Latest / ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women / 159 // What to Expect From Life as a Woman with ADHD

Transcript

159 // What to Expect From Life as a Woman with ADHD · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

• 0:14
  God-centered confidence so you can know in your heart that you do belong.
• 0:18
  You are enough and you are made on purpose and with a purpose.
• 0:22
  Hey, I'm Kelsey Spronk, fellow ADHD mom and entrepreneur. Join me in building
• 0:27
  confidence so you can experience success with,
• 0:36
  Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast. I am your host, Kelsey Sprunk.
• 0:42
  And today we're going to talk about what kind of expectations should we have as women with ADHD?
• 0:49
  What's realistic? What's healthy to expect?
• 0:53
  Now, obviously, these can change from person to person, but I wanted to look
• 0:58
  at expectations that we should all be able to have.
• 1:03
  The first expectation, you should expect to have opportunities in your life to use your strengths.
• 1:11
  There's multiple pieces to this. First, I want you to recognize that you do have strengths.
• 1:17
  And it can be incredibly discouraging to be in a job or in a role in your life,
• 1:23
  where you feel like you don't have strengths, where you feel like you're constantly struggling.
• 1:28
  But I want to encourage you here, number one, you do have strengths.
• 1:32
  And number two, you deserve to be able to use them.
• 1:36
  That is something that you should expect in your life.
• 1:39
  Number two, as far as expectations.
• 1:43
  You should expect that your needs matter. Now, this can be a tricky one depending
• 1:48
  on the culture you're in.
• 1:51
  Maybe you are a mom, maybe you are married, not married, whatever it is.
• 1:55
  Your needs matter. Now, the needs that I talk about in this podcast are your survival needs.
• 2:01
  So sleep, nutrition, hydration, those matter.
• 2:04
  Your foundational needs, those are different from person to person.
• 2:08
  For me, it's faith, exercise, and social connection. Those are important and
• 2:12
  then on top of that your life-giving needs that add that excitement and that
• 2:16
  extra kind of pizzazz to your life,
• 2:20
  but those matter you should expect that your needs matter and you should expect
• 2:26
  to be able to have those fulfilled at least some of the time obviously survival
• 2:30
  needs you need all the time
• 2:32
  but the other ones at least some of the time number three,
• 2:36
  as far as realistic expectations,
• 2:38
  we will mess up.
• 2:40
  That is a realistic and a healthy expectation. I don't mean that in a negative
• 2:46
  way. I don't mean that to say that we should constantly expect ourselves to
• 2:50
  fail or tell ourselves that we shouldn't try because we're going to mess up.
• 2:55
  What I mean is that even with the best of intentions, everybody is going to
• 3:01
  mess up at some point or another, and that is human.
• 3:05
  It doesn't mean that you are a mess up. It doesn't mean that you are bad or
• 3:11
  wrong. It is part of being human.
• 3:15
  That's the next one actually is that others will mess up. And so what that means
• 3:19
  is that sometimes when people hurt us, when they say something that they shouldn't
• 3:24
  have, when they say something or do something hurtful.
• 3:27
  That can be part of our expectation is knowing that humans are not perfect if
• 3:33
  they say something rude to us. Now, obviously, if this is a consistent pattern,
• 3:38
  setting boundaries is incredibly important.
• 3:40
  But just expecting that in our friendships, in our relationships,
• 3:44
  it's not going to be perfect.
• 3:47
  Next up, number five, that others will show grace and understanding.
• 3:52
  And what I mean by that is that when we do make a mistake, when something happens,
• 3:57
  we want others to show us grace and understanding. This goes along with number
• 4:02
  six, that we should show ourselves grace and understanding.
• 4:06
  So when we do make a mistake, when we are struggling with something.
• 4:11
  It's not going to be perfect.
• 4:13
  And it's important to be compassionate with ourselves to be understanding of
• 4:18
  what we're currently going through,
• 4:21
  what some of our struggles are we're not we're not robots we're not computers
• 4:27
  we're not ai or whatever we,
• 4:30
  need to allow ourselves to be,
• 4:33
  human and part of what that means is that,
• 4:37
  we go through different phases different stages so in life in general maybe
• 4:42
  from year to year or month to month and sometimes it's from hour to hour sometimes
• 4:48
  I wake up feeling awful and I can sometimes,
• 4:52
  embrace that and have a fully awful day and sometimes I can say you know what
• 4:56
  that was a terrible start to the day but we are going to try to redeem it by
• 5:01
  doing x y and z whatever it is,
• 5:04
  Number seven, as far as realistic and healthy expectations with ADHD.
• 5:09
  Is that life is going to be a journey of learning.
• 5:14
  And that's kind of part of the point. The point is not to get to a specific
• 5:21
  destination and then just stay there.
• 5:23
  It's about learning. Learning within our relationships, learning in our work,
• 5:28
  in our boundaries, in our self-advocacy, and in learning to understand who we
• 5:34
  are. It's about the journey of learning.
• 5:37
  No one's going to be perfect and it's not life isn't about all or nothing that's
• 5:43
  going to hold us back and that's going to keep us stuck.
• 5:47
  In fear. Number eight, another realistic expectation to have is that our goals
• 5:53
  and expectations will change with time and the season of life we're in.
• 5:58
  Now, these expectations that I'm talking about in this one here are outside
• 6:02
  of the ones that I've mentioned today.
• 6:04
  So talking about, you know, maybe you've set a goal to, this is a lofty goal,
• 6:08
  so, you know, I'll, there are other goals as well, but you've set a goal to write a book.
• 6:14
  Yeah, but that goal might change or that expectation might change depending
• 6:18
  on the time and the season of life you're in. Maybe your goal is to exercise
• 6:24
  three or four times a week.
• 6:25
  That might change. That might differ. You might do more. You might do less.
• 6:29
  It might look different depending on the season of life you are in.
• 6:33
  And that is a realistic expectation is to know that your goals and expectations
• 6:39
  will change depending on what season of life you're in. I look at my season right now.
• 6:45
  A couple years ago when I had three kids, three or four and under, they were super young.
• 6:52
  It was really hard to even set any goals, let alone accomplish any goals.
• 6:58
  Whereas now when my youngest is three, I feel like I can actually do a little bit more.
• 7:03
  I mostly get good sleep at night and I can function a little bit better.
• 7:09
  So my expectations for myself and for my life have changed.
• 7:14
  Number nine, this is incredibly important.
• 7:18
  Our expectations should be connected to our goals of living a meaningful life.
• 7:24
  And what I mean by that is that it's important for us to start from a place
• 7:28
  of understanding what do we want out of our life?
• 7:31
  What do we want our life to look like? I look at, this is always my example,
• 7:35
  But with my kids, if I want to have quality relationships with them,
• 7:41
  what should my expectations be right now?
• 7:45
  What should I expect now?
• 7:47
  From myself in interacting with them right now?
• 7:51
  If I want to be somebody who shows up for other people, what are my expectations
• 7:57
  for myself and for my life right now?
• 7:59
  If I say that I value social connection, what should my expectations be right now?
• 8:08
  What should I be working towards? And this is incredibly important to look at
• 8:13
  how our expectations for our lives align with our goals of living that meaningful life.
• 8:21
  I hope this has helped you to understand what it would look like to have realistic
• 8:26
  and healthy expectations within ADHD.
• 8:29
  Thank you so much for being here with me today. Until next time, God bless.