Episode Description
In this episode Spencer Chernick, LMFT explores how ADHD impacts the workplace and offers strategies to thrive. He explains that ADHD’s right-brain dominance makes emotional connection essential for focus and memory, while executive functioning and prioritization can be challenging. Common struggles like time blindness, task avoidance, and emotional dysregulation often create barriers, but Spencer provides actionable solutions. These include setting multiple alarms to disrupt hyperfocus, reframing tasks with positive language to reduce resistance, and using body doubling—working alongside others—to stay focused. He also highlights the importance of emotional regulation techniques, like the 4-7-8 breathing method, to manage stress and improve productivity. Spencer encourages advocacy, urging individuals to communicate their ADHD needs to create supportive environments. Ultimately, he reframes ADHD as a strength, emphasizing that understanding and leveraging its unique traits can lead to success.
Episode Transcript
Hello. Welcome. My name is Spencer Chernick, LMFT. And this is ADHD as an Ally, Thrive in your Career, Relationships and Responsibilities. Today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about something that I discussed essentially with every single one of my clients. And that’s the workplace, specifically ADHD, in the workplace.
In a world, the thing to first understand is that ADHD is a right brain diagnosis, right? We come from a creative, emotionally attached place. We do really well with what we really connect to. Think about the times that you have made that change in your life. It was because you were really excited about it or the potential of some big scary things enough where you were like, ah, don’t do that.
Or honestly, you just, you’re got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you were just so frustrated that you were just like compelled to do it. But seeing how in all these instances you’re emotionally attached. Why am I mentioning this? Executive functioning is where we struggle.
This is very left brain, it’s not like we don’t have access to our left brain. It’s just that’s not like where we set up our base, right? We, if we don’t naturally connect to it emotionally, it’s going to be harder for us to remember. I just call it emotional memory, right? It’s like we naturally remember what we are activated by.
I think it’s connected to our, constant chase for dopamine. So, when the task is more, I should do this, you would even think oh, what about when I say I need to do this? Need, that’s emotional. Yeah. But who’s telling you that need is someone else saying you need to do this? cause. What if that’s not, you like, what if you really feel like you need to get to that next level on that video game or, you need to get back to that project you’re working on in the garage or right.
What’s your need? Does it line up? So that’s where we run into things. And so, there are these three struggles. One of them is time blankness. We can really, a lot of time people are just like, oh, I lose track of time. Yeah, totally. That’s a big part of it. Oh, it’s oh, I, but it’s, more than that.
It’s what does five minutes feel like to you? Again, knows how I use the word feel. We are right brain dominant. If I really enjoy what I’m doing, five minutes feels like five seconds. But if I’m stressed out by what I’m doing, resistant to what I’m doing, hate what I’m doing, man, five minutes could feel like an eternity.
So, we are also blind to what five minutes is because there’s not a consistent left brain. This is what, what is 60 seconds? Five times, and this is what a second. Like it’s. It’s not like that. It’s how much we’re connecting to what we’re doing and what it feels like, so that can work to our benefit because our time blindness can also mean we can get lost in something, in a good way, right?
Say what you want about how we can get lost in stuff and, how it backfires, but man, when it’s locked in on what we want to be doing should be doing right when all the planets align, that’s our superpower. The problem is, in the workplace, there’s times, there’s deadlines, there’s this, there’s sequence, there’s order, right?
Even if we’re pulled to, one phase of the project, maybe that’s, the thing we should be doing after the thing that, people want us to be doing, right? And so, there’s that kind of time blindness, but also when it’s setting up our schedule, right? When we’re timing out, okay, how long is this going to take me?
That’s a hard answer, right? Because what are we accounting for? We, a lot of times we tend to forget, okay, I have to use the restroom, right? Will I ever want any breaks? Will I need to get up and eat? Is there, do I have to gather information before I even start the task? Like, where am I in my, readiness to jump into it?
There are all these things, right? So, we try to speak, hopefully because we’re stressed out about it, we try to calm ourselves down, right? To motivate ourselves to do it right, make the obstacle smaller so it’s less scary. But in the end, that kind of means sometimes we, I. Tell ourselves it’s going to take 15 when really, it’s like 45.
