ADHD and Self-Care
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.”
– Audre Lorde
We can’t really show up for others if we aren’t first taking care of ourselves. But we often get in the habit of underestimating the importance of self-care. I suspect part of this is because with ADHD, one can be very externally motivated. For example, do you need your toothbrush to be out on the counter for you to remember to brush your teeth before bed? Do you have to keep the light on in the laundry room in order to remember to move the clothes from the washer to the driver? (That’s me!) Our daily to-do list often drives us, more than our internal needs drive us, which makes it hard to determine what’s most important. In terms of self-care, let’s get back to the basics.
1. Slow down.
ADHD brains like stimulation and our busy world has plenty of stimulation, noise, and distraction to last us a lifetime. Stimulation is the “encouragement of something to make it develop or become more active; the action of arousing interest, enthusiasm, or excitement; the raising of levels of physiological or nervous activity in the body or any biological system” (Oxford Languages, 2024).
For ADHD brains, stimulation goes hand-in-hand with feelings of motivation, so there is good reason for folks to enjoy and increase this feeling as much as possible as it helps them remain calm, engaged, and regulated. If you don’t think you need to slow down, try going the speed limit exactly, and see how your body reacts. You may find the urge to go faster, which is typically evidence that we have an internal motor driving us that doesn’t like to slow down. The reason slowing down is important, is so that the ADHD brain and body can slow down long enough to really pick up on internal cues. That part of us that wants to keep going might be afraid that if we slow down, we won’t be productive. Instead of living out of that fear, it’s important to reflect as to why we keep running and what we are even running towards.
If ADHD symptoms encourage us to overidentify with external cues rather than internal cues – then our default mode is to just keep going. This means we have to be very intentional in order to really check in with ourselves to identify how we are feeling.
Now that the idea of self-care is part of mainstream culture, it is completely commodified. At this point, self-care has become attached to bath bombs, ice rollers, or an iced latte. That’s just another way people end up in the wrong direction, in which self-care becomes attached to a purchase or an object. Another way of training ourselves to become more externally driven. The downfall of this habitual pattern is it traps our brains in a feedback loop, where it’s consistently looking for that dopamine boost to distract us from whatever is actually going on internally. Maybe what’s there is sadness, loneliness, boredom, fear, shame, guilt, or regret, but we’re too busy to even pick up on it. Or we don’t even realize that as soon as we feel shame, it is actually the emotional cue that gets us up off the couch to grab one more beer. Just remembering to slow down might be the first step to uncover what is invisible to us when we are constantly on the run.
2. Be present.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls all the things that your body does without you having to think it through; like breathing, sweating, and regulating blood pressure. The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are designed to work in harmony. I like to imagine them tapping each other in and out when they are necessary, as if they are wrestlers fighting a match. The sympathetic system manages the fight-or-flight system and it gets tapped in when there is a life-threatening situation, such as when a deer runs out in front of your car or when you wake up and realize you overslept for work or even if you have a huge presentation at work with upper management. The parasympathetic system taps in when it’s time to rest and digest, to recover from the fight-or-flight response, and come down from it. Walking in nature, crying, breathwork, yawning, stretching, and just laying down are a couple ways to turn on this system, or are signs that your body is turning on the parasympathetic system. Within the context of the autonomic nervous system, ADHD impacts this balancing act significantly and will require more intentional effort. When we are running from one thing to the next, and our way of relaxing is binge watching Love is Blind, our nervous system may not be getting to a rest and digest state.
In our modern world, trying to be “present” feels like an unreasonable expectation when there are countless things to keep track of, remember, and plan for. If you are watching a movie, and at the same time you’re scrolling on Instagram – you’re more accurately listening to the movie, taking information in on Instagram, and not fully processing either activity. Smart phones have fundamentally changed the way we interact with the world; and just because we think we are doing two things at once, it doesn’t mean we are doing them well. Plus, how exhausting is that for our brains? How does our body know how to respond if we are constantly switching between tasks? Because of ADHD and the productivity-driven world we live in, we are often more successful, popular, and financially stable when we are we living out of the go-go-go mentality or hyper-fixating on our work quite consistently. Plus, the constant running helps the stimulation that we are craving. Sometimes we get so used to the running that trying to slow down is actually painful. And that is when slowing down is the most important, because it means our nervous system hasn’t learned it is safe to slow down.
In conclusion, ADHD impacts one’s ability to engage in self-care effectively. Though, the irony is that showing up for others first starts with showing up for ourselves. This might be the hardest lesson for us to learn. At some point, increasing productivity and efficiency may not make much of a difference in your life. Perhaps, the thing we haven’t tried is slowing down and being present. Let’s start there!