More is better...or is it?

Something Shiny: ADHD!

Isabelle and David catch up and grapple with those moments when you have a ton of energy or anxiety or excitement, and you tackle way more and up the difficulty on your video game of life, instead of going for an easy win. The way we tend to think more is better when it comes to interventions or accommodations when actually it’s the little stuff. The power of the little yuck, and also the way we buy 4 cases of fruit leather and only later consider where we will store them.
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David is sharing how time doesn’t make sense (5 minutes v. 299 seconds=2 different things). Isabelle names how she tries to operate this way all the time or much of the time, remembering all this Team Shiny stuff, but it really is such a hard thing to acknowledge that her working memory is as poor as it is. Whaddayamean nobody moved the keys? (except past her, who forgot she moved the keys?) She gets so angry at herself, maybe now that she knows more about ADHD/attentional variability/ND — she is kinder to herself faster, but she also gets angrier. David names that anger is a path toward adaptive humor—“are you kidding me?” Can turn into a laugh moment or it can turn into berating yourself more. David had a beautiful ADHD moment. David has a bonus at his job, and what does he do with a bonus? Is it a vacation? A box of chocolates? A piece of furniture? Video game? The rule that we have is that anything labelled like this is getting a treat. Bonus or treat yo’self. David decides he’s going to get the best fruit leather than exists, and he decides to order it. First thought: This is excellent, this is funny. Second thought: I can’t wait to tell everyone about this, this is so cool. Third thought: Wait a minute—how much space does this much fruit leather take up? Fourth thought: Does it go bad? Fifth thought: Does it need to be refrigerated? My cats won’t get into it….What did I just do to myself? He is excited and terrified about much fruit leather. He minimizes his impulsivity. What shipping option did he pick? No idea. It doesn’t say what kind of shipping. It reminds Isabelle of how fascinated she is by a ‘lifetime supply’ prize of things: how much is a lifetime supply? Like a steady supply? All at once? How much did you buy exactly…are we talking, pounds? David got 4 cases, so he could pick the flavors. Isabelle-that might be an elementary school’s summer camp order. She thinks you could polish this off, using her kids as a baseline. Will he keep enjoying fruit leather 100 fruit leathers in? David knows that we don’t enjoy the next bite as much as the first, it does wear off. He’s not going to Golem them, he’s going to share the fruit leathers. The last time he had this thought, it happened with Jordan almonds. But they also break people’s teeth and not everyone likes them. Isabelle is delighted because every Polish baby shower and wedding shower, and it was just little baggies of them. Isabelle throws in three fun food facts: frying food is originally to preserve the food without the refrigeration, so fried food, it keeps longer. When you coat something in sugar, or in a salt, it keeps longer. Isabelle also thinks about learning what is the first thing to put on a cut? David responds…not hydrogen peroxide or alcohol, and Isabelle learned that doing that messes with the skin barrier because you scrub away all the good stuff, its then more likely to get infected. Which is shocking, because you'd think more is better. David *names that that’s why soap works: it’s the bubbles! And the friction! That makes soap work. THIS MORE IS BETTER is something we see in clinical work all the time. People throw in so many ADHD interventions, and it fails, and actually…less is more. Like simple things, like where you put your phone at night. Isabelle’s metaphor of late is the idea that we often do all or nothing, but we get bored with playing the video game at easy, and instead of upping the difficulty to medium, we think we have to make it extremely hard, and then you die right away, and you get extremely frustrated and then you quit the game. Here’s Isabelle’s boring task: she needs to go through the kids clothes. What does she do, she then signs up for three consignment sales and figure out delivery dates, and then it raises the anti, and it makes her feel like she’s doing something, but she overwhelms her stimulus load, and then passes her sweet spot so darn fast. David names that easy level on this game is just collecting clothes and putting them in one spot. Medium is putting them into a sort. And super hard level is taking them there and not having them in their house. David notices that people don’t even see the easy options. And then Isabelle also opened three other games, to play at the same time. The more games we’re playing, the harder it is to get into a rhythm. All the interventions he knows are habits and rhythms. David doesn’t really know how to distinguish anxiety or excitement, he’s getting all excited for a party, and the settings all got to difficult. There was no easy option; everything started on difficult. Only parallel is like when you’re about to go to Disney World, everything is set to excited and anxious and difficult. And so he just started doing easy wins; normally he takes that energy and just does way too much. So he did a lot of small little things, he listened to a book and did the dishes. The weirdest thing is he actually thought he could do this, and have all this stuff get done. Part of him was surrendering to an easy mode; he didn’t think of all the things he could accomplish, but rather…what to do with this energy so future Dave will not be mad at him. Isabelle very slowly processes this. Is it like having a big to do list, but actually those things are very difficult things, very little movement, lots of executive functioning. But the awareness of “I have a ton of energy,” the practice of where is your thermostat is living; feels difficult anyway, and then where can I put this so future me is not mad at me, is like body doubling yourself. Both Isabelle and David geek out about Huberman Lab and wanting to hang out with Andrew Huberman in an encapsulated experience, how important it is for our brains to experience little yucks. Doing little sucky things throughout the day creates more good things in a day. The variation of experiences is what helps you feel good, feel the peaks of goodness. Imagine doing exactly what you want to do for 10 hours, Isabelle feels like a piece of poop—but you were getting what you wanted, but instead there’s the sneaking suspicion of impending guilt, or this isn’t how it goes in this game of life. We need the variation in order to actually feel the highs. Like imagine you took breaks and did little yucks throughout the day, and then return to your phone, you have a better day. If you have anxious or excited energy, what are the little yucks I can do with this energy while I am self-medicated (through the anxiety and excitement to do so)? Isabelle thinks about “reiserfieber”, which is a German term for exactly how you feel before a big trip. This is how Isabelle functions this way during nap time, it’s the little yucks. Or the contrast of dropping the kids off at school after 6 snow days; the contrast is what makes you appreciate things. Also pandemic shut down flashbacks. But no, David names, that’s a big yuck. This is actually about little yucsk. It’s something that’s small and not future-oriented, just asking yourself: I have energy and 10 minutes…what’s a little yuck I can do? And keep it easy. On purpose.