234 - ADHD and Depression: Understanding "I Can't"

This is a very timely episode. There are a couple of "I can't"s in my world. Exercise and meditating. Today I'll explain how that feels to me and what I'm doing about it. 

Summary of my "Plan it in Advance" challenge:

1) Forget today. Set a timer for 10 minutes and plan the task for a specific time tomorrow.

2) For me, this is meditate minimum of 2 minutes and goal of 20 minutes...daily.

3) I win if I can do the planning in advance 30 days in a row. 

4) Bonus if I meditate the full 20 minutes at least 3 times in those 30 days. 

Are you stuck in an 'I Can't' loop right now? Join ADHDBB's membership community now and come experience our Body Doubling room. Do your 'shitty thing' while I do mine!

Try the FREE ADHD Big Brother Episode Finder!  Type in your struggle, get two matching episodes. No emails, no sign-ups. Find your episodes →

For those of you that are wondering why nothing is sticking, why you read things and don't do the work, why you have epiphanies about what could work but it goes nowhere...Join myself and others at ADHDBB.  There is a 'team' component to managing ADHD. Join our team. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There's this thing with ADHD, uh, and with depression. Oh my god, especially with depression, big time, where a seemingly very easy thing to do can't be done. Like it just can't. You cannot, you cannot do it. Physically, yes. Capable of doing it, sure, but it cannot be done. That is really weird.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Let's talk about it. 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 moot. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Roger Joe. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

