Overcoming Rejection Sensitivity as a Parent with ADHD and Demonstrating it for Your Children, Too #160
I recently got rejected from something that mattered to me. And it stunk. RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) and trauma response all rolled into one giant ball of suck.
One of the hardest parts of parenting is talking to our kids about hard things, like rejection, sadness, and disappointment. Especially when we don’t feel like we are good at those skills ourselves.
When disappointment strikes, how do we work through those feelings? And how do we teach our kids to do the same?
Here’s how I worked through the sadness recently and explained the tough stuff to my kids.
Links to resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode 122: Tantrum or ADHD Meltdown? How to Deal with our Children's BIG Emotions with Dr. Laura Froyen
It’s time to take care of a very important person in the family: Mom.
We’ll relax, rest, have fun, and build friendships with mamas who think like us. Plus learn how to take care of our impressive yet evermoving brains.
Join us in Houston, October 7-9, 2022 for the very first ADHD Moms retreat! Reserve your ticket here: patriciasung.com/adhd-mom-retreat
Patricia Sung 00:02
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 01:08
Hey there successful mama. It's your friend Patricia sung back in 1996. I tried out for the flag line. My little 14 year old self thought it was absolutely gorgeous. The way the girls tour ruled and swirled and like caught the flags and midair and the broom and I practiced for hours. But I did not make the team. Nor did I make it the next year or the next year. Even though I had my best friend's sister who was the captain of the flight line coach me before tryouts. I worked really hard three years in a row. But it wasn't enough. Last week, I got the call that I didn't get picked for a mentorship group that I had applied for. Can I just say that not getting picked for something sucks just as much at 40 as it did when I was in my senior year of high school, I have been working in therapy for the last couple months of just sitting with my feelings and letting them be there experiencing them and then letting them dissipate. We talked about this in Episode 122 with Dr. Laura Freudian about how most feelings take about 90 seconds to pass. And I will say this feeling typically lasts more than 90 seconds. But but it was worth it. I sat through it. And the other thing I've been working on is re parenting myself.
Patricia Sung 02:21
And I think like most 80s and 90s kids, I never learned how to be with my feelings. Like I don't remember my parents sharing how to overcome tough stuff beyond like you can do it get back on the horse. Like all that advice is valid, you do need to keep going. And you need that encouragement. But a lot of it was like just shove those feelings under the rug. So you have to deal with them and keep going. Like I wanted to be able to walk myself through the hard stuff without escaping immediately like yes, sometimes that's needed. Like that is our body's stress response to like escape this and disassociate and like be away from the hard feelings like yes, sometimes that is needed. But I don't want to use that as my go to like I want to develop the skills to be able to deal with the feelings without relying on food or alcohol or my phone or whatever else to distract me out of whatever I don't want to deal with. Like I want to actually deal with it. And as I learn to deal with these things, I want to be able to teach my kids how to deal with these things. Because they realize like I can't teach my kids to do stuff they don't know how to do myself. So if you are one of the cycle breakers, changing the generational traumas in your family, like Hi Fi Hey, this matters. It is hard and it is worth it.
Patricia Sung 03:44
Like after I got the news that I didn't get picked last week, I moved around, like hidden her guest room and sat in the big arm chair for like probably a good two hours that afternoon like thankfully I could my husband was here and I was just tending to that like 14 year old version of me that was just devastated by not getting packed like what does that say about me? Who am I like how do I dust myself off and like quote unquote, like try out again for something the next time that I really want and possibly have to go through this again, letting those feelings like sit in my body and like identifying where I feel them and like letting my mind wander in the sad places. And I will say like if you've never done this, I highly recommend doing this with a professional first because I mean, I've been doing weekly therapy for almost four months now and it has taken me time to get here.
Patricia Sung 04:36
So like especially if you have a lot of trauma in your background. Tread lightly because this is really hard. We have to like dip our toes in, try it back up, try it back out, dry it back out until we can tolerate more and more and learn how to work through these things because especially when you have ADHD you've spent a lot of your life masking and hiding and covering up and ignoring the your gut feelings and who you are and what you perceive. Like, even after I was, you know, I had been moping for a while my husband came in and was like, because I told Mike, I want to I want to talk about it, he comes in, and at some point, he was like, I think you're too sad about this, like, the disappointment you feel doesn't really match the level of not getting into this thing. Like, it's not that big of a deal. And immediately, I was like, full stop. Like, I am allowed to be sad. It doesn't matter. Like there's no like accounting system for like, level of sadness. Like if I feel this way, I feel this way, I'm allowed to be sad. And I'm not going to get off on a tangent about rejection sensitivity, dysphoria and trauma and all that. But like, this is something that we feel with ADHD we feel rejection in critique and all these negative feelings like we feel extra. I'm not going to get into why right now because I'll be here for another hour.
