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Episode 19 - ADHD and Object Permanence
128 Plays2 years ago
Paul and Martin (co-Mayors of ADHDville) chat about why we forget people all the time. Out of sight out of mind right? Crazy! Along the way we learn some stuff about Moldova and whatnot. Also crazy!
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Theme music was written by Freddie Philips and played by Martin West. All other music by Martin West.
Please remember:
This is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
but we love doing this. Okay. Nice. Nice. It is one of the highlights of my week two. All righty. All right.
Moldova's Podcast Popularity
00:00:11
Speaker
As we were just saying, off air, looking at the listening figures, it turns out that we're quite big in Moldova.
00:00:28
Speaker
I think in the podcast charts, I think we, we roast a slight 13, number 13 in the health and wellness category.
Facts & Traditions of Moldova
00:00:39
Speaker
So if you're listening in Moldova, if you're listening in Moldova, cheers. That's amazing. Right. So, so I thought in celebration, I would give you a couple of facts or a couple of interesting things about mold.
00:00:58
Speaker
Dover I'm all ears It has I Know right well First off it's a small country between its big neighbors Romania and Ukraine there's about two and a half million people there And it has good good wine I
00:01:25
Speaker
That's what we know. There's this other little special little thing that I saw. It's also one of the world's largest exports of walnuts. No way. Okay. Which... There you go. So if you're having walnuts... Well, I should be personally thankful to them for lowering my cholesterol because walnuts are just like really good for that. So thank you Moldova for that.
00:01:56
Speaker
Great. Yeah. All right. And then just one last little interesting cultural thing. Apparently the arrival of a new family member, like a baby, is celebrated by having the baby bathed for the first time by the eldest woman on the father's side. Wow. Okay.
00:02:25
Speaker
And apart apart from apart apart from water, they add flowers for a nice life, honey and milk to give the baby a sweet life and money. OK. So he gets a little sweet bit of. So not like Bob Mortimer, who claims to crack an egg into his bath on that. He cracks it. Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that. Yeah, no, I'm not noticed.
00:02:52
Speaker
And then on that little piece of gem, cultural. Lovely. Interestingness. Welcome to ADHDville. Okay.
Hosts' ADHD Journeys
00:03:23
Speaker
Hello everyone, I'm Paul Thompson. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD after 56 years of WTF. And I'm Martin West and I was diagnosed with ADHD, the lifespan of one mattress ago. So apparently the lifespan of a mattress is between seven and 10 years.
00:03:43
Speaker
that problem I've had, I've been diagnosed. It probably depends on your weight or even, I think our sweatiness. Okay, alrighty. Okay, let's think about my mattress now. I think our mattress is, I know, I think ours is
00:04:04
Speaker
He's starting to come up with it. This Norwegian company that makes mattresses and apparently one mattress costs $50,000 for one mattress. So yeah, you got to want it to last longer than seven years on that money. Anyway, so anyway, so we're just two mates who coincidence or not, after 39 years of friendship, discover that we're co ADHD-ers.
00:04:31
Speaker
Now, it's really important to say that this is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals. So don't take any advice from us. No, no, no. We're just here as a kind of all-inclusive ADHD park bench with room for everyone and your pets.
00:04:55
Speaker
Okay, still here? Great then, grab your pop-tarts and let's take it to ADHDville, an imaginary town that we've created on our minds where we like to explore different parts of ADHD. We do. We do, every Tuesday. And we start off, as always, in... Thank you for that.
00:05:23
Speaker
in the town hall of ADHDville in the mayor's office where we the joint mayors of ADHDville take care of business and on my meeting agenda I should just rattle some paper on the agenda today
00:05:45
Speaker
First off is a reminder just to please subscribe to the pod. Come on. Rate us. Tell us what you think. Write in the comments. You are a citizen of ADHDville. Get involved in your town. Civic duty. Feedback. Be lovely. Be lovely.
