what’s the “state of okay”? (part 1)

Remember in the last post how we learned about executive functioning and how it affects pretty much everything we do, including our very sense of self? Remember how complicated that was?

Well, I have some news: it gets even more complicated! I mean we have ADHD, how could it possibly be simple, right?

So here’s the big question: how are we supposed to be okay with ourselves and the world if we don’t even know what it feels like to feel okay? As you’ve been learning, when you' have ADHD, and especially when you have undiagnosed ADHD, you have a lot, a lot, a LOT stacked against you - externally and internally. We basically are fucked.

It’s time to learn about the window of tolerance, or as I like to call it, your “State of Okay.”

Late-diagnosis ADHD and the “State of Okay”

Especially in trauma-related therapy, the window of tolerance is used to describe any person’s ideal zone of wellness and calm, from which we should all be operating on a daily basis—and guess what, neurotypicals usually are. Lucky them, right?

In a shock to no one, we’re not. Quite the opposite, in fact!

The window of tolerance is when we’re our best selves, basically. It’s when we’ve had enough sleep, we’re well rested, we’re calm, we’ve had some exercise recently or we’ve just worked on something we love do, we’re not all whacked out on caffeine or amped up on sugar, racing to get to some appointment we’re late for……you get it: we’re in a general state of “okayness.”

And when we’re in this state of okayness, we’re way more able to absorb life’s little bumps, and we can handle bigger roadblocks with greater aplomb, too. Yes, aplomb! 

Can you remember the last time you handled anything with aplomb? And that state of okayness I just mentioned—how about that? Would you say you’re in a state of okayness fairly often? No? That’s not surprising. 

Not. Surprising. At. All. 

ADHD and the window of tolerance

It’s been widely established by scientific research that ADHD is “life on hard mode.”

Because of our lack of dopamine, our faulty executive functioning machines, our hyperfocus, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and perfectionism, not to mention our poor sleep habits and lack of routine plus our various addictions to things like caffeine and sugar to keep us going, most of us neurodivergents are living with nervous systems that are constantly in fight-or-flight mode. We are always on. 

Would you say it’s hard for you to relax? You have difficulty sitting down and just doing nothing (unless it’s zoning out, which is not the same thing!)? That’s what this is. You are constantly scanning and unable to settle — this is your nervous system operating in overtime, running you on cortisol, making you anxious and likely to either overreact, react badly, or not react at all when something unexpected comes up in your life.

Because you’re always in this heightened state of reactivity (or in a state of complete shutdown), this anxiety builds all the time on a low level — so low that you’ve likely normalized it and think it’s just “the way things are.” But then every single little thing triggers you more and more, until eventually you burn out and crash — however that plays out for you in your particular situation. And then you spend a few hours or days in burnout mode yelling at your family or yourself or hiding in your room zoning out watching shows, unconsciously trying to soothe yourself. For example.

For some, burnout could even play out in self-harm behaviours such as impulsive shopping or sex, driving dangerously, overeating, picking our skin, hair-pulling … a lot of these behaviours fall under the category of “sensation-seeking,” which can also be a reaction to shutting down — a way to jumpstart ourselves into experiencing the world again, into feeling anything. 

This is a pretty simplified explanation of this cycle that is oh-so-familiar to the late-diagnosed ADHD/AuDHD/on-the-spectrum adult. Most of us experience a version of this cycle for years before we’re diagnosed — if you really stop to think about it, you might start to see signs of this cycle happening in your own life right now, and that can give you clues to how to start regulating better.

This constant up and down, round and round of the undiagnosed neurodivergent is exhausting

NTs (neurotypicals) are magically able to self-regulate (of course they are) because their dopamine receptors work the way they’re supposed to to be able to function in this world; they can have a bad night or a fight or get fired and get back to that “state of okay” on their own, more or less, in not too much time (yes, I realize that not all neurotypicals are able to do this. I know that. I am talking in general, here). 

But not us, oh no. We have to work for it. Of course we do!

The amazing, magical (and crucially important life-saving) part

There is a really amazing silver lining to learning about your state of okay and how necessarily important it is: it gives you permission to do what you truly want to do.

“What? Yeah, right,” you might be thinking. “That would be nice but there’s no way it’s true.”

But it is.

The thing is, as a neurodivergent adult, you actually have to do the things that make you happy. You need to slow down. And this isn’t only a mental health, getting organized thing, it’s a physical health thing, too. Getting interested in self-care could save your life. Because all that stress and cortisol in your system is bad for your body, and leads to disease, and leads to harmful behaviours like binge drinking or eating or risky sex or whatever.

Learning about your state of okay could save your life

This is one of the factors that lead to neurodivergent folks having statistically lower life expectancies — yeah, you read that right. People with ADHD live shorter lives. In fact, adults who have ADHD statistically live 12.5 years less than neurotypicals.

There are lots of reasons for that, but it comes down to lack of awareness and lack of care on the part of health care systems. That’s why learning about this is so important — so that you don’t have to be one of those statistics.

You’re going to be hard pressed to find a doctor who will tell you this stuff, but this is me giving you permission right now: for the sake of your own health, you have to stop doing shit that stresses you out and start to do the shit that calms you. It’s non-negotiable. And, are you ready for this? That means….

Taking care of yourself!……(which will be the topic of my next post. Stay tuned!)