248 - My Normie Son's Tough Love To Me

Noble gave me some tough love that turned out to be absolutely brilliant advice for the adult with ADHD. 

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The episode Noble and I did 6 years ago: Episode 7 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1176524/episodes/6316792

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So my son called me out really good the other day. And I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Maybe that's because I have a rumination problem. I don't know. Oh, it was such a good call out, and this episode just kind of manifested from it. So I think that's what we're going to talk about. My son and his smart mouth. 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, Rush Jones. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's craptastic. 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. Super excited to be talking with you guys today. A lot of cool stuff is happening right now. And so let's discuss. I joined a new mastermind recently. I just like I like being around helpers and learning how they're helping, and it's flippin' neat. Uh I learn their strategies and how they do stuff. I share how I'm doing things. That is the best way to grow. So the mastermind first sesh happened. That was super great. I'm in another two-person type mastermind with my friend Shelby. She's a therapist. She's somebody who has this way of talking about things. I really respond to metaphors, and oh my God, does she have them? She's going to come to ADHD Brothers. She's going to give us a QA on therapy, the different modalities, somatic experiencing, talk therapy. I am fascinated by all of it. Um, so she's going to come in and she's going to give us a chat ski poo about it. It'll be a live, uh, it's going to be a members-only event inside our community. So to get access to the live call and the recording, you need to be a member. So just hit the link in the show notes. Join the community. Get on in there. Uh, but man, when do we get the opportunity to shoot the shit with a therapist off the couch? Um, so that's super cool. Let us pivot now to the mental health report. So every episode, every single episode nowadays requires us to normalize the conversation about how we're doing the skull spaghetti, man. It's it's good sometimes, it's bad sometimes, it's really freaking weird sometimes. We're not always fine, you know. So let's be cool talking about it. Nothing needs to be done. We're just sharing, you know. I, as you all may be aware, I've been in a depressive episode for I God, it's been close to a month now, maybe. Not awful, really, but kind of awful when I'm alone. That's but I'm noticing that my cynicism, the dark thoughts, my opposition to everything, this melancholy, it's easing up a bit. Trying to squeeze in the meditations. Thank you, Tik Not Han, for your mindfulnesses. Um I am so fucking scared to say that I'm doing good because I'm afraid I'll jinx it, but that is my truth right now. My mood state as I'm writing this is pretty good. I was over at Emily's the other day for dinner. Um she's my girlfriend. I love her dearly, and uh she was checking in on me and asking me if I was down. Um and I didn't feel down. But I guess like I guess normal Russ is usually like jovial and happy. I'm not usually a guy that's absent of emotion, like when I'm around people. I'm not usually just like, yeah, yeah, I'm here. So, you know, hey, how you doing?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I'm usually like, hey, this is neat, you're neat, this is all neat. Wow, let's talk about it. Tell me more about you.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

And so if I'm like regular, like if people are like, hey, is something going on? Anyway, my mental health is good. I'm good today. So let's just one day at a time this sucker uh today, good, and let's ride that wave. Okay, okay, so my 20-year-old son, this is Noble, he was actually on the podcast six years ago. I don't remember what we we talked about, uh, but he's a normie. He's our normie, he's our loving, loving normie. We haven't had him formally diagnosed as a normie, but uh we've always had our hunches, right? Um, you know, the signs have always been there. Like we've caught him effectively managing his time, we've seen him turning in homework assignments on time. So the signs were there. We just never made the appointment, you know, to go to the doctor and officially stamp him uh with the normie stamp. I have definitely watched him and asked myself questions like, how the fuck does he do that? How does he just do these things? Good gravy. Anyway, I don't know if if you've guessed this or not about us, but like uh we are a loving but heavy on the shit talking type of family. You know how like Martin Short and Steve Martin are to each other, like that's my family. Like we love each other, we absolutely make fun of each other, it's super great, it's all good. And so this happened recently. So, like one of the things that I do with my kids, you know, we're in a divorced household, so um, everybody gets along great. We are the we are unicorns of co-parenting. So, but my kids uh will play video games, we'll get on headset. So even when they're at Gail's house, we can we can still play video games and shoot the shit. So we started playing Fortnite again, and this is all gonna tie in, and I'm gonna provide you guys with a metaphor that isn't video game related. So, you know, just to be inclusive. So Fortnite is like one of those Call of Duty type shooter games. It's less on the realism, which is uh I'm not too crazy about, but it's more like the cartoonish aspects of these shooter games. But you can build ramps and walls as a defense and an offense. It's a skill that some people are incredibly fast at. And the other day after a session of playing, I was telling Noble, I was like, Man, I suck at building. Building is so hard, and I'm just no good at it. And Noble said to me, Dad, you're not good at building because you're not trying to be good at building. And then he went on to make fun of it, like, yeah, you just panic. You get into a box and you start flicking, you just flicking controller buttons. And that's true, and that's what that is what I do. Um, so then he went into this big normie speech about getting into creative mode practicing, and I was like, ah, why do you have to be so smart and right? And then what I do is I credit steel, I'll turn it and I'll say, Well, I'm your