In this episode of the Translating ADHD podcast, Asher and Dusty explore how to manage difficult seasons of struggle, especially when living with ADHD. They focus on the importance of simple, flexible routines—not perfectionist or rigid ones—that support basic self-care such as hygiene, tidying, and sleep. Asher shares a personal moment of realizing the need to slow down and create a manageable morning routine, while Dusty highlights how routines can serve as freedom rather than restriction. The conversation emphasizes building routines that fit individual needs, acknowledging that what works for one person may not work for another.
A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing sleep challenges and strategies for improving sleep hygiene. Both hosts note how lack of sleep compounds executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation common with ADHD. They share client examples illustrating different nighttime routines tailored to individual preferences and stress the importance of incorporating “luxury time” or moments of joy into these routines as positive motivation. Ultimately, the episode encourages listeners to prioritize incremental progress in sleep and self-care, using routines as supportive tools to navigate struggle with kindness and flexibility.
Episode links + resources:
For more of the Translating ADHD podcast:
- Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode
- Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD
- Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com
Episode Transcript:
[00:02:08] Asher: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:03:26] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:05:04] Asher: And this is Translating ADHD.Listeners, a couple of things before we get started. First, I am doing a live coaching demo on Wednesday, February 25th at 8 p.m. ET for our Patreon subscribers. So look for the link to join that either on Patreon or in the Discord. If you would like to be the person to be coached during this demo, shoot me a message on Patreon or on discord. Either way, I would love to see you there. We’ll do some coaching and then we’ll talk about what happened in the coaching afterwards.
Second, I am taking new clients. I recognize it’s a tough economy right now. We talked about struggle last week. We’re talking about struggle this week. The economy is certainly part of that universal struggle we are going through.
So I am offering a sliding scale to everyone if we are otherwise a good fit. And if it is just finances that is keeping you from being able to work with me, let’s have a conversation about that. Reach out via the form on www.coachasher.com as a starting place, and we will take it from there. So Dusty, as I just said, we are talking about struggle again this week.
[01:16:20] Dusty: So we are. So we are. [01:19:02] Asher: Dusty, part of why I wanted to come back to struggle for today’s episode is last week we talked about a variety of things in terms of what it’s like to be in struggle and what you can do while you’re there. I think for someone that is deep in struggle at the moment, that might have been a little overwhelming.I think this week the opportunity is to take a look at what you can do right now, to think about what is possible and where you might start in a moment where change feels almost impossible. So Dusty, I’m actually going to tell myself a little bit here, because the reason I wanted to revisit this topic today was a moment that I had this morning.
I got out of bed several hours before we sat down to record this podcast, and I didn’t have anything before that. Meaning I don’t have clients, I don’t have anything that I have to be at. I do have some things that I want to do, but nothing that I am obligated to do. And there was a moment when I was taking a shower where I caught myself feeling like I didn’t have time to brush my teeth and fix my hair.
I was going to dismiss that for a later moment, and this was a real pause disrupt pivot moment where I caught myself doing the dismiss and then realized I don’t have a morning routine.
What happens when you are in a moment of struggle with ADHD? Well, a couple of things. Number one, when you’re in struggle, overwhelm – that includes what feels like an insurmountable backlog. You hit the ground in the morning already feeling behind. Here I am with nothing I have to do, but I am operating like I am late for something. I am operating like I have to hurry up and get somewhere even though I don’t have a destination in mind.
Number two with ADHD is we tend to forget. We tend to forget what supportive structures look like, how they help us, how they support us. So we fall back into these old patterns and we just don’t notice that the structure, the routine or what was supportive of in the past isn’t there anymore until we do.
I really had to laugh at myself this morning, because right now I am working with a number of clients on retooling in a season of struggle, getting back to very basic support, reconnecting with those things. And yet here I am, catching myself in those same behaviors. That’s such a challenge of ADHD that I didn’t realize it until I realized it. But this morning I was like, okay, my work right now is a freaking morning routine.
[04:19:17] Dusty: It’s so funny and it’s so relevant. I think the experience of being a coach is how much we have to do modeling and how often we have to go through these things ourselves. And really, then you’re walking the talk. So it’s good, right? [04:35:27] Asher: Yeah. [04:37:04] Dusty: I think it can be good to have “self call out” when you’re down with executive dysfunction. I also want to acknowledge here that the word “routine” can be really triggering for people and I’ve had a lot of pushback about the concept of routine. I think as soon as some of us hear that word, we automatically get into a feeling of hopelessness and despair because we have this very high concept, very perfectionistic black and white idea of what a routine is or should be.And we all have had the experience of failing at that. Then you can end up shut down and get into this idea of “well, routines don’t work for me” and boom, the door is closed.
