What Does Self-Care Look Like When You Have ADHD?

Hello, yes, hello brains, let's talk about

self

-

care

. This episode is sponsored by Blinkist. It is an app that helps you discover and understand powerful ideas from books and podcasts in a short period of time. The link for that is in my description. I'm something like that. obsessed with it, stay until the end of the video to learn more about it. Self-

care

is something that is a challenge for many people with ADHD and is something I talk about a lot on the channel and hear a lot about on social media. In advertising,

self

-care is encouraged, self-care, so I wanted to talk about

what

self-care is because a lot of times people tell us that we should take care of ourselves and the people who tell us you know that self-care is important, they are advertisers, they are people who try to sell us things and I want to make a little differentiation.

Self-care can be luxurious bubble baths and face masks and anything that can be a form of self-care. self-care but it is not the only type of self-care self-care can be free you can go for a walk and that can be a form of self-care it

does

n't cost you anything you don't

have

to buy it but it is something that maintains or improves our well-being, assuming it

does

n't Let's

have

a broken foot, in which case maybe going for a walk isn't a good form of self-care, which brings me to the point of

what

self-care is. It will be different for each one.

What we personally need to maintain or improve our individual well-being will be different, it will vary, so what someone says is self-care may not be what we individually need to be well. it can also be difficult self-care isn't always like treating yourself self-care isn't always like oh yeah girl like ordering that extra expensive glass of champagne because you deserve it that's not necessarily self-care it's treating yourself there are some ways ways we can treat ourselves are really good for our well-being. If I get a massage regularly, I know my body and mental state will improve. Massage works very well for me, it does a lot for me and that's it.

It's a form of self-care for me and it costs money, but I also don't have to go to a hotel for 250 to get those benefits if that makes sense, so going somewhere more luxurious isn't. I'm not necessarily going to improve my self-care. Spending money on something doesn't make it self-care and spending more money on something doesn't make it more self-care. I guess that's what I'm saying. Self-care doesn't always cost money and also self-care isn't always fun. self care isn't always easy eh it's not always fun it's not always enjoyable sometimes self care feels like going to trauma therapy and then sitting in the corner crying for two hours because I had a lot of traumatic things that came up and that's a form of self-care and it won't be advertised in the same way as a fancy mask, but it's still self-care, self-care for me is doing my laundry on Sundays and folding them and putting them away so that during the week I have clothes to wear and I know where finding it and what we personally need for self-care can not only vary from person to person but also depending on what else is going on in our lives or what stage of our lives we are in after my mom died.

I needed support with pain and after a few months I was ready to start trauma therapy and that was a really good thing for Me and I were in trauma therapy for like two years and that was wonderful and it was a form of self-care and I prioritized it. . In fact, I told my team that I was going to take Thursday afternoons to do therapy and someone on the team suggested it and I'm so glad they did. It's trauma therapy, like taking extra hours, like taking the afternoon off. If you're going to do trauma therapy, don't try to go back to work after that and that ended up being really good.

An introduction for me to self-care about going and doing something difficult, emotional, and difficult that didn't feel like a luxury at all, like it wasn't fun, but it was something that helped me maintain and improve my well-being. It helped me get better, it helped me undo a lot of damage from my childhood, I guess. It helped me heal from a lot of things and it was really good for me and

when

my therapist changed and it wasn't going to work. She was no longer available to me at that time, she offered to let me go and start a different therapist and I went, you know, it's been a couple of years, like I'm doing really well with my mental health right now, I don't believe it.

It would be the kindest thing. I don't think it would be self-care for me right now to start a new therapist if I was still in a place where I actually needed that therapy every week, that might have been the case, but I realized that I was doing well and what What's happening now is that I'm stressed like I'm writing a book. You know I'm running the company. You know I have a lot of things going on. Now we move to the new studio. There's a lot going on and I thought, you know? For me, what self-care

look

s like now is different.

What self-care

look

s like now. It's going and kayaking like going and having fun. do things that will de-stress me, not things that I will like, dig up more things for me to process because I'm already processing a lot, the complicated part was convincing myself that kayaking was as important as going to therapy Just like therapy , I don't know, there's a specific time frame and that's the only time it happens and obviously you know who on my friendly mental health team will be like, ah, therapy isn't important, but I was like, but Browse kayaking is probably not important enough to take the afternoon off, but I reserved that time for myself

when

I was not mentally well.

I think taking that same amount of time and continuing it to keep myself mentally well is absolutely valuable. It is absolutely valid. I think sometimes it can be hard to know what we should do for our self-care because even what is going to maintain or improve our well-being, but I think there are some ways that I like it. I have learned to do it. One is to check in with myself how I am listening to my body. Exercise can be a form of self-care, but if my body hurts a lot, maybe I need to tone it down a bit to get outside. going out to dinner and enjoying a good meal, great, but if my bank account is struggling right now, maybe that's not a good form of self-care, I think it can be hard to know what self-care is and even where we should do it. focus our energy because I think for those of us with ADHD the idea of ​​doing all the self-care is really intimidating and daunting and it's probably not possible for most of us, like me, to get up in the morning and take a shower and do my hair and put on makeup and meditate every day and exercise every day and go to work and eat healthy and do all the self-care things.