dad. I raised you into that outlook, so good for me for daddy that into you. You're welcome. That's my work right there. I'm like, good call. Guy, he punched me right in the ego. So he went on to tell me to get my ass into the creative world, practice building, so that I'm better at it and not some freak who clicks all the buttons in a panic mode when I'm being attacked. Fair point to the no scums, and a message was received. So I dwelled on that for a while because that's what happens to me. I dwell uh and I loved it because it just so perfectly made sense to me. So let me give you the sports analogy of it, and then I'll give you the ADHD productivity analogy of it because it's all so magical and brilliant. The easiest to view this across the board is free throws in basketball. We're all pretty familiar with that, I think. You're never gonna be good at free throws if you only ever shoot free throws when you get fouled in a ball game. You need to shoot the free throws when you don't have to shoot the free throws over and over and over and over again so that when you are fouled in a game, you're way more likely to make the shot. Doesn't guarantee anything, but oh my god, how much more likely? This just makes so much sense. So now let's bring that into the world of ADHD and productivity. We want things to feel right in order to be able to do them. So that means we have the motivation for it, the desire to do it, the mental bandwidth for it. We want conditions to be right in order to do stuff. According to our diagnosis, it's not a want, it's a need. Our brain needs interest or urgency or novelty. And adults with ADHD, like all of us late in lifers, we are so programmed to use those things to make things as right as possible. So we herald our urgency is like, oh, superpower. Because, oh man, look at how awesome I am when I'm about to be fired and people are yelling at me, and I'm about to let everybody down, and I'm shitting my pants because I'm ruled with anxiety, but look at me go! My focus is off the charts. Yahoo! My approach to ADHD, it's very task-driven. It's literally what Noble said to me. We don't get better at important tasks that don't ever feel right in the moment because we aren't trying to be good at them. We're trying to alter everything else. We're trying to alter everything we can around the task so that it feels right. And this is where I'm this is a personal opinion, so it might be divergent. I don't know, but this is where the insanity of our ADHD culture is to me. It's that we're all looking to globally diagnose the problem of a task before we have it and implement a solution in the form of a big system or a way of being for that problem. And then we wonder why it never works. Because we're literally different every day. I mentioned this last time, I think I did, but like there's a million reasons why you might not have the juice justifiably to do a task. There's so many elements. But how are you gonna get better if you don't practice? If your goal was, I'm gonna get better at free throws, but I need the right shoes, but I need the right ball, but I need to make sure that I have the right breakfast so that my energy is ideal. But I need to make the basketball court make sure it's swept good and the shorts feel weird. So I need to have different shorts that fit right first. The net seems ratty and tearing. I'm like, we just gotta get on the court and start shooting free throws. And then that's our problem, right? The whole just doing the thing. Because I you can't tell me to just do the laundry. So holy shit, we have an extra challenge on our hands, don't we? So here's the steps. This I'm an ADHD coach. This is what I see working, this is what works for me, and this is what I promote. Okay, step one, you gotta know what the task is. You're not gonna go to the basketball court and just kind of you know see what the vibe is. You've determined that free throws are important, and whether you were into it or not, you're shooting free throws for 30 minutes at noon on Wednesday. Be specific. That's how specific it has to be. For this one thing that you're doing, not for every single aspect of your day, not for every part of your life. This is just 30 minutes Wednesday at noon, that's the 30 minutes of misery. And the step two is you're not allowed to what if? You know, what if something else comes up? What if my leg hurts? But what if I get a phone call? What if it takes longer? What if my kids need me? What if I don't want to quit? Can't. You scheduled it, you said it was important already. You did pre-work to determine it was important. So, and you put it in your calendar because you determined that you had the time. Done. Now go think about something else. Go do that fun thing you wanted to do. You've got an appointment with yourself to do a shitty thing that's important Wednesday at noon. Today is Tuesday. Go have fun on Tuesday. Step three, know that your task is gonna be riddled with tension. And just know that there's no escape from it. There's no escape from the suffering in the moment. That's why you said it's only 30 minutes. So there's an end to the misery so that you can see visually that you have more time for the fun, unplanned stuff, and you're only hanging out in misery for 30 minutes. The task is going to blow. Misery will exist. Your focus will be shitty. If you know it's coming, it's so much easier if you accept it. This is it's not supposed to feel good. You know, maybe it doesn't suck one day, but wow, that's that'll be an amazing day. Cool, neat. Step number four when the time comes, shoot the metaphorical free throws. Practice the building. This is not about the task. Let's say that your free throws are sending out invoices. I mean, what a pain in the ass. Sending invoices is what you use to practice the skill of shooting the free throw, which for ADHDers is doing a thing even though you're practicing doing a thing even though the tension sucks. It's like exposure therapy to the dramatic misery of a task. And it only lasts 30 minutes, or make it 20 minutes, or make it 10, 5, whatever. It's just practicing doing a shitty thing while feeling however you feel in that moment. And there is an exit, and it's at whatever the timer is that you set. I, as your coach, don't give a shit about a finished task. I don't care if it's done. I don't care, none of that matters. What matters is like you're true, we're trying to be able to get to a point where we can do this shit on our own, right? Where you