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Footholds
I have recently embraced attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and have started living from a more self-accepting place. I’ve found a new quietude in yoga practice, reading and walking, and I am moving into self-compassion around things that are difficult. Staying with silence in the therapy room is one of those things. I always felt that telephone counselling could not work and, in the past few months, I have found myself delighted to be wrong. In fact, I have experienced the times when my clients were not inclined to speak, as much more than telephone silence. When lockdown first began, I was consumed by COVID-19 news broadcasts and by a fear that made me realise I was operating from a place of basic needs, just as my clients were. With our livelihoods at stake, our creativity doesn’t necessarily blossom.1 I felt on ‘high alert’ and recognised that, while this is not usually my way, it is how so many people ordinarily feel. I had not encountered telephone counselling as a client or as a therapist and, suddenly, this was the only way forward. There is something to be said for the idea that when we are down to our only option, we become aligned with spirit. Finding ways to move through this, with courage, is familiar to us, as human beings. Letting myself fall Having always had to call on a part of myself that wasn’t strictly ‘thinking’ to guide me through silence, I noticed that, at first, this time was spent in part searching for a foothold: a security of knowing that simply wasn’t there. It was also about letting myself fall, only to discover a new trust in the therapeutic process and significant personal learning. But the learning came in the part I wasn’t prepared for: the silence. Noticing my discomfort, from this already deep and peaceful place, was an invitation to safely feel the ‘somethingness’ in the absence of content Seeing clients face to face and observing their body language and facial expressions has always felt absolutely necessary. Now, without these vital tools for connection, I was concerned that I might distort my sense of clients in some way, or that something would be lost. I keep eye contact when my client is in the room. This is a foothold. However, I now wonder if this can swing back on itself. Seeing a client may also distort my sense of them if I am too engaged with their physicality. Perhaps my attendance to spirit can be eclipsed by visuals. When a person is so physically present, in their particular way of being, dressing and moving, it may hold me back from another kind of experiencing. I’m aware that I have to break through my variable attention layer. This is drawn to every shiny physical aspect of my client, in a somewhat insatiable way. Colours and textures, in particular, can be emotionally evoking. Holding a balance posture In the silences, that I acknowledged to be my clients’ process, I needed to trust my higher self to know to ‘not’. To not intrude on this happening with a well-worn open question and, instead, to quieten my mind; to gather in the feeling of everything I knew and trusted about my modality, my spirituality and the therapeutic relationship. This was similar to holding a balance posture in yoga: a topple could happen, affecting both body and soul. During longer silences, I felt guided to offer, ‘I’m here with you’, followed by my client’s name. After the first awkward minutes, I found that holding my client in this way didn’t require trying or struggle. Usually, I ‘drop into’ myself before a session so that I am working openly with my whole person – mind, body and soul. This is my way of preparing. But the learning came in the part I wasn’t prepared for: the silence. Noticing my discomfort, from this already deep and peaceful place, was an invitation to safely feel the ‘somethingness’ in the absence of content. Listening with my whole self, I experienced the felt sense that our relationship, which was already established, was one of trust. My client felt this sufficiently to be comfortable with the silence and may even have had a greater trust than mine in our relationship. I suddenly felt very humbled and grateful for this gift. I was then more able to lean into our silence, to trust their trust, and find my own. My mind drifted, as it does, to a Brian Thorne book, Hope Beyond Despair, which suggests that it’s not the language, so much as trusting in the process and the quality of experiencing, that can lead to a relational encounter that’s transformational.2 It then came to rest on a sentence in an article by Sukhi Sian in the last issue of Thresholds: ‘…at last we can come out of the closet’.3 This resonated hugely with me at a time when I am actively ‘coming out of the closet’ as a person with a particular neurology, who is new to this way of being. I have started to greet the part of me that feels shame that I am not the logical, capable person I believed myself to be and to ask it to rest its hand on my shoulder. Deep, inner stillness The quality of experiencing in this silent, gentle session came with a transforming personal realisation that I can fully realise my spiritual way. By working self-compassionately with my own traits, I am becoming present to this part of myself and I can physically feel this. As trust deepened, a felt sense of my client became more and more available in the form of deep, inner stillness and wordless ‘messages’ in silence. This felt like fully experiencing connection with another being. I felt honoured to be of service at this time and suppose that, if the physicality of a client, while being usually and wonderfully present in the therapy room, is not ‘necessary’ for connectedness, more therapists may find work by telephone entirely possible. This may be of great benefit to clients as we emerge from this crisis. Telephone counselling has its own possibilities for depth and, while not often completely silent, no call is without its moments where silence is most definitely a ‘something’. I spent time preparing for future calls but resolved that nothing I could read would compare to what I had learned experientially. In practice: Hanging on the telephone There’s more to successful telephone counselling than you might think, says Sally Brown. Therapy Today, June 2020 The quarterly journal of BACP Spirituality division. Counselling with spirit. References 1https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow. html (accessed 26 May 2020). 2 Thorne B. The mystical power of personcentred therapy: hope beyond despair. Oxford: Wiley; 2002. 3 Sian S. Coming out of the closet. Thresholds 2020; April: 20–22.
