57. The Power of Anchoring with ADHD - Options Over Tasks
Summary
This episode explores how ADHD and wandering minds can make “I don’t wanna” feelings so strong that even writing a dreaded obligation down feels difficult because, in doing so, we are admitting it exists.
To get over this hurdle, I introduce a foundational skill from the WAVES method called anchoring. This technique allows us to pause and write down what is happening and the pathhs available to us in the now.
We treat these items as options rather than tasks that fill us with overwhelm. When ready, we prepare to “launch” into an action by giving ourselves the choice of where to give our attention in the moment.
We end with a reflective piano piece called “Caregiver.”
Transcript
But if I write it down, that means I have to do it.
One of the struggles of ADHD, wandering minds and beyond is that it can be terribly complex navigating the, I don't want to feelings, for example. Maybe we get caught in the sense of where they come from, or more often than not, we're trying to outsmart them. Of course, that can lead to its own troubles. So what do we do?
"I don't wanna" feelings can run deep. Have a listen to episode nine [https://rhythms-of-focus.captivate.fm/episode/i-dont-wanna-and-the-practice-of-agency] to get a sense of what they can be about. One place they crop up is in even admitting that something exists. A report, the taxes, whatever it is, can become so dreaded that even writing them down becomes a terrifying enterprise. If we write it down that means we would admit to ourselves that there's this thing to do.
As odd as that might seem, it's simply human. We can expand that notion to the world of therapy, for example, if we give voice to a problem, maybe we're making it worse. I think we inherently, naturally gut level, know, that as we pay attention to something, some emotion, something that's stirring the back of mind, barely cresting into consciousness, we start to give it a form.
Words, thoughts themselves are this cresting of the emotions, this consolidation, crystallizing of them into our minds. "Did I just say something dumb in that conversation? Well, if I don't call it out, maybe no one will notice."
The same idea happens within us, even if there's no one to see, but ourselves.
One of the foundational skills in the WAVES approach to practicing ADHD, is that of anchoring. It's a simple pen and paper technique that I'll give you the rudiments of right now.
It's probably something you've done before, but didn't realize that there were some unwritten rules that were around it, and so it maybe faded out and you wondered what happened to it. You may have felt that success, but then it was fleeting, illusionary, like so many others.
But once you know its rules, well, then you can start to practice it. And you can use it at any time. You don't have to use it. It's there when you feel like it. It's particularly helpful when feeling scattered, confused, exhausted, really any negative emotion really. Or even a positive one if you wanna feel like I wanna focus a little more strongly in this direction or the other and not get lost on some rabbit trail.
So here's the technique:
First is to pause. Probably the hardest bit of all of this.
Secondly, if you have a pad of paper, you can use that as this anchor. If you, uh, don't already have this pad of paper around, you can, start a new one. It could be the back of an envelope if you like that.
Next, write in some attempt to acknowledge what your options are of this moment. Grounding yourself in the reality of where you are now. And we're doing this without following through on doing them.
You might have an idea, you might have a feeling, but consider any of these possibilities:
* One, what are you doing in this moment? If you're multitasking, what are those multiple tasks? Or maybe you're spending time with someone at the moment, you can write the option to pay attention to them.
* Secondly, what might be pulling at you? For example, maybe there's something you're hoping to remember to do. Examples might be something you want to do, something you might impulsively do. Maybe there's something that's gnawing at you, something you feel like you need to do.
I like to use the mnemonic wind. WIND: Want, Impulse, Need and Drift or Do Nothing. So these ideas that are in your mind in this moment might feel like you are about to brainstorm, but this is not brainstorming.
Brainstorming is where you're associating. You're connecting one idea to the next, pulling to mind what might be there lurking there, but you're connecting one thing after the next saying, oh yeah, there's this I can do and that I can do it, et cetera.
Well, you could do that if you want, but uh, I might look at that as a form of in indulgence, if you will. It's in the meditational way of speaking. You're inviting a process to tea. To manage this, to avoid the brainstorming part of it, rather than feel like you have to hold back or something, you can write down the option to brainstorm.
Now that leaves then whatever is on our mind in this moment, including the option to brainstorm. Something else might come to mind, like something that you don't want to do right now. Something that doesn't make sense to do right now.
Well, you could write that down on the side. Maybe cordon it off and say, okay, that's for later. Maybe you're wondering what's on my to-do list. Lemme go there first and take a look. Well, that'd be something of an indulgence too.
Rather than dive there, you could write down consult to-do list. Now that's an option. The idea is that you are consulting your own mind. Now you might wonder what to do if something else comes to mind, something to develop, something to get into. Again, give those a separate space if you like.
