233 - How to Get Things Done When You're Depressed or Overwhelmed

This is timely for me. Having a low mood state doesn't eliminate the crap on my plate. Taking a break from my overwhelm and anxiety doesn't magically eliminate the items off my to do list that need to happen. Life keeps happening while I'm drowning, so let's talk about what we can do about it (after the rest, of course, if that's the order of the day). 

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Transcript

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Life is just never perfect. The conditions are rarely like 70 degrees, slightly cloudy, mostly sunny. It's always, always like clear skies, but it's 30 degrees below zero, or it's 100 degrees with a chance of acid rain. So waiting around for like the conditions just to be perfectly, perfectly right before we do a thing, it just feels like it's a huge fucking waste of time. Let's discuss. 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. 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. Hi, welcome to the podcast. Let's go. Let's just do this. All right. Quick ADHD Big Brother Corporation update. If you go into the show notes, there's a PDF that uh I give people that it's gonna help you to get started on anything. It's like a nuts and bolts solution to the I can't get started problem. Uh clickity clack on that link down there, and hopefully that'll help you out. Oh, and actually, you know, the community, we just wrapped up the book club reading of Changing to Thrive. I recommend that book. I give it about an 8.5 out of 10 stars. Uh, that is my official stance on the book. The other members that were in the book club uh seem to be like we're averaging like a seven. Super good book, Changing to Thrive. It's the stages of behavior change, super informative. Um, and we're about to kick off the next book club sessions, and the book we chose is The Power of Wonder. Do you wonder what the book might be about? Um, so do we. So we're gonna read it. Um, our first session on that is gonna be on March 6th. That's a Friday. So if you want to read that book with me, join the community and you know, let me know that you're interested and I'll get you squared away, and then you can join us and we can talk about the book. We shit talk sometimes, man. We will shit talk a book. We will air our grievances. Just because somebody writes something doesn't mean that they don't, that doesn't mean they know what's up all the time. You know, we definitely do our fair share of calling bullshit where needed. Um, so that's that. Link to join the communities in the show notes as well. Okay, here's the here's the mental health report. This is where we normalize talking about our school spaghetti, the good, the bad, the weird. We're not always fine. And it really does help to talk about this stuff, I find. Um, mine is I don't know if you can tell, mine's weird. Mine's this is gonna be a weird one. Um I regret to inform you that I I don't really want to do the report right now. I feel stupid and I'm not really up for it. It's just my mood state is fucking sucky. So I think I owe you, uh, if I'm doing this correctly, if I'm correctly doing the mental health report, I need to peel my onion a little. And that just this feels really hard to describe. So uh I was talking to Emily about this earlier, uh, but what it feels like is um it's like I'm not in my own body, but I know that I'm but I know that I am in my body. All right, so just relax. Okay, I know where I'm at. But uh uh we're gonna make sense of this together today. It's like I can see a positive me and a person that has joy, a person that is content, maybe handling life's up and downs, gets on with his day. Uh that person is on the other side of this invisible prison that I'm in. Like I can see it. It's in all its beautiful positive glory, and it feels like I'm on this precipice, like always this heavy, mass amount of energy to hang on. Um it's not like a suicidal ideation deal, so just rest easy there. It's it's like the energy to be or exist in the day. It's the energy to care. Let's say that it's it's the energy to care about any output. Stuff like just simple stuff, like doing the dishes, like who cares? I can't. I don't have the energy. Is this what life is all about? It's so dramatic. Is this what it is? It's like I just want to quit. You know what I mean? I and that would mean to me to go lay down and to sleep. I just uh to ignore it. It's like a deep fatigue. So that's the mental health report. My comment uh to Emily was if it lasts too long, I'm gonna pursue a medical intervention because it is kind of bullshit. Um it zaps the bejesus out of my energy. Um, it's so interesting to me how we can have so much light for other people, like so much belief and hope and excitement for you, and I can't turn that around on myself. It's fucking weird. So, my effort, just so you guys know I'm working on this, it's I'm always working on improving my well-being. It's just it's something I'm fascinated by. So I got the DBT skills workbook. It's the dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook by Matthew McKay, et al. I believe that's means everybody else, et al. There's multiple people. There's work to be done here, and I like a good DIY project. So DBT has a methodology, radical acceptance, uh, that I like. It's that even though mantra that I use, it's I'm not up for fighting my brain on its shitty self-talk. My brain can suck it. I'm not trying to befriend my brain. I'm not trying to reframe some fucking asshole that's saying some shit. All that talk about, you know, it's just doing its job, it's doing what it's meant to do. It's, you