25 ADHD (or VAST) terms you might like to know

Feel Better Every Day

Including 4 new letters that may become as familiar to you as ADHD as Drs Hallowell and Ratey’s potentially less stigmatising VAST model (Variable Attention Stimulus Trait) becomes better known…

Which of these 25 terms resonate most for you?

Which ADHD (or VAST) terms had you hoped to see included?

Comment or reply to let me know for a future episode.

le grá (with love),

Evei

FULL TRANSCRIPT

I remember part of the training involved the recognition, both through our own practice and through working with others, that often if, for example, someone is working with anxiety and they start practicing mindfulness, it's not uncommon for them to report feeling more anxious. In reality, they've normally been experiencing those physiological symptoms and the mindfulness practice makes it more conscious and helps us get better at making choices that alleviate the anxiety. 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 your Self, 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. Welcome to episode 53 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

Today we're deconstructing some of the jargon around ADHD. It's not quite an A-Z, but there's a lot there and I'm smiling because I remember I used to feel completely overwhelmed by all the jargon and over the past few years some of it still makes me laugh because it's not very intuitive and other bits are completely of course. When I learned to practice and teach mindfulness well over a decade ago, I remember part of the training involved the recognition both through our own practice and through working with others, that often if for example someone is working with anxiety and they start practicing mindfulness, it's not uncommon for them to report feeling more anxious.

In reality they've normally been experiencing those physiological symptoms and the mindfulness practice makes it more conscious and helps us get better at making choices that alleviate the anxiety and that help us regulate and help us make changes to our lives. Similarly with the ADHD jargon, I'm never a fan of jargon, but I have felt like it's been learning a new language the past few years and some of it is so helpful when I realise it's not just me. I do occasional newsletters called ‘Is This Me or ADHD?’ because I think like so many people with the diagnosis, whether it's self-diagnosis or official, it can be like well tick tick tick tick tick, I feel really like, ‘Yep this is all me’, but I thought they were personality traits.

So understanding that they're traits and symptoms and then also recognising that ADHD presents differently in different people obviously, so getting a sense of which ones feel most resonant for you and finding ways to support yourself through it. I just sneezed, I hope I don't need to edit that out, I tried to pause it in time.

We're going to start with ADHD burnout and it's different to regular burnout but it can be a real problem. I know that I'm constantly amending my schedule in order to minimise it because even now more than 20 years into being my own boss, being in the really fortunate position to be able to control my own schedule, I will still do too much, I'll hyperfocus, that's coming later and then I'll be fit for nothing for days.

It's really useful as with everything to notice for yourself when you feel it, what helps you when you're in it, what helps you recover more quickly, what helps you prevent it, the more awareness you have the easier it will get for you to actually prevent this endless cycle by building in more rest, taking more off your plate. Progress not perfection as with everything but it's a practice and just even recognising that you're potentially more prone to it can help you recognise that you are worthy of the extra supports and accommodations in your own life and if you're your own boss or if you're working for someone else, really advocating for yourself and knowing you're worth it.

The second term is convocoaster which is not a clinical term but it's for when we go off on a bit of a conversational rollercoaster. The people who know and love us might be patient and wait knowing that we will come back eventually.

I remember my housemates when I was at Bangor University in the ‘90s talking about me being a bit like a runaway train and that if they kind of hung on I would get back to the point eventually. I had no idea about ADHD back then but being patient with yourself, being patient with loved ones, recognising okay there is a point and you will get back to it and also supporting yourself if you're in a meeting or if you're in a situation where you want to be as focused as possible and making brief notes for yourself.

Number three, we've got Glimmers, a term coined by the delightful Deb Dana who has helped make Polyvagal Theory accessible to more people. We're all so familiar with triggers and how something that others might not notice can have a pretty debilitating effect on the nervous system. Glimmers are their opposite.

It might be the way the light looks on a puddle, it might be the way it can be all kinds of tiny things, larger things but getting to know your glimmers and creating an environment for yourself, creating a schedule for yourself where you are likely to experience as many glimmers as possible is going to contribute to your ventral vagal wellness and overall wellbeing.

It's a wonderful way to help alleviate some of the suffering and to really enjoy the way things look or feel or taste or smell or sound, just let yourself feel glimmery and set playlists for yourself, really enjoy it, really indulge yourself as much as possible.

Number four is moving on to hyperfocus and for Half Moon members (that's the free subscribers, you can subscribe at evemc.substack.com or selfcarecoaching.net) you'll be getting an email newsletter with a video around hyperfocus and how you can support balance and harmony in your life by working with your own hyperfocus a bit better. Hyperfocus is one of the many reasons why ADHD as a name is not loved by so many. I'll get on to that later but we don't have a problem focusing when we're interested in something. When something grabs us, we often have difficulty unfocusing. So often, people ignore bodily sensations like hunger or thirst or needing the loo or sleep or whatever it might be. Becoming aware of your areas of hyperfocus, becoming aware of your energy levels, of your interests, of the things that need to be done and finding ways as much as possible to make it work for you.

