Transitions Treats and Dopamine Redirection with ADHD
In this episode, we're shifting gears from our prior focus on games to delve into the world of transitions, particularly from the perspective of individuals with ADHD. The first area we explore is the concept of micro transitions. These are small changes that occur throughout our day, whether it's switching tasks, moving from one conversation topic to another, or even everyday activities like waking up or moving to a different location. Despite their seemingly minor nature, these transitions can pose substantial challenges for those with ADHD.
One of the central discussions in this episode centers on why transitions are often so hard for people with ADHD. The difficulties stem from the fact that ADHD can negatively affect executive functions. This can manifest as time blindness, difficulty in starting and stopping tasks, hyperfocus, and poor working memory. On a practical level, this might mean an individual with ADHD struggles with moving from a fun, dopamine-producing task to a boring or avoided task, remembering the reason for moving from one room to another, or leaving for work on time due to difficulty transitioning from waking up to getting ready.
Our conversation takes an intriguing turn as we propose a novel way to think about transitions: not as a change in contexts, but in rewards. This perspective encourages us to be aware of the hidden rewards of our current activity while also reminding ourselves of the potential rewards of the upcoming task. Poor transition management can lead to chronic lateness, which can impact jobs or relationships, and even a decline in health and wellness due to inadequate sleep.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hi, Nikki. This is a very-
Nikki Kinzer:
Hi.
Pete Wright:
It's a big day.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is. I have a new microphone stand.
Pete Wright:
It is. It's perfect. We're same [inaudible] now, but you don't... We're going to fix it because mine, I think what I send you is going to make things better-
Nikki Kinzer:
I think so.
Pete Wright:
... for the live stream. You can see that Nikki is talking behind a giant robotic arm, but it's okay. We're going to fix it. We're going to fix it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Fix-It Felix.
Nikki Kinzer:
I am hopeful for that.
Pete Wright:
I'm very excited about that. But it is great and so quiet and so, hopefully, we'll have fewer mic stand issues.
Nikki Kinzer:
Crashes.
Pete Wright:
We're changing gears today. I'm pretty excited about this transition because it's a series on transitions that we're going to do here.
We've got a little trio of conversations that I think we're practicing making active transitions by transitioning the series right around a major seasonal transition, and so we're going to talk about it. For three straight weeks we're going to talk about what transitions are like and we're starting today with micro transitions or context shifts that sometimes [inaudible] those of us living with ADHD.
And I have to tell you, I was doing some research on it and I am going to tease this. My mind is blown by a perspective-shifting way to think about transitions and-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I cannot wait to hear.
Pete Wright:
.... I have been shook for the last several hours since I've discovered this. Shook, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that's exciting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think so, too. So we're going to do that.
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Nikki, we're going to pivot, pivot.
Nikki Kinzer:
Pivot.
Pete Wright:
Given our community reactions to friend's memes, I don't know if I should regret that comment, but I'm going to stick with it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, it's going to be there.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know in Discord it's going to be there.
Pete Wright:
I wonder how fast it will be there, in fact.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, it's probably already there.
Pete Wright:
It's probably there. Given the lag between when we speak and the livestream hits, the few seconds, I'm sure it's already there.
We're going to be talking about transitions, so let's start talking about the challenge of transitions and, in this case, micro transitions for people living with ADHD.
Go ahead, Coach. What do you got?
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. Well, let's start with what we're talking about. What does it mean? What's a micro transition?
It's the small transition, so it's the things that you're seeing on a daily basis. It's switching from one task to another, which can be extremely difficult to do.
It can also be from moving one conversation topic to another conversation topic, which happens all the time when you're talking and you happen to have ADHD, or the person you're talking to has ADHD, and just like regular routine type of things, like waking up in the morning. That's a transition of being asleep to being awake.
