Change

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In the past two weeks, I have:

    Dog sat for a very big, energetic dog
    Had weekend houseguests
    Welcomed my youngest daughter Caitlin back home due to some changes in her relationships – along with all of her clothes and “stuff” – which is everywhere. Literally.

I’ve also got out of town guests coming for the next 3 weekends.

Change? My life is all about it, and truthfully, I don’t know how well I’m coping.

How do you deal with change in your life?

You know, as ADDers, we often seek out change just to alleviate the boredom in our lives. We do get bored very easily – that’s why we’re constantly jumping from one thing to another. Call it multi-tasking – it sounds so much better.

So on the one hand, we like change – it keeps things interesting. But on the other hand, if change comes to us without our asking for it, it can throw us for a loop.

I think that most of us with ADHD tend to live in the future rather than the present. (If we lived in the moment, we wouldn’t be losing so many things because we’d remember where we put them).

Instead, we live in the not so far off future – the next hour or few hours or a day.

Our ADHD symptoms – poor memory, lack of organizational skills, poor social skills or social anxiety, poor time perception – can trip us up and cause embarrassment at times. So to compensate, we try to stay a few steps ahead.

If we can anticipate what’s going to happen next, we think we can better prepare ourselves for it.

Of course, the truth is that we can’t always know what’s going to happen in the next minute or hour or week.

And that’s where change comes in. Unexpected changes – big or small – can throw our lives into chaos. And let’s face it – our lives can be pretty close to chaos a lot of the time anyway. The further away we can stay from the chaos border the better off we are.

So how do you cope when life throws a curve ball your way?

I’m not sure I have the answer, but here’s what I’m going to try:

I’m going to start by taking better care of myself. Making sure I have enough sleep, good nutrition, some exercise and some relaxation time will all lessen my ADHD symptoms and leave me better prepared to deal.

There are some reasonable things I can do to plan ahead – like deciding on meals, sleeping arrangements for guests, and things for them to do. Once those things are taken care of, that will help me relax a little bit.

I’m going to work on taking care of the basics – clean laundry, food in the house, and bills paid on time. If I know the basic things are taken care of, that will help me relax, too.

And finally, I’m going to try to go with the flow. We’re good at that – when we’re the ones making changes and it’s fun. Now I’m going to try and learn to enjoy change when I’m not in control.

Wish me luck.

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Lacy Estelle

Lacy Estelle is the writer of Lacyestelle.com and the Podcast host for An ADD Woman.

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4 Responses

  1. What a trip! This is soooooo true! My life is like a soap opera! Do we just have magnets attached to our souls? If it’s not one thing, it’s another! I used to tell my babysitters, if you want to lose weight, just follow me around! But then the crash happens. Too many little changes.You begin to lose it and you know it but you simply don’t care. Binge time! Guilt time, binge time. It can take a bit before you can begin to take hold again. Then just when you think you have that future piece, those little changes happen again. Dang, ADHD is a catch 24! So, I’ll go with the more sleep portion of your article. I believe we don’t get enough.

  2. Most of the time I hesitate to drop a line because my comments tend to get overlooked but your page helped me pass a lil time @ work so i figured i’d drop u a line! LoL =P Take Care.