Listeners, if that’s you, I want to encourage you to very gently suspend your disbelief and hear us, hear me when I say a routine is not what you think it is.
It’s literally the concept of freedom to and freedom from. And I think a lot of people don’t like the concept of routine because it feels like it restricts their freedom to be spontaneous, their freedom to go with the flow, the freedom to do what they feel like doing.
But for me, routines are all about freedom. You know what really interrupts my spontaneity and my creative flow? Gearing up to do something I really want to do and then being like, oh crap, I forgot this. Or oh, I really want to do this thing but there’s no clean laundry, there’s no clean dishes, etc. I don’t have what I need because I wasn’t attending to my basic self-care.
And so for me, routines need to be simple. They need to be flexible. And they’re about freedom from *fill in the blank*. They’re a supportive structure where you’re supporting yourself to be able to do what you want to do, not restricting yourself from doing what you want to do.
We never want to brush our teeth, I get that. But also when you have to spend $3,000 on dental bills ten years down the road, now you don’t have that $3,000 for the thing that you really wanted to do.
[06:38:04] Asher: Exactly. Just do it. And I’m glad that you made that call out, because when I was speaking of my own morning and turning my attention towards morning routine, we are not talking about, I’m going to get up and I’m going to exercise, and I’m going to meditate, and I’m going to do this massive laundry list of things. We are just talking about attending to some very basic things that always serve me well when I do them in the morning, taking the time to complete my entire very simple hygiene routine rather than jumping in the shower, jumping out, and feeling like I have to hurry up and get on with my day because I’m so far behind.Taking a moment, a morning thing I do, particularly now that my dishwasher is broken and I have to hand wash all of my dishes, is I put the dishes from the night before away, which I did pause and do this morning once I realized that I had time to both do that and to do the thing that I set the intention to do before you and I met for the podcast today.
Listeners, we are not talking about some overburdened, some idealistic way of being. We are talking about some things that are going to support you in having the day you want to have, or showing up a little bit better than you did yesterday. So let’s kind of bring it back to the concept of struggle, because what I really wanted to get at today is in that moment where you feel like I can’t do anything, what can you focus on? And I will tell you that the number one thing that comes up with my clients is sleep.
And that, fortunately, is not an issue for me. I value sleep so much that even in a moment of struggle, I get my sleep. Because that’s just somewhat immutable for me these days. But if you’re not getting enough sleep, it doesn’t just make it harder, it compounds the problem.
[08:39:19] Dusty: Yeah, I’m the opposite of you as always. I really struggle with sleep, and I have to do a lot of different things to get sufficient sleep, which I still, you know, I don’t always nail it. I go through seasons of doing better. I’m a little bit in a season of doing worse right now.And I’m having to introduce more structures to hold myself accountable and get to bed. What you’re saying is so true because just the other day, I got a really, really poor sleep and I felt so emotional throughout the day that towards the end of the evening, somebody said something to me and it kind of hurt my feelings. So then I was in a mood and I had to go on this whole big journey in my head where I was like, do I talk to this person about this or what do I do? How do I feel about this? And all of that emotional energy distracted me from doing the task at hand.
This is the thing about emotional dysregulation – it’s an inability to pursue goal directed behavior in the face of strong emotion, right? The emotion comes and it washes away everything. So when you’re under-sleeping, your brain doesn’t work so well. You’re going to struggle more with executive dysfunction and with prioritization. You’re going to struggle with energy, but you’re also going to struggle with emotionality.
And again, for me personally, with my ADHD, emotional dysregulation is the number one thing that gets in the way of me doing what I need to do. I cannot follow a routine. I cannot look at my to-do list. I can’t do what I was trying to do when I’m upset. And so the more time I spend being upset, the less productive I am, and I will spend more time being upset if I have not slept.
So the other day I felt really good about myself. I had the foresight to be like, “you’re feeling a feeling Dusty. Why don’t you just let that feeling pass and see how you feel tomorrow?” And then I got a better sleep and lo and behold, I was like, oh, this doesn’t bother me anymore.
But I could have, like, popped off at someone, had a big conversation about something, you know, made some big angry social media post about it. And I was like, let’s just wait and see. So that’s a little aside just to say that 100% sleep is going to get in your way in a lot of different and specific ways.