00:06:06
Speaker
hate hate mail will be liked as well. And there's a reminder that we drop every Tuesday on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and you can see our beautiful, beautiful faces on the YouTubes.
00:06:24
Speaker
Second on the gender is, how was your week?
Daily Structure & Navigation Challenges
00:06:30
Speaker
Good, bad, ugly. How was your week? I can start off if you need a couple of minutes to...
00:06:43
Speaker
to collect your thoughts. Yeah, so my workload has gone down a bit now so that I have more time, which also means I have less structure. So I am currently trying to apply a structure to my day. So I've been doing all the same things in the morning. I used to have a 9.30
00:07:13
Speaker
a meeting. And now I'm trying to turn my 930 meeting with other people with a 930 meeting with myself. So I sit down and I look at the list of things I've got to do that day, and kind of like plot it out. So I'm trying to use as much structure that I used to have and apply it to where I am now. So it's been difficult. Okay. But it's been fine. I mean, I mean, if you're
00:07:41
Speaker
If you're looking on the YouTube is these are Manila envelopes behind me. I like tax.
00:07:51
Speaker
This is a pile of tax stuff. And that's been going well. I've got my taxes back on course. Chest bumps. I feel good about that. If anyone was worried from last week when I was like going, I need to get my taxes back on course. Back on course, we can all relax. Back on course, but like the form of one of those giant oil tankers.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, back on course. Oh, yeah. At least it's moving forward towards the Suez Canal, which is the main thing. In your case. Okay, that's good.
00:08:31
Speaker
I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm like, I'm still in that, in that, um, in that phase was my grandmother used to call it just a phrase I'm going through. She used to get her words mixed up. I'm going through this phrase at the moment. I'm just like really hardcore. Um,
00:08:51
Speaker
reflection of my past, because if you haven't picked this up on the podcast, previous podcasts, I've, I was diagnosed, was it seven or eight weeks ago now? So just like, Oh, got so much in my head.
00:09:05
Speaker
were just like, Oh, this and that. And it's like, Oh my God. Yeah. It's just a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. So, um, but also just generally I was in the hospital a couple of days ago. Yeah. Monday. And, uh, it's just really funny now how you see the world differently post diagnosis. And, um, yeah, so I was in the hospital and I generally, I'm quite famous for getting lost in hospitals.
00:09:35
Speaker
And as my son will write, yeah. They are confusing places. But generally more confusing for me. I realized something. I don't, it's not necessarily that the logic isn't there right in front of my eyes with a like, really nice, maybe a really nice, you know, signposting system. I generally attracted towards like, in a hospital, you're like, oh, if I go left, wonder what's down there, you know.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah. So, so I get like spat out. Yeah. You'll see ugly things. I've seen it. I was once down, I was with my son in another hospital about three years ago. We got so lost. We were like two floors down underground and we're in the mortuary section. And as we got
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah. And then we got through, we got into this thing and all I could see was this enormously long corridor in front of us of me and my son. It was at least, I couldn't see the other end of it. That's how long it was. But there was a small family that were behind a trolley of clearly a dead person from their family walking very, very slowly. I didn't have the courage. We didn't have the courage to overtake them.
00:10:58
Speaker
So this corridor took 20 minutes to go through down. Yeah. And even then we would. Yeah. Yeah. We laughed so much. We can't overtake a trolley with a dead person on it. It's not in my mind. Anyway. Coming through. Excuse me. Excuse me. Coming through. Coming through. We're lost. Yeah.
00:11:27
Speaker
But we did laugh about it. Oh God. I don't suppose you have to know where the, uh, where the, uh, where the, uh, Oh God. Yeah. Well, it was less than no. And I husband, stick to the graph.
00:11:46
Speaker
unless you want a good story and then you go off. Yeah. So there you go. A little anecdote about ADHD and hospital.
Adopting ADHD Hacks
00:11:55
Speaker
Signing systems for you. Podcast gold. G'day. All right. Yeah. Where are we? 12 minutes. All right. Uh,
00:12:09
Speaker
Have you got any comments on the MERS? I haven't. But yeah, I've got nothing in my entry. Or not. All right.
