Overachievers Anonymous: ADHD Edition

What if your burnout isn’t from doing too much, but from not having the right supports in place?
  • Breaks down the 4 key areas Jamie assesses in every ADHD coaching consult for burnout
  • Explains why your work environment may be sabotaging your focus and energy without you realizing it
  • Highlights sneaky boundary issues, especially the kind that look like being “helpful” but are draining you dry
  • Offers practical shifts for managing a dysfunctional home environment without perfection or shame
  • Dismantles the perfectionism + executive dysfunction trap keeping you from getting started
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What is Overachievers Anonymous: ADHD Edition?

Hi, friend! I'll keep this short and sweet, because ADHD!

Whether you're newly diagnosed or have known for a century, Overachievers Anonymous: ADHD Edition is the podcast for you. Join me and my guests as we explore the latest research, share personal stories, and provide actionable advice to help you live your best life with ADHD.

 Welcome to Overachievers Anonymous, ADHD edition. I'm Jamie Cutino, a board certified occupational therapist, two times TEDx speaker and a DHD coach. Now let's talk about A DHD.

 Hello, beautiful humans. How the heck are you doing today? I'm excited about this episode. Where I'm gonna talk about, if you are ever wondering, okay, working with Jamie, I wonder what it's like. I wonder what she's thinking as she's doing a consult and taking her little notes. If you've ever done a consult with me, you know that I am taking notes, the entirety of it, because it turns out I have a DHD and working memory is hard, so I write it down.

But if you're ever wondering, what is she assessing during a consult? I'm gonna tell you exactly what it is because after doing this work for almost four years, there are specific patterns of issues or problems, or, I can't think of a really good word, but things that can contribute to burnout and high achieving A DHD humans.

So I am gonna talk about those themes, things that I see, and also give you a few things that you can do for each category. But I have yet, I think to work with a client who doesn't struggle with each of these in some way, shape or form. And if you're feeling burnt out and thinking, well, maybe I'll be able to.

Sleep my way through recovery. I hate to tell you that burnout recovery requires so much more than just rest. Yes, rest is important, but if you are not changing these things after you're done resting, it won't fricking matter because you are going to be it perpetual states of burnout and maybe feeling less shitty and less you.

Work through these different areas. Okay, so the first thing that I'm gonna look at when you tell me that you're burnt out or you hop on a call with me is I'm gonna look at your work environment, and there's a few things I'm gonna be looking at as far as your work environment. For one, are your sensory needs being met?

Now that comes all the way down to the environment that you're in. Are the lights too bright? Is it too loud? Are there people walking in your periphery? And that is taking away attention from what you need to be focused on.

Are your clothes or even your hair done in a way that is not going to irritate the shit out of you.

When you're in long meetings, do you have fidgets by you or something that can allow you to stem while you are engaged in maybe a Zoom meeting.

So I would look at your sensory needs as one thing in your work environment. Now, the second part of the work environment is I want, I'm looking for, do you have any supports set up to help your executive functioning? Now your executive functioning. Something that's controlled in the frontal lobe, which if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that as an A DHD human, we have underdeveloped frontal lobes, which means that we are going to struggle with executive functioning, which means you are going to struggle with starting tasks, finishing tasks, switching tasks, prioritizing tasks.

So I am gonna look at how are you setting up your workday? Are you doing the most challenging tasks when you naturally have the most energy? Do you even know when you naturally have the most focused energy? You've probably heard me talk about this quite a few times in the podcast that. I will set up my most challenging tasks for when I naturally have the most focused energy and me being a medicated human.

It's gonna be about an hour, or it's gonna start about an hour after I take my stimulant medication and the next couple hours after that first hour. So say I take it at 8:00 AM be from like nine to 11 is gonna be my most primetime window. If I have really challenging tasks to do, I'm gonna wanna do them during that window.

But a lot of people that work with me, they aren't even for sure when that window is, or they feel like, oh, it's during my second wind in the evening, or.

Or they're not sure because they're so burnt out that they don't even know when they naturally have the most energy. Even if you are feeling burnt out, you likely have a time where your brain does best, which is why before setting an appointment with someone, I try to overlap their best focus time with my best focus time so that we're able to have the best session possible.

Not always possible, but. These are things I'm looking at as far as executive functioning supports. I'm also gonna be looking at how are you prioritizing your day and do you know how to prioritize your day?

Or are you putting all tasks as equal, looking at 17 of 'em at the same time and having a really hard time getting started on any of them? Or are you picking maybe your top two priorities for the day and letting that spiral you good, spiral you into getting more things done? So there's a lot that can be done to support your executive functioning.

It'd be really hard to cram it into a 20 minute podcast episode, but your environment, your work environment is one thing I'm gonna be looking at with someone who is struggling from burnout. Okay. Now the second thing I'm gonna look at is boundaries. Boundaries with yourself and boundaries with others.

I'm gonna look at your personal life. Are you the savior for other people? Are you the go-to person? Are you the unpaid, self-appointed therapist for all of your friends? Do you take a moment to ask yourself if you have the capacity to be there for somebody else when they are? Reaching out to, to you in a crisis, or are you first to jump on it without first checking in with yourself?

