Overwhelmed and Over-Committed: The ADHD Struggle is Real
This week on the show we tackle the challenges of overwhelm and over-commitment!
There are a bunch of factors that contribute to feeling overwhelmed that are exacerbated by our ADHD. We take on too many responsibilities. We have a difficulty saying no. We suffer the constant pressure to keep up with demands. We discuss the negative impact of over-commitment on mental health, relationships, and overall well-being, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care.
Throughout the conversation, we’ve got some practical strategies for managing overwhelm and preventing over-commitment. We share tips on how to assess your current commitments, clarify your priorities, and learn to say no when necessary. We also explore the benefits of delegating tasks, breaking projects into smaller, manageable steps, and creating realistic schedules that allow for flexibility and downtime.
It's okay to admit when you've taken on too much and that seeking support is a sign of strength. We encourage you to be kind to yourself, celebrate your accomplishments, and embrace the power of intentional decision-making.
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 really enthusiastic, Nikki Kinzer, I mean coming out of the gate.
Nikki Kinzer:
I was not expecting you to start right there, and I'm like clapping.
Pete Wright:
Now, I have to leave your enthusiasm in as I'm talking. It's just clapping.
Nikki Kinzer:
Clapping. I'm like, "Come on, let's go," and you're already going. Did not know you were rolling.
Pete Wright:
No, I was rolling.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. We're ready.
Pete Wright:
What are we doing? We're continuing our conversation, kind of, that we started last week with Brooke, who is fantastic, by the way. I mean, really-
Nikki Kinzer:
She was great.
Pete Wright:
... she's awesome and I think that it's good. We're going to have a good conversation about overwhelm and overcommitment because as ADHDers, we don't know anything about that. So we're going to educate you on what may happen because I'm sure-
Nikki Kinzer:
What may happen.
Pete Wright:
... you've never heard of it and this is something that the normies deal with all the time, and so we're going to deal with it today and see if any of it sounds... I can't even continue. Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com and get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. Take Control ADHD, just put that at the end of any social URL you deal with, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. If you really want to hang out with us, come join our Discord server. It's free to join. Just head to takecontroladhd.com/discord and you will be taken to the public invitation page. Lots of free stuff going on in the server, but if you really want to get to know us, well, this is what is behind the secret door.
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I mean, this has become a real whole team thing. There was a time when it was just me and Nikki just kicking dirt around a playground and now it's a whole team and it is subsidized by you guys. For those of you who've listened for a long time, there's a whole team, Melissa and Mel and Marian and Brian and me and Nikki, the whole infrastructure here is supported by you guys. So thank you so much to those of you who are supporting the show right now, and to those who've considered it, maybe today's your special day. Today's your special day. Let's make it a special day.
Nikki, let's talk about overwhelm.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Last week, as I mentioned-
Nikki Kinzer:
Overcommitting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, overcommitting. Last week we talked with Brooke Schnittman about overwhelm and how it can manifest, and this week we're going to look at one of the ways that we unlock the magic overwhelm disaster for ourselves by overcommitment and maybe we might talk about boundaries. I think today we might drop boundaries in here.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think so, especially when we're talking about overcommitting, because how do you undercommit? You have to set some boundaries.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Well, undercommitment just sounds so sad.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sad. Yeah, I know. It does. It does. Well, why don't we-
Pete Wright:
Where do you want to start?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Why don't we start with why it's so easy to overcommit for the ADHD mind. It's interesting. I think there's a lot of different reasons. We'll highlight a lot of them, but I really think that one of the ones that comes out the loudest is the people-pleasing piece of it. We don't necessarily want to say no to anything because we have that FOMO, fear of missing out. There's the RSD piece component, the rejection-sensitive dysphoria. "What if I say no? Is this person going to think less of me? But if I say yes, they'll have a better opinion of me."
When we're overcommitting, there are some times where we're taking on more than what we can, and that's a delegation issue sometimes where we think we can do everything, but we can't do everything because there just isn't simply enough time to do everything. Overcommitting, if you're not pausing to say yes to something, then we're saying no to something else, and so there's an impulsiveness there that's coming out from ADHD as well, right? So you may not jump ahead and think, "How is this going to impact me in the future? I'm just going to say yes now because it feels good and I think I can do it all. I can do all things all the time," because we have that magical thinking that's happening at all times, right?
Pete Wright:
I've got one to add that has been hitting me as I was thinking about preparing for this show, which is I also think yes is a get out of jail free card-
Nikki Kinzer:
How so?
