ADHD Real Talk - with Zac Erickson

#004: Attention, Motivation, and Stimulation Thresholds in ADHD

• Zac Erickson • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Unlock the secrets of ADHD by understanding the concept of "stimulation thresholds" and how they fundamentally shape attention and motivation. As I, Zac Erickson, share personal anecdotes and insights, you'll gain a clearer picture of why tasks that seem simple to others can feel insurmountable for those with ADHD. We'll explore the fascinating interplay of attention and motivation in the ADHD brain, using relatable examples like driving to illuminate how these mental processes filter distractions and prioritize crucial information. This episode offers a promise: by the end, you'll have a deeper understanding of the daily difficulties faced by individuals with ADHD.

Say goodbye to mundane tasks and hello to strategies that enhance engagement and manage ADHD more effectively. From becoming the class clown to daydreaming, discover how ADHD symptoms often serve as coping mechanisms for understimulation. We'll discuss practical tips for effective communication in relationships, like making eye contact and using physical cues, which can capture the attention of loved ones. Learn how fidget tools, movement, and time challenges can transform procrastination into productivity. By creating structured environments and minimizing distractions, even the most boring tasks can become stimulating and rewarding. Tune in to turn your everyday struggles into stories of success.

Zac:

Hello and welcome to another episode. My name is Zac Erickson. Thanks for joining me on ADHD Real Talk and, yeah, my apologies, listeners, for skipping a week. I completely lost my voice last week and you can kind of hear it in the Halloween episode. I actually recorded that one after episode three that you just recently have heard, but my voice is back. I was starting to worry about my voice and like how that was going to. You know, I was like, oh, is this my voice forever? Like I'm just going to sound kind of raspy? And luckily, a couple of days ago I woke up and it was like back to normal and I didn't feel like I had a frog in my throat. So I'm super excited actually today, because today I actually want to talk about, I want to share with you a way of thinking about ADHD that I feel like I don't hear a lot of people talk about and I don't like.

Zac:

Sometimes people will use this in just sort of a like a casual way of people will say, oh, like I'm kind of understimulated. But I think talking specifically about stimulation thresholds and what the ADHD brain needs compared to average people or more neurotypical people, how that can help us understand a little bit more about the connection between attention and motivation and why, like, some of the easy stuff sometimes is the hardest to do. Uh, and you know, like logically, on the outside, we can look at something and say this is like not that hard, it should not be this hard. Um, and hopefully by the end of this, you'll begin to understand why sometimes the most difficult things for us are the things that are the easy, simple things and, I think to be more accurate, they are the most under-stimulating, simple and boring things, and those become the most difficult things because of the neuroscience, like the brain chemistry, of ADHD. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm really excited. This is something. There is a way to sort of like show this visually and this being an audio program, it's going to be a little bit. I'm going to want you to visualize something as we go through this. But, yeah, this is exciting, right?

Zac:

So the first thing that we need to understand is that our brains are equipped with very like intricate systems in the brain. I think I mentioned before my apologies, Apparently, my voice is whatever. Well, we'll try not to comment on it, right, but our brains are equipped with these, these they're very intricate machines, right, like if you think of your brain like a very complicated meat computer. That's a good way to think about it. It's a computer made out of meat in your head, right?

Zac:

And one of the things that happens is that let's talk a little bit about attention and what attention is and why we need it. Because attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder right, there's attention in there. So if we don't actually understand attention in less, in, in like a little bit more than like this, this broad vague sort of way, then we, we don't really understand everything else on top of it. Okay, so attention essentially. So if you think, even just in, like you know, you're in your room right now, you're, uh, you're listening to this, you're in your room right now, you're listening to this. Either you're in your room or maybe you're in your car or like wherever you're at right, I want you to sort of like take a step back and look around and notice how many things in your environment your brain has kind of just decided are not important, right? And, more importantly, imagine if your brain was constantly paying attention to everything.

