Welcome back to ADHD-ish. If you are feeling a bit “off”, upset, depressed or easily triggered, this episode is for you. 

Most of the advice we hear on managing ADHD traits is about disorganization and distractibility, but emotional dysregulation is also part of ADHD and can really impact us in both our personal and professional lives. 

It’s OK to not be OK right now. It’s understandable to want to pull the covers over your head or punch the pillows. 

But, you have a business to run, so how do you get, and stay regulated during trying times? Here are the 5 key takeaways from this episode you won't want to miss:

1. Exercise for resilience:  I bought a Peloton to eliminate excuses, but also to hop on and burn off frustration and irritability but you can accomplish the same with a brisk walk.
2. ADHD-Friendly Meditation: Yes, meditation IS possible with an ADHD brain! Learn how to start a practice that suits you and why it's a game-changer for emotional regulation.
3. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): Ever heard of tapping? This strategy can be used to maintain your calm, but also as emotional first aid when you get triggered. 
4. Pro-social emotions to up-regulate: gratitude, pride, compassion & simple ways to remember to do so 
5. Setting Boundaries: With the holidays approaching, boundaries are crucial. Learn to protect your emotional space from toxic interactions and enjoy a more peaceful season.

A special Thank You to Connie Zanderzanden and Sugarwish for demonstrating care, compassion and gratitude with a special gift package of teas this week.  

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• ADDitude Magazine article on pro-social activities to build emotional resilience 
• Do you have a Peloton?  Connect with me!  My Peloton handle is ADHD-ish (obviously)
• Episode of ADHD-ish on Meditation for Busy Brains with Guest Jude Star 
• Podcast Episode on Emotional Freedom Technique with Kate Moryoussef 
• Rick Hanson, PhD Taking in the Good 

My framework for ADHD-ish solopreneurs, The Boss Up Breakthrough is a 1:1 strategy, coaching and mentorship program that turns your hidden gem into a stand-out, sought-after, profitable business based on your unique brilliance.  

Over the course of 12 weeks, we transform your positioning, packaging, pricing and promoting and remove everything holding you back. 

Want to start NOW, lay the foundation, then take a break for the holidays and pick up again in January?  Schedule a free consultation to see if we’re a fit.

Not ready to work together, but want to share the love?  Rate and Review ADHD-ish and subscribe/follow on your favorite podcast player! 

© 2024 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops  / All rights reserved. Outro music by Vladimir /  Bobi Music / All rights reserved. 

Well, hey, boss, it's Diann Wingert, the host of ADHD-ish, the podcast for business owners with big ideas and busy brains. And if you're anything like me and most of the people that I've been talking to for the last couple of weeks, whether you are in the US like I am or not, you can probably relate to the topic of today's episode, Prioritizing Peace During Turbulent Times. If you're listening to this anytime close to the time it was recorded, then the recent US presidential election is far from a distant memory. As a matter of fact, the very next day, I was receiving Voxer messages and emails from all over because I'm here in the US and because friends and clients outside the country were paying very close attention to the election as was I.

A lot of people are excited about the results of the election and a lot of people are upset. So I think it's safe to say that emotions are stirred up. And one of the things that is, I believe, evidence of the gender bias in the identification of ADHD and in meeting the diagnostic criteria is we are still placing far too much emphasis on the cognitive brain, and I think not enough emphasis on the emotional brain when it comes to identifying who has ADHD or ADHD-ish tendencies and who does not.

It's also one of the reasons why so many people who actually should be identified with ADHD are actually diagnosed with other things that they don't have, including bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, because folks with ADHD have emotional dysregulation issues. It is part of how ADHD affects our brain and if you want to make a simple division into cognitive brain and emotional brain, then the emotional dysregulation that many of us are feeling right now is squarely in the camp of the emotional brain. Now the focus for most intervention with ADHD is still on the cognitive brain. And that would make sense because if that's where most of the diagnostic criteria come from, then of course, that's where most of the intervention is going to be focused. But for many people, the emotional dysregulation of ADHD, the fact that we can run hot and cold, we tend to be very excitable people.