00:12:21
Speaker
All right. Homework from the previous episode, just, just, just to remind, uh, uh, the guys from Moldova, but, um, uh, you were trying out the thing of when you go from one room to another to like take stuff with you.
00:12:44
Speaker
so that things got picked up around the house. And my thing was to carry on blinking at objects to make sure they stuck in my head. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll kick off. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing's changed. Still do whatever I did before, but there's only, there is a change, one change when I don't pick it up and take it to where it should go. I think if you, Martin,
00:13:12
Speaker
Oh, so that's nice. Okay. All right. Sodom. Sodom. I'm going to leave that coffin right there. I'm thinking of you in the next podcast when I tell you that I haven't done my homework again. I'm telling me to pick up the coffin. All right. There you go. How about you, Martin? Right. Right. You know what?
00:13:33
Speaker
Well, I was going to say that that's a little bit of if you could attach the thought of accountability to actually doing the thing. So if the change in habit is like you look at that coffee cup and you think of me, right, then that's a change. And you go, all right, what would Martin say if I
00:13:56
Speaker
if i took it or i didn't take it all right and you you you you could go oh right might not be happy that i took this that i took this coffee cup so i think you should do a lot of my dominatrix my personal dominatrix right it's the whole uh yeah you know buddy doubling buddy up
00:14:25
Speaker
thing, right? Where you kind of do something to someone else. So you could use that. That's segways. Is that the right word? Segways. Nicely into something that will come up because body doubling. I saw it about two weeks ago, doubling my own words. What's that? ADHD, body doubling. What the hell? I still know nothing about it, but I'm sure it'll come up as interested.
00:14:53
Speaker
we could do something on doubling oh yeah no no it's it's it's my my wife uses me for body doubling quite quite a lot so um basically the the general idea is if you've got someone else there in the room
00:15:12
Speaker
or, you know, you are likely to do the thing. So for example, coffee shops and Starbucks are like a full of people trying to write their books or doing work. And the reason is because having people around you actually helps you focus on doing the task. So
00:15:35
Speaker
I will sometimes get pulled into my wife's room because she's doing something that she doesn't want to do. And I'll just sit in the room and I'll be on my phone. But my presence there compels her to do the thing. OK. Yes. So we will get on to that. It is a fun little project. And just to clear off with me blinking at things,
00:16:06
Speaker
to be honest, I've not blinked at a single thing. Uh, okay. Um, although it did work that one time when I, I will want it to half, half some is that I just forget. Yeah. I forget to blink at things. Right. Right. It's, but it wasn't a habit.
00:16:31
Speaker
It did work that one time. Also, I've started to suspect that these ADHD hacks, if it was a hack that you came up with yourself, if you managed to kind of come up with a little thing, a little trick, one weird trick that you did, you're more likely to invest in that hack and do it and it to be successful. If someone else says, oh,
00:17:01
Speaker
Here's a, you know, here's a hack that I do to get this thing done. And it comes from someone else. You're less invested in it. And actually the chances are it may not work. That makes sense. I was, I think. So I almost think you have to have time. I was listening to a couple of hacks, I think this morning. And yeah, this goes in one ear and out the other. For me, probably for what, for a reason you've most said, yeah. Right.
00:17:32
Speaker
Right. But I think if there's a general principle that you can kind of buy into, then if you could find your own little way of applying that. It's like the people have invested thousands, if not more, into HHD hacks as an app for your phone. And I haven't looked at those because I already know that that wouldn't work for me. You know, just wouldn't
00:18:00
Speaker
Right. I think that's the the rebellious part of you is like, is like, no, no, I'm not going to know. Yeah. It's not going to work for me because I'm just to commute to London and everyone was reading Harry Potter. And it's when it first came out to showing her old home.