Pete Wright:
... in a complicated social engagement. Sometimes I find myself wanting to say yes, completely ignorant of my other scheduling issues, of my other commitments because I feel like it will let me out of a conversation sooner. When somebody is asking me to do something, if I stick around and think about it, I might have to come up with a reason why and coming up with a reason why is harder than just saying yes and figure it out later. It's a way of playing sort of kick the can with commitments. I just kick it down the street and run and hide behind a house, right? That's something that is an interesting angle to me because I think it does address this need for control, immediate control in an engagement.
When my boss or a co-worker comes over and says, "Will you do this thing?" I can say yes, and then it ends because they don't need to hear anymore, I've said yes. It's like social commitments on a credit card. It's the social commitment credit card, the SCCC. So saying yes is like I know I'm going to pay interest on this time debt later. I know I am, but-
Nikki Kinzer:
And it's going to accumulate, right? So what happens when we have too many credit cards and too much debt is we get overwhelmed and we get ourselves into really stressful situations, because then now what happens is we're feeling all the effects of that overcommitment and that-
Pete Wright:
My gosh, this metaphor is so good.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
It's the compound interest of commitments, the commitment compounded, the CCI, because-
Nikki Kinzer:
It's waking you up in the middle of night, right?
Pete Wright:
Absolutely.
Nikki Kinzer:
That anxiety, that depression that, "I should have done this. I should have done that."
Pete Wright:
Now we're catastrophizing because I know all the people that my social commitment credit card is going to disappoint later when I default on that debt.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yeah. And then what happens? Sometimes you have to file bankruptcy or whatever it might be. Yes, I agree with what you're saying, in the short term, it feels good to be able to say yes to end the conversation, but if we want prevent-
Pete Wright:
Just like it feels good to use a credit card.
Nikki Kinzer:
A credit card to get whatever it is that you want at the time. But to prevent the stress and anxiety and everything else that comes after, are there better ways to handle this up front and lean into being uncomfortable? Which is hard because with delegation, for example, one of the things that people will say, "Well, delegate things to people," right? That makes sense. If you have too much on your plate and you're not able to get it all done, is there anything that you can delegate?
There's a couple things that go wrong there because one is that you may not trust anybody else to do it the way that you would do it, so you feel like it's just easier to do it yourself, or they'll take longer to do it and so I'm just going to do it. But there's also this shame around, "Well, I don't want to ask this person to do this for me because I should be able to do it on my own. I should be able to do all things." So then that prevents you from delegating because you don't want to ask. You don't want to have that uncomfortable conversation, so it's easier just to say yes, rather than saying, "Can this go to somebody else?" or "Can I pause and wait for a moment before I make this decision?"
Pete Wright:
This is the other thing that I think lands right on top of that, which is I feel like saying yes gives me the appearance of being in control and that it turns out is what I want to feel like all the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yes.
Pete Wright:
I am pretending. I am pretending and that's an insidious thing, right? That's an insidious thing because it causes you to dig your own pit that you're about to fall into.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Right. We're overpromising and there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done. So one of the things that we wanted to do is really be more careful about what we're saying yes to. Is it the stuff that matters? Is it the stuff that is really going to carry you forward in whatever goals or focus you have at the time? That may mean disappointing people, and that's hard. That's hard to say no to someone.
Pete Wright:
Let's break that down a little bit. What are the reasons that it's hard to say no to someone?
Nikki Kinzer:
Because for me, instinctively, you feel bad because you're like, "I want to help this person," or, "I want to do this," or "I want to be of service." For example, for me in real life, if a client wants to meet me at a time that I know is not convenient, I still want to say yes because I want to help that client. I want to be flexible for that client, but at some point I still have to say no because it's not in my plan or it's not going to work because then I have to say no to something else. There's always this fear, I think, of disappointing others, of them feeling rejected from you because you're saying no. It's an uncomfortable conversation, period. To say no to anything is hard. If you don't like confrontation or if you don't like having those uncomfortable conversations, that goes back to exactly what you said before, it's easier to say yes and deal with it later.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, and the self-serving, like the immediately selfish. Okay. There is self-serving and selfish, right? The selfish response is saying yes without thinking, because that gives you an immediate appearance of being in control. It gives you the satisfaction of having said that you're going to help someone, even though there is a non-zero chance you're going to let them down later. You don't think about that and it lets you handle your own reputation around which you are involved. You can abdicate any feelings of FOMO of any of that, because involved you said yes. You're in the chain. You're in the know. That is selfish because it's satisfying your needs, right? This is sort of a hypothesis based on my experience.