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_02 0:59

Welcome to the podcast. Uh this uh this one is super timely. Uh, it's easy for me to write podcasts when I'm in the stink of whatever is the whatever it is that I'm talking about. Makes it easier for me, that's for sure. This is my ADHD super gift. That's me playing to my strengths, fiddling with my strumps. I have the ability to talk about what's going on in my skull spaghetti, so I should probably do it now while I'm in it, rather than afterwards when it's too late and I forgot. Good. This will wrap into the mental health report, so let's let's just do this. Hey! Welcome to the mental health report. My name is Frost Jones. I'm depressed. Can you tell? Does it show? Probably not. Maybe you can, who knows? It is super interesting to me. Uh, so let's talk about it. In the quiet times of my day and night, I'm like in this constant loop uh at the moment of like I failed. I'm a failure at life. We don't need to argue about it because I I mean I know I don't need the data points about why that's not true. I know it's not true. Um, I've got my own data points. Thank you. But man, Emily and I, we were discussing this recently over a spinach and onion quiche. That brain, I mean, what the hell is it even doing? The the loop that it goes on for me is just is exhausting. It's draining. It makes it really, really hard to see the forest for the trees. I had to Google that phrase because I it sent me into a brain spin. Like, do you ever say a saying and you like, you know what it's supposed to imply, like the meaning of it, but you don't know what you're actually saying? Do you guys do that? You're just saying the saying? Uh, it means that the trees are in the way. I can't see the big picture of the forest because I'm too focused on the details. This depression bullshit, it really only exists with me when I'm not distracted. So, for instance, like I have lunch with my lady friend, Emily. And uh during that time, I'm happy, I feel content. I'm not thinking about me, I get the gift of thinking about somebody else. Later that day, pick up Alistair from school. I get to spend time with Alistair. I get to listen to him talk about his day. I feel happy, I feel content. My college son, Noble, he comes back on a Friday and we hang out and we play Brotato. I feel happy, I'm content, we're laughing, we're having fun. During the day, I'm in the body doubling room in our membership community. I'm getting work done alongside other members. The work part sucks, but the company helps. During my client calls, oh my God, I get to 100% put all my focus and energy on another human being. What a gift. But the fucked up thing of it all is that when I'm alone, when it's just me with little old me, my brain turns on me. And it's not loud. It's not aggressive, it's not yelling at me like you suck, you worthless piece of junk. It's it's quiet. It's like a quiet self-disappointment. It's a passive dwelling on my lack of worth. It's like an idle rumination. It would almost be better if it was yelling at me, because then I could be like, what? What do you mean? Fuck me, fuck you. I can I could, you know, I could get angry back. Isn't that just messed up? But I am glad we're here talking about it. That's cool. I can kind of feel you saying, oh God, if this guy ties this into how to do my laundry, I'm gonna fucking lose my mind. What do you do? Why why? Why are you so I'm a productivity consultant or coach, I guess. Depends. You define the relationship and how I identify. This is how I help, you guys. So get your goddamn laundry baskets out while you're listening. Let's go. We're doing this. Oh my god. Where did I leave off? Uh, depression is dumb. Yes, that's true. It's clear to me that occupying my brain is the order of the day. Put it to use. Distract, distract, distract. I have to say that I am, I'm super grateful to be on the other end of a lot of unhealthy distractions, which ran the gamut in my life, like we were talking. Substance abuse, alcohol abuse, sex stuff, nicotine, huge coping mechanism. Mechatism? That was a huge mechanism. Binge watching shows, video games. So I'm super grateful to be on the other end of many of those nightmares. Um, if you are in one of those, I mean, I'm not an addiction specialist. Outside of being an expert at having one, they tell you that it takes 10 years to master something. So I'm a master. Nobody gives a nobody gives out a certificate for that, you know, oddly. Just a bunch of withdrawals and anger and hopelessness and fear. So anyway, what I'm saying, if you are trying to get on the other end of addiction, reach out. Uh, I could probably point you in a good direction for sure. Um, and I am always happy to share what does and does not work for me. We're all different, you and me. You know, when my dad talks about how he quit smoking, it's not how I quit. So, you know, there's that. Oh, let's talk about the I can'ts. We all have stuff to do, and a lot of us have these goals that we're like, yeah, fitness, exercise, food things, meditation. And so today I want to dig into this feeling of I can't and explore possible roads out of that for you and like for myself as well. There's two that I can speak of right now for myself that I'm dealing with this in the moment, and that's exercise and meditation. These are two things that I know that are good for me. I have experienced them and their goodness to me. And I can't, especially with the meditating. I can't. And you might be saying to yourself, but Russell, Russell, you can. You just simply aren't. And I know I can, and you'd be right. Uh, but I would like to explain why I can't, and then we'll get to the can part. But you gotta, we gotta fully peel this onion and expose the I can't for what it is. It's the dopamine neurotransysicles in can the in the lower frontal compartment of your cortex holes. There's a switch in my brain, and once it's flipped, uh, whatever it is, it's just the truth. It is what it is. I remember it most when I was quitting nicotine uh or trying to. Like back in the day, I would eliminate the pack of cigarettes, throw out the can of chew. It gets very expensive, by the way. When you're in the process of like, I'm quitting, you smoke three cigarettes, then you throw the pack out, I'm done. You hear me? And then and then later that day you buy another pack. Oh, it gets very expensive. So, like if I'm driving by the convenience store, if my brain flips the switch that says buy a pack of cigarettes, then it happens. Autopilot kicks on, and I have no control over the wheel. It's very difficult to explain to someone how you can be totally aware of what you're doing and at the same time powerless to stop it. It makes no sense. So similarly, but opposite, I guess, if I'm depressed especially, I'll think, okay, meditate. It'll be good for you. And my brain just says no. It doesn't even say no, it just it just won't allow. And I'm powerless to initiate. It's super hard to explain that to people because like if you're aware of something that you should you should technically be able to do something about it. In some cases with ADHD and depression, whatever, I don't think that's the case. That's my personal opinion. So, how do you get on the other end of this type of paralysis or this inability to activate towards a thing that you want to do, but you're not doing? And exercise is the same thing for me. Like, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it, you know? Nothing I say here is a guarantee, but this is what currently works for me. And so I gift this knowledge. I bequeath it to you. I have to stack the deck as much as possible. So for exercise, that is joining a challenge with other people. I will be referring to my membership community a lot because I'm also a member and they are my quote unquote