00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;09
Unknown
Welcome to another episode of the ADHD Families Podcast. I am so happy that you are here today. We are building on my last solo episode that we did about using your energy as currency. Today we're going to be looking at those little things, those little minor things that suck your energy throughout the day. Because I think it's very important to be intentional about where energy goes, how we can save time, save if it when you have a family that has ADHD in the mix, we are sensitive to the world.
00;00;30;09 - 00;00;46;14
Unknown
We are living extreme live. There is low frustration, tolerance, you know, emotional regulation issues, and we need to make sure that we are very careful about where our energy goes. So let's get to it.
00;00;46;17 - 00;01;12;14
Unknown
Hello. I'm Sharon Cullen, and you are listening to the ADHD Families Podcast. I am a mom of three beautiful boys with ADHD. I love being a mom, but my home life was absolute chaos and the stress of daily life had a terrible effect on my health. My husband had so many horror filled stories of growing up with ADHD that I decided I wanted to change the experience for my little boys.
00;01;12;16 - 00;01;45;21
Unknown
So I got to work and I systematically changed and streamlined my family's lives to suit the ADHD brain. And now that I have my family on track, I want to help yours. Do you want a life with your beautiful kids that is more functional, fun and full of joy? Let's explore together the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of raising kids with ADHD.
00;01;45;24 - 00;02;12;04
Unknown
So in ADHD coaching term, we call minor irritations toleration. So what is a toleration? So toleration is things that we are putting up with or allowing to hang around. They drain your energy, irritate you, and distract you from focusing on the important things in your life. You'll know it's a toleration because when you spot it, it feels heavy or you feel slightly overwhelmed.
00;02;12;07 - 00;02;39;12
Unknown
Now, a really great analogy is to picture a toleration, like a little rocking issue. Yes, you can absolutely still walk, but it's irritating and it sucks a little bit of your energy. And when you have ADHD, the price that you can pay for these toleration in terms of energy can be very, very expensive. And not just for people with ADHD, for people that are caring for those people or people that are living very extreme lives like walking.
00;02;39;12 - 00;03;05;07
Unknown
I would say it's a very fine line that we're walking between exhaustion and burnout. We walk a very fine line. So we need to make sure that we are very intentional about our energy and what we do with these toleration. So I'm going to give you some examples of our energy, of our toleration, and I want to make sure that you know, you are doing a good job of identifying our toleration.
00;03;05;07 - 00;03;27;13
Unknown
Once you see them, you can't unsee them. And we're going to look at how we handling those in a minute as well. So let's I'll give you an example of a toleration that I have. So I walk up and down my staircase multiple times a day, and every time I'm on my staircase, there is a little handprint on the white wall.
00;03;27;15 - 00;03;49;05
Unknown
And I look at the handprint and I go, Oh, I've got to clean that off. It's just a mild irritation. And by the time I walk up to the staircase, to the kitchen, where I could get my cleaning supplies, I forget about it and it's already gone. And then later on, I walk down the staircase and I go, Oh, I've got to clean that off.
00;03;49;07 - 00;04;07;21
Unknown
And then I forget about it again, and then I won't up the staircase. I've got to clean that off. And it's just a minor irritation or point of friction. Now, if it was serious enough, I would remember and I would get to the top and I would clean it off straight away. But because this is a mild irritation, it just saps a little bit of my energy.
00;04;07;21 - 00;04;27;02
Unknown
But you can see how it accumulates over time, every time that I'm going up and down that staircase. You know, I'm noticing and it's irritating me. That is a perfect example of a toleration. It's a minor rock in your in your shoe. That's that's a bit of energy. Another example that I use all the time is, you know, that decision fatigue example.
00;04;27;09 - 00;04;51;13
Unknown
So it might be something like, you know, when you go to get your cup, you go to make yourself a cup of coffee and there's one mug that you prefer. And so every time you open that cupboard, you're looking for your one mug. And if it's not there, it's mildly irritating if you use another one. All right. But you know what we would do if we were handling toleration is we'd actually just make them all the same.
00;04;51;19 - 00;05;07;21
Unknown
We'd look at why that is important, why you like that mouth. And we would get all the monks to be the same. So you only have your favorite mug, so you're not looking. You don't have to do the looking and the decision of making of choosing another mullet. That one's not there. Or even the act of energy of looking for that favorite moth.
00;05;07;23 - 00;05;34;28
Unknown
So this there's power in eliminating some of our toleration. And we really want to eliminate decision fatigue as much as possible. I love providing my kids choice. I think choice is important when it's you know, autonomy is important for kids with ADHD, for people with ADHD in general. But when it's things that don't matter with things that are just sucking energy, I love to eliminate it.
00;05;35;02 - 00;06;01;05
Unknown
Just make it as easy as possible. So just have them all the same color mugs all the same. Try and keep everything as if that's something that's not important to you. Streamline the stuff that you can and then provide choice for the things that matter to your child and the things that matter to you. So let's talk about stress resilience and low frustration tolerance.
00;06;01;08 - 00;06;22;19
Unknown
So I always think of stress resilience like a rubber band, right? So we stretch it to the maximum capacity and then we let it go. So stress happens. We stretch the band out as if to see if you're pulling a rubber band with both your hands. And then we relax and then we, we, we stretch it out again and then we relax.
00;06;22;21 - 00;06;45;19
Unknown
And that's how it kind of goes, right? But the thing is that people with ADHD have less. Their rubber band is a little bit shorter, so they're stretching it, but they don't have as far to go. They are all like, you know, it doesn't take long for them to be at the capacity. Now, the reason that fueling with colorations is important is you stretch the rubber band to full stretch.
