Reset After a Meltdown or Total Shutdown #258
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When you’re hiding in the bathroom in a puddle of tears on the floor, what do you do next?
When you’ve yelled at your family and said things you regret during a grownup temper tantrum and wish you could hide under a rock forever, what do you do next?
When the shame and guilt and overwhelm feel like too much to bear, what do you do now?
It’s so common for those of us with ADHD to get overwhelmed and shutdown or say things we regret.
Here’s a clip from Successful Mama Meetups during our month themed "Your Reset Button (How to reset after a total shutdown or meltdown)” because the mamas requested this topic. You’re not alone in this.
I’m sharing supportive strategies for dealing with stress and moving forward when it feels hopeless or impossible. Understanding ADHD's impact on your emotional regulation makes a huge difference in how you deal with stress.
Big hugs. Let’s talk about it.
Links mentioned in this episode:
When you feel anger rising, how can you find calm and stay present in the moment?
Hit play on Slow Down, Be Present: a calming audio private podcast for both sleep and anxiety. It’s only $9. Snag yours here: patriciasung.com/slowdown
Rooted Group Coaching for ADHD Moms is enrolling for next month. Learn how to deal with your emotions with ADHD friendly skills you can teach your kids, too. Join here: patriciasung.com/group
Free Video and Checklist → Stop Medusa Mom: 10 Ways to Calm Down
Patricia Sung [00:00:00]:
Oh, no. I can't find my keys. Like, that's a little bit of stress, and it's going to affect you, even those small things. Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy? You can't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get you, mama. Parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life, creatively, lovingly, and with all our might.
Patricia Sung [00:00:40]:
When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well. At the end of the day, we just wanna be good moms. But spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, mama. You can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story, and I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to Motherhood in ADHD. Hey there, Successful Mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung.
Patricia Sung [00:01:15]:
Today, I'm sharing a clip with you from Successful Mama meetups last year when we were talking all about how do you reset after you've had a total shutdown or a meltdown. And, like, first of all, how do you even know the difference between shutting down and melting down? Like, they're not quite the same, but then what do we do about it? How do we repair? How do we reset? How do we get back to it? Because as moms, we don't have the luxury of just being like, well, just pack it up for the day. I'm done. No, we still have momming to do. And before we jump into that clip, a reminder that Rooted Group Coaching is open for sign ups through the last Thursday of the month. When you have tried literally everything and it's still not coming together and you're like, you know what? I am a fairly intelligent human being. I have checked all the boxes. I've done all the lists and somehow I still can't figure out why this is not coming together.
Patricia Sung [00:02:03]:
Why am I still so frustrated? Why am I still so scattered? Because you can see the things that you've done. Maybe you have a degree. Maybe you have a good job. You've worked really hard at getting where you are now, and yet somehow it still doesn't feel like you got it together, then you need support that's tailored to how you function, how your brain works, how you are a carer and a responsible person for others, not just yourself, and that you need support that takes all of that into account. It takes into account your full person and the health issues that you have and the other struggles that are going on and finding the way to make your life fit you with someone who gets it. Not just me. There's also the other moms in the group who get it and knowing that you're not alone. So when you are ready for that help, we meet twice a month and do coaching on whatever's plaguing you at the moment.
Patricia Sung [00:02:50]:
Whether it's trying to get out the door on time or trying to balance all the things that are on your plate with your kids and family and work and volunteer projects, with your child who probably is a lot like you and has some neurodiversity as well, and how you're trying to build that relationship instead of having a fight with them every day. We come in, we take care of the most pressing issue, and we move on. There's no extra homework. You have enough to do. We come in, we get it done, and we move on. We are learning as we go. We are implementing on the fly as we learn, because we don't have to have it all together in order to learn, in order to teach our kids these skills too. We can work together to make our lives fit us and teach our kids how to do that at the same time.
Patricia Sung [00:03:33]:
So come join me in rooted. All the information is on my website, patriciasung.com/group. And if you don't see an opening right now, shoot me an email, hello {at} patriciasung.com, and I'll let you know what openings available. If not, I'll drop you on the wait list, and you'll be the very first person to know when the next openings available. So check it out. Come join me, and let's make your life a little bit easier in all this chaos that you are currently juggling. You make it look good, and now we can make it feel good too. That's patriciasung.com/group, or shoot me an email and tell me you're ready to go.