00:18:23
Speaker
And, um, actually this week, a first edition was found from the 1990s. It sold for a fortune. Some, a lady found it in a, in a, in a secondhand bookshop or something. Anyway. Um, yeah, when I see people like reading all the same book, I, I can't, I could never read it. Um, yeah, everyone, everyone seems to be reading that like, I'm not reading that. Yeah.
00:18:51
Speaker
You see, the, the, the interesting thing is, right. Is that you, you go, right. Everyone's reading Harry Potter because they're all influencing each other. Right. They're all being, okay. Oh, he's what he's reading Harry Potter. I'll, I'll read Harry Potter. Um, so you're kind of going, Oh, look, that person that they're being influenced, right. To read Harry Potter, but it's, but it's equally.
00:19:19
Speaker
You're equally being influenced into not reading Harry Potter because you're going, oh, look at all these people reading Harry Potter. I'm not going to read Harry Potter. So they're influencing. You're still being influenced, but just in the opposite direction. Nuclear has been an influencer of the influenceable.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Influencer of the influencer. All right. Or you could be like an, an uninfluencer or an anti-fluencer in some way where you actively don't do any of, don't influence anyone. Right. Could be a thing. You have a whole gang of followers of, of
00:20:10
Speaker
people who are, who are also not, who are, oh God, I think perhaps they would be doing the thing that you're not doing. Right. Because they're anti-influenced. Well, no, because they have to know. So for example, I don't get lost in this conversation. If you're going
00:20:38
Speaker
If you're going, look, I've seen those are people not reading Harry Potter. I've seen lots of people reading Harry Potter books. I'm not going to read Harry Potter books. I'm the uninfluencer and all your fans are going, well, I follow this philosophy of, yeah, of a reverse. So I'm going to read a Harry Potter book because I'm, I'm, I'm anti-ing the anti anyway.
Clutter & Object Permanence
00:21:04
Speaker
Good Lord.
00:21:06
Speaker
reverse, reverse out of this crazy rabbit hole that we've found ourselves in. Anyway, took in a rabbit hole. Yeah. And crack on with, uh, so what's, so we need to work both as usual, bang on, you know, the trend of us never doing homework, setting each other homework and never doing it. Should we set some more homework that we're not going to do?
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, I can't believe it. I was, you know, I was actually, um, all right. I will for next week. I will, I will find this. It'll have nothing to do with blinking. All right. You know what? You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to, I'm just going to go here. I'm going to go online. I'm going to go ADHD hack. Right. I'm just going to find one.
00:22:10
Speaker
Back to attitude magazine, 40 little life hacks from PDHD gurus. All right. OK, that doesn't OK. Well, this could be interesting.
00:22:32
Speaker
Uh, downsize your desk. I know that you and I like, like to have things out and about, right? Give me a flat surface and I will pile paper on it. And since I can't stop piling, I opted for a small desk. It limits my potential and creates paper based chaos. Okay. Well, I'm not going to get a whole new desk.
00:22:56
Speaker
But you know what, I think that the hack is, okay, so our task for this week is, and my wife and I have this conversation, if there's a flat surface, we will put stuff on it.
00:23:14
Speaker
Oh, like if it's a flat surface, it will, it will pretty soon become like it will soon start gathering things on it. Is this, is this something that happens in, in, in your house? Like if there's a flat surface, it will just spontaneously start accumulating. My mind immediately went down a rabbit hole of like, Oh, is that why in public toilets, you never have flat surfaces because of people having bad drug habits in there.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, I went off on a tangent. Ooh, blimey. I wouldn't know. No flat surfaces in toilets. Yeah. No, I have never heard of that. Right. But is that a thing in your house? Like if a flat surface appears for some reason. No, you've said it. Yeah. Like there's a new bit of furniture or something. Stuff.
00:24:10
Speaker
will just accumulate, especially by the front door, right? Like the post and keys and then stuff when you come in the house, you just dump, dump, dump, dump. Well, my girlfriend, she's not ADHD. She's uh, she's really, really, really, really tidy. Um, so she, yeah. So, okay. So, but in normally, yeah, she tidies up. She doesn't, she's really careful not to.