know, survival, it's misunderstanding. Say, no, fuck that. My brain's a douchebag. No accolades to my abuser. Thank you. I don't, I'm not my brain. I'm not my arm. I'm not my nose hairs. I am the driver of a ship that needs a wrench to tweak some valves. So I just I got the book. We'll crack it open, crack open Macranium, we'll see if we can't tinker with the engine in there. See what happens. And because I'm a good ADHDer and I have some shit locked in uh as much as we can, right? I will be making that a community challenge, most likely, uh, that will sound something like this. If you're in the community, get ready. Russ's DBT challenge is coming. This is how we do it. Uh, it's gonna be something like putting 20 minutes a day into a thing. So in this case, it'll be the workbook. And I like to put buffers in for some challenges. So I'm gonna do it, it'll be something like 20 minutes a day for 25 out of 30 days, uh, so that I have a little bit of wiggle room. Alrighty. That's the mental health report. That's good. Are we good? Should we are we good? Ah, we're good. Alrighty, let's get some work done here. Let's talk about the work of this. How to make change while overwhelmed or depressed. This is very, it's perfect timing and it's timely. Um, when I wrote that line as a podcast episode, that is a doozy. This is the tough stuff. Uh like an episode like this requires a caveat. Um, not the I'm not a therapist caveat. Like, I don't fucking, I'm over that. He's if you don't know by now that I'm not a therapist, you know, that's on you. Do your research, Troy. Okay. I do love therapists. I think they're awesome. They are the ultra helpers, and I love them. No, the caveat here is that there's such varying flavors of drowning in life, um, from the freak out of what's to come and the catastrophizing and that isolating feeling of going it alone to the dread of the past. It's all so craptastic. It is just, it is really great. Mm-hmm. Can you tell I love it? Mm-hmm. I personally I learned something neat last week about myself. I I had gone to the doctor and I was looking at my lab, so I was just looking at my chart, and it turns out my psychiatrist also gave me uh an anxiety disorder diagnosis. I either didn't know that or I forgot, which is also possible. But how about that? They should just call that yin-yang disease. Like anxiety and depressive disorder. It's like it's the best of both worlds, really. The opposing forces, the catastrophe of the future, and the the regret and the sorrow of the past all mixed together to make a really fucked up now. Oh man, fun discovery. So I think I'm gonna drink more water. I think that's how I'm gonna work on it. Um, and I don't do medicine currently. I mean, we talked about that before, but um man, fun discovery. Oh, you know, if ever there was a prescription for meditation, right? Seriously, how do you make the now calmer, easier to manage, grounded in reality? That's how you handle yin-yang disease, right there. Get your ass into the moment. Um, no, okay, so the caveat here is that uh I'm gonna be talking about things to do. I'm gonna be talking about behavior change. And to most of us in states of overwhelm or sorrow or dread are about resting, right? Taking a break, don't do anything, Troy, take a spot. Hey, Troy. Some people just want a validation, you know, and to be told that, you know, it makes sense that their world is in chaos and they need permission to relax. So I will validate you. So just consider yourself validated. You're validated. Life is really hard and it can really suck. There. And also, if you brought your parking stub, I can validate that as well. I can validate all kinds of things for you. Um, your struggle's real, it sucks, and a nap sounds great. Have one. I know I'm going to. I will be taking naps. Um, but okay, so now everyone's rested, everyone is relaxed, or I allegedly. So now what? Did the shit stop hitting the fan? Probably not. So here's my views, uh, my views on this, which was maybe a common view or not. I just feel like saying it's my opinion. So, you know, if you disagree, you know, I covered my ass. You can't argue with my opinion, because it belongs to me and I shall use it however I like. Um what this stuff requires is skills training. Uh, even in therapy, I mean, like, you know, when you process uh your world, your emotions, your traumas, your past with your therapist, aren't you also getting an assignment on something to practice? Perhaps some journaling or something to practice? I can't imagine people are literally just going to therapy to process the week and all it takes is 45 minutes, it's a one and done. That can't be real. Um, well, it's not real in my world. In my time in therapy, it was there's always shit to do. We have skills that have to be learned, they have to be practiced, you know? And like who the fuck wants to practice dumb shit when it's not exciting? And maybe even we when we don't need it in a particular day. Like I don't maybe I don't need it on Wednesday. Wednesday was fine. You know, and who the fuck wants to feel like a third grader? You know, I'm gonna do a thing for 20 minutes and then stop because I'm practicing a skill. I totally get it. I have an ego, but at some point, like I kind of had to stop giving shit about that. We are a type of person that feels our best when we're bouncing from whim to whim. Like that feels normal, right? Like when we don't have to make decisions, when the answers are clear and the impulse to start is there. That's when it feels the rightest, right? Or the rightiest, the most right. I just refer to that as whim chasing. Like we go with our whims. So this means that