50. The problem with ADHD entrepreneurs intellectualizing emotions

Transcript for: "The problem with ADHDpreneurs intellectualizing their emotions"
In this episode, we're going to talk about the problem with ADHD people intellectualizing
their emotions.
One of the darker jokes about starting a business is that if you want to start a business,
that's a great impetus to actually start doing therapy, because when you start a
business, you are putting yourself out there. You're being vulnerable in ways that you've
probably never been before. You're also taking on all the expectations and all the
pressure of providing an income for yourself and providing a service for your clients.
And we take for granted what that pressure does to us emotionally and mentally and
what kind of shadow work can come up through the process of building your business.
This has been a major thing for me over the last few years through the pandemic. I'm
very open about coming from an abusive relationship, dealing with PTSD, having had a
mild traumatic brain injury, having to do therapy after that. I'm a huge advocate of doing
therapy in general, and I will say that doing therapy has been one of the greatest
supports for me to be in my business and to be fully myself and to be able to handle the
stress of managing all this on my own. And to learn how to let some things go and to
delegate to team members. One of the things that I've been working on over the last
several months that I actually didn't even realize was a problem for me was that I never
actually learned how to process my own emotions. And I think this is really common for
those of us with ADHD, because as children, I think kids with ADHD, one of the big
indicators that a kid has ADHD is they have what they used to call temper tantrums.
Now it's been relabeled as emotional dysregulation. Kids with ADHD are very sensitive
to input, and children in general are not great at communicating their wants, their needs,
and their feelings.
And as children with ADHD, and you have all these feelings, and you have humans
around you who don't understand what you're going through, and you have the inability
to communicate what you're going through. It ends up in you crying, screaming, maybe
stomping around all the things that are actually really good for moving emotion through
you, but are very uncomfortable for everyone around you to experience. So a lot of us
get trained out of actually processing our emotions, and we get trained into
intellectualizing our emotions, and the two are not the same thing. And let me explain
what this means. Let's say I have a disagreement with a friend, and they did something,
and it hurt my feelings, and I'm angry and I'm upset. There are emotions there, and
when I get angry, the heat just rises to my face, and my eyes almost get a little, like,
scary like dragon eyes. Like, I imagine if I had any magical powers, like, fire beams
would be shooting out of my pupils. And I think we all have that experience when we're
pissed off.
And then, of course, when I'm hurt, when my feelings are hurt, I actually feel, like, some
pain in my chest and in my gut. In both instances, I want to cry. But there have been so
many instances throughout my life where I've been told crying is wrong, right? And I
think this is huge in our society, right? If you're at work and you need to cry, you go hide
in the bathroom. And it's only okay to a certain degree for women to cry. Men aren't
allowed to cry at all. You guys have to hold it together, be a man, which is a very unfair
expectation of half of our population. What ends up happening is we get trained into
intellectualizing the feelings. So instead of me processing the anger and the hurt at this
friend doing something or saying something that hurt my feelings and pissed me off, I
get to go and jump straight to let me make sense of it.
Let me intellectualize where they were coming from. Let me intellectualize and explain
to myself why this made me feel so bad. What ends up happening is we close the loop
intellectually of why we're feeling this way, but we still have that emotion that hurt and
that anger in our bodies. One of the things that I learned through coach training is that
emotions is really energy in motion. When you feel a big emotion, it's a ton of energy.
When you feel love, just imagine you feel so much love for someone, you feel like your
chest is about to burst. Right? That's all energy in you. When you are angry at someone
or afraid of something, that's so much energy in you, right? And it shows up in different
ways.
If we don't let it move through us, if we don't let it stay in motion, guess what happens?
It gets trapped in our bodies. It doesn't leave. Let me tell you, when you start doing
therapy, at some point, because you started your business and decided at some point
that you needed the support of a therapist, those emotions are all bottled up. They have
not gone anywhere. So as you start learning how to process emotions, it's going to be a
lot. There's a lot of crying involved. I had a coach not too long ago who I worked with for
a very short period of time until she started telling me these things and I quit working
with her. She kept telling me that I was too emotional to run a business.
