On Optimism and Our ADHD
The world can be a tough place. We know that our ADHD doesn't make that any easier. But our health and well-being depend heavily on the worldview we cultivate in spite of our challenges. This week, we're talking about optimism, how we find it, and how we make it a practice in the face of struggle.
We’ll talk about the things that get in the way of our efforts to feel optimistic like emotional dysregulation, rejection sensitivity, an impulsivity. The thing is, in the face of all those challenges, we’re already wired with our other tools to regain control. We’re generally OK with therapy and strengths-based approaches to wellbeing, for example.
So let’s explore mental models that impact us. These include Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset, Cognitive-Behavioral models, and Martin Seligman’s Explanatory Style theory. That’s the one that has impacted Pete the most this month. For the sound of a mind being blown, listen in.
This episode is brought to you by Stimara. Get your next favorite fidget and engage your brain with a fidget designed by neurodiverse adults for neurodiverse adults and save 15% along the way. Visit Stimara for yours today, and thank you to Stimara for Sponsoring The ADHD Podcast!
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 right here is rested and recuperated, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so mindful.
Pete Wright:
So mindful, cleansed.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
So cleansed, smoothied. Oh, so many smoothies.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh yes.
Pete Wright:
Fresh back from your retreat and ready to ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I love that we're talking about optimism. This is such a great topic to come from a wellness retreat to come into optimism. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
Pete Wright:
Eagle eared, is that a thing? Bat eared listeners, is that what you say? We'll note that this is a little bit of a sister episode, because I did do an episode where I started diving deep into the season's All The Feelings episode for the podcast on optimism. Just in terms of setup, before we dig into the main thing, and I do all the introduction, I said to you in our team meeting, I told you we were doing optimism, and I don't think I finished the sentence before you said, "We have to do an episode on optimism. "What happened to you in that exchange?
Nikki Kinzer:
Immediate like, yes, this is what we're doing too, Pete, whether you like it or not.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is what we're doing. You did the research. I want to learn. Yeah, no, I think I feel that it's something that's so important to highlight and to talk about. It's one of those things that it doesn't come naturally for a lot of ADHDers because of the shame and disappointment and frustrations that ADHD can bring. But optimism, I think, is something to explore because what we think, and this is going to come from my probably a little bit off of this wellness retreat, but what we think really matters and how we respond to things matter. And we have that choice on how we respond.
And next week I want to talk about a class that I took that was called Manifesting Joy and Harmony, and I'll go more into that part next week. But I think it's just, again, having that how are you going to react to this thing that's happening to you? And how do you allow time to grieve if you need to or time to feel whatever it is that you're feeling? But also how do you get back to optimism? How do you get back to feeling good and joyful about your life? I just don't think that this is a natural thing for a lot of people with ADHD, and I hope it will be because I think if you can adopt it, I think it's so positive.
Pete Wright:
Doing the research on this and figuring out what are the mental models around optimism and around an optimistic mindset, it turns out there's a lot of research, and it helped me put together a puzzle in the way I look at the world and the way I internalize events that was new to me. So I'm not saying this is new to everybody. You might've heard all this stuff, but it was new to me, and I hope it's new to enough of you out there that you get something out of it. And so that's what we're going to talk about today.
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Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
ADHD and optimism. It's rough. It's rough sailing.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
I want to start with just a quick review of the places where an optimistic outlook is challenged with ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's a good place.
Pete Wright:
Maybe best to start with you. When you are working with your clients, what do you see in terms of how optimism is challenged?
Nikki Kinzer:
There's a very strong internal critic that is telling my clients that it's their fault, that they could do better, that they should do better, why can't I do better. When something goes wrong, it isn't so much I'm going to learn from this, or I'm going to just understand why this happened and let it go, it's more of, I'm going to take the worst case scenario and run with it. And not only now that this happened, but this person... Let's say you're late to an appointment, and the person says something that's sort of passive-aggressive, right?
