#ADHD can be impacted by hormonal cycles for women and those with menstrual cycles. Estrogen and dopamine are linked, so when estrogen is high, the dopamine is flowing (I’m speaking in layperson’s terms of course, don’t @ me). It’s highest when you ovulate mid-cycle. So like the first two weeks of anyone’s cycle are usually when they have more “self-discipline”, or willpower, or executive function, or what have you… following through on tasks, routines and habits are easier. Emotional regulation is easier.

In the wake of a medication shortage, strategies and techniques to manage your #adhd become even more vital (and harder to implement, it’s a catch-22, I know!).

Here are some of my most foundational non-medication #ADHD management techniques:

🧵 1. Your brain is an organ and like other organs, will behave better with adequate sleep, nutrition and hydration. To that, for the ADHD brain, we can add “get vigorous body movement”, “have some fun”, and “practice presence”. Again - easier said than done, I know. Stick with me.

Hello. Would you like a hilarious #adhd story? I’ve got one.

My car randomly broke down the other night and I had a hair appointment today. My housemates picked up my kid from school and I ubered home.

Upon arriving home, it was sunny and everyone was in the yard doing work. “How fun!” I said to myself, “I’ll join in and finally cut up that big ass pile of branches in the front yard that fell during the last windstorm”.

We don’t talk enough about the connection between sleep apnea & men’s health, especially as it relates to #ADHD. While women can suffer from sleep apnea, it’s like a 3:1 or 5:1 ratio for men:women affected by it. So, it’s more prevalent in men. It’s *also* comorbid with ADHD, meaning you’re more at risk for OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) if you have ADHD.

I need to take a hot second here to talk about a real special kind of neurodivergent grief:

The grief of recognizing that most people don’t socialize, interact, or see the world the way you do, and that you sorta CAN’T just “be like them”. I’ve been called naive, I’ve been told time and time again that my way of handling situations and trying to relate to people will only bring me heartache, and it often has. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I’m honest and vulnerable and authentic.

As a parent with #adhd, I have a lot of guilt & shame about not being able to show up as best i'd like for my child all the time. One area I noticed I was lacking was communicating values to my young child, and this was REALLY important to me. Here's what I did: Whenever something would spark my mind in the direction of values i'd like to teach my child, I made a note in my phone. Lately the system that's working well for me is the Reminders app on the iPhone because I can organize it into distinct lists.

all righty, I said I was going to do a tweet thread on skin picking / Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours & #ADHD and I am and here it is. Disclaimer: I'm not a medical expert and this is not medical advice. A lot of what is going in this thread came from the book "The Hair Pulling Problem: A Complete Guide to Trichtillomania" by Fred Penzel, a VERY DRY 600-ish pages I read so that you don't have to.

Here's a thread of all the #adhd symptoms & related traits I had as a child that were completely and totally missed: #1. I was gifted. I was reading and writing very big words at a young age, I got nothing but straight A's from kindergarten through to university in any kind of language or english class but I was also unbalanced, getting C's or D's in math.

We need to talk about the connection between #ADHD and shameful body things. Because SO MANY PEOPLE I know with ADHD do or have in the past struggled with body things that are Embarrassing or Shameful. I mean, rotten-teeth, infected-picked-wound, real-bad-yeast-infection stuff. there's enough things about being an adult with ADHD that make you CONSTANTLY feel like you're not a "real" adult or a "good" adult, but I can think of none more insidious than the shame that comes along with either neglecting or messing up your corporeal meat suit.

Ok so probably pharmacists and doctors think I’m drug seeking when I’m out of my meds because when I’m out of my #ADHD meds and can’t/don’t know how to get more I’m:

-highly distressed which reads like aggression
- talking fast, interrupting cause im panicking -emotionally dysregulated
-very disorganized and can’t remember things / coming off as all over the place

All of these are ways I act when I’m both unmedicated and distressed

Good morning! Just a gentle reminder that rejection sensitivity and quick anger / irritability are a part of emotional dysregulation, which is an aspect of #ADHD not listed in the DSM and commonly overlooked by physicians! This time of year can really bring up the feels so I thought I’d remind you that if you:

- are often told you’re “too sensitive”
- are obsessing about everything you said at a party, dissecting it and getting convinced everyone hates you

I was just minding my own business when I saw y’all tweeting about the Twitpocalypse so if anything terrible happens to Twitter here are 5 things I want you to remember: 1. You, as a person with #ADHD, have so much worth, value, heart and meaning. It’s not easy to have ADHD sometimes! But I want you to remember that you deserve as much care and gentleness as you give others.

