Episode Details

This April Fools Day, we’re exploring ways in which our ADHD brains keep us fooling ourselves

And how awareness and compassion really help…

How about you?

Le grá (with love),

Evei

FULL TRANSCRIPT

For me, if I don't have something to read, I feel quite anxious. I don't want to be anywhere where I could be reading and I'm not reading, but also I don't know what mood I'm going to be in at that time, so I tend to bring like different journals and magazines as well as maybe a memoir and maybe a novel. And this might be just for one night, but I'm, especially now I can drive so I'm not lugging it all on the train, and like my brother has used a Kindle since they were invented and I know so many people use like Kindles or similar and I'm just like, ‘What if it ran out? What if it broke?’ I can't, I need to know, I've got stuff to read.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I am so excited to be sharing new trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly ideas for you to help you take better care of yourself, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself, as well as the basic self-care which we all know can be so challenging at times.

I really appreciate you tuning in. If you want a deeper dive you'll be getting bonus content each week if you sign up to the Sole to Soul Circle. You can do that for free or from as little as eight euros a month. And you can also find more ideas in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.

Thanks for joining me again, Jayne Leonard, I really appreciate it.

Thanks Eve, thanks for having me.

We're celebrating April Fools today and talking about, especially with ADHD, how we fool ourselves, how we delude ourselves.

I'm looking back through 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and I just looked at the April Fools Day entry and it’s what we're talking about today:

Are you fooling yourself?

How can we really get honest in a compassionate and curious way about what we're doing and whether that serves us in terms of what we want to be doing and where we want to be going?

I'm just laughing that I was talking about deluding myself that yumyums were a healthy breakfast. We're talking also about how like we delude ourselves in terms of, do you want to say some of the things you delude yourself about? Some of the things you fool yourself about?

Yeah, the biggest thing I think I delude myself about is how much I can get done in a time period and I just think, so time is as we know like a really tricky concept for people with ADHD anyway, we just, yeah we struggle with it. But I think also I don't take into account maybe where I am in the whole, am I in the hyperfocus mode where I can get loads done or am I kind of on the comedown from that or am I in the burnout zone.

So it has been, yeah, it's been kind of a journey to figure that out and it's still definitely tricky. Like I sent you a photo when I was in Kerry, in November was it, I sent you a photo of about six books I brought and I was only there for four days and I also had a load of work to do and stuff but this was like, it's almost like the fantasy of, absolutely, the fantasy of oh and I could and I could get that stuff done if I sat and read.

But I also have all this other stuff to do. But it's like my brain compartmentalises like you want to get this done so just focus on this and get this done and it doesn't look at the other compartments that also need to be done.

Yeah I think that's the biggest thing I delude myself about. I love that about reading and I no longer call them to be read piles, they're like COULD be read piles because I don't want that pressure.

For me, if I don't have something to read, I feel quite anxious and it feels like I don't w