bewilderbrain

The pinnacle of the year…

That coveted prize of a well earned holiday…

Oh my poor dears, if only it were so simple…

At exactly 2.45pm on the last day of the school term, I placed a cup of tea on the table in front of me with a reverence bordering on ceremonial.

It had occurred to me only as I walked into the entirely quiet and tranquil living room that this was The. Last. Cup of Tea.

The last day where the stillness in the room was such that it was disturbed only by moving particles of sunshine dancing lazily on the dust motes, and the steam rising from my precious beverage.

The quiet was broken only by far off sounds of cars, and the birds singing. The room had an unbroken softness to it you could nestle into.

I clutched my cup of tea like a life-saving elixir of energy, feeling that I must savour every detail of its warmth and succour, every moment of just me and that cup of tea, together in our serene haven.

Holidays.

Times of fear, stress, disruption, inanity and meltdowns…

Also joy, surprise, excitement, silliness and bonding.

Holidays can be stressful times with an ADHD or neurodiverse brain

Holidays are not supposed to be stressful. I understand this. I really do. I think perhaps once upon a time in my younger years they weren’t.

Holidays away, and indeed school holidays in general, can be a difficult thing for ADHD and neurodiverse brains to deal with. For some of, but not limited to, the following reasons

• Change
• Loss of routine
• Uncertainty
• Different rules and boundaries
• Understimulation
• Overstimulation…

And for me as a person with ADHD the utter enormity of….

PACKING.

Preparing for a holiday, I think, uses so many different executive functions that it ought to come with some kind of brain plug-in back up pack.

An extra 64gb hard drive that you can utilise for the ridiculous amount of sheer brain power that is required.

Every day of a holiday, or the school holidays, is an unknown quantity that needs to be tamed into submission.

Plans need to be formulated.

Meals need to be planned.

Schedules need to be created.

BAGS NEED TO BE PACKED…

Time. After Time. After Blessed Time.

THIS IS COMPLEX, ARDUOUS AND GRUELLING FOR A NEURODIVERSE BRAIN.

Stuff – the enemy of ADHD and neurodiverse brains and the terrors of preparing for a holiday…

We are currently a family on a very tight budget, and this years holiday was camping.

Now. I love camping.

Given what I put forward like a stuck record about the healing power of nature, it would almost be odd if I didn’t.

However, camping, especially if you also happen to have kids, involves the most tremendous amount of STUFF.

STUFF. In Itself. Is so stressful to a neurodiverse brain that it is definitely deserving of its own post, and discussion, which I will definitely undertake in future.

But in the context of a holiday, when you are camping, the sheer weight of thinking about all the different stuff, and Types of Stuff, that will be needed, feels, not so much like an insurmountable obstacle, as a terror inducing monster of titanic proportion bearing down on you with an “I eat ADHD’ers for dinner” T-shirt on.

And I think that is an understatement.

Packing involves numerous decisions, micro-decisions, offshoot decisions and decision revisions.

It leads to inevitable decision paralysis and overwhelm. It’s hard to think of everything. It’s hard to decide everything.

It’s a set up for procrastination overdrive, and a situation where executive function spoons are used up faster than I can stress eat chocolate.

My partner used to dread the day, years ago, when, about a month before we were due to go on holiday, the lists would start appearing on the back of the living room door.

Why the back of the living room door?

That’s a good question I’ve asked myself.

Object permanance? If I had to hazard a guess.

I have to walk past the living room door multiple times a day. I guess it felt like if I kept seeing them, it would be less likely that some or all of the objects on the list would dribble out of my brain, as is their wont.

The lists had to be, and still are, broken down into different categories, bags, parts of the tent the things were needed for, and parts of the car/ roofbox/ trailer they might need to be packed in.

So just the lists….right there…I’m exhausted before a single thing goes in a bag.

I have been close to tears of overwhelm many times in the days leading up to a holiday, actually trying to physically pack, checking, and forgetting, what’s already been done…

Unfortunately, the effort required often leads to a high degree of burnout by the time of arriving on holiday, at which point of course, you need to switch up a gear and start arranging, planning, organising, and packing each day again. With a Vengeance.

Because now all these added variables like visits to beaches… and the accompanying paraphernalia, have been added to the list of STUUUUFFFF, that needs to be remembered, and then packed. Time and Again. Again.

Add in the impossibility of finding anything in a tent/ car/ a rotation of various day tripping rucksacks amongst a family of neurodiverse brains who can never remember where they have literally just put their glasses or a new toy down, and we are in a greater and more perpetual state of mental and physical chaos than Die Hard meets The Hangover.

Performed by The Muppets.

And the final stressor in the holiday scenario of course…

*whispers furtively but actually screaming at the same time….*

OTHER PEOPLE.

I can’t go into my feelings about due levels of consideration whilst camping/ holidaying in any great detail here, lest I render myself too angry to continue writing and/ or accidentally insult most of the population.

Let us just say, when you have a sensitive, neurodiverse brain. Noise Matters. Consideration matters. Following the rules, matters. Not being generally annoying and/or a bloody idiot… matters. Five minutes of peace can sometimes be a rare and magical thing. You savour every second.

I shall leave it there.

How can we make holidays easier to manage for ADHD and neurodiverse brains?

I’m not here to give you a planning and organisation schedule. I’m not really very good at that.