And I can't tell you the tailspin that sent me into because I had already built a very
successful business, and I am an emotional person. I can't not be. That's just part of
who I am. It's part of what makes me good at what I do because I care so passionately
about my clients and the impact that I want to have on the world. You can't do that
without having emotion behind it. That interaction with her is one of the reasons why I
further niche down to working with ADHD business owners, because I experienced
firsthand the shame that got cast on me for operating differently and running my
business than neurotypical people. And it crushed my self-esteem for several months. It
took me a long time to get over.
And there are still moments where her voice rings in my head, this bullying voice telling
me all the reasons why I'm not going to be successful because of these emotions. We
villainize emotions. We see them as an impediment to success rather than something
that will support our success along the way. My therapist, who's absolutely incredible,
she reminds me all the time when I complain about how hard it is to process all the bad
emotions that I've bottled up throughout the years, that if I don't learn to fully feel those
emotions, then on the flip side, I will never learn to fully feel the good emotions. Without
sadness, there can't be joy. Without pain, there can't be love. Like Disney's inside out.
Got it right.
It was a children's movie, but it was so on point that we need the full range of emotions
to be able to live a full, fulfilled life. And not just life. If you want to run a business and be
successful, you're going to have to have access to your full range of emotions, and
you're going to have to also understand how to process through them. Because I think
we've all been through that scenario where something pissed you off in the morning,
maybe someone cut you off in traffic. You go into the office, you're just thieving like,
what the is wrong with people? And you're kind of on this tear, and you're also
professional, so you kind of try to bottle it up in you and get to work. And you go to your
first meeting and you notice everyone's on edge and they're nervous, and that pisses
you off further. You're like, why can't people just show up, be engaged, do their jobs?
What is wrong with people? And then you go to your next meeting, and again, people
are kind of on edge. And again it starts feeding into, this is going to be a bad day.
What is wrong with people today? What you don't realize in that moment is everyone
who's nervous. They're nervous because they're picking up on your anger. They're
nervous because you feel like a wild, dangerous tiger in the room who might eat them,
right? And the fact that you can intellectualize that someone cut you off in traffic, that
people don't know how to drive right now, that you're going to have to just learn to drive
defensively for the rest of your life. And screw everyone else. That's intellectualizing
your anger. The fact that you don't take the moment and process the anger, and
probably also the fear of potentially getting in a car accident. You're going to be carrying
that emotion throughout the day and it's going to be impacting everyone around you.
Now, this is in a job scenario, right, where you're going into a job.
This is your team. Imagine the greater impact when this is your business and you're the
owner. Everyone in that meeting answers to you. Their paycheck relies on you. So for
them, you being angry about something that they're not aware of is not only scary
because they're not sure if you're going to bite their head off in the meeting, they're not
sure if they're going to lose their income. It starts sowing incredible distrust in your team
and it will ensure, like nothing else, that you will not get the best out of them and you
also will not retain their talent. They will move on to a safer pasture as soon as humanly
possible if you do not learn how to manage your emotions. And even there, I just used
old language.
I used the language of managing emotions. Let's be real. We can't manage emotions,
right? Emotions are going to come up in us without our control. What we need to learn
to do is process them, process the emotion, process that anger, even if it means
missing that first meeting, just to paint the picture of how this could go. In contrast of
that person who almost got in the car accident going to work and going to their meetings
and scaring everyone. Imagine if they showed up, explained to a few key people, oh my
gosh, I almost got in a car accident this morning. I'm a little like frazzled. I'm freaked out.
I have some anger in me. I just kind of need to process the emotion before I inflict
myself on other people. Let's cancel or move this first meeting so I can just deal with
myself. Imagine the amount of trust that you'd build with your team. Imagine the
permission you then give each team member to process their shit outside of work and
then come in with their full self, fully able to concentrate and contribute, knowing that
they're safe to do so. We talk a big game about emotional safety in the workplace and
it's one of the reasons why a lot of ADHD ers leave working traditional jobs, because we
don't feel emotionally safe in the workplace. And yet if we don't learn how to process our
emotions in a healthy way and not just intellectualize them and put them in a sealed
container, that will turn into a time bomb at some point and you'll pay for it and so will
your team. It's actually going to backfire on you big time.
