289 Self-Awareness (And Why People With ADHD Suck At It)
Nov 12, 2024
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Joe Corpus, a Houston-based gardener with ADHD, shares his transformative journey towards self-awareness and acceptance. He discusses how self-awareness is crucial for personal growth and decision-making. Joe reflects on the feelings of disconnection stemming from his ADHD diagnosis and emphasizes the role of grief in his path to acceptance. The conversation highlights the healing benefits of nature and the importance of understanding one's emotions in nurturing both self and relationships. Tune in for a nurturing take on overcoming ADHD challenges!
Developing self-awareness for individuals with ADHD requires confronting grief and embracing self-acceptance to foster personal growth.
Incremental practices like journaling and reflection can enhance self-awareness by promoting vulnerability and insight into one's emotions and needs.
Deep dives
The Importance of Self-Awareness for ADHD
Self-awareness is a critical skill for adults with ADHD as it significantly influences their capacity to reach personal goals and understand their behaviors. The podcast emphasizes two key skills related to self-awareness: working memory, particularly visual working memory, and metacognition, or the ability to think about one's own thinking. Individuals with ADHD often struggle with time blindness, making it difficult to reflect on past experiences or plan for the future, which directly impacts their self-awareness. Moreover, metacognition poses its own challenge, as those with ADHD may find it difficult to assess their thought processes, necessitating deliberate practice to develop this essential skill.
Grief and Acceptance on the Journey
The process of developing self-awareness inevitably involves grappling with grief and acceptance, particularly regarding one's past experiences and the way they have previously treated themselves. Recognizing the pain from formative years and the internalized beliefs that stem from them often leads to a realization of self-acceptance. Individuals may find that they must mourn their experiences and the self-sabotaging behaviors that have previously defined them, but this emotional work opens the door for deeper self-compassion. This aspect of the journey reveals that acknowledging hard truths can ultimately facilitate personal growth and healing.
Practical Steps to Enhance Self-Awareness
To begin cultivating self-awareness, individuals might consider simple, incremental steps such as reflecting on their feelings and emotions throughout the day. This could involve journaling thoughts or utilizing supportive tools like chatbot programs to explore internal sentiments without judgment. The podcast highlights the importance of creating a space for vulnerability, which can lead to valuable insights into one's preferences, triggers, and coping mechanisms. Engaging in this consistent practice encourages growth, allowing each person to gain clarity and a better understanding of their needs over time.
The Transformative Power of Self-Discovery
The journey towards self-awareness and acceptance can be life-changing, offering individuals a sense of relief and emotional lightness as they come to understand themselves better. This transformation includes increasing confidence in setting personal boundaries and navigating relationships with others, leading to healthier interactions. As individuals learn to manage their emotions and recognize their limits, they become empowered to make choices that align with their genuine selves instead of merely conforming to external expectations. Overall, the growth achieved through self-awareness fosters a sense of authenticity and self-acceptance that significantly enhances quality of life.
Self-awareness is one of our deficient executive functioning skills and it can REALLY hold us ADHDers back if we're not careful.
Feel like you make the same mistakes over and over? That's in part because of lack of self-awareness. Feel like you don't know yourself, who you are, and what you want? Yeah, that's because your self-awareness isn't great.
In this episode, my client Joe Corpus is here to discuss his path to self-awareness and the crucial role that acceptance played in the process.
Joe was diagnosed with ADHD as a child but told by his mother that he was "fine" and "didn't need medication." What ensued was decades of feeling disconnected from others, but mostly disconnected from himself.
Joe shares his journey of developing self-awareness and how this can only be done with a hefty dose of self-acceptance. And the pathway? Well, you may not like it (I sure don't!): GRIEF.
We talk about it all...you're going to feel so nurtured by this episode, I just know it.
Joe Corpus is from Houston Texas. He owns a small, full-service gardening company dedicated to the stewardship of a limited number of high-end residential properties. Joe has been a part of FOCUSED for 10 months. He was diagnosed with ADHD approximately two years before the pandemic.
Watch this episode on YouTube Want help with your ADHD? Join FOCUSED! Have questions for Kristen? Call 1.833.281.2343 Hang out with Kristen on Instagram and TikTok
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