Why those most at risk of COVID-19 are least likely to respond to a vaccine submitted by /u/shallah
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5 Ways to Manage Your ADHD When You Work from Home
Can’t focus? Here’s how to cope with ADHD when you’re stuck at home.
Living with ADHD can be a daily struggle. Put social distancing, working from home, and staying inside much of the time in the mix, and you probably feel like most or all of your systems, strategies, and self-care practices have been ripped away.
You may feel like there’s no real certainty of when you will be able to reincorporate these necessities back in your life.
Well, as a therapist who is also living with ADHD, I feel your pain.
There are some tips that might make life easier as you move through this time of uncertainty.
I have never been one to do well working from home. Having nowhere to go, no real reason to get dressed, no consistent structure, or pending deadlines can send me down a rabbit hole of feeling depressed.
For me, it feels like a constant pushing, moving from one task to the other. Even the littlest thing like brushing my teeth ends with me asking, “Why bother?” If there’s no immediate reason, then there’s no point.
I struggle with activation. Getting started is always hard for me.
I can’t wake up and just get going. I need some coffee, a television show that doesn’t last longer than an hour, and my stimulant medication before I can get going.
If I have to be somewhere, I wake up at a time that allows me to have my morning activation routine. But with nowhere to go, that hour can turn into four hours. Then half of my day is gone, and I have put off yet again something I wanted to finish.
This is where my negative self-talk comes creeping in and further down the depression rabbit hole I go.
Anxiety will set in when I can’t separate work time from my responsibilities at home. Like cleaning the house, making appointments for kids, animals, medication refills, meal planning, etc,. because it is all in one space.
If you struggle with inattentiveness like me, then you know that as your brain is scanning your environment, it can’t filter out what isn’t important. So everything is of equal importance and equal urgency.
As my brain sees everything, my body responds with physical anxiety responses. I immediately feel overwhelmed, become paralyzed, and shut down. I don’t know where to start. So I procrastinate, which makes me feel even more anxious.
Well, you know how your brain works. That’s why you had all of those systems, strategies, and practices of self-care in place.
Here are 5 ways you can cope with ADHD on an uncertain schedule and still be productive.
1. Learn How to Adapt to Change.
A good book on this topic is Who Moved My Cheese? by Spensor Johnson, MD.
This is a short book about change. I think Dr. Johnson does a wonderful job of creating funny scenarios of what can happen, depending on how you respond or don’t respond to change.
Intellectually understanding and emotionally understanding don’t always go hand in hand. Especially when you don’t choose the change!
So much is out of your control right now. And honestly, many things always have been and always will be out of your hands.
Still, you always have choices. Learning how you react in these scenarios and how you can learn to react will be helpful at giving you a sense of power in your life.
This book can provide some insight and space for you to think about how you want to reset yourself in your own time and in your own way.
Common But Often Overlooked Symptoms of ADHD in Adults
2. Use the “Pomodoro Method” for Productivity.
This technique makes productivity feel much more doable. It works by focusing on 25- to 30-minute blocks of working time separated by five-minute breaks.
You pick a task and just focus on that one task during the working session. It’s much easier to activate you brain if you think of working for 25 or 30 minutes segments with breaks, than if you think about the work by itself.
By breaking your necessary projects up, you’ll get more done. You can decide for yourself what time increments work best for you.
Just keep in mind the transitions. If you are working for 30 minutes, maybe set your timer for 27 minutes to allow for the transition.
Transitions can be one of the more difficult things to manage with ADHD.
3. Work with Your Own Natural Flow of Energy.
If it feels better to go straight into working from your comfy bed before you brush your teeth, then do it. You can find another time in the morning to brush your teeth. Maybe in one of your five-minute breaks.
If your body and mind want to rest, then rest. This could be the opportunity to take a real lunch break and watch a show on Netflix. Just be mindful of not getting caught in a time suck and watching a whole series.
