Tips from an ADHD Coach: The myth of ADHD laziness

Do you wait until the last minute to write a paper, or complete something until it absolutely has to be done? Do you find it almost impossible to start any sooner? Does it make you feel guilty?

This week on Tips from an ADHD Coach, Jaye talks about how the pressure and shame that comes with waiting until the last minute can push us across the finish line… until it doesn’t. Listen for some tips that can help.

Have a challenge you’d like Jaye to talk about in an episode? Email or send a voice memo to us at adhdcoachtips@understood.org.

Related resources

• ADHD and the myth of laziness (Rebecca’s story)

• ADHD and perfectionism

• ADHD and anxiety

Timestamps

(00:43) Rebecca’s quote

(02:22) Using pressure and shame to motivate ourselves

(08:30) What can we do instead?

(11:22) Recap

Episode transcript

Jaye: Are you someone who has a history of waiting until the last minute to write a paper or clean the house before guests come over? Does it make you feel guilty or ashamed that you didn't start on it sooner? Have you blocked off time to start on those things sooner than found yourself not able to actually get started despite the pressure and shame you put on yourself?

This is "Tips from an ADHD Coach," and I'm your coach, Jaye Lin. Today we're talking about how pressure and shame can push us over the finish line until it doesn't. We're going to hear from Rebecca, who is on another Understood.org podcast, "ADHD Aha!," about how she put pressure on herself in her schooling.

(00:43) Rebecca's quote

Rebecca: I was a perfectionist. I fell back on my AP classes, my top ten university degrees, being 15 minutes early for everything because if I wasn't 15 minutes early, I was going to be extremely late. I knew what my shortcomings were and I overcompensated for every single one that I could so that no one would know because I knew I wasn't good enough. But there was no good reason why. So, I just had to hide it.

But for me, throughout my life, I was just always that kid whose paper was a day late. And so, all through high school it was, "Oh my printer didn't work. I emailed it to you. Didn't you get it?" And things that every teacher knows what that is. And because I was good and smart and accomplished, they let me get away with it. And I never learned that lesson. Instead, the lesson I learned was that I could get away with it. And it had that effect of me thinking that if I did put in an effort, then it meant that I wasn't good at something.

So, I had this like double bind of I'm naturally gifted, so I shouldn't have to work at hard, but even when I do work as hard as I can, sometimes I can't even produce anything. In graduate school, it just got worse and worse because there was less oversight. I wasn't living with my parents to provide that structure, and so, I would just stay up all night and wait. I would have a paper that really I should have spent two weeks working on and I would do it in eight hours and I would do almost as well as I could.

And at the time, of course, I chalked it up to imposter syndrome and fear of failure, and "Oh well, if I work as hard as I can and I don't do well, what does that say about me? So, that must be why."

(02:22) Using pressure and shame to motivate ourselves

Jaye: This tactic Rebecca describes of putting pressure on herself to finish a paper at the last minute is something I used to do all the time, and this even continued into my professional life. I used to think I had to feel pressure and shame. It was the right thing to do. It's the only way forward. Spoiler alert. That's not true. When my clients say that without pressure and shame, they wouldn't get anything done, I ask them when they've used pressure and shame to push themselves over the finish line in the past. And then I ask them how they feel about doing that task again.

Every single time the answer is that they hate doing it and thinking about doing it fills them with dread. So, how easy is it for us to do the things we dread? Pressure and shame might have pushed them over the finish line, but every time that task needed to be done, it got harder and harder to do it, requiring more pressure and more shame each time until, well, they couldn't actually get it done anymore.

When we can't trust ourselves to do what we need to anymore, it can be pretty devastating to our self-confidence and make it a lot harder to maintain things like relationships, a comforting home, or our careers.

For many ADHD adults, especially later diagnosed ADHD adults, pressure and shame are common strategies. It's easy to see why this is such a common tactic. The feedback we receive from many parents and authority figures tends to run along the lines of stressing the importance of doing something along with the shame we should feel when we don't do it.

My parents couldn't really understand why I didn't always do my homework. Don't I know that getting good grades is important? Because if I don't get good grades, I won't get into a good college and then I won't be able to get a good job and then I'll be a failure. Yeah, sometimes it did escalate that quickly. Or, people are coming over tomorrow. Why am I not cleaning? Do I want them to see my disgusting room?

Oftentimes when we are being scolded by someone for not doing something as a child and even as an adult, it's either underlining the importance of doing something which adds pressure around doing it, or by making us feel bad that we didn't do it, which is intended to make us feel shame. And when later on, when we still haven't done it, the pressure and shame tactics usually get more intense.

The reasoning behind using pressure and shame to motivate humans is that, logically, if someone understands the importance of doing something and knows that there are consequences for not doing it, they'll be motivated to go and do it, right? Well, no. Not right. With ADHD, lower dopamine levels and motivating energy can make it harder for us to get started on doing something, even if we know it's something that's a good idea for us to do.

Knowing something is extremely important doesn't always allow us to kick things into gear and get started on it. In fact, it can do the opposite of that. When we put a lot of pressure and shame onto a task, it can often lead to overwhelm, especially with the emotional dysregulation that often comes with ADHD. With emotional dysregulation, we are less equipped to manage and interpret negative feelings, which can often cause our emotions and reactions to be much more intense than they would be for neurotypicals.