[10:42:26] Asher: Yeah. In addition to what you said about emotional dysregulation, you’re also starting with more of an executive function deficit than you already have with ADHD. And so I’ve gotten to the point in my coaching practice where I can just kind of tell when my clients are under-slept, because I know how they’re showing up otherwise. And it’s just a really low mood, hopeless place.And I do want to acknowledge that if you have chronic pain, if you have sleep disorders, if you have other things at play here, sleep may not be an easy thing to solve. But if you don’t otherwise have those barriers, or even if you do, prioritizing working on sleep first makes all of the difference. And the way this usually plays out in my coaching sessions is talking about an evening routine.
So we’re back to that dirty word of routine. But again, this isn’t about all of the things I should do. This is about what time do I need to be in bed to get good sleep? And by the way, I like to start there. What time do I need to be in bed? If there are other barriers in the way, at least you made it to the bed right?
If you didn’t fall asleep, we can start to work on those things separately. But let’s just start with when do you want to make it to the bed and then walk it back a few steps in terms of what might it take to get there?
There are so many silly things that can get in our way. We can get distracted in the evenings. We can get really enamored with “me time”, right? I finally have time to myself. And so there’s that sleep procrastination thing where you just don’t want to go to bed. For those of us that don’t love doing hygiene tasks, having to do the bedtime routine stuff itself, the very basics like brushing your teeth and washing your face or whatever else you consider a must do before hitting the sheets can be really challenging.
And so how do you arrange the pieces of your nighttime routine with the goal of I want to go to bed by this time – how do we start to back it up from there and build a routine that makes sense for you? And the answer is – it’s going to look different for everybody. So this is an opportunity for you to experiment and get curious.
For example, let me tell you about two clients who are very different in their nighttime routines. I have one client who knows what time he wants to go to bed, does the hygiene stuff last but leaves an inordinate amount of time for the hygiene and putting on pajamas. And that way if he is slow or procrastinating about it a little bit, he’s still got plenty of time (his phone is a huge distraction for him). The final thing he does, and this is why it’s so supportive to do the hygiene stuff, is he leaves his phone in the bathroom on the charger, and that also then becomes an alarm he has to get up to turn off in the morning.
But another client of mine would absolutely be horrified of that stuff being the last thing she gets to do before she goes to bed. So her evening routine looks like she sets an alarm to do her bedtime stuff of brushing teeth and pajamas an hour before she even wants to think about laying down. She does those things and then gets to sit down in her cozy place and do her cozy hobby for an hour before she goes to bed. And so, two clients, both struggling with the same thing of getting enough sleep. But the way they arrange their nighttime routine is a little bit different.
So a place that you can start listeners, if sleep is something that you need to attend to, which one of those stories resonates more with you? Would you rather do those things last and go to bed or would you rather have some time between doing your pajamas and brushing your teeth before you lay down?
[15:00:19] Dusty: Yeah. I’m exactly like that second client. When I was younger, I used to have a problem with brushing my teeth before bed because I would go go go super hard until I was exhausted. And then I’d be on the verge of falling asleep and I’d be like, oh, should I put on my pajamas now or should I brush my teeth?And so many nights I would sleep fully clothed, with the lights on, no sheet on the bed or with a guitar or a pile of laundry because I had no transition. I had no step down time. So for me, I’m the same way. It’s not as bad anymore, but I often will brush my teeth and do all my bedtime stuff a lot earlier because if I do it right before I want to sleep, it kind of makes me feel more awake. And so, I’m like that client where I find I need that sort of cozy time in order to fall asleep. I have to get in the bed, maybe read a book or listen to something – I need that physical wind down.
But the important thing I heard in both your stories was there’s no right way to do it. And again, I think when you’re struggling with burnout or executive dysfunction or you’re in a season of struggle, we’re experiencing more executive dysfunction. And one of our executive functions is the ability to think in a flexible and nuanced manner.
So when you have more executive dysfunction, you have more black and white thinking. And I know that for me, that shows up as “rules brain” – like this is the way I have to do it, extreme all or nothing. If I can’t do it exactly this way, I’m not going to do it at all.
I think what’s really pernicious, I don’t know if I’m using that word correctly in an ADHD season of struggle is when you need the most flexibility, gentleness and just sort of incremental do what you can, your brain is screaming at you that that is not acceptable and that you have to do everything perfectly.
I like the idea of this concept of routine as something that is very imperfect. That it is just what you need it to be. We’re not going for gold stars here.
[17:01:09] Asher: Exactly, Dusty. Which is why, again, I like to start with, when do you need to be in bed? But if getting to sleep itself is a separate challenge, then once you have the in bed part, let in bed be the win, as a starting place.You’re not hurting yourself by starting to build the routine there. And then you can start to address if there are challenges from there, from in bed to getting to sleep, then you can start to look at those.