What is Self Care without Self-Compassion?
“If ADHD neurology had factored into the self-care boom early on, it may have featured different and kinder messages to those of us who struggle to cement new habits — even the ones that are supposedly beneficial. Self-compassion might have featured prominently from the start.” Kate Fraser Headshot By Kate Fraser-Medcalf, BSc dip.Couns(MBACP) Updated on April 25, 2023 Click to Add Comments Save Twitter Do you remember when self-care became the new buzzword? Perhaps its inception slipped by you, as it did me, until suddenly, it was everywhere. I began to embrace what I thought was self-care in my 20s. This involved eating a lot of yogurt and salads, taking lavender bubble baths, and getting to bed earlier. But impatient and restless, I was out of the bath the moment I got in, making it an exercise in speed relaxing. I’d get to bed early and then lie wide awake for hours ruminating and worrying. I also struggled with impulsive eating. In my 30s, I experienced burnout while in the final year of my degree program. I couldn’t figure out how to study within “normal” bounds of time. Not for a moment did I imagine I was taking on too much. I assumed I wasn’t doing enough! I blamed my burnout on my lack of self-care, and more rigid self-care regimes followed. For reasons I couldn’t fathom then, these self-care rituals never quite worked for me. This pattern – of setting up self-care plans and failing to follow through on them – was a constant. Every let down came with feelings of doom, shame, and inadequacy. What was wrong with me? I blamed myself for my lack of willpower to make self-care happen – a prerequisite to achieving the life I wanted. All my struggles made sense after I was diagnosed with ADHD in midlife. One of my many subsequent realizations was that true self-care always comprises one central component: self-compassion. [Get This Free Download: Take Control of Your Life and Schedule] Self-Care and ADHD The most dominant self-care narratives would have us believe that our lives would be better – and we’d be better people — if we only ate the best superfoods, or followed the smartest exercise regime, or exfoliated more. So much of what’s considered self-care, it seems, involves superficial self-maintenance more than anything. It’s about “doing” to achieve, regardless of how we actually feel about said self-care at the end of the day. Self-care is sold to us as the antidote to burnout. But for many people, especially for those of us with ADHD, it’s hard enough to get it together, let alone keep it together. And trying to keep it together often comes at the high price of overcompensating, and perpetually feeling like we’re not good enough. In the end, we struggle to like ourselves all that much. So much for self-care. If ADHD neurology had factored into the self-care boom early on, it may have featured different and kinder messages to those of us who struggle to cement new habits — even the ones that are supposedly beneficial. Self-compassion might have featured prominently from the start. The Role of Self-Compassion in ADHD In my 40s, as I studied to become a counselor, I came across the work of Dr. Kristin Neff – a vibrant American lady who spoke boldly of self-compassion. I was alarmed but curious about this new concept. Does this mean I might have to start accepting myself? Liking myself even? Embracing my very humanness, which never seemed adequate? What did that even look like? [Read: You Are Worthy of Self-Compassion – How to Break the Habit of Internalized Criticism] Though the concept felt uncomfortable and a bit icky, I realized that this self-compassion stuff would become integral to my work as a counselor. Helping people find congruence and embrace their authentic selves wasn’t a journey I could lead unless I was walking it, too. Practicing self-compassion with ADHD is not easy. When an ADHD diagnosis comes in adulthood, as it did for me, it can shatter everything we thought we understood about our personhood. By the time of diagnosis, we have lived much of our lives already with atypical neurology, which has brought us confusion around our limits and capabilities. We often feel behind others in life’s key areas. We strive; we agonize. It’s caused many of us to feel like we must berate ourselves to get anything done. Self-compassion tells us that it’s OK to err and to be human. That it actually is okay to experience what we experience without (as one of my clients eloquently describes it) “contorting ourselves.” We are deserving of compassion by virtue of being human. As people with ADHD neurology, perhaps a little self-compassion would go a long way. Practicing self-compassion also gives us less reason to berate ourselves. This is not to be confused with self-pity. It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for yourself, and everything to do with an inward kindness. On this long journey toward self-compassion, I finally realize that this is what true self-care is all about. I tentatively predict (and not just for people with ADHD) that self-compassion – currently a little quirky, a little self-centered-sounding – will soon become inextricably linked to our concepts of self-care.
