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Today we're talking about the 4th part of ADHD Academy course, your relationship with you and others.
In this episode we talk about the inner dialogue that can often hold us back, and I offer solutions to help empower you to use your inner voice.
We'll explore the concept of "manuals," which are the subconscious expectations we have for the behavior of others, and why letting go of these can significantly reduce conflict in our lives.
Get the mini course workbook here
What you'll learn:
What manuals are, why and how we create them for others
How to manage your inner voice, which can both protect and limit you
Why we have expectations for others and the way they behave
Practical steps to set boundaries effectively
 "Write the story that you tell about yourself, and then take a look at that story and see if there are ways that are also true, that you could be telling a better story that would be more useful to you."
Useful links mentioned:
Free Resource list
Learn To Thrive With ADHD on YouTube
Listen to the Episode:
Or watch the video on Youtube
Click here to read the transcript:
Welcome to Learn To Thrive with ADHD. This is the podcast for adults with ADHD or ADHD like symptoms. I'm your host coach, Mande John. I'm here to make your life with ADHD easier. Let's get started.
Welcome back guys. What I'm offering you today is one of the most important courses in the ADHD Academy. If you don't know what that is, that is where we come together. With Learn to Thrive with ADHD and in there, I coach you as a group. There's recorded coaching. There are courses that you can go through.
You can check it out in the show notes, where to see that. But people always ask me where should I start with the courses. This is the one you should start with and I'm not going to present the whole thing. Here's the whole thing though. Part one, understanding your brain. Part two, your thoughts about your thoughts.
Part three, learn to feel on purpose. And part four, your relationship with you and others, what we're going to do is go to part for your relationship with you and others, our relationships with either ourselves or other people are our thoughts about those people. So, our thoughts about ourselves, our thoughts about the other people, put you in a relationship with those people.
Now, you can be in a relationship with somebody that you don't even talk to. You can be in a relationship with somebody that you don't even like if you're having thoughts about those people that puts you in a relationship with them. So, we're going to talk about that. If we love someone, it's because of the loving thoughts that we think about them.
So, it works both ways. If we hate someone, it's because we're thinking hateful thoughts about them, and the reason I'm even bringing this up first is you can change any of your relationships you want to, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with others, and that is huge as far as connection, your mood, it's going to improve your symptoms if you're feeling better and feeling more connected with others.
So, what is your story about you? We all tell stories about ourselves. We tell people what we're like, who we are, what is the story you're telling about yourself? And is it helpful? You really want to take a look at this. What I'm going to do is I'll have them pop up a little image. What I'm going to do is give you part 4 of the workbook.
There'll be a link in the show notes where you can get that. So, what is the title of your story? What would the chapters be? Are you the hero or the victim? Does the story serve you? You really want to be careful the kind of story that you're telling about yourself and it's just good to acknowledge what story that is.
If it's negative, that's okay. You just need to understand that because we want to tell a different story. So, what are hero thoughts? I'm capable. I can figure it out. I'm learning. Anything is possible for me. These are just a few examples of hero thoughts that you could be thinking instead of something possibly negative that you're thinking.
What are victim thoughts? I've never been able to, I can't, I'm not a person who, and nothing ever works out for me. Again, just a few examples. I'm sure with either of these, you can think of a lot more examples. In the workbook, I actually have you go and write those out critical inner voice. So, we all have that inner voice.
What is that inner voice? It's our brain trying to help us. It's trying to keep us safe. It's trying to point out negative things so that we are aware of them so that we can watch out for danger. So, it's important to have, but it's also important to control and decide how much you're going to listen to it.
So, are you talking to yourself about yourself? Like you're someone that you care about and respect? Are your thoughts about yourself loving or hateful? Again, without judgment, just notice these things so that we can make changes. The manual. What is the manual? The manual is a. Set of instructions that we have for other people in our lives.
So, it might be your spouse. It might be your friends. It might be your children, but you have a certain way that you want them to behave. You have certain things you want them to do. You have certain ways you feel that they should be acting. And what's sad about the manuals is the other people in our lives don't know that we have these manuals, and they don't exactly know what's in them.
Maybe you've made comments before. Maybe you've tried to share. part of what's in your manual, but they're not acting off of the same manual that we have. And so, if we're not communicating and requesting things in a proper way, it can cause a lot of conflict. So, what I would offer is it is possible to throw out your manual on people that you're having difficulty within life and just writing a new one together.
So, are the things in your manual for other people in your life helpful? And it says here, how can adults behave? Adults can behave any way they want to. Like I said before, we can make requests, but they still ultimately get to behave any way they want. And the reason we're talking about this is because we can reduce a lot of conflict if we're not having so many expectations of other people.
So, boundaries, what are they? They are not us telling other people what to do. I think that is often what people think of when they talk about boundaries, and they think that they are setting up these rules around how other people are going to behave. around them. But what they are instead is it's a request and a consequence.
When we're setting a boundary with someone, what we're doing is saying, I need you to behave this way towards me, or I'm going to. And so, a great example might be, I need you to not yell at me, or I'm going to leave the room. And if they know that ahead of time, when it happens, it's going to be a lot less of a problem.
And they're going to start learning that that is your boundary. Okay. But more importantly, it's not a tool to tell people what to do. They get to do what they're going to get to do. And this does not mean that people get to abuse you or anything like that, because what's, what's part of this, the consequence, right?
You're not going to stick around for people that are being awful to you. So unconditional love and lovability. Unconditional love is for you. If you want to love someone unconditionally, this does nothing but help you be in a. More loving space, a better mood. Another important thing is your lovability is infinite.
If people aren't loving you to the degree that you think they should, it's about their capacity to love. It doesn't mean anything about you. So that's important. Your future self. Time is passing anyway. You're going to be different in the future. Do you want that to be a good thing? Or do you want that to be a bad thing?
You get to decide. What are you doing today to set up your future self for success? What do you think that they would thank you for? And what will you stop doing for your future self? Those are all questions to ask yourself. Pick a point in the future and write a letter to yourself. You can write to your current self a letter offering guidance and advice.
And you can write a letter to your past self. And this is a really good exercise. Along with that, what I didn't put here is Where we talked about that story about yourself, a good exercise would be to get a notebook or type it on a computer and write the story that you tell about yourself. And you can even, like, go into the past.
This is how I grew up. This is what happened. Just write the story as you would normally tell it. And then I want you to take a look at that story and see if there are ways that are also true that you could be telling a better story that would be more useful to you. All right, that is what I have for you guys this week.
You completed Part 4 of Becoming a Brain Boss. Again, this is where I like to have people start, and the ADHD Academy is with this course, and it really helps us set up our brain, improve our symptoms, improve our moods, and get us in a way where we're pursuing our goals and not procrastinating. So, I'll see you next time.
Thank you for being with me and I'll see you guys next week.
Thank you for your time, and especially for your attention today. If you haven't looked into the ADHD Academy, you'll want to do that. This is my membership, with binge-able courses, weekly life coaching, new courses every month, a community of like-minded people and more.
Be sure to head over to www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/membership to get the details. See you next week.
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