Episode 2: My Specific Flavor of ADHD

Today, I'm going through all the different aspects of my particular version of ADHD, as well as touching on some of the overlap of ADHD and Autism. 

References: 

"Is It ADHD or Autism? (Or Both)" by Dr. Megan Anna Neff

https://neurodivergentinsights.com/adhd-vs-autism/

Transcript

Speaker 0:08

Hi guys, welcome back. Or welcome for the first time if you're starting here quite backward. You know, it's your prerogative, live your life. If you'd like to go out of order, that's okay. I'm not gonna know anyway. Um first of all, I would like to say thank you, big, big thank you to all the people who reached out to me to congratulate me on the podcast and give me all these compliments and tell me all the ways that how they could relate to it. I really appreciate that. Because that's exactly what this whole point is. I wanted to make sure that I could reach people with what I'm doing. And you know, if I help one person to feel a little bit less like a freak, I'm doing my job. The very cool thing about doing this podcast is to kind of dig deep into my memories, all of the ways that my ADHD shows up for me. I think that's what we're gonna do today. My specific flavor of ADHD, as the title says, this might be one or two part kind of deal, depending on how long I talk about it. Because I don't want to keep you here for 14 hours. That's just nobody has time for that. I think that one of the ways that ADHD kind of set me back when I was growing up was how I interacted with other people. So in the last episode, I kind of said I spent a lot of time alone, but I had one of my cousins that I was pretty close to, but she was a few years older than me. So we would play, she would come over to my house and she would want to play with all my Barbies and you know, touch all my stuff. And I didn't realize it then, but I realize it now that I needed everything to be just so. There was a very specific way to play with my Barbies, they had to look a very specific way. They did not go over there, they went over here. And that one doesn't go in this car, she goes over there. And her boyfriend is this kin, not that kin. Hello. So I was very particular, and I didn't mean to be, but I remember she would tell she would get so frustrated with me, and she would call me stingy and greedy, and I had all these nice things, and I just didn't want to share, and looking back, I do feel awful. Because she was very ready to share everything she had with me, and I was not the same. That happened always. I don't really like people borrowing my books because they come back looking different, or you know, that they might not come back at all, and that is unacceptable behavior. This is still a concept that I struggle with. I would love to say that I'm better at it now, but I'm not. Even when I'm with my family, like if my mom comes over and she's cleaning something or she's organizing something and it's not the way I like it, I will hop in to tell her, maybe this goes this way. But we've had enough run-ins that she's like, I'm trying to help you. Let me do it how I want to do it. I'm helping you in general. So just accept it. I'm like, all right, all right. I'll change it later when you leave. But, you know, even at work, there's a certain way that I like to do things, and there's a certain way that I like to conduct myself, a certain way that I do laundry, or a certain way that I do dishes, or a certain way that I work, the way uh that I work specifically, when I have to do my notes at the end of the day, I will write them down. I will write it in my calendar, I write everything in my calendar in pencil first. So I'll erase the name, I'll put it in pen because sometimes people cancel and whatever, or if they had uh a particularly particularly difficult day, I'll extend out, you know, our time frame is different. I write it in pen, then I I box in their name with pen, and then I box that in with like a felt tip marker, usually blue. So then when I do that, I type my little note when I sign it, I highlight it. And then later on, once I'm done with all my notes for the day, I'll sign off on it and I'll send it away. But if I don't do it in that order, I will forget to do it in general. I either forget to do it or I won't mark things off, and later on I have to calculate how long I've seen I've seen these people, and I have no clue because I didn't follow my system. I'm not better at it now. It still frustrates me just as much as it did before as it did before. Part of the question that I had for myself when I was writing down kind of my bullet points for this episode is kind of the overlap of autism markers or traits characteristics versus ADHD traits and characteristics. Um, I've seen a chart before, and it kind of indicates that sensory issues are not as big of a problem for people with ADHD, and for me, the pretty big, pretty big sensory issues. We'll go through that all that later. But I did find some research for this article. There is a doctor called Dr. Meganna Neff. She hosts the Neurodivergent Conversations podcast. I have that like flagged on my website. I love that, I love that podcast a lot because they're really just off the cuff. They're friends, they curse a lot, they're just they're very real, and they're both neurodivergent, which is pretty cool. But she published an article going over the differences and overlap versus autism and ADHD. For my ADHD, we'll kind of focus on that. But in case you don't know what ADHD is, it is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. So they shoved it all together in the last few years. Before that, it was ADD, of which the name I do not remember. Attention deficit disorder. Duh. Now I see. But they expanded on that because there's two different kinds or a combination. So there's inattentive parts of ADHD. Some people are more on that side. Uh, so it's hard for them to stay engaged or stay focused on anything that is not of interest to them. Uh, they might kind of zone out a little bit more or disassociate. I didn't realize that I did that so much uh until later on in my life, because there are times sometimes that I'll just be talking and I get bored with what I'm saying, but my body will go on autopilot and continue the conversation without me. And I'm over here thinking about what I want for lunch or or how my shoe feels, and I'm like, oh, who's talking still? It's me. It's me. I left my body, she's back there somewhere, so that's part of it. So I have that side of it. I also have the hyperactivity side of it, kind of what people thought at one point. Um, you know, when you have ADHD or ADD, you're just bouncing off the walls, you can't sit still, you're yelling, you're loud, it's part of it. But that's not the whole thing. The hyperactivity part has to deal more with the hyper focus of everything and the busy brain. When I started looking for my diagnosis, I didn't realize, and I don't know if this is true or not for other people, but my brain always, always, always has like 400 tabs open. It's really hard for me to have anything quiet in there. It just doesn't happen. I really can't stand silence most of the time. I have noise-canceling headphones, but I always have something going on. Whether I'm watching a show or I'm listening to music, I listen to classical music when I'm like writing something or I'm trying to do work that I need to really lock in, but I need something. I even need it to sleep because when I'm sleeping, the wide noise is okay. We always have a fan on, but like I need something for my brain to anchor to so I can go to sleep. If I don't, my brain's just going off on all the directions, making lists for what I'm supposed to do, worrying about stuff that happened at work, worrying about unresolved things, and 14 years in the future, where are we gonna be? What are we doing? Things that you don't need to worry about when you're trying to fall asleep. So yeah, if I listen to a book, most likely it's something I've heard before. Harry Potter's a big one. I've listened to a lot of series that I've heard before. I just listened for the 14th quatrillion time to the Hunger Game series. I was just driving around too while I was working, just crying, just crying my eyes out at the people that are dying, and I'm like, oh, I've already I've read this so many times. I know what's happening. Doesn't matter. It's the beauty of good writing. Silence. I need a headphone in when asleep to give me something to hold on to. So that's part of my happy activity. Also, for me, I am not productive mostly during the day. Um, my brain doesn't come on until about 10 or 11 a.m. Doesn't matter how much I slept before then I'm a zombie. You're not gonna get anything good out of me at that time. I'm grumpy or I'm just gonna be zoned out. Uh in the middle of the day, a lot of the time I forget to take my medicine, like earlier in the day, which makes it easier for me to get through my day. But it's mostly because I haven't eaten anything. Side note, it's good for people with ADHD to eat in the morning, gives us a little fuel, and it's easier to focus. Most of us forget or don't like to eat in the morning. I get sick, like I get a little nauseous if I eat too early when I wake up. So, yes, I forget my medicine a lot, a lot of the time. And I'll get home at like six or seven and I'll take my pills and I'm like, oh man, what was I doing all day? So it's really