I don’t know about you, but there’s been a couple times where, I don’t know, I might’ve waited till the night before when it was a project that should have been worked on for a month. Yeah. It’s a thing, right? And it’s, not like I wasn’t aware, right? It’s, I’ve heard this time and time again, it’s you understand, right?
But in your heart, it’s you pulled these other things, but you’re also pushed away, right? There’s this thing called task avoidance, right? It’s this natural, how do we already connect to the task, right? It’s not that we were driven from difficult things. That’s a big misconception. It’s a big misconception.
Oh, and by the way, if it hasn’t been clear enough already, notice how I keep saying we, I have ADHD. I’m as ADHD as it gets, I literally have every symptom of both an attentive type as well as hyperactive slash impulsive. I can get more into that, in a, in another instance, but. This is something I understand very well.
And you can tell yourself the should and the this is and the that’s. But if we have a natural resistance to something because of how we see it, it could be an anywhere from, we don’t connect to, we don’t understand why someone’s asking us to do this. Like all the way to it’s really important to me.
Oh man. What if I do it wrong? There’s something about it that makes us have some sort of resistance. So, we will tell ourselves, I really, I, can’t work in a hectic environment, right? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that, right? You know what, no.
Now is the time to do the dishes. The dishes that were not a big issue when I wanted to watch that show or when I was making food or whatever the case may be. Now. Now, right now. And I’ve had clients, come to me and, say that I just, I don’t have enough time in the day. But the thing is when we sat down to take a little break, that 10-minute break was that really 10 minutes.
Now we got time blindness interacting with task avoidance, right? This creates a much larger elements, and that’s why I broke these down into two different areas. Because understanding that we can also misjudge the thing that’s coming. We’re also misjudging. The thing that we’re doing, we’re misjudging like how long it’s been taking.
And so, it’s really easy to get lost. So, it’s really important that we check in and have some sort of thing that lets us know like how we’re going along and how it’s coming along. So, the strategies that I like to recommend are first understanding something that I like to call obstacle avoidance. This is really, important. You can’t predict everything, but if you check in with yourself, what do you tend to run into? If the most common thing you say is forget. Yeah, me too. It’s super normal. It’s literally part of the diagnosis. Okay, so what helps with forgetfulness? It could be, I know these are basic things, but this is always where you want to start, right?
Do, are we setting alarms? Also? Here’s a key thing I like to say. Are we just setting one alarm? Because I get it, you’ve got it on snooze, but there’s almost a rhythm to snooze, right? I don’t know about other phones, but the iPhone has a 90-minute snooze. So, if it keeps smoothing, so like nine gets into a flow, right?
So, what I like to do is I like to set three different alarms, five minutes apart. You want to break up that dopamine pull that you’re in right there, have it gone off every five, and then four, the three that creates this hectic combination where you’re just thrown from it so much that you’re just like, okay.
I need to stop doing whatever this is. Is right. It’s like understanding what the issue is. It’s not that you’re just forgetting, yeah, I set alarms, but are you sending alarms in the way that does what it’s supposed to do? Break your locked in focus. Remember that superpower? I said, yeah, when it’s put over here.
Mis misplaced power, right? That’s going to, that’s going to be a problem. It’s things like that, but it’s also understanding okay, do I get pulled towards my phone? Is it, is this something as simple as facing my phone down? Or is it like putting it in another room and boom, I want you to check in with how you felt right there.
Okay. I mentioned we are a right brain diagnosis. Why am I saying that? You are very likely, those who are struggling with the thing I just said right there, you just got an emotional jolt in your chest right there. That’s your resistance. You just came up with a bunch of reasons not to have it in the other room.
What if someone needs to get ahold of me? What if, what if I just one? Yeah, totally, valid, right? These are reasons. Yes. And they’re also part of. What is. Happening. So it’s like there’s an acceptance that we have to engage in that helps us with this task avoidance so that we can then better assess our time blindness, because if we have less resistance about what’s going on and we have something that really keeps us on task and has us spend as much time on what we’re doing as we think we are doing.