The Greatest Gift of my ADHD Diagnosis - Permission to be Vulnerable
“True ADHD self-care requires intense vulnerability — a tenderness that is difficult to conjure after so many years of disdain and disapproval, which lead to self-rejection, which leads to a state akin to martyrdom. Trying to please everyone else all the time is an unhealthy way to live, and it is falling away more and more each time I refuse to deny my true needs.” Kate Fraser Headshot By Kate Fraser-Medcalf, BSc dip.Couns(MBACP) Updated on November 4, 2020 Click to Add Comments Save Twitter In a bright blast, which I can neither deny nor ignore, my stubborn non-acceptance of my way of being became a full-body embrace. I thought I had done this already — lived the feeling of recognizing that it’s okay to have ADHD — but then another layer was showing. I was the side of the slice of lasagne — newly cut and oozing. It caught me off guard because I had, at least on the outside, stopped questioning every behavior, every emotion, every mistake as a sign of ADHD or something else. I thought I had decided that ADHD was the answer. ‘Really,’ I chide inwardly now, ‘since when did you ever decide anything?’ My capacity for knowing things wholly, it seems, was arrested by faulty ‘executive functions’ and then it wandered in some other direction altogether. [Self-Test: Symptoms of ADHD in Women] My almost-acceptance of my late-life ADHD diagnosis has a tinge of indigence about it — and also enough warmth and softness toward my very existence as a human being to bring a gentle smile to my heart. I now feel that I am meandering toward a most valuable and ultimate knowing. That my quest to be in the world and within myself in a way that is comfortable is incomplete, but getting closer. Following my diagnosis, I assumed self-care to be self-compassion. It turns out that doing nice, comforting things for myself is incomplete self-care if I don’t also acknowledge the bittersweet truth of my humanness. It is incomplete — and ineffective — if I don’t offer to myself what I offer to other people: unconditional positive regard not despite their way of being, but because of it. True ADHD self-care requires intense vulnerability — a tenderness that is difficult to conjure after so many years of disdain and disapproval, which lead to self-rejection, which leads to a state akin to martyrdom. Trying to please everyone else all the time is an unhealthy way to live, and it is falling away more and more each time I refuse to deny my true needs. I’m beginning to see how learning self-compassion is a prerequisite for showing compassion to others. If you deny your needs — out of shame or embarrassment or overwhelm or some combination of the three — you are denying compassion to yourself and to those around you. Self-denial doesn’t make you a ‘good person,’ as you imagined it would or should; it makes you resentful, and that’s not good for anyone. Though I came to see my ADHD some time ago, this new understanding of the role of self-awareness and healing — with permission to be vulnerable — came to me like the revealing of a wrapped gift inside a wrapped gift that you suddenly realize is the real thing.
I Mistook My Sideways Angles for Faults. They Were the Points of My Star.