Like I said I'll go into this in more detail for tomorrow's bonus content, the deeper dive, but you can just think for yourself, when did you last hyperfocus? Was it a joyful hyperfocus? Was it a stressful hyperfocus?

It can actually be really enjoyable building time in to go down random rabbit holes, something you may never have heard of and all of a sudden it's the most fascinating thing in the world and we live in an information age and it's very easy to research and find out more and it's I think really helpful to recognise the joy in that and put supports in place and also to recognise the things that you perhaps need to be doing. I've recently completed a massive revamp of my website and it's taken a year and a half because I initially hyperfocused and then I got distracted by lots of other things and I wanted to complete it but there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

It's an enormous site and I was creating a library and my virtual assistant helped a lot but it just took a really long time and then in the last few weeks recognising I was near the end, I let myself go into hyperfocus.

I scheduled days in where I could work. I didn't have sessions those days and working around the clock but in a planned way. I'm not advocating working on the clock, it's something I'm still working on myself but in this instance it was such a joy to get it done and then I built in some time off afterwards.

Know that you're going to get hooked into things, knowing that certain things are going to produce more dopamine and you're just going to get really enthusiastic about them rather than beating yourself up for the way your brain works. Work with it as much as possible.

Moving on to impulsivity (number five), it makes me laugh that I didn't realise that I was impulsive until I got my diagnosis (combined). Once I realised it, I realised of course I am. I can remember going back decades, certain things I did. A couple years ago I leaped onto a conveyor belt at an airport because I thought that my luggage was being taken away without it being labelled.

It was the middle of the night in Norway, it had been a stressful few days, my uncle was dying and there were no humans around. I saw my suitcase disappearing and I just leaped onto the conveyor belt like a thing possessed. I'm surprised I didn't fall and hurt myself.

Suddenly there were loads of humans around and they were telling me off because I shouldn't have done that but it's that kind of impulsivity. I guess not everyone does that and I can think of so many examples through my life where I’ve been like. ‘Well obviously you had to do whatever’ and other people are like, ‘No, you really didn't.’ So like I said with the mindfulness earlier, knowing that I have this tendency towards impulsivity, my life has changed.

I'm still waiting to hear from the doctor if I'm able to take the ADHD medication. I've had the cardiology report, things are looking promising but just knowing I'm impulsive helps me attend to that impulsive part of myself. My spending has improved, my eating has improved, my time management has improved, all sorts of things have improved just by recognising that impulsive part of me needs to be attended to and loved and cherished and enjoyed when appropriate. But it cannot drive my life. It just cannot be in the driving seat. So recognising it's a thing is definitely helping that awareness, that consciousness and I hope it does for you too.

Moving then to inattentive (number 6), again I didn't really know that not everyone did this but I did know that I often gave the impression of listening really well and not taking anything in. And because I now understand more about my brain, I'm better able to own it and be honest. I think because my dad was a teacher when I was growing up, I kind of grew up pretending to pay attention and at school and all the rest of it but in my head I was all sorts of other places.

I was recently in B&Q and I asked where the loo was. The kind person said it is do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do and I was like, ‘Magic. Thank you so much!’ and then I immediately said, ‘Would you mind repeating that please? I said magic as if I understood it and I was nodding as if I understood it but I have no idea what you just said!’

And because I'm 49 now and because I feel safe now, I can own it. She laughed and she was so sweet and she showed me where it was and I found it. It was brilliant but I thought I can't tell you how much of my life I pretended to nod along and understand things that were just whoosh.

I think also being Indian Irish, I recently had an experience… not recently actually, it was over 10 years ago. I was in Italy at a psychosynthesis conference and some people think I look Italian or Spanish and I realised that when I was doing my normal nodding along. They were talking Italian at this conference in Florence and people were then talking to me and they thought I could understand and it was like, ‘Oh my god! I really can't!’

I'm not sharing a How To Do Things here, I'm just sharing how more awareness is helping me in hopes that it will help you.

Giving yourself anchors that help you when you're inattentive so you don't go down a rumination (number 8) pathway but you instead have nice happy places you can visit in your mind. Ways in which you can use that time to do something that works for you. I feel like I'm being naughty suggesting that! But it’s so helpful.

