A practice for when you don’t feel enough

Pressing Pause episode 153 A practice for when you don’t feel enough

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, author and writer. Join me as I share the experience of life as a quiet, introverted, sensitive woman diagnosed late with ADHD, and I’ll explore how we can work with our brains to feel more peace, ease and joy.

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After a brief summer break the podcast is back, thank you so much for listening. I never think to mention it but if you enjoy these episodes it would be amazing if you could leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts so that other people who might enjoy Pressing Pause can find it too.

Before we get on with this episode I wanted to let you know that I’m hosting an online workshop on Thursday 18 September specifically focused on how you can become more self-compassionate. There are huge benefits to giving yourself the kindness and compassion that you give to others but I know it can be incredibly hard to do so. There’s a mean girl in your head who loves to snip and snipe at you, point out all the ways you’re failing and disappointing and messing up, how just being you will never be good enough.

It can be easy to think that self-compassion isn’t as important for supporting you with your ADHD challenges as tools and strategies and organisation hacks. But all the top tips in the world won’t help if you’re constantly criticising and berating yourself. When you’re able to give yourself compassion and kindness it allows you to be more accepting of yourself and your ADHD and it helps you to be calmer, more confident and able to manage the complexities of life with more ease and joy.

So this is what we’ll explore in the Be Your Own Best Friend workshop. I’ll share:

• Why we struggle to give ourselves the compassion we give others
• What self-compassion really is
• The incredible benefits of being self-compassionate, particularly to late-discovered ADHDers
• And how to practice self-compassion and become kinder to yourself every day

You’re going to get so much from the workshop and there are two ways you can book your seat. The best way is to become a member of the Quiet ADHD Club where not only do you get to join the workshop, or get the recording if you can’t be there live on 18 September, but you get all the other benefits from being in the Club too. Or if you prefer you can just buy the workshop on its own. Go to quietadhd.com and click on the Be Your Own Best Friend workshop post to find out more. I hope you can join me.

Right then, let’s get to the episode.

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Welcome to episode 153. I’ve been meditating most mornings for well over ten years and well before I knew about my ADHD. I started long ago because I wanted to find a way to calm my whirlwind of a mind, to soothe myself and bring down my stress levels. Along with my daily gratitude journalling it’s probably the most impactful practice I’ve built into my life.

My sweet spot is ten minutes but there have been periods where I’ve meditated for less than five minutes, other times when it’s been 20 minutes and plenty of occasions where I skipped it completely. I’ve gone through phases of following guided meditations, being in silence or chanting out loud.

For the past two or three years I’ve added a message I say out loud to myself at the end of the meditation. It’s a sort of affirmation to round it off and to start the day.

The first line is: “I am enough, whole and complete, just as I am in this moment and always have been, and there is nothing that I, or anyone else, can say or do that will change that.”

When I came up with this line I was completely unaware of my ADHD. But, as I now realise, something within me knew it and knew the message I needed to take on board. It’s what I really wanted to understand and believe, to take it to heart each and every day. And I also now realise that it’s a message so many of us who have gone through decades of our lives not feeling enough while living with unrecognised ADHD need too.

So let’s break it down.

“I am enough, whole and complete” – so the world tells us, in many ways, from many different directions, that we aren’t enough. That we need to behave in the expected way, to be productive, be like this person, do this thing, think this way, feel this way… and only then will we be enough. Only then will we feel like we’re a whole and complete person.

Yet, because we’re each individual human beings AND our brains don’t work in the narrow, neurotypical, prescribed way society says they ought to, we’re never going to measure up and so we’ll never feel enough.

The message is you’re not enough, whole or complete without ticking boxes laid out for you by other people, by society.

When the truth is that you’re enough right now, as I say – “Just as I am in this moment and always have been”. You were born a whole and complete person – yes, your neurodivergence included – and you have been every day since.

You can learn and grow, in fact you’re more likely to because of your insatiable curiosity. But, this is an important but, if you get overwhelmed by too many choices on your to do list you’re still enough.

If you struggle to get yourself to do simple stuff like the washing-up or drinking water you’re still a whole person.

If you get super excited about something and then soon after lose all interest you’re still complete.

If you don’t look, sound, behave or live like others want you to you are still enough, whole and complete.

You were as a little girl, as a teenager, as a young woman and as the person you are now, whatever contradictory messages you were given from the people around you or society at large.

“And there is nothing that I, or anyone else, can say or do that will change that”– it’s a fact that you are enough and it isn’t up for debate. Really, I’m serious.

You can tell yourself that you need to be this or do that and it doesn’t change the fact that you are already enough, whole and complete.

Someone else can say that you should do this or be more that and it still doesn’t change the fact that you are already enough, whole and complete.

You can berate yourself and it still doesn’t change the fact that you are already enough, whole and complete.

Someone else can treat you unkindly and it still doesn’t change the fact that you are already enough, whole and complete.

Believing wholeheartedly that we are enough, whole and complete, just as we are in this moment and always have been, and there is nothing that we, or anyone else, can say or do that will change that is incredibly important.

Because for so many of us this was not a message, an understanding, a belief that we were given when we were younger, when we needed it.

For a moment let those words sink in. What does approaching life from this place allow you to do? How does it open you up?

What would you do if you knew that the result doesn’t affect your intrinsic value and worth as a person?

What would you say? How would you be?

“I am enough, whole and complete, just as I am in this moment and always have been, and there is nothing that I, or anyone else, can say or do that will change that.”

This sentence is not a magic formula for instant self-confidence. It can’t miraculously erase the myriad verbal papercuts you’ve endured through the years when you’ve felt too much and not enough for just being you. But, sitting with this new perspective, repeating and reminding yourself of it regularly is a much kinder, supportive and truer message than you’ve received in the past.

What you say to yourself matters because you’re always listening, even if you’re not fully aware of it. All the mean, critical things you say to yourself soak in so how about you try saying something more supportive for a change? In time, these words can create a real and powerful shift, I know it has for me.

So, when you say out loud to yourself: “I am enough, whole and complete, just as I am in this moment and always have been, and there is nothing that I, or anyone else, can say or do that will change that” how does it feel? What comes up for you? I’d love to know. You can find me at quietadhd.com or on Instagram as @gabrielletreanor or email me [email protected].

And, if you’ve struggled to meditate or think it’s not for you because of ADHD, I have something that might just make a difference. In Exhale, my beginner’s meditation course for overthinkers, there’s no having to sit still or emptying your mind or never getting distracted or spending loads of time on it. Instead there is explanation and practical action so that you can reap the rewards of meditating in just a few minutes. Exhale is free to paid members of the Quiet ADHD Club so, as well as the Be Your Own Best Friend workshop that’s just one more of many reasons to join the Quiet ADHD Club. Go to quietadhd.com to find out more.

Thanks for listening, until next time.