Managing Clutter and Motherhood Challenges with ADHD with Emily Weinberg

 Today I’m collaborating with Emily Slackberg. Emily is an ADHD coach who works with adults who have or suspect they have ADHD to help educate them on what ADHD is and how it has shown up in their lives to help them become more aware of why things may have always seemed more challenging for them.  

Emily helps them see themselves through the lens of ADHD so they can begin to shift the narrative they have created about themselves in order to figure out what they want, what support they need, and how they can move toward a life in which they show up intentionally and are able to do the things they want to be doing. 

Identifying signs of ADHD in adulthood

Emily was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood rather than during her childhood. 

It could have been so easy to spot when I was a child but, unfortunately, there's just so many misconceptions about ADHD and how it presents.

Emily wasn't a 7 or 8 year old little boy full of energy, bouncing off the walls, and not able to sit in class. And this is really the stereotype of ADHD. 

And while some kids fall right into that stereotype, Emily did not. She was a daydreamer, head in the clouds, messy room, disorganized backpack, forgetting things, losing things, and was viewed as a space cadet.

This is how ADHD can present when you have the inattentive type. And that does tend to be how it presents mostly in girls, and some boys present like that as well, but, generally, that is how it can present in girls. 

Emily had people point out through young adulthood some of the more stereotypical ADHD things that she would do.

Spacing  on things, losing things, and being distracted. 

Emily became a teacher and really struggled in that job and in hindsight struggled even more than she even knew she was struggling at the time. 

All the executive functions that are required of teachers planning, organizing, time management, she just couldn't do it, but kind of pushed through until she had her own kids. 

And that's when she kind of got on the ADHD path. After she had her kids she was just really struggling.

She felt like she was just floating and there was always one million things to do and it was so hard to get stuff done.

When Emily’s kids were around 2 somebody had mentioned ADHD to her and that led her down the rabbit hole of, oh, this is what ADHD looks like

These are the symptoms, this is how it presents and this explains everything. This explains all her struggles. 

This explains why when the kids would go down for a nap and she had some time, she just froze on the couch in indecision. She told herself she was relaxing because she needed to but it was really that didn’t know what to do. 

There's so many things to do, and she didn’t know which one to do, or how much time she would have, etc. This was every single day, rinse and repeat.

After a few months of researching and reading and listening to podcasts, Emily thought this just makes so much sense.

And that’s what led to Emily’s diagnosis.

Challenges those face with ADHD

When people call for help to declutter and to organize, oftentimes, it's because they can't get started. They don't know what to start with. Should we work over here? Do we start over here? What comes next? How do I make these decisions? Where does it go? 

There's so many smaller parts that make up the big picture. And someone with ADHD can get stuck at step one.

Task Initiation

Task initiation is often a struggle and one of the symptoms of ADHD. 

We have a hard time getting started and sometimes that can be so frustrating for somebody with ADHD because the task itself is not the challenge. 

It might be a relatively easy thing to do but it's the getting started that is so hard. 

Getting started with a task actually requires so much executive functioning and that's exactly where somebody with ADHD has deficits.

Task initiation requires prioritization which is something people with ADHD struggle with.

 It's being able to look around and not only seeing what needs to get done but also what's important. 

Somebody who's neurotypical might be able to see a bunch of things and very clearly put them in order of what needs to get done. Whereas for somebody with ADHD, everything feels equally important, equally urgent.

Time Management

Another challenge is time management. Understanding and estimating how long certain things are going to take. Do I have enough time for this? Is this something that I can finish before my kid wakes up??

Those with ADHD have a really hard time conceptualizing the passing of time and oftentimes may totally overestimate how long something will take, and so then we kind of stay away from it because we're like, well, I'll do that later. I don't have enough time. 

Or we completely underestimate how long something takes and then gets and then it can derail our whole day. 

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is kind of the biggest part of ADHD because ADHD is really not an attention deficit disorder. It's just not. 

We pay a ton of attention to everything, everywhere. We see all the clutter. We can see all of it. We are not ignoring it.

We see it all, and we're overloaded. And so the emotional regulation piece is really seeing all the clutter and you are so overwhelmed by all of it because we have a really hard time recognizing certain emotions, allowing certain emotions, and kind of soothing those emotions, and we kinda just run from those emotions. 

We don't know what to do. We are just so overwhelmed and it’s like, I'm out of here. I don't even know what to do. Or I'm looking around and I'm seeing the clutter, and I'm feeling a lot of shame for allowing it to get this way. And so, again, I'm out of here. I'm finding something else to do.