00:24:39
Speaker
So that makes sense. Yeah, which is good. I really like that. Right. I like that she does that. She's like careful not to tidy up after me, but it's always my stuff that's lying around. Yeah. Right. Okay. Right. Totally. I think.
00:25:09
Speaker
So I think that the task is, and I'll do the same, is to go around the house and just look at
00:25:17
Speaker
And just be aware of the flat surfaces. And then if you can change the flat surface. So for example, if there's like a table and you kind of get, Oh God, I'm always putting stuff on this table. If I move this vase and put this vase on the table, so there's not much room to put things on. If you're listening in the UK, that would be one less surface for me to hang on. Yeah.
00:25:46
Speaker
Right. Oh God. Yeah. I forgot the bars. So I think it's to kind of, it's to go around your popular dumping spots and see if you can just wiggle something around just so that there isn't much room for you to put things on anymore. Which is what I, which is what we do. If there's any change
00:26:11
Speaker
If you buy any furniture or something, we'll go, I've just created a flat surface.
00:26:18
Speaker
Okay. What are we going to do? Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I did the same thing as you. All right. There we go. Jumped on the first thing that came up and I choose Oxford learning.com. It's about kids actually, about advice for kids, tips, hacks for kids. But I looked down it right really quickly and it says, Oh, you could do the same homework as your, as your children are doing.
00:26:47
Speaker
Okay. So this advice for parents and the kids. So, and I thought, Oh, what do I need to do that? I could get Martin to do as well. Right. So I've got anything to study so much, but I want to do a portrait and it's been on my mind for like three, four weeks. I'll do a portrait with my girlfriend, paint a portrait and I've not done it. And I've got like given loads of pieces for not doing it. Yeah, I am dangerous territory, but my challenge to you, if you,
00:27:17
Speaker
want to take it on is you do a portrait as well of your lady. And I'll do one of mine. Could be anything. Well, you know. All right. I was going to say it might not necessarily be a portrait. So I know that in a week's time, I'll do the one I've got in my mind of my girlfriend.
00:27:48
Speaker
And, uh, yeah. All right. And then we'll show it up to the camera so that you can see it on the YouTube. And we'll probably, mum, you might even share them on the social. All right. So we've got a week to do a portrait for charity. All right. Well, that sounds like fun. Um,
00:28:15
Speaker
All right, last thing on the agenda is where are we going today? Well, Martin. Well, I think I'm actually taking us to... Yeah, so you take us, you take us. Well, Martin, why don't you take us to this week? All right, well, let's jump in the mayor's car.
00:28:36
Speaker
Well, because we're going to go to, we're going to take a trip in the Mayor's car to, to the left field farm. I think we both like left field farm rams. And we're going to talk about object. We're going to talk about object permanence. All right. Let's jump in the car.
00:29:09
Speaker
nice reverb on the back of that you can tell it's a bit of guitar string natural string all right okay so this is a subject Martin that you you came up with last the last pod
00:29:23
Speaker
Cause I, as, as, as, uh, yes. And a lot of stuff that we come up with, uh, you know, you're seven light years ahead of me. And, um, object, object impertinence, what was it called? Impermanence. We're, we're, we're both. Right. We're both on our separate. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So I'm curious, take it away.
00:29:56
Speaker
All right. So I think, you know, the phrase out of sight, out of mind applies very well to people with ADHD, even more so. And I should say that object permanence
00:30:14
Speaker
isn't a symptom or a clinical part of ADHD. It's this anecdotal feature of ADHD which most, which a lot of ADHD people experience.