If continuing to watch gives you the stimulation you need while cleaning the kitchen or doing laundry, go for it. But if the television becomes a distraction, then you’ll need to use something else to help you focus.
You know, all the things that require “not thought,” but are the hardest to do because they aren’t interesting?
The Struggles Only People With ADHD Understand
4. Get Creative With Your Exercise.
There are some great free workout videos on YouTube or OnDemand. They also have some that are just 10 to 15 minutes. This is a great way to see if you would even like them.
Listen to your body. If your body just wants to take a walk, then walk. If you feel like yoga, then do yoga. You don’t need to force yourself to come up with the same intense workouts you may be used to at the gym.
Exercise is so important for the ADHD brain, but it’s also supposed to be fun. If it isn’t, you’re more likely to not do it.
Even a person without ADHD or focusing problems would struggle to follow through an exercise routine that sounds miserable.
5. Practice Self-Compassion.
I think this is the most important tip. What’s happening in the world is hard for everyone, but it can be especially difficult or those with ADHD who are still trying to work from home, distance, and be responsible while cooped up in the house. Maybe not all, but many.
The idea behind practicing self-compassion is intentionally acknowledging to yourself that life is hard right now, without judgment, criticizing yourself, or over-identifying with how you feel.
Because you aren’t how you feel. And you aren’t alone in how you feel — ever!
Be kind to yourself every day. Focus on your strengths and what is really important to you. As with all things, this too shall pass.
This guest article was first published on YourTango.com: 5 Strategies To Cope With ADHD When Working From Home.
Photo: Viktor Hanacek on picjumbo.
The Perils of Overconfidence
In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, our society conveys the message that we should be a strong, confident person. We shouldn’t hesitate to grab what we want and express our views in a direct, forceful way. Being tentative, faltering, or uncertain earns us the reputation of being weak and indecisive. Assertiveness rules. Extraversion is prized. Humility is shameful.
Do we pay a hidden price in our quest to be uncompromisingly assertive and project an image of strength and confidence? Is it possible to become overconfident?
No doubt you’ve met people who dazzle you with their apparent self-confidence and assertiveness. They may even trigger feelings of insecurity in you, leaving you feeling envious toward their self-assured air and verbal communication skills. Turn on the news and it’s hard to avoid seeing politicians and pundits who appear to be super self-assured, who ruthlessly criticize and shame people who disagree with them.
Perhaps in your romantic life you’ve been drawn to confident individuals. But as you got to know them better, you might have realized that what looked like self-confidence turned out to be arrogance — a blustery cover-up for a hidden fear and fragility.
Hypnotized and fatally attracted by a person’s overconfidence, we might take a hard fall when we realize that their personality developed in way to compensate for poor self-worth and insecurity. Similar to a prominent politician whom many people love or hate, what appears to be a compelling capacity to sound good may turn out to be a person who is a polished and persuasive showman.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being confident. But oftentimes in life too much of one quality can leave us unbalanced and destabilized, especially when it’s designed to make up for character flaws or shortcomings.
Emotional Rigidity and Splitting
A mind that is already made up is a mind that is closed to new ideas and viewpoints. Overconfidence implies a mental and emotional rigidity. We think in black and white categories. We engage in psychological “splitting” — putting things in neat categories that offer some order and predictability to our lives. We think in extremes with no middle ground: you’re either with me or against me. You love me or hate me. We see people as either good or bad rather than realize that everyone, including ourselves, has some blend of positive and not-so-stellar qualities.
Such splitting is common when our inner life feels chaotic and unsettled, perhaps due to early trauma or feeling unsafe in our family of origin. Taken to an extreme, inflexible thinking and behavior might reflect a personality disorder (such as a borderline personality disorder). It is difficult to consider other viewpoints or empathize with people’s feelings.
