Stuff that helps (and doesn’t) ADHD, from someone with ADHD
For no reason in particular, I felt like sharing some tools and methods that I’ve tried since my ADHD diagnosis and how they’ve gone.
Things that help and are (comparatively) easy:
- Slowly building a morning routine. I really think your morning and how prepared you are for your day at the end of your morning routine has a huge potential to shape your day. Building habits is much more difficult for us than the general population, and it’s harder than we give it credit for ourselves. The best thing I’ve found is to build it piece by piece, and not even considering adding more pieces until the existing ones are no longer an energy drain. Once they feel completely natural, you can build. Brushing your teeth and taking your meds should be at the top of the list. From there I added a set time to eat and a skin-care routine. Once those are established, I want to work on journaling and exercise. Go as slow as the situation requires, and don’t feel anything about the stuff that you want to add on to it until it’s time.
- Breathing exercises when you’re overloaded. This is one of those things that caught me completely off-guard with how effective it can be. At any point in your day you can do this, even during meetings, because it’s pretty invisible. You can google “breathing exercise” and Google will pop one up for you: six seconds in, six seconds out, repeat five times. One minute elapsed and I’ve seen my heart rate drop 20-30bpm in that period. I’m not a fan of the “box breathing” technique where you hold your breath for some amount of time, it seems to add more stress than it takes away. You can also do a YouTube search for