Zac:

Now, already, people, some people with ADHD, like the inattentive kind, some people are saying that's my life, all the time We'll get back to you, okay, but a neurotypical brain is essentially equipped with what we call attention and it is automatically running most of the time. Right, and essentially, attention's job is to help us prioritize what are the things in my environment or the things that I may be planning to do, or whatever that are important, right? So, reading this definition here, attention is the mental process of concentrating on specific information while filtering out distractions. It allows us to prioritize tasks and respond appropriately to our environment, right? So a neurotypical person is able to adequately filter out the non-important things and not devote any attention to them, right, I'm not going to focus on them, I'm not going to look at them, I'm not going to like. It's not even a temptation, right? And so that's how attention is supposed to work for most people, right?

Zac:

And on a good day, maybe, your attention or your focus I'm going to probably use those words interchangeably, but your attention or your focus, I'm going to probably use those words interchangeably, but your attention or your focus is that's what it's designed for. It's like a net to keep you on task and, more importantly, like to keep you focusing on the important things. So another example maybe would be driving. Right that you're paying attention to maybe a broad range of things. Right that you're you're paying attention to maybe a broad range of things. You're going to be letting certain information in. Your attention is filtering things out that are not important and and allowing you to focus on the things that are important. And if there is a problem with that attention, then that means you can't focus on the important things. Ok, we'll come back to that.

Zac:

Similar to this, or related to this, is motivation. Okay, so motivation is the internal drive that compels us to initiate and persist in goal-directed activities. So it's related to our ability to stay focused on something, but it fuels our actions and sustains our efforts toward achieving objectives. Okay, so you can see how these two things are related. If your brain, for whatever reason, right, we'll get to the ADHD brain in a second right, but you can see why. If your brain is saying, oh, this is important, then you can pay attention to it and it will automatically do that. Then you can pay attention to it and it will automatically do that. And also, if there is something to be done, then the motivation. When everything's running the way it should be running, then you should feel motivated enough to actually engage with that information or that thing? Does that make sense? That's sort of where we're at, okay, so part of how our brain determines what is important is the way that I describe this is by stimulation thresholds, in other words, the level of stimulus intensity required for the brain to engage fully.

Zac:

In other words uh, there is another word that that gets thrown around. It's a little more of a psychobabble type word, but it's salience. It is both in your face and important, right, and so every brain comes with essentially, uh, predetermined, and even with neuroplasticity. You can change this over time with like meditation and and like that right, there are lots of things to change stimulation thresholds, but one of the things that's important to know is that essentially, everybody has a stimulation threshold.

Zac:

So why do we need again, why do we need attention and motivation? They're essential for learning, problem solving, performing daily activities. They help us adapt to new information, focus on important tasks and achieve personal goals. If you don't have attention and motivation, we don't have that. The brain's engagement in attention and motivation is influenced by neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals are released when stimuli meet or exceed certain stimulation thresholds, prompting the brain to allocate resources toward processing and action. Okay. So, in other words, stimulation threshold is met and then dopamine and norepinephrine are released, right, and if that stimulation threshold was met or crossed, then then engage, attention and motivation kick in, is that? Or hopefully we're with me so far. So let's build on that.

Zac:

So let's let's talk a little bit about, like, what we would call the neurotypical experience and what somebody's experience might be, um, in different kinds of tasks, okay. So let's just start with more routine tasks. So, let's say, activities like chores or attending meetings. Uh, these things are sufficiently stimulating for neurotypical individuals, right? People who do not have ADHD or, uh, who are not, you know, autistic or things like that, right, they have, sorry, activities like doing chores and attending meetings are sufficiently stimulating. Their brain recognizes these tasks as important, as it's supposed to releasing the necessary neurotransmitters. The person feels capable of focusing and motivated to complete the task, right. So, in other words, you think about like, right, you think about like the average person's.

