Embracing every win: Combatting the "So What's"

Change is hard. Shifting routines or learning to change old behaviors or thoughts is among the hardest things that we as human beings can do. Think about when you learned to ride a bike as a child. At first we had no idea how to make the bike stay upright let alone move forward at the same time. For many of us the first fall is discouraging and at some point in the process we exclaim "I am NEVER going to be able to do this, I give up!" As time goes on, and with encouragement and being shown the progress we make, we get more and more confidence. Eventually frustration gives way to excitement and even pride as we slowly begin to master the skill and the feeling of accomplishment fills us the first time we set off without training wheels or help, and we can now ride regularly with few issues.

The process of failure and learning, picking ourselves back up and the encouragement from others are powerful tools in our journey that allow us to recognize the progress we are making and continue to push through the setbacks to our eventual success. But what happens when our brain lacks the mechanism to process those wins? What if every time someone told you that you were getting better because you stayed on the bike just a little longer than before your brain told you "so what" and you gave up? For those of us with ADHD this is a constant struggle.

I've talked before about the struggles with executive function and how managing our tasks and executing them effectively is often heavily impaired by ADHD, and this is a significant contributor to our ability to sustain changes to address it. The impact that our ADHD has on our reward systems also causes us issues in being able to recognize and reward ourselves for the progress that we've made working toward change. So, how do we combat this?

For many of us, out of sight is out of mind. It is easier for our ADHD to make our barriers into unclimbable mountains. Our victories into "so what" moments, and has a devastating effect on our ability to effect change. One of the systems I work with individuals to build is the successes and setbacks tracker. This tool can be helpful in two important ways.

1. Our ADHD makes it very difficult to focus on things that aren't right in front of us and interferes with the way our experiences are coded into our working memory which impedes its transfer to long term memory. By tracking our successes and setbacks, in whatever medium feels most effective (digital or analog), it gives us a concrete reference point that can remind us of the wins that we have had.

2. Our ADHD impacts our ability to emotionally regulate as effectively as neurotypical people and part of that is a vicious cycle of negative self-talk. To a person everyone that I have coached with ADHD when asked do they succeed or fail more the response has been fail. When you break it down, you succeed vastly more than you fail. Our ADHD brains however doesn't code things that aren't home runs as wins and so the perception sticks. By learning to track successes, no matter how small they may seem, and setbacks we can begin to shift the paradigm.