Business Strategy for ADHDers
Hey there, I'm Sky! As an ADHDer I have always been passionate about business and doing things my way. It wasn't until later in my adult years that I finally had the balls to take the leap, ditch the people pleasing, give fear the middle finger and start my own business!
With four kids under five (one with ADHD and Autism) I quit my 9-5 government job, encouraged my husband to do the same and we went all in on creating my own psychology practice.
What started as an idea has now become a 7-figure business, allowing my husband and I to have more time with the kids, holidays, choosing our own hours and has set us up financially in investment property.
Now I want to help you too. Because here's the thing if my ADHD brain can do it, so can yours!
I am here to teach you step by step how to start and grow your business in a way that suits your ADHD brain. It's time to stop doing things the neurotypical way and start doing them your way.
This podcast is the perfect place for you to connect, learn, and see that your ADHD business dreams get to become a reality. So come and hang out and let me share my journey with you!
Business Strategy for ADHDers
Ep 12 - ADHD and Anxiety: Understanding the connection and coping strategies
Share your thoughts with us (click here)
In this episode, we'll explore what links ADHD and anxiety and share some great ways to handle them.
You will have a better understanding of how ADHD and anxiety can team up and affect your life, like at school or work. You'll also get some practical tips and useful tools to help you feel better.
Even if you have ADHD or anxiety, or just want to learn more, this episode has information to help you understand and find ways to feel better.
Chapter
00:00 - Intro
01:52 - What Does ADHD Anxiety Feel Like?
02:26 - What Percentage of ADHDers Have Anxiety?
03:26 - The Challenges of Managing "Just" Anxiety
05:58 - What Is Your Anxiety Telling You?
08:50 - The Impact of Overly Optimistic ADHD Traits on Anxiety
10:50 - ADHD vs. Anxiety: A Battle Within
11:14 - How to Manage Anxiety When You Have ADHD
17:14 - It's Difficult to Do, but It's the Most Important Thing...
20:26 - Here's My Request When Dealing with Anxiety
21:44 - Outro
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Need ADHD coaching support? Feel free to DM me on Instagram @adhdcoachsky for personalized assistance and guidance.
Together, let's navigate the journey towards managing ADHD and unlocking your full potential.
If we then go, okay, I'm not going to focus on ADHD and managing what's going on for me there. I'm only going to focus on managing my anxiety. Then we are gonna get caught up because your anxiety's there for a reason. It's there letting you know that life is unpredictable. It's there letting you know that you're not managing your a h D as well as maybe you can. I am so excited to be finally back talking to you all like it is been a red hot minute. So if you are new to this space, Welcome. My focus, instead of just being on broad mental health, I've really kind of niched down a little bit in terms of ADHD. And so what I want to do every week is answer your questions about ADHD. Hello everyone, welcome to another ADHD chat. So today I wanted to talk to you about something that I've experienced in my 40, how old am I now? 3 years of living with ADHD and that's anxiety. You know, I see so many people who come in who Like, we get focused on their ADHD, and we get talking about their ADHD, but what really is impacting them and is at the front of what's going on for them is actually anxiety. And, you know, the other thing that anxiety does for many HDs, particularly women, I notice as well, is that anxiety can mask The ADHD almost. So we don't notice the ADHD. We don't see the ADHD. We just see the anxious human in front of us. And as someone who has lived with anxiety, worry, panic attacks, like anxiety can be so, or feel so debilitating if we're not aware of what it is, how it impacts us, and just what we can do about it. You know, anxiety is probably the most common comorbidity when we look at ADHD. And comorbidity simply means the friends that ADHD comes with, right? So, ADHD has friends like autism, um, bipolar, uh, borderline personality disorder, learning difficulties. And the big one... Anxiety, right? So about 50 percent I think of ADHD is like, think about that. 50 percent of us have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. So we're dealing with two things that are causing difficulty, not just one. And I think sometimes we can get caught up in, well, what do I manage first? And quite often what happens is, we start to get really focused on managing the anxiety. Right? And if you don't know anxiety, it's kind of like the body's... Natural response gets tripped up, you know, that fight or flight response over a perceived danger, right? Fear is when there is something really bad happening in our environment. The fight or flight response gets tripped up and we need to respond. Anxiety is we're thinking something dangerous is happening, but it's probably not going to kill us. And though our fight or flight response doesn't know the difference and it gets tripped up. Now here's the problem with just managing anxiety, right, is my strong opinion, and I can be wrong because this is just my thoughts, is that anxiety is a by product of living with ADHD that is being unmanaged. So if we spend a lot of time working on anxiety, trying to understand anxiety, managing anxiety, Without actually looking at managing