Pete Wright:
That's a real pain point for me, I just have to say, like that transition and going to sleep. Those two transitions are very, very difficult.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yes. Well, and I'll tell you in the last couple of weeks we've been working on the GPS promotion and the transition that's been hard for me is going into dinner.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Oh, I totally get it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because I know that like I'll be in this like mode of getting things done and working and I know I need to eat, but I know that once I eat, I'm probably not going to go back to work and so that transition has been difficult. And, yeah, change of location when you're leaving the house, when you're having to go to the grocery store, all of those little micro transitions that we deal with every day.
A lot of times people don't understand that it's really difficult for ADHDers to have, to make those transitions and it's a surprise sometimes when they realize, "Oh, okay. Well, that starts to make sense," that it's their ADHD showing up, because they don't necessarily pinpoint that it's the transition that's giving them difficulty.
Pete Wright:
For sure. Yeah, this is exactly where I am and we started talking about the perils of transitions some years ago on the show, right? It's been a while.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yeah.
Pete Wright:
And that was one of the mind-blowing experiences for me was figuring out that, you know what? This isn't strictly ADHD hyper-focused thing. This isn't strictly like... You know, something I'm working on right now, it's the act of changing gears. It's the act of my brain saying, "Okay, we're doing this one thing and now we have to do another," that just completely blows up my day.
And it blows up my day in some kind of weirdly insidious ways that aren't related just to, "I can't get started on the next thing," but I'm mad. I'm like viscerally angry with myself and it can come out at other people. I'm sad that I feel like I've let myself down by not finishing before the transition. None of those emotional experiences are put into words related to the transition itself, and it's the transition experience itself that is the culprit for me.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's a very good way of explaining it.
Pete Wright:
I'm curious in terms of the work that you do with clients and what you see, when you think about micro transitions, what is the real sort of central weight of transitions? What are the kinds of transitions that people have the most trouble with?
Nikki Kinzer:
I would say the task-switching and balance in their schedule. You know, we talk a lot about time-blocking and I see that the transition with time blocks can be really difficult for people. It's a very common complaint or challenge that I hear is that you want to work on multiple projects in one day, but you can only do one at a time. And so if you start on project A and you find that it's taking longer than what you expected, which almost always happens.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Like, I don't know why this still surprises us, but it always happens, that this is something that's going to take longer. And now I've told myself, when I did my planning that I was going to switch and do something else and I don't want to do that now and so I get hyperfocused on this one. Then, at the end of the day, I feel bad because I didn't get to all three and I really only worked on one, which took longer than what I expected it to take and that's frustrating.
So I think it's the task-switching and that time blindness of not being able to... It's just not easy to stop.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know? It's just not easy.
Pete Wright:
So I know we have a lot of other stuff to talk about and I want to talk about it, but can I tell you the thing that blew my mind in my research this week? Because I think it might color some of the other things that we talk about.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, please.
Pete Wright:
Okay. It's not the transition itself, it's not changing context. It's about changing rewards. Let that sink in for a minute. It's about the changing rewards that give us the challenge.
I'm going to give you an example, but do you have kind of an intuitive reaction to that before I do?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, my intuitive reaction is that this is exciting because rewards is a dopamine hit and ADHD minds like dopamine.
Pete Wright:
They sure do.
Nikki Kinzer:
So please expand. What do you mean by this?
Pete Wright:
Well, it starts when we're kids, right? Think about this. You have a kid who's having trouble with... and ADHD is the culprit and it's clearly the culprit.
The kiddo is out on the playground and they're telling jokes and they're cracking people up because they're center of attention. What is the reward in that scenario?
Nikki Kinzer:
The attention. The feeling good.
Pete Wright:
The laughs.
Nikki Kinzer:
The happiness, the laughs. Like everybody's-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, they're getting laughs from other people.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Now 15 minutes goes by, recess is over. Kiddo's got to change contexts and go into the classroom, but the reward is different now. The reward is not getting laughs. The reward is paying attention, right? Paying attention leads to rewards of good grades and teacher's attention and all that stuff. But the ADHD brain is still anticipating the laughs and so the kiddo is still making jokes. That's what ends up causing the disruption in the classroom.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, because what I'm understanding is that when you're getting that laughs, you're getting that instant gratification.