“For so long, I tried to fit my sideways-ness into a straight world. But my angles just couldn’t be forced without breaking them clear off. I know now that my angles are unique and give me ‘extras’ — extra ways to be and to do in the world. They are the points of my star.” You’ve heard stories of a defining moment that changed the trajectory of a life forever. It turns out I had one of those; I just didn’t realize it at the time. My whole life, I felt as though my intuition and personal compass were inherently broken. Whenever I thought I finally understood myself, I was wrong. That realization was always disappointing and triggered frantic searching, rounds of questioning, and piling on more self-doubt. In training to become a counselor, I became more self-aware. My subconscious gradually brought tidbits of my personality into view, but it took years for me to see myself clearly — ADHD and all. As part of my training, I was required to work with a therapist. Determined to learn why I was such a walking contradiction, we used something called the person-centered approach. What I learned was this: The person I thought I was and the person I actually was did not align. This was my moment, though it dawned slowly — and continues to do so now. Now that I know I have an ADHD brain, more and more of my past experiences make sense, but I’m still catching up with myself. Today, at 50, I’m striving to reframe my life with this new knowing. As it turns out, I did have a defining moment but it wasn’t crystal clear. It had peculiar angles and shifted everything I’d ever known or thought, sideways. My Blurry A-Ha ADHD Moment The life I remembered was tilted. I couldn’t get inside my own memories anymore — they were like a house compacted and titled by an earthquake. So I resolved to become a detective and to study the clues threaded through my life. They were as clear as day but incredibly hard to see with fresh eyes and vision. [Take This Self-Test: ADHD Symptoms in Women] In trying to ‘think’ my way to self-understanding, I realized that my thoughts aren’t ever just in my head; I feel them through my entire body. I’d try working something out in my brain by shifting thoughts around the way one might move furniture in a room — it was laborious and ultimately impossible. Something tangible, usually a hard edge, always seemed to block my way. As if my life were a frustrating game of chess, I could never ‘think a move ahead.’ A metaphor for my existence perhaps. Through literature, community, and science, I learned that I have combined type ADHD — a textbook case. Initially, accepting that was hard and made me feel as vulnerable as if I were walking naked into a supermarket. I know my story sits among many others on a shelf from which I’ve made frequent selections in the past. Those selections tell me, gently, that I am more than my ADHD. I am a person who shifts with the light. A person who will likely spend the rest of her life trying to clearly define who she is. That is what I needed to know from the beginning, but here I am. My ADHD Life In the ADHD brain, possibilities are endless. That rush of possibility sparks action and is a feeling so familiar it has a name. They call it the search for novelty (God, I hate that word…it sounds like some kind of a seaside shop!). Now that I’m aware of this tendency, I can view it as an opportunity to observe the rush, the flooding in of ideas, and big dreams. [Free Resource: Guide to Changing How the World Sees ADHD] But now I’m using mindfulness to help me see it from a different place that I can only explain as my authentic self. My authentic self feels compassion toward the ADHD mind that scrabbles at all the possibilities and often — in spite of tremendous effort and focused attention — comes up empty. Observing myself has helped me know there is more to me, and everyone else with ADHD, than our quirky traits. Like others who know a lot more about ADHD than I do, I dislike certain widely-used terms. The word novelty. The word deficit. I’ve always felt deficient in some way, but in my heart, I’ve also known that I’ve more than made up for these deficits with something else. Sadly, that something else may be of less or little value, but it’s still the result of hard work and consistent effort. I regret spreading myself so thin, but now I know I need to forgive myself for all those projects that I threw my whole self into over and over again that reached the same plateau. The plateau of unfinished projects. The ones that are always met with disapproval in the real world. But what’s the real world anyway? Is diversity valued there? My son told me recently that his employer applauds his ADHD traits. They like his energy, his spontaneity, his ability to see possibilities everyone else missed. They like his ADHD sideways way of looking at things! (My son has it, too.) For so long, I tried to fit my sideways-ness into a straight world. But my angles just couldn’t be forced without breaking them clear off. I know now that my angles are unique and give me ‘extras’ — extra ways to be and to do in the world. They are the points of my star. And I realize now I’ve been trying to make myself less. A star doesn’t shine brightly without its points. I’ve been rejecting those parts that hand outside the square and they are me, too. All those parts I’ve rejected — I’m reclaiming them now. They are the best parts of me. When I show up as myself, my whole self — not someone I’m trying to be — that’s the best version of me I can be. At last I’ve learned this. At last, a star is born.
