Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 9: Emotions

Emotions

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Emotions. A lot of us tend to think that we should always be feeling happy that we should not have any pain ever. We always feel like the pursuit of happiness is, should be something we strive for, but emotions, whether they're good or bad. They all teach us something.

Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, A Pysician's Perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers for three and four years of age.

 

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. And a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes the last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back. Like I have.

 

A lot of us tend to think that we should always be feeling happy that we should not have any pain ever. We always feel like the pursuit of happiness is, should be something we strive for right? But emotions, whether they're good or bad, they all teach us something. They really happen, based on a thought. And we don't realize that the thought is what eats to the emotion and then the emotion guides, some of the feelings and some of the actions that we take.

And so this week I want to bring into a discussion, emotional regulation and people with ADHD, even though the us DSM five diagnosis does not count emotional dysregulation as one of the six Fundamental features of ADHD to get to be diagnosed with. And it is used in other parts of the world, like in Europe.

And it makes sense, right? Because we all can get flustered. Whenever we get frustrated with a task that we're not able to complete. And I don't know about you in the last year when I started to get curious and discover about my ADHD, I started to realize that there were certain behaviors that I was doing.

I sometimes felt like I just could not bring myself to stop doing it. I would say little lies because I felt like I didn't want to displease anybody. I didn't want to upset anybody. I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I didn't want to feel rejected. And I remember there was one episode with my husband years ago, before I had kids that I was like, so excited about cooking.

And I remember baking a chicken and I don't even know all the specifics about it, but I think he had told me like, don't use that Rosemary spice because it was expired or I don't even remember what, but I think I forgot, you know, how it is. They tell you something and you're like, well, yeah. And then you forget.

And then of course I was so excited to have cooked this chicken that I was going to show him that I should have done it. And he asked me whether I had cooked a chicken. And even though internally, like my voice was saying, yeah, just say, yes, I couldn't like I had this like immediate sense of fear that if he knew that I had used the rose mary, he will no longer like me.

And she had like the chicken, like all the thought and effort that I was, I had put into this meal with a little sh**. So logically I could have jumped, answered Yes. I did cook the chicken and then allow him to make the decision. To decide if we wanted to eat the chicken or not. Because I had used a rose mary that he had inquired me about, but I could not get out of the loop of lying.

I couldn't say yes. I just think he gave me multiple chances, and I just could not. And so he knew I was lying. He could obviously see that the amount of the. That was used and it resulted in like us not talking for a few days. And it was a very painful experience because I'm an extrovert. And of course, with ADHD, you make things seem like worse than they are.

And so at that time, I didn't realize like, there's a name for that. There's a name for it. It's called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) which is something that. shifts or if they're short lipped sensations, it's an emotional dysregulation that is triggered whenever you feel like an intense pain, because you feel like you might be rejected.

You might be cheesed. You might be criticized. You might start to judge yourself and you don't realize that you're lying to try to avoid feeling those feelings. And so I ended up, like I said, it was horrible for me because he wasn't talking to me and he ended up saying like, why are you lying about that? What else are you lying about?

Of course I wasn't lying about, to me, like a small little lie didn't mean anything because I thought I was trying to protect them, but he made up a good point. Like, why do I have to lie? I can touch it. Say yes. And then if you do whatever. And so the point is that when you don't know any better, you do.

Thank you need to do to protect yourself, but let's not an immediate danger, but my brain could not associate that. And this week I want to talk about emotions and why some things trigger us and how to be able to tap into what we are feeling like right now. And what are the top three feelings that we always have?

And whether those are the three feelings that you want to continue to feel, or whether you can choose another three things on purpose to be able to support you better with whatever goals or whatever things are doing throughout your day. Yeah. So that's the topic of this week and I want to go back to emotions, right?

People can internalize or externalize sometimes emotions. Like when you have this emotional dysregulation and you internalize it, you can send any change. Right? You can call yourself all kinds of names. So negative self-talk you can go from feeling like fine to like immensely sad. And sometimes you might even look like you're like severely depressed and suicidal, but then all of a sudden, like a few minutes later hours later, you're like back to.

Bizarre. Right. You can also externalize it. And I didn't even realize this was time times because you're in like overwhelm or anxiety. Like that's what the feelings that you think you're having, you become like immediately angry or irritable and frustrated, like from zero to nothing. And you just can't seem to control it.

But then again, I can sit back and just be a few seconds. So having those emotions and you not being able to regulate them, long-term can really lead to low self-esteem to self doubt, self criticism, to rumination and your, and it can affect relationships. Not only like with yourself, it can affect relationships with your coworkers, with your family members.

And so it's very important to like really recognize the importance of emotions and to realize that emotions. Because of a thought that we having, many of us want to think, I feel happy just because they're all I feel. Well, I feel happy because I have a husband ended up, but neuro is not that you have a husband it's because of your thought of whatever the husband is doing or not.

Or some of us. I think, oh, I feel lonely. And you still have a husband. So it doesn't matter what the fact is. It's whatever your thought is about the circumstance. Right? Because I have heard many people tell me, doctor, I don't understand. Like I was in a room with all my family members there. They were treating me like we, and yet I still felt lonely.

