In this episode of the Translating ADHD Podcast, Ash and Dusty explore the complexities of activism, particularly for individuals with ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions. They discuss how all-or-nothing thinking can hinder meaningful engagement in social justice causes, leading to feelings of despair or burnout. The conversation emphasizes the importance of recognizing one’s capacity and the need for nuance in advocacy. Rather than adhering to strict standards of activism, Ash and Dusty encourage listeners to reflect on their strengths, resources, and personal values to find sustainable ways to contribute to causes that matter to them.
They share personal experiences that illustrate the struggle between wanting to make a difference and managing day-to-day life demands. The discussion highlights the significance of small contributions and the collective nature of activism, reassuring listeners that every effort counts, no matter how minor it may seem. Ultimately, the episode empowers individuals to embrace their unique journeys in advocacy without the pressure of perfection, reminding them that it’s okay to take breaks and reassess priorities as life evolves.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:04] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Last call to sign up for one of the two group coaching classes that I’m hosting in January. The first is Purpose, which begins on January 13th, Monday. The second is Project X, which begins Tuesday, January 14th. Both classes meet at 8:30 PM Eastern time. For more information on the content of each course, pricing and to apply, visit the website TranslatingADHD.com and click on the group coaching tab.So, Dusty, this week we’re gonna continue the conversation we were having last week when we were talking about the political climate and the impact of ADHD. But we’re gonna turn our attention towards activism. You wanna jump in and say something about activism and what that means?
[00:00:49] Dusty: Yes, we should define activism. And now I wish I had a really good definition of it, but my working lay person’s definition of activism would be like participating in social causes that matter for you. So making change in the world on the topics and the political things that matter to you, whether that’s trans rights or access to healthcare or poverty reduction or what’s it called when people are like, like incarcerated or like, you know, advocating for people who are, you know, incarcerated or… [00:01:23] Ash: restorative justice. [00:01:24] Dusty: Yeah, restorative justice.It could even be stuff, you know, like, you know, caring about what’s happening in other countries where there are social issues, like what’s happening in the Ukraine or with the war, you know, various things like that. So it’s about participating in some level of activity that makes social change. I think, I don’t know.
What do you think, Asher?
[00:01:45] Ash: I think that’s a good definition. And I think that list that you just kind of came up with off the top of your head also speaks to why it can be so hard as a person with ADHD, who is very justice sensitive, as most of us are, most of us tend to be empaths. Most of us tend to be oriented to the left and it’s really challenging right now when it feels like the whole world is on fire, how do you have any impact at all and how do you do it in a way that is sustainable for you, right?I know that one challenge I have is being prone to despair right now, being prone to forget it, nothing matters, so why do anything at all? And then you have the other side of that equation where it’s like, I want to do everything, I want to try and do it all. And that can lead to its own forms of burnout and can also be kind of inefficient if we’re putting our effort into things that aren’t really making a difference. If we’re not distinguishing what’s important from what’s not.
[00:02:41] Dusty: Yeah, all-or-nothing thinking, right? And there’s something I said before we started recording too that’s occurring here. To me, it’s sort of like a lesser talked about thing, but I do see it with my clients in different aspects where Like I think because we have ADHD and some of us are autistic like we take things very literally at face value, right?So sometimes we know that autistic people do take things really literally But sometimes I think we do with ADHD as well. Almost more because we’re like not really paying attention and noticing all the nuance underneath it. So the example that I often see is like, clients are when they’re in the workplace, they assume that they are doing less work than their peers, or that they are struggling more to complete work than their peers.
And you know, if they’re supposed to be working for 8 hours, they really think that means, like, working for 8 hours. Right? And so one of the things I’ll do is I’ll have them actually ask their colleagues. I might have actually even said this before, like, you know, how much work do you actually get done in a day? And like, What do you do? And like, if you have too many emails to deal with, like, how do you manage that? Like, I get them to get specifics because often what we learn is that, like, they’re taking it at a really shallow face value level that everybody else is doing this thing.
And I think this applies to, like, activism and also social justice as well. Because we’re very, like, all or nothing thinkers, we’re very justice sensitive. There are these, like, quote-unquote, like, rules. Here’s how you’re supposed to act based on your values, and here’s how things are supposed to be. But we don’t always have the nuance that comes along with that.