Patricia Sung [00:04:03]:
Hello {at} patriciasung.com. Let's dive into the episode. Today is our monthly theme discussion, so we're gonna talk about our reset button and how do we reset after a total shutdown or meltdown. If you've been here for a minute, you've probably seen me talk about the stress ladder. So I wanna go through this, like, super quick stress review before we talk about that. Like, if you're up here with Star Guy at the top where it is peaceful and sunny and the trees are blowing in the wind and everything is lovely, we're in this, like, safe social ventral vagal stage of stress, which means we're not really stressed. Things are great. The sun is shining.
Patricia Sung [00:04:40]:
A lot of people will talk about stress like a ladder, and I make it so that my ladder goes down, which is not usually what you'll see. For me, I imagine when we get stressed, it's like when you go in the manhole cover, like, on the street, and you start descending down the ladder underground. So as we get more stress, so we move from, like, a zero or a one up here, and we're moving down the rungs to, like, a five. When we're in this space here, we are underground. So even if your feet are, like, on this rung here, you still are hindered by the fact that you are stressed. Even if you're just slightly stressed, if your feet are slightly underground, it's affecting your system. It's not like only I'm affected if I'm really stressed. It's like as soon as we start to get a little stressed, it affects our whole body physically, mentally, emotionally, all the things are affected.
Patricia Sung [00:05:25]:
When we understand this, we can have a lot more grace for ourselves because then we're not expecting ourselves to be these magical humans that don't get affected by stress. Like, that's not how we were built. That's not how we were made. Our body is purposefully created to react when there is a stressful incoming anything so that you can protect yourself. Like, it's purely a survival mechanism is that the moment your brain detects there is something stressful going on, it's going to be like, hey. What's going on? You ready? We might have to run. We might need to do something about this. Like, are you let's let's prepare.
Patricia Sung [00:05:59]:
So in that, like, knowing that our body is supposed to do that, it takes away some of the guilt of, like, well, why am I feeling stressed? Like, this shouldn't bother me. It's like, no. Literally your body's job. Your brain's job is to be, like, I my sole purpose here is to keep you alive. So the moment something happens that looks a little fishy, your brain's like, what do I gotta do? What do I need to fix? What do I need to like, how am I gonna move? So when we're coming down this ladder, we are affected no matter what. Even if it's, like, the tiniest thing, it could be the, like, you know, oh, no. I can't find my keys. Like, that's a little bit of stress, and it's going to affect you, even those small things.
Patricia Sung [00:06:34]:
So as my little picture here, as you're moving down this ladder and your head is still in the sunshine, but your feet are below ground when you're, like, two, three, four, like, you can still function here, but you are in that fight or flight stage. You're in a sympathetic nervous system state, so your body's ready to go in case something happens. As my therapist always says, nothing good happens after a five. So when I move past a five, so, like, from one to 10, we're, like, halfway to very, very stressed. At that point, your feet are underwater. So you're picturing the sewer system. You've now descended past the street level. Your head is below ground, and now your feet are getting wet.
Patricia Sung [00:07:11]:
And as you move all the way down the ladder, when you hit 10, that means that now, like, you are full unstressed. Your head is below water, and, like, that's when all the terrible stuff happens. That's when the meltdown happens. That's when the shutdown happens. So even if we're at, like, an eight, if you can imagine, like, you're trying to function with, like, your body's underwater from, like, waist down, it's like, how much can you do when you're trying to move around underground, half underwater? Like, it's really hard. Maybe even the water's, like, up at your chest. And when we think about, like, level nine, if you picture, like, my head is just above the waterline. I am barely keeping my mouth above water in order to breathe.
Patricia Sung [00:07:53]:
Like, now we start to picture, like, oh, if I'm that stressed, like, how much can you really get done when your head is barely above water? Like, you're just trying to survive at that point. So when we hit that bottom of the ladder and we're in that, like, underwater stage or even and not all of you. Like, if part of you is underwater, then we hit into this, like, dorsal vagal stress response, and that's our freezer fawn where we're like freezing is like when you're just like, I don't know what to do. Like, you see the mess in your house and you just see mess and you're like, I don't even know where to start. This is too overwhelming. I don't even know what to do next. That's when we're in that free state of like, oh my goodness. What what what how what am I gonna do now? How do I even I don't even know.
