last night i couldn’t sleep. my body was tired but my brain clearly didn’t get the memo. she stayed up all night, riding the train of forgotten thoughts, while i kept shifting and turning trying to wear myself back to sleep. that didn’t work. 3am, i gave in and went through them. i found a thought that wasn’t mine, corrected it, and thought… okay, if that’s not me, then what does it mean? what is it trying to tell me? i got down to the root of it, did my little midnight research and wrote in my notes what i’d do in the morning.
4am
another thought. this one was me. it told me not to go back on my word, so again, i wrote down what i’d do the next day.
5am
i could hear birds chirping outside my window and somewhere in between all that, i realised that with adhd i tend to circle thoughts that reinforce my emotions. e.g. “i can’t do xyz” and it becoming a limiting belief. the process is me trying to recognise my emotional truth in the moment because i believe the emotions are valid but at the same time, i understand words are spells and overtime they rewire your beliefs and perspectives so i wasn’t sure how to balance between those two feelings. i think its a really important split to notice.
with adhd, this gets more intense because at times, emotions can feel absolute even when they’re temporary states of nervous system overload, not accurate predications of capability.
reframing my thoughts
something i did almost instinctively was to reframe my thoughts.
“my brain doesn’t work this way, so i need a different approach” “this method doesn’t fit my brain, but there is a way that does”
what i was building in this reframe is a replacement for the adhd default of:
difficulty = inability to difficulty = try a different method or approach.
in doing this i’m reminding myself that difficulty ≠ inability.
feeling vs overthinking
it also links to what i’ve been practicing recently - actually feeling my emotions instead of analysing them and turning them into a story. i think that’s the difference between processing emotions and ruminating on them. when i feel it properly, it moves through my body and leaves. when i analyse it, it stays stuck in my head and loops. the emotion is always valid but that doesn’t mean its always true. the story is always optional.
emotions aren’t thoughts
feeling an emotion is a bodily thing. it’s time limited (unless chronic) and it moves. you can think a thought but we are meant to feel our emotions. that’s not to say you can’t analyse your emotions, you can analyse for clarity then let go but once you turn it into a story, it creates this mental loop. when you turn an emotion into a narrative like: “i can’t do this/this always happens” your brain is trying to do something protective. it wants certainty and predictions and adhd brains especially tend to jump into this because this amount of overwhelm or uncertainty can feel physically uncomfortable so the mind tries to solve it by explaining it. but that comes with a cost, the emotion stays activated, it keeps the story alive and the body never gets the chance to complete the cycle. the cycle of an emotion is meant to last 90 seconds. if you constantly move from emotion, to story, to identity, you will stay in a loop. where as, if you move from emotion, to sensation, to allowance and then release, you shift from an identity to a state.
and this is why you don’t attach your identity to your emotions because emotions are a part of you, not the whole you. they come and they go. your identity is something core to you. core not solid, it is very much fluid and can change whenever you want it to, but it’s more stabilised than an emotion. emotions are more like the weather and identity is more like climate patterns but also climates can shift over time. when you start treating your emotions like an identity, you get statements like “ i am this [feeling]” when its supposed to be “i’m experiencing [emotion] or i feel [emotion]”
emotions are transient internal and external experiences that’s why they’re all over the place compared to an identity which is organised from repeated pattern and behaviour over time.
(knowing how to actually feel your emotions is a completely separate conversation. if i ever talk about how i actually feel my emotions properly, i’ll do another post)
the fog in my head lifted when i came to this conclusion. that these small linguistic shifts and healthy reframes keep your sense of self from being constantly rewritten by temporary states.
6am
i searched: how to fall asleep if your brains awake, some tiktok related scrolls away i realised yh this isn’t working so i played a puzzle game on my phone, figured if i exhaust my brain she’ll eventually get tired and it worked by 6am i fell asleep.
sometimes i don’t really know how to transition between winding down and actually sleeping, my brain just stays on like it missed the cue or something. a fortnight ago i ended the day writing a film review and somehow my dreams turned into the review continuing, scene by scene, picking up extra nuances like my brain decided to run a director’s cut. i didn’t realise how overstimulated i was just from watching a film. maybe i need some kind of wind down buffer or something, but even then there are still nights where the thoughts just don’t stop, they’re not even negative… i’d just also really love to sleep you know. #tiredbutwired
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I relate to this so much! Sometimes I stay up late because my body is tired but my mind just can’t relax. It can get so frustrating