It’s Not Coping Skills. It’s ADHD Navigation.

As someone with ADHD, I hate the phrase coping techniques. I also dislike the phrase self-care. It implies there's something else you have to do—something else you have to remember.

As adults, there are already so many things we have to do and remember just to accomplish the basics. There's work, physical therapy exercises, working out, meditation, eating, making food, buying groceries, calling friends, kids, romantic relationships, getting that thing for work done, laundry, doing the dishes, appointments, and etc. At some point, even relaxation can become just another check on the never ending to do list.

Without ADHD, life can be overwhelming. But with ADHD, this need to constantly remember what we need to be doing in any given moment is very overwhelming and exhausting. Especially when you're trying to remember all the masking strategies you're supposed to use in every social situation or at work:

"I need to put that item on my to do list/calendar."

"I need to remember to wait a few extra seconds so that I don’t interrupt."

"I need to remember to break down tasks when I feel paralyzed."

“I need to remember to come back to what this person in front of me is saying rather than thinking about what that person at the next table is saying.”

"I need to remember to use self-talk when leaving the house so I don’t foret things."

“I need to remember to exercise because if I get really hyper and its hard to relax or think.”

Even hobbies and doing things for yourself become another thing to remember. Taking a walk becomes something to remember to do.

That, in itself, is a load on the ADHD brain. The executive functioning networks that help us remember things are built differently. They have to activate harder and work harder, which creates an extra cognitive load. It's exhausting.

So when I talk about ways to work with ADHD, I don't like thinking in terms of coping skills. I think a much better way to think about it is basic ADHD navigation.

How do I navigate the world with the brain that I have?

Everybody is navigating the ocean of their lives. ADHD ships tend to look a little bit different than other types of ships. The controls look different.

With ADHD, our ship has trouble catching the wind and sailing forward sometimes, and then in other situations, when we are highly interested or there is a lot of stimulation/urgency, we accelerate too fast and have a hard time stopping. So, knowing that our ship is constructed differently, we have to perform different procedures in order to get where we want to go and accomplish what we want to accomplish.

There is skillful navigation, and there is unskillful navigation. Unskillful navigation leads to crashes—dopamine crashes, sensory crashes, exhaustion, irritability, forgetting to eat, and the list goes on.

That's why it's so important to understand your own ADHD traits. Do you have strong hyperfocus? High emotional intensity? Heavy masking? Do those masking traits require downtime afterward so your ship can recover?

It's important to recognize when you're exhausted from masking and what that actually feels like. Otherwise, you may expect yourself to mask all the time, which often leads to high levels of self-criticism.

The same is true for emotional intensity. Part of good navigation is understanding that you simply experience emotions intensely. That's how your ship works.

Instead of expecting yourself to be different, you learn that some people can comfortably handle high emotional intensity and some people can't. You may need friendships with people who can tolerate that intensity, rather than spending so much energy trying to fit into relationships where there's constant conflict.

The same is true for attention. When we're navigating our ship, procrastination isn't proof that we're lazy. It's information. It's a signal. It means we need more stimulation in the situation to get ourselves moving forward. It may mean the ship needs to wait. It may mean the ship needs more structure before starting. It may mean we need some self-talk to get ourselves through the task. It may mean that you need to listen to music, walk and talk out what you want to do, call a friend and tell them about your project, body double, or have some chocolate while you work.

Those aren't coping skills.

That is basic ADHD navigation.

When we understand our ship, we can understand how to sail properly, and then our world suddenly becomes easier to understand and much less daunting.

This is your captain. Fair Winds.