Episode 6: I Should Have Gotten This Done Earlier!

In this weeks episode, I share a recap from a coaching session I had with a client who had only a few more days to get her classroom set up before the school year started.  She had been putting it off for a few weeks and was now feeling a lot of shame about not having done it earlier.   I will share how, through the coaching process, we were able to  uncover some of the reasons she kept procrastinating in the first place,  the role ADHD played in that, and why it is so important to REALLY understand what ADHD is and how symptoms can affect you so that you aren't left just believing you are lazy or irresponsible or just need to try harder.  We talked about how SO many people with ADHD tend to feel so much shame because other people don't understand why they struggle with certain things and they don't understand it themselves so they are left just believing there is something wrong with them.  And being able to see this situation from a new perspective allowed my client to shift away from focusing on the past to addressing how she could find success moving forward. 

Coaching is not JUST about figuring out how to move forward, that's part of it, but so much of it is about understanding your brain and learning to accept how it works instead of judging yourself in areas you struggle. THEN, you can actually find ways to support yourself, learn strategies that work with your brain instead of against it, and make a plan that works for YOU in order to move forward. 

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. Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me again on Monday morning, ADHD coaching. I am your host and coach Emily. And today I'm going to be talking about a session I had with a client who is a teacher, and she was really upset with herself because the school year was starting soon and she hadn't yet set up her classroom. There were only a few days left of the summer and she was really regretting not having done it sooner. 
I am very familiar with this feeling from when I was a teacher. The summers really felt like one elongated case of the Sunday scaries. And once August hit setting up, my classroom was always kind of just like looming over me. But I dreaded it so much and I always waited until the last week or even the last few days to go to my classroom and start setting it up. And that always came with so many emotions that honestly I can still feel in my body whenever I think about it. It doesn't feel very good. Um, but even if you aren't a teacher, I'm sure you will relate to the idea of waiting until the last minute to do something and all the drama that happens in our brains and all the dysregulation that happens in our bodies. When we do that. So let's get started. 

So we started the session and I could sense right away that this client was pretty stressed out. And she began telling me that she really needed to get into her classroom and get things set up as the students were returning to school next week. And she said she was really frustrated with herself because she had so many opportunities over the past few weeks to do it. And she really did intend to go in much sooner, but she just kept putting it off.

And when I asked her to kind of recount what had been happening over the past few weeks, that led her to this current situation. She said it was really just overwhelming thinking about how much she had to do her room was so disorganized. It was hard to know where to begin. She had a lot of ideas about like new configurations and things to put out for the students. And that would kind of get her overwhelmed all over again by all the options. And so she would just go do other things with her time instead. But always kind of say, oh, well, I'll go in soon and get started.  

So now it's the end of August. And she sitting in front of me and she really doesn't have any other option, but to go in this week. And at this point there's only three more days left in the week. Uh, otherwise her room wouldn't be ready and she was dreading it.

 I asked her what, some of her thoughts about the fact that she only had three more days to set up her room more and.  She just said, it's like, what's wrong with me? Why didn't I get this done earlier?  

So let's pause there and talk about what happens when we have questions like this, that just kind of replay in our minds on a loop. Because oftentimes when we're asking ourselves questions like this, We aren't really asking out of curiosity. It's more of an accusatory question because we're actually telling ourselves I should have gotten this done earlier. Right? Because she did list a lot of the reasons why she didn't get it done earlier. 

She was overwhelmed. She didn't know where to start. She was in a bit of decision paralysis with how many options there were in terms of how to set up the room. She also had mentioned, she couldn't figure out how long it was going to take and probably felt like she needed to get all of it done at the same time. Though. I'm just kind of adding that in, because I know that can be another thing that happens with big projects like this.  And all of those reasons can be directly tied to ADHD. And some of the things we really struggle with due to deficits in our executive functioning. We can struggle with emotional regulation, time management, task initiation, organization planning, making decisions, impulse control. So it makes a lot of sense that she procrastinated.  But that's what happens when you don't either know you have ADHD or you don't understand ADHD. And in this client's case, she actually had been diagnosed with ADHD a few years prior, but really didn't understand the diagnosis and wasn't getting much, if any support around it. 

So her struggle to set up her classroom in her mind was her fault. You know, a moral failing, her being lazy or irresponsible,  all of those labels that fall under the umbrella of what's wrong with me. And it really sucks. And I really relate to this because I spent a long time asking myself that question, what is wrong with me? Multiple times a day.

Okay. So back to my client, I asked her when you're asking yourself what's wrong with me? And telling yourself, I should have gotten this done earlier. What emotion does that bring up for you? How does that make you feel? And she mentioned a few. She was frustrated and embarrassed, but mostly she felt shame. And shame is such a heavy emotion. And one, I find to be universal amongst people with ADHD. And we'll talk about why in a moment, but I asked her to think about what happens when she starts to feel shame because she's thinking I should have got this done earlier. 

And she said that's, what's been happening in the past week. Every time she even thinks about setting up her classroom.  So she often tries to avoid even thinking about it. She finds other less important things to do around the house to focus on and be able to accomplish.  She beats herself up a lot. Which did eventually lead to her, taking everything out.  Meaning, you know, all this stuff she needed to bring in to her classroom, but then she got really overwhelmed by that and left it, telling herself like, oh, I'll do it eventually. But she never really made a plan for what she was going to do and how, , she said, oftentimes she ends up smoking weed, which is a really common coping mechanism for so many people with ADHD. She mentioned another teacher had at one point offered to help her, but she never got back to that person because she was embarrassed about like the state of her room and how little she had done and was afraid they would judge her.  And she tells herself teachers need to be organized, which really only adds fuel to the shame. And she said she's spent a lot of time just like worrying about getting it done.  

