Navigating Boundaries with ADHD: A Practical Guide

In this episode, hosts Ash and Dusty explore the crucial topic of setting and maintaining boundaries, especially for those with ADHD. They begin by discussing the importance of understanding personal boundaries as rules that define how others can interact with you, emphasizing that these boundaries are not about controlling others but about ensuring one’s own safety and comfort. Dusty introduces the concept of the “boundaries escalator,” a step-by-step approach to gradually enforcing boundaries, starting from polite requests and escalating to more firm reminders if necessary. They also address common challenges faced by people with ADHD, such as impulsivity and rejection sensitivity, which can complicate boundary-setting.

As the conversation progresses, Ash and Dusty tackle the complexities of maintaining boundaries in relationships and discuss how to handle situations where boundaries are crossed. They emphasize the importance of being willing to prioritize personal well-being over maintaining a relationship that does not respect established boundaries. The hosts also share personal experiences and strategies for effectively communicating and enforcing boundaries, encouraging listeners to practice setting boundaries and consider them as opportunities for growth and deeper understanding in relationships. The episode concludes with practical tips, such as using boundary flashcards for practice and enlisting support from friends, to help individuals with ADHD consistently uphold their boundaries.

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Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash,

[00:00:03] Dusty: and I’m Dusty.

[00:00:04] Ash: and this is Translating ADHD. 

Quick announcement before we get started, I am hosting another round of my Purpose Course. So for those of you who feel like they don’t know what their bigger why is, who might be looking for a change in career or life, life is not fitting, but you don’t have good answers as to why this is a great course for you.

And I just want to add that particularly in times like these, where life is stressful on a global scale, reconnecting or connecting for the first time to our inner purpose, that “why” that drives us, that’s intrinsic to us, can be a huge source of support. At least I know that that’s true for me. That’s the thing that I come back to when I start to feel helpless or hopeless. 

So if you’re interested in learning more about this course, visit the website, https://translatingadhd.com/ and click on the group coaching tab. Classes are going to meet on Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, and they’ll meet for eight weeks, starting on April 1st. 

So Dusty, this week we’re going to continue our conversation from last week where we left off talking about boundaries. We touched on it last week in the context of sexual dynamics and particularly kinky dynamics, but boundaries are a challenge for those of us with ADHD on a broader scale.

It’s a really tough thing for us to get acquainted with, particularly since we live in that area of “pleaser”. So, where do you want to start?

[00:01:41] Dusty: Oh, I don’t even know. There’s so many good places to start, but I think I want to limit the scope of all the different directions that my brain is going and say that, what I’d love to talk about is just sort of a boundaries 101 playbook. So I guess I would start with a definition of boundaries.

My definition of boundaries is rules that you have about how people can treat you and interact with you. They are not rules about how other people can act. There are rules about what’s safe for you. The key thing about boundaries is that they are meant to keep you safe and that it is up to you to enforce them.

So, although when setting boundaries, you are in essence asking people to change their behavior, that’s all you’re doing. You are asking them to change their behavior. You cannot force anyone to change their behavior, but you are letting them know that the way they’re behaving is having a negative impact on you.

And I think this is where people get really nervous about boundaries because they feel nervous about asserting themselves. They feel nervous about doing something that could be perceived as trying to control somebody else’s behavior or introducing an uncomfortable dynamic into the relationship or into a social situation, right?

For example, Ash, you know, if you’re making jokes about my body that make me uncomfortable and everyone’s laughing and having a good time and I choose to say something like, “oh, please don’t make comments like that about my body”. Well, now I’ve maybe gone and made it awkward, but I think the key thing here is we’re not considering the discomfort that we’re already in when we discount ourselves that ADHD one down perspective, you know, and this is what I hear all the time.

People say oh, you know, the resistance is taking a situation and making it uncomfortable, but if you start by recognizing that you’re already uncomfortable, then who really made that situation uncomfortable? So it’s about, I think, it’s about being willing to speak up about what makes you uncomfortable. I think the thing that can really help a person who’s nervous about setting boundaries is the realization that setting boundaries isn’t about pushing people away. It’s not about keeping people out. It’s actually about inviting people in. Right at the heart of boundary setting is knowing what’s okay for you and what makes you feel loved and safe and communicating that to people.