our ADHD, then we're going to keep living in an anxious space. And it's often when people come to me, and they've gone, Oh my God, I've had anxiety for 20 years, and I've worked so hard, and I've tried to manage, and then nothing's working. They're the moments when alarm bells start to trick for me and I'm like, Oh, what is behind that? Because if we're not managing what is behind that, anxiety is going to keep showing up. You know, there's this sentence, um, that I think is really important when we think about living with ADHD, and it's called, inconsistency. Now, the nature of ADHD means that every single moment of every single day, we don't know how we're going to show up, right? Like, am I going to be impulsive today? Am I going to lack attention today? Am I going to emotionally dysregulate today? Am I going to be hyper fixated and get shit done today? Like what kind of sky or what part of my ADHD is going to show up today? Like we are consistently inconsistent. And that is a core theme with ADHD. Now if you think about the nature of anxiety, anxiety likes consistency, not inconsistency. Anxiety likes safety, security, which comes in the form of structure, routine, predictability. And anxiety doesn't allow for us to predict how we're going to show up in the day, how we're going to show up in the moment, how we're going to show up in the week. And so what starts to happen over time of this building and building and building is our fight or flight response gets stuck on. Cortisol tap, it's like a tap. Cortisol just drips, drips, drips. And we just stay in this heightened state of anxiety 24 7 because we're consistently inconsistent and our fight or flight response doesn't like that. So if you think about that for a minute. It's there letting you know that it can't predict even the next 30 minutes or an hour into your day because there's not really a structural routine that you're trying to work towards having in your life. So if you are somebody who's anxious, I want you to start checking in and from a place of curiosity, not judgment. How well am I managing my ADHD? Right? And I noticed for myself, like I go through definite ebbs and flows in my anxiety. And when I check in with myself, what I notice is I've let the management of my ADHD go, right? I've left the management of like regulating my emotions go. I've left the management of trying to manage my week go. I've stopped pausing and planning in my day. Like I've stopped it. Doing the things that support my ADHD, which is why my anxiety shows up and gets loud. So now, instead of making my anxiety wrong, or me wrong for not managing my ADHD, I simply see it as a noticing to switch gears, check back in and ask myself, what do I need in this moment to support my ADHD again? You know, us ADHDers, right? There are, there are a couple of things that we do that give us a false sense of, like, positivity or, um, that things are going okay, right? Like that we've got our shit together. When in reality, it's just all smokes and mirrors, right? Like, one of the things that, um, that I do is, I kind of get myself into this space where I'm like, Oh my God, like, I can do it! I can do everything! Like, I can do anything! Like, I'm so amazing! Right? You know, like, that really... Have you ever had those moments where you're like, so confident for about 30 fucking seconds, and you can take on the world, and you can do this, and you're planning everything out in your head, and like... Right? And we can mis like our anxiety can mistake that for, Yes! She's got her shit together! She's gonna get stuff done! And have you ever gone from being in that really big high, and swinging really fucking low, Because your anxiety's then figured out that you actually don't have your shit together. That that was only 30 seconds of a hyper fixation, and now you're in, like, the big hole of, like, shame, where you're like, I can't do anything, right? Like, this is what our ADHD can do. It can swing us like whiplash between, I can take on the world and I can't get out of bed today. And so that's why our anxiety swings too. It's like, no, I'm so confident and I feel really good, too. Holy fuck. The world is gonna swallow me whole. Right? The other thing that, um, we do as ADHD is if we, is we can be overly optimistic, right? Like, I know when I wake up in the morning and my husband can say to me, What have you got on today? And I can be like, I've got blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and I like rattle off these ten things, and I'm like, oh my god, I can, I can do them all! And I can see his face looking at me like, Do you just said? Like, I don't know that you can actually manage all of those things today. Like, that's a lot in one day. But my ADHD overly optimistic brain, because we're time blind, it goes, Yeah, I can. And again, we're like fucking with anxiety, right? Because our brain's like, I can do all the things. But then we start rushing through our day, and we get really busy, and we miss things, and we get distracted, and we get to the end of the day, and we're like, Oh my god, like I've only done 50 half things, nothing actually whole, and I had a hundred on my list. Right? And that's when the anxiety hits again. And this is what happens with anxiety. It's like, oh my god, I'm not anxious. Oh my god, I'm fucking over anxious. Oh my god, I'm not panicking. Oh my god, like I'm having a panic attack. Again, and I've done another video on this about whiplash. We just, like we swing back and forth. And then the other thing that we can do as ADHD is we have this like front end perfectionism, right? Where it's like, I'll do the thing, right? So we tell our anxious brain, I'll do the thing. I've totally got this covered, but I'm not going to do the thing until I'm hyper fixated. I'm in my confident space. I'm like so feeling grandiose that I'm like, yes, I can fucking do it in this moment. Like until the stars fucking align and I feel like I'm in the good mood. I'm not going to do anything. And again, that creates anxiety, right? Because our anxiety goes, Well, when are you going to do it? And when is that good mood going to show up? And how long is that good mood going to last for? And what happens if we get halfway through and that good mood fades? Like the anxiety comes in to try and manage the ADHD again. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel this battle between the two, right? ADHD telling me, You can fucking do it! And then anxiety and the shame storm showing up going, No, you fucking can't. And it's this push and pull between the two, which actually keeps us stuck in anxiety limbo, right? So, if you're listening to this and you're like, Fuck, yes, that's me, like, I'm, I'm anxious, I get overwhelmed, like, I'm just bleh. Like, I don't have words for it sometimes, you know that when you're just like bleh, right? What can we do about it? Now, the first thing that I want you to start thinking about is, uh, Like I said a minute ago, is seeing anxiety as the byproduct. Like, if you have an anxiety disorder, please seek support and therapy and treatment for that. I'm not saying don't do that. But what I'm saying is, if you're anxious, you really need to be checking in with, how well in this moment am I managing my ADHD? And so then what we need to do is we need to break down the parts. for your ADHD to see where you need to do things to support you to create some safety, security, and sense of control in your world. So anxiety can calm the fuck down, right? So for you, it might be your emotions. Like maybe for you with your ADHD, you're so emotionally dysregulated, and then you make it wrong that you're actually not managing that. So maybe for you, it's checking in with your feelings and saying, okay, what do I need to do to support myself to manage my emotions, to manage my discomfort, to take care of myself when these big feelings show up? Maybe that's the space that you need to work on or maybe for you if you're a bit like me where you're like I'm like all over the place. I'm like, what have I got on today? Oh my god, I can do this here No, I can't and we get so caught up that I like to sit down I structure time now and what I try really hard to do is I chunk different activities into different time spaces So today when I'm at work today, I booked no clients and this morning is all about Interviews, right? This afternoon will be all about kids, right? Next Monday in the day will be all about clients. I try and chunk things together to calm my anxious brain so it knows for the next few hours, this is the task that I'm doing. Because again, anxiety comes up when we're consistently inconsistent. So if I come to work and I've got one client and then I've got an interview and then I've got a kid thing and then I've got this and then I've got that again, the unpredictability of what is going on becomes overwhelming for my brain. And hello, anxiety. Right? So chunking similar tasks together in a structured way can help support your anxious brain. The other one too, and when I say it, you're going to be like, Oh, I know, I know, I know, right? But exercise, movement, like get rid of the word exercise. If that like, like me, if the word exercise like triggers you, like, Oh, yuck. Just think of the word movement, right? Moving your body. is so important. And even moving your body in a way that allows the left and the right brain to work together, right? So it might be tapping one shoulder with the opposite hand and then the other one, right? Like literally crossing over your arms and tapping each shoulder. Because what you start to do is you actually start to have the left and the right brain work together, feel a little bit more cohesive, and calm the fuck down, right? And movement creates endorphins, we get the dopamine hit, so it's an all round good way of calming anxiety and calming and managing your ADHD symptoms. Now, the other thing that I like to talk about, too, is organizing physical spaces. So, just like we might chunk tasks together, start thinking about where you're going to do specific tasks and create physical spaces for them. So, if I'm creating programs at home, I have a specific space that I do that, and I'll only do it in that space. If I'm doing, like, accounting and, like, Pays and things like that. I will have a specific space in my home where I sit and do that. And if you've got a small home, it might just be on the kitchen table. You sit in one chair to do one task and you sit in another chair to do another task. Because what we want to do is create habits for our ADHD brain that when we sit in a certain space in the environment, it trips us up and goes, Ooh, this is the doing the pays chair. Right? We want to lessen the load on our executive functioning, because when our executive functioning is taxed, we are automatically going to flip to our emotional brain, which is automatically going to trip up our limbic system, our fight or flight response, and guess what's just shown up again? Fuckin anxiety, right? So just doing these Little things