Well, that's a lot, and that is so exhausting. And also of course she's putting off setting up her classroom and of course she is currently dreading it. Even though it was challenges due to her ADHD that were initially making it hard for her to get started and go in. So she was putting it off. Now her classroom is a source of shame. And shame feels awful in our bodies. And so when we feel shame, We often just try to suppress it, ignore it, distract ourselves from it. Anything to not have to actually experience it.

 And that can momentarily help, like when we smoke or drink. Or find other maybe easier ways to be productive or scroll our phones or binge Netflix. But all that happens is that, you know, that shame just kind of quietly plays in the background, kind of. Hovers above us like a rain cloud or, you know, just zapping our energy, lowering our capacity. And really  shame is a huge barrier for us working towards our goals and doing all the things that we want to be doing. Unless we can learn how to allow for it and tolerate some of that shame will also challenging some of the thoughts that are contributing to it. 

And this is why it's so important to understand ADHD and how it affects us. So many people with ADHD are living with so much shame because they don't understand why things feel so difficult for them. And other people don't understand that things are so difficult for them. And so they'll often judge and make comments that reflect that. And when you go through life with that combination, Struggling with what can sometimes seem like a very basic task and being questioned about why you can't just do it. 

Well, we start to internalize that and then begin to think there is something about us that we should be ashamed of. Anytime we struggle.  You know, being asked why you didn't do something already or what took so long or how did you forget or why would you do it like that? Or why can't you get organized, maybe being called lazy or irresponsible or unreliable or inconsiderate? I mean, I could go on and on. With these types of comments, which. You know, I've said before, it's not as though everyone who has said something like this has bad intentions. Or is trying to be mean or make us feel bad. But, you know, they also likely don't understand what's going on either, but this can really begin to lower one self-esteem. 

And so instead of acknowledging the very real reasons that might be making something really difficult for us and, you know, using our energy to find support, or figure out how to do it in a way that would work for us, that works with our brain. Or implementing strategies that really could help. We spend all of our energy avoiding and procrastinating and worrying and stressing out and ruminating and beating ourselves up.  

And as you can see, in my client's case, she was feeling shame because she was thinking she should have gotten it done earlier. And as a result, she isn't giving herself the support. She needs to be able to get it done. Shame is the barrier. 

One point that really highlighted. This was the fact that a coworker offered to help her. But she felt so much shame around not being able to do it herself, that she didn't even take the help. I'm not saying have someone else do everything for you and that's not actually what this person was even offering. But having someone else in her classroom offers her a body, double somebody who can like, kind of hold her accountable, which is something that can be so helpful for someone with ADHD. This could be someone who she can bounce ideas off of help her make decisions. Make the task, a little more fun offer suggestions for organizing materials, help her estimate, how long things might take and just so much more.  

You can also see that any time she started feeling shame, she would begin doing other tasks or smoking or ruminating. And she really wasn't able to.  Actually just stop in that moment and spend some time to make a plan or think through ideas or look through an organize her material or consider what might help. She just wanted to hide from the shame so she didn't have to feel it. But that also meant hiding from setting up her room.  
And so throughout this coaching session, once she could start to see. how her ADHD had played a huge role in putting this off until the last minute. She was able to have like a bit more compassion for herself. Was she's still frustrated that she was in this situation where she was running out of time to get it done. Yes, totally.  But being frustrated about the situation. she was in is much different and way less dysregulating, then feeling shame and really blaming and judging herself for putting it off. 

So acknowledging why she felt shame and then pushing back against it by questioning if there is anything for her to actually be ashamed of. Allowed her to gain some distance from the situation.  In order to consider what she actually wanted to do moving forward and talk through how she was going to go about doing it.   

And one of the things she talked about was actually taking her coworker up on the offer to help. She realized there was someone who genuinely was happy to offer support and accepting that support would relieve a lot of the overwhelm. She was feeling.   She was also. really able to break down the next few days and consider how many hours she could spend in the classroom. What she wanted to accomplish each day. And, and this one is so important. She also recognized that it didn't need to be perfect for the first day. of school. 

And that one was huge as well, because perfectionism, which is another common trait, amongst many people with ADHD.  Can be another thing that really stops us in our tracks, because if there's a chance, it won't be perfect or we don't know how we could possibly make it perfect. Or we don't even know what perfect looks like. Well then oftentimes we don't even try. Or we put it off for so long. That time becomes the reason it's not perfect. Not us.  But that is a concept for a whole other episode, and I won't completely get derailed here and go into it now. 

Anyways, acknowledging that it didn't need to be perfect. Allowed her to go through the list in her head of all the things she was feeling like she needed to do, you know, that list that was probably overwhelming her from the get-go   and kind of sort through and find the things that actually needed to get done by that first day, which all of a sudden that list felt much more manageable.  So she left the session feeling much more calm and clear about her plan.  And was no longer, totally dreading. going in and getting started.  

Okay. So maybe she was still dreading it a little bit and probably at times she would still get overwhelmed and likely feel some of that shame. Creeping in. But the point is now she can be aware of when those emotions pop up and understand why she's feeling them. And still move forward with what she wants to do. Knowing those emotions don't have to control her actions.  Because that's what so much of this work in coaching is about. Bringing awareness to how big emotions can completely take control of us, and then finding ways to take control back.