I don't know how people fit that into a day. I can't, but I believe. The key is to prioritize. I think knowing what you need and leaning into that at least a little is really helpful. I've learned a few different ways to know what kind of self-care I need and where I should be spending my time and energy and money, especially if money is tight and that for me is listening to my body, how do I feel? Am I really stressed? In which case, maybe there are things that will distress me if I'm very emotional. Sometimes self-care for me. looks like journaling, like writing things down, talking to a friend, processing some things, going to therapy if you're hungry, taking care of yourself, looking like getting food if you're thirsty or not drinking enough water, like drinking more water, can be a way of self-care, so I think letting your body guide you is a way that can be difficult because we are not always in touch with our body.

Alexa Thyme is something that people with ADHD and autism experience and you can't always tell. I like what you're feeling, but there are at least indicators or you know, scheduling like one of the things I do with food is schedule it so I don't wait until my body is really hungry because if it waits until then I'm probably not going to eat. something super healthy checking in with other people like the people around you can be something else like hey like how do you think I'm doing? um like you seem more like whatever you do I seem more stressed I seem more worried about money it seems like I'm getting really excited like I know I need to go to trauma therapy because people kept telling me, like you, that you're reacting to something that Not so what was happening right now is a trauma trigger.

Things kept triggering me and that's how I knew I needed to go to trauma therapy working with a therapist. She was able to talk to me a lot about what self-care was like and what I might need and she taught me to ask myself if she is this kind to me if she was asking me to do something or pushing me to do something she is of this type and a lot of times she wasn't, I was just like no what, does that have to do with anything, but that's also a form of self-care? Question: What am I?

What I'm asking myself to do. Okay for me? or Does it hurt? kind to me, I think self-care can be so difficult for people with ADHD that it's something it often makes sense to get help with. A long time ago I made a video with a self-care checklist as the basic human needs to execute. below, but I think one of the most important things is also spending time on self-care. There are so many times we realize something came up or something is more urgent or someone needs us and we give up any time we had planned for ourselves. -care as if it is not critical, but again, self-care is anything that maintains or improves our well-being and we need to be well enough to be able to be there for ourselves and the people we love, we can try hard temporarily but for a long time.

In the long term we start to break down like our bodies and our mental state starts to deteriorate, we can't push ourselves at that level forever and I think it's hard to realize that, it's a hard thing to acknowledge, but sometimes it's like it doesn't. . We know that the best thing we can do for ourselves is recognize that we can't run 60 miles per hour constantly. I'm actually pretty impressed if someone can run six miles an hour, that's pretty fast, but we can. We can't always be at full strength, we can't always push ourselves to our limits and then wait for, I don't know, an Instagram ad to like a mask, slow down, there are other ways we can slow down.

Below, this is the last thing I will say about self-care. I try to put it aside in the morning because as the day goes on I'm more likely to be too tired to take care of myself. I'm too busy, like work is delayed or something happens, something went wrong, I have to put out a fire, so I have a rule that like all my self-care, it mostly happens before I start work, so like all my biological needs I make sure I drink water and eat foods that are healthy for me and if I'm going to meditate that's when I meditate if I need to shower that's when I shower and then like I can have incidental self care later on but Most of it happens in the morning because that's before I run out of energy, that's before life happens and scatters all my plans to the wind.

I guess what I'm saying is prioritizing self-care and recognizing that what self-care is is not just what we're sold is taking care of ourselves and taking care of ourselves can feel like rewarding ourselves or treating ourselves every once in a while but it also feels like therapy too. It looks like exercise It also looks like learning when and how to say no It will vary from person to person What one person needs may not be what another person needs Someone may be Oh, but let's do this together because, like self-care, that's not what what I need right now, I'm a different person my body has different needs than the next person my mind has different needs my spirit has different needs starting to question it a little bit and challenge it and it's going well it's this self-care for me it's this self-care now Same what do I do?

I need right now and from there, speaking of self-care, there are many books like Atomic Habits and Atre to Lead that I had every intention of reading and just couldn't find time until now, how blinking is an app that offers the best selection of non-fiction books, collects key conclusions and includes them in short texts and audio explanations called links, they last about 15 minutes and are really good, you can even listen and read at the same time as I read this. one because I always wanted to be able to stop time and ideally have a time machine, but apparently we're not there yet.

I loved how the information was presented, it was easy to follow, really interesting and I was able to remember and implement pretty much everything I learned right away, one of which was that you need to think carefully about how you are investing your time and what return you are getting from it. investment. I realized that I get a lot more out of kayaking with a friend. Aftera long week of filming than staying home and spending the same amount of time complaining about being too tired, I also learned that you have a lot more freedom over how you spend your time than you think, even the things we're forced to do.

In general, we agree on obligations and even when you need to do something, you still have a lot of freedom in how to do it, but how do you stop time? You say, it turns out that mindfulness can slow down your experience of time, which can allow you to extend it. that and even stop, there are many more blinks that I can't wait to check out. It's like it was designed for those with visible ADHD. If you want to try it yourself now, Blinkist has a special offer for brains. Click the link in my description. To start your 7-day free trial with Blinkist and get 25 off a premium membership, those are my thoughts on self-care.

It's important that it's not something that you necessarily buy, although sometimes it's safe and it looks different for everyone and it looks different. where you are in life, but self-care is important and it's hard, thank you to my brain advocates and all my patreon brains for allowing me to, I don't know, spill thoughts on you, I think it's an important conversation, I think so maybe so. What I'm hoping to start here is a conversation about what self-care is for you and what you can do that doesn't cost money, maybe that's really helpful for you, for your physical or mental well-being.

Let me know in the comments below what you do for your self-care, what that looks like for you, subscribe, click all the things and I'll see you in the next video, bye, brain.