The other really important piece here is positive motivation and Dusty for you and my client, who likes to have that cozy time, that itself can be great positive motivation. It feels really good if you do the bedtime stuff early, to be in the PJs, and then you get to have your time to do your cozy hobby or to do whatever it is that you want to do with that time.
But for some of my clients, positive motivation isn’t something that happens in the evening. It’s about the next morning. It’s about what I want to be able to do in the morning, taking that cozy time, that moment of meditation, journaling practice or whatever that they might want to do in the morning. That simply doesn’t feel good if they’re not well slept.
And so, again, model it with tons of flexibility. This isn’t about rigidity. This isn’t about what you should be doing but if there’s something you want to be able to do in the morning.
I had a client who wanted to be able to regularly walk her dogs in the morning. She has a fenced in yard so she doesn’t have to walk the dogs, but she really enjoys the physicality of getting out for a morning walk and enjoys that moment of being in nature. She feels like it sets her up for a better day. And guess what? It was almost impossible to talk herself into doing it if she was really low on sleep, because it takes a lot more time than just letting them out in the yard. And so she would choose, understandably, to get that extra hour of sleep, rather than doing the thing that might set her whole day up for a different and better experience.
So, listeners, again, the opportunity here is not a perfect routine, but it’s to ask the question, what’s the positive motivation beyond getting enough sleep? Because, Dusty, you just admitted yourself as a coach who coaches people about sleep all the time, as somebody who understands more so than most people with ADHD exactly how being under slept affects you negatively – you still struggle with sleep, and it’s a normal struggle for people with ADHD.
I do think it is something that gets easier the more you start to experience, well slept, but it may never be in the category of easy for you. It may always be a bit of a struggle. So beyond just well slept, what’s the positive motivation – either in the evening or in the morning? It doesn’t have to be both, but in either place. What is the positive motivation that you are anchoring to or when it comes to getting to bed by a certain time?
[20:29:03] Dusty: Yeah, I definitely think sleep and the bare minimum routines that go with that is what we’re talking about. The number one piece is to get as much sleep as you can. And again, we’d all love to be getting 8-9 hours. You know, if you can get an hour more than you’ve been getting, that’s the goal, right?If you’re getting three hours a night, get four. If you’re getting four hours, get five. Just work on incremental increases and the bare minimum routines that support healthy sleep. And I think we could do a whole episode about this, but I just want to give a special shout out to not staying up on your phone all night.
If there’s one routine that you need and the phone is always keeping you up and it’s just plugging your phone in somewhere else, or there were times in my life where I would let my phone die on purpose so that I would be forced to not use it, you know? And obviously, if you need it as your alarm, this doesn’t always work. But sometimes just letting your phone die is a good one.
But other than sleep, we talked about a couple of other sort of really basic things that people can do for self-care when they’re in a season of struggle. You mentioned morning routines too, and also you mentioned, joy. Do you want to talk about that?
[21:40:15] Asher: Dusty, let me start with joy, because I had this really interesting conversation with that same client who does the brushing teeth and putting on pajamas so that she could have time with her cozy hobby. And that was a routine that we developed prior to her bumping into a brand new, difficult season of struggle. We had an interesting conversation the last time I spoke with her about redefining joy and a season of struggle.The things that might have been joyful for you before might seem hard or unattainable or unreachable right now. First and foremost, I think the opportunity is joy and should never be choosing the thing that you can do right. The opportunity here is to stay out of the doom-scrolling, out of the dark playground, out of the place where time is passing and you’re neither being constructive nor doing something enjoyable.
But let the enjoyable thing be whatever it is. And for her, it was a switch from a sort of crafting hobby to doing puzzles, and she was acknowledging that puzzles didn’t feel as good because there’s no product, there’s no creativity in that necessarily, but that they certainly felt better than being on the phone. So find the thing that you can do and the opportunity here with joy is there’s your opportunity to be anchored to a positive motivation in the evening or in the morning as part of your support around sleep.
Where is your joyful moment, whatever it is that you want to do, and independent of whether or not you get more sleep, build that in as part of your structure around getting more sleep. But do not gatekeeper yourself in terms of well, I didn’t get enough sleep, so I’m not allowed to do this. No, you are allowed to do this. Build in something joyful as a positive motivator around the goal of sleep.
Now bringing it back to a morning routine, the place we started because of my realization this morning, I think the biggest opportunity with morning routine is what is the bare minimum to start my day. Well, when you’re in a season of struggle and you already feel so immensely behind, as I was this morning, I was literally behaving like I was late for something, right? Just dismissing and skipping steps of my morning routine, rushing around at a mock pace. I am not normally a fast mover. I am an inattentive type, not a hyperactive type. So if I am moving that quickly first thing in the morning, it’s from a place of anxiety.
