Here’s What to Do If You Hate Your Wall Color, but Don’t Want to Repaint | Apartment Therapy
I had to laugh when I saw this headline. How many of my fellow ADHDers have either:
a.) impulsively painted a room a regrettable color (or one that probably won’t get your security deposit back),
b.) inherited a terrible room color and procrastinated repainting it for years,
or
c.) a combination of a.) and b.) because you had no motivation to redo the whole project to fix your mistake?
I’ve done all three! Including but not limited to:
- Moving into an apartment with a truly appalling attempt at sponge painting on the living room walls and living in it for close to a year before my roommate forced us to repaint
- Painting a bathroom bright yellow with orange trim (that one was actually fun at the time, but good thing the landlord didn’t care!)
- Knowing from the first coat I’d made a mistake, yet still painting my living room the wrong color and, four years later, still planning to repaint it “this month”
Painting walls feels kind of like cutting my hair: a way to feel like I’m making a substantive change in my life or putting the past behind me. Sometimes that’s good! Other times, I end up with a shaggy, DIY pixie cut or a paint job that makes onlookers say “wow — it definitely makes a statement…”
Coaching Your ADHD Child on Social Skills | Healthy ADHD
I’ve started doing some more hands-on coaching with my kiddo lately, and it’s hard. Sometimes I wonder how I can teach him what he needs to know when I myself feel socially inept most of the time.
We’ve also been talking about feelings. A lot. He has big feelings, just like I do, and it can be hard to navigate those while still behaving appropriately toward the people around you.
Again, sometimes I feel like an unfit teacher. But then again, I think it helps a lot for our kids to know we think this stuff is hard too. Lately I’ve been reminding myself that it means a lot to be able to tell him I get it, this has happened to me, it’s okay for this stuff to be hard, it’s okay to need to practice and learn it.
In our house we have some worksheets from the kiddo’s therapist about thoughts, feelings, and actions. I want to write about this at some point because it’s helpful for adults too! We discuss what thoughts he had, how those thoughts made him feel, and what actions came out of his thoughts and feelings.
This weekend we learned that his most problematic behavior often comes out of worried feelings! Which is so helpful because then I can coach him on some new thoughts, which ideally lead to new feelings, less acting out, and more productive social interactions.
But, whew, it’s hard.
It’s okay if you have to learn social skills.
And of course my previous post reminded me of this one 😂
ADHD Stories: My Brothers & Me | The ADHD Good Life
This really got me thinking (again) about what many consider the “default” presentation of ADHD — or perhaps more accurately, the only presentation they believe — and how that leads to everyone else getting labeled with character deficits instead of a treatable disorder.
That default is usually: white, male, hyperactive.
I firmly believe I only suspected ADHD in myself because I had close friendships with boys who fit that “default” mold and thus had a diagnosis. The places we overlapped got the wheels turning for me.
I’m a woman with ADHD: Here’s what I wish you knew (now with narration!)
Patrons got this on Wednesday’s Audioblog podcast, but look at me actually remembering to share it here too 😉
A reader wrote a little while ago to thank me for this post and tell me they’d sent it to their partner to read. The only problem: partner’s dyslexia might get in the way of reading the whole thing.
This is a surprisingly common concern! Some ADHDers also have a lot of trouble sitting and reading but will happily listen to audiobooks and podcasts for hours. (Not me: I’m the exact opposite. Reading is one of my big hyperfocus jams.)
Anyway, the post was already on my shortlist to add narration so I bumped it to the front of the queue.
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