Episode 3: I Have to do it All!

In this weeks episode, I share a recap from a coaching session I had with a client who was feeling like she was drowning in all the things she had to do and she didn't like the idea of asking for help or delegating.   I will share how, through the coaching process, we uncovered some thoughts that were preventing her from reaching out for support as well as how difficulty with emotional regulation was playing a huge role in all of it.    I'll cover topics such as why we so often feel the need to "prove" ourselves to others and what we tend to base our value as human beings on.  You'll see how this client was able challenge some beliefs she had about herself that was making her feel like she had to do it all.  

This client was also able to take what she learned about herself in this session and notice how it applied to a many things that were happening in other areas of her life, and hopefully you will also be able to take the parts that you can relate to and see how it's showing up in YOUR life. 

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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.

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Transcript

  Hello. Welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me again on Monday morning, ADHD coaching I'm Emily, your host and coach. And today I'm going to be talking about a session I had with a client who was feeling very overwhelmed. She's feeling like she had a million things on her plate and she had to do it all.  And so this session was really focused around why she felt like she had to do it all. And how she could work towards delegating and taking some things off her plate. And really who doesn't relate to this. Feeling of being really overwhelmed. So hopefully you as a listener will be able to get a ton out of this.

 Okay. For some backstory, this client owns her own business and she's also a mom of two young kids. And she started the session, really just talking about how she felt like she was just drowning. She had so much that she needed to do for her business. She had so much that she needed to do for her kids. And, you know, this was also during the winter time when her kids were getting sick of tun, sometimes the older one would be home from school. Sometimes her childcare for her younger one would fall through. , she was missing a lot of work because of that. And so she just felt like she had so much going on. There was always something pulling at her. 

So that was one part of it. And the other part was that she really does not like delegating any of the tasks. 

So here she is feeling completely overwhelmed. Like she's just drowning. She has so much to do for her business. She has so much to do for kids. The house. and she's also just feeling like she has to do it all.  Now sometimes when clients come to sessions with this type of problem, You know, the never ending to do lists, feeling overwhelmed, feeling behind they can't catch up. The sense of drowning that she was talking about. Sometimes we'll focus more on that actual list. And our thoughts  around the things on the list. And maybe what's preventing us from getting started or what's causing the overwhelm, how we can make it more manageable, how we can prioritize things like that. 

But with this client, I know she has support. She has a spouse. She has family. She has employees. I think she was considering getting, , a virtual assistant at the time. So knowing that there was support there for her, I knew this was a place to really focus on , the resistance to delegating piece of this.

 So after getting a sense of the big picture, kind of the big problem that she was presenting, I wanted to zoom in with her on something a little bit more specific, so we could get some information about maybe one of the things that was on her plate that was contributing to this feeling of drowning. That she also didn't want to delegate to anybody else. 

And she brought up her invoices, which she says she just hates doing. She's not totally positive. She's doing them in the quote unquote, most efficient way. They're really boring for her. And oftentimes she just avoids them. She'll say, oh, I'll take care of these tomorrow, or I'll do this later. And of course the more she procrastinates doing them, the more they really start to pile up. And then she gets into a lot of overwhelm around how many invoices she has to do, which causes her to avoid them even more. But then the urgency kicks in and she's sending like a month's worth of invoices to a client at one time. And she's feeling really bad about this.  She's feeling like it's unprofessional and there's a lot of shame and embarrassment around that. And that's also consuming a lot of her energy.

 So we can see how she's painted this picture of a task that she has that's on her plate. That is really hard for her to do. And it's consuming a lot of her. Energy, it's consuming a lot of her time. It's consuming a lot of space in her brain. And it's making her quite dysregulated as well. 

 So next, I really wanted to find out. Where the resistance to delegating this task was coming from. And I asked her, why is this something that you're not delegating to somebody else in your company?  And she had three reasons why she's not doing this one is that she doesn't like asking for help too, is that she wants to feel like she can do it all by herself. She doesn't like feeling like she can't do it all. And three was that she doesn't like giving up control. .  

And again, I think this is a feeling a lot of us can relate to. Right? Sometimes we feel like we just have a lot to prove. We want to show that we can do it by ourselves. We want to prove that we're capable and responsible human beings. And that might be because so often in our past, we've maybe received the message directly or indirectly that we aren't capable or responsible, or  maybe that we need too much help or we aren't trying hard enough. So with that in mind, again, it really just, it starts to make a lot of sense why she would be trying so hard to prove that she can do it all by herself. 