Having a negative association paired with emotional dysregulation can make the pressure and shame around doing something feel unbearable. And what tends to happen when it all feels overwhelming and unbearable? Well, our brains try to protect us by avoiding thinking about it when we put a lot of pressure and shame onto doing something, it's common for us to distract ourselves, like scrolling on social media or playing games on our phone. It can be harder for us to think about what we need to do for this task because our mind keeps wanting to go somewhere else.

Thinking about how we haven't started on the project yet. It makes us feel really bad and we don't want to continue to feel really bad. So, we're going to think about something else. The whole time, our mind is trying to get us to think about anything but the thing we should be working on. But it's not possible to completely avoid it because it's so important we keep bouncing back and forth between shame and distractions.

And then something happens at the last minute. We start working on it and we churn out something that's decent in quality right before the deadline. Huzzah! The powers of pressure and shame pushed us over the finish line. Pressure and shame are responsible for us getting it done, proving them to be excellent motivators. Well, no. Not quite. What's more likely happening is that at the last minute a neurotransmitter process starts kicking off that puts us into go mode.

Knowing that this is the last opportunity for us to make the deadline, leads to a rise in adrenaline, which leads to a rise in norepinephrine, which leads to a rise in dopamine. Suddenly we are operating at higher levels of executive function. We can think through complex ideas. We can tackle the steps we need to take to do all the things. We are surprisingly emotionally level. In this go mode, we are at our peak brain function and everything that seemed unbearably hard to think about before is suddenly a lot easier.

And you want to know the kicker? This neurotransmitter process would be happening even without pressure and shame. Yeah, I know. Pressure and shame don't actually help us get into go mode. In fact, it can sometimes prevent us from reaching those productive highs. That's because while we're in pressure and shame mode and our brains are fluttering around looking for something more pleasant to think about, we aren't getting anything done, but we also aren't resting.

We are anxious and creating wear and tear on our bodies and brains. And then after we missed the deadline or put out work that we're ashamed of, you guessed it, we get even higher levels of pressure and shame.

(08:30) What can we do instead?

So, what can we do? If pressure and shame was what we used, what can we do instead? First, I suggest taking a self-compassionate view. At times of lower stimulation, we can have higher executive dysfunction, which makes thinking through complex plans a lot harder. That's not something we need to feel ashamed about. It just is. Feeling shame about it doesn't actually help the situation. It only makes it harder.

When we don't feel shame about things, a beautiful thing can happen instead. We can create an environment for ourselves that leans into what actually works best for our brains. We can view the tasks with interest, creativity, and opportunity. All things that lead to a rise in dopamine. There are many strategies that help with this, including most of the tips I talk about on all the episodes of this show, but they will vary from person to person.

Here's something that I do that helps me get into a more interest-based focus space: I ask myself about the reasons I'm doing this task and how I can customize the process to be exciting for me. So, for example, if I'm having a hard time with loading my dishwasher, I'll think about how getting this pot washed means I can make a soup I've been craving or driving out to the post office to drop off my package means I can stop at the car wash, which is a special sensory treat for me.

When shame isn't part of the equation, we can look at the situation more clearly since our brains aren't trying to distract us away from it. Sometimes I'll find I only feel resistance to doing something because it feels like a huge commitment and will take me forever. I will find the easiest, most fun piece of that task and then only commit to doing that. This makes my difficulty with contact switching work for me.

Even though I'm not committed to doing more, most of the time I keep going since I'm already here. We can also recognize the momentum we're making and acknowledge the progress so we keep getting little boosts of dopamine as we go, giving us feel-good motivation instead of pressure that makes us feel bad.

Leaving shame behind also means we can be open and talk through what we need to do with our colleagues and loved ones. Because for a lot of us with ADHD, verbal processing can be easier to do with executive dysfunction than trying to work it all out in our heads. And we can feel confident that after we work out the basics, nearing deadline time will give us a boost of go mode to turbocharge our finish.

These are all ways we can work with our ADHD brains instead of against them. Shame and pressure only decrease our productivity. Getting things done is already pretty hard to do for us. We don't need to make it even harder.

(11:22) Recap

Pressure and shame are often seen as effective strategies for getting things done with ADHD, but they actually make us less productive because they can create negative associations and feelings around that task, which can make the task feel overwhelming and unbearable. Our brains will try to distract us from those overwhelmingly negative feelings, which can make it much harder to think about what we need to do and then start doing it.

We might associate pressure and shame with our previous results, but those results are more likely due to the adrenaline we get when nearing deadlines, which leads to a boost in norepinephrine, dopamine, and finally, executive function. Instead of pressure and shame, we can be self-compassionate and use strategies that actually work for our brains. We can capitalize on dopamine getters like interest, creativity, and opportunity and look at easy ways to get started on the task.

We can cheer ourselves on with our progress for boosts of dopamine as we go. We can verbally process what we need to do with the people around us, and we can feel confident knowing that a boost of go mode can help us over the finish line near deadline time. We can work with our ADHD, not against it, and leave the pressure and shame behind.

Thanks for listening. You've been listening to "Tips from an ADHD Coach" on the Understood Podcast Network. If you have a challenge that you'd like me to talk about or would just like to say hi, you can email us at ADHDCoachTips@understood.org. You can also check out the show notes to find links to anything mentioned in the show and more resources.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

"Tips from an ADHD Coach" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also makes the show. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer, Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Jaye Lin.