00:30:40
Speaker
So that's why we're at left field farm, because it's kind of adjacent to ADHD. And what it is, is if you can't see it, it kind of doesn't exist. So we were talking like last week about that can very much
00:31:09
Speaker
be about objects and it can be about people. Yeah. As well. So I mean, how this comes to life for me is and I think for quite a lot of people is they like to have their stuff out so they can see it. You know, like so so they will fill up those flat
00:31:39
Speaker
flat surfaces, because once it's in a drawer somewhere, it is harder to remember that it's there. So for example, I have my drugs right in front of me. I've got some vitamins and I've got some other bits and pieces.
00:32:06
Speaker
that are always, if I sit at this desk, that's where my drugs are. They're right in front of me because I can see them all the time. So I remember to take them. Whereas if I put them in the bathroom cabinet where they used to live, I would frequently forget to take them. So that's one part of it.
00:32:33
Speaker
And then I think it becomes more of a problem when it's other people. So it can cause problems in your relationship because if they're not there, you kind of forget that they exist a little bit.
00:33:01
Speaker
So you'll forget to, to, to phone them when you, when you said that you'd phone them or, you know, um, and I think, you know, like that whole thing we talked about the other week, which is friends, like trying to maintain relationships with friends becomes difficult because
00:33:23
Speaker
because they just almost cease to exist unless they pop up on your Facebook page and say, oh, you know, John's birthday is today. You get, oh, Christ, I forgot all about John. Let's just wish him a happy birthday. Because I did like a bit of research too into this, you know. What popped up for me was like when
00:33:53
Speaker
When my mum died a few years ago, 24 years ago now, I remember at my mum's reception of the funeral, I was just like, I couldn't visualize my mum because I'm very visual. And I was just like going around, you know, like it was just so easy for me, you know. And I was just really calm and collected. And I remember thinking to myself, like, oh, this is weird.
00:34:22
Speaker
And then, but now reflecting on that, I was thinking, this week, that's because I couldn't see my mum there. You know, she couldn't see her. It's not that because she wasn't there, I was forgetting her at all. It's just like, I, I'm visually stimulated. And, you know, you know, that's kind of the kind of
00:34:45
Speaker
beginning the end, you know, of where of something that I would take in to my mind. And because my mom wasn't there, you know, I was just like breezing about really, I was fine. I was really fine. And I did some shaming of self shaming about it. And to this day, would I go to visit my mom, see a tombstone or gravestone, I get nothing. Nothing, because it's just like, what is that, you know,
00:35:15
Speaker
I guess, I think they're related. I think they're related. See the difference is that I went to another funeral of a friend of ours, James. He's a friend and ex-colleague of ours at where we work together. And at his funeral, bless him, he'd prepared a video for everyone at the funeral reception. And I bawled my eyes out. I was a mess.
00:35:44
Speaker
Cause they, I could see him, you know, I was an absolute mess. Right. Yeah. He prepared like a whole long video of you, like, like tracing his, his youth and stuff like that. Oh, I was gone. I was gone. Yeah. Wow. That's it. That is really interesting. You know, that just seeing him.
00:36:13
Speaker
you know, just brought him, brought him back. The other part, as you are a visual person, like I am, and you know, you were talking the other week about how you pay attention to the details of things. So you're very detail orientated, right?
00:36:43
Speaker
part of the object permanence thing is that because you've got, because you take in a lot of detail, your mind can have like, has difficulty pulling out any one particular thing. It just becomes like a lot of visual stuff. And your brain doesn't,
00:37:11
Speaker
necessarily pick out one thing or another. And unless you go hunting in that image in your mind, you go, OK, I can I can find the details I'm looking for. But it takes effort for you to kind of pull out something. Right. So things just get lost in the background of all the information that is especially if I'm overloaded by maybe there's a really strong, really loud music that will like
00:37:41
Speaker
you know, that will sort of put us better in our works. Yeah. Cause I'm, there's like sensory overload. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But yeah, that's what came to mind. It's definitely, definitely. And as you said, Martin, people, you know,
00:38:03
Speaker
Sometimes I get the feeling that people, like at my mom's funeral, I think people were watching and looking at me thinking, what's going on with Paul? You know, his mom died. You know, it's like carbon collected and, you know, and yeah, it's bizarre. What the hell, you know? And people just assumed, like my sister, for example, she assumed that I was just, you know, that I was not affected by it at all.