Zac:

The two examples that I always use when I'm explaining this to clients are paying attention in class, right. Or doing a paper, like two weeks before it's due, right. Yeah, that's fine. No worries, I this and it's almost like your brain. Once the stimulation threshold has been crossed, it's almost like the brain goes like you know what? Hey, this seems important, let's, uh, let's, let's dedicate some resources here. Let's, uh, let's focus up. No problem, we can do that. And so that's what the person's brain naturally does. Right, for people with ADHD, they're like, wow, that'd be wonderful. That's not necessarily what's going on for me, but that is what the neurotypical experience is, and when. You're.

Zac:

You know, for some people who are diagnosed with ADHD later in life, this can be kind of a. There's almost a grieving process that happens, realizing that everybody else you can say it one of two ways, right, either everybody else was working on easy mode or you were working on hard mode, where these routine tasks are not sufficiently stimulating. We'll get to that in a second right, but that's the case is routine tasks are able to cross that stimulation threshold, it is stimulating enough and we're able to actually say, yep, that's important enough. Engaging tasks, right, something that's like high stimulation, like sports, or something that's like complex, or something that's maybe more. You know, stimulating can mean all sorts of things, by the way, right, it can mean like interesting, complex, engaging, uh, stressful, right, like a, like a, uh, like a doing something last minute is more engaging than it is, uh, you know, like then that paper two weeks before it was due, the night of it's more engaging, but it's entirely because it's stressful. But for neurotypical people, high stimulation activities like playing sports or solving complex problems naturally exceed the threshold, leading to heightened attention and motivation. The individual may feel energized and fully immersed, right? So in both cases the neurotypical person is, they're able to engage.

Zac:

Now let's talk about ADHD. So for ADHD, our threshold, our stimulation threshold, is higher. Often it is quite a bit higher. And so for those routine tasks that are more of that, like doing the chores or doing your paperwork or you know, all those things that like they're not really all that interesting but they are like things that you're supposed to do, like pay your taxes or you know, like whatever, anything else you can think of. Call your mom, not that like my mom's boring, like that's not the case. It's just that it's like it's not new, right, and it's not exciting in necessarily the same way that doing something brand new and exciting and like groundbreaking is. And it's not personal, it's just that it's it's just not the same, right. Doing a paper two weeks before it's due is like more of a grind Right. Like more of a grind right.

Zac:

So tasks that often, uh, that others often find uh, manageable, manageable, may not provide enough stimulation. The person might feel bored, restless or unable to focus. Their brain does not release sufficient neurotransmitters, making it hard to engage. So, for example, sitting through a long, unengaging lecture may lead to daydreaming or fidgeting, because the brain is is not adequately stimulated, right? So, in other words, the brain has not reached the point right. So you sort of think of like, when you're under stimulated, it's more of I'm still looking. This is not important enough yet right, like this is this task is not interesting enough to deserve my attention. Important enough, yet right, like this is this task is not interesting enough to deserve my attention. Uh, I'm going to keep looking, right.

Zac:

And so many of the symptoms of ADHD is what we refer to as the symptoms of ADHD are actually that individual's way of trying to make their environment, their situation. They're all ways of dealing with being in the state of being understimulated, right? So if you think of somebody who is in class, right, and this is a boring teacher at the front of the class, well, let me think I can be the class clown. That's more interesting, right, that will make it more stimulating. I can fidget and I can squirm in my seat and maybe I'll get up and I'll walk around. Maybe that's what I'll do. Maybe I'll just stare off into space and think about this video game that I've been playing.

Zac:

Even my own thoughts, right, like this teacher, is so boring at this point that I can come up with a million ways in my own head to entertain myself. That is more engaging than this person, and this is also, by the way, when working particularly with kids with ADHD, but adults as well. If you're a boring person, you're going to lose me, right, you are going to lose me, and you need to not be so damn boring. Does that make sense? It has to, because you're not stimulating enough, and so you have to turn it up a little bit and you have to be a little bit more engaging, not rude, just kind of in your face a little more, right. And so, for example, another example that I'll give you with this is, um, that actually shows up in, like, my own relationship with my wife One of the things, one of the issues and we've been married for like over 16 years at this point.

