How to 'do what you know' with ADHD: Executive Functioning 101

Being diagnosed with ADHD might help you understand why you're different, but not how.

The symptoms of 'impulsivity, hyperactivity and inattention' didn't resonate with me. I didn't have a deficit of attention, I just couldn't control it. I was the girl who skipped P.E every week and the adult who finds it impossibly difficult to leave the house.

It was only learning about the 30% developmental delay in executive functioning skills related to ADHD that I finally understood why I could never 'do what I know', despite my best efforts.

This is why the foundation of our ADHD Works coaching training is executive functioning: because we need to understand our ADHD to work with it, instead of against it.

Knowing you have ADHD may not be helpful by itself without the context of what to actually do about it, which is why we created a framework of exercises based on the below:

Self-awareness

ADHD-ers may struggle to be aware of their feelings, needs, and experiences. Ways this could show up include sitting in uncomfortable positions and holding our breath without realising, forgetting to eat or take breaks, overworking, overcommitting, or generally speaking, living as a 'human doing' instead of a human being.

This can also result in challenges with understanding who 'we' are, making it difficult to know what we want from life - from our future goals, to how to spend the weekend. We may easily end up pleasing others and burning out, because we don't know how to prioritise ourselves. It's also why we may experience time as 'now' or 'not now', resulting in challenges with lateness and understanding what we might need in the future, such as packing or leaving the house!

This is an important reason behind why we created this framework for ADHD coaching - traditional coaching typically requires the client to bring the topics they want to work on, but we might need a bit of help getting there in the first place.

If you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD. Exploring who we are helps us to understand our 'unique fabulousness' as ADHD Works coach Sam Williams CEng MIET CSEP MINCOSE said recently!

This allows us to adapt our day to day environment to enable us to use our strengths and overcome challenges in the unique ways that work for us, implementing boundaries and support to ensure we don't burn out. Without understanding what we need help with, it's impossible to ask for it.

@adhdissues

Motivation

People with ADHD have an 'interest based nervous system'. This means that if we're interested in something, we can hyper-focus and achieve an impossibly huge amount, but if we're not, this may simply just not happen.

Novelty, interest and adrenaline can make the first 80% of a task seem so much easier than the last 20%, because the dopamine rush of excitement has gone, requiring far more energy to 'follow through'. 'Easy' tasks like administration and self-care, like cleaning or cooking, can feel much more challenging then traditionally 'hard' tasks (like writing a book or 3!).

The phrase I always hear in my head is 'you can do it if you want to, you're just being lazy.' Shaming yourself for things you're already struggling to do is highly ineffective, so we might just give up trying.

In the workplace, a common response to ADHD is to assume a person needs less work, but often we need more stimulating work that suits our interest based nervous system. Having support in place such as administrative help or task swapping between teams can make the world of difference, enabling us to harness our hyper-focus.

At ADHD Works, we coach people on understanding how to hack their own motivation by understanding it, and implementing systems to follow through and stay accountable. Instead of repeating patterns, we can apply our innovate thinking to prepare in advance - like me having to sleep in my gym clothes to go to yoga every morning!

Emotional Regulation

People with ADHD may experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, intense emotional pain associated with real or perceived rejection that lasts for a limited period of time. This isn't an official diagnosable condition, but it's said to be exclusively linked with ADHD.

Growing up not beating yourself up for not being able to do the things you 'should' be able to do, or being 'normal', can understandably make us worried about doing life 'wrong'. This can result in communication challenges, social anxiety, and people pleasing, causing difficulties in relating to others - especially those who can help us through it!

I've coached hundreds of people with ADHD, and every single one of them resonates with RSD. This can be extremely dangerous in combination with the other executive functioning differences in ADHD, such as impulsivity, which may explain the 5 times higher risk of suicide.

For me, emotional regulation challenges can feel like I'm gaslighting myself, because I know I'm being irrational but can't stop ruminating. Understanding this meant I could 'name it to tame it', to the point of creating an entire course on regulating RSD!

