"Don't you feel satisfied that your windows are so clean now?" It sucked and it sucked and now I don't care. I just remember the sucking.

Hello, I have ADHD and I am also a licensed clinical therapist!

This part sucks. Not gonna lie to you. That said, our brains DO still get rewards, just not from "task completion" (something something, the combination of executive functioning whammy that is task initiation, task break down, task execution, and task transition following completion). Instead our rewards tend to come from one or more of a few areas:

• Food. If you've ever seen the stat that ADHD folks are more likely to have "binge-eating" patterns related to sugar and carbohydrates, this is why! Simple sugars are an easy burst of energy, comfort, flavor, and sometimes even joy! For everyone, but for ADHD folks this may feel really significant because we so rarely have other reward responses
• Drugs. People with unmanaged or undermanaged ADHD are more likely than non-ADHD peers to find themselves reliant on substances like alcohol, weed, cocaine, opioids, etc, due to the way these substances interact with our reward centers. And even once our disabling symptoms are well accommodated, reliance on substances to induce reward responses is still common, and can be essential to the "rest and decompress" process that our autonomic system (the sympathetic nervous system specifically) needs in order to reduce hyperactivity of motor movements, thoughts, or activation/reactivity responses.
• Mentally/emotionally stimulating activities. This one is vague. But that's because they're going to be different for every person, and likely different even within one person's lifetime! For example, right now my "stimulation exposure" activities are to go outside on the deck with my dogs and tear bits of herbs off my garden growths to chew on (combining sunshine, watching my dogs play or playing with then, and fun variable tastes works well for me), or maybe putting on my noise cancelling headphones to my "caberet" or "southern gothic" playlists while I curl up in bed with some hot tea (the caffeine in the tea is regulated when I feel hyperactive, and the heat, steam, and flavor make for great mindfulness opportunities. Also, the music lets me shrink my world to a size that is tolerable for me at that moment), or diving into whatever my latest research project is (who doesn't love a research rabbit hole!)

Sometimes individuals have other things that can trigger rewards for them, and it's always worth making a note when you run across something like that!

I find that by popping off one of these options DURING or IMMEDIATELY AFTER a task that would otherwise be next to impossible to get thru without becoming a raging self hating asshole can make a big difference in how one experiences that task.

Examples: when I need to clean the house because my maintenance routine has fallen apart, I prep a vape with sativa delta or sativa THC, and shove it in my binder. I take a hit periodically throughout the task process to keep me functional and regulated. I also set pomodoro timers for 45 min each so I can alternate between "working" and "resting".

When I fall behind on notes, my wife buys me peanut M&Ms from the corner store and I pop a pair of M&Ms for every late note I submit for work.

When I'm having a low-function work day, I will prioritize taking my breaks outside with the dogs, and sometimes will splash water around from the hose on them and myself for a bit of a temperature change.

If I've overextended myself but still have essential tasks to complete, I will pause about every 15-30min to do a breathing exercise (5-6 count breath in through the nose, and 2-3 count breath out through the mouth - this is really good for short energy boosts and overcoming brainfog)

It's important to keep in mind, that these are not "incentives" in the traditional sense, where if you don't do the task, you don't get the reward. ANY use of your executive functioning would be rewarded in the brain to some extent for regulated neurotypicals, and just because our reward systems aren't great at self-activating as expected, doesn't mean we should have to live without the positive reinforcement that EVERYONE is supposed to get. So if you made an attempt at the thing, you get to trigger your reward response.

Overtime, myself and clients I work with have all noticed a shift in how we perceive tasks once this becomes common practice. Because we now have history and memories of tasks feeling positive to do (even when they are demanding or difficult for us), it becomes easier to interact with that task overall. You start to better notice the changes in approach that may make it even easier. You stop dreading the knowledge that the task needs to be done. It's easier to hop back into maintenance routines even after they've fallen apart. Basically, when you manually trigger what your brain NEEDS and can't self-create, a lot of the distressing aspects of executive function become WAY more manageable.

There's also a lot to be said about the experience of shifting self shaming and self blaming around what it means to "succeed" at a thing or "complete" a task, but that's sort of a different post. For now, suffice to say that being the kind and compassionate and understanding person you likely are for others, FOR YOURSELF, makes a big difference in how easy or hard the above strats will be to execute.

You probably know a few of the things that manually trigger that reward response for you. How can you make that ability work in your favor?

So if your brain won't give you a reward for completeing a task...store bought is fine?

Incase people missed this.

“Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. When you look up the stage directions, it says, ‘Exit Ariel.’”

— Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

[ID: a comic in mostly black and white with the only color being a pinkish flower.

 At the beginning in small panels, a flower sits next to a pill bottle labelled Adderall. Text reads “I was diagnosed with ADHD last fall.”

“At first I was ecstatic!” A woman with long wavy hair and glasses with the flower tucked behind her ear raises her arms to the sky and a speech bubble above her reads “My brain makes sense!”

“It helped explain a lot of quirky things I did as a kid, like doodling in class 24/7, swaying and never standing still, and having trouble making little decisions.” Accompanying each of these statements is a drawing depicting her, including the narrator being yelled at by a teacher and talking to her mom in distress on the phone. “What should I do, Mom?!” “Well, what do you want?” “I don’t know!”

“But, as months have gone by and I’ve gotten used to taking medication and talking to my doctor about my mental health… I stopped being happy about getting better, and began realizing just how much living undiagnosed had taken from me.” Three shots of the narrator show her going from looking happy to sad and then taking the flower from behind her ear to look at it.

The next panel is larger and shows the narrator squeezing the flower in her hand angrily. “And I got angry (underlined). Angry that I had struggled for years for no reason. Angry that I know I fell behind due to a lack of care. And most of all, I got angry that none of the adults in my life had tried to help.” A drawing labelled “me, age ten,” shows a girl with long hair in a school uniform looking worried with her arms folded anxiously in front of her. A thought bubble for her reads “I’m so exhausted. I can’t focus. I’m way too sensitive, I cry all the time, I don’t know how to calm down. I know something is wrong, but I make good grades, and that’s proof that it’s all in my head, that I’m fine… right?”

“Now, all I want to do is scream.” The narrator as an adult is shown standing protectively in front of herself as a confused child, cradling the flower in her hand. A speech bubble from the adult reads “Look at this kid! She never sleeps, she rarely eats, she spends so much time trying to make you happy that she’s been in survival mode for years! Can’t you see that?” In the bottom half of the panel, she screams “Why didn’t you (capitalized) protect her (end capitalization)?” at a cloud labelled “Family, friends, teachers, doctors.”

“I didn’t know what to do with that feeling.” Three panels show the little girl tugging the arm of her adult self that has the flower clenched in it, and the adult looking startled. “Until I remembered…” The little girl says from off-panel, “You can.” The adult has a tear in her eye now. “You’re the only person who can now,” the girl continues in the next panel, holding the now-open flower along with the adult.

In the next two panels, the child and the adult are shown standing next to each other, and then the adult kneels down to hug her younger self. “I will,” she says as she hugs the child.

In a zoomed-in panel of their heads and shoulders in the hug, the woman says “I promise.” They now both have pink flowers tucked behind their ears.

Large text at the bottom reads “It isn’t too late to take care of her. Of me. Of both of us.”

End ID]

This hits so close to home I have tears in my eyes.