Zac:

So we've gone through a lot of the back and forth of our relationship, but one of the things that we often have, uh, like that we would end up having fights about and we were certainly not the only people who have fought about this is like, uh, in, you know, with, like adhd couples right, my wife doesn't have adhd, but she's got me and four kids with it, right, well, I mean possibly four. Some of them are still up in the air, they're too young to know. But anyway, one of the things that happens is she would come and say, hey, can you, uh, can you take out the garbage, like sometime tonight. Like, yeah, yeah, sure, no worries. Like, and I would respond, yep, yeah, no problem, I came out, I came to find out later, I think that I had learned at some point in my life, like I, I had almost like a conditioned response that I would say, yeah, sure, yeah, that's fine, I could do that.

Zac:

I don't even know that. I heard her, if I'm being honest, right, like that, like, hey, can you do this? As, like, a side comment is so far below my stimulation threshold at that point that I don't even think I heard her to be genuinely honest. And so then later, when I didn't do it, of course she's upset because justifiably so, right. But one of the things that I kept saying to her is, like you know what? Like, here's a few tips. Number one did you? You know? Here's some questions to ask, and this is not me making excuses, this is just like how to break through and actually be stimulating enough.

Zac:

Not because you're not like this wonderful person, it's just my brain sucks sometimes, right? You're not like this wonderful person, it's just my brain sucks sometimes, right? So be engaging, right. So, in other words, like, did you have eye contact? Maybe even like, come over and like say my name and say hey, like Zac, ach, and like I, you need eye contact. At least some people will say two points of contact.

Zac:

So, whether that is, you know, like hearing and eye contact, whether that is, you know, a hand on the shoulder and talking, whatever it is right. But like, have me. And then maybe even like, have me repeat it back to you, right? Like, ask me a question, or maybe even like encourage me to like, can you, can you set a reminder on your phone to do that, because that would be really important. Like this is even even to simply say, hey, this is really important to me. That, to me, is a signal that it that it like gets through the stimulation thresholds and it sends the message to my brain Like, oh, this is important, you have my attention now. Okay, right, so routine tasks if they are mundane, if they are under stimulating, the likelihood that they are going to be able to be paid attention to.

Zac:

And, by the way, another thing I haven't I don't have in my notes here, but is also related to this is memory. So my brain is way more likely to forget things that are boring. Like I think everybody's brain is kind of like that, right, it's not important whatever. But can you imagine if there are things that your brain should actually like a neurotypical brain would recognize those things as important, but they weren't like super exciting, and so that brain this is not a choice, by the way, and so you can't just will yourself out of this. Right, like this is something where often people with ADHD, when they're dropping the ball in different areas, it's actually because their brain is not treating it as important. Does that make sense? The importance mechanism does not work properly, the determining how important it is.

Zac:

Okay, let's talk about the subjective experience, or, in other words, the experience of an ADHD person who actually does have adequately stimulated, who is actually adequately stimulated, right? So when something's highly stimulating, like playing a video game this is one of the things, right, you hear all the time. Well, you can play a video game for five hours, so you should be able to focus on your, your english paper it's like yeah, no, my english paper is boring as shit. Are you kidding me? No, it's not gonna work. Right, my video game is over the threshold, and so it's almost like this is one of the things.

Zac:

That's interesting is that when you actually find something that's really stimulating, what we actually might experience is hyper focus, where it's almost like your brain goes oh, finally, something that I really enjoy, and you, like the person, can even become like very deeply immersed and hyper-focused and completely lose track of time, right, and so that can be a beneficial thing and can be helpful, but it also can be really kind of debilitating as well, when, finally, you have something you're excited about and I really need to be focusing on this other thing over here, but I cannot even steer my brain away from where I'm at, right, and so part of that is just I think. When I think about this, I think it's mostly because all these other things are under stimulating and our brain just wants to focus on something that's stimulating. And we also have much more experience as people with adhd, um, experiencing things that are boring to the point where it's excruciating for us. I think a lot of people with adhd or more neurotypical people, sorry, who have not experienced a lot of this maybe are going to feel like oh yeah, can you imagine like if you had to sit and listen to, like Ben Stein, you know, like the Bueller guy, like just a super mundane, like monotone, boring, slow kind of thing? Like every once in a while we find something that, like people with ADHD and neurotypical people, can all agree is boring. But for the most part, people with ADHD experience boredom way more often at an excruciatingly painful level. So does that? Hopefully that's making sense for everybody here, right?