00:38:36
Speaker
right yeah no yeah it's different for everyone right so i've got some a little bit of research because i like a bit of science in this whole whole thing um research i'll just read it out because it's just easier research suggests that people with ADHD have poor working memory also called short-term memory
00:39:03
Speaker
where long-term memory stores information we don't need right at this moment, but still need later on, like who the president is or how to get to the post office. Your working memory is where your brain keeps the information you need right now for the task at hand. So what it's kind of saying there, I guess, is it has a
00:39:34
Speaker
It it doesn't do your the ADHD brain doesn't do so well. Keeping information that it doesn't need right at this moment. And you know, like we'll talk about this in the next we'll talk about this in the next episode, which is like where you're really good in a crisis. It's because you filter out everything that you don't need and you can just really focus on what
00:40:05
Speaker
is important. So if you don't need that thing right now, your brain just pushes it off to the back of your mind somewhere. So if your girlfriend or your wife or partner is, you know, if you're not actively engaged in them in that moment and they go off and they go out and they do their own thing,
00:40:31
Speaker
It's your brain doesn't need them to exist in order to do whatever it is that you're doing. So they just get pushed way back. And it isn't until they text you.
00:40:45
Speaker
And your phone goes ping and you go, Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I have a girlfriend. Oh, I have a wife. I have a partner. Oh yes. Oh yes. I've just remembered they exist. Let me just text them. Oh yeah.
00:41:05
Speaker
But the thing is, I wonder what came to mind was in that moment though. Okay. Um, just before you text your girlfriend, um, in that moment you can, um, I think ADHD is, um, maybe we'll, you know, people will forget feedback and comment or whatever it could be interested in. Um,
00:41:33
Speaker
ADHDs can be really, really good at reading a room or a situation, like really instinctively and really fast, you know.
ADHD Superpowers & Strategies
00:41:42
Speaker
So it's not like ADHD is a lot like in that moment as a normal non ADHD would be. I think ADHDs have often have, careful about being too generalizing, but often could be really good at reading a room or a situation and just like, you just walk into a room and it's like,
00:42:02
Speaker
get it, you know, like, get feeling the mood or whatever. And yeah, yeah, who's there? Who wants to be there that didn't come anyway, you know, or whatever. Yeah, I that's me anyway. I don't know. How about you? Good room reader.
00:42:30
Speaker
I, I don't know, actually, I've not really thought about it, to be honest. But yes, you, yes. So there's a lot of people with ADHD that, you know, because they are quite detailed or orientated will walk into a room, be able to scan it by be very intuitive.
00:42:53
Speaker
into what's going on, they can sense, even if you're not necessarily consciously thinking it, your ADHD brain is just very good at
00:43:06
Speaker
soaking up a lot of information really quickly and just pinpointing what you need to know. And when people talk about ADHD superpowers, you know, a lot of it's maybe over reused as an expression. I think that's when you do have it, it's kind of in that kind of sphere.
00:43:29
Speaker
Right. So that's the plus side of it. And then the minus side is you discard what you don't really need to pay attention to in that moment. That's true. So everything else disappears because your brain is self-absorbed, is very focused on what's right in front of you.
00:43:53
Speaker
Right. So if it's not in front of you, it disappears, which is what object, this whole object permanence thing is about is, is that, is the, everything else just goes away. Um, you know, from your wife to your car, car keys. Um, it all just disappears. It's funny. It just comes to mind, you know, as you do, Martin, you sometimes, you know, you fly back to London or into England, where I would see people.
00:44:22
Speaker
Uh, if I, I forget my life in Italy at that, at that moment, you know, and, um, yeah. Right. In fact, when I first went to Cuba, I got no one, a second went to Cuba was with you. I was with you, Martin. I was in Cuba and I forgot about my girlfriend and she was not happy at all.