So, you know, one thing is okay I’m a single mom, I’m self-employed, and I don’t live, I live on the outskirts of Vancouver, so I live maybe about 30 minutes away from the downtown. And there’s like various different protests that happen for different topics that I’ve always wanted to go to, and a lot of the time when I can’t go.
I’ll put myself under all this pressure, and I’ll be like, oh my God, I’m like such a bad activist what, this cause is so important, and I like, what’s wrong with me. And then I realize okay, I’m comparing myself, a single mom, who has very low capacity, living far away, who would have to drive in, find parking, bring their child, find child care, to maybe like a single person in their 20s who lives downtown, for whom like going to such a protest is it means something different, it’s so much easier, right?
But to me, those, I equivocate those things, right? I’m like, oh we’re both equal and we’re not, right? So I think sometimes we also do that with sort of that justice sensitivity and these causes we care about where we like. We apply those rules, and we take them to extremes because we don’t use nuance. And that can be challenging as well for how we actually manifest our intentions.
So, Asher, okay, here’s another way that I see people with ADD struggling with this, with the perfectionism – one of the things that both you and I do is, you know, is we help people with like clutter and home management and these kinds of things you probably much more so than I, but that is an area that I love to help people is getting their homes organized because it made such a big difference for me to learn to manage my stuff.
And whenever I’m doing this work with people, I really see them getting caught up. In in wanting to get rid of things the right way and because they don’t have the cap capacity to get rid of things the right way, they don’t get rid of them. Oh, I can’t get rid of this till I donate it or I have to sell it on Facebook marketplace because and I’ll just say to them throw it away.
And they’re like, shocked. I’m like, wait, just chuck it. Right? So often that effort we go to, to sell the thing on Facebook marketplace for what? 10. Then the person doesn’t come. It’s like all this effort. And for me if a place where you can donate things is accessible, great, but frankly, there have been times where I just have to trash a thing because I’m, like, the amount of spoons it would take for me to you know, get to the donation place, and it’ll sit in my house, and I’ve tried, right?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried. And then it sits in my house so long that the clutter slowly reintegrates itself, right? It just becomes a pile. So when I can donate things or I can sell things, I do, but if I need to just chuck something and just throw it away, I do. And it helps me so much with moving forward.
And so, with clients of mine, I’ve had to have this conversation, and I literally will tell them, I’m like, look, I promise you, you’re, like, not the straw that broke the camel’s back on climate change. I promise you, we’re not we’re not going to tip the scales, and like, oh, no, everything’s terrible now, because so and such put a box of books in her dumpster and didn’t sell them.
Now we’re past the point of no return. Like, it’s not gonna be you buying cut fruit in plastic, you know, clamshell containers versus cutting the fruit yourself. But that’s how people are really out here feeling, because they want to do the right thing environmentally, which I very much admire, but when it comes at the cost of their own capacity, and it means that they’re, like, not feeding themselves properly, or they’re living unhappy lives falling over their own clutter you have to ask yourself what actually reduces your capacity more, right?
‘Cause for me, living in a super cluttery home where I can’t find my stuff it means that I have to invest so much more of my time and energy in managing that space. And that’s time and energy that doesn’t get to go to what? making social change, right? Keeping my home like somewhat minimalist, keeping it somewhat organized actually creates the capacity for me to put more of that energy elsewhere.
Feeding myself prepackaged foods you know, means that I don’t have to expend all those spoons with like meal planning and shopping and prepping and probably burning the food on the stove and then falling asleep and forgetting it and leaving it out overnight and then crying the next day cause I didn’t even get to eat it after all that.
Anyway, all that capacity I save, guess where I could put it? Activism.
[00:08:04] Ash: That’s a really good point, Dusty. And it’s something I’ve been through as well. I was a vegan for a couple of years and a vegetarian for several more. I am neither now. I still think that factory farming is abhorrent, both in terms of the climate impacts and in terms of how we treat living beings, but I also realized that as a single parent myself – I do have a co-parent here in town that is is an active part of my kid’s life – but during the school year, my kid is with me all week, every week.So cooking for two people, and it’s just us making sure that we’ve got everything we need. It just became unsustainable. It became something that I resented, and it honestly wasn’t having that much of an impact – my choice to eat or not eat meat.