In coaching, we help people understand how RSD shows up for them and how to manage it with validation and compassion. We can't stop the waves of emotion from coming, but we can learn ho to surf - and even put them into practice. RSD has been the reason behind a lot of my work, including presenting to Directors of the World Health Organization on it!

Problem Solving

Being neurodivergent means that we literally think differently to 'most' people, which by definition, makes us innovative problem solvers. I like to think of these as 'creative adjustments' to living in a neurotypical world.

For example, I found it literally impossible to listen at university, so I stopped going to lectures and didn't do any of the hundreds of pages of reading required on a weekly basis. At the end of the year, I memorised Wikipedia and focused on how to pass the exams, graduating with a 2:1. This type of learning is clearly different from the intention behind education systems - my teacher at school asked the entire class if I had cheated when I got A's in my exams.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but these systems are there for a reason. People with ADHD often start at level 100 instead of level 1, and have to work backwards, using up considerable time and energy. I graduated with a degree feeling like a fraud, with no idea of how to use it.

Having a super fast brain can make it difficult for others - and ourselves - to keep up. We can also end up self-sabotaging, with procrastination, restlessness, perfectionism, burnout and over-complicating things, to name a few. Thinking differently can be a gift, but also incredibly exhausting to live in a neurotypical world with a neurodivergent brain.

From an ADHD coaching perspective, we pick out these patterns to understand them and implement tailored strategies around them. This can be incredibly powerful in giving someone a lens to understand these unique problem solving abilities, and empowering them to consciously use them, instead of being unconsciously driven by them.

Impulsivity

If you have ADHD, you may have a tendency to 'act before thinking', like me. This means we might be more prone to making reckless decisions, such as quitting our jobs, or saying things we'd later regret!

In combination with the impacted self-awareness, this can be particularly frustrating to live with. For me, I'm prone to saying yes to requests without thinking them through, and endlessly apologising to people for messing them around - or interrupting them! This can also manifest as incessant overthinking, as it feels like my brain is a radio with 10502 channels blaring at the same time.

Luckily the nature of my work has meant I've developed a lot of skills and boundaries around this, but the impulsive nature of my brain means I have to use a lot of energy in constantly regulating my thoughts, actions, words, and decisions. Before I was diagnosed, I was absolutely terrified of what I'd do by the end of the day - from feeling suicidal to moving across the world.

This can also make it hard to make and keep to decisions, because ultimately impulsivity is about our ability to trust ourselves - which can be difficult when our brains are constantly seeking dopamine. Planning and organisation can become extremely complicated as a result, leaving us overwhelmed and burnt out as we undo the tangle of over-committing.

Our coaching framework gives people a structure for making decisions and prioritising, building on their learnings to understand how to 'turn marathons into sprints' and trust themselves. Building up this trust in ways that work with our brain helps us to get the routines in place where we can harness the curiosity and courage linked with impulsivity to work for us.

Memory

The memory challenges associated with ADHD can be incredibly frustrating. I can have reminders plastered all over the walls of my flat, but still completely forget to do the thing I need to do. Forgetting appointments, conversations, decisions, and more can be extremely annoying - not only for myself, but those around me.

Ultimately, the way around this isn't to beat ourselves up, but to create systems that accommodate these challenges. We live in a world of information overload, and it's impossible to remember everything, especially when we're living so fast.

Identifying what we need to remember by strengthening our ability to prioritise means we can create structures that do a lot of the work for us. The secret is making these simple, and accepting that they won't work forever - and that's okay!

Viewing these strategies as a test in understanding what works for our brain means we can take the pressure off and get creative, building on this with delegating and asking for help. From a coaching perspective, having the routine of a 'designed pause' each week enables us to stick to our routines and habits with extra accountability from a person who 'gets it'.

Ultimately, understanding how ADHD can show up uniquely for you is like creating an instruction manual to unlock your abilities. Instead of wasting your energy beating yourself up, you can start working with your brain, instead of against it.

You can learn this framework by training as an ADHD Works coach in April or April 2024.

To access coaching, head here.

Read more about executive functioning in chapter E of 'ADHD: an A to Z.'