Patricia Sung [00:08:32]:
And you're like, I can't even finish a whole sentence. Like, that level of stress makes sense if you're like, hey. When I feel like that, it's as if my head is barely above water and I can I'm just trying to survive. The same thing when we see, like, that phone response is I'm out of capacity, and then your partner asks, like, oh, what's for dinner? And you're like, whatever you want. Wherever you wanna go, whatever you wanna eat, I don't care. That fawn response of, like, whatever you want, I'm just gonna hide here in my little hole. Hope nobody notices me. Little Bambi hiding in the in the forest.
Patricia Sung [00:09:04]:
Like, just you figure it out. I'm just gonna pretend like I'm not here. Like, that is, again, a very stressed state. And people tend to lean towards, like, one of these than the other, but not always. We're gonna be exhibiting lots of different kinds of stress depending on where we are and who we're with. But as you kinda, like, picture yourself in these different places, it gives us a lot more grace and forgiveness for ourselves to be like, well, obviously, I did not wanna choose dinner. My head is barely above water. Who cares if we're eating chicken or pasta? Nobody.
Patricia Sung [00:09:38]:
Like, that doesn't matter at that point. What do you do when you're really struggling to calm down? When you're dysregulated and your brain is offline? When Medusa mom is about to rear her ugly head and you don't wanna yell at your kids again, but you also desperately need some time and space to yourself. Well, you're in luck, mama, because I've got a free video resource waiting for you. I'm sharing my top 10 tips for what to do when you're losing your cool and you need a reset. Each of these things, you can do in under a minute with no fancy prep so that you can calm down enough to make a different choice than exploding like a volcano on everybody in the vicinity. Now since it's a video, you can watch what I do for easier practice, and, of course, there's audio plus captions to read it. I also have a little cheat sheet underneath of all the ideas, so you can grab that list, stick it in your phone somewhere, so that on the time where you're, like, totally freaking out, you can go to that list and quickly pick the idea that's going to help you calm down in that moment. Head over to patriciasung.com/calm, that's calm, and download your free video on how you can keep your cool when you're overwhelmed.
Patricia Sung [00:10:48]:
That's patriciasung.com/calm, because you can learn how to take care of yourself so that you can take care of your family. The stinky part about this is that as you are moving down the ladder, for you to get back up here to the sunny state, you have to climb up the entire ladder to get there. So it's not like we can be down at the bottom of the ladder and then, like, five seconds later, oh, everything's great. I'm up here. No. You have to make your way back through to get to the top. And these are all in your slides too, which are linked in the chat if you wanna read it because, obviously, this is, like, tiny stuff. And, again, I'm not gonna read this to you.
Patricia Sung [00:11:25]:
I'm not gonna go much more in-depth here. But I want you to know that, like, this is how your body is built. So when you're in this bottom section of social engagement, everything's green, everything's fabulous. As you're in this space, your body is doing all the digestive stuff and, like, your heart rate is normal and all the things that it's doing in that normal state. And as we get into this yellow zone of being, like, in fight or flight, all of a sudden, your body starts shifting, and that's where we're feeling if you're feeling more fight, it's the rage, the anger, the irritation, the frustration. If you're feeling more flight, it's the panic, the fear, the anxiety, the worry. That's what's going on. But on the right here, you can see here's all the stuff that is happening in your body when you start to get stressed out.
Patricia Sung [00:12:08]:
As soon as we start to get even a little stressed, our blood pressure increases. Our pupil size changes. Things decrease like your body's no longer doing the digestion. It has diverted the resources to elsewhere. Your immune response goes down, which I could on a whole soapbox about people with ADHD and being chronically stressed and having, like, any kind of autoimmune thing, but I will save that not for today. And then when you get up into this full on the dorsal vagal level of stress, it shows you, like, here's the, like, freeze section and what's going on with your body there. It's knowing, like, this is how your body was built. It was meant to divert the resources elsewhere so that you can survive.
Patricia Sung [00:12:44]:
However, as we get up here, to get back down, we have to pass back through this yellow section to get back to green. And that is where a lot of us we got super stressed and now we're, like, just as irritated or just as frustrated after it happens, and we have to go through that. Even if it's a short time, we still have to make our way back through the deactivation to get back to the red place. It's not like we just snap our fingers and everything's all better. But being able to get out of this red stage into the green is, like, what we wanna talk about today because when you're in this place here of the red, you can't do more things. You can't be grounded and settled and compassionate when you're in the red zone. It's not possible. That's not how your body was built.