Right? And so, Ash, if I say to you, if we’re friends, and you’re making jokes about my body, which, of course, you never would, but I’m just using the example, you know, and I say to you, “hey Ash, you know what? That actually makes me feel really uncomfortable. Could you please stop doing that?” Why am I saying that? I’m saying that because you and I are friends and I want us to keep being friends and the way that you’re making jokes is having a negative impact on our friendship, and I don’t want that.

So I want to let you know so that you can care about me more. That’s what a boundary is. It’s teaching people how to care about you more.

[00:04:24] Ash: I love that statement – that it’s teaching people how to care about you more. I also think it’s really interesting, the thing you said, I’m already uncomfortable. We often hesitate because we don’t want to make the situation uncomfortable, but as people with ADHD, we discount our own discomfort or even worse.

Sometimes we don’t know where that discomfort is coming from. Dusty, I’m thinking about something you’ve said multiple times on this podcast that for a long time, you did not realize that you were walking around, particularly in social situations, highly anxious, right, you just didn’t have that awareness yet about yourself.

And so when we’re in that place of unawareness with ADHD, we may not realize that we’re uncomfortable. We may not realize that something is wrong. And even if we do, we may just attribute that to ourselves, right? I too thought that I was a person with social anxiety. That is a term that I have used to describe myself for a very long time. I now know that that’s not necessarily true. 

There are certain social situations that still make me anxious for a number of reasons, but I am not a person that is socially anxious in general. There was a lot of other stuff going on beneath that, that I needed to figure out. And so if you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you possibly know where you need to set a boundary?

And that’s why so much of the work that we do with our clients is just cultivating awareness about themselves – what’s going on discreetly in certain situations, in certain relationships, in certain social contexts. What can we glean about that so that we can get past just the feeling or the emotion of it and know something about it?

So, step one here is really awareness, right? What’s making me uncomfortable? What is it about this person, this situation, this comment, this context that landed in this way for me.

[00:06:37] Dusty: Yeah and I think you can kind of go in layers. Like, you can start with the most obvious low hanging fruit. And the thing is, I think when you start setting boundaries, and you start to recognize what that feels like, both when someone doesn’t respect the boundary and when they do, you can feel the difference in that situation, it’ll give you a bit of feedback.

Often in a very, like, somatic way, like the way your body feels when you’re feeling sort of relaxed and safe and comfortable. And that’ll help you, be like, oh, okay, this is what this feels like, right? So, you know, if I have a friend, I’m gonna stop using you as an example, but if I have a friend and I say, hey, stop making jokes about my body, and my friend pushes back and they go, oh, come on, it’s just a joke. It’s just a joke, you’re so uptight, da da da. And then they continue to make those jokes. I’m going to feel a certain way, and I’m going to observe, like, oh, that person, like, made me feel like I was an asshole for, you know, setting a reasonable boundary. 

And if I have another situation where someone goes, oh, you know what, like, I’m so sorry, that was my bad. And then that person doesn’t do that anymore. Like, those are going to be two really different experiences, right? And when I say that I was really anxious all the time, the thing is, like, I wasn’t walking around like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. 

Like, for me, anxiety looked like being really overstimulated in social situations, not being able to manage hyperactivity. So it looked like being way too hyper, talking too much, being very gregarious, which with some people, like, they liked that, and other people, it really turned them off because I was just like the Tasmanian Devil of social situations.

I was just too much because I was kind of overcompensating. And I would feel like I was on speed when I was just excited and just couldn’t slow down and I started to recognize how wound up I felt in my body. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t share conversational space with others. I couldn’t get to know people who were a little bit more shy. I came off as myself dialed up to 10, right ? 

For me, especially, you know, I might not have recognized a lot of what was going on in subtle ways that kind of caused my energy to go in that direction.

