January 23, 2024

Hello friends,

I started struggling with ADHD for the first time in my life during the COVID pandemic. Looking back on my childhood, it is obvious that I’ve always had ADHD. I definitely exhibited symptoms. But I did not struggle with ADHD in the same way I did when for the first time in my life I was chronically under-stimulated.

As I’ve been learning to work with myself instead of against myself, from my ADHD to my RA to just rediscovering what brings me joy, I’ve been working on remembering a lot the strategies that worked for me when I was a child. What are the things I intuitively knew or learned in a childhood and play setting that I have forgotten as I’ve gotten older?

My ADHD wasn’t as challenging when I was constantly stimulated and had a lot of structure to my days. It was a lot easier to process emotions when I moved trough them by crying or yelling or singing as a small kid. I may have had acute anxiety, but when I danced it out or ran around I did not have chronic anxiety in the same way.

As we grow older, I think we forget a lot of our tool box for how to deal with emotional dysregulation or activation in particular.

We are regularly asked “what advice would we give to our younger selves?” Today I want to flip that and ask, “what advice would our younger self give us now?” It is similar to some of my favorite prompts, which will come up later this year: “What did you want to be when you grow up? How is what you are doing now related to that?” and “What would child you be most excited about in your life now?”

More than finding happiness, cultivating meaningfulness has been the highest predictor of how satisfied I am in my life. I think these questions that help me connect with the things that have been most consistently important to me throughout my whole life, really help me tap into what is meaningful to me. I hope they do the same for you!

Take 5-15 minutes and write about

What advice would your younger self give you?

Your friend,
Laura