Patricia Sung [00:13:31]:
So having that knowledge allows us to, like, forgive ourselves and know this is how how we're meant to be, but how can we get down here in an easier way or in a smoother way? Because we have to pass back through this yellow area to get back down here. So when we talk about how do we reset after being there is, one, I will when I stop talking, I will drop the links for some of the free resources that I already have out there, like the 10 ways to calm down, and probably a good chunk of you have the slowdown be present audio that's, like, the calming audio. But there's not like a necessarily, like, a, you have to do it this way. It's really for you. What are the ways that you can complete that stress cycle and find your way back to that peaceful place when things have gone off the rails. Now, obviously, a lot of what we work on is not getting to the place of dread and, like, how do we when we're on that ladder, if we realize, like, we're getting down to, oh my goodness, like, I'm hitting, like, seven, eight, nine right now. Like, as a mom, how do we get ourselves even back to, like, a five or a four so that we can make it through the rest of the day, so that we can make it through the homework battle, that we can make it through bedtime? We can't control all the things that are coming in that are stressing us out much of the time. There are some things that we can do, but a lot of times the stressors are coming in and we don't have control over those.
Patricia Sung [00:14:55]:
What we can do is find ways to move back up the stress ladder so that we are less stressed in giving ourselves that capacity. Because when we're higher up on the ladder, then we have the space to make it through the stressful things that are happening with our kids or at work or with a partner. It's when we start the talk with somebody and you're already at an eight or a nine, you have very little space, very little capacity to make it through without exploding into a tantrum or a meltdown. And I only like the word tantrum, but some people use it. Like, tantrum makes it sound like you're choosing that. And, usually, when we're in that place, we're not really choosing anything. Like, your brain's pretty much offline once you get past the five. Like, once you hit six, seven, eight, like, you don't remember that you read any books.
Patricia Sung [00:15:37]:
You don't remember that you went to counseling. You don't remember that you listened to the podcast because your brain's offline. You don't have access to all the brilliant tools that you have worked so hard together when you're at that point in the stress ladder. So as moms, if we can start to recognize, I'm oh, I think I'm hitting like that six seven. Gotta I gotta do something about it. Moving ourselves back up so that we can be at a three or a four before we try to have the hard talk with your tween, before you argue with your toddler about which plate they use today, before you have the tough conversation with your partner, then you have more capacity to be able to handle those stressful things. Oh, and then also just recognizing, like, you aren't gonna start every day at a zero or one. There are gonna be days where you are up with a newborn five times, and you're starting the day at a three or a four, or you're really worried about, you know, your partner or your kid or whatever else is going on, and you're starting the day at some other rung on that ladder.
Patricia Sung [00:16:33]:
So we don't get a fresh slate every day, which would be lovely. Life is lifing. We are living in post pandemic times. Like, I don't know, like, that any of us are immune to, like, just the existence of the world today. All of those things, like, we turn on social media and all of a sudden you see the 47 things that are wrong with the Earth that will bring us down the ladder too just in being around that. So when we think about, okay, I'm moving up and down this ladder all day long. What are the things that I can do? And it's like particularly, we're talking about, like, when I've already hit 10 and I have lost my ever loving mind on somebody, or I turtled up and totally shut everyone down and was like, don't talk to me for the rest of the day. What are the things that you can do to move yourself back up the ladder and get past you know, get through that yellow zone and back to green given that, like, things are gonna be hard.
Patricia Sung [00:17:25]:
So that's my first question for you is to I'm just gonna give you, like, thirty seconds and think about, like, the things that, like, really give you peace, that give you energy. Like, what are the things that you in particular, specific to you, will help you feel either more peaceful or more energetic after you do them so that you have this go to thing that you know, like, this is the if nothing else, like, you have this thing that's going to help you move back up the ladder. And, like, for some people, it will be, you know, something that they do artistically. Maybe it's movement. Like, for you, if you wanna journal, if you wanna just write it down, if you wanna just know it in your head, that's fine. But what is something that you can do that can help you get back to a place where you feel that more grounded, calm? The things that help you feel in this green area, what are the things in your life that help you feel that way? For more resources, classes, and community, head over to my website, motherhoodinADHD.com.