What I Said No to This Thanksgiving: ADHD and Capacity

It's October, and I really thought September would be the hard part of getting everyone back into routines. Spoiler: it was not. We're still in it.

We still have a lot of newness in our house, and the routines are still not set. With short form social media, a lot of us (me included) expect the hard part to be over by now, but routines take actual time and day to day building to stick.

This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, and my first master's degree paper is due Thanksgiving Monday night. My brain is exploding.

What I said no to this Thanksgiving

• Planning the menu
• The grocery list
• Cooking anything
• Feeling guilty about all of the above

What I said yes to

• A 1,500 word paper on why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD forgot women have hormones
• Refreshing my Find My app until my kids get their butts home to eat it

Passing Thanksgiving to someone else

I usually love getting ready for Thanksgiving. This year I passed it off to my husband to figure out, so I can put my focus on the paper without the guilt and the shame that usually come with it. Past Amy never would have done that. Future Amy is very grateful.

ADHD and capacity: a lot, a little or none

Knowing my capacity, whether it's a lot, a little or absolutely none (current status: none), changes my stress level and how I deal with everyone around me. It's what I do with my clients too: we work out when you're in low, medium or high capacity and what you can and can't do on each of those days.

One thing to try this week

Before you take something on this week, check how much capacity you actually have for it: a lot, a little or none. If it's a little or none, hand the whole thing to someone else, the deciding and the doing, so it isn't one more thing on your plate.

Where I'm talking about this next

I'm talking about all of this in my session at the ADHD Awareness Expo, When Food Feels Impossible: ADHD Food Systems That Work When Willpower Doesn't.

It's free and online from October 17, and when you register you can get The Low Lift List, a quick and easy tool with a column for each kind of night, so the writing-down part is already set up for you (and you don't have to think)! It's in the virtual gift bag, along with a gift from every other speaker.

Every session stays up until November 17, and these are the ones I'd watch first:

• Trish Grigoleit, You Know What to Do. So Why Is It So Hard to Do It? Making Sense of Executive Function Without the Shame
• Heidi Fishbein, Untangle Your Thoughts: How to Quiet the ADHD Mental Noise and Finally Take Action
• Alan P. Brown, Where Did All My Time Go?! Identify Your Time Leaks, Plug 'Em, and Have More Time Every Day

Register free for the ADHD Awareness Expo

Keep moving,
Amy