235 - ADHD, Depression, and All That Shiddidoo

The theme for this episode should be "Wednesday is going to happen". No matter how we feel about life, the depression, the overwhelm, the joy or the sorrow...Wednesday is still going to happen. And I would like to help us put a lasso around it and be the one in control of it. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Isn't it funny that no matter how good or bad life is, or no matter how up or down we are, no matter how close to the apocalypse we find ourselves, or how enlightened we are in the moment, no matter what, in good times and in bad, we're still going to run out of eggs. Again, and I feel like I just bought them. 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, Rush 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. Welcome to the podcast. I'm happy you guys are here. Even though I can't see you, I'm happy. The fact that you showed up to listen. Uh am I with you on a walk? That's awesome. Get that cardio going. Are you doing your housework? I'm so sorry, but way to go. I hope this makes it easier for you. Um, I'm gonna share some ADHD Big Brother stuff right quick. Inside our membership community, we have a few events happening mid-April. I am trying, I'm trying to do things in advance. It is really hard for me to do. I am a last-minute Larry. There's some events happening uh mid-April. They're kind of similar to Conquering Your Turd Mountain. If you guys um remember hearing about that, uh, I'm calling it ADHD School Spaghetti 101. Even though I'm not a crazy educational person, uh the title seemed fun to me. Uh, it's taking a look at how you manage the life cycle of a task. And this is born out of what I've seen in my one-on-one coaching practice. It's what I see in people's systems. Generally, life is chaos, it's overwhelming. We have too much shit to do. We can't get our head around it. And when we audit how we handle the day, there are really, you see, inefficiencies in the process. Not to sound too clinical about it, but it's not too hard to spot. And so I love this workshop. And it's not me lecturing you on how you're fucking up. I'm not coaching anybody. We keep it small, so these will be like seven members maximum, and it's interactive. We discuss our five areas, which I'll tell you in a minute, but where uh it's where we are now with those areas. It can be very eye-opening and helpful, I find, to hear how other people are handling their stuff. And then I share how I currently am handling my stuff. And the areas are how we capture ideas, how we prioritize, how we calendar, how we handle out of sight, out of mind, and how we handle the moment. Because it, you know, it doesn't matter how tight and efficient your scheduling and your planning is. In the moment, you won't want to do the thing. So there's tools to do to work on that. And what are those tools? It's a great opportunity to experience how other people can help your journey. And that's my main mission with our membership community, just in general. That's like a it's so important. And then I'm also going to be bringing back accountability buddies around the same time. We're partnering up, maybe in groups, to get shit done. So if you're looking for that extra support, join now. We have a body doubling room challenge going on right now. There's a few of us trying to get 30 sessions in the body doubling room. Who's the first that can get there? So that's that. The membership community is my answer to how you can get the benefits of ADHD coaching without the cost. This is as good as it gets, in my opinion. Um, if you know how to log in to an app, there you go. Join the community and then download the app. If you do need more high-touch help, I have one one-on-one slot as of this recording. If you need that private coaching or consulting, I do them both. Coaching to me, it's more, it's like when you basically have the answers inside of yourself, you have epiphanies and they just need to be popped out like a zit. Oh, yeah. You didn't know that you didn't know that that's what an epiphany was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the spiritual equivalent to popping a zit. It can be so satisfying, right? But it's not without its pussy goop. And so that is the work to be done. There is cleanup to do. Um, and I ask you the questions and challenge you and hold you accountable to honoring your solutions. Consulting is like when you have no idea and you just need the answers that will work for you in your brain, you need some guidance. I operate on both sides. It really depends on you. And so I'm also opening up another weekly group for our consistency crew. That one, if you're if wrangling your shit and doing the things is something that you need that extra help with, extra visibility, extra accountability, consistency crew is great for that. And I max those out at four to five people because you have to participate. This isn't one of those sit back and passively try to absorb the learnings. You already know the things. You know it's the dopamine already. You