"Thrive with ADD"
TIS THE SEASON TO FEEL GUILTLY?

Along with holiday cheer, gift-giving and togetherness, a common December theme of many of my ADD clients is guilt. ADDers have a tendency to over-promise, and to under-estimate the time needed to get things done. All too often this month, I've heard my clients sigh over all the things they've fallen behind on, haven't gotten to, or feel stressed about.

Marian feels guilty about back-sliding in the organization she's been doing all year in her home. Her strategies for getting through filing, closet-cleaning, and personal development have slowed to a crawl. However, she has hosted three large family dinners, spent most of a weekend slugging it out in department stores, and has pulled together - for the first time - a computerized list of names and addresses for her holiday cards.

Derek had been making great progress in his home remodeling project. But somehow, these last few weeks, he's fallen behind, and feels terrible about disappointing his wife. What was Derek doing? Last week alone, he attended three evening Christmas parties given by clients and vendors. He was up til 3:00 a.m. assembling a new bike for his son in the garage. He spent two hours in line at the post office with all the presents to send to his family - which he helped wrap the night before. Derek's exhausted!

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK! Recognize that preparing for holidays adds lots of activities and deadlines to your schedule, and you may have to let go of some of your "shoulds" for December. As a reminder, here's a brief list of all the extras you may be trying to pack into your days:

• Writing holiday cards
• Shopping for gifts
• Wrapping gifts
• Addressing gifts and cards
• Standing in line at the post office
• Putting up Christmas tree / holiday decorations
• Shopping and cooking for holiday dinner
• Preparing for and hosting out-of-town guests
• Spending more time with family
• Assembling toys
• Attending business and social holiday parties
• Attending to extra activities for church / synagogue
• Traveling

You can get tired just looking at this list! Now try estimating the number of hours each of these activities take, and you get a clear picture of how impossible it is to keep up with "business as usual" in day-to-day life. When you add ADD overwhelm to the mix, it's not realistic to try to maintain exactly the same standards as you would for the rest of the year.

First of all, disconnect any ties of performing all these extra tasks to your self-esteem. Even Superman or Superwoman couldn't do all of this AND keep up with everything else perfectly. You need strategies to get through the holidays with sanity intact.

There are some non-essential areas of life you may have to let drop temporarily. Choose what they are and give yourself permission to alter your expectations of perfection. You may have to re-negotiate promises you made to others, in order to realistically manage their expectations, too. Perhaps it's not possible to attain clutter-free, orderly closets before Christmas!

The main reason things are done frantically, at the last minute, is that they were not planned for. Sure, you know you have to go to the post office to mail all those gifts - but WHEN are you planning to go? You probably will have to wait in line - the closer to Christmas, the longer the wait. Yes, you know toys might need some assembling on Christmas day (or before wrapping them). Have you planned WHEN you're going to do that, and WHAT tools or extras are required? Do you know where the wrench and screwdriver are? Did you buy the batteries?

Thinking through all these little steps - preferably with another person as a sounding board - can help eliminate stressful scrambling later on.

Finally, don't forget to plan when to take DOWN the holiday decorations! You can read an article here about why this ADDer kept hers up far too long.