Patricia Sung 05:52
That is something that we feel it is a part of most people with ADHD. It's one of the trademarks that is sadly not in the checklist of symptoms, but it's a huge part of our ADHD. And I used to feel shame in feeling too sad, but like, I feel emotions very big lead. That is not a word. I feel emotions, like largely and Bigley. I'm gonna stick with Bigley. I just feel emotions big. And that's okay. That's who I am. I used to always feel like embarrassed that I would cry about stuff. And I still sometimes do. And like when I got the news, I did cry. And the man delivering the news to me was definitely uncomfortable. But you know, what was that about? No, Tommy, I was sad. And I'm allowed to be sad. And I think that's part of normalizing. It's okay to be sad, like, we are humans, and we are allowed to have feelings. And I'm tired of hiding my feelings. I was sad, I'm going to be sad. If you're not okay with my sadness, cool. You can go somewhere else. But it's okay that I'm sad. Like, my husband doesn't have to understand it. I appreciate that. He listened to me, he doesn't have to understand it. And he doesn't have to agree with me. It's okay. It's, it's my opinion that when you have ADHD, you are always in a higher level of stress. And more frequently, in our stress response, like the fight flight, Vaughn freeze, because we have more input because we have sensory overload, because we're constantly scanning the environment, things are catching your eye or getting distracted by stuff, we just tend to have more trauma in our lives. I think a lot of this comes from coming from like generations of family who have untreated ADHD. And that causes a lot of problems.
Patricia Sung 07:29
The fact that we are told through most of our life, that our perception is wrong, we have you know, we're too emotional. Over time, all of the stress wears on us. And again, totally my opinion, I don't have scientific research to back this up. But I think this is why we have so much like autoimmune issues. Like I just keep hearing this over and over again, in my community here of like, everything from, you know, celiacs, and thyroid issues, and all the autoimmune things like they're just so common with us. And let me let me get back on track here. There's a lot of reasons that when you have ADHD, you're stressed out. And I think that they compound each other. And it's not an isolated incident. It's not just one reason that we are stressed. It all comes together.
Patricia Sung 08:14
The one I was telling my therapist about this The following week, after I got the sad news, she was really proud of me. And it was so good to hear that support of someone saying like, Hey, you did a great job sitting with your sadness, I'm really proud of like, how far you come and the skills you employed. And you know, to get that validation of like, I am making progress. It is slow, but I'm making progress. So back to my kids. So I'm sitting in the armchair crime phase out, I'm sad, I'm I gotta pull together go through like half a tissue box, who pulled together, it's getting close to dying. My husband had plans with some friends. So he was going out. And I'm like, I'm not cooking. I take my kids to get dinner. And I'm like, how am I going to explain this to them? Like, how do I model this for them? Because I want them to know that like, I'm not perfect, I don't always understand it. And I have a hard time to like things are still sad for me to like, I don't get picked for things because this is something like my kids. You know, if you're new around here, my kids are five and seven. Like they're still just at the beginning of getting that taste of like, the disappointment with friends and activities and all that and I want them to be able to deal with these situations better than it did it when having these tough conversations, like how do I explain to them how I'm sad and dealing with emotions. And I'm sad about it because like, a lot of times we build up these conversations with our kids to be really difficult. And one thing I learned through teaching is that a lot of times when you get these like doozy of a questions from your kids one it's okay to say like, I don't know, let me do some research and get back to you.
Patricia Sung 09:50
But to that a lot of the times like we try to make it too complicated and we try to explain like really big things and they're kind of their questions sometimes isn't even what we think it is a lot of times are questions much simpler than that. And they're fine with the very simple age appropriate answer. And having these tough conversations is also easier when you're doing something else. So like riding in the car, or doing some kind of activity, like a craft or a board game, or making something or cleaning, like doing a thing with your hands, that's when I would talk to my students is when they were doing some kind of activity because their guard was down. And they're focusing on their task. And they were so much more comfortable to talk when they really weren't making like direct eye contact, and like having that like connection kind of conversation.