know it's your neurotransmitter blasters aren't firing when you're trying to send the emails. You know there's a fucking problem. So let's solve it for you. I'm not so crazy about the learning anymore. I've read all the books too, you guys. I mean, what are we gonna do? Hope that somebody's book now has that one piece of missing information that we've been waiting for. Oh my god, everything makes sense now. We thought it was dopamine A. Guys, it's dopamine C3PO. It's they've successfully broken dopamine into 15 parts now. So which one is it for you? Oh my god. I'm talking out of my ass right now, so don't Google how many dopamine participles there are. I'm just making a fucking joke about it. How about we try this? Because I'm not anti-science or reading books. I love that stuff. But while you are digging into it, while you're learning about yourself and whying yourself and whoing yourself and whating yourself, while you're doing that, let's take the car out on the road and drive it. Let's get into it. Let's learn by doing and sucking and failing and sucking harder with people that don't judge. Suck at life, be curious, zoom out and be objective. Like, what happened factually? What happened? Okay, whatever. I'm in coach mode, moving on. Uh, if you need help, book a chat. It's in the links in the show notes. All right, mental health report. Okay. Okay, we're normalizing talking about our skull spaghetti, right? Yes, yes, we are. That's what we're doing. Yes. Uh, we're not always fine. We got to talk about the good, the bad, and the weird, right? We need a place where we can explore and be ourselves. So I will do my part. Here's me. This is the Russell Jones mental health report. Do do ding doo ding dunk. Squonk. Let me peel my onion down for you. Uh, if you've been following along, I've been in a low mood state. That is such a nice way to say I've uh I've been I've been so depressed. It's been pretty bad. The intrusive thoughts were pretty sucky. Um, but that was then. This is me today. Uh I don't want to say I resonate with the idea that I'm coming out of a depression. Um, that just doesn't seem right. Uh what I would say is that the intrusive thoughts, they're not as debilitating. I'm not as lasso'ed by them. They happen, they're there, they're like annoying flies buzzing around me. And it's sort of like, you know, like a cow or a horse tail. I'm not shooing them away. They just they're they're a little bit easier to shoe away. So I don't actively feel like I'm not depressed, uh, but I'm not debilitated by it currently. And so that's yay for me. And I'll tell you a couple things that have been helping me. Obviously, the membership community, that's where I live and where I get all my own stuff going. So thank you guys in there. Uh sharing in there helps. Doing the challenges that I'm doing is helpful. Shout out to Debbie. Debbie's got a made a challenge, and I'm using that one to meditate every day, and that's working. It's helping. Um, I'm in the body doubling room a lot. That gets me out of my head. It helps. I'm also trying this new thing that I learned when I was being interviewed for this ADHD toolbox live event thing. I'll link the event in the show notes if you guys want to register for it. It seems pretty cool. It's like a two-day event. It's free. A lot of heavy hitters in there, a lot of big timers, a lot of biggies, your Brooke Schnittmans, your Nikki Kinzers, your Jeff Coppers, and your Eric Tivers, the superstars, you know? You can go watch them live. This is how they promo it. I'll just read it. Uh, top experts reveal secrets for reduced anxiety, improved focus, and emotional regulation to dramatically improve behavior. All right. You got behavior you want to improve? You got an emotion you want to regulate? That sounds good to me. Learn from the masters themselves. Uh, but I was interviewed by Alma Galvin, I believe that's uh how you pronounce it, um, for the pre-recorded side, had a blast talking to her offline about her life, her story, and I was doing some shit talking about affirmations, as we know that I'm wont to do. I love to do a good shit talk about affirmations. You guys have been depressed, okay? I don't have anything nice to say about affirmations. They can suck it. Maybe I need some emotional regulation helps. Anyway, but she gave me this really cool exercise. She invited me to try setting intentions as opposed to declaring affirmations, right? And I am a lab rat for myself. You tell me a thing works for you, you tell me a thing that you're doing and that it's going well, I will try it for 30 days. I may come across as shit talkie, you guys, but I will try a thing. I will throw in with the thing. I will believe and hope that it works. Absolutely anything and everything. And then I'll let you know 30 days later. Is it a magical elixir or a total crock of shit? I don't know. Let's find out. So I'm in, I'm game. Um, so she gave me this exercise. She called it Soothing Heart. I Googled around, and there's aspects of it that you can find online. We ended up recording it after