228 - ADHD Brain Fog

This is quite relevant to me right now. Been feeling extra foggy, so I'm sharing the things that I do to get myself activated and moving forward when the fog hits. 

Mentioned in the show:

Join ADHDBB to take advantage of Conquering your Turd Mountain: https://adhdbigbrother.circle.so/adhdbb

The Adulting with ADHD Podcast - Here's my guesting episode on Sarah's podcast. Super fun conversation! 

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVL7_DJZyh4

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4LMv3R7N8CtUm38UjGQ2Ox

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I go and I sit down uh at the computer to do some work, uh, and I was a good ADHD or I came up with my specific task and I went and sat down, and then nothing. Emptiness. My brain stops working. I even set myself a timer. So what the hell is going on? Let's talk about brain fog. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD, their comorbid depression, their anxiety. Oh, it's just a new. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Roger Jones.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's crapastic. So let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Let's make some commitments to do some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome to the podcast. That sounded very hi. I'm glad you're here. Whatever. Oh. I am glad you're here. More than you know. Today's podcast is super relevant to me right now. It's almost like that's why I write these episodes. Because I have ADHD and depression, and it's top of mind right now. My blank mind is top of mind. First up, this Monday. So if you're listening to this on Monday, today is like our first day of the conquering your turd mountain event. Uh, this is what we're doing in January and February inside the ADHD Big Brother membership. It's all the same: daily accountability, monthly goals, body doubling, weekly sport calls. But I also created an event where we're gonna look at your systems, right? Everybody has a system. Maybe it's cobbled together, maybe it's uh some guru system. It's and I'm gonna go through the six questions that need to be effectively answered in order to have what I believe is a functioning system. For instance, like, what is your calendar method? Do you have one? Or do you just remember? You're like, oh yeah, that's right. I'm gonna have lunch with Troy on Saturday. Yeah. Uh yeah, I'll remember that. Adults with ADHD who do not have a reliable method of calendaring are dead in the water. I didn't need to say it like that. They're dead in the water, man. You did. Let me actually say it like this. I have yet to meet an adult with ADHD who is thriving in life without a calendar. Um, so we're gonna cover that question along and the other five. And I'm gonna be sharing mine as well. So who knows? Maybe there's a hole in my system that you'll uncover. And it's gonna be a members-only event. So if you've been on the fence and joining, jump in, jump in for a month. It is now is the time. Uh, if you can log into social media, you can do this. So let's chat about your system. Mental health report. Okay, okay, okay. This is where we normalize talking about our skull spaghetti, what's going on in the cranium, the good stuff, the bad stuff, and the weird stuff that doesn't uh doesn't make sense all the time. Um, we're not always fine. And seriously, I am not fine. I'm not fine. Uh are you fine? Who the fuck is fine right now? I I what? I don't know. Um, so here's me. Uh I'm really having a rough brain fog time. Uh and part of my brain fog, I believe it's due to the weight of the world. I'm laughing, but it's the world is pretty heavy. It's super heavy right now. I don't know when the weight of the world has ever been light. Has it ever been light? It's always been pretty heavy, the weight of the world. So uh I don't think it's ever been bikini ready. Let's just say that. It's okay. Not to fat shame the world as a planet, as a giant globe floating around the sun. But you know what I mean? World's pretty heavy. Uh, and it's uh and now it kind of seems like the world's been eating nothing but carbs and not exercising. So the world is just really heavy. And you know why. I don't have to tell you why. This isn't a this isn't a you know news podcast, so yeah, you know what's going on. Um and you know who knows? Maybe I don't know when people are listening to this, it might be 2030, and you might be listening from your bunker somewhere. How did you get internet in your bunker, by the way? How did you do that? I because my bunker would like to know. But so this place, this podcast, is it's a place where we're actively troubleshooting. How do we move forward? Like, how do how does an adult with ADHD do stuff? Right? Um, and for folks like me with ADHD and a large glass of depresso, uh, this kind of a world, it doesn't help in terms of activating. You know, some people get really mad and activate and they can move forward and do things, make progress