I wrote most of this piece a few years ago, during the pandemic, when the world went quiet and I suddenly had room to breathe. I’m sharing it now because reading it back, with a late ADHD diagnosis finally under my belt, I can see what my brain was trying to tell me all along. It was shouting, actually. I just didn’t have the vocabulary yet.
I’m an introvert and proud of it.
Having my wanderings cut back because of the pandemic saved me money - less spending on fuel, which can be costly when you live in a rural or regional area, and also a saving on accommodation, food and random shopping - and it saved my sanity a little bit too.
As an introvert I sometimes get overwhelmed at large gatherings and need time to decompress. Those months of cancelled conferences and curtailed activities gave me time to take a much-needed breath.
Back then I put it all down to being an introvert. Now I know there was more to it - the noise, the lights, the constant low-level effort of appearing to cope while my brain was processing everything at once. Masking was expensive. It always was. I just hadn’t been diagnosed yet, so I assumed everyone found a conference as tiring as I did.
Since I started my business a decade-and-a-half ago, I have been on the go almost constantly. If I haven’t been travelling and attending courses to increase my skills and knowledge, I’ve been travelling to present workshops or consult with clients and to network. Taking some of that action off the table was wonderful for me - sorry everyone! It’s a very ADHD pattern, now that I look at it. Full throttle, all the commitments, all the shiny opportunities, and never quite enough recovery time in between. Saying no back then felt impossible. These days I know that a well-placed ‘no’ is self-care with a calendar entry.
Despite having some of my activities reined back, I spent a busy 2021 providing workshops both face to face and online, attended a number of great networking events and took much of my mentoring and coaching sessions online on Zoom, which continues to give me more flexibility with the location of my clients.
My husband, David, and I bought a small caravan, so we could travel with the Helpful Dog, and I had a wonderful end of year being chauffeured to various regional locations to talk about one of my favourite subjects - Networking - as a guest speaker to Women in Business Regional Network events. This was an amazing opportunity to meet many rural women who are forging ahead with their own businesses and using the networking for support and advice.
And here’s a nice full-circle moment: these days I mentor women through a WIB program myself, which is exactly the kind of thing that quiet 2021 made possible.
Back then I was also working on an online course which would help with our self care - so important in those strange times. That thread never left, by the way. It eventually grew into the digital resources I create and sell today.
Some of my top tips to help manage stress and anxiety right now include managing my time and making sure I have set aside some of it just for me.
I am a planner tragic - always seeking the next shiny object! And I spent time working out the best combination of planning systems which would work for me that year.
Reading that back now, I laugh out loud. Of course I was a planner tragic. An ADHD brain with a stationery catalogue is a dangerous combination. Every new planner promises the version of me who will finally be organised, and my brain falls for it every single time. The twist I’ve learned since: the system doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be one I’ll actually open.
I was gifted the Legend Planner which has monthly and quarterly goals and which I spent one New Year’s Day setting up with Big Picture goals, dreams and vision - I don’t think I’ve opened it since. I had a ‘Mindful Planner’ to keep myself grounded and mentally healthy (again not opened since, and I don’t know where it is) but I still continue with my Bullet-style work planning book, plus Claire Mitchell’s Awesome Marketing Planner for my marketing and business planning, as well as my A4 page-to-a-day diary which holds any necessary paperwork filed under the days when I will need it (ie blood test paperwork).
I also continue with my daily gratitudes and daily personal journal.
I love journals, planners, diaries - and I also take my appointments and some of my critical tasks online to coordinate with my Google calendar! What looks like overkill to a neurotypical eye is simply an external hard drive for a working memory that drops things. It works. Mostly.
If you’re not a mad journal keeper like me, then here are some of my top tips to help with your self care:
Refresh Your Focus:
Unplug completely every now and then and have a social media free day
Spend time in nature - take a walk, sit in a park, have a picnic
Take a nap - we’re never too young or too old for this
Set timers you can actually see and hear - time blindness is real and it will eat your afternoon
Put one thing in your planner for tomorrow that future-you will thank you for. Just one. That’s the whole assignment
So where am I now? Still an introvert. Still scattered, still running on a brain that negotiates with me daily. But these days I have the words for it, a diagnosis that explained decades of confusion, and a whole community of women who feel the same.
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s exactly why I built The Dandelion Clock - a monthly membership for late-diagnosed women with ADHD. One thing, once a month, explored together, plus a short weekly email and a workbook that won’t ask you to rebuild your whole life by Monday. You’ll find it at nanberrett.com/the-dandelion-clock. I’d love you to join us.
And if you’re simply here for the planner chaos - hello, my people.
I think we underestimate needing to rest the brain as well as the body!
I love that you’re embracing your introversion instead of seeing it as something you need to change. It took me a long time to get there too. 🤍