00;06;45;22 - 00;07;14;24
Unknown
Now, add a pebble tissue, right? It becomes when you're on full stretch and you've got less stress, resilience and you put a toleration in there as well. It adds to its intensity. It adds to your lowers, your stress resilience. So we need to make sure that we have a strategy for dealing with toleration and adding more resilience to our rubber band.
00;07;14;27 - 00;07;33;10
Unknown
So there's a few things that we can do when we notice a toleration. And I really love for you to provide for you to create a list in your phone of just things that irritate you. You walk around your house. It's not a to do list. It's a mild toleration list, right? So you're going things that are things that bother me, things that irritate me about my day.
00;07;33;10 - 00;07;55;05
Unknown
It can be part of your morning routine. It can be a mark on the wall like me. It can be anything that just mildly causes you those moments of friction, a time of day, a phone call with a person, it can be anything. And then we get to decide how we're going to deal with it. So there's six options with dealing with toleration so we can do it.
00;07;55;08 - 00;08;23;09
Unknown
This is the easiest one. Do it. Take care of it. Now, for something like the mark on the wall, we do something about it. We eliminate it off our list. So it might be something like, you know, if a noise is irritating you getting those noise canceling headphones, we we create a plan to eliminate that toleration. It might be about hiring a handyman to get through those lists of things that bother you as you're walking around your house, you might be able to delegated to get someone else to fix it for you.
00;08;23;09 - 00;08;41;14
Unknown
It might be you might be able to add a family member, a handyman, or someone to fix that toleration for you so you don't have to go past that point of friction every day. You might be able to delete it or dump it, so get that toleration off your list. So maybe when you write all your toleration is down, you go.
00;08;41;14 - 00;08;59;08
Unknown
Actually, you don't. You realize it's not as important as your first thought. And you can actually just get rid of the whole thing. Is something like the example would be the mugs. You've got all these monks that you don't prefer and dumping it and just getting all the same. One is a better solution for you. You can divide it.
00;08;59;14 - 00;09;21;18
Unknown
So sometimes a toleration that feels impossible can be broken down into smaller toleration that can be eliminated. So things like a toleration of your kitchen always being disorganized and not having a system for where you put things back, doing something as simple as breaking it down into one draw at a time or one cupboard at a time can be a great example of dividing a toleration.
00;09;21;18 - 00;09;47;07
Unknown
So you can do date it. So putting it into your calendar so that you have a due date on it. So you've got you're adding that sense of urgency or deadline so that you can know when you have to deal with it. If you can't deal with it straight away, you can accept it. So some toleration is like people you can choose that you notice that there are toleration and you can reframe how you look at them.
00;09;47;12 - 00;10;11;22
Unknown
Perhaps you look at them with that understanding. Perhaps you can reframe how you feel about that relative that makes snarky comments about identity. Maybe you can reframe it as in realizing that hurt people, hurt people, and maybe that realization helps you deal with or accept that toleration, and maybe you can accept that that person's never going to be the way that you want them to be.
00;10;11;22 - 00;10;29;14
Unknown
And that's okay. That's not about you, it's about them. And we can accept it. So I want you to have a think about one toleration that you have, and I'd love you to write either in an email to me at Sharon at the functional family dot com. What you're going to do, are you going to do it and take care of it?
00;10;29;14 - 00;10;59;10
Unknown
Are you going to delegate it? Are you going to delete it or dump it? Are you going to divide it? Are you going to due date it or are you going to accept it, deal with it or accept it? They're our beautiful options for dealing with toleration. And the reason that I want to have a chat to you about this today is a lot of people one of the things that I get probably the most amount of inquiries about is about systems for organize, organizing, household chaos.
00;10;59;12 - 00;11;25;28
Unknown
So organized home organization, decluttering people know that they feel better in a flooded home. They know that they you know, that anxiety is less and they feel better in a clear home, but they're not quite sure how to get there. They're not quite sure where to start or perhaps where to keep it, to keep it going and to get that over that ignition, but also that momentum piece.
00;11;26;00 - 00;12;01;06
Unknown
And so we've got a master class coming up for you. We've created a masterclass. I've got the incredible Narelle King coming in to help us with this. Now, she is a professional organizer. She also has autism and ADHD herself, so she definitely knows how the ADHD brain works and she's going to come in and present a live or a recorded masterclass for you to let you know at some really clear practical strategies on how to create systems that work and how to maintain those systems that work.
00;12;01;06 - 00;12;20;09
Unknown
It's going to be a very practical masterclass. So she's going to be teaching us about simplifying this room by room management and creating those systems in your home to help you stay nice and organized When you have ADHD in the family, we know that it can be a struggle, and I want you to walk away with really practical tools.
00;12;20;09 - 00;12;38;11
Unknown
And she's an incredible lady. So that is on the 4th of October at 8 p.m. Sydney time. And I'd love for you to join us. I'm going to put a link in the bio in here in the notes below so you can have a look and see if you want to join us on that masterclass or get the recording.
00;12;38;13 - 00;13;05;25
Unknown
I hope learning about some of those toleration today and learning about increasing your stress resilience has been helpful today. It's a nice quick episode and that you can make a list of what your toleration are and then decide what you're going to do with those six options of handling those toleration. Because your energy is important. It is very, very important that we're intentional about where we put our energy and protect ourselves from burnout.
00;13;05;25 - 00;13;37;23
Unknown
And I want I want that for you. I want you to be able to have energy in your tank for thing to come up. Thank you for listening to this episode of the ADHD Families Podcast. If you loved it, please share it on your socials. I want this to start a conversation about ADHD. If you want to make this mum do a little happy dance, please leave a review on iTunes if you would like to know more about what we do, check out the functional family dot com.
00;13;37;26 - 00;13;53;16
Unknown
I truly hope that you enjoyed this podcast and you use it to create a wonderful, effective, joyful life with your beautiful children.