towards things because they're mad and they want change. And some people get really sad and things feel hopeless and dark, and we get deactivated. Any forward movement feels monumental, and then we feel like extra shit because it's like if I can't do my laundry, how the fuck do I navigate this? Um, so where to even begin? So that's been a big part of my brain fog. Um, I and I so I want to share how I get on the other end of my brain fog. Um, even just, you know, even if it's just normal run-of-the-mill brain fog, you know, not necessarily into the world ADHD brain fog, just regular ADHD brain fog. And I'll start with this that I'm not medicated, um, not because of any stance, you know, except for the stance that, you know, the side effects are always so shitty for me. So for those of you that can do this through medicine, that is awesome. Kick butt. Uh, and maybe this will just add uh a little extra workaround for you if you need it. My brain is foggy. Um, so I want to let's talk about it. Like, how does that feel? Uh, and I'm just gonna speak to just regular fog that isn't corrupted by low mood states. Like regular day, sitting down to work, and brain fog. And the way it manifests for me is it's that my thoughts they don't come for things. It's it's like an emptiness. Uh, and that's sometimes it's like it's it's a tiredness feeling in my brain. Like I feel like I just need to do something that doesn't require thinking. In these cases, I'm super, I'm so easily distracted by like, you know, the we'll call them shiny thoughts, right? The you know, the old joke, it's like, oh, look, there's a squirrel. Um, the way I feel inside is that all my thoughts are blurry. You know, like you you take your glasses off and you just see blurriness. You you know that stuff is there. You can make out a face, you can see a tree, uh, a house, but the clarity isn't there. You couldn't really poetically describe it. You'd just be like, oh, yeah, I I know that that's a person. There's a tree right there. That's a house. I know what it is and I know what what I want, but I can't uh I can't really grab it and use it. That's what my thoughts are like when I'm unfocused and foggy. I still have them. They're just I they're hard to grab. And that's it feels very weird to say because like a thought is a thought, right? If the thought is do the dishes, but the um it's floating out of reach, if that makes sense. Oh my god. I'm trying really hard to describe this, and I'm realizing how maybe weird that sounds, but that's just what my thoughts are. I still have them and they're hard to grab. It's hard to mobilize and take action when there's no clarity of thought. And so then, like, okay, now suddenly a thought does become clear. I can do something with that. So that's the shiny object. It's like, oh my god, a clear thought. Let's go that way. I know what to do with that because I'm currently sitting here with nothing, and that thing has clarity to it. I must go to that. And then you know, next thing you know, I'm partway through a project cross-stitching a photograph of my kids, you know. So now I have a project and there's clarity to it. And then right around 75%, when it's 75% done, it starts to become blurry and it starts to have tension, and then something else becomes clear, right? You know the story. So it makes so much sense to me that when we have work to do and then the thoughts are blurry, it's really a lot of effort to move the needle forward. My personal belief on this is that uh it that it seems like we're waiting around for the clarity to get started on certain things. We're waiting for it. And I think it might be more helpful, you know, rather than just the the, you know, the quote unquote just do the thing. The thing that you know how to do. You've done it before, it's simple, just fucking do it, man. Instead of that, to maybe attempt to bring clarity through the prescription lenses of activating questions, prompts, maybe, right? So there'd be this feeling when I was in the fog that I will somehow eventually get started. So I sit in the fog, waiting, wondering why I can't access my thoughts, sitting in this giant blur, hoping. And the longer I sit, the more tension I feel, the more frustrated I start to get. And if we know anything about ADHD, it's that tension equals I'm not gonna fucking do this right now. I'll do it later. Tension means this isn't the right thing for me to do right now. Um, might as well get on my phone and look at Instagram while I wait for the thought to become clear. Might as well smoke some weed or might as well play the video game or whatever uh negative behavior that we don't want to do in this case, but it's killing the time while we wait. It's easy to get started on it, so we do it. It gives us whatever chemicals it gives us, and then maybe we'll have a renewed sense of being able to get started. You know, who knows? Typically we don't. Um, but you know, you never know. So let's just give it a try again because sitting