Zac:

So as a way of sort of recapping for ADHD brains, when they are understimulated, the brain is basically saying this thing is not important. And here's the thing is that it is not the part of our, the part of our brain that engages. Attention is a separate part of the brain than the part of your brain that may logically analyze if this thing is important. Okay, I'll say that again. So, logically, understanding that something is important may not be enough to make that thing stimulating. And therefore, even if you know something is important, you may not feel motivated or able to focus on it for an extended period of time, and this is infuriating and very, very discouraging for people with ADHD. So I want to validate that that is a very real thing. It is not enough to say, like I know this is important. It's not a matter of not being able to do it, it's not that I don't know, right? So, like when you're working with, like your partner or yourself, or like kids or whatever, and you say, well, like, but this is really important. I've told them a million times. It's like, doesn't matter, literally does not matter at this point, because the problem is not in their, their like logical understanding of the importance. It's about how engaging and stimulating the actual activity itself is Okay. So, and then the adequately stimulated one. It's almost like the brain gets super excited. Finally, something engaging, I'm all in, right? So let's talk about attention and motivation, right? So understimulated Another way to think about this If we're understimulated, there is a lack of drive to start or complete tasks.

Zac:

The person may procrastinate or avoid activities that seem uninteresting. I will even add to that sometimes there is a feeling of dread. I know I need to do this, but I don't want to right, or something like that. Or the person's doing something that is actually engaged. Maybe they're on their phone, maybe they're playing a game or doing literally anything else to avoid Um, but in the back of their head they know they should be doing this other thing, but it's not engaging enough, and so it's hard. It's still hard to get that motivation and to switch gears into the thing that you need to do, whereas if you are adequately stimulated, you have improved focus, ability to sustain attention for longer periods and the brain is prioritizing this task and enhancing cognitive processing and for motivation, you feel more motivated, eagerness to engage. The individual feels compelled to act and may persist despite challenges.

Zac:

Right, so that's, you can tell maybe, like for those of you at home with ADHD, how often you are understimulated, and so there is a reason why people with ADHD have a higher risk of getting speeding tickets, for example, and this is why mindfulness and in future episodes we're going to have an episode about mindfulness is like an introduction. But you have to be aware of right. You have to sort of like check in with yourself and get into the habit of checking in with yourself, not as like an obsessive sort of way, but just in like an alert and mindful kind of way. An obsessive sort of way, but just in like an alert and mindful kind of way. How am I doing right now? How am I feeling? What do I need to be doing? Like, what did I say I was going to do today? Do I even know what I was going to do today? And like, like, what's my mood? Like, how do I get myself into that more engaged mode, right, so? So here? So I'm sure all of you at home are sort of sitting here listening and thinking, well, what am I supposed to do about this, right? So let's talk about strategies. Number one strategy actually, there's two, right? There are two ways. If you think of the threshold and how stimulating the thing is, those are the two different variables that you can play with, right? The first thing that you can do is you can make something that you need to do more stimulating. That actually is a very real thing, right? So the idea of like fidgets sitting in a meeting. Perfectly reasonable thing. It actually can help, right? You're making this boring meeting a little bit more stimulating For me.

Zac:

When I was in school, I found if I sit on the front row with an open notebook and a pen and I sit there and I take notes and I actively listen and engage and maybe doodle a little bit in the margins, I am actively engaging with this content in a way that is more stimulating for me. In a way that is more stimulating for me, I had a. I had a professor once say I'm going to give you all the the like PowerPoints. I'm going to email them to you later. Don't worry about taking notes. And I was like that's funny. No, if I don't take notes, I'm going to be an outer space. Right, I'm going to. My brain is going to be entertaining itself with, like, all my plans for my D&D campaign or something. Right, like the last thing I will even be thinking about is this lecture, and I actually want to sit here and listen and learn. So I am going to take notes, even if I don't need to.