The self-serving response is no until I can look at my current level of commitments and figure out if I can say yes to this, because that serves your internal state of mind. It serves future Pete because future Pete doesn't have to wander ahead a little bit and dig a pit that I'm going to fall into in three days, and it ultimately is in service of my relationship because I won't have to let somebody down. Selfish versus self-serving, I think that's a mental model I can kind of get behind because of the importance of recognizing that what is in service of myself and indeed in my relationship with others is forcing myself building a practice of awareness of the time and commitments that I have, and that's hard to do. The selfish thing is the easy thing. It's the yes without thinking.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Well, and think of it this way too, if you are telling someone, "I'm not sure. Let me get back to you," you're planting that little seed of doubt that it may be a no, so then it won't be so disappointing, right?
Pete Wright:
Right. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So look at it that way. It is a positive thing.
Pete Wright:
Our future is uncertain together. We're in it together. I don't know if I can do this thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
"I'm not sure if I can do it, but let me get back to you." I think that that plants enough of a seed, so it's not going to such a disappointment. It may still be disappointing, but that's okay. It won't be as much of a surprise, I guess, because you've already said, "I'm not sure yet. Let me look and see if I can do it or not." That is also, I think, a lot of self-respect, right? You're protecting your schedule. You're protecting your time because that is so valuable. That's what you have. That's what we all have, and you want to take control of it. It's your schedule. If you say yes to everything, then you're no longer in control of it and you're going back to that overwhelm. "I'm running around a million miles per minute every single day. I don't get a chance to breathe. I don't get a chance to process." That's not how you probably want your life to be. So saying no or "Wait, let me get back to you" is at least a tiny step of starting to take that control back.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, all of that because what we're... I think what it boils down to, again, for me and my ADHD at the very root of all of this is RSD, right? What am I hiding from? What is the selfish me hiding from? It's the feeling of RSD in the moment, where I don't have to get up from the end of my day thinking about all the disappointment I'm going to have to handle because I've disappointed others, and because I've sort of cleared the decks, the emotional decks, I can hide from it for a little bit longer and not pay attention to the social interest that I'm paying for. So I think that when we break it down to that base level, the very base motivation is I'm running away from the feelings of rejection that I don't like defining me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Feeling. Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
So I'm hiding from them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. For all of those things that we were talking about, the fear of rejection, the fear of missing out, the need for control, all of those things come out when we're overcommitting. Perfectionism, that's something that we haven't really talked about in this conversation, but that's another reason that ADHDers have a really hard time delegating is they want things to be perfect. They want things to be one way, and it's hard. Sometimes it takes longer to explain it to someone than just doing it themselves, that kind of thing. But yeah, there's a lot of different reasons, but it all goes back to that feeling of, "I'm overwhelmed. I have too much on my plate. I have too much to do."
The thing about like our book that's coming out, for example, the book is not around talking... It's not a book around doing more in an hour, right?It's not about productivity, increasing your productivity and getting all of the things done on your to-do list. That is not what we're talking about in our book or in our podcast or anytime that we're talking about time management. So boundaries is about prioritizing what is most important to you and how do you make sure you make time for that, and then how do you communicate everything else, right?
Our mission is to spend more time on how are you spending the hour versus how many things can you check off in a list. When you overcommit, you don't even see the list because you're running from meeting to meeting or whatever. So it's really unhealthy and it will lead to burnout at some point, for sure, because you can only do this for so long, and then your body begins to shut down. Like Casey Dixon has shared in her burnout series, your body will let you know when it's time to stop. It's not just about getting rid of one or two things or going on vacation, something has to actually change in your life. So it's a big deal. It's a big topic, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Well, this part has been pretty dark and reminds me of all of the places that I can-
Nikki Kinzer:
We don't want to go.
Pete Wright:
... go naturally if I let it go, and that's it. This is the last thing about digging a pit in front of you. So I already live with anxiety and come to find out my own healthy levels of OCD. As medicated as I am, as sort of safe as that helps me feel, the idea of letting myself get into an overcommitted state just exacerbates all of the things that are my natural resting space, right? I have resting anxiety face. You know what I mean?
Nikki Kinzer:
Resting anxiety face.
Pete Wright:
So I have no need to do all that because I know what it's like to be sleep deprived and non-functional during the day when I need to be at my best. I know what it's like to have boxes that I don't get to check off every day because I either didn't do a thing or didn't do it to completion, and I know what it's like to feel in a space of constant burnout. I don't need that. So let's talk about what it means to create some healthy boundaries so that we don't. Give me a spirit of optimism in this journey.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Well, as a coach, I would say if you were a client of mine, I would say, "Well, let's figure out where are you right now? How do you schedule your time? Where do you spend your time? Let's review where you are right now and what's working, what do you like about this schedule and what don't you like. Let's review your values. Let's figure out what is most important to you, and are you living by those and what's the balance like?" Because really we talk about work-life balance, and it's a little messy on what that looks like, especially depending if you're working full-time or you're working or you're not working, and it just that can get to be a really messy conversation.