other people that I refer to when I say that other people are the magical elixir to getting your ADHD shit together. Works for depression and anxiety as well. My membership community, that's my other people that I use. And, you know, you're always invited to be one. So I need a challenge. Shout out right now to Louve and Dave. Like we technically lost the challenge. We didn't even win it. We failed. We crawled our asses to the finish line of a challenge, but it was 12 weeks long. And what was achieved for me in that challenge was that I walked three times a week. I did strength training three days a week. And I had down depressed days in there where I didn't want to do the challenge, but because I didn't want to be the one that set the group back. So this what this was not about exercising to me. This was about like the social component, the felt accountability, the people pleasing. Like, oh, I don't want to be the guy that wrecks a thing. Oh my God. So the question then would be like, okay, so if you're struggling to move your needle forward on things that you want to do, but you just can't, can you make it about something else? Can you create a game around it? And if that requires too much thinking for you, like a lot of these ideas and solutions, they die before they get started because they require thinking, right? Or figuring it out. And that equals effort. And like when I'm depressed, I just can't make efforts. You know, if only there was a place where these ideas were pre-figured out. Well, if that's you, then just pull the trigger, join the community. That's this is my gift. This is my superpower. I can challenge people. And we already have over 30 challenges of the community and they they keep popping up. I just made a couple more because I needed them to move my needle forward. If you need quote unquote other people and you don't know where to get them, um, hello, nice to meet you. I'm literally in there every day. You want to body double with me? You want to be my other people? I'm in that body doubling room doing my goddamn podcast outreach that I hate. Marketing sucks. So come in, do your shitty thing while I'm doing my shitty thing. You'd be surprised how good it works. Challenges help. And then the other thing that helps me a lot is building things up in advance. Stacking the deck in advance, like in the moment, I don't want to do the thing, right? I can't do the thing. Let's say meditate, because that's ripe for me right now. There's so much tension to it, there's resistance to it. The idea of meditating for even two minutes is like, no, that's too much. Even though you and I, having a conversation about it, would agree that it's not actually hard to sit on a cushion. It's not physically difficult to do that for two minutes. The physical act is quite simple. So I have to know that this is going to be how I feel. I can basically rely on an inner tantrum, a screaming no, some ultra resistance. I can bank on it, I can expect it. That alone, to me, is helpful. It won't this won't catch me by surprise. I know how it will feel. So, knowing that, the question then becomes what can I do to make it happen tomorrow? Fuck today. Today's too late. I'm gonna play to my procrastination, that thing that I have in me that allows me to think about tomorrow productively by giving up today. We're gonna do that anyway, so let's do it effectively. I'll start tomorrow. If that's my nature, I'm gonna use it, okay? If I'm gonna punt a thing forward, then here's what I'm gonna do with that. Here's the criteria. I'm gonna set a timer for 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, I will pick what time I'm gonna meditate tomorrow. I will be thoughtful and realistic with my calendar. I will ask myself coaching questions, like what is gonna happen tomorrow at 2 p.m. that will prevent me from meditating as I've just scheduled. And I will make sure that I'm set up to have the potential to meditate at that time. I will have the goal of a 20-minute meditation with the minimum of a two-minute meditation. I will schedule my time for a 20-minute meditation, though. I will block out that amount of time. Then I'm gonna set a reminder to go off five minutes before because that will work for me. So I've currently set up that I know exactly when I will meditate. I've put it in my calendar. I did this all the day before when I had the energy and the brain power to do it. That takes about 10 minutes max. I bet I could probably do it in two minutes. Then I'm gonna tell somebody that I'm doing this. In my case, it's inside the membership community. Visibility on something that I want to do, it adds the potential for shame. It will feel yucky to not do what I said. And that is not a thing to avoid. That is a thing to experience safely amongst people who won't judge you. Oh yeah. We need practice at getting on the other end of that shame, right? You don't join our membership and succeed. Oh my God, please. This is about how fast can you learn from failing? How quickly can you close the gap between failing and succeeding and not be stopped and run away from the feeling of shame? At least that's what's my hope is for you. Like, let's joke about sucking at this stuff. Then let's surprise ourselves by how quickly we got on the other end of it. Because what is the alternative here? Especially in a depressive episode. The alternative is literally what? Go it alone, subscribe to and go after a normie cliche. Suck it up, what would it be? Grind it out? Willpower, just do it, get tough. I don't know. That sounds awful. So I'll tell you what I'm doing. Okay. And the members of the community, if you're listening, uh, let's do this. We'll create two badges. Two new community challenges as of right now. I'm gonna do a I should just do this meditation thing. I'm just gonna do it. Oh my god, I can feel myself hating it already. All right. So here's how it'll look. I'm gonna have 30 days that I'm gonna meditate every single day. Oh God. My brain is like saying no to that. So that makes me think it's right. Uh isn't that interesting? So the thing that I want to do, life is always better for me when I have a solid meditation practice. So that's let's just fucking do this. All righty, here's the challenge. Before the end of the day, I have to schedule tomorrow's meditation. Oh, and let's do it actually, let's do it this way. Because uh I post in the Daily Accountability Club in the morning. So in my post, I'm gonna write the time of tomorrow's meditation. The meditation can be a minimum of two minutes, goal of 20 minutes. And so let's say let's say this. So in 30 days, I have to have at least meditated 20 minutes, like three times. That's that's doable. That should be good. That'll be a good one if you want to play with me. And then also I'm gonna do a uh a body doubling room challenge. I'm gonna make it open-ended. So, like once you do 30 work sessions in the bottled body double room, you get a badge. So it's up to you how fast you do it. At least in Erica will probably get one in about two days. Um I'll race you guys. We're gonna be in there literally all day. And you, glorious listener, um, come on in. Join the community and you join the body doubling room challenge. Come and body double with me. Get your shit together with me. It'll be fun. It'll be fun. We'll wave at each other. All right, you guys, I hope that helps. The I can'ts are brutal. Hopefully, there is a thing or two in here that helps you, and you know I'm around. So if you need additional support, go check out the ADHDB Brother.com website. You can see the various ways that I can help. Uh, as of this podcast, I have one spot for one on one clients. So if you need that extra high touch help, uh, you can reach out. And with that, hope you guys have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.