But that’s exactly what helped me in the beginning, was as a young woman who, you know, developed early, I started getting a lot of comments about my body very early. So the easiest, like, most low hanging fruit was to start setting boundaries around, like, hey, don’t make sexual comments about me. Please don’t literally stand there staring at my tits, right? It might be something really obvious, like, hey, Uncle Billy Joe Jim Bob, please stop making racist comments when I invite you over for Thanksgiving, right?

It can be just the most obvious thing to help you start setting boundaries, and then you can observe the outcome of that, and that can lead you to more awareness.

[00:09:20] Ash: So Dusty, that’s level one. And I just want to introduce some language that you shared before we started recording that boundaries are an escalator. So if we’re on the boundaries escalator, you just described level one. What’s next?

[00:09:35] Dusty: Yeah, so I got this term from Kami Orange, who is a really brilliant boundary coach. I definitely recommend her. I found her on TikTok many years ago. And I just love the way that she explains boundaries. So this is her, she says that boundaries are like an escalator. And what she means is, you start out on the ground floor. You don’t go to the top level in one step. 

So I think sometimes what people get wrong about the concept of boundaries is that it’s like this scorched earth, all or nothing. Like, you cross my boundaries, you’re out of my life forever or I tell you something once, you do it again, that means you’re toxic, and you’re a narcissist, and you’re out of my life forever.

But that’s not it. I think the sort of proper way to do boundaries is, first of all, you need to figure out what your boundary is, like we were talking about, and also what is the consequence of that boundary being crossed. And again, it’s not about controlling someone else, it’s about removing yourself and about keeping yourself safe. Right? 

So if I have a friend who keeps making comments about my body, I’m going to set a boundary. I’m going to say, please don’t make comments about my body. And then I’m going to slowly escalate. If I tell my friend, please don’t make comments, and they push back and they go, oh, it’s just a joke, da da da, then the next time they do it, I’m going to say, no, really, I’m not kidding, I don’t like that. Don’t make comments about my body. So I’m going to be a little more stern, right? If I’m still not getting the sort of respect or the boundary, you know, respect that I’m looking for, I’m going to speak my boundaries a little more loudly and firmly. I’m going to go, seriously, knock it off, that’s not cool with me. Stop making comments about my boobs, or I’m outta here. Right? 

And you’ll notice, I don’t say stop making comments about my boobs or I’m going to punch you in the face – that would be control. I’m saying if you don’t stop doing this thing that is a pain that bothers me, I’m going to stop putting myself in a situation where I can be hurt.

Because who’s really doing it? Is it that other person doing it? No, it’s me. I keep exposing myself to this person who is making it clear that they’re not interested in respecting my boundaries. And so the top level of that escalation, always has to be removing yourself or being willing to leave a relationship, which is where it gets really tricky when we’re people pleasers, but we don’t go from the ground floor. Like, hey, please don’t do “xyz” to, you’re out of my life forever. There’s steps, right? And depending on what the boundary is around, there may be more or less steps. But let’s remember, when you first set a boundary, somebody may not know that you’re serious. They themselves may have ADHD and they might forget that you said that.

They may struggle with being a boundary crosser themselves. And depending on how important the relationship is to you, you can give them more or less slack. But you’re escalating the boundary by continuing to enforce it. 

And that’s also one thing that’s hard about being a people pleaser and having boundaries. If you’re going to set a boundary, you have to be prepared to consistently enforce it. Because if I have a friend who makes jokes about my body and I say, hey, please don’t make jokes about my body. And they go, Oh, it’s just a joke and then they keep making jokes and then I laugh – what have I just taught them about my boundary? I have taught them that they don’t have to respect it. And so why would they? It’s up to me to teach them that when I say I have a boundary, that I’m serious. And I do that through boundary escalation.

[00:12:40] Ash: I really like that model, Dusty. This is the first time I’ve heard of it, but I think that’s such a nice description of how ideally boundaries should play out. And a couple of things I want to toss in is, first of all, I want to come back to boundaries are not about control. Because boundaries can be used by “abusers” as a form of control. You’re violating my boundary. You’re not behaving the way that I want you to behave, right? That is a situation I found myself in. You’re violating my boundary. You’re, you’re not behaving the way that I want you to behave. And as a person who really tries to adhere to other people’s boundaries, who really tries to hear as we’ve said, I would never, ever make a joke about Dusty’s boobs and not just because I’m gay, but because I am a decent human being. I would never comment on your body at your expense in front of a group or even just the two of us, but…

[00:13:39] Dusty: Only to my glory.

