ADHD Burnout (and what to do about it)
Are you someone who beats yourself up when you can’t get thing done? Do you get frustrated with yourself for not trying harder? This post might just be for you.
Firstly, this blog today is based on a YouTube video I put out. If you would prefer to watch instead of read, you can find the video here:
You don’t have to be neurodivergent to suffer from the challenges I mentioned above but I think this is something that particularly affects us neurospicies. We’ve had to navigate growing up in a world that wasn’t built for our brains, a world in which we’ve often had to work really hard to adapt to.
If we’re someone that is used to working hard already, and you probably are even if other people don’t recognise that, it can be easy to subconsciously think: “well I’ve worked hard to get where I am today, I’ll just keep working harder to keep improving”. But that’s not always the best approach.
You see, we’re not infinite reserves of hard work. This is something I have to remind myself of a lot so future Leigh, come back and read this. We are not infinite reserves of hard work. We have a lot to give and we’ve proven this time and time again, but if we keep pushing and pushing and pushing then we’ll hit a point of burnout. And you know what happens when we hit the point of burnout? We probably try and push through it. And it only gets worse.
I feel like a box to shut the world out is exactly what I need when I’m feeling burnt out.
I’m one of those people. I’m an ADHDer, I want to do all of the things all of the time. I’m impatient for results and I will work my socks off to get to where I need to be. The problem is that this ADHD drive also comes with ADHD burn out and I get to the point where I physically can’t push anymore. So what do we do?
The obvious answer is take a break. Sure. Absolutely the first thing we should do is to take a break. But a break is useless if nothing fundamentally changes underneath. If you are burnt out, take a break and then go back into the exact situation that caused your burn out after the break, well then you’re just going to burn right back out again and the cycle repeats.
This then leads to us feeling bad about ourselves. Why do we keep burning out? Why can’t we just work harder? Why aren’t we good enough? If beating ourselves up got us to where we needed to be then we would be there already. So what do we actually do?
The answer is that we stop judging ourselves by other people’s standards and start working with our brains.
I’ll give you an example. I have ADHD. (I’ve mentioned it once or twice). There are many things about my ADHD that I genuinely love and enjoy but one of the things I can’t stand the most because I’m aware of it happening and I can’t do anything about it is when my executive function is running on empty.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, executive function is the juice you need to get yourself to do things. Harvard’s Centre on the Developing Child defines it as “the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully” and if you’re neurodivergence then you may well relate to this struggle to get things done.
Some days I have ample “spoons” for executive function. Other days it’s more of a struggle. Forks are pretty useless at holding things.
To describe it, I like to borrow the concepts from Spoon Theory, a metaphor for energy management where units of energy are quantified in spoons. Borrowing this metaphor I can consider that I have a number of executive function spoons at the beginning of the day. Every time I need to self-regulate then it costs me a quantity of spoons and when my spoons are low I don’t have many to spend on self-regulation.
The number of spoons I have each day isn’t consistent either. Some days I start with a ton and am on top of the world and other days I’ve got very few and they deplete very fast. These days are the tough ones.
Working hard would be to push through. To sit at my desk and force myself to do the work. I can do it, it’s not impossible, but it puts me into a spoon debt and debt comes with interest payments.
What if instead I worked with my brain? I realise I am having an executive function deficiency. What do I know that helps with that? For me, exercise is huge. As is sticking on one of my favourite songs. I might be frustrated with myself and just want to push through but the reality is that if I work with my brain and use one of these strategies that brings me back I will get far more done and feel so much better for it. This is working with my brain.
I think sometimes we feel bad for doing this. Maybe our colleagues (or coworkers) don’t take time off the desk to go for a walk or maybe no one else is wearing headphones in the office so we just assume we can’t do these things, that it’s not okay to do these things. And to that I say: “don’t judge yourself by neurotypical standards.”
For me, regular exercise is so important to my ADHD management as it gives me a brain a reset and pumps it full of the chemicals that it needs so that I can perform to a higher standard.
I definitely faced it in my corporate life, the occasional snide comments about my lunch time gym trips. The thing was that I needed those gym trips in order to perform at my best and my best more than made up for the hour I spent there while they sat at their desk eating lunch and reading the news.
Often when we think of accommodations, or the changes we need in order to perform at our best, then we can feel guilty about them, that we’re inconveniencing others by asking them to make accommodations for us. The thing is, those accommodations aren’t a burden, they’re things that we need in order for us to perform at our best. And our best is worth it. And let’s be honest, most of the time making things better for the neurodivergent makes it better for everyone.
It’s also important to recognise though that you are working with YOUR brain. That’s really important. Even if you’re sitting there nodding along thinking “yes Leigh, I’m an ADHDer too and I totally relate to everything you say”, your brain is not the same as mine. It’s its own beautiful uniqueness and that beautiful uniqueness requires its own approach. You’ve had your whole life so far with this brain and you’ve got a lot of life to go with it so it’s useful to get to know how you two can work together.
So try things. Try strategies, even if you think you’re not neurodivergent at all, many of the strategies that make our lives easier make everyone’s lives easier. You don’t have to keep strategies if they don’t work for you, and certainly don’t work to push them through if they don’t fit. But I was trying the trick where you leave an object for a task you need to do in the middle of the floor so you don’t forget because I’d read it somewhere learning about ADHD long before I ever knew I had it. And the trick works really well for me!
Leaving laundry baskets in my way has been the best method for my brain for getting on top of this chore that I always forgot to do…
Don’t be afraid also to let go of what doesn’t. One of my catch phrases is that “just because something is good advice, doesn’t mean it’s good advice for you”. I’m going to generalise this here: “just because something worked for someone, doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for you”. And that’s okay.
So don’t apologise for being you in your wonderfully unique way that you and your brain work. When you work with your brain you can do amazing things and I really really would love to see that happen.
If this resonates with you and feel you would be interested in talking to an autism-friendly coach, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more blog posts, you can find them here.
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