Dealing with ADHD Paralysis: Tips and Tricks

Everyone in this thread has given lots of good advice, but one brain trick I'm not seeing mentioned is "the countdown" method. It doesn't work for everyone all the time, but pick a number and count down to it before standing up to do something. It can help your brain jumpstart by creating anticipation.

Have you heard of body doubling? Harder to do with COVID, but sometimes, it’s enough for me just to have another person in the room if we’re both concentrating on our tasks

It depends on the situation. I meditate daily which helps me quite a bit get more focused on things I like to do. For the more mundane tasks, I have to make up games to just get started. For example, I set a timer for 15 minutes and see how fast/how much I get things done within that time. Other times, I create a checklist and see if I can check all the things off I want to get done at a certain amount of time. Usually my paralysis is getting started. Then, I let my competitive side take over to smash through my goal.

I️ journal a LOT when my adhd is bad, I️ find it helps me organize my thoughts, and allows me to look back on bad days and see what may have triggered it. There’s also a fun game I️ learned from my friend where you fold a piece of paper into thirds, the other person can’t see what you’re drawing, and they open their section and connect it, so on and so forth. It helps with restlessness, the feeling of wanting to isolate, and it’s fun. It focuses the mind on one task, none of it needs to make sense you don’t know what the other person drew, and you can end up with some awesome artwork!

But I relate to this a lot and struggle with it more often than not😅

Hi hi, I personally find that it can sometimes help if I tell myself I only have to do the thing for like 15 minutes, Like for example, if I’m having a hard time starting a drawing, I’ll tell myself that I only have to draw one line. So I’ll get all my stuff out and draw my line, but then I have all my stuff out and I actually Want to draw (because a lot of paralysis for me is that it takes too many steps to get to THE step of drawing)