What is your boundary? What are your boundaries like with your partner? Is there a

I.

Division of labor that allows both of you to know exactly what your roles are in the house without having to nitpick each other about when, why the fuck didn't you do X, Y, z. I'm also gonna be looking at boundaries with your boss and your colleagues. Boundaries are essential to not get to the point where you leave with your middle finger up in the air, wondering how the fuck you're gonna pay your rent or your mortgage boundaries with yourself and that are you working outside of your job description, trying to solve the all of the company's systemic issues, working as four people getting paid as one person.

And the reason this happens a lot of times, especially when you're new in a position, is because it's new and it's fun and you're learning all these things, but what happens after you're somewhere for four or six months, it becomes more routine. You don't get that novelty in the dopamine that you did early in a job.

This is where shit oftentimes goes off of the rails. So the lack of boundaries with yourself leads you to be doing a lot of extra work, which over time oftentimes leads to burnout, coupled with all of these other things as well, which is why when I mention boundaries, I'm not talking about just boundaries with other people.

It's also boundaries within yourself. Now, having a DHD means that you're going to be a dopamine seeking person because we are dopamine deficient humans. So oftentimes what this work also looks like is channeling that extra energy, that extra creativity into something outside of work, not looking at work to fulfill all of your dopamine needs and all of your creative endeavors.

Now the third thing that I'm going to look at is your home environment. Your home environment.

When I see somebody that is a very high achiever at work and their home is not in a functional state, and I'm not someone that is like. Pro Pinterest fucking picture worthy home at all. The only thing I am concerned about is your home functional for you? Are you able to do what you need to do in your environment in a way that creates as little stress as possible for you?

That is what I'm looking at. Definitely not looking at some bullshit fucking standards, but. Many people that I work with, at least in the beginning of our work, their home isn't in a way that is functionable. There might not be clothes that are always cleaned. There might not be, uh, dishes that are washed.

There might not even be a, an area that feels comfortable to be able to get work done if they work from home because it feels cluttered. When I see these things, I don't see somebody that doesn't give a shit about their home. It's oftentimes the opposite. It's someone who cares very much about their home, but they're not able to get, keep their house in a functional way because they don't have routines that are doable for them, and they don't have supports in place to be able to keep a functional home.

So this is where we would work on routines to be able to get to a place where you are able to keep your home in a functional way. That might be something as little as when you get started. Not having the goal be to do all the dishes, but to do a single dish so that you're able to eat off of it. Maybe this looks like if you have the resources, starting off with somebody coming in and helping you to be able to clean, and then from there, putting in supports so that you are able to keep up with it.

This can look like having multiple alarms so that you are able to not only be alerted to what you need to do at home, but then have the time to transition from whatever task you're currently doing to that other task because you've had three alarms go off that allows you to transition to that task. It might look something like figuring out.

What preferred task you can do at the same time as you do your non-preferred task, like listening to a podcast or an audio book or music while you're doing the dishes,

or getting on a call with somebody and just silently working alongside of each other, like body doubling.

So for your home environment, it is essential that you have routines in place that feel doable, and you have supports in place for the things that don't feel doable, like maybe eating off of paper plates and plastic silverware when you don't have the capacity to do the dishes.

And the fourth thing that I look at, perfectionism. Perfectionism. I see this very often within my clients where they are incredibly high achievers, especially in the workplace.

And they'll have a beautiful vision of a project that they need to do or a task that they need to do, and they have a really hard time getting step one done when the vision that they have is so beautiful, so perfect. That step one feels like, I don't even know what the fuck step one even is. So for perfectionism, what we work on is.

Doing a shitty job, what I call doing a shitty job for you. It's gonna feel like doing a shitty job when an actuality, when a perfectionist does an adequate job and doesn't go above and beyond it. More times than not is adequate, where you're not gonna hear from anybody telling you that you did a shit job.

And over time when you do a shitty job and don't get in trouble for it, your nervous system can finally take a deep breath knowing that what you are doing is enough. So to recap, the four areas that I look at when someone is feeling burnt out is their work environment, our sensory needs and executive supports.

Present your boundaries with yourself and with others personally and professionally, your home environment, and if there are doable routines built in. Because when you're in your home environment, unlike your workplace,

hold.

There is not built in urgency in your home environment, which is why it is so imperative that you have doable routines in place to keep it in a functional way. And the last thing is perfectionism. In dismantling that perfectionism, allowing you to be able to get things done instead of perfectionism, marrying executive function, executive dysfunction, and making it even harder to get started.

Woo. All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful. I hope that you reflect a little bit more on your life and what can be. What is possibly creating a feeling of burnout in your nervous system? And I hope that you take this time to get honest with yourself and what could change, because the fact that you feel burnt out has nothing to do with morality or how bad you want something.

But it has everything to do with not having the supports in your life that you need to be a functional human. And the skills that are incredibly learnable to be able to do that. All right my friends. Until next time. Bye now.

 I'm an occupational therapist. Turned a DHD coach for overachieving. Perfectionistic. Brilliant, but burnt out. A DHD humans. Are you curious about my one-on-one coaching schedule a free consult link is in the show notes, or go to out smart A DH d.co. I'll see you next time.