When we are interested in something, we're fascinated. You might even say obsessed. And if we are frustrated or annoyed, that can become anger or outrage really, really quickly and guess what? Emotions get stronger with use. So if we don't have ways of regulating our emotions when we're dysregulated, we will tend to become more dysregulated over time. And because all behavior is habit forming and nobody wants to feel like a weirdo in their social group, we will tend to attract and befriend people who are more like us. If we are emotionally dysregulated, we will attend to attract and befriend other dysregulated people so that we can feel more normal. That makes complete sense. But if we focus strictly on down regulating our emotional dysregulation, we're missing some opportunities.

So in this episode, I wanna talk about things we can do to down regulate when we are distraught, when we are upset, when we are frustrated, when we are outraged, when we are scared, when we are angry, when we're worried, and also things we can do to up regulate our emotions during those same times. It reminds me of the advice that I always hear when people want to lose weight. They say, well, just get rid of all the bad stuff in your diet, as if right? Well, I think that's a missed opportunity too, because the people who tend to be the most successful with long term weight loss are not just the ones who learn how to cut things out, but who learn how to add things in that are positive. And I think we can think about the up regulating and the down regulating of our emotions in the same way.

There are easy to learn, easy to practice, and not always easy to remember in those turbulent times. But of course, the more practice we have, the more likely we will remember. And it's always a good idea to get some accountability from other people who have similar goals. So in talking about some of the things that we can do to down regulate our emotions when we are upset, when we are overwhelmed, when something has happened that we didn't anticipate, and it could be something as big as an election outcome that we didn't want and we didn't expect.

And we're very unhappy with down to being 5 minutes late, getting back to our car at a parking meter and finding a fresh new ticket waiting for us. The brain doesn't discriminate. If we got something we didn't want or we didn't get something we wanted, we're going to experience some level of emotional dysregulation. That's part of being human, and it's definitely part of having ADHD. Some of the things that we can do to help regulate our emotions regularly, you might even think of this as proactive or preventative, are actually moderating our intake of foods that are not particularly nutritious. It is pretty much a fact at this point that the more we eat what I like to call play foods instead of junk foods, because there's nothing fundamentally wrong with them.

It's just that they may take up too much space in our diet. But those foods actually contribute to us having difficulty regulating our emotions. So the more we can front load our diet with healthier foods, the easier it's going to be to regulate our emotions. Same thing is true with intake of caffeine, the more over caffeinated we are, the more we're gonna have trouble regulating our emotions. I just got the message from my doctor that my blood pressure is starting to creep up and part of this is because I do take stimulant medication. I'm not really willing to give that up. So now we are substituting non caffeinated tea for some of my caffeine intake, some of my coffee intake and I love coffee.

I looove coffee. I've loved coffee for years, but I also wanna keep my blood pressure under control. So and more about the non caffeinated teas in a few minutes, so these are things we can do. Eat healthier foods, be more hydrated. Now you might be really surprised to hear me talking about things like this in an episode where I thought we were gonna be talking about emotional regulation. Believe it or not, the whole mind body connection thing, it's really a mess. There's no mind body connection. The mind and body are one seamless interface. So what we do for our body is good for our mind and our emotions.

What's good for our emotions is also good for our body. So eating more nutritious foods and less play foods, less caffeine overall, less alcohol and other recreational substances is best overall. Because even though we may think our emotions are much better handled because we smoke weed every day, it's not actually true. Our emotions are just a little bit blunted as a result of smoking weed chronically. And this is not an anti weed statement by any means. I think there is a place for it, and I think there is a place for it in the management for many people with ADHD or ADHD tendencies. I'm talking about excesses.

And especially if you are a person who notices that you have a lot of emotional dysregulation, or more likely, it has been pointed out to you by the people around you. I often hear other people say, I really love working with this person, or I really love living with this person, or I really love being friends or family member with this person, but they are a hot freaking mess whenever things don't go their way. Well, you know what? That's not just a personality trait. If that person happens to have ADHD tendencies or a diagnosis, that's part of their emotional dysregulation. And frankly, I also think it's part of some of what makes us really appealing and really interesting and really charismatic individuals. I think it's one of the reasons why so many people with ADHD tendencies are in the performing arts.