hard to stay focused. I think something that I've learned with my medications, I was very resistant to a lot of things. So I was on stimulants, I was on non-stimulants, and eventually my doctor decided that my brain was too strong, she was fighting too hard, so she put me on, well, butrin or bupropriolum, I believe it's called in the generic version, but it is a depression med that works the same kind of um hits the same targets, and it also helps with the little anxiety and depression that come along with ADHD. ADHD has a lot of hats, hats that it wears. A lot of things show up in ADHD, like depression and anxiety, um, but they all kind of coexist. I am lucky enough to have a medication that hits all of them at the same time. And I wasn't totally convinced when I started taking my medication, any of them, that they were doing anything for me, because they would work for maybe a few weeks and then I'd be back struggling a few weeks later. But when I really know that they do something is if I've forgotten to refill them, which happens on occasion, uh, and I don't have it for a few days, and I'm super, super agitated, or I'm very scattered. When I don't take my medication, things that are like annoying become unbearable. Like an hour of a session that's usually, you know, oh, I'd show up, I do what I need to do, and I leave feels like four hours. And I'm just like painfully aware. That used to happen in the call center when I was doing claims too. Uh, you know, if I forgot my medicine or I didn't even have it yet, it was just like I physically cannot get through this day. It is painful for me to sit here and I and know that I have three hours left. Like, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna survive this? It's not that deep, but let me tell you, it feels that way. It really does. It's just very painful inside. When I forget my medication, I'm not having a good time. Things are super, super hard. And yeah, that's the only time I know that they really work. I don't think any medication solves every problem always. You know, we're all different, different backgrounds, different genetic makeups, different DNA, blah blah blah. And medicine affects everybody differently. So I don't think that I've found the perfect solution, but I found the solution that is about as good as it's gonna get, I think. Because I've gone through a lot of medication and this is the only one I feel like kind of normal on. It's definitely not an end-all be-all, and I have had this conversation with a lot of my friends with ADHD that also feel like their medication is useless and they don't take it, and then they suffer, and we all talk about why we feel that way, and we realize that we should probably take our meds. They're good for you sometimes. But anyway, back to this article I was talking about. There are some common traits of ADHD. People live with ADHD, we seek novelty, so that's been part of something that I've struggled with a lot in jobs. Um, doing the same thing every day, day in and day out, is nice and predictable, gives you structure, but fuck, it's boring. Like, I just don't want to do it after a while. So now I'm in a job where every day is different. I see the same people at the same time, but my people from one way, one week to the next, like most people, are vastly different. They are dealing with totally different situations. Sometimes we're chill, sometimes we got crises z-zies to work through. Every day is a little bit different. And if I want to take on more people or want to drop people, if I want to see people on a different day of the week, I can, which is awesome. I really needed that in my life because being in school was tedious and I hated it. Uh, being at work in a job there every day was the same was really soul crushing. So that was part of my ADHD. Attention regulation, so our focus drifts, unless something is genuinely engaging, which is very, very real. You would think that it's just like a common thing to not be engaged in, you know, stuff you find boring. But people with ADHD, we we can really disengage pretty fast. You know, I have people that I work with with autism, and the minute that I walk into a territory that they're bored with, they're gone. Their eyes are gone, their body language is different, they're not checked in, they're somewhere else, they're floating around. And I'm the same way if I'm not interested. I'm I've gotten worse at hiding it over the years because my face is very loud. She's got a loud face. Always turn the volume up on my face. I can't do anything about it. It's just there. Inattentive social cue challenges. So that is inattention and impulsivity leads to missing or overriding cues. For example, I am loud. I'm a pretty loud person, and sometimes I don't realize it. I'm also very expressive. So there's been a lot of times that I'm out at lunch or something with my friends, and I'm trying to tell a story, and I'm being real dramatic and you know, very animated, and I'll smack the table just because like that's what the story called for, and I don't realize how strong I am or how loud I am. So, you know, I hulk smash the table and everybody looks at me and I'm like, oh my god, sorry, I'm not mad, I'm just telling a story, mom. Sorry. Um, so I do that, or I'll get really loud sometimes and I won't realize how far my voice is projecting. I was a theater kid, so I can project my voice. I'm real good at it. Um something else uh about the ADHD. We are hyper hyperactivity and impulsivity. We have restless bodies, quick actions, hard time hitting pause. So impulsivity, I feel like is maybe not something I struggle with as much. Um, I've had to put a lot of filters on how I speak to people sometimes, and I'm not so great at it. I've definitely been caught up in a lot of situations where I've been talking shit and people hear me, and then I have to deal with it. I have to deal with the fallout because I got I got caught just straight up, and I'm like, well, there's no way to talk my way around this. I said it, you heard it, so here we are. It's unfortunate how many times this has happened to me, and even though it's happened to me a million times, I haven't learned my lesson. It's just you know, my body's like, hey, say this thing. Okay, so I said I don't have a problem with impulsivity, and yet I just described how I do. That's most like where it comes in from. I'm a planner though, like if I'm going on a trip or whatever, I plan uh, you know, head to toe. I'm very serious about what I'm doing, at least to get to the place. Once I get there, I'm a little more loose, but I need to know what's going on. I will pack a bag way too far in advance. I always have 17 checklists going, so I'll make one with all of like the toiletries I need and all of the things I need to entertain myself. Everywhere I go, I take my Kindle and I load it up with movies. I make sure I've got some books on there, at least three downloaded, because I don't ever rely on having one book that's gonna interest me. It won't. I need choices. Uh I usually take a paper book or two, usually which I never touch on the trip, and I always take it. I hauled a book around in Alaska that I still haven't read. I always have one around. I always have my Switch with lots of games charged. I had I bring all my games with me. Um, usually I'll pop that out at some point. I always have my iPod with me. Yeah, I'm that person. I have revitalized my podcast, my iPod several times over the years. I've had at least six or seven. I have a refurbished iPod that is like the big one, the 132 gigs I can hold my entire music catalog. I take that with me when I travel because I don't like having to rely on it's Bluetooth time, turn off your devices. No, I won't. I am living in the past with my iPod, and I will have my music on, whatever you say I'm doing. So I always have uh headphones with a plug, whether it's my like my noise canceling headphones that I have on right now that do have a plug that I can plug into old tech, or I have, you know, just like wired regular ones. I also travel with two types of headphones. So I have my over-the-ear noise canceling headphones, and that I have earpods, or not earpods, but little earbuds always, because you just, you know, it's not always easy to have one or the other, and my ears get tired, so then I have to switch. I travel with all my medications, I always travel with a pair of contacts and glasses. I am a utility like belt. I'm a walking utility belt. I've got everything in my bag. I just always think if I get in an accident, no. If the you know the plane gets stuck or I lose my luggage or whatever happens, you know, someone needs a a Narcan spray, I got you, I'm ready. So I'm always over prepared when it comes to traveling, and I always make that list once I pack all the things or I put all the things where they go, I'll scratch off the list, I'll write it again, and then I'll write it again. I check it over many, many times, which is again more I would say probably on like the autism overlap side. Like you don't need to label things, and I definitely think ADHD accounts for most of these things, but like some obsessive things or um very specific ways that you do things are kind of more on the other side. Where autism and ADHD overlap, stimming and fidgeting. I am always moving. I'm a foot bouncer, I'm a pen chewer, I rub my hands on my pants in a circular motion on my thighs, and I