Flowcharting a thought Process Day zero: There is always a day zero for my ADHD brain. It’s the ‘before’ time of that particular action. Before hitting the big shiny send button on an email. (Editor’s Note: With ADHD, your Day Zero may last up to 5 years.) Day one: Having contacted TotallyADD to ask if I might reference their wonderful site in the book I am writing about finding self-compassion with ADHD, I am already struggling to find my own self compassion through the self-doubt which rears up in the corners of my confidence. Day two: It’s a yes. And an invitation to write a guest blog. But will what I write be what they want? Niggle niggle. The only way to find out is to DO SOMETHING. I am anxious. I feel it ramping up and my hyperactivity joining the party.. then impulse. I write to Ava Green, TotallyADD co-founder. Day three: Ava kindly agrees to read some sample pages of my book. Everything’s a lonely journey at the moment, as you know, not least writing. I have shown no one my work and let’s just say that the send button looked particularly bright and shiny and inviting… I know what’s coming. That send button is a double-edged sword. My self-doubt, which bubbles away like an old hag’s pot just a fraction shy of my self confidence boils over. This can go one of two ways. But I am a self-compassion writer with ADHD… and in this blog I necessarily ask myself… Can I really walk the walk? Day four: It’s okay for a day. I’m spacey from my feat of daring. I don’t know what Ava’s feedback will be. But I have been given an opportunity to watch my mind. This is what happens: I stop writing my book. Exactly as I stopped painting after taking my work to a craft fair where no one bought anything. This might be construed as some kind of tantrum. But often, for people with ADHD it’s the big Q hanging that hangs over self-worth. Working in hyperfocus before we build confidence around it, can feel tenuous. We are not always encouraged to work from ‘that place’, the realm of executive function often having been openly more valued from our early years. a man relaxing Self-doubt + Self-compassion – a Heady Cocktail Personally, it’s taken me a very long time to believe I can do this, given the enormous praise and sense of ‘proper personhood’ that came when I got a maths sums right, or stuck to a timetable – which in themselves held no meaning – that something I didn’t have to struggle with could be taken seriously in ‘the big out there.’ When we hyper-focus on what engages us, it can feel so safe… while we are engaged. A time comes to share the product of our vulnerable, yet capable inner world with the ‘real world’. We can experience the wrench of a finished project. We can also experience the overwhelm of other ‘projects end’ stuff which require our less than cooperative executive functions. Self-Talk and Humanness Back at the craft fair, behind the little stall I had set up to display my paintings, my face was the real picture. Steely eyed and tight jawed, I don’t suppose anyone dared to enter my little, palpably-icy zone of self-doubt. In exhibiting those paintings, I had laid my soul bare. I had left myself open to receive judgment without first offering myself self-compassion. How could I not construe every glance at my work as anything other than disapproval when on some level, I disapproved of myself. Beginning to find some self-compassion around our very humanness, to just practice the powerful healing of kinder, more gentle self-speak can create dialogue, and build a healthy relationship with the part of ourselves that is quick to berate our ADHD traits, to compare ourselves to others, or feel at odds with our ADHD being. Rather than staying alert to the heart and health benefits of celebrating it. I call aspects of parenting ‘my work.’ I call writing ‘my work’ – because it is. When we dig deep we can know ‘our work’. What it truly is, is not always obvious to those around us. For so many of us with ADHD, soul work is creative and might be defined as what happens for us inside the task be it gardening, housekeeping sewing, care-giving. Fulfillment vs Accomplishment Once, as a Care-Giver in the community, I recognized my soul work as being to offer my clients the sense that I was taking time with them. (Despite how hyperactive I felt!) Yes, this might have been a response to my need to temper my hyperactivity, which always presented challenge, but it was the part of the work inside the task that mattered. It was an attempt to create a feeling for my clients. One of being attended to gently, and of being offered my full attention. And I wonder if you agree, that it is within the doing that the part of our being that becomes alive. When we hook into these activities is whenwe are ‘found,’ not in their outcome. Not in the ‘how many things made,’ or ‘how many people give us positive feedback’….. or the dreaded ‘how many likes.’ Because our soul work has its own qualities. It fills our lives in ways that can never be quantified. When I was little, I had a knowing somewhere deep inside me, which I now reflect, might be the first awakenings to the experience of flow. Despite the 1970’s Parent-Culture push, ‘You can be this, or you can do that…’ I knew it doesn’t matter what someone does in their work. What matters matter is the feeling it gives them. That feeling. But sadly, I lost that knowing to feed my ego and ‘accomplish.’ Day five: And it is to this knowing I turn now in my moment of not-knowing how Ava will respond. This is the point of my life to realize that, on the whole, I opted for struggle. Isn’t there something weirdly wholesome and admirable about knowing you have struggled, about making it hard on ourselves when it’s hard enough already?! I try to catch that realization, to save it. But it slips through my awareness. When I first came upon the idea of self-compassion, its possibilities threatened to crush me. That I could possibly learn to cultivate within myself enough kindness to be consistently – now there’s a word – who I am, was the stuff of dreams no…. transcendence? By this, I mean getting on the other side of my cruel self-speak, and off the conveyer belt of little academic achievements that ‘prove’ me a worthy person. Truly, and quite frighteningly, I need and want so little. And this is the scary thing. That when I meet myself in a place of self-acceptance and kindness, I will be enough. The effort it takes to ‘do nothing’ threatens to gobble me up. And therein lies a paradox of living with ADHD, that to do nothing will take all of me. Day six: I still wait. I check my phone and emails. However self-compassionate I can be, I recognize that my whole self-worth hinges on Ava’s reply and realize the game of ‘testing’ that I play. My diagnosis of ADHD is fairly recent, but I recognize this ‘waiting for approval’ for what it is. Part of the loop from which I long to escape. But I knew self-compassion as a friend before I knew my ADHD, and feel a loyalty to myself to draw on the spirit of what came first. Through the lens of self-compassion, self-doubt is humanness, not a personal fault. It highlights what matters to you. That it’s worth matters. And again, through the lens of self-compassion, you are a being of innate worth. I contemplate the stillness of nature. That it needs no approval, that it is as kind as it is ruinous, as tatty as it is beautiful. Remembering that humanness is part of nature, I have a go at calling on myself to let go with the grace to know what happens, happens. And what will always happen will always happen. That lasts about five minutes. Day seven: Ava emailed me. I try hard to stay aware to my response. It’s relief. Massive relief. I am an okay writer after all, aka I am a worthwhile being after all. Hmm. I reflect that I put myself ‘on the line’ without thinking about how I was going to hold my anxiety. Even with my experience as a therapist, I didn’t recognize that in sending something into the big out there, I had offered out with it, for appraisal, so much of my self-worth. Impulse has me not preparing my ‘self’ which spells danger by any standard. But I concede that however uncomfortable, it can get things rolling too. Staying in awareness of my feelings and self-speak to see if I can really walk the walk of self-compassion, I notice the ways I was trying to cope with a possible rejection: ‘Oh please, please email me back’ – begging Ava in my head to put my mind at ease. Pretty unfair on Ava, sorry about that. On reflection, this became pretty close to prayer. It’s because I’m rubbish. My writing is just a great big over-share and Ava is thinking ‘it’s horribly serious’ – because she is married to Rick Green and he is a comedian… Faaaantastic! Now I’m a mind reader. Perhaps that’s the way to go? And then. Actually, I don’t care. When Ava never replies I will just know. Have you met my friend Shame? This is the prediction of my moment of shame. Shame, I learn, is the feeling of ‘being wrong.’ Unlike Guilt which is about ‘doing something wrong’. And then a thought, ‘Hang on lady. What are you doing to yourself? The only person who can confirm my worth, the worth of having taken time to do what I love, is me.’ But I can’t go back on knowing, because my self-doubt has been allayed …. this time. I reflect and wonder on your own experience. It only takes a glimmer of self belief to surge through my veins and make me fizz. And make me dare…This, then initiates ‘my work’. This blog you are reading which, when that send button looks good and shiny enough, will place me firmly back on the loop of self-doubt. I long to abandon, but that figure, in some way, must still, in some way I am yet to figure out, serve. Can I walk the walk? Not yet. But I have found that my soul task within this work is to connect with people with ADHD, who, like me when I am stuck in self-doubt, want to find themselves to be enough. Hey Ava, no pressure to answer!