So next I asked her. Well, what does it mean if you have to ask for help? What does it mean if you really can't do all of this by yourself? What does that mean about you? . 
And she answered by saying that she was scared. She was afraid. It would make people question why she's the one who owns this company. Right. If she can't do all these things by herself, why is she the one in charge and not one of them? And along with this, she also said if I take stuff off my plate, I'm afraid I lose some of my value.  

So, this is pretty big. This really gives a lot of insight into what's happening here. Because this client is making her value as the owner of this company. Contingent upon being able to do everything that was being thrown at her. Without asking for help. And if she had to ask for help, if she really couldn't do it all. Then she was afraid that she would lose some of her value and that others, might be wondering if she's capable enough to run this company. So that was a big aha moment for her just uncovering that this was really what was at the root of it all. 

And it really extends even further than that, because, you know, as we have continued to learn throughout the coaching process, This is what was happening across the board and in all areas of her life. Right. If you remember at the beginning, she was talking about feeling like she was drowning with things she needed to do as a mom, as a business owner. But also things she needed to do as a friend, as a wife, as a sister, a daughter, And she was really taking on all of it and not wanting to ask for help because asking for help was admitting that she couldn't do it all. And if she couldn't do it all, then she was afraid. That meant she was losing some of her value as a mom, a wife, a friend, a daughter, Really just as a human being. 

And this is really one of the cool things about coaching is that you can take one little part to zoom in on one part that maybe in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't feel that big, but if you zoom in and you get really curious and you figure out. What are those thoughts that are just under the surface that you're really not aware of in the moment you can really get to the root of it. And that information that you discover about yourself. When you zoom back out, you really can see how it can apply to just so many different areas of. Your life. 

 Okay. So now given the information we've gathered, let's go back to the beginning so we can start to put together this map of what's been happening for her. So she has this task to do in this case, it's the invoices and she really doesn't want to do it. She's having difficulty doing it. They're really hard for her. And they're also quite boring. And I really also want to add that this is the case for a lot of those more administrative tasks, right. We have an interest based nervous system. And so what that means is  when tasks are just boring, repetitive, mundane, there's. Nothing new or novel or exciting about them. Even if they're really important, it can be really, really hard to get motivated, to do those types of tasks.  Okay, so getting back to the situation,  but she's not delegating this task. 
She's not even asking for help with this task. And her thought is if I take stuff off my plate, I lose some of my value.  And she had mentioned fear. That's what she was afraid of. 

And again, at the time, well, this is going on. She's not necessarily conscious. Of this thought. But her body or her nervous system does start to sense some of that fear, even if she's not really able to recognize or, label it in the moment.  And fear is a really uncomfortable, really hard emotion to experience in our bodies. And one of the executive functions that people with ADHD really struggle with is emotional regulation. And so what that means is we don't really know how to recognize, tolerate and soothe. 

Some of these well, all of these difficult emotions. And all we have really been able to do. And all we really want to do is to just get rid of them, get them out of our body. And we do that by avoiding the thing. That's making us feel that way. So if the idea of delegating this task is bringing up a lot of fear for her. She simply not doing it. She's just telling herself that she has to do it. Then in order to keep her value as the owner of this company, that she should be able to do them. But then when it comes time to do the invoices, there's a lot of procrastination going on and she's getting sidetracked by things that don't have anything to do with work. She's researching different hobbies, different business ideas, looking up trips. Uh, distracting herself on social media shopping.  All these things that really help her avoid. The overwhelm and the frustration She feels about doing them. 

But what it also means is that she's not doing a lot of the other things that she's really good at in her business. It's also taking her away from the areas that she actually does provide a lot of value to the company. Areas like building relationships with clients and coming up with creative ideas and, you know, parts that are generally just less administrative. That's really where her strengths are. 

And so at this point in the session, she starting to notice what's really happening here.  Which is that by keeping all of these things on her plate. She's actually not able to provide as much value to her company because her work in the areas where she really shines and the company really does benefit from. Is suffering.  

But I want to make a really important distinction here. It's not that she has become a less valuable person, right? It's it's not the work that you do or that you don't do that. Determines your value as a human being.  But there is work that she does that adds value to the company. And when there's something preventing her from being able to focus on those areas where her strengths lie. Then she isn't able to add value to the company in that way.

And honestly, this concept in and of itself, the idea that we are inherently valuable as human beings and how much we do or how much we don't do, doesn't really add or take away from that. I mean, that's lifelong work. That's definitely something I'm still striving to get to, but we  talked about separating those two things. 