And I will add that I still have a low-meat diet, right? So all of those things that I did learn, the recipes that I do, the ways of eating that I’ve adapted to over the years, that has stayed. So I let that be good enough. I consume less animal products than most people I know, and that’s good enough.
But it’s so hard to know what’s good enough when, especially in the media climate today anywhere you look, any news you’re reading, is going to be telling you politically, environmentally, socially, economically, how everything’s a mess because media itself is no longer news. It’s entertainment. It’s intended to get at your nervous system. It’s intended to get your anxiety up and throw you into that limbic system because media wants you to consume more media. They’re writing those headlines to get you to click. They want to scare you.
And so when it’s all doom in all directions, what’s the point, right? How do you keep from going from one extreme of I have to do it all right to the other extreme of why does it matter? I’m just going to slide into despair.
[00:10:06] Dusty: Yeah, and I think that neurodivergent people, I think we are a little bit more vulnerable to these really extreme swings, right? I remember when sort of, you know, cancel culture was a thing. You know, and don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s, I think it’s excellent that so many people who’ve caused so much harm are being held to justice. But there was this moment where we were all like foaming at the mouth, like it was like the Salem witch trials. Like it was like a pissing contest of who is the most, like, holier than thou, like perfect left-wing like activist type. And people were throwing each other under the bus to the point where there was lateral violence happening, right?Like I remember I once posted, I reposted like a meme on my Instagram Facebook account, my work Facebook account that was about like executive functioning age. And somebody must have seen it and not liked it, and they shared it in some really toxic disability justice online communities because all of a sudden, this one Facebook – and my Facebook is very small. People don’t really care about me on Facebook -this one post that I made was getting like, comment after comment. And it was all these people saying oh this meme is and that wasn’t a meme, it was like an infographic.
But they were saying, oh this is, you know, like insulting to neurodivergent people because it was talking about Russell Barkley’s theories of like executive function age. And I was like totally taken aback because I had never thought about it. I had just accepted it when I read it.
It didn’t offend me as a disabled person. So I was like really wow. And I was surprised that there was such a backlash, but I was like, okay, I guess, you know, people are offended by this. But one person decided to start DMing my clients on Twitter and telling them, oh, Hey, don’t you coach with Dusty? Just so you know, she’s sharing some really harmful ableist stuff. And luckily at that point my business was quite new and the person that person DMed wasn’t just a client, they were kind of almost more like a friend of mine that I was coaching casually. So she like a hundred percent had my back and was basically like, screw off.
But like, okay. You don’t like one infographic that a disabled entrepreneur who is trying to make a living and feed her child shared on Facebook, and now you’re trying to like literally undermine her business? Like that is cancel culture going too far. That’s like that sense of justice like twisted and perverted because who does that help, right? Does that make the world a less ableist place? No, man, that’s just lateral violence.
And so like I do think that neurodivergent people unfortunately, sometimes we’re more prone to those really extreme oh you want to do climate change? Like you have to be the perfect vegan, and if you don’t, you’re like a piece of crap.
And so I think what we’re starting to talk about here, Ash, and what we’re getting into is like how to approach these topics that you really care about and the values that you have with nuance where It doesn’t have to be black and white.
And like, how do you make sure that the things that you’re doing are actually, well, first of all, hopefully not actually causing harm, but – and when I say not causing harm, I also mean not causing harm to you – but also like, how do you make sure that very limited supply of variable capacity, energy and spoons that you have is making the biggest difference that it can. Right. I think that’s where we want to go with this.
[00:13:08] Ash: That’s exactly where we want to go. I do want to toss in a bit of a funny sidebar about cancel culture, is I still see the effects of that today, as a visibly transgender person. People will twist themselves in pretzels having such a normal conversation with me out of fear of saying the wrong thing, right?And isn’t that where a lot of this comes from when we’re in that reactionary, I have to do it right place? Is fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of getting cancelled, fear of not being quote-unquote good enough, fear of being looked down on for how you live your life.
