Episode 2: I Have to Buy the "Correct" Soap!

In this weeks episode, I share a recap from a coaching session I had with a client who was having difficulty purchasing soap. I will share how, through the coaching process, we uncovered how his thoughts about choosing which soap to buy were actually making the task much more challenging for him.  I'll talk about "black and white" thinking  and why it's is so common amongst people with ADHD as well as how deficits in emotional regulation can lead to avoidance and procrastination. You'll see how this client was able challenge some beliefs he has about himself as he gained more awareness around what was preventing him from completing this task.  

While this situation was specifically about the task of buying soap, the insights this client took away from this session will apply to so many other areas of his life.  So even if you  haven't experienced the same exact thing in your own life, I'm sure there are other tasks you've been avoiding and putting off and this episode might help you figure out some of the reasons why. 

If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe to this podcast and make sure to rate and review so more people can access ADHD coaching support. And I would LOVE for you share it with your friends and family!

Disclaimer:
This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for coaching, therapy, or any other medical intervention. Rather it is a resource for you the listener to learn more about yourself and your ADHD. Furthermore, these sessions reflect MY personal style of coaching and how I was trained, and are not meant to be a representation of all ADHD coaching.

All sessions being highlighted in this podcast are being done so with permission from the client being featured. Some details may be slightly altered in order to keep their identity anonymous.

Learn more about my coaching business ADHD with EMILY:
http://www.adhdwithemily.com

If you are interested in working with me and would like to book a free consult, check here for my availability
https://www.adhdwithemily.com/getstarted

Follow me for more ADHD content:
https://www.instagram.com/adhd.with.emily/

Transcript

Hello, and thank you so much for joining me on Monday morning, ADHD coaching I'm Emily, your host and coach. And today we're going to be diving into a session I had with a client about buying soap. Uh, yes, that's right. We talked about why buying soap can feel so difficult. And, you know, I will say my client admittedly felt a little bit silly for bringing this topic up in our session, but really difficulties like this, you know, the daily struggles that we're experiencing are just perfect for coaching.  Because what he was able to learn about himself and the awareness that he came away with. We'll not only help him the next time he's trying to buy the soap, but it will also apply to so many different areas of his life.

So let's get into it.  

Okay. So he starts explaining to me that they're almost out of soap in the house and he needs to buy soap for the house. It's been a few days and he still hasn't been able to buy the soap. So that right there is kind of the problem he has run into. He still hasn't bought the soap. So the next thing we do is we kind of zoom into one particular situation where this happened, right, where he was supposed to buy the soap and he didn't end up buying this soap. 

And so I asked him. What are some of the thoughts going through your head when you're going to buy the soap?  When you're even thinking about buying the soap? And he had a lot. And the one we kind of narrowed in on was I really want to get the right one. Which is a thought that really resonates with me. And I'm sure a lot of people, this idea of the right one, it can really be the cause of so much indecision.

And that's really common for people with ADHD to have this kind of black and white thinking. Like there's a right soap and there's a wrong soap. And so I noticed that it was one thing going on here. And for a lot of people, this can stem from having a brain that thinks and processes and figures things out differently. And it's likely that we've been questioned a lot throughout our lives by people who may say things like, oh, you're doing it wrong, or you pick the wrong one, or why did you choose that?  Or why did you do it like that? And, you know, over time that can really cause a lot of self mistrust where we can no longer trust ourselves to make the right choice. And so it makes a lot of sense when you are trying to choose between two things or many things.  It can sometimes feel impossible because we don't know what the right one is, but we do feel so strongly that there is a right one and a wrong one.

So going back to this thought, I want to get the right one. I asked him. You know, what does that feel like in your body? What emotion comes up when you're thinking I want to get the right one. And he said, you know, I just feel completely overwhelmed.  Okay. 
So now we can really start to go through what is happening when he's trying to buy the soap for the house. So when he has some free time in the day and he realizes, oh, I should get soap for the house. He immediately has this thought. I want to find the right one. And he's feeling overwhelmed. 

And the one thing I want to make clear is that we're generally not even aware in the moment of what that thought is, right? It's  automatic. It's kind of sneaky this little thought that just pops up immediately. And we may feel the emotion associated with it, but also oftentimes we might not even be exactly sure what that emotion is. And we're generally not really sure what's causing that emotion. 