the interview so that I could share the video of it in the membership. It's like a three-minute meditation and it's working, you guys. Um, if you want to reach out to Alma, I'm gonna put some links in the show notes. Um, but I don't want to I don't want to tell you what the exercise is and get into a hole like here's the exercise, do this, A, B, and C. Um, you could reach out to her for that. Or if you're in the membership, I'll I'll point you guys to it when you're in there. So my mental health is getting better every day, and that's enough. And spoil alert, that's the mantra that I use in the soothing heart meditation. Um, but I'm only two days in, so we we need to give it some time. I think it's working though. Uh I want to philosophize with you guys a little bit today. Uh, so everybody gather around the campfire, we're gonna talk, we're gonna shoot the shit about some stuff. You wanna? Uh, I've been pretty self-aware of these things. Uh let's call them tasks. Uh that's the common uh phrase for shit we have to do. This really is a thing that I I just percolate on this stuff. So I may as well pass it along to you. Um, I was in the kitchen and I ran out of coffee filters. And I thought I have to get coffee filters. Stay with me on this, it gets great. And then I thought, here's another fucking thing I have to do for the rest of my life. Get coffee filters, and that spiraled me into all the things. There are so many things that are ongoing that are never done, and they repeat always. Yes, I could give up coffee, and then I'm running out of tea bags, or then I'm running out of water filters, and then I have the there's gonna be groceries, there's always gonna be bills, there's always gonna be dishes. Am I poking you in the overwhelm? Is that your overwhelm? Misery loves company. Come on in, come on into the waters are warm in my misery. There's just tasks to do, always, right? And they do overwhelm. These tasks, they keep growing and they're real and they do have to happen. I mean, okay, as a single parent, I mean, even if you're not a single, even if you're a married parent, whatever, you have shit to do. Even though you're stressed out, you got shit to do, even though you're depressed, even though you're overwhelmed, you're riddled with anxiety, you have shit to do. That to me, this is my quest. I can't wait around for my inner neurocraptasticos to fire correctly before I fucking take the car to get serviced. I don't have the financial capacity to just let things go, take a month off, you know, and recenter all my chakras or something I would personally actually love to do. I would love that. And I'm actually working on it. I would love to reacclimate my heart center. I would love that, but I have shit to do. I've got shit to do. Shitda do. That should be my mantra. That's gonna be my mantra when I meditate. I have shida do. So much fucking shada do. Do you guys have shit to do? Probably. Anyway, here's my imposter syndrome for you. In my mind, my brain is like, nobody wants to hear about how to do stuff while they're drowning, you asshole. That's how that's what my brain says. I'm like, but somebody has to hang out in the sandbox. You know what I mean? Someone has to be open for business to help move a needle forward with some tools. I don't know. Nobody wants nobody's in the mood to talk about or hear them, but nobody truly wants to hear the nuts and bolts because we keep hearing it. We keep hearing that these are the things that we need to do. But we want the hugs and the cuddles. I I do. That's what I would prefer. I would prefer a big ass hug. Emily, uh, you're on notice. I need a hug. I love hugs and cuddles. Someone to tell me that it makes sense that I feel this way. I love that. You know, hugs and cuddles are awesome. But Wednesday, you know, Wednesday is still coming with all its bullshit Wednesdayness. I'm not gonna meditate my taxes away. So, I mean, what do I do with my time? I wholeheartedly um uh throw in with it. I don't know what I would say this, like the holistic stuff. I'm that's the kind of person I am. I am that kind of I think that's it's all great. I do all kinds of exercises and resets and meditations. I'm a holistic motherfucker. Uh I don't take pills for my skull spaghetti because I mean they work great. Uh I just I happen to be the side effects guy. You all you if you guys listen, you know that. So it's no big deal. I made a choice. I I don't want to experiment with the 500,000 options there are medicinally. Uh I don't have it in me to try them all out until I find one that works. You know, I'm not up for it. Maybe that changes later. So I'm doing the holistic work. Even if I might sound a little on the shit talky side, uh, I like it. I do it. You know, but the work takes time. Holistic work is rarely, if ever, an immediate sort of fix. It always with me, this is my experience with it. The realization that is always a hindsight. Like I meditated for years, and then one day something doesn't bother me like it used to, and I think, oh, meditation. Huh.

unknown 15:39

Huh?