Obviously that person who was having a thought about something, it was not the fact that everybody was around her. She was still having a thought about something. So I really want us to give the importance of emotions. It's important because if you are feeling like. You're probably going to do like a lots of other actions that you probably thought you weren't going to do.

We go back to the same thing of exercising. If you think you don't have enough time, if that's the thought that you have under 90, your feeling is going to be, and from defeated or hopelessness, you're not going to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to go exercise. You already have the thought I'm coming at time.

So you're probably going to say, ah, just tomorrow, I'm not a big deal, but if you have. I take care of my body. Then you're likely to have a feeling of like being focused or like being excited or being motivated. And that's going to lead you to different actions. So I really want you to tap into what are your top three feelings?

Are they supporting you? And again, this exercise is just to bring awareness. Most human beings don't even pay attention to what their thoughts are and when they don't pay attention to them. Then they just wonder why they can't figure out why they feel the way they feel, but you have to be willing to look at it on purpose, to become aware of it.

On purpose. We really are not taught about emotions and a lot of us don't even have lots of vocabulary with emotions. And there is things that are considered like an emotional childhood versus an adult childhood. And that's a very important distinction when. We tend to think that if we behave well, if we get good grades, then we are worthy of love.

Like our parents are going to treat us well, they're going to love us. They're going to acceptance. And when we come, we become adults. We in, we just continue doing those behaviors. We think that if we treat others, which I'm not saying you shouldn't treat others as well. But what I'm saying is that when we do things for others, But even though internally, we don't think that's something we should be doing.

We don't set boundaries or are just people pleasing because that's what we got taught, like when we were kids and maybe we didn't get taught that, but that's what, just what we learn to be. And so when you, it's natural for us to continue to want to do that, but nobody ever teaches us that it is not our job to make us happy.

Your spouse's job to make you happy is not your best friends' jobs, make you happy. It is not your mom's job to make you happy. It's your job to make you happy. It's the relationship you have with yourself that should make you happy and be aware of that. It's okay. To feel all the spectrums of feelings, be aware that the good feelings and the vaccines, they all teach us things.

And sometimes we are very afraid of the bad feelings, because we are afraid that whatever thoughts we are having, like they mean that about us. And I can, we're having a thought, like I'm too stupid to read a book. What is that going to cause that's going to cause pain, right? And most of us don't want to feel pain.

We don't want to feel like a failure. We don't want to feel ashamed. But the thing is that if you are not willing to. Or to even question that feeling, you're never going to realize what is the thought that is making that feeding and whether that feeding is actually serving you or not. I'm not saying that the job is to change the fee.

Right? A lot of us are going to think like, okay, I'm just going to change the thought that way I have a different feeling. No, you have to be willing to process a FINI. You have to be willing to sit with it. And many times when we just become the upstairs. Of the feeding. If we tune into where it is and our body, is it in her chest, isn't in her stomach.

Is it on. How does it feel? Does it feel that it constricts or does it feel like it relaxes? Will you just become aware of it? You become aware that lean on any emotion is just a vibration in our body. And many times, you know, I have now made the connection that when I was lying a lot, like I ha I was lying.

And to me, they were baby. They were white lives. And I didn't think that was wrong because I thought I was genuinely saying babies are genuinely sparing. Somebody else from that disappointment. I'll give you an example. Let's say somebody invited me to a party pre COVID and one, I was too tired or too, I just didn't feel like it instead of just say no, I don't feel like interrupted tired.

Like I would say something like, oh, my kids are sick. Or, oh, I'm on call. I can come even though I wasn't on call or something. Right. And January. And so I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I didn't want to say, oh, I don't have time for you. And I'm not saying that's how you should say it, but in the last eight months or so, and really more and more I've been working on just saying what it is that I need to say and staying true and not worrying.

About me trying to control how the people are going to react. It's not my job to control how other people are going to react. When I try to do that, I don't show up from that place of integrity to myself. I lie to myself. So I think it's more important that you speak your truth. So for example, when there is something that me and my husband disagree on, he tells me no, don't do this.

And I still do it. And I tell him, look, he told me not to cause this. Something in me told me that was the right thing to do. Of course, I didn't want to disappoint you, but disappointing myself was something I was not willing to do. So it's about communication, right? Because we don't know the present with us or not with us, whether it's a coworker or.

They might be with us for a lifetime or not. They might be with us for six weeks, six months, who knows six years. But hopefully you and the relationship with you is going to be for a lifetime. So you really have to know you don't die when you just are willing to feel all the emotions. You just feel so much better.

What I made the connection was that whenever I was saying those little eyes, I was feeling like stomach issues like constipated and just not well. So all that out there that paying attention to our thinking and noticing what you're feeling. It's not something that people do on a regular basis, but it's something that can be very beneficial and especially be willing to not just feel good emotions, but also bad emotions.

Because when you do that's when your life really starts to change and transformed, because you are willing on purpose to create and sign the life of your dreams.

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