FOT: New Help for ADHD Emotions
Over the past fifteen years there’s been an explosion of interest in the emotional impact of ADHD.
That’s great. Except a lot of what I’ve seen written about it I don’t like.
For example, Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the premier researchers and educators on ADHD, now retired, coined the term “Deficient Emotional Self-Regulation” (DESR) as one of the core characteristics of ADHD. Honestly, when I hear the term “deficient emotional self-regulation,” it makes me want to scream.
Or punch somebody.
Just kidding.
Personally, I think that Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD, is a much more accurate diagnosis of what actually triggers most of the emotional overreactions in people with ADHD.
But that’s another article.
On the other hand, it’s not easy being so emotional. Worse, it really sucks when outbursts mess up your life, especially when you realize later that you overreacted.
But if there’s anything worse than being emotionally distraught, it’s having someone patronizingly tell you that you shouldn’t be so upset, and “all you need to do is learn to control yourself.”
Don’t you agree? But here’s the funny thing: Though we all can sense that it doesn’t work when other people tell us that, somehow we still get the idea that we can do that to ourselves. The truth is, doing it to ourselves doesn’t work much better, no matter how many articles or books suggest that it can.
Here’s where Focusing-oriented therapy comes in. With FOT, you don’t tell yourself to change and become more rational. Not even kindly and gently, using your nicest and most patient kindergarten-teacher inner voice.
Instead, you learn how to listen to and really hear the part of you that is feeling so upset. You even learn how to turn toward it, understand it, appreciate it and give it lots and lots of company and empathy.
This is a very interesting mental trick! But all it takes is to realize that your upset feelings are just a part of you. Maybe a big and very loud part of you, but still only a part of you. You – the whole of you – can listen to them without completely identifying with them and “becoming” them.
It’s a process called dis-identification.
A Very Dreadful Daddy-Morning
I know this probably sounds very confusing, so let me tell you the time when I discovered just how simple and practical this technique really is.
It was the early ‘90s, and my wife and I were going to a five-day conference being held at a retreat center in the Colorado Rockies, taking along with us our older daughter, who was then 11 months old. Getting there meant driving an hour to the airport, flying with a squirmy baby on our laps from Baltimore to Denver, then renting a car and driving another two-and-a-half hours. Altogether the trip took about 11 hours. It was 10:30 p.m. by the time we were fully settled in our room with our daughter in a crib. My wife and I were absolutely exhausted.
But my daughter, bless her, woke up the next morning exactly as she always did, at 6:30 a.m.
It was my turn to take care of her, so I managed to put clothes on us and walk down to the cafeteria where breakfast was being served.
Obviously I wasn’t going to get mad at my daughter, but I was not in a good frame of mind. I was, to put it mildly, a mess.
I already knew from Inner Relationship Focusing how to “be with” a part of myself without “becoming” it. But I had never done it before by myself or in this kind of situation. But as I sat there with my daughter, who was fortunately, happily sitting in a highchair eating Cheerios, I decided to try it.
I half-closed my eyes and got in touch with the “part of me” that was angry, upset and distressed. As you can imagine, that wasn’t very hard to do. I sure could feel “angry-upset-me.” But I didn’t let myself get overtaken by “him.” Instead, in my mind’s eye I put him in front of me. He was looking at me. He looked awful.
“You’re upset,” I said to him.
“You’re damn right I am,” he answered.
“You’re really tired.”
“Yes, I am so so so tired.”
“You don’t want to be doing this.”
“God no.”
“I hear you.”
“I want to go back to sleep.”
“Of course you do.”
“But I can’t.”
“I know.”
“But I’m so f**king tired.”
“I really hear you. You’re so, so f**king tired.”
“Yes I am.”
This went on for a good five, maybe even ten minutes. “He” kept telling me how tired, frustrated and unhappy he was, and how maybe the whole trip was a really really stupid idea, and I kept listening to “him,” repeating back his words and letting “him” know that I totally understood and accepted how “he” was feeling.
And then, you know what?
Suddenly it was all over.
I was still bone-tired, but all the “charge” had gone out of me. I didn’t feel angry or upset or distraught. I just felt tired.
My daughter, whom I had been watching the whole time, had no idea all of this was going on in me. She finished eating, I finished eating, and I picked her up and carried her back to our room.
I ended up having a really good first day at the conference. I was tired as hell, but I conversed, met new people, and came across (I’m fairly certain) as a pretty nice normal guy. I didn’t even take a nap.
You (Yes, You) Can Learn to Do this
I’ve taught this technique to lots of parents of small children, especially of poor sleepers. But it’s useful in tons of situations when you feel triggered and ready to lose your cool.
Can you imagine what could happen if you didn’t get stuck in overwhelmingly intense emotions?
The best cure for painful and distressing emotions is self-love. Not a love that excuses and justifies emotional overreactions, but a love that wraps its arms around an inner hurt and says, “I know. I know. I know. And you’re not alone anymore.”
Doesn’t that sound like a good thing to be able to do?