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so now you're holding onto that. That pess... I can't say it.
Pete Wright:
Pessimism.
Nikki Kinzer:
The opposite of optimism. See, I can't even say the word.
Pete Wright:
That's good. You go to your retreat. You come back. You can't even say negative things. You've been reprogrammed.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. I've been reprogrammed. But that's where they tend to go is to that negative space. Do you see the glass half full or do you see it half empty? And it's almost always half empty. It's hard. It's hard to get there. Not everyone. I don't want to say that everybody with ADHD has this. It's just that you can easily fall into it.
Pete Wright:
Well, and look at how we're wired to... Essentially, we are pessimism seeking missiles, right? First of all, we're impulsive, and so our brains naturally just respond rather than think first. And what are we responding to? We're responding to emotional dysregulation. We're responding to the experience of intense emotions and having those magnified. If it's a critical experience, we're responding to RSD. And that is, I mean, we talk about that all the time, that intense emotional response that we carry, in baggage that we drag along behind us far longer than people who don't live with RSD.
So we are wired for these experiences for a pessimistic outlook. It makes it hard to see through the veil of pessimism and discover that you know what? Things in the world objectively might not be as bad in your sphere than you're seeing it. For those who are doing the work, we know how to find our strengths, right? We know we have tools to look at the strengths that we bring, that the vast diversity of our ADHD spectra actually allow us to unlock. And I think that's really important.
We also may be more likely to have experience with a therapist. We may be investing in CBT, in behavioral therapy, and working to change repetitive thought spirals and those sorts of negative things. And so I think all of that sets the stage for the perilous tightrope we're walking on between the positive and the negative. You fall off one side, you have a net and you can bounce back up. And you fall off the other and you just hit the ground and it's really uncomfortable. Let's just say it's probably not a high...
You live when you hit the ground, but what a gross metaphor. That sets the stage for our ADHD. And now let's just talk a little bit more about some of the models that we're dealing with, and we've talked about Carol Dweck before. I know we're big fans of Carol Dweck. Would you give us a bit of a background on Carol Dweck and what we love her for?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it's The Growth Mindset that she has explained to us verse a fixed mindset, and they did a whole presentation on this at one of the ADHD conferences one year, and I absolutely loved it. And I know I've shared this on the show before. My daughter's third grade teacher was all about growth mindset, and so everything in her room was about learning and growing. And my daughter at the time caught me having a fixed mindset and says, "Mom, you can do hard things." I'm like, "Okay, that's right."
But really what it's about is people with a growth mindset believe that abilities and intelligence can be developed with effort, time, and practice. With a growth mindset, you are embracing challenges as much as you can, persist in the face of setbacks, and you're viewing your effort as a path to mastery. So this is a lot of big words, but I think the way that I look at it is the belief system, it is a natural optimistic viewpoint because it's not about sitting in failure. We don't want to be scared about failure.
We want to grow from our experiences. We want to evaluate what went well, what went wrong, and what do I want to do different, or maybe I don't want to do that at all, right? But it's coming in with more of an open mind and not judgmental. Now, in contrast, people with a fixed mindset believe that the abilities and intelligence are largely fixed traits. This is just who I am. I can't do this. They may avoid challenges, they give up very easily, and they see effort as being fruitless.
So a fixed mindset can lead to more pessimistic views, especially in the face of difficulty. Life is happening to me. It's all to me. And so that gives you kind of an idea of where we are with those two things.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it really is. I think you're going to see that again in my favorite model, the one that I hadn't quite seen distilled the way it is. So this is a tease, hang on, because it's important. The next one I want to talk about is just the cognitive behavioral models. And cognitive behavioral models, we're just talking about how we form pessimistic versus optimistic views. They propose that our thoughts, our cognitions about events influence our emotional responses to them and our behaviors as a result.