It is our ability to access our emotions, both positive and negative, that create charm, that create good acting skills, that can make us very personable, very animated, funny. But that's when we have some handle on them. When we don't have a handle on them, it's anything but funny. And I think we owe it to ourselves and the people around us, especially during turbulent times, because we know we're gonna be triggered. We know we are, we always have been. So it's not like it's gonna automagically go away. And I'm here to tell you, as you get older, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to have more emotional self control because emotions get stronger with use. So if we are overusing negative emotions, if we are overusing frustration, annoyance, irritability, anger, we're just gonna have more of them as we age.

So outside of the nutritious diet, more hydration, exercise. And I know exercise is still a dirty word for a lot of people, but I gotta tell you, even if you're walking and you're not breaking a sweat, but maybe it's a little bit difficult to keep up a conversation. Let's say you're talking on the phone or you have someone walking with you, and it's just a little bit difficult to maintain that conversation. You don't have to be sweating. If you're having trouble maintaining a normal conversation while you walk, you are walking at a pace that is exercise, okay? We don't have to be doing triathlons. We don't have to be signing up for the Grunt and Sweat Gym. We don't have to be taking Zumba or buying a Peloton.

But if getting one of those things will get you to exercise more regularly, by all means, do it. I stopped making excuses when I got a Peloton in the early months of the pandemic because the gym that I belong to at the time kept opening and closing and opening and closing. And every time it closed, it was that much harder for me to get back into a routine when they opened again. So I got a Peloton, and now I have no excuse because the classes are prerecorded, they're available. I could literally take 1 in the middle of the night if I wanted to, which I don't. But exercise of any kind and the kind that's right for you is the kind you'll do. Bottom line, you don't have to do what anybody says including me.

Some people say cardio is better if you have ADHD. I know quite a few weight lifters who say it has helped their ADHD because they have to focus so they don't hurt themselves when they're lifting really heavy weights. So the exercise you'll do is the exercise for you, and it absolutely will help you regulate your emotions, I promise. You know what else helps a lot? Meditation. And I know there's many people with ADHD traits who say, oh, no, I could never. You don't know that.

In fact, you don't even know that if you've tried it in the past and it didn't work because there are so many ADHD friendly ways that you can meditate that you're probably putting unrealistic expectations and standards on yourself and just opting out without really trying. I'm gonna be linking to everything I talk about today in the show notes, so you don't have to pull the car over and take notes. There's a lot of really helpful information and back episodes of this podcast, and I wanna make sure I link to those for you so that you can go back and reference a full length episode on any of these topics.

Or you can just take this mashup that I'm giving you now and run with it. I'm definitely going to link to, I believe, 2 episodes that I've done with Kate Moryoussef. She also has a podcast, she's in Great Britain, and her whole focus of her ADHD coaching is on regulating emotions, especially for women. One of the primary techniques that she uses is emotional freedom technique, EFT. It's also often referred to as tapping, this is a very effective technique. It actually looks and feels a little weird when you first start learning it, but it really does help you get your emotions under control. And you can use it in a moment of emotional upset, but you can also use it on the regular to proactively and preventatively regulate your emotions.

Everything that I've talked to up until now, the, you know, nutritional food, hydration, exercise, meditation. These are all things that if you do them routinely, not perfectly, not impeccably, not like a perfectionist, not every single day or you lose, but as routinely and as regularly as you can. Every one of them individually and collectively. Oh, another one, getting enough sleep, should have said that one first. Getting enough sleep. Every one of these is going to help regulate your emotions by making your brain more resilient, and by making you less reactive. The more reactive you are, the more you are gonna fly off the handle, and the harder it's going to be for you to get things back in control. And I can certainly remember in my early years, just reactivity, impulsivity, blurting things out. And when I got called out on it, I would be defensive and double down.

None of that endears you to other people, and it certainly doesn't, do any good for your career. So I've talked about some of the techniques that you can do proactively and preventatively to make things better when you're emotionally dysregulated. I'm also gonna throw in there doctor Rick Hanson's taking in the good technique. I've been a follower of his for many, many years. He's a psychologist, a Buddhist practitioner, and meditation teacher, and he has so many wonderful techniques for helping people regulate their emotions and feel more grounded. But you know what else? One of the best things we can do during turbulent times, like the ones we're having right now, has to do with boundaries.