So what we want to do is maybe not necessarily look for a 50/50 balance, but where are you spending your time and what's missing? So if something that's really important to you, like social relationships and you're not finding time for that, then let's reevaluate where is your time going and where would it fit and what do you have to maybe give up to make that fit. So maybe that's saying you don't work on the weekends, or maybe it's saying that every Thursday evening you want to spend time going out to dinner with a friend or something like that.
I would actually print this out because ADHDers are so visual is I would print out a weekly calendar that's blank, and from times, from whatever time you get up until you go to bed and how do you want that time spent. This is just a rough draft. This is not anything that you're going to be set to stone, like this is how you have to live your daily life or your weekly life, but it gives you that ideal like, "This would be great if I could do this in the evenings. This would be great if I could do this in the morning," and what does that look like for you and then figuring out like... Okay. Time blocking, Pete and I were big advocates for that because that is protecting your time to do the things that matter most or that you really need to pay attention to.
Now, a lot of people out there are going to be like, "But time blocking never works for me," but I would push back on that. You can try it differently. You can try it in different ways, but that is definitely where I would start is how are you living your life now and how do you want to be living it and where can we find some room, because we all have the same amount of time per day, although it is interesting because in the book you talk about how 24 hours in a day is different for somebody with ADHD.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. And from day to day, those hours are... It's non-consistent, inconsistent.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's very inconsistent. But that's where I would start is where are you now and where do you want to be, and creating those time blocks, those boundaries. Pete, you've always done a really good job with that, I think. I mean, I know over the years you've protected your time pretty well.
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah. Okay. So two things are true. Thank you, one, for that because that is reassuring that at least some of the practice works. That's the one thing that I feel is true. The second thing is that it is such work, right? It's such a high calorie, high intellectual calorie burn activity to be so protective of those boundaries. It's like a spiral, right? Sometimes it's great, sometimes it gets out of hand and I get behind and I don't block off time to actually do any of the work that I need to do. I'm kind of in that state right now where a lot of things have come back on my calendar because our break is over, our production break is over on a number of shows. I didn't protect enough time these first two weeks of August, and so I'm recording way more than I normally do, which means I have way more to edit, which is those times double every time I add a new item on my particular calendar and that is a real challenge.
It's a real challenge not to feel burnt out, not to be doing stuff at night. I know that doesn't happen every night, but it is a practice every day to really think, "Do I have to do this thing tonight?" versus "What can I fit tomorrow?" and recognize that by the third week of August I should be cleared up and everything will be fine. But being able to say that I'm still okay and that this is just a short period and not a lifestyle is important to me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Well, and where you can do with that is also communicate to me personally, "Hey, we've got some things on the docket here. I'm not going to get to them until another week or so." That's a disappointing conversation to have because I want it right now, but you being upfront and saying, "This is the timeframe," you're communicating that and planting that seed. So I think that that's the important piece too, when it is communicating to others, when you're not able to get to something quickly or you do have to say no to someone is having that communication open and, "Hey, I would love to be able to help you, but I just have too much on my plate right now. Can I help you next month?" or something like that, whatever the conversation may be. So I think that that communication is really important.
I think that this is important too, is that some... And you did this, Pete, right? You did this. You told me this a long, long time ago, and it's always stuck with me that someone else's emergency is not your emergency, and that is so important to remember because we will get an email... And you'll probably get this from me sometimes, where I'm just like, "Oh my God, we got to do this. We have to change that." Or I'll get an email from a client who's like, "Oh my gosh, I can't. My life is falling apart, da-da-da." We instinctively want to respond as quickly as possible, and we have to always remember, "Wait a minute." Sometimes they are real emergencies and you got to drop what you have. If I was to tell you that the website got hacked, I would hope that you would drop-
Pete Wright:
You drop things.
Nikki Kinzer:
... what you're doing and you would go and fix it. If a client was in real dire need to talk to me, I'm going to drop what I need and help that person. But if a client is asking me for a worksheet and I don't have time to look for that worksheet right now, it is okay for me to say, "Okay. This can wait," right? So it is so hard to do when you're a people pleaser and you're of service to people. I get it, but it's always something that is rung too. Somebody else's emergency is not mine and I have to remember that, email especially. I can wait to check email. Just because the notification came up that I have five new emails doesn't mean I need to go straight and look at it, and that's hard.
