“How Self-Awareness Can Extinguish ADHD’s Little Fires”
“To live with unmanaged ADHD is to face constant fires that threaten to burn us and our loved ones, and which we spend so much energy trying to extinguish. But what we often fail to consider is how those fires were sparked.”
To live with unmanaged ADHD is to face chaotic fires that threaten to burn our sense of self-efficacy and damage our connection with loved ones, and which we spend so much energy trying to extinguish.
But what we often fail to consider is how these fires are sparked.
Before the consequence of unmanaged ADHD blows up in our faces, there is a long progression of unnoticed action that gradually stokes such a blaze. Unchecked ADHD, then, is more of a slow, silent, invisible flame that heats and bubbles under the surface. Everything may appear smooth on the surface, but the hushed activity below tells a different story.
This quiet simmer is a vast collection of kindling – of distractions, impulsive actions, lack of initiation, and other issues that eventually spark and rage into an inferno — a missed deadline, a failed relationship, a lost job, a failed class. To the person with ADHD, simmers are so easy to ignore or miss altogether. Fires are undeniable.
When the fire erupts, everybody runs wild in a panic, which increases our chances of acting upon the situation. The crisis revs up the brain chemistry that provokes fear, which makes us move and do. We run around in circles trying to extinguish the awful thing, engaging serious damage control. This usually includes saying we’re desperately sorry, groaning to ourselves that yet again we’ve screwed up. Sometimes we hide under a rock.
This is one reason why ADHD is so hard for the larger community to accept. “How can you act like this sometimes but not all the time?” If we were blind, we wouldn’t see some of the time. The consensus among all affected by our fires — parents, teachers, spouses, friends, bosses — is that to prevent the next one, we must remain in freak-out mode because that’s the only thing that will keep us in check.
[Read: To Infinity and Beyond, Powered by Self-Awareness]
The problem, of course, was never the raging fire. That was only the most obvious consequence of the slow-burn of hundreds of small decisions prior to it, when we decided to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, one on top of the other. That is at the heart of what it means to suffer and struggle with ADHD.
Living with ADHD: The Importance of Self-Awareness
The work of preventing these self-defeating fires is more subtle and consistent than a handful of panic episodes, and more fine-tuned to the specific issue with which we struggle. The solution rests on one thing and one thing only: Self-awareness. You can’t change what you don’t see.
It’s hard to learn how to become aware of those subtle, quiet seconds of mis-decision, especially when there’s panic in the room. Awareness is a quieter practice. It prefers to act on a stage of self-compassion, self-honesty, and wanting to change. It involves figuring out how we’re going to help ourselves to notice in the first place. But how do we build awareness when the landscape seems so unknowable, so unmapped?
When people run from fires, nobody slows down to map the area. Self-awareness happens when we have extra bandwidth to catch ourselves deciding to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. These are those classic moments when we decide “just for now” not to study, or when we “just have to” blurt out a secret, or when we decide we’ll put away our coat or the dinner plate “later.”
[Read: 10 Things I Wish the World Knew About ADHD]
It’s true that negative reinforcers are so enticing, and we’ve used them since we were kids. But wouldn’t it be amazing if we could notice when we do the wrong thing at the wrong time without the fire department having to clang its bell next to our ears? That fire department – us or others – works great for fires, but not for lasting, inspired, intentional human change.
How to Build ADHD Self-Awareness
So, how do we build awareness around the decisions we make, especially when they seem to happen reflexively in the background? Bring to the fore in detail an understanding of what happens at the precise moment when we make these decisions. What is the setting? What are we doing? What else is going on? What do we choose to do instead? When will this most likely happen again?
These are the kinds of things we talk about in ADHD coaching, but none of us live in a coaching call forever. These are the tricks and skills we can learn and develop. Learning to become aware might involve visualizing, talking it over with someone or with ourselves, and then asking curious questions about how to put into place support systems to help us pivot and make optimal decisions. The support options are plentiful. It all rests first on building awareness around how ADHD shows up in us.
Then it’s practicing and tweaking so there are fewer, less intense fires — or maybe no flames at all.
How to Be More Self-Aware with ADHD: Next Steps
- Get This Free Download: The ADHD Healthy Habits Handbook
- Read: Self-Sabotage and ADHD — Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?
- Read: Has ADHD Warped Your Sense of Self? It’s Time to Reclaim Your Story — and Power
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