here waiting isn't happening. My battle with that, and I mean I fight this to this day, uh, but if I would go into that fog, oftentimes my go-to was a nap. That's my escape. It's not good. I don't know, maybe that's the over 50 thing to do. Naps aren't bad. You know, I do think a good nap is good, but I don't not the way that I do them. Is it really a nap if it's two hours long? You know, you don't really come out of that alert and ready to go. It's more like you're in a deeper slog, you fucked up your nighttime. It's sort of a double whammy. Um, but oh god, it's such a depressable go-to. For me, low mood, tired kind of sounds like the universe wants me to take a nap. Okay, so logically, the the answer to this seems to be like, well, what about getting the blood flowing? Go for a walk, do some push-ups. And I, man, I don't I don't know about you, but uh doing an activity that I don't typically enjoy doing. Like I don't love the process of getting my shoes on, going for a walk. I don't enjoy working out. I love the health benefits, but doing an activity that is itself difficult to do in order to do another activity that is difficult to do, I don't know. That's fucking crazy to me. So, so in order to sit down to work, I need to go for a walk or new push-ups. That's just never gonna fly with me. So, what is an answer here? Maybe we should find an answer here. Let's go. Let's talk it out. And by the way, no, no shame, no guilt here. If you're a person that's like, I just need to take a break, I need to come back to this later. Okay, that totally fine, totally get it. I support that. It's just I you that why the podcast? Like, we don't need that for we don't I just imagine you're perpetually being told that it's okay to take a break. That is self-care yourself silly, give yourself a foot massage, bathe yourself in scented oils, breathe in the lavender, and just really feel it, you know. I love that stuff when I remember to do it. But but let us say, for the sake of this, the learn the sake of learning a skill, let's say that if you wanted to do the work, even though you don't want to do it, right? You want, though, to be able to do the work. If you want to be the person that can do the work, like what if we wanted to find ways through the tension and the blurriness and get started and get the work done so that we maybe can enjoy the self-care stuff. Then you can you can enjoy bathing in scented oils. I don't know why I'm saying bathing, because I don't, I'm not a bather. I'm a guy, I'm a shower person, I'm a hot shower person. You might be thinking, oh, Russ, he probably seems like a cold shower guy. I'm not, and I think cold showers are stupid. Just ask Stephanie. She created a cold shower challenge in our community, and I tried it. I'm too big of a wussy, man. I I think I lasted a few days and I was like, this is dumb and I hate it and I'm out. ADHD brother is judgment free unless you propose cold shower challenges, then the judgment will rain upon you. Oh my god. What were we talking about? Oh, it was the idea that like you could imagine like having the self-care thing, the the bath, right? The scented bath, but you don't have the guilt of or the regret of the things you didn't do that day. You're like, yeah, I got everything done now. I can just enjoy myself. That to me sounds pretty rad. I find it very helpful to approach my own brain uh like an ADHD coach, man. You can be your own coach. That's the whole process that I use when I'm one-on-one coaching. I guide you through the tools so you can coach yourself. So you can use these questions and identify these hurdles on your own. That would be so ideal. So you're trying to do some work, but you can't activate, your brain is foggy. First, you notice it happening. Can you catch yourself between the struggle and the escapist activity, like the doom scrolling or the browser tab hopping, or you know, you're suddenly watching a YouTube video. If you can catch yourself, then you pivot from the old conversation, which is, hey, you're a piece of shit for not working. You should be working. Why aren't you working? Get back to working. That's our old ADHD, right? That's the ADHD superpower of abusive self-talk. That's our gift. Um, so like a meditation, if you can catch yourself, then you can non-judgmentally bring your attention back. This is similar advice that um, you know, you would hear someone give it to a writer who's sitting down with writer's block. Um, it works for me when I struggle to motivate writing. Having a prompt or a specific question to answer helps get things activated, puts the brain to work. Something very clear for your brain to work on. Specific. Like an example is that like if you're sitting down to write, there's nothing just blank, so much to write, nothing pops into my head, what do we do? Well, instead of sitting in that frustration and letting the tension build and build, right? We do not frustrate ourselves into creativity. Give yourself a question, like uh a prompt, just