How A Person With ADHD Thinks
Back to the present - exploring mindfulness for ADHD
I always loved Marti McFly’s adventures backward and forward in time and was fascinated that wherever he ended up - his engagement with his environment was total. Let’s face it, a film about a guy travelling in time only to zone out when he got there wouldn’t make a riveting tale. That my childhood memories are more of the activity I was hyper-focused on - usually reading - makes me pine a little for ‘another go,’ this time around, fully present to my surroundings. It was quite a revelation to later learn that our clearest memories are made up of times when we were most present in our feelings/mindful of our thoughts, and surroundings. Maybe the film Back to the Future resonated pre-ADHD diagnosis because Marti’s way of engaging with the world so differed from my drifty, slippery experience. Memories of holidays, social events, shopping trips, or schooldays elude me and as I write, I wonder whether my fascination with time travel is more about returning to fill in the gaps!? A few years ago, explaining to a therapist colleague about what I had come to call meditation, ‘It’s like floating,’ I told her, ‘thoughts and feelings free, and sometimes it happens without my even trying! Her question – ‘But isn’t meditation about being fully present in the moment?’ went completely over my head. Bringing meditation into therapy sessions seemed like an obvious next move, and I booked, giving myself six months more to ‘practice,’ onto a week-long mindfulness teacher training course with the reputable provider Mindfulness Now. When a few days later my therapy journal landed on the doormat, its cover article about working with ADHD clients tweaked my interest. A few of my son’s schoolfriends had had this neurology, and I still associated it with ‘naughty little boys.’ Working with anyone too ‘difficult’ would be out of my depths as a private therapist - that was for settings (which I’d tried working in but, oddly, always became phased by keeping up with the paperwork side of things.) But the article was about adult women with undiagnosed ADHD, not little boys, and when I sat down to read, the description of something called ‘traits’ felt almost intrusive. Who was this writer who knew me inside out?! Stunned, I continued my day as usual, doing half-tasks at speed, struggling to focus, then losing hours to reading or writing and moving in and out of my meditations. But there was no going back from learning about these ways of being that I recognised now were ‘traits’ and had names like zoning out, hyperfocus, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Questioning my meditation ‘practice,’ I remembered my colleague's words, ‘But isn’t meditation about being present in the moment?’ Years of struggle with ‘ordinary life’ fell into place that week. What was I thinking of booking myself onto a mindfulness teacher training course?! The practice that gave me such peace wasn’t meditation at all. It was called zoning out and due to my neurology! Why, I questioned, in five years of therapy training along with its required hundred hours of personal psychotherapy, had ADHD never arisen as a possibility?! (Later, reading about masking answered that question). Over the next few weeks, I read a lot, found ADDitude, and got a diagnosis. Fellow ADHDers were a sharing, supportive community! I joined them and wrote my first blog. I went to cancel my mindfulness course because a week of sitting on a beanbag for hours in actual present-moment awareness would be excruciating, embarrassing even. I would fidget, and need a notebook or a podcast. Still in the early phase of understanding my neurology, I hadn’t begun to develop self-compassion for the shame I carried about my way of being. It was a conversation with the empathic training provider that shifted my decision. After telling her I couldn’t possibly learn mindfulness, let alone teach it, she asked me if I would like to postpone. ‘But I’ll still have ADHD next year!’ I wailed, following with a surprisingly concise explanation about ADHD traits. Anxious at that time, believing I was always ‘in a trait,’ I told her (in one breath), ‘I start a five-minute task only to move into hyperfocus for hours. Having to stop feels like coming out of the cinema after a good film – jarring, disorientating. Then I zone out (the ‘nothing mind’ which I’m too ashamed to tell her was the extent of my meditation). That’s it, round and round, I can't step outside of this!’ I still had lots to learn about harnessing my hyperfocus and accessing present-moment awareness – challenging, often momentary, but possible. The lady on the other end of the call’s ‘I am so sorry’ was heartfelt. ‘I didn’t even know women could have it! I’ve just asked someone who has lost a leg to postpone their walking holiday until it grows back!’ She’d heard my struggle. ‘Thank you. I had no idea that the experience of living with ADHD was like that. Would you like a refund?’ But something inside me shifted then, and when I said, ‘No. Thank you,’ no one was more surprised than me. Because shouldn’t more people be saying, ‘Ah, so that’s what life with ADHD can feel like.’ The course was challenging; I sat on my hands most of the time to stop them doing a ‘Kermit thing,’ but I didn’t hide my need to. As it turned out I wasn’t the only one! Built into the course was time to share our experiences of each meditation. By the end of the week, everyone’s awareness about adulthood ADHD was raised a little. Nowadays, my therapeutic work is with brave, insightful people who are questioning their neurology. I tailor mindfulness meditation exercises to my client’s unique needs; self-compassion is usually integral. We don't have to 'stay mindful' to become more mindful. The practice of mindfulness is the ‘coming back to’ being mindful when we are not. This literally lights a new path in the brain through a process called neuroplasticity, so making being mindful more and more accessible. So, good news! One moment a day is enough to begin with, and in the spirit of self-kindness, that's really just as well!