And so the realization for me was, I have time this morning, I have time to take the steps. And taking the steps always feels good. What am I? One of my basic mantras that I come back to in this came out of my coaching with Cam years ago is – start with being clean as a self-employed person.
Nobody’s monitoring my hygiene, nobody’s monitoring what I’m wearing beyond what they can see on camera. And so the very basic steps of taking a shower. And by the way, it doesn’t have to be a shower for me, it’s a shower specifically because I have crazy hair and it’s actually faster for me to just take a shower, wash it and blow dry it because it’s short and style it than it is to wet it down and otherwise fix it.
I get this monstrously crazy bedhead so it doesn’t have to be a shower. But for me the basic steps of taking a shower, brushing my teeth, putting on some clean clothes, making some coffee and putting the clean dishes away. Super super basic stuff, but sets my whole day off on a better tone.
[25:58:27] Dusty: I totally agree, I think that one of the things I love about a morning and evening routine is there actually are several other routines for me, bundled into one, like they’re just a time to do things that need to be done right? So my morning routines are kind of like yours. They’re a combination of self-care, body care, and other obligations that I need to attend to and like tidying, but in a really small way.I don’t often have time to clean the whole bathroom. But in the morning, what I’ve started trying to do is just notice, what got left in the bathroom the night before, like clutter or what is a small mess I can tackle. How do I reset the bathroom? And then at night I’ll just wipe down the counter or wipe down the mirror, right?
Just one small task and same as you, I like to load the dishwasher at night, unload it in the morning. So instead of having this whole thing, I need to clean my kitchen every day, or I can clean my kitchen on Mondays, or I can clean my whole house on the weekend. I’ll just incorporate very small tasks that keep the mess at a dull level for the most high impact places. And they’re just very small things, like they take less than five minutes, so it’s a little self-care task.
And then I’ll usually try to do some other obligation, like I might walk the dog or clean the bird cage or take a couple of minutes to respond to messages. But one of the things that’s really important for me about mornings and evenings is having them be points at which I do get quality time in.
So the first thing I do when I get up is I get a cup of coffee and I go sit on a couch and I read, and sometimes I only get like 5 or 10 minutes to read, but it makes such a huge difference when those routines incorporate some of that joy. I’ll also walk around and look at my plants once in the winter, not when it’s dark but as soon as it gets to the point where when I get up in the morning, the sun is coming through the windows, it just makes the whole day. It sets the tone for the day. It slows everything down. It brings me so much into the present to just look at my plants. It also keeps my plants alive.
I had a client who we actually called this “Luxury Time”. So we started his day off by talking about what is the most “luxurious” thing you can do in the morning? And we turned the concept of morning routine into luxury time and like, damn, dude, that’s how you start your day.
[28:34:17] Asher: So listeners, I’m going to invite you to not worry so much about the tidying and other things that Dusty talked about in her morning routine. And instead bring it back to the topic of the season of struggle. Let’s focus on the concept of luxury time. Because honestly, for me, Dusty, my luxury time, as silly as it is, is if my coffee pot is clean from the night before and I just get to walk in and leisurely make my coffee, get that going, and then put away the dishes.My kitchen is really sunny and bright in the mornings. It’s a room that I really enjoy when it’s really clean. So yes, it is a bit of tidying and a bit of chores I don’t otherwise have to do, but it’s also when I give myself the time and space that I can leisurely make the coffee and just sort of leisurely pace around and put the dishes away and maybe wipe off a counter if I feel like it.
It feels nice. It feels really nice. So, listeners, I think the opportunity with the morning routine in a season of struggle is what’s luxury? Time? What does it look like to have a little bit of luxury? And it doesn’t have to be extravagant. For Dusty, it’s reading a few minutes a day. For me, hilariously enough, it’s putting the dishes away while my coffee brews.
So what does that look like? And from that place then the opportunity comes in. Perhaps this is somewhere we can go in a future episode. Then the opportunity comes to kind of build on and add to those routines in ways that take care of your future self. But right now we’re just trying to take care of present self.
So again don’t worry so much about all of the other stuff you could do or could tack on to a morning routine.
[30:24:19] Dusty: Yeah, I went off on a tangent there. [30:26:20] Asher: But do ask what’s that luxury time moment? What does it look like? What’s the bare minimum to get ready for my day? And then what does it look like to have a little luxury time in addition to that? Dusty, I think that’s a great place for us to wrap today’s episode. [30:44:00] Dusty: I agree. [30:45:05] Asher: So until next week, I’m Ash. [30:47:21] Dusty: And I’m Dusty.[30:48:02] Asher: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