[00:13:41] Ash: Only to your glory. That’s right. That’s exactly right. But let’s just say that I did, that I was having some out of body experience and something flew out of my mouth. And those of us with ADHD, everyone of us has had that moment where something comes out of your mouth and you just wish you could stuff it right back in.

My response would be to hold space for you and to try and understand what I’ve done wrong and to really try to learn something from that experience and to do better there. And so facing a person who’s constantly telling you you’re not doing right by me, you’re not upholding my boundaries was really messing with my sense of self, right? Like, am I not as good of a person as I thought I was? 

So that’s something to pay attention to on both sides of the equation. If someone else is meeting you with a boundary that feels confusing or unreasonable, or you’re really struggling to get there and you feel like you’re putting forth your best effort. That might be an opportunity for you to check in on whether or not this is a healthy relationship, right? 

[00:14:51] Dusty: There’s two really interesting things about what you’re saying, because I know exactly the situation you’re describing. Anecdotally I had a sister in law and you know, we had a very conflictual relationship. We struggled to get along and we both had kids around the same age and with all of my other nieces and nephews who were not through her. Like my brother had other partners and I had other nieces and nephews that I had always been really close to. I knew their birthdays. I sent them Christmas presents. And so when she and I were going through a tough time, we weren’t speaking, we weren’t seeing each other, you know, I gave a gift to my niece that was her daughter. And I actually gave it to my brother to give to her. I said, hey, it’s her birthday, here’s a gift. And I got this text message that was like, please respect my boundaries. Don’t give gifts to my child. You don’t understand boundaries. You push them. And that was so upsetting for me because I’m like, wait, what?

That was never said. You can’t have a boundary you never say, right? If somebody said to me – you and I are having conflict and I expect you to not interact with my child at all. Okay, first of all, I have other feelings about keeping children from their family members, but whatever, that aside you know, okay, well, now I know that’s a rule. Right? But, you can’t just say, oh, you crossed my boundaries that you didn’t know that I had because I never stated them. And also, again, boundaries are about keeping you safe. Does it cause you harm if I give your child, who is a member of my family, a present for their birthday? Debatable. Whatever. I’m not going to debate the validity of that person’s boundaries, but like, they weren’t stated, right? 

So that was a situation where I very much had that experience. I was like what? And similar to you, Ash, I’ve been in really toxic situations where you’re crossing my boundaries was code for “now I’m allowed to be abusive and yell at you”.

I have actually explicitly been told you crossed my boundaries. So that’s why I’m yelling at you and again, you know, proper boundary enforcement means, oh, if Dusty’s making me feel unsafe, then it’s my job to keep myself safe and remove myself from the situation. Does yelling at me keep you safe? No, it does not. That’s not a boundary. 

So I totally get what you’re saying there. And the other interesting thing about what you’re saying is around how we honor other people’s boundaries. You know, you brought up sort of like being impulsive and, and I think this is a really interesting topic because as people with ADHD, so often we don’t want to hurt other people and we are people pleasers, but at the same time, because of rejection sensitivity, if we haven’t like done the work, I’ve seen it be the case, and I’ve been the person who, when told that I upset someone else or I crossed a boundary, I got really defensive.

I wasn’t able to hear that in the past because I was like, no, but I’m a good person and I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. And like, if you are the person with ADHD who has been told a boundary, like a real boundary, and you have crossed someone’s boundary, it can be so hard to not feel like you’re the worst person in the world.

And like, Ash, you said, I would hold space for you. Like, I would apologize. Even, oh, that’s so hard to get to that place as a person with ADHD and not hate on yourself. But I think remembering that boundaries are how other people keep us close to them really helps, right? Like if somebody has told you that you’ve hurt them, if someone’s told you that something you’ve done negatively impacts them, the way through defensiveness is to remember that person wouldn’t give you that feedback if they didn’t want to keep you in their life, if they didn’t want you to care about them. And that can help diffuse that defensiveness and be like, oh my god, thank you for telling me. I’m so sorry.