What you're talking about as a reward as being a focused student is long-term. That's like way far in advance. Like that has nothing to do with what's going on right now in my life.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And so this is something I've never really considered. That, for me, I never look at, when I'm working on something and I feel like the reward I'm getting is the ability to be able to move through something or play a video game and get to the end of a level or accomplish something, like I never look at the explicit reward that I'm getting or even the implicit reward that I'm getting from that activity. And I absolutely never look at the reward for the next activity that I have to do. I'm just mad that I know somehow there's this unspoken truth that that reward is not as good as the one that I'm getting right now. And we can call it the dopamine hit, whatever we want, but really, ADHD folks have no trouble transitioning if the reward structure is the same, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I actually have zero trouble changing video games, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
I have zero trouble with that.
I have zero trouble finishing a great book and hyper-focusing on the book and knowing that I haven't eaten for the last five hours and knowing that I should probably eat. But also I have another great book on my bedside table that I also need to read or research or whatever.
I have zero complication making that transition, not because specifically the context has changed, though it has by dint of the reward-changing. I'm no longer getting the reward of the research, of the push of feeling like I'm accomplishing that thing.
And that's the thing I'm most interested in. The transitions involving changing rewards is actually a big component of being able to successfully navigate the other side of it.
And it was actually funny. This was in originally the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology. It was a 2021 article they said, "This is a great new thing we've just discovered about ADHD." Well, not really. Like we with ADHD, we get it. But the-
Nikki Kinzer:
We knew this. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, we knew this was going on. But the whole idea that we can be more explicit about, and more aware of, the rewards we're getting from this activity and be very explicit about the changing rewards to come can actually make transitions easier.
If you tell yourself, "I know that the thing I need to do after this is going to be giving me some other thing," or there will be some other reason to do it and be really clear about that, you can soften the blow of the transition and, frankly, give yourself something a little bit to look forward to.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, that's interesting. So yes, I think you answered my question that I didn't actually ask you. Maybe-
Pete Wright:
I love seeing the future.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right? I know. Because my question was going to be, so how do you make going back into the classroom as fun as being out in the playground?
So what you're saying is that there's got to be some kind of like almost internal dialogue of you reminding yourself of why it's a good thing to also be in the classroom? Is that what I'm getting?
Pete Wright:
That's right. In this article, when pivoted toward children, it's all about the practitioners saying, "Hey, teachers, let's figure out what the ancillary benefits of being in the classroom are and make sure we're selling those to the ADHD brain."
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Because this is what I'm thinking is that when you said teachers, that's where I was going with it, too. I think you're reading my mind today. It's a little weird, a little creepy. Maybe it's this new microphone stand that's happening. I don't know.
Pete Wright:
It is, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
But it's so interesting because that's what I was thinking is that, okay, you have a teacher. You know this about your students because it's probably more than just one, right?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's going to be a group of people, all students. ADHD or not, that's going to be difficult to have fun and then go into this boring environment.
So then it is. It's like teaching the teacher, like, what can you make, how do you make that transition fun? So you can almost make a game out of it. Like, everybody that can sit down and be quiet and freeze, like you could do like freeze tag or something, they all get a sticker or something like that, right?
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
But you can make it fun.
Pete Wright:
You can make it fun. And how do you do that for yourself as an adult, right? How-
Nikki Kinzer:
You get a lot of stickers.
Pete Wright:
Get more stickers. Turns out more stickers.
I think that there's really something to that. So when we talk about how we manage the dopamine, the dysfunctional dopamine relationship, it's important to treat yourself and this is what keeps coming up in my mind is to treat yourself, like the dopamine puppy. Like don't be afraid to give yourself immediate reward.
That's the piece that the researchers came out with was like rewards can warm up the brain for the next thing to come. And we've talked about this time and time again, which is that when we need to warm up our brains for a task, it's okay to give yourself the reward first. If you need to play Wordle for a little bit, or if you need to do your Duolingo for a little bit to get your brain engaged and warmed up, that can be the reward for the task that is yet to come.