Zac:

It's what I do as a therapist as well. I take notes in session and it helps me focus. So that is part of that. And so engage, enhancing how engaging it is right. This is the same thing with, in terms of like, if you were a teacher or a therapist or anything like that right, if you are not engaging, right, pull out a pad of paper right. Draw a picture on the board. Draw right, wave your hands around in the air, do a funny accent, it doesn't matter. Be more engaging, right. Actually, you know, be animated, right. So, for example, turning study material into a game, incorporating movement into tasks, setting time challenges right.

Zac:

One of the things I saw online that a lot of people do is actually one of the things I do in general is I will I've been doing this forever too is like music can be a huge thing, right, so you're enhancing the engagement and a lot of people, when they're like cleaning the house, for example, all right, I'm going to see if I can clean this house by the end of this song. How messy is this room? Well, it might be stairway to heaven instead of something else, right, or whatever. It is like a longer song, but it's. I'm going to be doing these things. I'm going to maybe focus on doing a specific thing, right.

Zac:

So, for example, back in the day, I used to hate doing the dishes. I hated it, I think I like. In fact, when I was a kid I hated it so much that I would like I'd be like standing at the, at the, at the sink, for like an hour and just hating every minute of it. And so I feel like I sort of like learned to hate it back then. And so even when I was an adult and I was married, I hated doing it. And then eventually one day I was like you know what, I'm going to see if I can do it in a 15 minute spurt. I'm going to just like rush through and see if I can do all of it in 15 minutes and turns out it was about 13 minutes. You would have. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have believed you if you told me it was only going to take that long. So that is that's that piece right, making it more engaging.

Zac:

The other thing around task playing with the stimulation stuff is uh, is building in some sort of like structured environment and minimizing distractions and making clear goals so that your brain can recognize how important this task is Right and so that you can. And not only that, but that it's concrete, right, and so, even if it is a little bit under stimulating, if you make it clear what you need to do, you make it a small enough chunk that it's like, ok, this thing might be a little bit boring, maybe it's a little bit below my threshold, but you know what, like, I'm going to set a 10 minute timer and I'm going to see if I could beat it and I'm going to just like power through this for 10 minutes and then if I'm done after that, then awesome. But let me tell you, getting started is the hardest part anyways, and then my brain will start to realize and engage with this information and realize that, oh, this actually is kind of interesting or important or whatever it is, and I'll feel that momentum and I'll want to keep going. So that is the first part of playing with the task itself and the environment that you're in, ok. The other side of this is playing with your own threshold, and this is where this more of like biohacking kind of stuff maybe comes in, as well as medication for ADHD. So the best way to think about how ADHD affects the neurotypical brain is that, in essence, what it does is it lowers the threshold of the person. Uh, the stimulation threshold for a person with ADHD, back down to a neurotypical person's level, is the goal, right? And so things that otherwise would not be under stim or that would not be stimulating enough, become stimulating enough, right?

Zac:

And so the way that I described this in my own experience was that when I started taking medication, I know that nothing changed about the genetics class that I was taking. The genetics, uh, instructor was just kind of like a this, like mousy lady and she was very like. She's like a very stereotypical, like biologist scientist, like dry, sounds like she's speaking out of a textbook and uh, and she'd lose me every time. Right, like she was. She was dry and she was like, frankly, she was one of the better ones, but she was kind of boring Right, kind of boring right. And I started taking medication and all of a sudden I noticed myself in her classes being like, wow, this is really interesting. I never realized genetics was so cool. This is like really awesome. I really love this class, and all that was different was that I had taken a medication that allowed my brain to feel stimulated enough by what it was being presented with. It's the only thing that changed. And yet my experience of that was wow, I freaking love this stuff. This is actually interesting, right? I guarantee you she did not change her approach because I took a medication, right, but that absolutely was what it felt like. Right, but that absolutely was what it felt like. And so medications lower the stimulation threshold, allowing routine tasks to trigger adequate neurotransmitter release, and the result is improved attention and motivation for tasks that were previously under stimulating.