Moving on to justice sensitivity (number 9). Again, I didn't understand how other people seemed to function when certain things were going on in the world. I’d burst into tears reading the newspaper before I learned how to practice Metta and send loving kindness to all involved. I remember all sorts of situations which I'm actually not going to name now because I don't want to upset anyone. There's so much going on in the world now. There has been for such a long time but I didn't understand how other people functioned when I just felt just broken by something going on so far away. Understanding that justice sensitivity again is a symptom, is a trait, helps me recognise, ‘OK. It's just my differently wired brain.’ What can I do, not to fix the problem (because even though my name's Eve I'm not responsible for the whole world this is something I keep reminding myself of) but what is within my power what is within my capabilities and my time available and my energy levels and my desire to help.

We so often think we have to do all the things whereas just doing something in that direction can help alleviate some of that intense pain that accompanies daily life a lot of the time. There is so much injustice in the world and it's not about turning a blind eye it's about honouring your strengths and capabilities and energy and harnessing it so that you can potentially make much more of a difference without hurting yourself. Without burning out. Without feeling utter despair.

Moving then to misophonia (number 10) and I didn't realise there's so much I had no idea about. That actual pain that accompanies certain sounds. Again, I thought everyone had it and I didn't understand how they'd be able to focus on whatever other people were saying rather than, ‘OH MY GOD!’ But also thinking about adults in my life when I was a child.

Certain things they'd pick up on and certain things that they would criticise me for, well meaning potentially but painful to experience. Recognising they probably had misophonia and it was painful to hear whatever.

With all of this, I think there's a grieving not just for ourselves with late diagnosis ADHD but also if we then recognise symptoms in the adults in our lives and think not only how different our childhoods might have been and younger adulthoods if we had known about ourselves but how different, how much less intergenerational trauma there might be had they known. And had they had the support that they needed and deserved and that could have made them better in their roles as adults in our lives.

So we then move to neuroaffirming (number 11), which I hope you're familiar with. You want to, if you're working with anyone one-to-one, make sure they're neuroaffirmative rather than pathologising you, recognising a strengths-based approach and really working with your delightfully differently wired brain.

And doing the same for yourself, not dismissing yourself, not beating yourself up about things you can't change, but working with the gifts and the strengths that come with it as well.

PDA (number twelve) makes me laugh. The pathological demand avoidance. I used to hear the whole time as a child, as a teenager, that I was, I mean, I was, I can't remember exactly what I heard because I was kind of inattentive tuning it out, but I remember a lot of being told off about not doing what adults wanted me to do. And as an adult now, as a 49 year old, I still have to be careful with myself.

If I want myself to do something that I know is good for me, I have to really be gentle and I have to kind of approach it like an adult might in terms of giving a small child vegetables and kind of sneak them in because the pathological demand avoidance is high. And it just makes me laugh now and I can own it and I no longer let it sabotage me. It's like, ‘OK, I need to attend to that part of me that really doesn't want to be told what to do even by myself!’

Working with yourself again and reminding yourself you're not forcing yourself to do anything, but something might help, see how it goes, play with it, have fun.

Then we move on to the painful rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) (number thirteen), which is incredibly painful. I also want to flag that everyone experiences rejection as painful, but with the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, it can feel especially like, ‘How to recover?’ but it's not an excuse to make your feelings more important than anyone else's. Obviously they need to be to you, but it's not fair to expect other people to put their needs and wants below because it's about recognising and having empathy for yourself and also for others, for ourselves and for others.

We might feel things more acutely, but again, when you say that, when I say that, I don't know how someone else actually experiences it. They might be feeling it much more deeply than I realised from their reaction, because they might be used to getting on regardless while dying on the inside. But rejection sensitivity dysphoria is incredibly painful. One of the things that helped me was becoming a writer, where I basically had to deal with so much rejection.

It didn't desensitise me to it, but it did teach me very early on that the best thing to do was to take action. I'm in a position right now where I'm waiting to hear back from a few different situations and teenage me would have languished and stressed and ruminated and all the rest of it. But when I became a professional writer, I just learned to get on with it.

It doesn't mean that I don't feel it. I still go through far too much of my life thinking that people don't like me or hate me or I've done something wrong or I mean, it's much, much better than it was, but it is a painful way to be. And it's very recently that I realised that not everyone goes through life like that!

Be gentle with yourself and use the pain you feel to be gentle with others as well and to be sensitive about the way you reject others.

Moving on to revenge bedtime procrastination (number fourteen), I know we covered this in the sleep issue and also in the second episode with Rebecca Seal (and later I think with the Chris Oxborrow and Louise Lucas episodes). Notice when you're staying up late and you don't want to be, notice again that potential PDA. That, ‘Don't tell me when to go to bed!’

Ask yourself what benefits you're getting. Often it is that kind of quiet time, that peaceful time. See if you can make changes in your schedule so you can get those needs met, but in a way that doesn't leave you feeling exhausted so much of the time. Log your...