we're gonna operate with either the shit is about to hit the fan, urgency, or I just had a really cool idea for a new business, and you know, I'm gonna buy a domain name, create a landing page, build out a mind map of how it's gonna make us all rich, and oh my god, it's 2 a.m. And that's the funny meme that like I don't think is funny. I don't enjoy that stuff. Like, that's why I cannot be on social media. It's like when people share the silly memes of like, hey, it's a family, and look at they're having fun because he's got ADHD, and isn't that weird? I guess we all just have to laugh and roll our eyes. I'm like, fuck that. Can you guys guess my can you guess my current mood state based on the episode? Sorry, I'm trying to, what am I trying to say here? If we want our lives to be managed, we have to practice some kind of structure. I'm super sorry. I'm just as upset about it as you are. Structure sucks. I don't like it. But if I might entice you with the benefits, because I do have a little bit of structure in my life now, and that actually gives me more unstructured time, my whims time. People that have no structure tend to not have any time. Like they tend to be people who are massively overwhelmed and never feel like they can take a breath. And life responsibilities just keep piling up, they can't get control of it. And that makes a hundred percent sense. I know that feeling. Surviving during burnout, like there's no break. When I started out, I had to get over uh the remedial feeling of this. Like I said before, like I'm a dude, I got an ego, I don't want to feel like a child, but I had to get over that. And I had to practice structure in very small quantities. And how that looks is it's literally like owning 30 minutes, like a 30-minute chunk of time during the day, 12 p.m. on Tuesday. I will work on my finances for 30 minutes. It's an appointment with myself, so I am more than happy to blow it off and not do it. And so then the only way that this works is if I put a, you know, a no matter what on it. And so when we walk these things through, there's always a thing that might pop up. What if this? But it has to be devastating and it has to be real. Something else more important pops up, that's a too bad. Too bad. Unless something really bad is gonna happen if you don't do that more important thing in that 30-minute chunk of time. Otherwise, the more important thing has to wait until after my 30 minutes. Sometimes we have that feeling of like, oh, I'm gonna need more than 30 minutes. Too bad. My job is to honor a 30-minute chunk of time. It's not about the thing. Who cares if it's gonna take five hours to complete? That's not what this is about. This is about a 30-minute chunk of your life. If you've got time afterwards, great. Like I'll I'll I guess I'll be chipping away at it. But the fight against structure, in my opinion, needs to be black and white. Then that's for me. That's how I operate. I have to eliminate choice. If I leave room for gray, my brain will find the gray. If I'm overwhelmed, if I'm depressed, oh please, give me any option out. Show me an off-ramp and I'm taking it. So to practice structure, especially while depressed or anxious, I have to really eliminate choice. And I have to get over feeling like a child. Yes, I feel like I'm capable of so much more. Yes, I am. I know that. But I'm shooting free throws. I'm practicing a skill, and I have to accept this. I'm not gonna convince my brain that this is grown-up level, so who fucking cares? I'm just going to practice anyway. The problem is that it's not gonna feel good in the moment. And changes in behavior never do. That's the bullshittiest thing about life, isn't it? Why couldn't we just say things like, hey, I want to be a person that exercises every day, and then my body and my mind cooperate and then say things internally like, yes, so now I'm going to be excited about working out. I'm going to be prepared and ready to go at any time because this is a thing that I like to do now. That's not real. It's going to be like, oh God, today. And then our brain finds a loophole, and we're like, oh yeah, well, yeah, I needed to work on that article. So that's important. So I'm gonna, I'll work out tomorrow. Big change starts tomorrow. I still have my intentions, my good intentions, they're still there. I just bumped it to the future me that will, you know, spoiler alert, not comply. So what I'm trying to say is that we have to practice the skill of structure. It's a thing to practice, right? I don't enjoy sports, but that analogy works perfectly. You don't become proficient at free throws by only practicing them during the game. You have to practice the skill. Or let's just say, let's just say it what it is. For screw this sports analogy. You're never going to get proficient at managing your time without practicing managing your time. You know, maybe we just call it like we see it. Depressos who have shit to do have to practice managing their time. Anxious people who are overwhelmed and can't get their head above water have to practice managing time. I don't know you, so I'm just talking about me. In both of those states, these are my stances, and those are the ones that I had to take for myself. The idea that we're going to just become better at managing our time because we read a fucking book or we watched a YouTube video or we listened to some rambly podcast guy who kind of feels like he's lecturing me, it's not gonna manage your time. So here, let's do this. I'm gonna give you a challenge. The insights always come from the doing, the good ones, like the real good epiphanies. They come from the doing while you're in the doing of