Wintering Well With ADHD

How to exercise in winter?

Find a way to get your body moving. Physical health and exercise contributes to mental health. But it’s hard when it’s cold.

• Indoors exercise
• Lunchtime exercise: if you can get away at lunch for a walkabout, do!
• Parkrun: Every saturday, a 5K and a commnunity.
• Running Club: There’s probably one in your area
• Sports Clubs: Check your local leisure centre
• Exercise with a goal
  • Maybe you get a little treat at the end
  • Go to a coffee shop
  • meet a friend

Fix your environment

An easy step is to make sure your home environment is meeting your needs. Do you like it dark? Make it more cozy with fairy lights. Prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)? Light it up! One of our members talked about a cool “Wave Light” they enjoy.

Keep personal connections active

So how do we keep personal connections active during the winter?

• Routine! Schedule regular meetings so you don’t have to keep making the decision about when to meet.
• Board Game Nights are a low-demand sort of indoor activity that many people enjoy.
• Book Club

Wired Differently

We’re wired differently. What might seem like a normal thing for a normal person, like meeting up with friends, may be a challenge for us. So how do you motivate yourself? To go out? To do anything!

Body double

It really is that simple, sometimes. Just have a person sitting there with you.

Focus Mate Service

One of our members has been using this for a few years. You call a random internet stranger, you each state what you need to get done, and then sit there on the phone with them. After the allotted time, you report if you did it.

A Stern-Looking Toy

The idea is that you have a little ritual. In this case, it was a very disapproving toy. Our member puts it on her desk when she needs to get something difficult done. The toy judges her quietly as a visual reminder to focus.

Wintering Well, Food Edition

Your mind is part of your body, and if your body isn’t getting enough of the right stuff, your mind will suffer.

• Vitamin D
• Veggies
• Delayed Gratification on junk food. If you don’t buy it, you can’t eat it.
• Salt + Vinegar Powder? Make your veggies taste better. Yeah, apparently Amazon has it.
• Plan your meals. Make your decisions before you get hungry.
• Freezer meals.
• And use a heavy-duty ziploc baggie for soups if you don’t have the room for containers in your freezer.

Surviving Christmas

We found a workbook from an organization that has a lot of free resources for neurodivergent folks. Weirdly Successful. If you like a workbook to help you organize your thoughts, signup is free. Link in the resources.

Secret Santa can take a lot of the pressure off gift-giving. One gift for one person in your family. Do it for a couple of years and you can call it a tradition. Draw Names online tool can be useful for setting the rotation for your gift rotation.

Gift Exchange Pile is even less pressure. Everyone brings a gift, and selections are random. Who doesn’t like a “Lucky Dip”?

Say “No!” More. You have to say no to a thousand things so you can say yes to the things that actually matter. You don’t need to make excuses. You can just say that you don’t want to do a thing. But in order to set boundaries appropriately, you have to communicate them to the people in your life.

A concern about self-medicating came up. A lot of ADHDers have dealt with substance abuse in the past. Be clear on your boundaries about alcohol and the like when dealing with family and work parties. Take care of yourself.

For things like work parties, if you feel like you must go for whatever reason, you could try to be one of the organizers of the party so you can make sure your needs are being met as well as probably helping out other neurodivergent people who aren’t speaking up.

Consider quiet neurodivergent-friendly activities for any get-together.

• Craft Tables
• Crochet
• Coloring books

Family is also found. It was pointed out that there is a photographer who organizes a Christmas hike in the Peaks District every year for people who don’t have others to spend christmas with. I bet a lot of families come out of that little community over the years.

Try to identify the things that are important to you and the people you care about for the holiday season. If there’s something you’ve been doing for years “just because”, there’s no reason to keep doing it if it’s not in line with your values and needs. But make the decisions before any conflict comes up. Script the conversations you think are going to be difficult ahead of time, so you can better advocate for yourself in the moment.

Have a safe holiday, everyone!