don't realize I'm doing it. I do it a lot at like restaurants when the food has gone and I don't have anything in my hands. I chew on my lips or my in the inside of my cheek. I really have trouble recording this podcast. Sometimes I am like fidgeting but quietly at the moment, because anytime I move, you can hear it. I can't edit out everything. I'm not that good. So I have to sit really, really still, which is real difficult for me. Kind of less known, lesser known stimming things, like listening to the same song over and over and over, watching the same movies or shows over and over, reading the same books over and over. It's a comfort level thing. I know the predictability of it, I don't have to worry about it. A lot of the time my brain is too busy, I've got a million things going on at all the times. Oh, I need my my media and my relaxing time to be easy. I need to be able to zone out or I need to know what's coming up, and I still appreciate it all the second or fourteenth or a millionth time around just for shits and gigs. Uh some of my comfort shows are Game of Thrones, Handmaid's Tale, uh, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, New Girl. Thinking about my wall. I'm old school, so I have box sets of things. I love Shits Creek, I love The Office. Oh, I love Veronica Mars. So things that have a lot of rewatchability that I can lean on uh as far as series goes, because you know you guys are all just on the edge of your seats wondering what I'm hyper focusing on. I have reread the Hunger Game series a million times. There is a kind of fantasy ish story or Series that I have read a million times called The Red Queen. It's a little like uh it's by Victoria Aviard, and it's like mutants kind. Um, there are the Reds who are like the normal humans without powers, and the silvers who have powers they can like manipulate metal and telekinesis and they have all that shit. But the uh the main character, spoiler alert, turn this part off. If you're gonna read this, she is both. She has powers, but she's red, and she's like this whole thing, it's kind of like divergent, and how man, if you guys are behind on these series, like too bad. I'm sorry, you missed out on this train a long time ago. I'm gonna spoil everything for you. Uh Divergent Triss doesn't fit into the boxes because she's evolved past that particular part of evolution, I guess. So, uh, Divergent is another series that I have reread or re-listened to a million times. Uh, Harry Potter, you know, side note. I have a love-hate relationship with Harry Potter. I love it because it came out when I was a kid and I grew up with it. I have all the books, I watched all the movies, I've gone to Universal. You know, I love all of the things. Harry Potter's a big part of my life. However, J.K. Rowling, problematic, transphobe. She's got a lot of views that she's really doubled down on, but in the cancel culture of today, you know, a lot of people are like, just you gotta let go of the Harry Potter and, you know, remember all of the things that she stands for and all the things she's against. I am not as virtuous as I'd like to be, because I'm still gonna consume all the Harry Potter things. I'm sorry. I wish I had stronger convictions, but it's like a magical thing in my life that has defined a really big pocket of things that I'm interested in, how I've connected with people. So, you know, I don't know what category of life to put that in where you're really about something, but you know that it's maybe not the best thing. Um, at least the creator of it is not that great. I don't want to keep giving her money, but I will. Sorry guys. Um, back to ADHD things. Uh something that is big, at least for me, and again, not to be said for everyone with ADHD. This might be more on the autism side. Um, sensory things I have trouble with textures, lots of textures. I like a soft texture, but if the fabric is too itchy, or if a tag is poking me, or if there's a hair stuck in it somewhere, now I'm super aware of my clothes. I'm trying really hard not to focus on what my body is doing right now. But clothes are they can be really awful and restricting. I had a dress once that I had to wear for an event that was not my choice, and I was terrified for weeks about the texture of the dress and how I was gonna make it through this thing. I got real drunk and I didn't care. So that's what happened. I didn't care anymore, took the dress off, and I donated it immediately. Uh, so I survived, but it was a straw. Something else like smells are pretty sensitive to me. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate smelling like food. It doesn't matter if it smells good, but I don't like it. I used to work at, you know, Starbucks and coffee concepts and whatever. When you leave, you'd think that you smell like a delicious bag of roasted No. It's stale, sweet smell, and it's disgusting. Like walking out of a subway. You got that fake artificial bread smell on you. I hate it. I love going to Korean barbecue, so good. It's my favorite thing on the earth these days, but when I walk out, I have to shower. I cannot stand clothes or food smell on my clothes. I cannot do it. In the same way that if I have cooked something pretty like strong, except for bacon, I like the smell of bacon. But if I've made a steak or something that might smoke a little bit or whatever, and the the steam is just sitting in my house forever, it's my nightmare. I don't like it. I've got a really strong sense of smell too. There are certain smells that I just cannot stomach. I hate the smell of maple syrup. I like the way it tastes. I do not like the smell. I love ketchup. Ketchup Fiend can't stand the smell. If it's on me or dripped on my shirt, which it inevitably, inevitably always drips on my shirt. My nightmare. My nightmare. I usually have a hoodie or something in my car so I can like cover it and not smell it all day because I just can't. It'll keep me uh, you know, occupied all day. Clothing textures can easily, easily, easily throw off my day. I knew this about myself when I went wedding dress shopping, but you know, I love lace. I love beading, I love glitter, I love shiny things with embellishment. And I swore that I could just get through it, that I would just suffer and I'd be fine. When mom and I went to go try on wedding dresses, there were at least three that she pulled up, and the minute they touched my arms, I said, get me out of this. Now, I cannot handle this because it was just rubbing on my arm wrong and it was heavy or whatever. I couldn't deal with it. My wedding dress was actually like buttery, satiny, wonderful, and I didn't even like it immediately when I saw it, but my uh my consultant or whatnot talked me into trying it on. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And the minute I had it up, I was like, oh fuck, this is it. I love it. It's so pretty, it feels so nice. Okay, I guess that's it. So that happens if you're not married yet and you're like really looking forward to that wedding dress, probably not gonna be the one you wanted. And yeah, it'll present itself to you. And you might be a little salty about it, like I was, that it wasn't what you swore you wanted. But my dress was awesome. I think the biggest part for me was the weight. Uh, I had like a cathedral-length veil because my dress was very simple and the veil was beaded and whatever and have to worry about it, but the material of the veil was super soft, so that was great. But the weight of my dress uh really started to get to me at the end of the day. The way that I planned our wedding, I had our ceremony in the morning and we had a few hours in the middle, so we could go to the hotel and take a break, be away from people, I could get out of my dress, we could eat some lunch, we could take a nap, and then our reception, you know, I had to put my dress up but dress on again and do the whole thing. So at the end of the night of my reception time, I was exhausted. My dress was really heavy, my veil was gorgeous, but the pictures, like, you know, we had it on for the pictures, but it kept yanking my head back. And uh at a certain point, my photographer was like, I need this veil on this beautiful thing. I said, Nope, we're done. She's like, no, I'm like, no, I don't think you heard me. I'm finished. I'm done with the pictures, I'm done with the smiling, I'm done with the veil yanking my head back. I'm done. I don't ever want to see this veil again. I'm looking at her in the closet right now, and she's hearing me. I l I see you, veil. You're so pretty, but God, you were a pain in my ass. Pain in my neck, really. I I got my wedding dress too like professionally cleaned and preserved, and it's in a pretty box and all that shit. But my veil, I was just so angry at her that I forgot to put her in that box to be cleaned and preserved because it's gorgeous. I would love my kids to be able to like use it someday or play with it or whatever. But she didn't quite make that that preservation train. I'm sure I could do it on my own, but I don't know. It's just still in the bag. I haven't touched it since our wedding day. I shoved it in there, I hung it up kind of, but it's definitely not neat. It was just, I just needed her to be away from me. We were done. Sensory things. I can't sleep with socks on. I don't like wearing socks, really. I will, but I don't enjoy it. Uh I always liked the look of feedy