How To Manange Rumination With ADHD

DESCRIPTION: Rumination can take a lot of time and energy unless you know how to counter it. Here are some strategies to help you manage it. KEY TAKEAWAYS: * There are many reasons for rumination. * Your ADHD can impact your rumination.  * In some instances there may be a problem you need to solve. * In other instances it may be a matter of accepting what is.  * There are many ways to manage your rumination. RESOURCES: Book: Writing to Heal by James Pennebaker TRANSCRIPT: (00:07): You’ve tuned into Scattered Focused, Done Re-Imagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD, adults like you who want to learn how to adopt the best strategies, tools, and skills to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired. I’m Marla Cummins, and I’m glad you’re joining me today on this journey to re-Imagining Productivity with ADHD, so you can get what is important to you done without trying to do it like everyone else. (00:39): Rumination goes by several names, including racing thoughts, worrying, perseverating, and stuck thinking. They all refer to the inability to move on from thoughts that are causing you a lot of distress and getting in the way of doing what’s productive. This might happen when you blurt out something unintentionally at a meeting with your boss that you later regret. Then afterwards, you replay the scenario again and again thinking about what may happen because of it. Like will this affect your chances of getting promoted or working on future projects? Yet you may not be doing anything proactive about the situation because while you’re just thinking about it, you may even be having a hard time focusing and attending to your other work because your energy is taken over by these thoughts. Does this sound familiar? There are probably reasons you can think of you would want to stop ruminating. (01:32): The most obvious one is to reduce your anxiety so you can feel more grounded. As rumination takes away your time and energy. Also, it crowds out your ability to think creatively and these runaway thoughts can take away from your ability to address whatever it is that is prompting the rumination. What are the reasons you want to stop when you’re ruminating whether the payoff is something you want or something you want to avoid, understanding the causes of rumination can help you create the most helpful workarounds. (02:05): Let’s first look at how your ADHD may impact your rumination. The first place to start is to remember that your ADHD working memory challenges means that your brain has limited capacity to hold and process information in the moment. Because of this, according to Dr. Charles Parker, you may engage in counterproductive excessive thinking ie rumination. Because you’re not able to hold and consider multiple ideas at once. (02:34): Also, while you may want to transition and focus on something else, you can’t seem to turn off your thoughts, and it can happen at the most inconvenient times. As Dr. Parker notes, your prefrontal cortex becomes relatively frozen in time, and you have what he calls unmanageable cognitive abundance. There are three ways this ADHD stuck thinking presents itself according to Dr. Parker.