All right,
In this session,
I wanna talk briefly about the power of body doubling for adults with ADHD.
We know that for ADHD,
We are compelled by interest.
We can activate,
We can do things when there's components of interest to them.
And you may hear other things as well,
Like we're activated by novelty and urgency as well,
But I relate all of that to interest.
Novel things are interesting things,
And urgency is the interest in not suffering,
Right?
I'm interested in keeping my job,
So I'm going to scramble to get the report in at the final hour.
And as we know,
Most of the things in life,
They're not interesting.
They're boring,
Actually.
They feel awful in the moment,
And they're riddled with tension.
ADHDers,
We do not do tension.
Nobody enjoys tension.
Neurotypical,
Neurodiverse,
We can all agree that nobody wants to do things that cause tension.
The neurotypical difference,
Though,
Is that they can activate based on importance.
Deal,
This task affects my future.
And so because of that,
They can activate.
Our brain doesn't work like that.
Russell Barkley is the scientist that I subscribe to,
I get my ADHD science information from.
He said it in the most simple way,
And I love that.
The brain is divided into two places,
Knowledge and performance,
And ADHD splits the two.
So it doesn't matter that we know what to do,
We won't do it.
And it can be very difficult to express this barrier,
Especially because it can change.
Situational variability says that something I had the ability to activate on yesterday,
I might not be able to activate on today.
And we often hear that in our ADHD lives,
Don't we?
But I've seen you do this before.
You know how to do this.
So just do what you did then.
And so we can see how feelings of shame,
Self-loathing,
They might manifest out of this confusion about ourselves.
Why can't I just,
You know,
Do this thing?
But there are ways that we can actually do those crummy tasks.
And one of the most successful ways that I've found is with body doubling.
It is literally doing a thing while another person is there.
That's really that simple.
In the ADHD Big Brother community,
We do that virtually through body doubling virtual spaces.
Body doubling is a thing that I don't want to bog us all down with the science of why this works and the neurons and the connections with humans and all of that.
I get really lost in that kind of talk because it's not It's experiential.
It's not tangible.
It's just academic.
It's learning.
And I have this viewpoint because I typically enter people's lives when they're done with the learning and they're trying to figure out why they still aren't doing.
They know all the things and it never translated into like getting the laundry done.
I want to keep this talk simple.
It's a see it to believe it thing.
I want to share with you how to do it,
And I want to invite you to give it a shot.
Be skeptical,
Enter into it with the belief that this stuff doesn't work for you,
And still try it.
I say this because I was that person.
How is having someone else around going to help me finish a task?
It seems more problematic than helpful.
I have to show up.
Won't I get distracted?
ADHDers,
I find that we're amazing at multiversing the multitude of scenarios why a thing won't work.
Why it's not for us without having tried it.
I had a community member years ago mention body doubling as a cool feature and would I consider adding it to the membership.
And I was like,
It's not for me,
But if other people want it,
Sure,
I can buy a Zoom room.
I'm in there almost every day now.
That was a 180 degree turn for me because I tried it,
Even though I was super skeptical.
You can do this physically,
Or you can do it virtually.
Consider the trainer that you hire to help you with your exercise.
You show up to those appointments.
Working out is easier when you have a trainer walking you through it.
Maybe the exercising isn't actually easier,
But getting started,
Actually doing the work of the exercise,
Isn't it easier with the trainer?
That's a body double.
I go on a walk around the Rose Bowl each weekend with my friend,
Brian.
We go because we are each other's body double.
None of us shows up to do that walk if the other cancels.
I'm so much more willing to do a longer meditation when I go to a group sitting because we've created the parameters and we're all collectively agreeing that we're sitting for 45 minutes or however long it would be.
That's so much easier than getting started on a meditation by myself.
Another person equals support.
And we win with proximity to support.
If you invited a friend over,
A nonjudgmental friend,
And the idea was that they were going to keep you company while you organized your art room.
Let's say you have an art room.
It's a very messy pens and paints and stuff everywhere.
But if your friend was hanging out while you were picking up and moving stuff around,
Wouldn't that make the slog or the organizing and cleaning a little less sloggy?
Less isolating.
And with our time blindness,
Doing unfun things alone can feel like an eternity.
But 45 minutes with a friend,
And then maybe we make them lunch afterwards as a thank you.
Wouldn't that make it easier?
That's body doubling.
My question for you is what is something that you've been struggling to get done?
Think of a way you might try using a body double for that thing.
I'll give you one fun example before we go of how creative this body doubling can get.
So in my community,
One of the members was struggling with a lilac bush.
She needed to uproot it.
I guess like dig it out,
But those roots,
They went deep and she didn't have big equipment.
So she had to chip away at it one shovel full at a time.
And so she set up her phone in in our virtual body doubling room,
And there were a few sessions where I was in there on my computer getting my work done,
And she was there shoveling a lilac,
And we both moved our needle forward.
There is the quote that I love the most,
And I don't even know who said it,
But,
Hills are never as steep when you walk them with a friend,
And that is so true.
ADHD,
It's a team sport.
And I'm glad I got to be on your team today,
And hopefully this was helpful,
And I'll talk to you soon.