don't need a coach, right? So it's like, okay, so practice doing shit even though, and over and over and over again until you're like, okay, I know what it feels like to do shitty things. Okay, cool. I got this. Some people that can they can get it quicker than others, some people it takes a long time because ADHD makes important tasks seem so not now. It's so, let's do it later. That's why proximity to support is so crucial, especially when you're starting to work on this. It's why I built ADHD Big Brother. It's why I use ADHD Big Brother for my own goals and my own daily accountability. It's why I offer daily accountability to my one-on-one people. Because this stuff can be miserable, man. Behavior change is never lovely. Ooh, I can't wait to, I can't wait to completely modify my behavior. I can't wait for it's like if you think that just whipping your mindset into some new perspective is gonna turn the dishes into some like bibbity bobbity wonderful experience. I think you might be wrong. That's that's my personal opinion, but I think you might be wrong. Um feel free to reach out, tell me that I'm wrong. Um but we have ADHD. ADHD doesn't give a shit about your mindset, you'd be on top of the world, man. You could believe in yourself. Oh my god, you could love yourself, you could know that you're great and all your greatness and your emotions are feeling good. And when it comes time to mail that bill that you forgot about and deal with it, your brain will say, You what? You're in a good mood. You should just go enjoy nature right now. Here, I'll give you the motivation for it. Here, here's some extra motivation that you rarely get. So go, go enjoy. Take advantage of this. The bill was due two months ago, and who cares about what extra day? You'll come back to it later. Experience the glory of life. And then you get your car repoed while you're out. Super fun. This is it. If it's not novel, if it's not urgent, and if it's not of interest, it goes into the this sucks and this is wrong for me right now category. And ADHD cares very little. Your mindset shift, it's literally a small hurdle for ADHD to work around. Oh, I just gotta make you think something else real quick. And it will. So I'm like, okay, so what if you have a fixed mindset? Oh God, how are you gonna get on in life with a fixed mindset? You're never gonna grow. Okay, well, ADHD is hard, and no matter what you do in life is hard. So, okay, so with that mindset, shoot a metaphorical free throw. I think we get our ultimate like shifting of perspective through the doing, through the insights that we get from the doing. We see improvements that we could make through the doing. I see this in our community all the time. People slog it out for a couple of days and they realize, oh, I think if I just implemented this one thing, it could make it easier because they have the experience of the effort. I'm a big nerd. Can you guys tell that I'm a big nerd for who you are now? I'm like whoever you are right now, be you. And then what does it take for you right now, with all the shitty self-loathing perspective, with all the fixed mindset, bullshit feelings, all that stuff? What does it take for you, that you, to do this thing that you've deemed important but not necessary today? How does that person do that thing? Try getting good at building, try shooting free throws, try carving out 30 minutes of your life a few times a week to do something that you believe is important, but that you will absolutely not do and practice your free throws. And if you're a late-in-life diagnosed human person with ADHD and you've tried to do this work on your own, you still can't get yourself to do these things that you keep telling yourself you should be able to do, then I want you to join our program. I want you to join ADHD, big brother, and I want you to take a risk on it before you know how it'll work for you. Risk this being just another thing that you spent money on and it didn't work. Thank God it was so inexpensive. This is never gonna feel right. It's never gonna be right or the right time to do this work. That's the nature of our chaotic brain. Oh, I just gotta get my head above water first. No. Our lives are always too busy, our lives are always too chaotic. There's always too many good, justifiable reasons to not try. So I built a place to help you when you have no time, when you have no ability to do these things on your own. Just being around the support will help you. Just seeing how other people are engaged and what they are working on will help you. It'll give you ideas. It might just inspire you. I know we all want to be able to do this stuff on our own. And if you can, great. If you aren't, if it's not happening, then join us. I have my shit together for the most part, but I go back to day one all the time. I just went back to day one this week. Big deal. I try to do things on my own. I am capable of doing things on my own, but some things, sometimes things are just really fucking hard. ADHD doesn't go away. So we we gotta have support. Take the support until you don't need it anymore. It's almost like, you know, like if you break your arm, if you're if there's something that you need to work on, put it in a cast, even though you don't want to wear a cast, even though it feels bad, even though you don't want to have it, it's you're gonna heal quicker. Anyway, get in the community, man. Join, jump into our body doubling room. There's somebody in there all the time. Lisa, Rupa, Ray, Ryan, Erica. I see in there. I'm in there. All in the body doubling room. We're getting our shitty things done together because misery loves company. Alrighty, I gotta get going. I obviously have to practice 15 minutes of Fortnite building training. That's what I'm gonna do. It's super boring. Uh, you'd think that playing video games is some kind of a bonus fun thing, but I'm using it to practice the skill of doing what I said. And when my 15-minute timer goes off, I'll stop and I'm gonna do something that I want, something that does feel right, something that my whims fancy. And that's how you do ADHD. All right, any questions, comments, concerns? Feel free to reach out. I'm I'm available. Head over to adhbigbrother.com, get all your queries answered. If getting started is literally the hardest thing for you, I've got a framework for it. Ready, set, go. It's in, it's there. Go to my website, grab it, it's for free. And with that, I do hope you have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.