Patricia Sung 10:33
So those are my tips for when you want to have these tough conversations in like dealing with the harder things, whether it's like dealing with something, it's hard for you to say, or, you know, you're trying to explain things to them, like the birds and the bees and like bullying are hard things with friends like these are good ways to talk to them, these hard subjects about your kids. So like we're in the car, and I just shared a few sentences about why I was sad, that are at a five and seven year old level, like, hey, I really wanted to do this thing, they didn't pick me, I'm really sad about it today. So I don't really feel like cooking, we're gonna go have dinner together. And you guys spending time with you cheers me up. And I'll be sad for a few days. But you know, I'll get over it. And then the things hurt for a while, but not forever. And at some point, I'll be ready to try again to do something that's hard. And I might not get picked again. And like that was about the summation of the topic, it was just a few sentences on how it's hard to be disappointed. I really wanted it but I don't get to do it. I'm sad, my feelings are hurt, really bad for a little bit, a few days, and then I'll be okay. And I'll try again when I'm ready. Like that's the summation. And I think back like, a few years ago, I never could have explained that hurt simply and easily because I hadn't processed it. There's so many things I couldn't have done a few years ago, I couldn't have taught them about how to rest or how to slow down or how to be sad. Like, here I am hosting a retreat centered around how to slow down and rest and take care of yourself when like I didn't even have those skills.
Patricia Sung 12:03
When my oldest was born, I'm hosting this because they want you to have those skills for your kids. Like I want you to have them for you. But I also want you to be able to teach your kids especially if they have ADHD, how to live well with it. And so many people always ask me like why I work with moms and not with kids after having taught middle school for so many years. And for me, it comes down to the like you, Mama, you were the change maker, you're the leader of your family, you were the one forming the next generation. And I can help one kid at a time. Like it reminds you like that, you know the saying of like, Give a man a fish to eat for a day, teach them how to fish they can eat for a lifetime, like I can teach the kid the skills or I can teach the mom the skills. And then she can spread that far and wide. So like when I teach you how to do something. I know that when I teach you something like you're applying it to yourself, but you're also applying it to your family, and then your extended family which may not be receptive at all, they see that. And even though they may not like it down the road, they'll see how it changes and be like, Wow, what's that light in her that's different now than before. I know that you are going to then spread this in your kids friends lives and in your community. I know that when I teach you and I support you. And I encourage you that you're spreading it far and wide. Because when you have ADHD like it's highly correlated, and families that like if you have ADHD, there's a 50 to 70% chance that your kid also will have ADHD. Whereas like if you just survey the random population, they say it's three to 5%.
Patricia Sung 13:38
Personally, I think it's closer to 10. But I won't be on that. So back to the moon. So like how do we teach the next generation to love their brains and live successfully with ADHD is what we're doing now teaching them now as kids to love the way that they are and be successful how they are instead of trying to fit in the mold that everybody else wants to put us in is figuring out how to make our lives work well for us. And we can do that when we've learned it for ourselves. That's when we can teach other people how to do it. That's why you are special, you are meant to have those precious little ones in your care because you are doing better by them. Even when you feel like you're at your worst you're trying and you're putting in the effort to make you and your family better.
Patricia Sung 14:22
Okay, I need to go find a tissue and give you a big Virtual hug. And remind you one more time that today's the last day to sign up for the power of the pause retreat that's happening in two weeks. It's October 7-9th. Today's the last day to sign up. And this is a retreat just meant for you just for ADHD moms. We're going to learn how to implement the pause and your life both big pauses and little pauses in the moment in the season. Figuring out how do you take care of yourself like not bubble baths and facials but like how do you really take care of yourself and recharge so that you have the skills to teach kids how to pause how to rest so they know how to take care of themselves as grownups, especially as grownups with ADHD. You have me there all weekend, ask as many questions as you want or how to have some great meals. We're gonna have fun together and it's gonna be really great and I hope that you're there. So set up today it's the last day in its website, you need a website you can go to motherhood and ADHD and click at the top on the tab that says retreats or go to patriciasung.com/adhd-mom-retreat. That's patriciasung.com/adhd-mom-retreat, and it's all lowercase letters. I'll talk to you since accessible. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com