00:44:49
Speaker
And she left a message with the reception and I spent $150 making a frantic phone call to call her. And then she admitted later that she kept the conversation going that so that I would spend more money because in those days it costs a fortune. $150 it cost for a 10 minute call.
00:45:12
Speaker
So yeah, payback. Right. So that is a, so yeah, that's the cost of object permanence can be, uh, your, your, your partner being very annoyed at you because you forgot they exist and you end up paying for a huge phone call trying to make up. I think we had $150 less for my ethos that night. The fact that you forgot them.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, although they were quite cheap. So I think we powered on regardless. Okay. Okay. So I think there's, I mean, I like to have some what can you do about it?
00:46:08
Speaker
And you know what, there's only, I mean, there's some fairly obvious things which help, which is always putting stuff in the same place, which I think is, you know, so that, you know, your car keys always go in the same place that,
00:46:29
Speaker
everything has a place so that actually if it, if it's, uh, if it's always, it's somewhere, then you know that it's always there. So that's like physical, all your friends in a cupboard. Um, and then the other one is, well, that's kind of, yeah. Like Facebook, right? There you go. The cupboard of friends, for example. Yeah.
00:46:58
Speaker
And right, it is your cupboard of friends that you remember where they all are. That's where Facebook is quite good because it will ping you and say it's your birthday or someone's written to you or something. So having alerts on
00:47:25
Speaker
It's one of the reasons over the years I've avoided giving up Facebook is because of exactly that. Yeah. Otherwise, my friends would go, Paul, what the fuck? You know what? That is the ADHD tax. Another one, which is another episode. And then the ADHD tax.
00:47:55
Speaker
It is, I have it written written down. And I think I have in my phone, so I use the reminders app on my Apple thing, a lot.
00:48:12
Speaker
So an example of that would be my wife would say, oh, don't forget to phone me when you're, I don't know, when you reach somewhere or something, right? Or at a certain time, and then I will semi instinctively go to my reminders and go and put in a reminder, phone wife at this time, or whether I reached this place.
00:48:41
Speaker
And I'll turn it on and then that little ping reminds me, Oh, I have a wife and I'm supposed to phone her so well. So using tech knowledge is a pain in the butt, but, um, it's the, it's the price you pay for, for having a, you know, it's like the, my life is easier.
00:49:07
Speaker
If I put in a little effort into things that, you know, I think I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't have to put a reminder in my phone. Yeah. I give, I, I set up multiple alarms.
00:49:25
Speaker
Cause you know, you could set up more than one. If I've got a message, I, I generally, my default is I, I remind myself one hour before two hours before one day before and two days before it's my default. I want all the options in all the colors. I want to be told sizes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay.
00:49:54
Speaker
Well, you know, as therefore, you know, it's like, all right, if a subject comes up, a topic theme comes up, I think, Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Diddley squat about that. And then I do like, I find, you know, I spent five minutes looking into it. It's like, Oh, okay. Yeah. That's it's like, it hits various nails on the head. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:50:21
Speaker
I think that's what this podcast is all about. Hitting nails on the head. All right. Well, let's get back into our MERS car. And let's go over to the post office. It's one of our more expensive noise effects, sound effects. Okay. So here we are.
00:50:48
Speaker
Here we are all gathered outside the post office. Maybe have a group hug.
00:50:53
Speaker
And it's going, it's going. And just at this point, just want to say your feedback is vital to us, it says here. And we'll be reading almost all of your comments and we'll include regular featurettes of our future podcasts with a pick and mix of our faves. Our discretion is important to us too. And we'll always be careful to ask before sharing your comments. So please subscribe and interact with
00:51:21
Speaker
total abandon free and gay abandon oh the outro all right that just means that we can dance our way out uh and it's just left for me to say thanks for being here uh check out any show notes for any links visit us on the youtubies facebook and tiktok in the meantime be fucking nice to yourself
00:52:12
Speaker
Bye! Ciao!