So now we've gotten to the point in the session where we really gained a lot of clarity on what's going on. And so now we're going to spend some time going back to that thought that if she takes some things off her plate, she loses her value and we're going to start challenging that thought.   And again, it's important to recognize the thought it's important to validate it. Right. It's definitely understandable. She feels like she has to do everything. We talked before about how sometimes we do feel like we have a lot to prove. Uh, to show people that were capable and responsible.

 So we are validating that thought. We're not just saying, oh God, it's like so ridiculous that I think this about myself. No, it's very understandable, but yeah, we are going to challenge it because oftentimes our brains see our thoughts as facts that they're the truth. But most of the time,, They're really just not true. And when we can gain a little distance from those thoughts, when we can observe them from a more regulated place from a more rational place. Then we can decide if it's a thought we want to keep believing.  

So I asked her for some evidence as to why she actually should be the CEO of this company.. Right because she was worried that if she wasn't able to do all of the things that were being thrown at her, people were going to start to wonder why she's the one in charge. 

So. I wanted to start gathering some evidence so she could prove to herself why she actually should be in charge at this company. And she gave a lot of great answers and we won't go into too much detail, but.  The conclusion that she came away with was that. You know, she's the one who started this company from the ground up and yes, her employees have absolutely contributed to making it successful. But the bottom line is the company wouldn't exist if she hadn't started it and under her leadership, it's continued to succeed.

So then I asked her how might taking some things off her plate by delegating, or maybe even just asking for some help in some of the tasks that she's having difficulty with. How that could actually make her a better owner and maybe allow her to add more value to the company? and it was very easy for her to be able to see that if she didn't have to do some of these more administrative tasks. Things like invoices, setting up appointments, follow up emails, organizing her calendar.  if her time and energy wasn't being drained by those things. Then she could spend so much more of her time doing things that actually help the company and her employees. And her clients really thrive and succeed and grow. 

And this also led to a conversation  about how the most successful business owners, they don't do everything. They're really good at delegating. They're really good at taking things off their plate that they don't need to be doing that's commonplace. And also one of the things that allows them to be really successful.  

And even as she's saying this, there was a bit of like, oh yeah,  I rationally know that. , but it's one thing to know that rationally. And it's another thing to start taking action that is aligned with that. And we're much more likely to take action. That's aligned with that. 
If we truly do understand what was preventing us from doing it in the first place. 

So for this client moving forward, it's going to be so helpful for her to just be aware of this thought and you know, the narrative that she has around doing it all. Doing it all, meaning she's valuable  and not being able to do it all, meaning that she is not as valuable. 

Because if she can be aware of this and notice what it's preventing her from delegating or from getting help.  She's more likely in that moment to be able to disrupt it. By challenging. It just like we did in the session.  And she can remind herself that she doesn't have to do it all in order to be a valuable person. And she doesn't have to do it all in order to be a good CEO and that asking for help, doesn't take away from the value she does add to her company. And really reminding herself that it can be the support she needs in moving forward with what she actually wants to do. Which is to have somebody else do the invoices. 

So we definitely discussed this topic over a few more sessions, because a really big part of it is working through some of those difficult emotions.  Learning how to allow for them and tolerate and soothe them in order to be able to take  action and start taking things off her plate. And there were other things that came up around, you know, Feeling embarrassed about showing other people how she had been doing some of the things like invoices during the process of offloading them because of how they might judge her for her way of doing it.  

So it definitely wasn't something that was just neatly wrapped up in a bow in one session. I mean, most things are not. But the insight she gained from this one session really allowed her to start being more aware of what she was doing and moving in the direction she wanted to be moving in.   

I also really want to recognize that this isn't always the case for some people, right. Sometimes someone has a lot on their plate and they don't have anybody to offload it to. They don't have an assistant. They may not have family support. They don't have employees or coworkers. So this is the direction this particular session went in because this client did have other people to lean on. And so that was how she was able to support herself.  But if she was in a situation where she absolutely had to do the invoices, there is no one else to do them. Well, then our coaching session would have looked very different. Support would look very different. 

So I  don't want you to come away from this thinking. The only solution is to have somebody else do all the difficult things. That's definitely not the case at all. But it is important for you to notice if there are people around you who could help, who you could offload  some of those things that are contributing to you, feeling like you're drowning. Well, maybe some of my client's thoughts resonate with you, or maybe you want to start becoming more aware of your own thoughts that are preventing you from asking for help or delegating. 

Because it really isn't always just about figuring out how we can do the thing. Sometimes we don't have to do the thing sometimes we're not meant to do the thing and that's okay too.