Zac:

Okay, so the couple of quick things that are interesting to this really is. Again, I'm going to do a little bit of a disclaimer. It's been a while since I brushed up on all the neuroscience of this, so if some of the things that I said you know, if there are neuroscientists who know more than I do in the crowd, feel free to you know, reach out to me at Recharge Psych on Instagram, you know, shoot me a DM or something, but for the most part, part like. This really does have a lot to do with, like, the neurotransmitter function and what we know from brain imaging studies and uh like. While the term stimulation threshold threshold is a conceptual tool, more than anything, it's sort of metaphorical. It reflects the neurobiological need that we have for adequate stimulus to engage in attention and motivation in ADHD.

Zac:

So, uh, final sort of caveat as we go through this um, adhd is a real, like complex condition, right, everybody's a little bit different. One of the things we didn't cover is that what one person experiences as like really engaging or interesting and enjoyable, another person may not be all that interested in it. Right, and so it's not just as simple as how loud is the professor, right, but, like, what do we like is very subjective from person to person, and so these are some of the things that are that are important to keep in mind through all of this. Right, and it's and there's still a lot of ongoing research, and this, this example is, I mean, it's not a perfect metaphor. It's not going to explain everything, right, it doesn't explain, you know, it doesn't account for the deficits or the difficulties in executive functioning as an example, right, but it is one piece of the puzzle that for me personally, resonates a lot. So, yeah, so that's about all I have prepared for today. I think that there are, I think there's a lot. Hopefully, this has been helpful. Feel free to go back and review this if this has been helpful, but I think again, for now, I think that really the takeaway is. This helps us understand a little bit of why medication again it helps lower that threshold. Oh, I should mention my goodness, right, it's not just medication, right.

Zac:

There are other things that also can impact your stimulation threshold that you need, the amount of stimulation that you need, for example, having adequate physical exercise, particularly cardio exercise. There's some real good research. The way to kind of think about this is that cardiovascular exercise in particular can essentially serve to lower your stimulation threshold. Your required stimulation needs for about a couple hours after doing it right, and so that's something that we can keep in our back pocket and then doing that over time. Staying healthy good diet and exercise and getting adequate sleep is a huge one. Managing our stress levels those are all things that also impact how much stimulation we need, and if you really feel like you're in a fog one day, it may be. If you look at all of these different individual factors, it might be that your stimulation threshold has been like driven super high, right.

Zac:

Another thing that we're still learning about is the role of things like social media and just like electronic media in general, and what that does to our brain and training our brain to expect a certain level of stimulation, and so there is actually some evidence that you know, continued, you know, chronic use of social media and things like that can actually train your brain to expect it to expect more stimulation, and then it actually kind of gets a little bit like the calibrations off, right, so that those are things that are also uh important to know. But, uh, yeah, so okay. So this is, uh, this has been ADHD real talk. My name is Zac Erickson and, uh, by the way, if you want to check out, I have a uh, a free resource online you can go to recharge psychologycom slash AI guide and uh, I've got a free PDF over there tool to help you use uh AI and particularly things like chat GPT to help you manage your uh, your workload and to kind of help you manage ADHD a little bit more and wrap your brain around some of the stuff that's going on. Right, like interacting with something like an ai chatbot can be a way to make some of these things more engaging, and that's definitely been my experience. Right, engaging with a robot in a conversation is way easier, uh, to engage with for some people than simply like sitting down with a pad of paper or whatever. So that's it. That's all I have for today.

Zac:

This has been a little bit of a longer episode. Hopefully you found it helpful. Rechargepsychologycom is the website if you are looking for a therapist in Alberta, particularly in the Edmonton area, though I do online therapy with people from all across Alberta, and if you have any other questions or things like that, feel free to email me, Zac Z-A-C at rechargepsychologycom and otherwise. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye, thank you.

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Zac Erickson

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