When we're doing the work, this is when you hear people say, "You have to separate the emotion from the experience." The experience happened, right? This is living in fact and truth. So here's the thing that happened. X happened. Y might be my response to it, my emotional response to it. And the complication is when you include those in the same equation, that a thing happened and I have an emotional response to it, and that creates my worldview. The reality is this thing happened.
And as you were talking about even before we started the show proper, my emotional response to it is the thing that I can practice. I can make choices around how I allow myself to be impacted by this thing. And it's not saying you have to just suddenly strip emotion from your being. It's saying you should target, you should develop the practice of targeting emotion so that maybe you aren't as impacted by events as you might be. I made comment last week. There was the parallel that Dr. Tom Wolfe, the Executive Function guy, and he made the...
I think I may have done this in the post-show. He was comparing ADHD to erectile dysfunction at a conference, and I love that so much because it's not an act of will, right? ADHD is not an act of will. It's in the brain. Well, some of this, when you're dealing with emotional dysregulation, when I say, "Go ahead and make the choice not to respond so heavily to events," you're not going to be able to do that, right, if you're dealing with deep emotional dysregulation.
And yet, I think it's important to at least be aware of how cognitive behavioral models work and the fact that there is an event response reaction that is creating your worldview and that you take part in it. You play an active role in the way you respond to things, and that's okay. Sometimes just being aware might be enough.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, that's what I was going to say. I think the awareness piece is really important, because it's true. During the time of that reaction, you may not feel like you have any control. But now that we're having this conversation and you're listening to us talk about it, our listeners are more aware that this is something that happens. And then I think at some point, if it's a pause or some kind of conversation you have with yourself later that evening, that you can now think, okay, how do I want to respond now?
What do I want to do with this experience now? And figure out what your next steps are. You can stay in it, or you can learn how to slowly come away from it. And it was interesting because I'll talk about this next week, but one of the experiences from the Manifesting Joy class was when you're grieving, how one phone call can change your whole life, and how do you plan, or not plan, but how do you get through that grief? How do you schedule that grief, and then at some point be able to find your way back to joy?
And it was just a really interesting way of compartmentalizing it, I guess, in a way. Right. I think just going back to what you're saying is that what do I do with this after the initial reaction?
Pete Wright:
Right. Did you happen to watch, you were retreating, so you probably didn't, but Saturday Night Live this last week back on the air?
Nikki Kinzer:
Not yet, but I'm going to. It's recorded.
Pete Wright:
Pete Davidson did a bit of a cold open where he was speaking specifically to the catastrophic situation happening in the Middle East right now, and one of the things he said really stuck with me, which is his dad was killed, I believe, in 9/11. He talks about it as a terrorist attack, and he said he's seven years old when this happened. His mom was driving home and his mom thought that she bought him The Bee Movie and instead bought him Eddie Murphy's Delirious.
And he's apparently in the backseat of the car and he's hearing what Eddie Murphy is saying. And she tries to take it away, but realizes he's laughing for the first time and let him listen to Delirious because it was such a surprise. It was a corner around which she had not peaked, that who knew what it would take to actually rediscover a little bit of personality in the face of grief.
And I think that's kind of what you're talking about obviously in a catastrophic situation, but you never know if you take a beat and look around what it is that's going to allow you to find an anchor. And taking a beat means practicing when you're not stressed to actually take that beat and take a breath. It means doing it when you're not stressed. So that when you are stressed, you know how, and you don't think it's a ridiculous thing to do.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely, and it goes back to awareness, right? It really goes back to what you're saying is understanding what is happening and knowing that when that phone call comes or you turn on the news and you see breaking news, that you have a way that you know you can respond. Now, whether you do that or not is probably going to take some practice, but I think it is that awareness and I'm so glad that we're talking about it.
Pete Wright:
Well, this leads us to the third model I want to talk about, and this one I found on Quora, and it was somebody who is restating a different model. And I hadn't gotten to the bottom of that model when we recorded the All The Feelings episode. So this is essentially Pete figuring out where the work came from. So if you listen to that episode, this will answer some questions. The poster was...