pajamas, and I would beg my mom to buy them for me, and then she had cut the feet off because I was gonna I was gonna lose it. So she would cut the feet off, and then she'd be like, Really? Why are we still buying these? This is this isn't this like the whole point. I'm like, eh, I like the idea of it. They're cute, but I just can't handle it. It's like being in a sleeping bag, you know. Like some people really like that security. I feel hella claustrophobic and I will lose my mind. I have to have it like unzipped so I can pop my foot out. I sleep with my feet outside the covers, which is really brave because you know the monsters will get you. If you have your feet out hanging over the bed, luckily I'm not that tall, so they don't reach that. But my husband, he sleeps with his feet off the bed, and I'm like, oh no, they're gonna get you. Someone's gonna grab your feet and it's gonna be gone forever. I warned you. Uh, when it comes to sound, I cannot stand mouth sounds. As someone who is doing a podcast and my mouth is real close to the speaker, if I hear mouth sounds, I'm gonna I'm gonna jump off a cliff. I can't do it. They are like shooting a movie and they zoom in on the mouth, yuck, the sounds or the view, I don't like it. I mm-mm, it's unnecessary. Uh nail biting also is something that will really drive me to murder. Uh for the clinical or the you know, whatever people in the in the room. Uh that's called misophonia. Misophonia is when you cannot stand those mouth those mouth sounds, and like you might just get like irrationally angry or super uncomfortable about them. Like, sometimes my husband will play this game where he knows a sound is driving me crazy, and he'll just keep doing it slowly and louder until I break, and then he'll say, I wondered how long it would take you. I'm like, You're a brave man. Do you value your life, sir? Uh side note, uh disclaimer I am not a violent person. My husband is fine, he's okay. I'm sure he would blink twice if you asked him, but he's fine. Take nice care of him. I like him. A na a mouth sound will drive me insane. I cannot handle it. And most people, like I said, my husband and I have different flavors of ADHD. His is the I need to bite on my nails to feel okay kind. And mine is the if you bite your nails in my ear, I'm gonna make it so you can't feel anything because you'll be dead. Uh, you know, that's that's my solution. So he is a nail biter, and I have internal struggles with tapping him or smacking his leg when he's chewing on his nails too much because that is his stim. That is his comfort. So I have my soundproof headphones. So when we're on the couch next to each other, I will usually, if I can get away with it, I will have my head, my uh, my ear facing him covered so he can bite his nails to his heart's content, and I don't want to yell or scream or jump off a roof. I have like a a tolerance meter kind of. I mean everyone does, but this is something I think about a lot. If I am like getting irrationally angry, which I know it's irrational, I can't do anything about it. I try, but I can't. Uh, once that little meter starts to tick up, say for example, there is an annoying noise happening somewhere. I can ignore a lot of noises, but some of them my my ears will just really zoom into, usually the mouth sound variety, that my body will start to get a little tingly and I like physically start to feel like that that boiling. I don't know how else to describe it. I just like see the meter rising in my eyes and like getting to the point where I really have to lock in and ground myself so I don't scream or I don't yell. I've definitely yelled before. There have been times before where too many people were asking me questions. A lot of the time my parents have been on the receiving end of this. I remember very particularly one time my cousin and I were had just been at Disney for like a week and a half, and you know, constantly around someone else for a week and a half, which was not my norm at the time, and also being at Disney, which, you know, there's a million people around, there's kids, there's sounds, there's smells, a million things going on, and then getting on a plane and then coming home and having people ask me questions or, you know, make not demands, it might not be the right word, but like, you know, what do you want to eat? Where do you want to go? Do you need this? Do you need that? And I think I threw something and I just like growled and screamed, and I had to excuse myself. I'm like, listen, I can't be around anyone right now. Okay, I can't say anything nice, I cannot regulate myself. I need to remove myself because I am so overwhelmed right now, and anything that comes out of me right now is not gonna be nice, and I'm gonna have to go on an apology tour for it. So I'm just gonna go. I'm gonna take my pizza and I'm I'm just gonna go away. I'm sorry, but I cannot at the moment. So emotional dysregulation is also on the kind of symptom list there, and that what I just described is emotional dysregulation. Uh, I'm a little better now that I can name it and know why, but like I feel emotions super big. If I'm having a day at work where I am absorbing a lot of feelings from people, whether they're having trouble or you know, something that I've talked to my own therapist about this, is separating my feelings from other people's feelings. So if I am with someone who's experienced things that I have in the past, uh, I might really absorb all that and I might take it on my back, and then their problem is my problem. And I will think about it all day and night, even though there's nothing I can do. It is not my problem to solve, it is not my life. I am not currently in, you know, that situation or in danger. It's just kind of that flashback, PTSD or whatever of something that I've experienced before, and it can throw off my whole day. When I was working in school, um, in a school, I had some situations with kids who were really, really going through it, and I was so close to them and so empathetic for them that like I was in a really bad headspace myself, and I really had to reverse and be like, wait a minute, this has nothing to do with me. I can be here for you, I can be sympathetic for you, I can help you find ways to deal with this yourself, but I cannot take it on my own back. That is a problem with probably most people who are empathetic and are in kind of helping professions like me. We want to help and we understand a lot of things that you're going through because we've gone through them ourselves, but we have to draw those lines and those boundaries on what we're experiencing and how to deal with it because you'll derail your whole life and you'll go off on somebody or you'll be upset and whatever, and your life is chill. You actually don't have any real like deep things you're going through, and you know, it's just not necessary for you to take on all that stuff. You can help other people without absorbing all of their shit. Yeah, I've definitely had to go back to therapy a few times to have my therapist help me to rebuild my emotional boundaries and remember that others' experiences aren't mine. Um, something that is probably not unique to me is that my overwhelm always presents as agitation. If I'm scared, I'm agitated. If I'm sad, I'm agitated. If I'm confused, uh I'm overwhelmed, whatever, I'm agitated. That's how it comes off more often than not. And that's not like the best thing, because you know, when you're agitated, you usually take it out on other people. And I don't mean to, so I try really hard when I can to like remove myself from the situation, but you also like can't tell people half the time, like, yeah, I'm really pissed off that this really random thing that either you did or is happening around me that like somebody else set up or I'm in somebody else's space, like I can't explain to them, hey, stop the things that you're doing because you're making my brain mad. Like it doesn't have anything to do with them. That's my problem, you know. I have to be an adult and deal with my own feelings and try to get them sorted out because most of the time it's not anything serious. But if I just like woke up in the wrong space, my brain was somewhere else, I had a bad dream, you know, I'm thinking about something that happened last week, whatever. Like, I'm just I'm just mad. I'm just mad because I know how to handle that emotion better. Anger and I are friends, we understand each other, we're simple, it's easy to work out, but like sadness is harder, you know. You don't know where to put sadness, you don't know where sadness is stemming from half the time, you don't know why you're sad half the time. I uh, like I said before, I am a writer, so I write in my journal. I would love to say regularly, but that's not true. Uh, sometimes I avoid it, and for this exact reason, I won't write in my journal when I'm really going through something because I'm afraid of what I'm gonna find out. Uh when I'm writing, I am very open. I'm very honest because you know, if I can't be honest with me, I can't be honest with anybody. So I just start writing. I free write, I write with my hands, I don't type. Um, you know, I write with pen and paper in a book. It's crazy. But then my my my thoughts just take me on the journey. I go away with my thoughts and they show me where we're going. And usually at the end, I can look back and say, oh, okay, I see