So when it comes to what works for you, I think the starting place is flipping the script from what should I be doing that should word to what’s in line with a life that fits for me, right?
I am a transgender person living in a red state. I do not get involved in politics. It’s not good for my mental health. It definitely brings up those feelings of hopelessness and despair, and I don’t deal well with bureaucracy. So a lot of actual real change happens slowly and over time, and that’s not something that I’m good at or the right role for me, right?
And I used to feel bad about that. I used to feel like I should be doing something, right. As a person in this community who theoretically has the time, energy, and skills to do something in this arena, shouldn’t I be doing something? Shouldn’t I be taking a stand?
But I’ve kind of adjusted my thinking there in a couple of ways. So first of all, I want to say this, if you are a marginalized person, you do not owe anyone advocacy. And that was something that I had to learn for myself. I don’t owe anyone advocacy. I don’t. Just because I am trans does not mean that I have to be an advocate.
But I also have realized that in a lot of ways, just living my life the same way I was before, going the same places I go, talking to my audience here on this podcast, working with my clients, there is advocacy in that. There’s a statistic that something like 30 percent of Americans have never met a transgender person. So for a lot of people, I might be the first transgender person that you are exposed to in a personal way.
And there’s been feedback coming in since I came out a couple of years ago on this show saying just that alone has an impact. So, the bigger point I’m trying to make here is the idea is letting go of shoulds and instead thinking about who am I, what are my strengths and what are my resources? That’s been a big one for me, is what are my resources? I don’t often have a lot of time, and I’m pretty protective of my time, but what else do I have to give? How can I lift others up that are in a position to do advocacy work who are good at it?
I’ve done that in a few different ways. Number one, I’ve had a number of clients over the years who are doing some form of advocacy work as their job, and those are the clients that I’m always willing to offer sliding scale to. Whatever you can pay me, your work matters. Let’s make sure that you can keep showing up doing what you are doing.
Another is taking care of your own community. I had an old laptop that I was not using that I gave to a young non binary person who does do advocacy, who drives down to our capital city here in Missouri anytime there is major legislation to be part of the efforts of protesting and testifying in front of our Congress here in Missouri. And they are also a writer who did not have a device to write on. So that was a resource that was not serving me at all that I could give to someone else.
And while that sounds like a small thing that has ripple effects, right? You don’t have to be the person with the megaphone. You don’t have to be the person standing up and talking to politicians. You don’t have to be the person that goes to protests. They make me really socially anxious because I do not like big groups of people. I have been to one and realize that protests are not my way of doing advocacy.
The point here is advocacy can look like a lot of things. Start thinking about what it looks like for you and what’s a teeny tiny little piece that you can slice off? What is the thing you can do that feels good to do and that is in line with your strengths and values?
[00:17:37] Dusty: That’s very well said. And like that when you said not, you know, moving away from what should I do for me? It’s moving away from what should I do to, yeah, what can I do? And that’s going to change month to month, week to week. Maybe even day to day, depending on, you know, your capacity, your comorbidities, your life situation, right?If your capacity – and this gets into now, not now thinking, right – If your capacity isn’t there now, that doesn’t mean it’s never going to be there. You don’t need to panic and be like, oh I’m a terrible person. I don’t, like, do enough in the world. Okay, you might just be having a hard time now. And if you can’t do much now, then let’s think about, well, how can we increase your capacity in the future to be able to do things right? Okay.
So, for example there’s like a protest that happens every Sunday in a neighboring district to mine that I’ve been wanting to go to, but my daughter had like a drum lesson every Sunday at that time. And then she stopped taking drum lessons. So, then I didn’t go because then I forgot about it. So I had to start writing it in to my calendar, right? To remind myself that I wanted to do this thing, right?
And for me, a lot of making change is about reminders. It’s both reminders and motivation, right? Because I’m not the perfectionistic type. I go the other way. I’m the overwhelmed type, right? I’m the like, oh, I don’t have time to read and understand more about this issue and learn everything about it. And I’m always so busy and tired. Oh, I guess I just can’t do anything right.