Nikki Kinzer:
This is like exclusive material.
Pete Wright:
Right, right. Makes me want to rerecord the whole thing that I did over there, but I'm not going to do that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Of course, it does.
Pete Wright:
Felipe Cross was the original poster on Quora and was talking about this model of how we internalize or externalize blame and shame, leading to optimism versus pessimism. And what Felipe was actually doing was reframing Martin Seligman's theory of learned helplessness. Now, Martin took the theory of learned helplessness and then reformulated that model and turned it into explanatory style theory. Are you with me? This is big.
Nikki Kinzer:
I am.
Pete Wright:
This is all Martin. Old Marty Seligman.
Nikki Kinzer:
Has changed the theory.
Pete Wright:
He's changed the theory, and this is what I found on Quora that had been reframed, but I like this a lot. Explanatory style is a way in which people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative. Now, according to Seligman, there are three dimensions to explanatory styles. One, personalization. So what does personalization mean? When bad things happen, do I blame myself, internal, or do I blame the world, external? So the scale is internal to external, and you're usually somewhere on that scale.
So that's personalization. Number two is permanence. Do we see this situation is unchangeable, so it's stable, it's fixed, you can't change it, or is it changeable? That means it's unstable. So stable, unstable is the next spectrum. And finally, pervasiveness. Do we see the situation as affecting all aspects of our life, so it's totally global, or is it affecting just one specific area? So personalization, permanence, pervasiveness. Are you with me?
Nikki Kinzer:
I am.
Pete Wright:
People with pessimistic explanatory style internalize blame, view bad events as permanent and pervasive and good events as temporary and specific to only certain areas of their lives. It is usually associated with feelings of helplessness and is pretty directly linked to depression. I think you can maybe see why. On the other hand, people with optimistic explanatory style externalize blame, view bad events as temporary and specific and good events as permanent and pervasive.
So it's just the opposite, and it's a style that is associated with resilience and overall well-being and good health and all of these things. Now, we are not all on one end of either of these spectrums, and it's totally individual and totally dependent on the event itself, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
But I think we should go through some examples. Looking at one, just say you're a student, because I was one and I felt this a lot. Let's just say I'm a pessimist and I just failed an exam. I probably think I am stupid. I'm looking at this as internal personalization. I probably think I'm going to fail all my exams. So permanence is stable. This is an unchangeable existence. And as a result of it being my fault and the fact that I'm sure I'm going to fail all my exams, I will never find a job or a career because this is global.
The pervasiveness is global. It's not specific. So you can kind of see how each of those statements, those three statements, combine to build a worldview about that event. On the other hand, an optimist is more likely to think, hey, I did the best I could. It's external. I did what I could with the material that I had. I'm sure I'll do better on my next exam. It's unstable. That means the permanence is changeable. I can do better. This was one thing, one moment in time, and it's just a blip.
It was specific, not global, right? I'm going to find a career because this was one thing. And in the long arc of history, this will evaporate because I'll be better elsewhere. That is an example of what it means to look at the three constituent elements, personalization, permanence, and pervasiveness, and see optimism, to look at the world and see there's something that we can do to change. And back to Felipe Cross, the original poster, I really like the way he says this.
In this case, my view is, of course, the only one possible, the glass, speaking of glass being half full or half empty, the glass is always full, part with air, other part with liquid, but always full. And I think that's actually a really powerful way to look at what it means to be an optimist. The glass is always full. It might not always be full with what you think it is, but it's always full. Okay, so before I move on, what do you think about this model?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love it, and I'm going to copy it and paste it in a safe place so I can talk to my clients about it.
Pete Wright:
It makes so much sense.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because I think it's so important. It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. And I think it's good reminders. When I'm hearing, as a coach anyway, as I'm hearing things in a conversation, I can look for this and say, "Okay, is this internal or external?" And ask them, "Are you blaming yourself or is this an outside force?" I mean, I think there's a lot of coaching things that can come from this.