We’re not going to lose as much time, which won’t put as much pressure, which won’t increase the moment, which won’t increase the task avoidance, which almost makes us not want to look at the thing even more, which, oh yeah, not looking at it. More task, the time blindness boom activated further. It’s this feedback loop.
So, the real, answer is how do we break up the pattern that starts at all? Are we setting ourselves up for success? Are we truly, understanding everything that’s at play? Because there’s a tradeoff. By doing the thing that we should, chances are we’re not fully doing what we want to do, and that sucks.
And I’m sorry, me too. Been there. But
that’s the tradeoff. If we can truly recognize, okay, that means I’m actually not going to get that much sleep. Or it means I won’t get that much downtime after work because I have to blah, blah, blah. And we can get into that acceptance that helps us with the task avoidance because we don’t see it as such a big thing.
And then we’re able to really look at it and be like, okay, how much time is this really going to take me? And then we can really actually better assess it cause it’s not coming from this emotional place as much. Then we’re also able to kind of be like, okay, all right, Spencer said, we got to sort this up.
Okay. If we say we’re going to say 10 minutes, what is 10 minutes and how am I setting up these alarms? I like to send these alarms, nudge and nudge, right? Hey, thing in 10 minutes. Hey thing in five minutes. And then I always want to go. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then I have one that goes off two minutes right before it’s like, for real dude.
Now come. I know, I get it, but like you could always keep whatever the thing is I’m doing. So, get us in a position where we’re ready for it. Have that acceptance. I know we don’t want to, but, and that’s kind of where we start from. And then what I want you to ask yourself is, okay then what makes it not happen?
And then do this process over and over yeah, when it comes to task blindness, a time blindness, and, these task initiation struggles known as task avoidance, this is the largest part that we run into. So, the best thing to take from this, and what I hope that we really, move forward with when it comes to this is that this is something that I really hope we look at from an emotional lens.
Our whole lives we are told you should, because you have to want, doesn’t play a role here or my favorite, ADHD is not an excuse. This is an emotional base. So, if we do not recognize how much resistance we have, not only to the thing itself, but to all the little things that would set us up for success.
Then we’re not really mo. working with all the, info with all the tools and it’s, that’s, bound to set up a system that’s going to lead us to struggle. So that’s a big one. Another thing that I that I incorporated a lot in that one is this thing where there’s this disfunction, executive dysfunction in prioritization.
Because what I’m attached to and all the chaos of the struggle and all the chaos of the ups and downs and everything like that, I can be like, okay, so it’s okay I got to do this, but right. But I’m also supposed to be doing that and it’s like this, see, like this hectic like pull, that just happens repeatedly, right?
Again, this is why I mentioned everything about time blindness, right? This really, stacks, because we’re going into struggle number two, which is just in general, executive dysfunction and prioritization. We are dysregulating. We might not call it that. Oh, I’m just a little stressed.
Oh, I’m just a little sped up.
We’re going to be coming from a place of what motivates us and what have we learned throughout our life. We do things because it stresses us out, because it excites us, or we’ve been frustrated by it. We’re done with being done. We’re fed up with being fed up. When it’s just something I’m supposed to do, and especially, what if this isn’t even your forever job, right?
This is just your right now job. Oh my gosh. Even harder because you’re literally telling yourself, I’m not going to need to know this forever. So, we don’t always label it that way, but we’re like actually dysregulating a little bit. Like we’re like stomping our feet in a little way, being like not fair.
Dude, this is not that serious. How many times have I, your client told me that, its dude, it’s not that serious. It’s coffee. I remember hearing that one, right? It’s I get it, like in the end I’m getting it cleaned. I’m duh. But there’s an actual like way that they want it done.
And if our emotional need to that, our emotional connection to that or where we’re at already, right? Are we having a hard day, hard week, a hard life? So, are we coming in at a zero? Probably not. Wherever we are on that scale, let’s just say you register that. Are you engaging in the regulating, self-soothing, self-loving strategies equivalent for that level of they don’t pay me enough for this right now.