what's going on here. I see the theme. I'm feeling abandoned. I'm feeling scared. I'm feeling insecure. I'm feeling whatever. But I have to give myself the pieces of the puzzle to put together. And that's kind of how I work through that. And then I find out again, like all the unfiltered things that are popping up for myself. Because it's not easy to say that to other people. You know, I'm self-deprecating, I guess maybe is the word. I don't know. I laugh about a lot of things. So when I'm telling hard stories, I usually make a joke at my own expense, or I'll, you know, I'll make something lighter to make it less uncomfortable for everybody. You know, I'm pretty open about my stories, and you know, I have a poll podcast now where I just give you all of my my information, all of my feelings and all my things. So, you know, I'm not secretive about that. I think where I lock up the most is how things actually affect me and how I'm actually dealing with them. You know, there's a there's a little core key group that have gotten to experience my like deep, deep holes and you know, how I'm trying to crawl out of them, but I don't give that to everybody. I don't think everybody can handle that. I think that in life you have different tiers of friends or family, you know, there's everyone has their own purpose. Like I have a pretty big group of friends that I'm like really lucky to have them, but everybody has their own lane, and there's no two people in my group that, you know, serve the same purpose. You know, I've got all my strengths and my weaknesses and people that kind of align with me on one weakness or you know, share this other strength with me. And I think I'd probably say the same, you know, they come to me for one thing and maybe not for something else. I think that everybody is okay, you know, you should do that with everybody. Everybody has their own strength and their, you know, whatever it is that they are qualified to help you with the most. I don't know where I was going with that thought. I wish I could like reverse my brain. Yes, I realize I'm doing this on a computer, and I can go back and listen, but I like to just go off the cuff. Because if I go back, I am gonna get really self-conscious, and I'm gonna think too much, and then we're gonna we're gonna get all fussy. Everything's gonna get weird. So we're just gonna go for it. Okay, next step. Eye contact. Eye contact makes me uncomfortable. However, I have a love-hate relationship with eye contact because I like to know that people are listening to me. Part of my ADHD issues have always been that I have a lot to say and I feel like I don't ever get to say it all. You know, I don't get to finish my thought before somebody hops in and redirects the conversation or whatever. So a lot of the times I have been talking in a conversation, other people start up and then I just fade away. So I'm like, for what? What am I gonna have to like wrestle back your intention for? You don't care. Like this isn't important to you. And it just like doesn't feel good. So I am pretty active. Like I will cut people off for sure. It's it's an accident. I don't mean to in the same way that people don't mean to do it to me, but I will try really hard if I'm aware of it to after I'm done spitting out whatever it is that I have to say, I will say, wait, you were saying something. What are you saying? Like, finish your thought. I here's your space. I try. I try really hard to do that. I definitely don't try as hard not to hop in in conversations because like my thoughts move at the speed of light. If I lose them, they're gone forever, and then I'm gonna think about it for the rest of the day. Like, what the fuck was I thinking? I don't know. It seemed really important at the time. It wasn't. Most likely it was nothing. But since I didn't spit it out at the time and it got lost, the mystery. The mystery is what I'm gonna grab onto. That's gonna bother me for the rest of the day. Eye contact. Yes. Uh especially if I am saying something that puts me in like a vulnerable position or I'm sharing some trauma or whatever, because I do do that pretty often, probably. Um, I don't like eye contact. I do not like it. When I was in therapy, I would never look at my my therapist. I wouldn't do it. I can't do it. It makes me just squirmy. So I always have a fidget toy or paper or a cup or whatever. I need something to draw my attention to. When I worked in a school, I had activities for myself and the kids to do while they talked to me so they could focus their body in one place and their emotions in another because that's like how I like to talk. So I used to have like a diamond painting dot painting, whatever you call it. I would have it out on my counter and I would do it while they were talking. And I had at least one or two students like, oh, why aren't you looking at me? I'm like, listen, if you want me to look at you, I'll look at you. But I find it's easier to like dig into yourself if you don't feel like you're under scrutiny and you don't have a spotlight on your back. We're just here. We're just doing an activity. We're coloring, we're playing with play-do, whatever it is that we're doing, we're doing that and we're just having a conversation. This isn't like you making a declaration to anybody, you know. This is like it's serious, but it's only as serious as you want it to be. So, you know, again, I like it when people give me their attention, but I don't know what to do. If the eye contact lingers for too long, it makes me just scormy. One of my other really big pet peeves is when I'm with people and they're like fussing on their phone the whole time. You know, if you need to respond to a text message, okay, fine. But if we're like at dinner and you're just like checking ESPN or, you know, reading whatever, like a lot of the time, I that irritates me. I am also socially awkward. I don't always have something to say to you. I don't always have the focus to look at you, but I really don't like to be on my phone when I'm with other people. Uh, one of my love languages is quality time, and quality time to me does not involve you staring at your screen the whole time. Um, kind of what it comes down to is like if you can do it without me and it doesn't make any difference if I'm sitting there or not, then like we're not really spending time together. Now, there is something to be said for you know parallel play. A lot of ADHDers like to sit together while they're doing their own thing in their own world. If we're mutually understanding that like you're gonna be reading a magazine and I'm gonna be knitting a sweater, cool, love it. But if I'm trying to talk to you and you're on your phone the whole time, I don't like that. Like your attention is split, you're not listening to me. It doesn't really matter if I'm talking to you or not. And you know, that's just my own pet peeve. Like other people have their own deals where they like are uncomfortable if they don't have their phone in their hands, you know, like giving them something to do in public so you're not just sitting there. Part of the thing that I teach people a lot is to sit in discomfort, and I have a lot of problems with it myself. So, you know, those who can't do teach social challenges while we're on that particular vein or line of thinking. For me, I do have a lot of social challenges. I don't like large crowds, I like I don't know who does, but I'm 5'1. If I'm in a big group of like herd-moving people, I can't see anything. Like my sensory overload is big. I don't like people touching me. COVID for that particular reason was one of the best times in my life. Like having a six-foot square somewhere else where people had to stand and couldn't like breed on your neck. Oh my god, that was my favorite thing. Having a mask on so I'd have to make small talk because I'm a I'm a Midwesterner. If you look at me, I'm gonna smile at you. And I can't help it. I've got a really mean, like resting bitch face. It's a thing. But like I try to smile at people because it like, you know, it makes you feel good. You're a human, you're interacting, you're here, I'm here. We'll smile at each other, let's acknowledge each other's presence, you know, whatever. It was kind of cool though in Europe, because like that wasn't a necessity. And I'm like, oh my god, I can just look mean. Yes. But yeah, I don't like people touching me. I really don't. I, you know, it's accidental if people bump into me or whatever, but it like it makes me angry. Again, there's a little tolerance meter for me when people are talking around me too much. There's one time that I really remember very vividly. I went to a comedy show by myself and I was sitting like smack dab in the center of a theater. It was wonderful, great seats. I was able to see the comic pretty well, whatever. But it was like the pre-show. So the comic had like a playlist going, and everybody was just talking, getting in their seats, and they're excited and they're chit-chatting and whatever, and there was just a constant buzz. Now, again, and when I'm with my friends or whoever I go to see shows with, I'm talking. That's a totally acceptable and normal thing to do. We're talking, we're sharing things, we're trying to catch up, whatever. Totally chill. But if you're by yourself and, you know, doing things by yourself is empowering, but it's also, you know, makes you a little self-conscious