What has been really effective for me is treating activism like any new habit that I’m trying to form – reminders, alarms, scheduling it in, and then also like returning to the source of motivation, right. So I have daily alarms on my phone that remind me to take very small daily actions, like sending an email to someone or signing a petition, right? And then, you know, there are, like, bigger things that I try to plan around.
So I know myself now that I’ll see all these different protest things, and I’ll be like, oh, I can’t go to them. But if I see one far enough in advance that I will put it in my planner, and I will schedule around it. And what will help me go is body doubling, like inviting someone to go with me or seeing if I can make a social event out of it. And yeah can I visit somebody and go with them so that I have more, not capacity, but more onus to go, but specifically with.
You know, you were talking about eating earlier, right? So I’m like a I’m like an 80 percent vegetarian. By that I mean I’m a vegetarian, but I’m a very bad vegetarian where I like fall off the wagon. And if my kid like doesn’t finish her chicken nuggets, yes, I’m gonna, you know, why would I not eat that chicken nugget.
But like for me, you know, there’s a few different reasons that I engage in vegetarianism. One of them is climate change, but also animal welfare. So, I do eat eggs, but I only buy, I have only bought free range eggs for years and years. And they are, like, hella more expensive than the cheap eggs. And I started buying them back when I didn’t have a lot of money. And it felt wasteful. I just worked it into my budget, and now it’s a normal part of my budget. I’ve bought only free range eggs for years and years now, and that matters to me.
And I do eat like dairy and cheese, but I recently learned, and I actually didn’t know this, that there are certain kinds of cheeses that have to do with like more, like baby animals have to basically get killed for those cheeses to be made. So I just chose to eliminate those cheeses from my diet. And when I needed, like, for example, feta cheese is one of those cheeses, so now I use vegan feta instead of real feta, even though I love real feta. But I still can have some of the other cheeses that I like.
And again, for me, like over time, I’m the same. I’ll come to be a bit resentful. Like, why do I, why am I placing restrictions on my eating? But I noticed that if I ever watch a documentary about like factory farming or something, I have so much more motivation, but I always forget to do that.
So it sounds funny, but what I did was actually made. like, a habit out of watching like a documentary about animal welfare or factory farming about once every three months. And if I actually schedule it in, and I’ll go and I’ll pick one and I’ll watch it. And then every three months or so I sort of like refresh and renew my commitment to that cause.
And I need to do that to have the motivation to push through the like, ah, but McDonald’s is right there, but they don’t have anything vegetarian. Oh, but burgers are so yummy. Right? If I keep renewing my level of care – because I’m also, I have that high emotional ability. I’m easily stimulated – then I’ll stick to my guns. And I like to see myself stick to my guns.
So for me, it was about creating a habit out of it. But I think also what you’re talking about, Ash, is like figuring out what you can do and what’s going to be the most impactful. Because me like messing up my whole routine and my whole schedule to drive downtown for a protest and dragging my kid along, and then like she has a terrible day, like that is maybe not the like best way that I can make change. And that’s maybe not like the best use of my time, right.
So I think it’s it is a lot about getting out of perfectionism and really doing a bit more research on what are the things you can do that are actually impactful, right? Throwing away a small bag of old socks with holes in them rather than darning them is like probably not the best way to fight climate change, especially if it’s just going to clutter up your house, make you unhappy, make it hard to get out of the house because you’re spending 20 minutes looking for the one pair of socks you have that doesn’t have holes in it. We have to be strategic because we have limited capacity.
Okay, and one of the easiest ways that I think a lot of us with ADHD can make change is we are impulse shoppers. We are big consumers, I know, and just mindless consumption, right, is driving a lot of these things. And we need that dopamine hit, but if you can make a simple switch to putting things in your Amazon cart but not buying them – one of the things I’ll do is I’ll put things in my Amazon cart and then I’ll go find them on Facebook Marketplace or on Etsy where I’m supporting like, a real person – if you can switch to stuff you know, if you can get that dopamine shopping hit by thrifting, you’re not creating more waste.