So that emotional regulation piece is really crucial when it comes to tackling projects and when it comes to getting started. 

There are certain emotions that if we don't know how to recognize and manage and regulate them we can't get started. It's like a roadblock. It's a barrier.

Taking small steps to move forward

I could sit here and list out, first you do this, then you do this, then you do this.

But the bigger piece here is really, recognizing the emotion at play

Emily notes that she has clutter, is not very organized, and there is stuff all over her desk.

She notes she could sit there and see the mess and kind of think what is wrong with me? Why does my desk look like this? Why can't I put this stuff away? 

She could sit there and beat herself up about everything on her desk. And think what is wrong with me? Why am I so disorganized? Why do I have stuff everywhere? 

And wondering what is wrong with me brings up a lot of shame, a lot of embarrassment, a lot of regret and really negative emotions.

Emily finds the clutter very visually overstimulating. But when we have the visually overstimulated paired with the what's wrong with me, why can't I get my act together, why does my desk look like this, that makes it so much worse. 

And so she can sit here and just acknowledge there is stuff all over her desk. 

And at some point she might want to put some of it away, but, also, it doesn't make her a horrible person that she has stuff all over her desk. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with her that there's clutter on her desk. It just is what it is.

Which is where the 4-step Coco organized process comes into play. 

The first step is not to clear your space. It's to clear your mind because you're not going to be productive and feel good until you get straight and get into a place and just recognize, okay. Here I am.

This is not about who I am or who I'm not. It's just about taking that next best step forward.

The weight of expectations ADHD

Emily notes what can be really hard about ADHD in motherhood is that there is a general narrative about motherhood that it is hard. And that narrative is absolutely true. Motherhood is hard.

Parenthood is hard. Raising kids is hard. Nobody is debating that. But there are so many more challenges when you have ADHD. And the hard thing is that they're not challenges that are exclusively true about having ADHD.

They are also experiences that every mother can struggle with. There's the term mom brain that gets thrown out there a lot like, oh, everybody forgets to pack the lunches. Everybody is late to pick up.

There's this one thing that you're telling me you struggle with, and everybody struggles with it. Right? And so I certainly had a very hard time, especially since Emily’s married to a woman who was also in motherhood, and it was hard for her. 

And it was really difficult for me to kind of say, I think it is harder for me, and I'm not invalidating how hard this is for you, But the things that I am struggling with are not once in a while I'm late, or once in a while I can't get myself to do anything during a nap or once in a while I'm forgetting to throw the laundry in the dryer. 

This is happening every day. It is happening really often and it is really affecting the quality of my life.

It's that analogy between, like, yeah, everybody pees, but if you're peeing 60 times a day something is wrong.

So, if you're asking yourself every day, what is wrong with me? Why can't I get my stuff together? There could be something else going on and you are allowed to seek out support for that.

Accepting Your ADHD

Emily notes that while it’s annoying sometimes that she has ADHD, it’s not all bad but it makes so many things so much harder. 

And that sucks. But it's not my fault. And Emily notes the difference of seeing herself through an ADHD lens.

Whereas Maggie notes that letting go of all those shoulds and that self loathing thoughts and stories that you were telling yourself open up so much mental space.

It's so much mental space reclaimed that you'll just continue to work on and improve as you go and gain even more space. And you're working up that mental decluttering muscle.

Getting started with decluttering with ADHD

Maggie notes that when her company is doing the sorting and making the decisions, it's very tempting for really any client to jump ahead, to want to move to another space, because it's starting to feel overwhelming. 

And we're bringing them back in, and we're helping stay on task and focusing on what's right in front of us and t working through that decision process.

But if someone's not ready, they're not ready. That's we go on to the next thing. 

And as Emily noted, that time management, the planning, that's when you are ready, when it makes sense to bring in that support.

Emily notes that Chesterfield Organizing Co. is a perfect example of where somebody with ADHD can support themselves.

Other people can declutter their own houses and they don't need help. I should be able to do it. Right? And, no you shouldn't. Nobody should have to do everything alone.

And we have deficits that make this particular task so challenging. Can we declutter? Yes. It's not something we're completely incapable of. Can we also get help to do it? Yes. 

It doesn't make you some kind of failure, it makes you pretty smart to recognize this is really challenging for my brain. So I'm going to bring somebody in who can function as those parts of my brain to help me through this.And there are other things that we can do amazingly well.

And people with ADHD need support and there's nothing wrong with that.