because you're like, eh, this feels kind of weird, but like I do like doing things by myself sometimes, or at least I used to. Uh, now that I am married and I don't have to anymore, that's awesome. But, you know, like if I really like a musical artist, for example, I love Jason Moraz. Jason Moraz was popular when I was in second grade. Uh, everybody can probably name a few songs of his, whatever, but I am like a dead, like, I don't know how to say this, but I'm pretty serious about Jason Moraz. Like, once I find an artist that I like, I'ma dig deep, deep into their catalog. I'm gonna learn all the stuff that they had when they were, you know, doing coffee shops and had $2 to their name. I'm gonna dig in. So that's how I am with Jason Moraz. I love him. It's like a religious experience. There's just like no feeling better than going to a concert where people are really like just there with you. You guys are all experiencing the same things. You could be next to someone of a different religion or, you know, political stance or blah blah blah. They may not even speak the same language as you, but like they love this artist and they love the feeling that they get from listening to this artist. Like, that's just a magical thing to me. So if I have a concert for someone like that, then I'm really locked into it. I know that the other people who are around me or my friends or whatever just like don't have that same connection, I will go by myself. I have no qualms about doing that. It is nice to experience it with someone else, of course, but having to like look over the whole time, be like, oh, are you having fun? Are you bored? Is this like not as magical for you as it is for me? Like that, I would rather just not. I'd rather skip over that entirely. I would like to just like focus on the experience that I'm having and really dig into it. So back to what I was saying. I was at this comedy show by myself. Um, it was actually right before the world closed down for COVID now that I think about it. I went to the comedy show and the next week everything shut down. So it was already like pretty uncomfortable to be in a big crowd because you're just like, you know, at least 20 people in this crowd have have COVID. Um I'm vaccinated pretty like thoroughly. I got COVID four times. Despite when I did, I got COVID four times. It was terrible. The first time was definitely the worst before I got vaccinated because they the vaccinations didn't exist yet. So I was at this comedy show by myself, and just hearing all the chit chat and the buzz of other people like made me feel. Have you seen those like movies where there is a psychic, not a psychic, a person who could read minds, telepath, and they can hear everything and they hear it all at once because their like powers just like popped into existence and now they hear everything from everyone every time, all everywhere, and it drives them like crazy. That's what I was feeling. So I didn't have headphones because I wasn't hip that much to what I needed to do. Because if I had had headphones, I would have been fine. I would have just like locked in, I would have looked at my phone, or I would have listened to my music or a book or whatever, and I would have been chilling. I was not prepared. So I was sitting there just raw dog in the world, and I remember like writing into my Discord group. I'm like, people are so loud, and I wish that they would never speak, and I can't handle it, and I'm gonna rip my ears off. Like, I need this this comet comedy show to start right now because I'm gonna like implode. So that was a challenge, challenge for me. That tolerance meter again just like goes off the charts when I'm in situations like that. Something that I didn't anticipate running into. Uh, I have to go to a conference every year for work, it's a mandatory conference, it's a lot of good information. A conference is my nightmare. Like, I don't know if you've read Dante's Inferno, but there are circles of hell for like the different kinds of sinners, and the circle kind of pertains to whatever you were doing in life that got you there, and then you're like stuck in it for the rest of your life, you know. For example, I don't know, you're like gluttonous or drunk or something, and you might just be stuck like drinking something but never feeling satisfied, or like every time you go to get a drink of water, or like your cup is empty, some crazy, like really niche hell. Uh, that's what conferences are for me. I don't know what I did, I don't know what I did to the world to deserve this, but um, when I have to go to this conference, I am not having a good time. The information is important, and I'm glad that I am able to go and experience these things and get to learn things, but the constant hum of people talking when there are breaks is untenable. I always have headphones with me, and like the the really ironic thing is that most of us work with people on the spectrum or with ADHD or whatever, you know, neurodiverse people. That's kind of like the whole the whole jam of our job. And this conference is just for behavior consultants. So we all know what it's like to have people who are socially anxious or you know, whatever. So I'll have my headphones in, I'll be watching a video, or I have a book or something that is very clearly saying, please don't fucking talk to me. I don't want to talk to you. I would like to take a minute without any noise. I would just like to be on my own for now. Um, but that signal does not always work. And then people ask you questions because they want to network with you, and that's part of the thing, and you're sitting at a table with people ideally uh that you don't know for me. I like to sit at tables where people don't know me. I'll sit far, far back in the shadows at a table with maybe four people so I can really spread out uh with all of my activities because I always have something with me. Um I've taken knitting before. I usually have my computer so I can do notes or, you know, whatever. I have to, I'm a child. I need something to pull focus so I don't lose my mind. Um very specifically in the conference last year was the last day of this presentation. I side note, this was a week before my wedding. A week before my wedding that I had to go to a mandatory conference for three days. A week before my wedding. Do you want me to hear that again? Was a week before my wedding. And I was getting a lot of calls about seat changes and can I bring this person and all this thing is changing and I need this and now so I had to go to the conference and I really didn't want to go. And I had to because it's mandatory. So, you know, the day, the last day of the presentation, we were in rooms all day where we had like individual seats, we didn't have to sit with like a big circular group of people. You could just like set up your camp and you could be in that whole room all day, and I'm like, cool, I don't have to transition, I can leave my crap here. Awesome, love it. But the lady about three down from me, the whole presentation, she was digging her hands into her water glass, grabbing out the ice, so that alone was just like pretty annoying. But then she would eat the ice. And I don't know if you've heard a person eat ice before, but it's a pretty uh uh sensory heavy activity. So crunch, crunch, crunch. I hate mouth sounds, I was so close to her. And again, coming on the tail end of three days of being around people and having to be on all the time when I just kind of wanted to zone out and like be in the background and not talk to anybody. I was gonna lose my mind. I text my husband, I'm like, I'm stuck, please. You can't do anything about it, but I hate this, everything is terrible. So I had headphones with me. I was able to pop one in, and I felt kind of bad for the presenter, but I put it in the ear that wasn't facing them. But I'm just like, you know, we're in a conference to learn how to better support our neurodiverse friends, and I am one of them. So the fact that a conference is so sensory overwhelming is really ironic to me. Again, let me not undersell the fact or you know, be unappreciative of the fact that like our work sends us to this thing all the time so we can learn and we can network and whatever, whatever. Just it's not particularly my favorite thing to do. It is very stressful for me. Uh, I really want to just like hide in a hole. If I could go in like on invisible mode and sit in the corner and learn the things, that would be awesome. It'd be fantastic. And also at this particular last conference, not that this matters, but it does to me. They didn't have any soda. I my one really large love in my life that I have never been able to kick is soda. I don't like it that this is a problem. It's a lot of sugar, but I need a hit of caffeine every day. I have a caffeine addiction, and I find out every time I haven't had a soda. There was a time in my life where there was a company called Bubbly, and Bubbly made Bubbly bounce, and it was like crisp and delicious seltzer water, and I don't really like that uh anywhere else, but I really like that flavor, and it had caffeine in it. It was about like that 35 milligrams of caffeine that I got in a in a cherry Pepsi, and I was able to switch over for like a year and a half. It was great. I felt so much better. I was like, cool, I'm not drinking all the sugar every day, huzzah! And I'm still getting my