the scale unless something feels off.

When I was doing the podcast Hate to Weight and actively pursuing weight loss as a goal, I was stepping on weekly to update my cohost and our audience with my progress. We made it a very big point on the show that the numbers and the scale didn’t matter — that said, it was something my cohost, John, and I both thought was important to talk about on the show since that was our original goal.

Friends Over Followers

When I think about my social media usage over the years, it surprises me that I’m more confused about how to use it than ever. Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself part of the social media pioneer generation. Compared to what Facebook is now, it astonishes me that I was around when you needed a college email to sign up and it still had “The” before its official name. And there was no talk of the Metaverse at all.

But ever since starting a podcast and then a business, I began to use social media for much more than catching up with friends and family. I began to use it to network and promote more.

When It Rains, It Rains: Dealing with Anxiety on Days Full of the Unexpected

Usually, my period is what throws my week for a loop. But since that was last week’s hassle, I started the week with an optimistic outlook. On Tuesday night I finished up my work, made a quick list of things I wanted to get to the next day, and went to bed with this all-too-smug feeling that I was finally on top of my game.

My smugness was short-lived when my 4-year-old woke me up early the next morning announcing every parent’s nightmare — he didn’t feel well. You’d think after three (3!!!) colds in the last six weeks, I’d be used to this, but this one felt like it was going to be the one that made me crack and completely lose it.

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What Adenomyosis Taught Me About Breaking Away From The Hustle Culture

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I'm bed with the heating pad and smoking weed to help with stabby cramps around my uterus that stretch around to my lower back and radiate down my legs and up my spine. After having Adenomyosis for so long, I’m oddly used to dealing with pain the week of my period and ovulation, and anything else during the other two weeks of the month is considered a “flare.”

It's been difficult to concentrate when my brain is at least 40% occupied with "What is happening?! We're in pain down where babies come from?! What danger is this?!"