By Sara Raynor
Before my ADHD diagnosis I spent years believing I did my best work last-minute and with a deadline. I worried and ruminated in order to remember to do things. This became a cycle of adrenaline and cortisol that drained me and was detrimental to my health. When this cycle was identified after my ADHD diagnosis, I’ve worked with different therapists to break out of the worry and adrenaline dependence, but very little clicked until I was able to visualize it as working in different gears.
If you’re anything like me you are great in an emergency but struggle to follow through or get any satisfaction out of everyday tasks. That means when I work at 110% out of necessity I also get results at 110% so then anything less than that feels like failure. What if we didn’t measure everything based on our results in crisis mode?
When we are not trying to make a deadline, we see slower progress, maybe we cannot complete something in a few hours and we see it as not good enough. We also have more time to second guess ourselves and don’t trust our first instincts because we don’t feel as engaged in our work. Ask yourself what it would feel like to work at 20% to get 20% done. Is that a failure or is it progress?
How would our lives improve if we gave ourselves permission to shift down to different gears for different tasks? Less demanding tasks do not need 110% of our attention or interest. Moving forward is forward progress even if it is not your very best every single day. We might recover something in health and longevity by not forcing ourselves to give peak performance for every project. We might be happier and have more energy if we didn’t constantly deplete our already short dopamine and serotonin stores.
Part of that is learning to trust the process and our abilities. Learning to work in lower gears may be a muscle that we have to strengthen. As we get more comfortable allowing ourselves to work in lower gears it will get easier to start things when our energy is low, or not to judge ourselves when we don’t care that much. Pacing is not easy for people with ADHD and we can get into cycles of self criticism for our own output, but allowing ourselves to explore other gears may help our health and mental well being in all of our environments.
I like this analogy a lot. It actually makes so much sense!