Étiquette : ADHD

Publié dans ADHD, Goal Setting, Mental Health

Habitica: Happy little dings for doing all the things..

Publié le par Snowrose

Over the last few months, I have been using a productivity app that has been surprisingly impactful in my day-to-day functioning as a mom with ADHD. My husband had been trying to find ways to compensate for his memory issues that don’t involve asking me to remind him, and with the help of ChatGPT, found a list of different apps that are supposedly meant to help with ADHD, memory, and productivity. Now, when I say memory issues, I mean that he has the textbook case where if he is not hyper-focusing on whatever it is, it goes in one ear and out the other (completely unintentional, too). This is lifelong ADHD struggle territory, and I’ll be honest, not much has worked over the years except me carrying the mental load, which, let’s be real, isn’t sustainable.

Habitica App!

In comes: Habitica. Originally, I downloaded the app to support him because he figured gamifying his life would probably be fun (we are both gamers after all). Did it help? Oh, man, did it ever. He has been successfully using it for several months, and I RARELY have to remind him of things. In general, if something hadn’t been done on his dailies, he chose not to do it because he wasn’t feeling well. Now here’s the kicker: I’ve been the one using the app MORE than him!

My normal way of coping with my lack of executive function is to hold onto the thought of all the things that need to get done in a mind palace like Sherlock Holmes’. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, and mixing that with compassion fatigue and masking led to me becoming burned out last year. While I have been learning to not mask 24/7 (IFS and parts work with the RCC has been a game changer), allow myself to stim when I need to regulate, and become more compassionate with myself, at the same time my husband demonstrated huge improvements in his mental health, I never really found a way around carrying the big mental load.

Reducing the mental load

In using Habitica, I have unloaded the giant mental load of all the things I plan to do and all the steps to take. I have a GINORMOUS to-do list, with steps broken down neatly. The length of the to-do list is a relief because I am no longer going over it in my mind on repeat to make sure I follow through (lest it be lost in the void).

Habitica is also programmed such that the longer something is on the to-do list, the more difficult it is to finish, and it adjusts the rewards accordingly. This has been massively validating, as many of the projects on my to-do list are longer-term (such as uploading designs to Spoonflower or Redbubble, making resources, or finishing the books that are in progress). I have habits set for tracking virtue and various ways I want to grow as a person. I’ve even learned how to set up my monthly virtue challenges to be hosted on there, too! You can join for June, where we practice growing in trust HERE.

… and finally… the most delightful little dings for doing daily things. I don’t know about you all, but I find with my particular flavor of neuro-spicy deficiencies, I get ABSOLUTELY NO dopamine from completing a task. Does that prevent me from getting stuff done? Well, no. I do it anyway because I learned long ago that action begets motivation and… I’m as stubborn as a bull.

An impressive impact…

Although I found taking medication a few years ago helped with sensory processing disorder, and getting that little “oh look! I did a thing!” dopamine release, it hasn’t been sustainable to stay on them for several reasons. In general, I usually hate bell noises of any kind, but this app has a ding that is lovely to me. I put together my list of dailies, and with the party I’ve formed with my husband and a few friends, I get to share the fun I’ve found in this relief of my mental load. We hold each other accountable through the quest feature, and it has brought a lot of good! I wouldn’t say this app will help everyone, but if you think it may help, I highly recommend you give it a try!

Publié dans ADHD, Coaching, Goal Setting, Sam's adventures

Captured busy!

Publié le par Snowrose

My goodness! My well-intentioned goal of writing and contributing to this blog weekly has most certainly fallen through! This is a great place for my own self-reflection on the past season and look ahead to how I can do things differently next time.

First things first: why am I sharing my own pitfalls with you, dear reader? Well, to show that even if you look put-together, life is a process of learning and growing… for EVERYONE! I think what caught me off guard with this particular goal was a divide in my focus. In establishing this business, I’ve been working at the turtle’s pace, bit by bit. It started as homework for my Master’s degree in my “flourishing and development plan”, as a simple portfolio of my art, and has slowly blossomed into something bigger– and a little more immediate than my eventual goal of becoming a fully licensed psychologist. In the last few months though, I’ve had a lot of clarity for the direction I want to take this up-and-coming business to really hit the ground running. That’s where I stumbled: too many ideas at once.

Maintaining Balance

It’s always tricky with ADHD to see where the balance in that divided attention can be maintained. I’ve personally found my many interests and ability to hyper-focus to outweigh the impact of diminished executive function, especially when I take the steps needed for the support I require. In this case, I definitely bit off more than I could chew. So what now? Well, I’ll use a very helpful tool that DMU (Divine Mercy University) introduced me to in that same “flourishing and development plan” homework. WOOP!

No, no, I don’t mean to just exclaim exuberantly, though really it is a sound I make when I’m excited. WOOP is a really helpful system designed to take goal setting to the next level. It stands for:

So let’s WOOP my goal together:

Your WOOP Summary
Your Wish: Have an active blog
Your best Outcome: I’d write posts at least once a week
Your inner Obstacle: Getting distracted by other priorities
Your Plan: If “Getting distracted by other priorities” then I will “Choose a day to write and that be the business task”

Want to WOOP your goals too? Here is the practice space!

Publié dans ADHD, Goal Setting, Mental Health, Sam's adventures

What am I all about?

Publié le par Snowrose

If there is one thing that I am passionate about, it is helping an individual heal, grow and flourish. I can’t say that I have been on this road for very long, but the more I travel it, the more I realize, “yep, this is for me”. Over the last 4 years, I have had the privilege of accompanying my husband on his healing journey battling mental illness. Let’s be clear, I am no spring chicken, I’ve had my fair share having gone through major depression caused by chronic illness in my mid-twenties, and Post-Partum depression after my son was born… but there is something different walking with someone else. Was it easy? No. Was it fun? Eh, not really. Was it worth it to get to the other side and really experience them beginning to flourish and grow? You bet.

My husband and I both came into our marriage knowing we had no idea what the heck we were doing. We grew up in broken families, with divorced and remarried parents, stability wasn’t really our forte. I can’t say we did it right, but I can say we tried our best in the first years. After miscarrying twice, we had our son, our little rainbow baby. That’s when my husband’s mental health took a turn for the worse. You see, he had been working shift work for more than a decade by that point, had undiagnosed sleep apnea and the physical implications of that were really starting to hit the fan. Add in a little munchkin bundle of joy? Well, I learned that you start reliving your experiences of childhood… and either embrace them and grow or repress them and get pretty stuck in who you are. For my husband, mixing those with a toxic work environment, some added family struggles helping extended relatives, a little COVID Isolation, and well, it was enough to reach the breaking point.

It was this journey of accompanying him that set me on the path I am on now, determined to be there and accompany those who are ready to take the next active step in their lives. It took us 4 years, many hurdles and hardships, a lot of grit and even more grace, to get here, and I will never look back. Now that he has been symptom-free for almost a year, we are building a healthy home based on accountability, forgiveness, gratitude and trust; we are learning as we go and overcoming obstacles along the way. I am homeschooling our son, studying to reach my goals, and building my business.

I have to say that starting a business based on art, healing, growing and flourishing, is also not easy, but, it is oh so worth the efforts. I am loving coaching, and making art. It may be a small start, but it is the right direction and I look forward to meeting all the beautiful people who will come and join me on this path.