[00:18:19] Ash: Really well said, Dusty. Really. I think that intersection of conflict and getting through it together, being on the same side, forges stronger friendships, can help you understand something about someone else’s lived experience that you didn’t understand before.

If you’re coming to me saying you hurt me, and you’re articulating that experience to me, I’m going to understand something about you that I didn’t understand before, and I might understand something about your lived experience in a broader way as a woman that I didn’t understand before. So it’s this beautiful learning opportunity if you let it go.

And these days, that’s kind of the, don’t get me wrong, if I’ve hurt somebody, I don’t feel awesome about it, but that’s the spirit in which I like to approach those conversations, with curiosity, right? Help me understand because ADHD brains do want context. So if you can help me find the context of why what I did was wrong, that’s not just gonna make me a better friend to you but that’s probably gonna make me a better human walking around in the world, because now I’m aware of what it’s like to live in your body in a way that I never was before. 

Even though I lived as a woman for 38 years, I never really grew boobs. So I don’t know what that experience of having people comment on your body in those ways is like, but I have some context I didn’t have before from talking to you and understanding what that is for you. So now Dusty, I want to come back to the top of the escalator, right? Because here’s where ADHD black and white thinking can get us into trouble.

The thing about the top of the escalator, and this is a new model to me, so you tell me if I’m wrong, but what I’m seeing at the top of the escalator isn’t a black and white choice. You’re in my life or you’re out of it, but it is about being at choice, whatever you do.

And I say that from my own experience. I feel like I’ve actually learned a lot about boundaries in the last few years. The very short TLDR of my realizing I’m trans and very shortly thereafter coming out, was that I cut off my family. And I didn’t cut off my family for me. I cut off my family for my kid who came out, which made the space for me to figure out the things, but that’s not what we’re talking about. What we are talking about is how I got to that decision to cut off my family after my kid came out. Well, I’m a person who likes context and I know that about myself.

So I picked up the phone and I talked to every single queer person I knew at the time who I knew had family struggles related to their queerness. And what I learned in those conversations is that there is no one right way to navigate those family relationships, right? I have friends that made the same decision I did. I have friends who went the other way and believe, truly believe that there’s still space for growth there. And so they’ve set their own boundaries. They adhere to those, but they’re willing to be in that messy place with that other person in a way that’s healthy enough for them for now. 

So don’t see the top of the escalator as you’re in or you’re out, but do see it as a point, you do need to clearly know how to keep yourself healthy in that dynamic, whatever type of relationship it is.

And you need to be the one enforcing that, but it doesn’t have to mean you’re in or you’re out, right? It just means knowing what your boundaries are to keep you healthy and being at choice about whether to continue to invite your racist uncle over or not, to continue to have some amount of interaction with that family member or not. That’s up to you. 

You just need to know one way or the other what’s going to keep you safe. And so I ultimately came to the decision I came to for a couple of reasons. Number one, the best piece of advice a friend gave me is how old is your kid? And at the time she was like 11 and he was like, talk to her. I was like, that’s actually really fair, right? This centers on her – not that at 11 she should be making her own decisions, but in an age appropriate way. I talked to her because who am I to decide what her boundaries should be unilaterally, right? Who am I to decide? 

And then number two, even not knowing that I myself was queer at the time, I sat down and thought about those relationships for myself, probably for the first time in a way where I was really considering what’s serving me here, if anything, and what’s not serving me. And so there was a careful evaluation there.

Again, no black and white thinking. It was a very thoughtful and conscious choice that I made at the time. And it’s one that I still come back to every once in a while and re-evaluate. Where am I at? Am I in the same place? Am I in a different place? Right? Because I don’t think anybody loves the absence of family, particularly when my family’s not perfect. They’ve got a lot of problems. A lot of families do. But there is also a lot of love there. There are things that I miss. And so, I think it’s an active thing to continue to be a choice, continue to evaluate, right?