Okay. So going back to the moment where he thought to buy the soap. Um, and I asked him. What did it look like when you were feeling overwhelmed?  What were some of the things that you ended up doing?  And he started to list out some of the things that happened. And he said, well, sometimes I just find something else to do. Like I completely and totally avoid buying the soap at all. Um, he said sometimes he will open the Amazon app and he'll start to look at a few and just immediately close out the app and say, oh, this is too much work.  If he has Amazon open, he might get a little sidetracked by some of the other things in his cart. Start looking up other things on Amazon. You know, he mentioned some times he did pick one, he had it in his cart. But then he starts to doubt the choice that he made.  He goes back to researching and seeing if there are cheaper ones or ones that deliver quicker.  So even if he does pick one, it's sitting in his cart and he's still not pressing the checkout button. And oftentimes it will end with him saying, oh, I'll just buy this tomorrow.

And how relatable is that phrase? I'll just do it tomorrow. I mean, that is probably the one I use the most.  And so now he's found himself in this position where he still hasn't bought the soap. And now he's getting really frustrated with himself and the longer he goes without buying the soap, then he starting to kind of bully himself a bit and say things like, oh, why is this taking me so long? Why is it so hard for me to just pick a soap? This is so silly. And that can start to bring up a lot of shame. And shame much like overwhelm. It generally leads to a lot of avoidance and procrastination. And so you can really get stuck in this cycle of avoiding and procrastinating and then feeling shame, which leads to more avoiding and procrastinating, which leads to more shame. And it can just be a really hard loop to get out of. 

And so, you know, you might be starting to think like, oh my gosh, we're really putting a lot of thought into why this guy can't buy soap. But it's really so important to move through it like this, to really pinpoint what's actually at play here. That's causing the difficulty because my client, you know, he's a smart, capable guy. And he was really just thinking like, what is wrong with me? That this is taking so long and in a lot of that negative, self-talk about why can't I just do the thing. It should be easy. Right? It's easy for other people. It should be easy for me. But when we look at it this way, we can really say, Hey, you're beating yourself up because you think this is an easy task you should have done already. But when the thought is I need to buy the right one, that's actually an incredibly difficult task. Right. 

And not only that, but I need to buy the right one is creating this feeling of overwhelm. And one of the deficits when you have ADHD is in emotional regulation. And so when we're having a big emotion and we're not quite sure what to do with it, and it doesn't feel good. What we end up doing is just avoiding the thing that's causing that big emotion. That's really the only way we know how to deal with it. We just want to get rid of it. And so we procrastinate and we get carried away with little side tasks and we do things that feel easier, but we generally don't end up doing the thing we want to do because we're trying to escape that feeling of overwhelm. 

Okay. So that's the first part of the coaching session. It's just really discussing the problem and kind of figuring out how he got there.  The next part is, so what do we do now? Right. My client still needs to order the soap. And so what can he do? How can he support himself in order to do this thing that he wants to do? And there's a few pieces to this. 

The first thing I wanted to dig into a little bit further was this thought I want to get the right one and just try to figure out, like, where does that thought come from? 
Why is it so important to get the right one? And he basically said, you know, it just feels good to choose a good soap. And so then I asked. And what about if you don't choose the right one? What does that feel like? And he thought about it. And then he said, it just feels sloppy and careless to have chosen a sub optimal soap. And, you know, he was throwing a little humor into the dialogue by saying suboptimal soap, but that right there really demonstrates how going through life with ADHD can really have such a negative impact on how we think about ourselves.

Because,  it's likely that in the past, when he has made mistakes or when he's chosen something, maybe somebody else would consider the wrong thing. Somebody has probably told him that he was being careless or that his mistakes were sloppy. And so now that messaging has really become internalized. Because now he's making, buying the quote unquote wrong soap mean he's a sloppy and careless person, which if you've been listening, you can see how much research he's putting into finding the right soap. 
He's clearly not being sloppy or careless, but he really is making this choice means something about him as a human being.  

. And then when we go back to the very beginning, when, you know, he's just thinking like, what's wrong with me that I can't just buy the soap. Well, okay. Now we know it's because when he goes to buy the soap, he's having this thought, I want to buy the right soap and that's making him feel really overwhelmed.  And now we know he wants to buy the right soap because buying the wrong soap would mean he's sloppy and careless. So there's some fear involved in buying the wrong soap. And there's also some shame now that it's been taking him so long to buy the soap and he's experiencing all these emotions and it just continues to make a lot of sense why this is so hard and why he's been putting it off. It's not just the soap. There's so much more that goes into it.  