Or wherever you’re at. cause that’s important too. I’m a therapist. I will absolutely tell you, deep breathe, right? One of my favorite strategies is 4, 7, 8. Okay? What it is you breathe in and remember, it doesn’t have to be like on the clock, four second, like there to a perfect second. What’s really more important is that whatever you’re calling a second, it’s just consistent.
Four seconds, seven seconds, eight seconds. You breathe in through your nose for four. You then hold it. You can either. Some people like to hold it in their chest. Some people like to push it down to the diaphragm. I find either works. I like the diaphragm one. But sometimes I confuse it to people. So, in the end, it’s really just about holding it and then you breathe out your mouth.
I’m emphasizing this for a reason, for eight seconds in the nose, hold out the mouth. That order is important. It is the most muscle tension releasing blood oxidizing, just like it’s what’s, literally what the marines do when they are under fire or if they get, if they need to get to sleep within two minutes.
Apparently, this is like a need that they have in certain situations. So yes, it’s a very calming strategy. So not understanding what’s important. It’s not like we don’t know, like what order they’re telling us to, but we get bounced around, we get lost in the sauce. It, it happens because our emotions are where we’re coming from.
In a left brain formatted world, which look, I’ll be honest, I feel like it needs to be right. I like knowing that amazon’s going to get here in two days, right? That, that, that’s a systematic, cause and effect system that comes from a left-brain formation. But there’s so much beauty that comes from ADHD that unfortunately doesn’t get reflected in this kind of scenario unless we can center it and just recognize hey, I need to do this first.
Then not because of this, I’ll be able to do this if we really don’t know the order, is there someone we can check in with? Now I know that’s going to activate this. There’s this thing called rejection sensitivity with ADHD, right? We get told our whole life, either directly or at least subtly, you’re doing this wrong, right?
The real word is different. Let’s just be real here. But it definitely comes off, if not as literally phrased as you’re doing it wrong. I, why are you doing it like that? Literally, like I’ve heard that so many times. Maybe this way works for me. Why do I have to do it that way? Even if the majority does it that way?
Why is that the criteria that I must also, but because of a concept known as in grouping, we feel much more comfortable the more we feel like we see our fellow tribes, people. So, the more I have in common with you, the more comfortable I am, and the more you act in a way that I perceive majority behave, you’re going to be seen as deviant.
It’s going to make me uncomfortable. If I don’t recognize you as what my people do, how I act. What does that make you, if not part of a different group? Now I understand you less. It’s just, it’s primal, so we get really uncomfortable, and we engage in a process known as social learning where the people around will try to correct the behavior subtly all the way to directly.
So, depending on your age group, right? Especially, I’ll definitely say like millennial, and above, right? Going back then, we grew up in times where they really didn’t understand it. Like they were just like, they would just get these left-brain things like, hey, this is what the syllabus says, do this, then this, okay. If I’m struggling with it, then why? It is clearly not that simple. Because I’m getting pulled, I’m getting stressed, da and if I don’t know what to do, I want to ask. But I don’t want to get rejected. I’m ready to be rejected. cause my whole life was already told. I didn’t want; I don’t want to be reminded that I think wrong.
That doesn’t feel good. So, we get stuck and as a result, I. We are unable to prioritize things in order, and that can also make us feel so defeated that we struggle to give ourselves this sense of urgency to compel ourselves to do it right. Maybe we haven’t just lost track of time or we’ve mis assessed how long maybe we fully know.
And for some reason it’s like that dream, like you’re running through water, but you just can’t get yourself to get up and do it. That and the people around us who don’t have it, don’t get it. Even. Even the ones who try to sympathize, right? The allies, right? But it’s just not that simple.
It’s this emotional pull that’s pulling us away. So overall, recognizing that calming we down and centering ourselves, even if it’s just as simple as that. 4, 7, 8, I would start with that. Or maybe having some sort of phrase that you say to yourself that kind of centers you again. Hey, I know I have a lot going on right now, but I have to do these things in order and that’s how I’m going to knock this out.