Now it's not a tool, it's not a hack. It's not a strategy. It's not a technique. It's not something you can learn. It's really more a prioritization of your own peace of mind and what I consider the ultimate form of self care. You've heard me talk about this before. I did a whole series of episodes on self care and boundaries. I don't think self care is getting a mani pedi. I don't think self care is taking the night off without the kids. I truly believe the ultimate form of self care is honoring who you are, honoring your values, and setting boundaries that protect you and your values, that protect your gifts, your capacity, and that also protect your emotions from being triggered into a state of dysregulation.

And we all know there are people and places that are going to do that with much greater frequency than others. There are people in the lives of every single person listening who are just not good for them. Every single time they see, get together with, hear, or even see that person's name pop up on their phone, they get triggered. Why? Because there's some level of toxicity in that relationship. And of course, the hardest ones are the people that are family, the people that are friends, the people that are coworkers. It's much harder to set boundaries with those people because they are a regular part of your life. But that doesn't mean you have to go to the extremes of either cutting them out or ghosting them or just allowing yourself to continue to be triggered.

It is so worthwhile learning some basic verbal boundaries, physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, and learning to practice them regularly and learning to think of them as self care instead of selfishness. You know, that person that always confronts you just when you're trying to walk out the door and demands your attention and then starts to go off on a topic that you want nothing to do with, that upsets you, that literally hijacks your emotions in the worst possible way, you don't have to stand there and let them have their way with you. I refer to people like that as they don't make friends, they take hostages. And there are people who just hijack our time, our focus, our attention, and our emotions that maybe we don't mind when we're in a good space.

But when we're dysregulated, it is not the time for them, and we all would benefit from learning how to practice and utilize some techniques for just saying, I can't have this conversation right now, or I'd, really like to be able to chat with you, but I need to be somewhere else. Even if it feels like we're telling a little bit of a white lie, it's really, really important that we know we can do just that. We can hit the pause button. We can take a break. You do not have to have that conversation with your sibling or your parent or your boss, who is on the opposite side of the political fence right now. You don't have to have it. You also don't have to be in the places that you normally feel okay about being as much as you have been.

If watching the news right now is making you upset and making it impossible for you to fall asleep or needing several glasses of wine or beer to do that, you don't have to do it. Even if your significant other thinks that should be part of your nightly ritual. You don't have to return phone calls or texts or emails so quickly with people that are triggering to you right now. And can I just say that the holidays are coming up in just a thin minute? And this is the time of year that I think all of us really need to take a good hard look at our values, our priorities, and our capacity to be around people who either don't respect our views or our values, or simply can't keep their mouth shut in areas that always lead to an argument or someone leaving the gathering upset. That should never be a requirement of being part of any community or family.

Now, I've been talking a lot about some heavy stuff about things we can do to down regulate negative emotions, including all the physical things I talked about, some emotional techniques that I will link to, and also, first and foremost, boundaries. Now I wanna end with some suggestions for how we can up regulate our emotions. A lot of people just feel like, well, this is a tough time right now and I just have to hunker down and wait it out. Well, you can do that. But many of us with ADHD tendencies are prone to depression and most especially prone to seasonal depression. We're deep into November already, and that means shorter days, darker days, and whether that makes it harder for us to get out and about.

So I wanna suggest that employing some of these techniques for up regulating your emotions might be exactly what you need right now just to keep yourself a little bit more buoyant. The techniques I'm about to share are from an article that was recently published in ADDitude Magazine, I will also link to that. And they break them down into 3 categories, regulating your emotions through prosocial activities. And prosocial just means things that make us feel better because they're good for humanity. They include gratitude, pride, and compassion. And here are a few suggestions for how we can do that.

Now if you've ever heard of or used a gratitude journal, it's a great way to create a sense of accountability around it. Because if you have that gratitude journal and it's sitting on your bedside table, and it's either the first thing you do when you wake up before you get out of bed, or it's the last thing you do before you turn out the light or both. Just having it there and not wanting to break the chain can be a really helpful thing to upregulate your emotions even if you don't do it every day. Many people have a daily ritual where they give thanks every day, especially if they're young children in the house.