And that really is the purpose of these coaching sessions. It allows us to create a bit of distance. Where we can begin to see, oh, it's not that there's something wrong with me. It's not that I'm incapable of doing this task. It's that the emotions that are coming up don't feel good and I want to get rid of them.  And it's also that I don't want to do something that could mean others perceive me, or I perceived myself as sloppy and careless and buying the wrong soap would do exactly that.  So, of course I'm procrastinating and putting this off.

 So this new perspective really allows for him to have a bit more self-compassion and instead of saying to himself, oh, this is ridiculous. I haven't bought the soap, you know, instead he can change that to, this is really hard. I'm having a hard time picking soap here. , what can I do to support myself? 

And one of the first things that we can do is to really start challenging those thoughts that we have. So we went back to his thought that if he picks the wrong soap, that means he's sloppy and careless. 

And I said to him, You know, if somebody doesn't like the soap you picked or you find there was another one that was cheaper.  Does that really mean you're a sloppy and careless person? And, you know, he can laugh a little bit about it in the coaching session because he's removed from the situation. He's not feeling dysregulated and he can say, no, it doesn't make me sloppy and careless because I didn't pick the right soap. But the point is in the moment when he's going to buy the soap. This really is what his brain is telling him. And that's, what's bringing up all of these really uncomfortable emotions. That he's not really sure what to do with, and that's really, what's preventing him from buying the soap. 

Not that he's incapable. 

And so a part of him supporting himself is going to be disrupting that thought. And we can practice that in the session by really challenging it and saying, you know, does this soap that I choose really reflect what I'm like as a human being. Or is the soap that I choose, the soap that I choose, and there might be a better option and there might be a worse option. But it really means nothing about who I am as a human being.  And I thought like that can really create maybe more of a grounded feeling or a feeling of trust. 

And that's really what we're trying to do here. We're trying to disrupt these old thoughts that are really keeping us stuck and holding us back. And we're trying to shift to different thoughts and different emotions that will enable us to move forward with the things that we want to move forward with.

 And I don't want you to confuse this with some kind of, you know, toxic positivity where we're just, oh, think happy thoughts and feel really good. And that's not it at all. It's more, we're becoming really conscious of the thoughts that are holding us back. The thoughts that simply aren't true, but they're really preventing us from doing the things we want to be doing. And what's really important is that we're understanding where the thoughts came from. We want to validate those thoughts, right? Not judge ourselves for them. But say, oh, I can see why I have this thought about myself and now I get to decide whether or not I want to keep that thought any longer, or maybe I'm ready to move on to some new thoughts about myself. 

 Okay, so now how does he apply everything he just learned about himself to his actual life. Right. He's made all these discoveries, but he still needs to buy the soap.  And so now his job, when he goes to buy the soap is to just see if he can start to notice when all of this happens. See if he can notice, oh, I'm starting to spend a lot of time comparing prices. Or  oh, I just told myself I'm going to do this tomorrow. That's a chance for him to pause. 

And pausing can be the most difficult part of all of this. That's a big part of ADHD. Our brains are moving so fast and pausing can just feel so hard. But that really is where he will be able to, just like we did in our session, kind of pull back and create some distance for himself and he can remind himself, oh, okay. 

This is when I start to feel a little overwhelmed and that's okay. That I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling overwhelmed because I'm trying to buy the right soap. And,  he can go through  the whole process that we went through in coaching. Probably a little quicker. And then he can come back to the thought that will make him feel a bit more grounded or have some more trust in himself that, you know, the soap he buys is the soap he buys. And it has nothing to do with who he is as a human being. And that's a thought that could really help him just pick a soap and actually buy it..  

Okay. So you're probably thinking at this point, like this is such a long process to figure out how to buy soap. And you're right in a coaching session, it can be a longer process, but what we're really doing is just getting into the practice of noticing. Noticing our emotions, noticing our own behaviors and pausing long enough to figure out what's going on. And we're learning how to disrupt negative thought patterns in order to shift to new ones. Ones that can really enable you to take action and do the things you want to be doing. 

And in our next session, my client did start off by saying, yes, I bought the soap, which is great, but what he really learned about himself as we dove further into the situation was way more important than whether or not he bought the soap.  Because this new awareness will allow him to take what he learned and apply it to so many different situations in his life. And that's really what coaching is all about. 

 I could have just said to him, listen, Go on Amazon right now. Pick the first soap you see, just buy it and be done with it. And sure he would have bought the soap. He would have accomplished that, but he's going to bump up against this type of problem again and again, he's going to find himself procrastinating or avoiding things. And the coaching process really just equips him with the ability to build that awareness on his own in the future when he's faced with all different types of obstacles.