Life isn’t as neatly ordered and predictable as we might like it to be. One sign of emotional and mental health is the capacity for flexibility and resilience, as well as a capacity to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. Acknowledging that we don’t know something or aren’t sure isn’t a sign of weakness. It takes a strong, secure person to declare “I just don’t know!” or “I’m not sure.”
Perhaps you’re a person who could use a dose of self-confidence. If you tend to be perfectionistic, you might hesitate to express your views or needs unless you’re 100% certain that you’re right or that it will go well. On the other hand, might you tend to project an image of confidence that is not congruent with reality? If so, perhaps take a step back the next time you express something with apparent confidence. Better yet, pause before you speak.
Check inside and bring some mindfulness to what you’re about to say. Does it resonate with your inner felt sense? Are you as certain about it as you think you are? Perhaps consider a softer tone that adds a dose of humility to your words, while making room for the ambiguity and uncertainty that is part of life.
The Health Benefits of Movement (and How to Get Out of Your Own Way with the Help of a Health Coach)
Regular movement has benefits for your health, but many of us still struggle to exercise. Here’s how a health coach can help you get out of your own way and reach your movement goals.
The post The Health Benefits of Movement (and How to Get Out of Your Own Way with the Help of a Health Coach) appeared first on Chris Kresser.
A Cheap, Common Steroid Called Dexamethasone May Help Patients With Severe COVID-19, Study Says
A paper published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests a low-cost steroid may be a valuable treatment for severe COVID-19, building upon encouraging preliminary findings from last month.
In June, U.K. researchers reported that dexamethasone—a cheap, widely available steroid that can lower inflammation in the body—appeared to reduce by a third the risk of death among patients with severe COVID-19. U.K. practitioners began using dexamethasone the very same day the results were announced, but some medical experts were more guarded, arguing no conclusions should be made without seeing the trial’s full results.
Those results were published today in NEJM, and they seem to support what was announced last month. Dexamethasone did have a measurable benefit for COVID-19 patients sick enough to require respiratory support—but it had no such benefit, and even showed the potential for some possible harm, for patients with milder disease.
About 2,100 people hospitalized for confirmed or suspected COVID-19 were randomly assigned to receive a 10-day course of dexamethasone in addition to standard COVID-19 care, while about 4,300 received standard care alone. Around 16% of the patients (overall, both those given dexamethasone and those who were not) were receiving mechanical ventilation, 60% were receiving oxygen only and 24% were not getting any breathing support.
After 28 days, 482 patients taking dexamethasone had died, compared to about 1,110 of the patients not taking it. That means about 23% of the dexamethasone patients died, compared to about 26% of the other patients.
That may not seem like a terribly significant difference, but the researchers found a sizable benefit for the sickest patients in the sample: those requiring mechanical ventilation to survive. About 30% of these patients died on dexamethasone, compared to 41% of those not taking it. A smaller, but still significant, benefit was also seen for patients receiving oxygen without invasive ventilation.
Meanwhile, dexamethasone provided no benefit for patients who did not require breathing support. In fact, among patients with these milder cases, those taking dexamethasone were actually more likely to die—about 18% of them did, compared to 14% of those receiving standard care alone.
Logically, the anti-inflammatory drug seemed to work best in patients who had the most inflammation. Patients who had suffered symptoms for at least a week—and thus likely had developed some inflammatory lung damage—seemed to do better on the steroid than patients with newer symptoms, who may not have experienced much inflammation.
“It is likely that the beneficial effect of glucocorticoids [like dexamethasone] in severe viral respiratory infections is dependent on selection of the right dose, at the right time, in the right patient,” the researchers write in the paper. “High doses may be more harmful than helpful, as may such treatment given at a time when viral replication is paramount and inflammation is minimal.”
While the paper’s publication is an encouraging step forward, the preliminary research must still be validated and replicated by other investigators. The researchers also note that, because they aimed to release results as soon as possible to meet demand for new therapies, they did not collect some data on secondary and long-term outcomes.
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