(Though have you tried sticking lists to the back of the living room door?)

And I don’t, alas have the extra 64gb of hard drive to give you, to make it physically easier for your brain to do the organising stuff. I really wish I did.

What I will say, is that there are a few things we do to ourselves when it comes to holidays that we need to try and put a dampener on/ stuff in a box. In the back of a cupboard. Where we can forget about them for a bit.

These two things take the form of our old friend The Guilt Fairy, and her ignominious side kick The Perfectionism Fairy. (Slicked back hair. Smells like furniture polish and newly vacuumed poodle). I’ll let your brain do the rest of the visuals…)

Holidays are a big deal. They are a big investment of time, money, and for the neurodivergent…emotion.

Another of our great paradoxes:

Nobody needs a holiday more than a person with a neurodivergent brain. Nobody finds it harder. On so many levels.

One of those reasons is the difficulty of relaxing with a brain that doesn’t switch off, and this, again, is such an enormous topic that it is deserving of it’s own post.

The differently wired among us are often able to recognise acutely how good a holiday would be for us, or for our children, and we are able to invest a fantastical notion of a holiday with all sorts of ideological visions of activities and serenity which are far beyond our mental capacities.

We expect, and with ADHD at least, often genuinely believe, that this perfect, life-enhancing, soul-nurturing rebirth of a holiday experience really can exist for us….if we just plan it right.

We lose all sense of time and space, forget to rest, and push ourselves harder and harder in our quest to ensure the perfect break. See also this post on the Power of Pacing with ADHD.

We plan and plan, we hyperfocus down intense week-long rabbit holes of where to go and what to do. We exhaust ourselves with decisions on the myriad of possibilities… because how can we make a decision if we have not considered Every. Other. Possible. Option. ?

We plan ourselves into oblivion.

We expect an enormous payoff for our effort, which, even if it were possible, we would be too exhausted to enjoy.

We set our expectations high, we plan the unplannable, we try to perfect and pin down what should instead be allowed to flow.

The smelly Perfectionism fairy drives this process, and the guilt fairy fuels her, particularly when you have family or children’s needs to cater for in this process.

You Must Get it Right.

You Must Have A Relaxing Holiday. (while beating you with a barbed stick)

YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ENJOYING THIS! You are not allowed to be stressed!

YOU. ALONE. ARE RESPONSIBLE. AND MUST PROVIDE:

The most perfect quintessentially holidayish life-defining, experience for your children.

We need to give ourselves some grace.

We need to stop pretending to others that we’re so excited/ lucky to be going on holiday or that we’ve had a positively smashing time and come back rejuvenated, thank you very much.

We need to accept for ourselves that

a) this stuff is really hard for us and

b) it’s not gonna be perfect, and it’s probably going to be tiring.

We need to be kind, ask for help, accept imperfection, allow ourselves to be tired. Respect that tiredness. Allow ourselves recovery if necessary, yes… recovery from a holiday. Where possible, that might very well be needed…

We need to try and slow and simplify our expectations.

Less can be more with a neurodiverse brain.

Why aim for the stars when we can be just as easily distracted and beguiled by watching a butterfly (or moth?) in sunshine on a camping chair.

We need to trust in a little natural flow to get us through.

I posit to you this:

It is more of a success/ more rewarding to have gone on a short walk around the block collecting leaves with your children, than it is to have completed a morning of Go Ape, lunch and face painting at a soft play followed by a fancy dress wildlife safari with ten friends hosted by Steve Backshall.

If…

You can manage the former while speaking, and actually listening to your kids, remaining relatively calm, engaging with them fully, and smiling.

The latter days schedule, for me, would likely have me arriving at tea time a haggard representation of my former self, vibrating with a stress so powerful that people are pinging off me into walls left right and centre, and in appearance and demeanour resembling an elderly cat that has just been through a car wash.

Stop trying to do more than you should. Than you need to.

We need to prioritise our mental health to maintain equilibrium.

We need to prioritise our mental health to do the best we can for our whole family.

You are already doing your absolute best, above and beyond, every day.

Undertaking the organisation of, and making a holiday happen with a neurodivergent brain needs a standing ovation.

You listen to that ovation, right now. You hear me?

You kick the guilt fairy in the wobbly bits of whatever denomination it possesses. And if you need reminding of the amazing stuff about ADHD and neurodiverse brains, read this post, Fantastic Beasts. Because we are.

DO NOT APPROACH HOLIDAYS WITH NEUROTYPICAL EXPECTATIONS.

DO THEM YOUR WAY. HOWEVER YOU NEED TO.

There is always going to be chaos in the holidays, in your holiday, in your family… because you are you.

It doesn’t all have to be bad.

In fact, leaning into that inner chaos and creativity can turn the most ordinary of activities or days into something special in it’s own right.

Something that doesn’t have to fit the mould…the expectations…that come with a holiday…

Something that will be unique to you and your family.

Fart noise championships and a competition to see who can draw the best wibbleplonker, anyone?

Stop trying to tame it, stop trying to do impossible things on impossible schedules.

Do something simpler, let the inner chaos, creativity and wonder roam freely in any given moment, and try to stop.

Enjoy that moment right there.

It’s enough.

Let me know your thoughts on holidays. Are you trying to give them up? Have you found a solution? do you just want to blow off some steam? comments welcome…