[00:24:06] Dusty: Yeah, I both kind of agree and disagree a little bit with what you said about the top of the boundary escalator. I think you’re right. It doesn’t always have to look like you’re out of my life, you’re canceled, but I think you always have to be willing to because you always have to be willing to choose yourself and your own well being.

So going back to that example of the boundary escalator – when we’re thinking about escalating boundaries, it’s not just about how, how loudly we communicate them, which is, again, sort of, I think, that language I borrowed from Kami Orange. She talks about loudly communicating your boundaries. Like, hey, I’m serious. But also, what are the consequences, right? 

So, I’ll give you an example. I had a friend several years ago who was an active substance user and sometimes she would call me in the middle of the night and was on I don’t know like meth or something and she would just ramble on. The first couple times I answered her because I was like, oh my god, what’s wrong and then it became pretty clear that this was a thing that she was doing. I told her to please stop calling me in the middle of the night and she kept calling me in the middle of the night. So I said, hey, if you keep calling me in the middle of the night, I’m not going to answer. And that was it, right? 

The first consequence, the first escalation, since she wasn’t able to respect my boundary, she wasn’t able to stop calling me in the middle of the night, but I was able to stop taking her calls.

And it didn’t have to affect anything outside of that, right? Unfortunately, she did pass away and wasn’t able to navigate through that and it’s really unfortunate. That was obviously a really hard situation to be in, and one of the ways that I kept myself safe from some of that chaos was by having really good boundaries and saying, you know, that I had to escalate, like, I’m not going to spend time with you when you are actively on substances.

And so that eventually meant that we really weren’t spending any time together at all. But it didn’t mean, you’re out of my life because you’re a weenie or whatever. But I think when you kind of get higher up on that boundary escalator, like you said, I think there’s two things that happen.

One is the ultimate control and power you have over keeping yourself safe is not exposing yourself to someone who’s going to do harmful things, especially after you have the evidence of you’ve asked them several times and you’ve reminded them several times that, like, this behavior is harmful to you.

If you’re at the beginning of the boundary escalator, it’s always possible that it was a miscommunication. Maybe they’re neurodivergent and they forgot. Maybe they don’t have a lot of experience respecting boundaries. But when it’s been several times, you are faced with the truth. Here is a person who fully knows that what they are doing is bothering you because you’ve told them and they are making a choice not to care about you.

To say, you know, not in so many words, but to say hey, I don’t care that I’m hurting you. And so when you talk about being a choice, Ash, I think about something my therapist said. He was talking about how to know when to leave relationships. And he said, like, step one is, can it be changed? There’s a problem behavior and can it be changed? And that’s boundaries. 

And the second step is, can I live with it? So you get to decide at the end of the day if there is some reason that you’re going to stay in a relationship that’s maybe less than perfect. And by relationship, I don’t mean romantic relationship, it could be friends, family, whatever.You always do get to make that choice. 

Like you said, inviting your racist uncle over, right? So, there’s choices, there’s values, there’s hey, this person is kind of mean to me, or they say something that’s a little harmful to me, but there’s maybe other reasons I’m keeping them in my life.

Or maybe I decide that I can live with that behavior. And maybe I’m going to reframe it and not let it bother me so much. But at the end of the day, yes, you have choices about how firmly you escalate those boundaries and how much you remove yourself. 

But I think that the top option always has to be that awareness that you have the choice to leave the relationship, whether it’s your parents, your partner, etc. You always have to be willing to choose your own safety over staying in a relationship that doesn’t serve you.

[00:28:07] Ash: Dusty, I appreciate that clarification because you said you agree with me, but you disagree with me and we’re on the same page. I’m glad that you clarified that point that that choice point always has to be there because if it’s not, then you’re not being a choice.

You’re not evaluating. You’re setting. Maybe setting enough boundaries to make it okay enough but if you’re not willing to leave, then it’s never going to change. Even if it really needs to change. Because problematic people are usually the people that will never leave. You have to leave. You do.

That’s been my experience. I want to leave our listeners with something on that note that was actually really helpful for me. It was a conversation that I was having with a friend that’s been sober for a very long time and who sponsors a lot of newly sober people and is really dedicated to that work, even though it’s volunteer work, right?