to get your body typing, moving, you know, like write about your lunch yesterday, but uh you're describing it to an alien that doesn't know what food is. Okay, there's a there's something for your brain to chew on. How this might look for me in a work type situation, um, well, this is a thing that I do, uh, that I don't enjoy doing, that I will absolutely brain fog on, is podcast outreach. You know, like reaching out to other podcasts to be a guest on their show. I love being on the shows. I love that's a that's fun to me getting to talk to somebody new and meeting them and talking about ADHD stuff. And uh shout out to Sarah Snyder. I was literally just on her show. The adulting with ADHD podcast. It was awesome. It was fun. That her episode just came out last Saturday. So check your local listings for details. Uh, hashtag that's gonna be in the show notes. Um, but doing the uh outreach is not fun for me. Um, so there's like a void when I sit down, I'm like, oh okay, what now? I know what the process is, I know how to do it, but I sit and my mind just goes blank. Um that's the fog to me. So then if I can catch myself in that fog, I can close the gap to getting started. Like if I can catch myself, then I can ask the coaching style question to myself like, okay, what are the components to reaching out? Oh, I need a list of podcasts. Okay, I have a list. I already have that. Okay, I could listen to one of the podcasts on the list. Okay, I'll set a timer on the and listen to the next podcast on the list, see if there's an appeal. While I'm listening, I'll do research on that podcast while I listen. Okay, great. So I've gone from sitting at my cute computer in a void to asking myself a specific question, and that question activates me. Specificity is a fast track out of brain fog. If the question is something like I have to figure out what, blah, blah, blah, that to me is the brain fog question. Uh, a specific question would be I uh open up your computer, open up your email. Like it would be a like something that you could physically do or something that you could physically move forward on. In my case, the outreach. I can physically start playing a podcast episode. That's how we get moving, even if it's half-ass speed, you know, like even if it's like slow mental work. We're talking about how to get moving through the fog. How do we get our headlights on so that we can at least start driving, right? Slowly, mind you, because you know, through the foggy conditions. Brain fog is about like the emptiness that separates us from our thoughts. It's the blurriness in the thinking. Um, and I I do believe that diet and exercise and I will say it, water, the glorious liquid of life, they are helpers, but they are things that we do consistently for the long-term sunny conditions. Those things build up the ability, in my experience, to experience less brain fog or to get through it quicker. It does not necessarily eliminate it from existence. The weather, it happens, right? Brain fog happens. So that workaround is more like, hey, it helps. Give yourself every possible way to help yourself, but this isn't the I have brain fog go for a jog thing. It's that jog might not work. A jogging practice will help over time, but in the moment, what's the simplest thing? How do you activate? I hope this is a I I hope this ramble on brain fog is helpful. It really, the the the summary here is if your brain is foggy, you need to activate, ask yourself some coaching questions, non-judgmental curiosity about what's happening, pulling yourself off autopilot to have a conversation with yourself and getting as specific as you can. It's clarity for the wind, baby. Let's go! And that'll do it for this week. If you guys have questions about this stuff, always feel free to reach out. If you go to adhere.com, you can click contact, it'll send you to a form, it goes right to my email inbox. I'll check it out. And I will re- and and just let me reiterate really quick that now would be the time to join ADHD Bay Brother. If you want some extra attention on your system and if you need the extra accountability to move your needle forward, that's what we're doing. That um we do it all the time, but January and February, I'm putting the spotlight on systems, yours, mine, ours. Let us get this shit tightened up so we can become confidently consistent at showing up for ourselves. You wanna? You want them? Let's go! I mean, it sounds like a fun idea to me. Um already, links to joiner in the show notes and make sure when you join that you download the app, practice by sending me a DM on the platform, say hi. I might beat you to it. I'm quite an eager beaver to say hello to new people. And as always, please share this podcast with your social media, share your favorite episode. I don't social media, so anything you can do to spread the word would be super cool and very much appreciated. And with that, uh, I hope to see you in the community, and I will absolutely talk to you later.