can help support your brain to actually feel better within yourself. The other thing that is so, it can be so hard to do, but it's like one of the most important things to do is lower The expectation that you have on yourself as ADHD is, we have been flooded with so many messages about who we are, who we should be, the box that we sit in, like I'm lazy, I can't, I'm not good enough, I'm stupid, like whatever your story is. And so what happens is, is that we put the expectation up so high to feel like that's the way to get out of the box. If I can just do more, then I'll feel smarter. If I can just, um, do more, then I'll feel less lazy. If I can just get my shit together, then I won't feel as not good enough. Now the problem with high expectations is all you do is keep yourself in the box. Because if you could do more, chances are you fucking would, right? It's not a lack of effort in terms of ADHD. ADHD is not a knowledge issue. You know what the fuck to do. You can't execute it. So hiring the expectations and putting them up and up and up isn't gonna solve your problem. It's gonna create more anxiety for the simple fact of what you can achieve In that moment, because you can achieve so fucking much, but what you can achieve in that moment and the standard at which you can meet that, if the level of expectation and the gap is high, then what you can achieve, the bigger that gap, the more shame, the more guilt, the more building of the I'm not good enough story, which then leads to more fucking anxiety. So get real with yourself, every single moment is probably going to be different, right? Like today I'm feeling like I can achieve way more than I could yesterday. What does that mean? Well, nothing unless the meaning I give it. So bring it down. Like what is today? What is the standard I can set for myself today in this moment? And that's what I aim for. Tomorrow, what is the standard I can set for myself and aim for that? Fuck off the expectations, fuck off the shoulds, because should is an expectation, and bring it down to what is realistic for me in this moment if I'm being honest with myself. Right? And the other thing, the last thing, and then I promise I will bugger off, right? Is we need to really work on de catastrophizing things. Like the nature of ADHD, right? Executive functioning's impaired. A little thing happens, it's like, Oh my fucking god, it's the worst thing in the world. Right? Like it's a disaster. And I do it all the time and I'm so aware of it, but what I'm more mindful of that I can do now, is bring myself down. Right? It's not that we're gonna always be able to stop the catastrophizing. Right, but when we notice it. What we want to do is work on through our mindset and through our breathing is just bringing ourselves back into the moment. So my favorite sentence is, it's okay, I'm okay. And almost just grounding myself in that moment and then going, okay, what's actually going on? What's actually true? What are the facts, right? Because our ADHD brains, when we become reactive and we catastrophize, we're not focused on the facts, we're focused on the feeling. So the more aware we can become of that when we're catastrophizing, and not from a place of judgment. Judgment's going to lead you into shame, guilt, more fucking anxiety, right? But if you can notice you're catastrophizing, From a place of curiosity, you go, fuck, I'm catastrophizing. Okay, that's okay, this is part of the ADHD stuff, let's just stop. Take a breath, ground into the center, put your hands on your heart, because that's connection to self. And then ask better questions of yourself. What is actually going on in this moment? What are the facts? What do I need to be doing? What do I need to be working on to move myself forward? Right? Then we're going to be shifting gears, creating a foundation within ourselves, and reducing the amount of anxiety that we're experiencing on a daily basis. So my ask of you... Is to spend a day, don't need to do more than a day, right? But it's just to spend a day noticing for yourself, when is anxiety peaking for you, right? And I say peaking because many of you are probably already going to live in a state of anxiety all of the time, right? So just notice for yourself when or what moments is my anxiety peaking in. And then actually just journal it, like what do you notice, like where are you? What are you doing? What happened just before it peaked? What happened external to you? Like, was there people around? Was there an environment that you were in? Was there, like, sensory stuff going on, right? Was there an expectation on you from someone else, like look at the external world and then check into your internal world. What was I thinking just before I started to feel anxious? What was my body doing? You know, did I need to go to the toilet? Did I like just eat something? Did I just drink something? Have I not drank anything? Like notice the internal stuff too. Because therein lies the answer to what you need to be working on for yourself in order for you to manage those anxious moments to support you and your ADHD. Alright everybody, I will talk to you again next week. And once again, as always, I'd love to hear from you. So jump into the group like living with ADHD and let me know your ADHD and anxiety stories, right? Let me know your struggles and let me know what works for you, right? We're a community, okay? Share so we can support each other in knowing how to work through this. Have an awesome day, and I will talk to you all soon.