Pete Wright:
When we first started talking, I don't remember how long ago it was that we first started talking about this.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, it was years, years ago.
Pete Wright:
Years and years ago. The original is client's stress is not my stress, not even emergency, because I have clients who come to me and they are incredibly stressed about something that isn't mine to take on. The reason I say it that way specifically is because I find client stress so contagious, and I think we all do.
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right. Again, because we're people pleasers, that's what we do. So having to say over and over and over again, "Well, that's not my stress. I'm going to do everything I can to help, but me being as stressed as they are is actually a disservice to me being able to do my best work. So I'm going to go ahead and not be as stressed as you, and I'm going to be calm. That might feel cold to you if you're in a stress situation, but the reality is it's not my stress. I'm a service provider and I'm going to do my best." Just as an aside, I had the luxurious event happen on Monday night. My entire family was gone. I was alone in the house and I didn't have much to do, and I had a client call with a complete stress that had to be resolved by the following morning. I said to myself, "This is fascinating." One, I-
Nikki Kinzer:
"What am I going to do, self?
Pete Wright:
No, I didn't create the mess that I was being asked to clean up, so it wasn't my fault. Two, I had plenty of time. Three, I wasn't letting anybody down. Four, it was after hours, so I was going to charge more per hour to resolve this stress. I got to actually come in and do the people-pleasing thing without the obligation of having this to completely up in my life and feel bad about it. It took a couple of hours and it was resolved and everybody was happy. That doesn't happen all the time. I think it's as long as we're clear, that that is a rarity. I have to admit, the dopamine felt good. It felt good to help and be a positive force, but I get to own that, not them. I get to own when that happens in most cases.
Nikki Kinzer:
There is a question or... I don't remember exactly what it was, but I'll still check my email over the weekend, which is stupid. I should just not check it, but I do, but I don't answer it. There's been times where I'll get questions over the weekend and I have to make that decision. Do I answer that now or do I wait until Monday? Recently, I definitely have been waiting until Monday because I was like, "It is the same thing. It's not my emergency. They're not in an emergency. They're just probably asking when they're thinking about it. It's not necessarily that they're even expecting an answer until Monday anyway." But it is you have to stop that and pause for a moment and say, "What am I going to do here?" It isn't easy.
So I think the last thing I would say is you just have to keep practicing. If you feel like your schedule is smothering you, really, again, go back to what's going on, what do you want it to look like and just keep practicing creating those boundaries, whatever that looks like, whether it's time blocking or pausing before you say yes to someone, remembering that not everybody's emergency is yours. It could be even spending only two times during the day to check email, whatever strategy or technique you want to use, but keep practicing it because it's too important not to. I mean, this is your life. This is your time. We're big advocates of joy, right? I mean, we want joy in our life and make that a priority. Yeah, that's our message today.
Pete Wright:
Well, I like talking about this stuff. I don't know if you knew that about me, but I do enjoyed this and-
Nikki Kinzer:
I used too. I don't know if you knew that about me either. We did write a book.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. No, it's pretty great. We wrote a book. So we're about to start a new series, and the new series is just leading up to the fact that the book is coming out very soon. So the new series is built on and around some of the frameworks that we wrote about in the book, so the next... I don't know. What is it? Four or five episodes?
Nikki Kinzer:
Five episodes.
Pete Wright:
Our anchored-
Nikki Kinzer:
And we have a behind-the-scenes special episode that you only get if you're a Patreon member.
Pete Wright:
That's right. That's right. That'll come out to patrons toward the end of this month, and so we're really excited about it. But understand, we're not just talking about pitching the book. I mean, we're pitching the book, but we really want to share what's in the book so you get a sense of what could be a resource for you and hope that it's enticing for you to actually pick it up and learn more. We're really excited about it. So that'll be the next five episodes, and then the book will be out as those episodes start to air, so we're pretty excited about it. The book comes out on September 4th, and that's the official release date. Your mileage may vary, check your local bookseller, but it's available for pre-order now if you want to check it out, and so we're really excited to-
Nikki Kinzer:
Talk about it-
Pete Wright:
... share it.
Nikki Kinzer:
... and share it. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It's been a long time.
Nikki Kinzer:
And let everybody know who Jordan is.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, Jordan, our secret best friend.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because there's a Jordan. There's a character in the book.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's good. It's going to be really great. So thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us. Thanks for downloading and listening to the show. Thank you for your time and your attention. Don't forget if you have something to contribute, 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 and Jordan and me, I'm Pete Wright, we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
