India Clark (she/her)

English

This guided practice walks you through ADHD paralysis to get you clear and moving again. Led first hand experience by a mindfulness coach with ADHD, we begin with empathy and normalizing, then move through a guided tension release, followed by simple reflective questions to give you insight that gets you on your way. Hang in there!

Guidance Through ADHD Paralysis

Hi. You are in a state of ADHD paralysis right now. I can really relate. I can relate to the overwhelm, the pressure, the shame, the negative self-talk. This is really hard right now. I'm India Clark. I have ADHD. I'm a mindfulness teacher and a coach for creatives. I just this morning worked myself through my own pretty difficult ADHD paralysis, and I thought I would share with you some of what helped me in case it's helpful to you as well. So you are not alone. You are not the only one, and this is pretty normal for those of us with ADHD, especially if you, like me, are in perimenopause and you discovered ADHD late in your life, and it's only gotten harder as your responsibilities have increased and your hormones are changing. But that may not be the case for you. You may be any age, any gender, and ADHD paralysis is something that you're experiencing right now. You are not alone. I want to remind you that this is not all that you are. It isn't always like this, and this feeling that you're having right now isn't forever. This isn't all that you are. So let's begin in reality with what is here right now, with what you're feeling. So I want you to just notice your body, your breath, the state of your mind, the sensations running through you, and if it feels right, finish this sentence. Right now, I can't possibly. If you want to pause the meditation and take more time to write on that, you're welcome to do so. Otherwise, we'll move on to the next sentence that you can complete. The worst part of this is. So let yourself really feel it. Maybe your face makes a certain face to go along with the worst part of it, or your body has a body posture. Just let yourself really fully embody this for just a few moments, just how true and how hard and what the full extent of this actually is for you. And now we're going to go through and do a little bit of a tension release. So I want you to find a stable posture. You can be sitting, lying down. You can be standing. Whatever posture you're in, focus first on the stability in your connection to the ground, bringing your attention to the parts of your body that are making contact. And rise up from there with as much dignity as you can find in this moment. And then we're going to begin at the top of the head and move all the way down through the body with a little tension release to invite in a relaxation response. So first, bring your attention to your face, and I want you to scrunch up your face and close your eyes as tight as you can. Press your lips together, maybe stretch your jaw, just bringing as much squeezing into your face as you can. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and then release. Feel the relaxation from the top of your scalp, down the back of your neck, and moving towards your shoulders. Now lift your shoulders towards your ears and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and drop the shoulders and release. Coming down through the arms, give yourself a hug, wrapping one arm around the other, squeezing your arms in tight at your sides, squeezing each arm with the other arm, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release. Bring your hands together, either clasping the two hands together or clasping each hand in a fist, and squeeze as tight as you can into the hands, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release. Pausing to notice the relaxation response, letting relaxation slip all the way down your arms from your shoulders into your fingertips. Draw in a breath and draw the belly in and up, bringing navel towards your spine, engage the abdominals, lifting in and up, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the abdominals, and when you are ready, release, feeling relaxation in the belly, in the spine, and in the diaphragm. Moving down into the legs, depending on your posture, this will look different for you, whether you're sitting, standing, or lying down. Bring your attention to the glute muscles, squeeze the glutes, squeeze your butt together, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, relax, and release. Engaging the quads, squeeze the top of the legs, drawing the quads in and up, squeezing the knees, lifting up into the quads, and now into the hamstrings. If you're sitting, you can have your legs out straight in front and press those legs into the ground. If you're standing, maybe you find a lunge, just twisting around in such a way that you find the back of your legs and you engage those muscles from the top of the leg down to the knees and down to the heels. Squeeze the two legs together, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release. Breathing in and out as you notice relaxation in your muscles, tension dissolving, muscles smoothing out, calming down, all the way down through the legs. And then come to your feet, bring your attention to your toes, squeeze them in, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and then flex, flex, flex, flex, flex, and release, feeling relaxation down through the feet, sweeping from the top of the scalp down through the face, the forehead, the eyes, the shoulders, feeling softness flowing through the neck and the chest, the throat and the jaw, down the arms into the hands, down the chest, the front and the back of the heart, the belly, soft into the hip flexors, down through the legs and into the feet. And notice how you feel now. Notice what, if anything, has shifted for you. And now I want to invite you to come back to what's on your mind, and what it is that you feel you need to face that maybe was weighing on you. And this is an opportunity to write it down if you'd like to pause the meditation, and there can be some liberation in the experience of putting something down on paper, so it's out of your head where it swirls around, and it's just objectified on paper. But if you don't have paper handy or something to write with, you can do this in your mind as well. So just take a moment to think through, pause the meditation, and get on to what is on your mind that you need to face right now. And when you have a little bit of a list, you can go ahead and look for what on that list feels heaviest, and circle it. And next, look for what on your list feels most urgent or is most urgent. And put an arrow next to it. And now you can put that aside and come back to seated posture, or standing still posture, or laying down posture, where you can close your eyes or gaze downward to direct your attention inside. Notice your breath and make a choice not to control it. Notice what's here in your body and your mind as we begin to invite in the possibility of guidance, a sense of knowing, a sense of inner knowing what comes next and what is needed. So this step is about finding the next right action. You can relax and see if it's possible to consciously open your heart as you invite in a sense of asking, what is the next right step for me? What is the next right action? And rather than going to work with your brain trying to figure out the answer to that, I want you to just sit with it as if it's a little Hershey's Kiss that's just sitting on your open palm. The question just sits there. What's the next right action? You can stay with that as long as you need. You can return to your journal or your paper, or if something has come to you that's really clear, go ahead and stop the meditation and go do it. And know that I'm with you and so many of us who have experienced ADHD paralysis are with you as you go through this. It is hard to make choices when many things weigh on the mind decision fatigue is real and your system will be able to support you through these steps when you are resourced and regulated, which hopefully you are by now. If you begin to take your next right action and you find that you're not sure after that, just repeat the next steps. You can look at your list of what's on your mind that you need to face and make a choice. Do you want to tackle what feels heaviest so you can invite in a sense of lightness? Or do you want to focus on what feels most urgent? But I will share my personal experience from this morning to say that the truth is I have many things on that list that really need my attention. But what stood out to me is two things. One, I need to break those items on my list down much further into smaller parts because they actually are multi-step processes, each one of them. And two, I couldn't do any of that before I took care of some of my basic needs like getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and eating breakfast. I hadn't been able to do those things yet for a variety of real and important reasons of things that were going on in my house and in my life and in my family, and I needed to clear space to just do those basic things. So if your next right action is something as simple as, I need to drink some water, I need to go to the bathroom, honor that, and then come back again to that last step of sitting quietly with your eyes closed and just asking for internal guidance from your own guidance system that you trust, your own knowing, to come to you. What's the next right action? And just focus on one thing at a time. At some point, hopefully, if your experience is anything like mine, you will come to a place where now you feel a little bit more ready, and you can take a look at that list and have some executive function available to you as you break it down and get to work. I hope this has been helpful. Please know that I am sending a lot of love your way. Take care.