A Today List. Sometimes you have one to two things that come to mind. Sometimes five or ten, maybe more. But at some point you've reflected where your mind is in this moment, and that's the moment you've anchored. Now there's a next phase to this if you'd like.
So now that you've anchored, there's also this idea of launching. So anchor and launch. So we get to this fourth step, which is where launch begins, which is at any point, circle an option that you feel makes sense to be with now and attempt to be with that thing you've circled.
And of course, you might wonder, what if I wander off? I'd be willing to bet that you'd wander off even the moment that you've circled it. Say, oh yeah, I'll come back to that. That's part of it.
What you can do, if and when you catch yourself wandering, I should say, return to the beginning and consider adding where you wandered off as a new option on your anchor pad. What that does is then it helps you to align yourself with your intentions.
It might take one time, two times. Might take several times, but somewhere things start to align. Lastly. When that anchor no longer represents the now, and this is important, and this is one of the places you may have gone off the rails with this that it didn't work out for you. Feel free to add things, cross things off.
Make them once again reflect the now and once it does not reflect the now, get rid of it, archive it, discard it, trash it, whatever makes sense. If there's something important on there that you wanna remember, okay.
Where do you trust that you would be able to come back to that? Maybe you just title it differently and say, this is an important thing, and you put that off to the side somewhere. That would be part of another type of practice.
Figuring out longer task lists and communicating with future you at a longer distance than what we're doing here now. Whatever it is, if that paper is no longer representative of the now, your mind in this moment, it's no longer an anchor.
Now this all might seem simple, and it is in some ways, but so is meditation, which in particular for wandering minds can be quite difficult. Fortunately, I find this much easier than the typical rest your mind on your breath type of meditation.
But one of the major muscles that are practiced in this is that as you're writing something down, here in this anchoring process, you're doing so as options, not tasks, and this is one of the important muscles to exercise.
A wandering mind tends to be zoomed in the periphery, the short term memory, that's all in short supply. Working memory, what we play with in this moment is in full blast. As a result, thoughts can pass by and we know they're short-lived and we'll lose them quickly.
If you've ever used a microscope, you can understand. If you see something, it's like, oh, better not lose it. The nature of the mind being a lens itself is that you forget that you've lost something. And as a result, we tend to hold onto things, jump from one thing to the next in near instant calculation of, do I have the momentum? Do I have the motivation to do it? Is this more important than what I'm doing? Or it might all boil down to this is shinier on fire and there's seemingly no thought process.
You may even find yourself there without having realized it. So when you do catch a thought, it immediately becomes this burden. It's this, I have to do this while it's on my mind. But because it can be so heavy, this affront to sense of agency, we might decide well, maybe I can let it go. If it's important enough, it'll come back to me.
Whether by floating back again into mind or by urgency of a deadline or somebody reminds you, whether we do it or not isn't the issue. It's that we're forced to make this decision then and there.
Because of that zoomed in nature of the mind, further weighing down our ability to make a decision, that pressure of time makes it that much worse. And this can become the majority of our experience when it comes to decisions. Particularly with those things that we might be avoiding.
But with this anchoring process, the idea of transitioning from task to option lifts that burden, it's a practice. It's new, it's not familiar, but with some attempt at it, it becomes familiar and it becomes something that's not required. It's no longer a thing you have to do. It's a suggestion at the moment, but later on it becomes, oh, this helps me.
Another way to think about anchoring is like creating a menu for this moment, only this moment. By writing the options down. That short term memory, that part of us that's trying to hold on so tightly to the multiple possibilities, that probability cloud of the next, that muscle can now relax.
And the energy that's now available because of that relaxation is now there to help make the decision. It's there to help consider the option as an option rather than hold onto it for fear that it's going to run away.
So as a takeaway, maybe try anchoring, pause with a piece of paper, reflect on where the mind is in this moment, and don't forget to trash it, destroy it, get rid of it. Archive it when it no longer reflects the now. And further. Can you feel the difference of creating options over tasks?
Several episodes ago I described the spirit and practice of care. It's one of those episodes people will bring up to me regularly saying it touched something. It's episode 41 [https://player.captivate.fm/episode/38a3b2e1-b13f-49cf-8b0a-c02c27726554/] if you wanna check it out.
Care is not simple. It pulls on us every which way. Whether we're caring for the work in front of us or the people in our lives, we're limited in our resources and that can have its own effects, its own emotional reverberations through us. The following piece is called Caregiver.
It's an attempt to reflect that melancholy that we might find ourselves in when, in that position. So I hope you enjoy it. I hope it's something that provides a point of reflection.
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