What’s that phrase? How do you eat elephant? One bite at a time. Something that kind of calms us down and slows it down. So, what I’d like to do at this point, just to kind of wrap, today’s, episode, is discuss like how I work with clients that struggle with, not only what I mentioned today. Just a little quick recap. We’ve got, I. Time blindness, task avoidance, executive dysfunction and prioritization, just in general emotional dysregulation and how that transforms into shame and, rejection, sensitivity, and any other elements that, interfere with, living up to, what we want out of ourselves.
When it comes to the work world. So, there are a lot of things. This might feel like this all consuming, overwhelming, obstacle to overcome, but truly, a lot of times it’s just a mixture of little things. It’s just finding what little things work for you. And if we find that, hey, we’ve done all the little things that still, then you can go to medium things.
But let’s really just start off with some basic stuff, right? I don’t want to presume that you guys do or don’t know this or that, so let’s just start here and build from there. But the things that I really like to do that really help people, there’s a lot of things, for example, when it comes to time blindness, right?
It’s not just setting alarms, right? As I mentioned previously, it’s, setting alarms in a way that will disrupt the thing that is making it, so you didn’t respond to the first alarm. Now, maybe you’ve noticed set alarms before and you’re like, oh, wow, I didn’t even think about that. Okay, try it. But what I recommend is starting off with three alarms.
That’s my magic number. I highly recommend like three alarms that are five minutes apart. cause even if you snooze them, I actually recommend snoozing them. If you don’t, if you are going to dismiss it, don’t dismiss it, snooze it, and then what’s going to happen is it’s going to go on a nine-minute rotation.
So, you’re going to get interrupted five minutes later, then four minutes later, then five minutes later, it’s going to be this constant disruption that’ll break. That locked in thing, whatever you’re doing, right? And then it also will increase. Like he’s crap, I got to do that. Crap. I got to do that. And remember, we really want to, if we can activate the excitement, the anxiety, and or the frustration.
Now that might sound weird to you that I’m saying activate the anxiety or frustration, but may I remind you, although it might not feel the most pleasant to experience these emotions, they’re not negative emotions. They’re doing a job. Anxiety is saying, hey, there’s this upcoming thing that’s important to you that has the potential for a negative outcome.
Let’s plan for that and prevent that. Frustration’s the exact opposite. Same thing, but it’s like, hey, we’ve been doing a thing that isn’t working and it’s, frustrating me and it’s making me feel bad about myself, and yada, yada, we actually want to lean into these emotions, right? Because that can also lead to why you’re avoiding the task and the task avoidance.
It can also lead to how you lost track of time. cause you’re not really paying attention to every element. cause you don’t want to be there. You don’t want to be doing that. So not only do I recommend alarms, but I also really, recommend how you label it, right? This is really, important just because something is not desirable all the way to sucks.
That’s, yeah, you’re allowed to feel that way. But there’s still verbiage that we use, in my opinion, that heavily makes a difference between the simplicity or the more complication of something and just, saying little things like instead, like one I hear a lot is, yeah, and I still have to blah, blah, blah.
This is how that feels. This is how that sounds. I still have to. It almost implies it’s this thing that you should have been doing this whole time and weren’t, ah, activate the shame. Now we’re talking about dysregulation, right? Ah, boom. Now it’s something that I’m trying to avoid. Now we’re talking about task avoidance.
cause really, I’m trying to avoid the feeling of shame, but I attach shame to the task. So, in my effort to avoid shame, I avoid the task. Therein lies the problem. So, it’s making sure that we label it. As something more doable. We don’t have to be dishonest with ourselves, and that’s the thing that we get messed up with sometimes is we go, oh, it’s no big deal.
What if it feels like a big deal to you? That’s not going to work. So instead, it’s hey, I only have that one last thing to do. That’s just as accurate as I still have to blah, blah, blah. Is factually accurate, yet if you are one of the many, I’ve worked with that saying something, phrasing like that where you shift a phrase, feels different, go with that.