And the gratitude journals include, like, 5 things that you're grateful for each day. Many people start their kids on this really young and can even create, like, a friendly competition as part of a family ritual at meal time to say something you're grateful for that day. Children with ADHD, of course, are visual. So writing them notes about gratitude or having a gratitude jar where they can have little slips of paper and write things down and put it in there, and then you can take it out of the jar and be read by someone else is a nice prosocial thing to do. Writing thank you notes to other people, something, I'm very, very forgetful. But one thing I tend not to be forgetful about is thanking people for things they've done for me. And I'm actually gonna do that at the very end of this episode.

Remembering to be grateful and remembering to practice gratitude includes not just thinking about, oh, I'm really grateful that I have so many wonderful people in my life, but telling them. There's something called a tree of support where you can write down the names of all the people that you have in your life that are actually there for you. And I think if you are a person who tends towards seasonal depression, this is something you wanna do right now before the year gets any, further along and put it in a prominent place. Because oftentimes, when we're feeling down and things aren't going our way and our emotions are dysregulated, we can get to a place where we think we're all alone and we don't have anybody to turn to.

Most of the time, it's not true so creating this tree of support or even just a pen and paper list of people, if I needed help, I needed someone to talk to, I needed someone to turn to, these are the people you'll probably be surprised by just how many there actually are. Next is pride and while we hear things like pride is a deadly sin and pride goeth before a fall, there's absolutely nothing wrong with feeling proud of a job well done or a kindness that we share with someone else. I'm always pleased when one of my clients has done something that was really difficult for them, and they tell me that they are proud.

That always makes me so happy because I think we've mostly gotten a lot of negative information about pride being a bad thing, and I think it's a good thing. And knowing that we could direct this prosocial emotion in a positive way to upregulate our mood, I think is a must. So when we do something that is hard for us, we should be proud. When we take interest in something and we learn about it, we can take pride in that. And when we've done something that furthers a cause or benefits other people, we should absolutely take pride in that. Okay, we're gonna wrap up now with compassion. And frankly, I think compassion is the most important prosocial emotion and emotion that we can up regulate right now to address dysregulated emotions.

Compassion helps to overcome anxiety, fear, worry, and doubt, something many people are experiencing right now. It also promotes empathy, community, collaboration, and cooperation with others. So if you are part of a team, cultivate compassion within the team, especially for people who are a little bit difficult for you to feel compassion for. Then you could feel proud, so you get a two-four. Practice mindfulness meditation and include a compassion meditation in it. When I used to have a lot of commuting time and often would get into traffic jams, I would often say out loud, a compassion meditation out loud towards other drivers. Because the alternative is that I was getting really frustrated with them and feeling sorry for myself, which is the opposite of compassion. You know, a lot of people are in need of our compassion right now.

A lot of people are feeling lonely and scared and dysregulated. So in whatever way we can spread these prosocial emotions around, cultivating gratitude, pride, and compassion, we are not only helping ourselves feel better and helping up regulate our emotions. I believe, quite frankly, we are making the world a better place. Now I promised I was gonna wrap up with something and I'm going to, share gratitude. I got a package this week and by the way, it's not my birthday. It's not Christmas. It's not my business anniversary.

I haven't done anything for this person. But, Connie Vanderzazen is part of my, network of online business owners. And, she sent me this wonderful it's like a care package, and it's by a company called Sugarwish, I will link to them as well. And it is a delightful bunch of, teas, which was there's no way she could have known that my doctor was suggesting that I drink less coffee and more tea. So it was timely because it just came this week when I was really needing a little something something. It's a harmless gift. It's not gonna get me into any trouble.

It's actually good for me. And just the fact that it's tea, not just because it's less caffeine, but it reminds me to sit down, to calm my mind, to just sip and savor, and that reminds me to be more meditative, more contemplative, and more grounded, all of which benefits my emotional regulation. So I hope some of this has been helpful to you. Please take advantage of all the links in the show notes for whatever you need. And if this has, helped you in any way or you know someone who would be helped by it, I hope that you will either leave a review or share it or both.