caffeine. Awesome! And then they stop making uh I am not a coffee drinker. Also, people with ADHD are more likely, I believe, to be dependent on caffeine because caffeine just makes us normal. It doesn't like wake us up and super, you know, whatever, like get us going most of the time. It just like puts us on the same playing field as everyone else. Like, you know, there are people who are like, I'm gonna take Adderall and I'm gonna clean the whole house and I'm just gonna be ready to go. I'm like, listen, if you actually needed Adderall when you took it, it would just like make you function. You're not going crazy, you're just here. That's kind of what caffeine is like. And the only reason I drink it uh is to keep myself on that regular plane. Also, it just tastes good, man. So at this particular conference, they didn't have any soda, and I had to go every day to the hotel little lobby and buy like a five dollar bottle of coke, and it was it was awful. It made me upset. Um, you know, again, this is my problem. This is a this is a little deficiency, I guess, that I wish I didn't have. But you know, in the grand scheme of life, I guess like a soda is not the worst thing I could be doing. Uh also I don't like coffee. I wish I did. I don't. I was a barista for a long time, don't like it. I don't like it. Makes my mouth feel funny. Uh I'm also lactose intolerant, and like coffee isn't delicious unless you put cool stuff in it, usually dairy related. Yes, I hear you. There are dairy free creamers. I don't care. I don't like them. I've tried them before, but not my favorite. I just don't like coffee. Also, I have high blood pressure, so when I drink coffee, my heart goes too fast. So don't go for me. So coffee in our not, we don't vibe. Uh there's specific kinds of coffee I like. I love our peppermint milcha. Delicious. I drink a nice coffee every now and then, but it just doesn't get me going like it does everyone else. Uh I have tried caffeinated teas. Disgusting. Do not like the taste of tea. Uh unless it is peppermint or passion tea. Surprise, neither one of those are caffeinated. You know, first world problems. I don't know that I'm gonna be able to shove all the information that I want to shove into this episode in one because you guys don't want to be here forever. I might revisit this particular topic again later. Uh, because I really got going on the things that I was talking about. I kind of like wrote some bullet points about them, and then the bullet points got longer the longer I talked. Uh I don't read from a script for these because it's really difficult to do. Like I said in the first episode, when I have to read out loud from a paper, it's hard. I do not do well. I cannot read a script well. Give myself little bullet points so I can kind of focus my thoughts, but it's not a perfect system. I think the last thing I'm gonna talk about today is kind of the over sensory overwhelm of my wedding. I think a lot of my life is like this balance of knowing that I'm like super lucky and privileged to have the love that I have, the house, the car, the whatever, all the things that I've been gifted in my life. I don't want to seem ungrateful for them because I'm incredibly grateful for all the things that I have. And I know that I'm like richer in life than a lot of people when it comes to my support system. Um, you know, reversing back to the beginning, I had so many people reach out to me after my first episode to tell me that, you know, they learned something new about me, or they were really sympathetic of my journey because they kind of experienced the same things, or you know, just that like I have a good voice and I'm a good storyteller, and like that meant so much to me. That was really cool because I was really nervous about doing this, and it's like it's super low stakes, you know. The only thing this costs me is my time, and uh that time sometimes would be spent just like scrolling TikTok or playing video games. I'm not really wasting a lot here. I'm reaching out to people, and uh, you know, it's interesting to have people listen to it that I'm like, hmm, I don't know if you should know this story or not, or if you know the story already. You know, there are definitely people who have listened to these and uh they know all the stories because they were there, or they've been told them 400 times, so I'm sorry, friends. But you know, it is cool to kind of bring in stories vaguely about my friends and my relationships and things because these friends and stuff are listening to the podcast and it's really cool. So that was a roundabout way of saying back to my wedding. My wedding, sensory seeking-wise, was a lot harder than I expected it to be. I spent a real a lot of time like really getting my husband prepared for what to expect and just being like, okay, well, the day is gonna go like this. We're gonna be here, we're gonna be there, and this is you know, these are the things we're gonna experience and whatever. But I didn't think to prep myself, even though I planned it all and I knew what was gonna happen from step to step. It wasn't like the unexpected things because everything went pretty well, everything like I planned pretty good. So if you ever have a Wedding to plan and you need help, I'm your girl. Especially if you give me your budget. I can spend your money, not mine. It's way more fun. Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about things that didn't matter so much, maybe, and totally overlooked what was coming for me. So while I was super, super happy to have all the people there that I did and to have all the people helping me and you know, whatever, um, like the ceremony was great. The ceremony was fine, everything I expected it to be. But where it kind of started to go like sideways for me was during pictures, because there were so many pictures, and I wanted to make sure we got all the family pictures of the people who wanted them and got all the combinations because like you can do this day again. You know, it's cool to have all like the cousin pictures and all of this and all of that, so you can look back and remember. However, my dress is was really heavy. My dress was heavy as hell. Um, and as I was standing there smiling and had my little pasty face on, you know, whatever, I was getting hotter and hotter and hotter because there were a lot of bodies around me. And kind of near the end there, I was definitely like, okay, we need to wrap this up because I'm I'm kind of overheating here and I'm sweating and I'm not feeling pretty and cute, and I do not want to watch my face get angrier in these pictures. Like we need to we need to call it a day on this, you know, getting to take my dress off and relocate and you know, go and spend time with my husband in our little off time. That was like the best decision I've ever made. I highly, highly recommend it. Like, you know, people in the middle were able to go home and get into something more comfortable. They were able to spend some time to whatever. They were able to like prep themselves and have lunch and do whatever they wanted to do, get together with people, whatever. I wasn't doing that, I was chilling. Um, so that was like the best thing that I could have done. So the first part of the day, except for like the pictures, was great. It was also really wonderful to have people helping me when I was getting ready. It was nice to have all of the people and the cousins coming in and out and the aunts and the uncles and just like having new people pop in my room and like, let me help you with this earring, let me help you get your dress up, let me help you with this tie, whatever. Like, I have so many wonderful pictures of all these like key players in my life helping me get ready, and that was really special to me. That was awesome. That was like one of my favorite memories of the day. Also, my brothers did my ceremony, our ceremony, and they made it really special and really specific to us, and like I didn't, you know, I've seen my my wedding and my future for my whole life, and I just like didn't see that as the possibility or like as something that was gonna happen. So having that moment with my brothers and you know, inside jokes and just having like the most close people to me that I could there, like knowing that they got to witness that was really special. After that, come to reception time. That was when I was just like really struggling in my day. It was really overwhelming. Like, you know, I think all brides probably have this issue of like, okay, I really gotta be aware of like how I'm gonna eat and what I'm gonna do, and like I need to keep myself hydrated. And I had like a whole team with me, just like, you know, giving me water and giving me food and stuff. Um, because my friends are awesome. But it, you know, like one thing specifically that I remember is that I would go and get a glass of wine, I would start walking around, I would, you know, and somebody would stop me to say, hey, congratulations, whatever, it's awesome to see these people and then, you know, take a picture with them. And then I take my picture and put my wine down. And I would finish with the picture and go back, and the service already take my wine. So I had to go back and I had to get another glass and on and on and on. I had like maybe three or four glasses of wine that I got a sip from, and they were gone by the time I was finished with