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is it stable? Is it unstable? And having them look at that. And for listeners, really think about these three pieces. Is it global or is it specific? Because really everything is temporary, at least in my opinion.
Pete Wright:
100%.
Nikki Kinzer:
Everything is temporary. And one of the things I learned on my mindful retreat is that the past doesn't matter and the future doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what's happening right now and what you do in this moment.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think that's hugely important. And what I love about this model and why it's been so meaningful for me, because I'm somebody who lives with obsessive thought patterns, right? That's how my anxiety manifests, and that can put me in a deep spiral. But that sort of catastrophic thinking is attacked with this model because it allows me to break down every thought into its atomic elements and start to chip away at it, right?
As long as I make it a practice when I'm not feeling compromised, then when I am compromised, I have an easier time grabbing that rope ladder and climbing out of it. And that is, I think, the most important part. Is it am I blaming myself or am I blaming the world? Do I see it as unchangeable or changeable? And is it affecting all of my life around me or just one area specifically? And depending on where the dots end up on that spectrum, I can actually control my reaction to it. Now, this leads me to my final point. Are you ready for my final point?
Nikki Kinzer:
I am ready.
Pete Wright:
This is speaking directly to optimism in the face of, hey, you know what? The world's kind of crap right now. We hear that. This is a frame called intelligent optimism, and intelligent optimism, I think, sprung up out of the techno-optimist sphere, that we have the technology to make change in the world. But I really do like the way it frames because it's not Pollyanna, right? I really like the idea of it, and I think it stems from understanding explanatory style. Intelligent optimism is all about being excited about the future in an informed and rational way.
So what we're saying is we know things are bad. We have data to prove certain elements are hard, but we also recognize the tremendous potential that we have collectively to find solutions to those problems. I started going down this rabbit hole of like, look, the world economy is amazing and mortality rates have dropped a ton. And you know what? We can edit genes now. We can cure massive diseases. And teen births are plummeting and climate change sucks. But remember CFCs when we were kids?
We did a lot of amazing work around the globe on ozone. We can marshal the same sort of thinking today. Global access to electricity is at a point where we're actually talking about 100% electrification of the planet, putting light in places where light has never existed. There's a lot that we're doing that's really good, but we forget about it because the news cycle and the choices that we make around what the signals that we let in frost over a lot of real good that we're doing.
So intelligent optimism, according to Raya Bidshahri, says that we're recognizing that many problems we are faced with, we're acknowledging that we can solve them just as we have overcome many other challenges in the past. I think part of the problem if we bring it down to our lives is that when we achieve something great, that we move on as if we're finished.
And part of the optimist's mindset is making it a practice. This is a mantra. It is to imagine we are never finished. We solve part of a problem, we celebrate it, and move on to solving the next. So optimism for me is we cannot ever forget that we can solve the next problem too. That's my pitch around intelligent optimism.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love it.
Pete Wright:
I don't know. That's where I am right now, that this is peak learning in real time. I hope that it is useful and inspirational to somebody out there. Because man, look at what we can do. Look at what we can do if we just try to solve the next problem.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. I love it. Thank you, Pete.
Pete Wright:
You're welcome so much. We win the podcast.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is great. I love it.
Pete Wright:
Well, I appreciate you letting me talk about this stuff and encouraging me to bring some of the All The Feelings research over. If you want to hear essentially the other side of this conversation, jump over to allthefeelings.fun and you can hear me and Tommy talking about this too.
Nikki Kinzer:
Make sure you put that In the show notes.
Pete Wright:
Oh, he has a story. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness, this story.
Nikki Kinzer:
Does he?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, he really, really does.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh good. I want to hear it.
Pete Wright:
I thank you everybody for hanging out. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the show talk channel in the Discord server and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
