ADHD – A Personal Walkthrough & Guide

I’m sure most of us have notions of how we “should” do certain things, or what we “should” be able to handle. Sometimes, these concepts might drive us forward, but very often they unintentionally hold us back from better solutions.

This week, for instance, I’ve been cat-sitting my cat, Carlos.

What do I mean by “cat-sitting my own cat”? Well.. technically, I no longer live with him since I moved out last year.. (and technically, he’s my brother’s cat), but as far as I’m concerned, Carlos is still my cat!! 😸

I’ve had to cat-sit a handful of times since I moved out, and as much as I love to see Carlos, I always get stressed out whenever I have to cat-sit him.

I keep feeling like I really should go to feed him during the day and get the cat-sitting off my to-do list early on so the rest of my day is open. Plus, if I go out during the day, maybe I can even get a couple of errands done while I’m out. It seems like what a productive, responsible person would do, after all. Right?

Unfortunately, this brilliant, responsible plan hasn’t been working out all that well for me.

I’ll try to figure out when will be the best time to leave the house to feed him, and suddenly I feel completely lost about when I should do anything else. Very quickly I start to feel trapped by overthinking and indecision. I start thinking about all the little things to consider in my plans like trying to avoid rush hour, when dinner will be, if I should wait till my laundry is done before I go, making sure I have plenty of time to get back before any potential meetings, if it’s gonna rain later, etc. I start to freeze up as I lose my momentum, before I know it, anxiety has crept in. 😓

Instead of being productive by taking care of the most out-of-the-way item on my to-do list early on, I kinda lose my ability to get anything done. And I feel like a bit of a failure for not being able to act on this very responsible plan.

So, how does something as simple as driving ten minutes to go feed and hang out with my own cat cause me this much stress and anxiety? Well, last week, as I was starting to dread my impending cat-sitting responsibilities.. I realized my insistence on how I “should” be doing it was what made me so stressed. 

When I stopped to think about it, I realized that it’s never been easy for me to just pop out to go do something during the middle of the day (especially for something with no set time). And I remembered that I always get analysis paralysis when I try to do a bunch of errands in one outing. So while, in theory, knocking-out my cat-sitting responsibilities in the middle of the day was a productive idea, of course it was stressing me out!

Following this little revelation, I decided to let go of this notion of what I “should” do and I concluded that my new plan will be to just go feed Carlos every day, after dinner. I don’t generally have any time-constraints to worry about in the evenings, there’s no meetings, appointments, and no dinner to miss. Plus, there’s no real opportunity to overthink when I should go. I just go over after dinner.

I’ve been following this plan for the past few days, and it’s been a HUGE help. I just put the cat-sitting out of my mind during the day, go about my business as usual, and then in the evenings I go and spend some quality time with Carlos. 😊

Although I couldn’t see it for the better part of a year, the solution to my problem was rather obvious in hindsight; If my plan to feed the cat in the middle of my day was stressing me out.. then that’s not a plan I should use.

Sometimes, we don’t see the arbitrary rules and expectations being placed on us (by ourselves and others) and we’re convinced that we have to do something in a way that’s difficult for us.

Maybe it’s expecting ourselves to set aside an entire Saturday to clean the whole house (instead of letting ourselves do little bits of cleaning when we’re feeling it) and end up always putting off doing any cleaning as a result. 

Maybe we feel like we ought to sit down and work on our homework until it’s done, (instead of considering that we’re perfectly allowed to take some breaks) and subsequently, we keep delaying when we start because we figure we’ll be stuck doing homework for the rest of the day whether we start at 10am or 10pm.

Or maybe, we have this idea that we ought to go and cat-sit and maybe even run some errands during the day when that expectation only seems to cause us stress. 

The Re-cat

Sometimes, we get so lost in the weeds of “should’s” and “ought to’s” that we can’t find that path of least resistance. 

So, the next time you find yourself stressing out over a metaphorical “cat-sitting” situation, try and take a step back, consider your needs and your strengths, and see if you can’t find a new, more you-friendly approach.

Who knows?

You might just find yourself a purr-fect solution. 😏