the thing. So here's a challenge. Try it out. Pick something that you're gonna do, something that you should do, right? Quote unquote, tomorrow. Fuck today, today's done. This is practicing the art of planning, scheduling, and honoring your word. Who? And we start simple, like a like a goddamn child. Embrace this. Hold, hold this like a little red balloon that says, I can do stuff and give yourself a little cookie afterwards. Yes, this will feel remedial, who cares? You don't have to tell anybody that you're doing it. You know, you know what it's gonna look like tomorrow when you're doing it? It'll look like you doing a thing at a specific time. And that seems pretty grown-up to me, but I don't know. So, how this ties into anxiety and overwhelm, let's say, and depression. Um, I'm only gonna speak from my own mouth port. Uh, this does not resolve my sorrows or my mood state. I am a person that has shit to do though. And when I'm depressed and I'm when I'm in a low mood state, I operate under bare minimums. And the reward after, let's call it after my 30-minute time block, this thing that I said I was gonna do, my reward is that I quit afterwards. The benefit is that I don't sink further. Because if I didn't do the thing I planned, I would sink further. And I fully recognize depression is a lot bigger than just, yeah, just do it at that time. That's it's so much bigger than that. So I'm what I add to my own mix is that I loop other people in. I stack my deck. So I will go into the body doubling room in my community. Like, shout out to Lisa and Erica. Oh my God, we've been body doubling almost every day the past week. Um, this helps. I pull myself out of isolation. Other people is a lot of the times my answer for doing a thing in that mood state when I can. And then when I'm overwhelmed, well, uh, you know, with anxiety, it tends to be a physical thing. I tend to try to do a hard reset, like physically, because I need to calm the fuck down. So I like that exercise of trying to push a wall. Obviously, the the wall doesn't budge, but by really going for it, trying to push it with all my strength, it it calms the nervous system. It's interesting. You can Google it. Somatic, because they use the word somatic nervous system, proprioception is another big word it's bentied about. Um, I just prefer the simple, hey man, uh, are you freaking out? Try to shove the wall over. See if that helps. It turns out it does. Um, I usually operate as like, what's the worst thing that can happen? Maybe I look stupid. It's okay, no big deal. I've been there before. Or maybe I have superhuman strength and I realize I can push a hole into the drywall. So I don't know. I've tried it and it works for me. So it doesn't eliminate the cause of the anxiety or the overwhelm, um, but it does a hell of a job at chilling me out. So if the time comes in Wednesday at noon and the anxious feeling is hitting, you know, maybe I'll shove the wall for two minutes and see if I can't calm down and then activate. Nothing uh is ever gonna be an every time guarantee here, but I am a fan of what are the tools to do shit, even though, because I don't have time to wait around for the depression to lift or for the anxiety to soothe, to get my shit done. My world is still spinning. There are things that have to be done. So, what is the easiest way for me to move my needle forward and get control of this? And man, I gotta say, the gift of structure in a chaotic day. Oh man, it this is from my recent experiences. You know, I have an agenda for the day, like that I make myself. I have podcast outreach to do, barf. I have clients that are in my calendar, so they happen. I'm excited for that. I have life stuff that I will have determined to do something about, maybe a phone call, maybe an email or whatever it would be. And I, you know, I don't always schedule those as specific appointments. I do have work sessions during the day. Like I'll be in there with Lisa and Erica in the body doubling room doing my work. That's a that's my structure. And then, like when I pick Alistair up from school, I am able to follow my whims at that point. More often than not, I can, for the most part, ignore the chaos that is chomping at me. I can blow off all the responsibilities because they have a home on my calendar for later. It's been determined. I have managed my time and I can distract from the dread with a call to Emily. I can watch some Seinfeld episodes, I can laugh, I have permission to do this because I took care of the day. I had structure. And this isn't a 100% fail-safe, but man, when you practice the skill of structure a little bit at a time, eventually you get pretty good at it handling your day, and it can be pretty rad. Alrighty, that's gonna do it for now. If you need a thought partner for any of this stuff, I can help. If you're overwhelmed, I can help you manage your time. We can do it together. If you're depressed, man, I really recommend joining a community. Our community is awesome. Get out of the isolation. And man, it just helps me big time to put a voice to my school spaghetti. So our community is like this big ass 60 plus person ear for your laments. And we are open for business. Come air your grievances in our ongoing festivus. If you watch Seinfeld, you know what I'm talking about. All right, hope this helps. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, please shout this out on your socials or paint it on your car or something clever. If you need extra help, go to www.adhdbigbrother.com and you can see the ways that I can help you there. Happy to help if I can. And with that, I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you later.