**approx 6 min read **

Hello, amazing human with ADHD. I'm speaking to you if you feel what you do in life often falls short of your expectations. Or if there’s a mis-match between the amazing, big vision you have for your projects, whatever they may be, and what you feel you can physically carry out.

I’m speaking with you from my own experience as a woman in her 30s with ADHD, only diagnosed a couple of years ago, and what i’ve slowly unravelled in my own practice and way of living. I don’t have all the answers, but I am curious and open to learning and adapting and experimenting and I reckon you might also be, too.

We can place amazing pressure on ourselves. And we might have the memory of continually not having lived up to our own and other's expectations, which can create shame and an exaggerated self pressurising in this way.

Our body-mind often has this amazing ability to envision a goal as big as the world, and receive new ideas thick and fast, it's one of the absolute gifts of having this trait, remember that. The vision to bring great things into the world. Also though, remember our bodies and nervous systems have a particular capacity which is finite. Slow progress is still progress, look at how far you've come already. even if it doesn't match your expectations.

Can we live each day, listening in to our body's needs? Can we orient to the now, rather than disorient to the future? This is the way of gradually aligning that amazing vast vision of your brain, and what your body needs on this earthly plain (this is as much a question to self as a question to you!).

This is a daily process, and likely one we have to keep coming back to, over and over again, like learning to walk. Orienting to the now, rather than disorienting to the future. There are specific practices we can take to help us orient, notice our bodies and come back to the moment. We can schedule these in and they can be habitual over time.

They help us ask and receive the answer to : 'What is my body telling me now, and what do I need, right now?'

Maybe when we're receiving a huge flood of creative inspiration, our body is pacing and fast, holding tension here and there, bracing, jaw gripped. Are you breathing?! What do you notice in your body?

When we notice that we're holding tension, we might then notice 'can I be with this?'. Maybe we notice we can pause for a moment, relax our tongue, relax our jaw and belly, finding greater ease and presence around the tension, rather than allowing it to drive us to override our bodies. We can have a conversation with this sensation, rather than being swept away by it. 'What do you need, right now?'

We get very good at ignoring our needs, from a young age. We’re trained to. School taught us to ignore the discomfort of an itchy / tight uniform, to force ourselves awake, to stay in bright articificial lights and noisy spaces when we didn’t want to be there, to hide when we were struggling. When we tune out of our body’s needs, we are much more likely to have a difficult day to day experience, feel like we’re forcing ourselves beyond what’s in-flow with our energy, perhaps moving towards burnout. None of this is your fault. And there are ways to move towards a different way of being.

The practices we can take to tune in to our body's needs are :
- orienting to the room / environment around us (slowly looking around our space, and taking everything in, as if for the first time)
- noticing and following breath and our impulses (things like 'do I need to stretch now - what part of me wants to move?')
- noticing our inner experience (called 'interoception') things like 'am I hungry?' 'Am I tired?' 'Do I need to go to the toilet?' and responding to that
- Self massage and self touch practices, where we get to notice things like: what pace, what pressure, feels good here?

If you'd like to practice these skills of noticing your own body, join me for an online class sometime - we practice these regularly. It can be surprisingly easy to ignore these things rather than notice them, if we're not practising them regularly. No experience needed and warmth and humour always present.

It can take a while, maybe years to learn to listen to what's happening in our bodies, but it does get easier and more habitual with practice, and it's something we can keep coming back to, over and over again). A way of life. As we practice noticing, we learn to really listen to what we need, find a way of being that feels more ‘in-flow- with our energy and it’s my experience that we seek less guidance from the outside.

A few more things too...

Things don't need to be done in an exact, linear order through your day - you might notice that your intuition takes you here, and there, and back again... this is still progress. Your body-mind might be telling you : right now, I have capacity (space) for this, and this, but not this... try to listen to that. All a part of bringing together our bodies and minds. Our energy levels are likely different each day.

s p a c e i s s o i m p o r t a n t : maybe that's having few objects in your environment (I work in a room that is very minimal! I find it much easier to focus this way), maybe thats scheduling only 2 things each day for work rather than the 72 you started with, maybe that's learning to say 'no' more to allow for the space, maybe thats a long, unhurried walk, taking in the view along the way.

Part of noticing what your body needs might be a process of research and intuition around nutrition : which foods support your energy and body-mind in the best way? How do you feel if you've eaten a particular thing? For me, making a couple of soups and a couple of big bowls of different tasty salad and having them there ready to eat, so i'm not preparing food every day and they're immediately available when I'm in a hyper-focus on something else, really helps.

Which takes us to... It might be helpful to allow more fluidity around the tasks you do each day and the order in which you do them (If you can!). A large % of people with ADHD are self-employed (that amazing vision serves us well), and it most likely works better for us to allow tasks to be done in a flexible way, that allows again the noticing of what our body-mind needs each moment.

I work with Intentions for each day, which can be done in any order : each day, allow time for : yourself - grounding and orienting to the present moment, noticing your body's needs, taking time to do something you love to do, time for quiet and sensory rest (rest from sounds, artificial lights), time to be in nature, do something for your home, do something for work, do something for or to connect with your family / partner/ friends, spend time on learning and creating, spend time moving your body joyfully. I do have a morning routine which I try and do each morning - involving yoga practice, orienting, reading and journalling, however if I don't do this on a particular morning I'm intentionally easygoing rather than harsh and critical about not doing it. Again, working with the intention to keep coming back, over and over again.

Don't allow your vision of what feels like 'the right way to progress' take you away from what you have actually done / are doing.

You might find that you progress, and then you stall, and you begin again, over and over again... this is still progress. There can be amazing gifts in these twists and turns on the path.

Are there any you'd add? What supports you in your day to day life?

We’re figuring this out together.

Warmly

Charlotte x