SPEAKER_00 15:41

How about that? How about that now? What are you who'd a thunk it? Um, so how do we handle Wednesday? You know? I can't shove a year's worth of meditating and holistic wellness into Tuesday afternoon in preparation for my god awful Wednesday. Wednesday is coming and it's still gonna be too much. It's still gonna bite me in the ass, and it's still gonna try to keep me down and freak me out, and whatever it is. So, what about all these things that like we hate? We say they won't work for us because we know ourselves and we've tried them before, the tools, the tricks, the timers. Who's sick of hearing me talk about timers, tips, strategies, the to-do list stuff? If you hear the word to-do list one more time, are you gonna punch me? Calendaring. Who wants to murder me over the word calendaring? These things that make us feel like a remedial child, the things that we don't want to feel like we need, things that we are so overhearing about, yeah, but we don't do them, right? They're these practices to survive Wednesday, so that Wednesday night, like when we accomplish the tasks of Wednesday, that we don't have as much guilt or shame of having not done the thing again, and we can actually feel okay about maybe carving out a little time for that holistic stuff, whatever it is, you know. Finally get your crystals lined up in a row, or tarot cards, or pray, or take your bubble bath, or try to shove the wall over, do that, those kind of exercises, or your guided chakra meditations. I like those. You can do them guilt-free, preventative style, instead of like how we normally do it in order to just like recover our mental health in the moment. Anyway, we're all different, we're all unique. Maybe uh you want a break from thinking about Wednesday. Um, and I think that's cool. I want you to take care of your skull spaghetti. That's I think the the number one order of the day, right? Take care of your skull spaghetti. Um, but I'm always going to be focused on Wednesday. That's my role on this planet is to give a shit about Wednesday. Somebody has to still give a shit about Wednesday. So, like when you're ready to handle Wednesday, I'm here for it. I have a buttload of tools and tips and tricks and strategies and encouragement. I've got all kinds of light in me for you. I just, you know, struggle to point it at myself sometimes. But I'm not afraid of your chaos. I think it's a beautiful mystery of how we specifically efficiently manage our time. I think I've just exposed myself as being like a a nerd for moving our needles forward. But like, seriously, ask yourself this. Okay, so if you did the things that you said you were gonna do, that you said you had to do, if you did them when you said you had to do them, and you were able to decide like you needed to do them today, you decided what you needed to do today and what you didn't have to do today, and you decided those things, and then if you made those decisions for Wednesday and you did them, how would that be for you? And I mean, I know it would be great if we could like do them all while we're skipping to the beat of our favorite song, you know, frolicking about. Like, what if you did them while you were super fucking angry or sad or confused or overwhelmed or apathetic? How many times did I do shit apathetically? And like, what if you were able to thoughtfully decide on a time when you were going to do your holistic stuff, your self-care stuff? Like it was a shitty task to accomplish, like it's a to-do item. What if you were able to have that Wednesday? What would that look like for you? What would what if you did that five out of seven days? Who would you be at the end of that week? So, this is my opinion. Apologies for my bluntness. If you have ADHD, you have ADHD. That that is your brain. It's it's a type of brain, and you naturally suck at this stuff. We naturally suck at this stuff. This is our gift. This is you know, this is our superpower. So now what? What do we do? Learn skills, and we've already learned them, we've learned them all, right? You've watched every single one of the YouTube videos, you know the skills. Try the skills, take it beyond. I can see it not working for me. That's not for me. I don't like it. I don't like those skills. These are the skills. Practice the skills. And by actually practicing them, by doing them, you're gonna figure out how to make them work for you. That's where the beauty and the creative process of this, these bullshit tasks and doing them comes from. From doing them, you'll realize things like, oh, if what if I did this instead of that? And that's when those things come. They don't come idly sitting back and dwelling and figuring out. It comes from the doing, in my experience. Practice them again and again and again and again and again. It takes like six months for things to become the new autopilot. It takes a long time. So that's six months worth of making a decision. And decision making can be very, very hard. And that's it. That's it. Yeah, decisions are hard. All right. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Anyway, that's all I wanted to talk about today. My challenge for you guys, hey, try this. Plot out your Wednesday on a Tuesday. Yeah, when you have the energy to figure out a Wednesday. It's super hard to do this stuff in the moment. So figure out your Wednesday on a Tuesday. Be realistic and thoughtful about what you can truly accomplish and what you will accomplish. Don't shove your whole to-do list on there with all your hopes and your dreams. What are the few things that you are going to get done and when? And if you need help with this bullshit work, reach out. I will help you if I can. Our membership is that is what we are built on. Go explore the show notes and sign up for the ADHD Toolbox live event. Yeah, fun times. And all right, guys. Hope you have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.