That will heavily help with the emotional dysregulation that leads to the, it’ll make you view it differently, highly, potentially, that it will make you view it differently, and then now you’re addressing the problem with less of a struggle, less resistance, less fear, whatever it is. So, the alarms for the time blindness, the reframing, right?
Whether it’s, I still have to versus I just have to. And then also just, I would recommend really tracking your verbiage. How are you describing this thing, right? What’s your tone? What’s your literal word choice? How factually accurate is that you might think I’m making a big deal outate, mountain outate molehill is what they say.
But the truth of the matter is. I think technically, even if you have 10 things to do, if you decide to, say to yourself like, ah, I feel like I still have so many things to do, right? Or you give it a number, ah, I like a million things I still to do. Granted, you’re not like literally thinking you have a million things to do, but that vague one, so many things to do.
Vague is unknown. Unknown is anxiety inducing. cause if it’s unknown, then, our primal instincts kick in and tell us, we now need to better understand this, but we’re not giving ourselves any detail, so we don’t know what to grab onto. So, it’s just anxiety sitting there building with no outlet. So, we avoid it because that doesn’t feel good.
And historically it’s been attached to something that we are doing wrong. So, it’s really important that we relabel it. We call it something that’s still true to us but at least feels better now. Will one word change make the difference even though it’s technically possible? I’ve seen it. I don’t want you going in with that expectation.
Okay, if I just call this, that’s going to fix it all. No, there’s, very likely a domino effect. It’s okay, all I have to do is that one more thing. Which really, like that’s something I, really want to do, right? Maybe I don’t want to like actually to do the thing, but I want what doing the thing gets me.
See what I’m talking to myself now. I’m relabeling this thing while still being honest with myself. We come from an emotional base. We have to address that when we are coming up with anything. That’s how we imitate left brain behaviors. We have to come from a right brain location. So emotional reframing is huge, and there’s also little things we can do.
If this is a task that you’re struggling with at work where you can get someone to do it alongside you or it, whatever the case is. If they’re able to do it with you or maybe they’re doing something similar, but you’re both filling out a piece of paper, it’s just different kinds of piece of paper.
That’s something called body doubling. We do really well or at least much better when someone’s already doing that thing. You ever zone out in class and all of a sudden you look around and everyone’s taking notes and you’re like, oh my, that’s body doubling you. You labeled it as, oh, look at me messing up again or zoning out again, or whatever.
Hopefully you didn’t, but we’re not great with our self-talk, so you probably did and that’s okay. It’s really just body doubling at being activated. And lastly, this one’s a hard one. I’m not going to require this outate anybody, but, and I, don’t mean lastly, like these are all the options. I could go on and on, but this episode does need to end at some point.
Mostly for your sake. I’m sure you don’t want to hear me drowning on and on forever, because I can. Don’t test me. I will do it. Advocacy, especially if you’re a millennial or older. We grew up at a time where people didn’t understand it as good as they do now. And honestly, there’s still so much more to understand, right?
I’ve got trainings, this and that, getting certified, we’re still learning stuff. We think we know what we’re talking about, and then we understand it even more and then we’re like, ah, it’s actually more attached to that. So, it’s, a work in progress forever, honestly. It’s how everything works and that’s okay.
But when we were growing up, it was framed, I, okay, I don’t want to speak for you, but for me it was framed as an excuse. So, it wasn’t just the shame that I felt where I looked to my left and looked to my right, and something seems so much easier for these people and not for me, but the feedback I got from being like, hey, I’m actually starting the race a little further back than everyone else.
So, this is hard to keep up with everybody. We didn’t understand that there were things we could do to make it so that we’re starting at the same spot as everybody else. And then, and it’s more of an equal, thing. We were dealing with all these distractions, and we have a lower threshold for overwhelm and, overstimulation while we also crave stimulation.
