feeling tired and uninspired
posting this before I change my mind and rewrite, again.
For many reasons, my executive functions have barely been functioning in October. Please know that I have sat at my computer to try and write this article every week.
Here’s what I found myself writing instead:
I’m trying to decide whether every time I say “gosh, I’m exhausted” out loud, I’m creating a self-fulfilling prophecy loop. The echoes of everything are feeling too loud lately. Always inundated with internet opinions. I find myself distracted - and worse, creatively blocked and paralysed. Wanting to write, record, film, create… but avoiding the page, microphone, camera, and canvas. I feel smothered by conflicting and constant opinions. Everyone speaks with absolute conviction.
Their way is the right way. There is no other way. Except every other fucking way.
Do this more, buy this now, try this out, eat this recipe, notice this horror.
Try harder, rest more, start today, trust yourself, stop making excuses.Sometimes I feel like the internet is too loud.
So, I stopped.
No new podcast episodes, TikTok videos, SubStack articles, or Instagram posts.
At 9AM, I chuck my phone into jail. Byyyeeeeee. This is a fishing tackle box I bought off Amazon and I think it might be helping to curb the incessant checking. It’s helped me to finish the giant fantasy book ‘The Will of the Many’ by James Islington and restart my Morning Pages ritual from ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. And if you needed the inspiration to create your own digital boundaries, listen to this song.
The Article I Avoided Writing
As an AuDHD woman who experiences the cyclical hellscape known as PMDD or Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, I recently made the controversial choice of removing my birth control. Please know that this is NOT recommended by mental health professionals specialising in ADHD management, so do not take this as advice.
In fact, during most consultations I’ve had it’s been advised to use birth control as a way of managing your hormones and reducing the intensity of shifts. After twelve years though, I’m interesting in a gentle experiment that involves following my natural cycle. Perhaps I will be back writing next month about how truly terrible this idea was, but I’ll only know in hindsight.
If you want to empower yourself with cycle-centric knowledge about your period phases, I highly recommend purchasing Lucy Peach’s ‘Period Queen’ or watching her YouTube TEDx Talk ‘The Power of the Period’.
She’ll show you how to track your cycle, even if it is irregular, and has created bloody (excuse the very intentional pun) brilliant illustrations that outline what to expect from your mood, body, and needs in each phase of your cycle, for example:
Day 1-5ish as your Dream Phase (Winter)
Day 6-13ish as your Do Phase (Spring)
Day 14-20ish as your Give Phase (Summer)
Day 21-29ish as your Take Phase (Autumn)
If you’re in the PMDD club with me, tracking your cycle feels like an essential step towards understanding the ‘why’ of how you’re feeling and sometimes the ‘when’. Taking the birth control out was a risk. Often women who experience PMDD symptoms - like feeling out of control, hopeless, and even extreme anger - are prescribed birth control to lessen the intensity of our hormonal rollercoaster.
You know who is more likely to experience PMDD, right?
You guessed it. Autistic and ADHD women, including those of us with the combo - AuDHD. So, if you have a cycle and you find that 1-2 weeks before your period there is a monumental shift in your mood, focus, energy, appetite, and general life outlook…
This might be your explanation.
My PMDD Experience
Sensitivity is taken to the extreme. Lights, sounds, demands; they all feel too much. This is when I feel a sudden avoidance of all my creative projects and look for any reason to not sit behind a desk. Neurodivergence can already make life challenging, described often as ‘playing in hard mode’, and PMDD adds a black and white filter to everything. My world loses colour and with it, joy feels like a memory. Gosh, sounds a bit depressing - because it is. My low energy is affected by struggles with insomnia struggles, both with falling and staying asleep.
It’s not a great time and the worst part - it’s every fucking month.
Day 25-31 is the avalanche of apathy, when I want to quit everything and become a rock or other inanimate object. Recently, I made the choice to remove the birth control rod from my arm. This may have played a role in my October hermit mode. Brain fog is a frustrating but common experience. I can get angry, or I can wait for it to disperse.
As an ADHD coach, I know how my executive functioning challenges impact my life, but add PMDD to the mix and it’s worth revisiting what’s actually impacted.
Executive Functioning 101: the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus, regulate, remember, and juggle multiple tasks – aka manage daily life as an adult and get shit done. Everyone's ADHD experience will be different based on lifestyle, upbringing, social and cultural conditioning, gender identity, and overall access to support. Not to mention everyone's unique mix of neurodevelopmental differences, as well as additional health conditions or illnesses. Oh, and the fact that many people are juggling parenting, working full-time, and being a present partner.
Everything above sounds like a pretty integral part of adulthood, right? Compassion is a non-negotiable. Thankfully, now if I need the time and space, I take it without guilt.
I’ll explain but I’ll no longer apologise.
That’s progress.