Today was one of those great days where everything came together; I had only a small amount of obligatory tasks, my #ADHD wasn’t raging and it actually felt like I had *time*. I could move slow and not be overwhelmed cause I didn’t have much to do. I’ve got spare time to putter. Some days, I’d be crawling out of my skin with boredom. Other days I might be overwhelmed. It can be a hard balance to strike because adhd really does give you a variable capacity. It takes time to get into the swing of structuring options

OK let me tell you a story about an #ADHD thing that happens to me and maybe you. It's when you slowly plan and build up to doing a thing but then your secret brain plan gets interrupted and you ABSOLUTELY LOSE IT. I find this most often happens to me on a day off but not always - sometimes there's a thing I need or want to do. Say, paint a picture. But for some reason I don't feel like I can paint the picture *now*, but I KNOW I have a free evening tonight at like 5 pm.

Did you know that when you have #ADHD, a part of your brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex sort of.. doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to? According to Dr. Russell Barkley, the ACC helps us organize our behaviour toward future social goals. So, it helps us to inhibit impulsive action in the service of long term goals. Ie, not oversharing about a wart on your butt to a group of people you’re trying to befriend.

You know what I’m really self conscious about? The amount of content I can consume. Right now everyone is posting like albums they listened to and books they read in 2021 and every year, what I took in was a fraction of this. Especially music, as a musician I feel like I just live in constant imposter syndrome about how little new music I get exposed to. Books at least make more sense because they take time to listen to/read. Same with shows and movies.

You know what is one of my least favourite #adhd traits? How challenging it is for me to shift gears when a plan gets changed, no matter how legitimately. This is an aspect of managing my ADHD which I think the people around me don’t understand how impactful it is. And disclaimer:

before people get in the comments going “did you know that’s actually an autism thing?”

1. I’m about to talk about cognitive rigidity & emotional dysregulation which BOTH neurodivergencies have

2. I do not meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis

Oh. I forgot that this weird hideyhole closet in my garage existed and…. I MEAN IM A LITTLE RELIEVED BUT ALSO NOW MORE MYSTIFIED ABOUT WHO CAME IN MY YARD THROUGH THE NEIGHBOURS YARD AND WENT UNDER MY DECK AND WHY CAUSE I AINT BEEN IN MY BACKYARD IN LIKE A MONTH

I just saw the most amazing tip about surviving domestic abuse in an ADHD group of all places. I’ll share it here, let’s get a thread going: what are your best tips for surviving in an abusive relationship? (before you can leave) Their tip:

“a few minutes before my husband would come home, I’d spray windex by the door and leave the vacuum or a bucket out. He would then say “hmm smells clean in here” and sometimes not spend the rest of the evening picking me apart”

Fucking GENIUS

Hello. If you’re sitting around naked in your bathroom with the shower running as per my last 2 tweets, now you get to maybe just stick your legs in the shower. Or heck, you’re already naked right next to the shower, might as well jump in amirite? If this feels really awful and it STILL feels too hard to get in the shower, grab a washcloth, towel or even a clean-ish T-shirt, wet it in the running shower and just give yourself a quick rundown on the smelly bits. You’re already naked anyway, might as well.

Sometimes I think that the reason people with #ADHD are obsessed with organizing tools is that being constantly interrupted by your own disorganization is SO FRUSTRATING like, a lot of my clients are OBSESSED w organizing tools. Journals, planners, productivity books, etc. I remember being like this too; I particularly was drawn to physical/spatial organizing tools (and still am) but for years I lived in a state of frustration that none worked