Yeah. Don’t get me started on that one. As a result, we got taught, especially the older and older we are. We were taught that you don’t even talk about it, you’re not going to be understood, you’re not going to be heard, or at least to the level you want. Maybe you’ll get the, that, that sympathy and I’ll like, oh, like a poor you or like a oh, and they still think that like you can, or someone who thinks they have ADHD when they don’t.
And so, they, they’re like, oh, I figured it out, or I cured myself, or whatever the case may be. Like for multiple reasons. Again, I can go on that forever. Here, look at me doing it. I still, I’m a talker. It’s what I do. But. Advocate for yourself. There are things that exist now. There are accommodations, and not only are they like in various instances, like legally not only required to like work with you, but also there are like things protecting you from being a.
Like negatively impacted for it, especially if you go about it, in a way that, makes it easier for them to listen and work with you. Be respectful and all those kinds of things, obviously. But we are taught to avoid this topic with other people, whether it was directly said to us or it was just implied.
So, we don’t think to let people know. Hey, fyi, I have ADHD, right? During an interview, when they ask that question of what’s something you want us to know about? I used to always say, I just want to point out I have a dud. I still fully intend to do all the things that you guys ask of me, but there’s going to be times where you see me getting up and walking around.
There’s going to be times where you see me kind of having a lot of energy and maybe chatting with other people, and it might look like. This, that and the other thing. But what I’m actually doing is, I need to get up and walk around sometimes, and I think better that way I’m not just getting up and avoiding the task like.
That’s a good thing that you’re seeing. I’m, doing this and I’m doing that. And other times when I’m talking with people, like I’m trying to get the energy up, I feel like I work better that way. And sometimes I feel like other people work that way. So, it’s how I operate. And I explain, hey, I have a dud, which kind of slides in there.
You, like if there’s something that’s like a difficult thing in the workplace between you and I, maybe having that information makes you come at me. A little more to my advantage and a little more to our advantage, and we can figure out what to do moving forward. But also, I get the opportunity to label for them what a behavior is before they get to call it something.
And then I have to talk them out of that definition that they have instead of being like, no, I wasn’t goofing off. I was, I’m just going to label that ahead of time. You can also ask for extended time on tests in school and things like that. If this is a school thing as opposed to. Work for the people who don’t have a job.
But schools’ kind of like work for people who don’t have a job yet. Obviously, there are accommodations that give extended time where a lot of people are really understanding. Sometimes your boss has agency and if they just understand oh, let’s do it this way instead, and it might change how something is packaged for you, and they might not even care.
It might be an easy thing. They might know what to do, they just didn’t know you had it. So, advocate for yourself. I know that a big part of it is based on how you feel about it, and if you feel like it’s a big ask, your car will probably present it. Like it’s a big ask, but it’s literally just being like, hey, I operate better this way.
Hey, can we do that? Hey, is there anything, that exists at this company, for that yada y or whatever the case may be, or look up online, things like that. It’s. You have a lot of options, and it’s not treated nearly the same as it once was, and I would love for you to at least see that it’s much more navigable than it was when we were younger.
It’s really something that you can use to your advantage because having ADHD comes with its struggles, but man does it come with its awesomeness and if we can just find a way to have our work better with what we naturally do, then we don’t have to focus on all these different strategies to keep us inside a lane that we might not even need to be in.
Maybe this works too. Maybe we need to show them that this way works. They just didn’t know it. Advocate it is not something to be ashamed of. I love a dud. I’m convinced that’s why my wife married me. I’m a total goofball. She never has a dull moment in her life. So that’s like the way the how I really want to end this is like me.
This is not something to be ashamed of. It’s a beautiful thing. Neurotypicals have their struggles too. Everybody has their struggles. They just look different, right? And so, we get superpowers and, they might just be different. We get struggles, they might look different. But I hope that we can take these strategies I talked about, especially the advocacy thing and, see if that may be, improves our work lives.
But as for now, that’s where I’ll come to a close. cause as I said. I could make this a 15-hour episode easily. I love this too much, and I love talking about it too much. So, I really hope that this was helpful, and I look forward to the next episode. And until then, I really appreciate you guys stopping by and until the next episode, I bid you ado.