pictures. Also, uh, I'm pretty short, but like in a room where you see this this little fluffy white cloud walking across everywhere, it's real easy to find you. Me specifically. So, you know, it was easy. It was easy for people to find me and pull me and take pictures and like, you know, again, wanted to save the memories, wanted, I was really glad. I was like cool to see all those pictures that people had taken. But at the time, one after another after another, I was really like getting kind of burnout from the the onness that I had to give because I couldn't, you know, I couldn't check out and I wanted to. I was really ready to just like sit back and experience my wedding. And I'm really excited that my friends are getting married. Um, you know, friends, family, whoever is gonna like have the niceness to invite me to their weddings in the future so I can go to a wedding that I didn't plan again and just get to be a guest and have fun. Because like being the bride at a at a wedding is like very demanding. And again, disclaimers, so glad, so so glad that I had so much support and so many people around. And like, I do, I'm so glad that there's so many pictures and whatever, because I do love pictures, but at the time I was like really just like at capacity. At some point, I grabbed my husband and I said, I need you to come with me. So we went to our getting ready room, which was like down the stairs and off the corner, and nobody knew it was there except for like the people who would help me put stuff in the room. Um, and we just chilled for like 20 minutes. I had a glass of wine, he had his drink, we were just like, Okay, this is what's going on. How's your day been? You know, what's your day been on that side where I haven't seen you? And we just like got 20 minutes to just chill. My mom asked me later, where did you go? I'm like, I was hiding. I was hiding. I just seen it a minute. Um, and again, that's like one of the very vivid things that I remember, just taking that time to like debrief and have a second where we could actually see each other and find each other because we were like separate the whole time. Just, you know, doing our thing and having our responsibilities and chilling with our people. So that was cool. So long as a short, if you are planning your wedding someday, plan a break. Especially if you are a little sensory sensitive like me. Take a break. Have a have some time in your day. And also, as are my advice will always be for everyone all the time, is to do things the way that you want to do them. There's gonna be a lot of people giving you a lot of opinions and telling you you have to do things this way, and you have to do things that way. Nope. No, you don't. You do them the way you want to do them. Because at the end of the day, it's up to you and what you want to do. And you know, yes, people will contribute and they will have a say and whatever, but ultimately everything comes down to you and your comfort because that day is about you. You know, that's the one day you can be like quote unquote selfish and do the things that you want to do the way that you want to do them and be unapologetic about it. You know, we had like we didn't have a physical registry, and that's like faux pas for a lot of people. We had a honeymoon fund, and you know, we got like a pretty decent size of money, and we were able to take money from that honeymoon fund and roll it into like a little like nest egg. Like we really needed that at the time. So that was great, you know. We we split up our ceremony and had like mostly family in the first one, and then the reception we had you know or friends and whatever, like that was pretty cool. And I felt kind of bad about having that division, but at the same time, you know, like I didn't have to manage as many people, and it could be a little bit more intimate and you know, like you didn't miss anything. We're married now. We'll show you the video if you want to. Like, some people just don't want to go to the wedding part, it's boring sometimes. Our ours wasn't, it was fun, uh, especially because my veil fell off halfway walking up the aisle. We had to pause, we had to have a few people hop in to try and fix it, and then it fell off again. It was a it was a whole thing. But I'm I was uh you know, as a stand-up comic through the whole thing. I made it work. We just did some things in a non-traditional way, in ways that other generations probably would have liked us to do things differently, but you know, it all worked out because uh if there's anything about me, I'm gonna do things my own way. Even if you tell me the wonderfulest, most efficient way to do something, I will usually get to that option eventually, but I need to try like three other ways that might be more hard or it might make less sense to you before I get there. Because I am stubborn and I like to make sure that I tried it the way that I wanted to try it before I go with the path that everybody else told me to go through. There's like no easy way to wrap up these things because I could talk forever, but like I'm gonna make less sense the longer I talk, diminishing returns after a while. I will leave you with this. I am so glad you're here and so honored and privileged that you are giving me your time. Um remember in life that time is your most important commodity because you have a finite amount of it and your time is important. Uh don't do things you don't want to do if you can help it, because your time is important. If you don't want to go to the thing, say no. And it's okay. Like if you have friends that and family that really care about you and you're like, you know what, that is just not on my bandwidth today. I am overwhelmed or I'm tired, and that just doesn't sound that fun. As long as you're not a dick about it, it's fine. Live your life the way that you want to. Spend your time the way you'd like to spend your time because it's important. Like I said, it's the most valuable thing you own. You cannot get it back. Thank you for giving me your time. Thank you for being here. I super appreciate it. Uh, this podcast has become like a really interesting anchor in my life because now I'm driving around, I'm like, oh, I can tell them about this. Oh, wait, I can explain that thing. Awesome. Uh, I really look forward to making it happen now that I have a little bit of experience, you know, one whole episode under my belt. But hearing feedback and just knowing that it's resonating with people is really cool. I've had a few people who would like to pop on and like tell their stories too, and I'm really excited about that. So at some point, you know, we'll have some some guest stars uh just to, you know, kind of talk about it because it's really cool to get to know everybody's flavor of ADHD and everybody like how people handle life. I have set up a Facebook page and an Instagram page. Feel free to find those and follow those if you'd like. I update every time that I post now. Um, I'm going to try and do this once a week, if life allows. Probably figure out a specific day someday, but like I am not so great with my time management. For example, I have a lot of notes to do today, like my actual job. Um, I didn't do them yet. I've got extra like work that I need to be doing because it's a holiday week and we've got some hours to make up. Haven't done it. One of the things that I was gonna talk about today, but I didn't quite get there. If I'm not interested or motivated to do something, I'm not doing it. There's no there's no pulling me to do it. So in our house, we share our duties of cleaning, and recently we've kind of gotten better about like splitting up the parts we don't like to do. So I hate laundry. I detest laundry. I hate dishes even more, and I refuse to do those if I can help it. My husband is a is a wonderful person, and he takes care of the dishes now. That's his job. I will help him unload the dishwasher sometimes if he'll ask me to, but like I don't touch that anymore if I don't have to. Before he moved in, and before my cousin lived here, once upon a time, um, my dishes didn't get done for two to three weeks, and that was fine for me. I did not care. So if he wasn't here, they would just sit there and fester because I'm a monster. Currently, again, putting off things that I should be doing, like my work, and or the laundry that my husband has been so nice to do for me. Because now while I'm at work, he will move things from the washer to the dryer to the guest room. I record in the guest room. If only you could see that I am sitting in a huge, huge, huge pile of unfolded clothes. They're very comfortable. So you know that's just something I've been putting off, which is not at all anything that has to do with what we're talking about right now. Um, but yeah, so time management. I will try to do this once a week. Um, I welcome the feedback and I'm super glad that you guys are here to listen. Um if you're listening, you've already found a podcast, this channel that you listen to uh this podcast on. But I'm on Spotify, I'm on Apple Music, I'm on iHeartRadio, maybe. You can find it on my website. I have a regular website, and you can listen to things on the website as well. Um, but that lists out things you can write comments and you can rate and things. Um, pass it along to whoever you'd like to. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you. You're awesome. It's been real.