That’s a big one for us, I think, is buying too much stuff. It’s so, it’s such an easy way to get dopamine. And I’m not even saying that you shouldn’t buy things. There’s a couple simple swaps. I went from buying factory farmed eggs to free range eggs. Can you swap from Amazon to yeah, like Etsy or second hand or local, right?
Like these things will make a measurable difference in multiple ways, you know, but there’s always a sacrifice. It’ll cost you more. So, I mean, I think that’s where we have to come back to that motivation. Oh, I’m doing this because this is my values.
[00:23:42] Ash: Dusty, I like what you said about if you can’t do anything right now, that’s okay too. That’s a conversation I’m having with a few of my clients who are taking the results of the election really hard who are in that moment of despair in terms of feeling like there’s nowhere to go from here.And if that’s where you are, I think we said this last week too, that’s okay. It’s okay to be there. Your resources, be they time, be they money, be they other things that you have to offer or give, they’re not fixed in time and space. They fluctuate, right? Our lives continue going on whatever else is happening in the world. So be adaptable to those things.
It’s interesting that you talk about simple swaps. A year ago is when I quit being a vegetarian. It was because my life got so hard that I just needed to give myself permission to not for now, right? To not, like just buy the freaking eggs, just buy what you need to buy. And you can always come back to this later. But having these extra things, making your life harder right now, when you are struggling to meet your own needs, which is where I was a year ago, when you are struggling to meet your own basic needs, I needed to be able to dial that back a little bit.
So I also think there’s a process of evaluating and reevaluating what’s important to me now and what’s not. I don’t regret the time that I spent. As a vegetarian, I think I learned a lot from it. And again, I think my eating habits are still much better than they were before in terms of environmental impact, but there was a time and place and a season for that. And I would rather put my energy and attention towards other things now. And that’s okay too.
[00:25:30] Dusty: I think really what we’re coming back to here over and over is this idea of getting out of all or nothing thinking, right, because that’s what you’re talking about. If everybody was a vegetarian for 3 months out of the year, or 6 months out of the year, even just part time, or if everyone reduced their meat consumption by 50%, that actually would have an impact.You don’t have to be perfect all the time. You know, doing the quote wrong thing, or dipping out of activism, or taking a break from this for three months and then coming back to it. Like it’s not everything and it’s not nothing. It’s not either you are this person or you aren’t. There are seasons of life, and you may be in a season where you have less capacity and you can’t do much, and that is okay.
Like just be in that season and huddle up and like hibernate, and do you need to do so that you’re ready for the next season. Like time comes and goes, it changes. We have a really messed up way of seeing time, and we forget that it flows. So like when the season comes again that you can do more, but if you’re in a season where you can’t do more, like beating yourself up about it isn’t gonna help anybody. And it’s especially not gonna help you And so I think that’s really key is remember, that time exists.
[00:26:37] Ash: The last thing I’ll chime in is remember that change is slow. That is something that has been really eye-opening to me over the years, coaching clients in nonprofits, because nonprofits, they’re bootstrapped. It usually means much more than 40 hours a week per work. They have high burnout, which is why a lot of my clients are people that work in nonprofits, but there’s also a lot of passion there.And I’ve learned a lot about how even really small organizations, like organizations here just in my state, are looking out for my rights. I’m not alone in this fight. That’s something I remind myself often. I’m not alone in this fight. And it’s not one person doing anything. It’s a lot of people doing a lot of things.
So, do what you can do. Any contribution is better than no contribution, be it time, be it money, be it some other resource, any contribution towards the greater good does help. And it may not be that you see the impact of that contribution right away, but anything you do have to give isn’t nothing, right?
And none of us can give everything. None of us can fix anything unto ourselves. It’s a collective effort. So do what you can do and give what you can give. And if the answer at times is neither – I don’t have anything, can’t do and I can’t give – that’s okay too. That’s okay too. Because we all deserve a life that fits, and sometimes in some moments of life, a life that fits means that there is not time and space for those things. It’s okay.
[00:28:18] Dusty: Well said. [00:28:19] Ash: So I think this is a good place for us to wrap this week, Dusty. So until next week, I’m Ash. [00:28:24] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:28:25] Ash: This was the Translating ADHD Podcast. Thanks for listening.