And that's not how we think in the other piece, right? Like that's not how we think when we don't have such a spectacularly neurodivergent brain, as we all have. Like usually rewards come after, they are presents for a job well done. In this case, you give yourself the present as a reward for changing gears, is to give yourself a treat, a puppy treat.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. And what you're explaining reminds me of when we're talking about, and I am pretty sure I've used this before in the podcast, if you want to be an Eeyore or if you want to be a Tigger going into a task, that going into a harder task, we want to be Tigger. We want to be excited, we want to be jazzed and the way to do that is exactly what you're saying. Do something fun first and get that brain going with dopamine and then it actually becomes a lot easier to get into the harder task. And that's the same with transition is that now it's easier to transition because you have that reward.
And Eeyore would be you going into the task or the transition with that Eeyore persona like, "Oh, I don't want to do this."
Pete Wright:
Exactly.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is hard, right? So yeah.
Pete Wright:
It is hard.
And I just want to reflect for a minute on the other side of this. Like everything I'm talking about assumes a pretty standard sort of schedule. But the reality is, for me at least, sometimes when I'm getting things done, I don't want to transition, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Or I need to not transition.
I've finally gotten to a point where I am accomplishing a task that needs to get done and maybe, how am I going to get to the other side of that?
Eventually, the world intervenes, for me at least. Like, eventually, kid will come home for dinner or there'll be some sort of activity that I need to transition to. That's what I'm talking about when the world intervenes, when I know I have to close shop.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right. But I also have to say that there's something about trying to plan for him a little bit, too. Because in our GPS sessions, we had a member who said, "You know, I'm going to add this to my GPS process," and she wrote, "What transitions do I have to plan for today?" And I thought that was brilliant, so good that I ended up putting it onto the slide as part of the questions that you ask yourself in that process-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's really good.
Nikki Kinzer:
... because it's so good.
Because now you're looking at your day and you're thinking, "What transitions do I have to plan for?"N ow we can use that strategy of adding buffer time and knowing that I need more than 15 minutes to switch a task, so I'm going to give myself a half hour.
And like you said, you're definitely going to have life happens and it's probably going to screw up your plan. But you have a plan and you're expecting it to happen, rather than having it happen and then you're surprised.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's exactly what it looks like so I think it's really interesting.
So as an aside, the new season of What's That Smell, now titled All The Feelings is live, and in some of my research, we came up with this thing for a show we recorded yesterday that I've been thinking a lot about.
It goes back to behavioral research studies from Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram, and these are guys who did some very dark behavioral research. Zimbardo's was the Stanford Prison experiment, and Stanley Milgram was the buzz machine. It's how do we respond to authority? So if somebody in a white lab coat tells you, "Push this button, it's going to electrify this guy in the other room, you'll do it," that's what they ended up discovering because humans are awful.
And the Stanford Prison experiment, they put college kids. You're a prisoner and you wear the trappings of a prisoner and you're going to go in this cell in the basement at Stanford. Then you guys are going to be the guards and you're going to wear guard uniforms and carry batons and stuff like that. They had to end the experiment because their brains took on those roles too well, and they became awful and contentious and beat each other and it was terrible.
So there's a lot of just horrible, horrible stuff that our brains can be triggered to do with external stimulus. So why don't we use that power for good? Like why can't we use some of the external trappings for good to trigger that positive response to change and learn lessons from what these guys have been teaching us for 40, 50 years?
Nikki Kinzer:
So this is an extension of your kind of aha moment of "I can look at this differently?"
Pete Wright:
Yes. Yeah, it really is. That's what I'm working on right now actively is how do I use this research to change the way I think about my transitions?
Nikki Kinzer:
Tell us. Tell us. How are you working on it? Like is there a particular-
Pete Wright:
Well, I don't have an answer yet. I got three weeks to do this series. Give me a week.