He will pick up the phone if a sponsor is calling him, even if we are out doing stuff, like it’s just something that’s really important to him. But something I really respect about him and have noticed is he does have good boundaries. 

So I ran into a situation where I needed to confront a friend around a sobriety issue and I didn’t know what to do because I was really scared of losing that friendship and therefore that friend not having me as a source of support if things continued to spiral out of control. And the advice that he gave me was this; sometimes, it’s okay to say I love you, but I need to love you over here. I need to love you at a distance. And I think that can be one of the trickiest things for those of us with ADHD because you’re drawing that boundary. It doesn’t have to mean you hate that person. 

I’ve drawn a boundary with people in my life that I love, several in the last few years of my life, more with people I love than with people I hate. Let’s just put it that way. And that language was immensely helpful to me – sometimes you just have to say, I love you, but I have to love you over here. I have to love you at a distance. 

So two things can be true listeners. You can uphold your boundaries. You can hit the top of the escalator and choose to end or distance yourself from a relationship and that doesn’t have to mean you don’t care or you don’t love that person. It can just mean that you can’t show up for that person right now in the ways that they want, in the ways they are demanding, because it is not okay, safe, or healthy for you.

[00:31:09] Dusty: Before we wrap up, I just want to add one more logistical tip here around boundaries specific to ADHD, because you just mentioned something really important. I have to love you from over here, like, I have to set this boundary. And I think one of the things that can get in the way of setting our boundaries is that working memory piece, like, literally forgetting that we wanted to set a boundary, forgetting what we want the consequence to be. 

We’re not consistent at the best of times, so it can also be hard to consistently enforce your boundary, especially if, like me, you’re a person who has a lot of anxiety in their body, and then, in social situations where there is tension or there are issues, your brain is going really quick.

So, first of all, you can learn about boundaries. There’s lots of good books to teach you about boundaries. I do recommend Kami Orange. One of the things I like about her, I don’t always love the phrasing that she has for her boundaries. Like, I think that I would phrase them differently, but I admire her confidence.

Sometimes she comes across to me, with the way that she sets her boundaries, like, damn, dude, that’s cold. But she has boundary flash cards on her website so you can download them and print them and you can literally practice what she recommends. You say the boundary over and over so that the phrase actually becomes a muscle memory. If you feel like you’re going to have a hard time saying, like, hey, please don’t make comments on my body, right? Just walk around the house, practicing, like, saying that over and over and over. And then when the moment comes, you’re a lot more likely to be able to just spit out, please don’t make comments about my body, even if your limbic system is going off the rails. 

And if you are the kind of person who might struggle with working memory issues where you can’t really remember what you said you were going to do if someone crossed your boundaries – write it down! I know it sounds obvious, but, write it down, or tell a friend, you know, text. I can text my buddy Ash and go, like, Ash, I told my racist Uncle Billy Joe Jim Bob that if he made another racist comment at dinner that I was gonna excuse myself and eat my dinner in another room. I can tell you that and then, when the moment comes and I’m so overwhelmed and I’m like, ah, Ash, he’s doing that thing again. What am I supposed to do? Then Ash can be like, you told me you were going to do this, right? 

There’s so many creative ways I think that we could supplement our own memory issues, especially if we do get overwhelmed. And that’s a key part – it is about being consistent. So if you know you’re going to struggle there, help yourself and learn about boundaries. Read about them, take courses, whatever you’ve got to do, it is a thing you can improve at.

[00:33:34] Ash: Well said, Dusty, and a nice note, I think, to take us out on for today, especially since we’re out of time. So, before we wrap, I do just want to remind listeners that we do have a Discord server for our patrons. If you are interested in interacting with Dusty and I, talking about episodes, talking with our other listeners about doing your own ADHD work, you can join this server for five bucks a month.

Visit the website, https://translatingadhd.com/ and click on the “Patreon” tab. Join as a patron and that grants you access to the Discord server, and by the way, also supports the running of this show.

[00:34:12] Dusty: Until next week, I’m Dusty,

[00:34:14] Ash: And I’m Ash.

[00:34:16] Dusty: and this is the Translating ADHD Podcast.