Nikki Kinzer:
I want to know right now.
Pete Wright:
I got to practice.
Nikki Kinzer:
What are you doing to change your life right now?
Pete Wright:
I just learned this thing. I'm partaking in the miracle of flight right now. Give me a minute to enjoy it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
So that's to come because I think it's really important, and I will say next week, we're going to be talking about larger transitions, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And as it happens, we have Tommy from All The Feelings who's going to be joining us and we're going to have a three-way conversation about this. Because, as it happens, he's learning the same thing as I am, and so I think it will be a good ongoing, continuous conversation. How do we build more transition treats into our days?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that, transition treats.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. That's what I think what it is.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's really good. And I liked it-
Pete Wright:
And you know what it is, you know what it really is, Nikki, this goes back to our presentation at CHADD in 2019, 2020-
Nikki Kinzer:
20, 2020.
Pete Wright:
... about the joy jar, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
On joy, yes.
Pete Wright:
Like a joy jar is full of transition treats, really, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
It really is, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Like how are we using external stimulus to trigger our brains to do something that we want it to do in a positive way? That's what I'm excited to do.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I love that we're starting this off really around your mindset, really around how you're thinking of these transitions and how to work with them. Because it's really hard to work against them because they're going to happen no matter what. They happen so, yeah.
Pete Wright:
They happen, and all of the same things I think are true. It's not like I'm going to stop setting reminders, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. No.
Pete Wright:
It's not like I'm going to stop using all the other external triggers that I have in my life to actually do things, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I'm still going to time-block. I'm still going to do all those things.
What I'm trying to do is, let's say time-blocking on my schedule, that fine line between two events that stack up next to each other, I'm focusing my mindset on that line. What is that line going to look like? Because I can choose to have it look like concertina wire and horror, but I can also choose to take a little nap in a featherbed on the way to my next thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
And have some treats, have some-
Pete Wright:
Have some transition treats.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It's all about transition treats.
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
I wonder if that's not a thing I should be building into my schedule. Borrow time from each of those tasks and have a standing template that's like, here's a 10-minute transition, treat-
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
... and work that into my schedule. So there will probably be more of that in coming weeks. So I'm really fascinated by all of this because it impacts all the other stuff, right? It impacts lateness.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
It impacts job performance. It impacts my reputation with others. Like it impacts my health and wellness. It impacts my ability to get up and do the rowing machine the way I've committed to do, so all of that.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is great.
Pete Wright:
Do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think this is great.
Pete Wright:
I hope so.
Nikki Kinzer:
What a great way to start into a new seasonal transition, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love the transition. And it's actually, it's interesting because we did this whole thing about games and now we're making transitions fun so really there is this huge connection-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
... between what we were talking about and what we're talking about going forward, so I love it. Thank you, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Was that it? Are we done? Do you have anything else? Is it-
Nikki Kinzer:
I think so. I-
Pete Wright:
Okay. Well, that was it.
Nikki Kinzer:
But this is my thought is I like that we're talking about the mindset of it today.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. All the tools, we count on all the tools and let's just say the tools are notes and systems and planners and all of those things. We've talked about those before. Have those. We're not saying anything about not using those things. We need to use those things. And also maybe the way we think about them and the way we transition through them is going to help.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's it. Because, man, you can start thinking differently, then I think you start thinking differently about all of the tools.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think we need to make a logo for transition treats. Like we need a logo-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
... of like a puppy.
Nikki Kinzer:
Like a little puppy dog treat that has a big T, like a little biscuit that's a T or something.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, just a big circle logo and you can stick it on stuff like your forehead.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. We're so creative.
Pete Wright:
So clever. God, so clever.
Nikki Kinzer:
We are so clever.
Pete Wright:
Yes. All right.
All right. Well, hey, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for hearing me out and letting me rant. I really appreciate that and I appreciate all of you. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. Thank you for your time and your attention.
Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to this conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level.
On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright and we'll see you right back here next week, Taking Control, the ADHD Podcast. End of treat.