You're going to end up creating a workplace that is not emotionally safe for other
people. And actually, let's be real. It's not emotionally safe for you either. One of the
things that I talk about with my clients a lot, especially when they feel bad for taking a
day off when they get sick and they need to take an afternoon or they're just tired and
they need to take a nap in the middle of the day is that we're building a business for you
that can work around you being a human. We're not building a business that's based on
you being expected to act like a robot at every given moment. That's just not realistic.
And yet let's look at the paradigm that we set up for ourselves. Oh, what am I going to
say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out.
But first squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And yeah, let's look at the paradigm that we
set up for ourselves. What are the acceptable reasons for you to take off in your own
mind? Even for me, right now, while I'm doing this work, learning how to process my
emotions in a healthier way, it's still well, I have to feel physically ill. I have to feel
physically ill. That's really the only reason why I can take some time off. Maybe if I'm
feeling burnt out and I'm not being productive, then that's also an excuse for me to take
some time off because then afterwards I can be more productive and we talk this big
game about building a life where we get to be our full selves. Well, what about our
emotional selves? Didn't factor into any of those acceptable reasons for you to step
away from work? I also see this so much on the flip side, in sales calls, my clients who
are learning how to sell their services for the first time. They're so nervous about
showing this prospective client that they're excited to work with them because they feel
like, oh, my gosh.
Well, what if my excitement comes across as me? Pressuring them to work with me?
Like, they don't want to show this joy and this genuine positivity about the idea of
working with this other human because they're worried that that emotion will pressure
this other human into working with you. That just doesn't happen. There's this dating
guru who I used to follow. I like some of what she says. Other stuff is kind of not my bag
anymore. But she talks about how feminine humans in relationships will only be
interested to the point that they think the other person is interested. If you're only ever
talking about going to dinner the next time, I'm not going to get excited to the point
where we might go on a weekend retreat. I'm going to just set my expectations that I like
you enough to go to dinner with you, and that's it.
I'm not giving any more emotion here because I'm going to assume that you don't like
me that much. It's the same on a sales call. I have a friend who did a sales call with a
coach and she got off the phone and she called me and she's like, I don't think she
wanted to work with me. She didn't sound excited to work with me. When we share our
genuine positive feelings with our potential clients and we show our genuine excitement
at the idea of working with them, we give them full permission to be excited to work with
us as well. We show them that they are wanted. We show them that we believe in them.
If you don't have full comfort with your full range of emotions, it's really hard to do that.
It's really hard to be vulnerable in that way and share how you want to work with this
person, right? Learning how to process your emotions and channel them in generative
ways is one of the best things you will ever do for yourself and for your business. I don't
have any data at hand to this, but I would posit that you'd live a longer life, you'd have
more fulfilling relationships, and I know you'll end up making more money. And also if
you start hearing reports that I'm smashing plates or anything, just know that that's
something my therapist has recommended. If I'm ever angry, I'm not going crazy. We're
all fine here. It's just a way to process anger. This is one of my goals for the future is I
want to have a really nice house. I want to have a vegetable garden, I want ducks, and
then I want this little barn to the side where I can have all my clients come and visit me
and we can have full-on experiences.
And I'm just going to continuously go to thrift shops and estate sales and garage sales
and just buy collections of old plates, chipped ugly things that no one wants. They're
going to end up in landfill anyway, and those are going to be on hand for any time my
clients have any bad feelings that they need to work through that's holding them back in
their business. I'm going to build a special little enclosure for this. Even so, there's no
chance that my dog Luna will ever walk through this and cut her paws. And so it's easy
to clean up as well. This is my dream and I hope to have this soon. And if you need to
learn how to process emotions and you want to do this with me, I am cordially inviting
you into the future to do this with me. And I want to just make a special note to my
female feminine listeners out there who are typically raised to feel like you have
responsibility for everyone in the room.
So if someone else is feeling uncomfortable, you will often take it upon yourself,
because this is how we're trained as women to be responsible for making them feel
better. Processing your emotions and owning your emotions and letting them work
through you will make other people uncomfortable. It will. There's a guarantee, right? It
will make people uncomfortable. There's a reason why you were trained out of
processing your emotions and trained into intellectualizing them. Because that's
something that's comfortable for everyone. I want to release you from the responsibility
that you hold for the emotions other people have about you. Experiencing your
emotions, that's not your responsibility.
You being upset about something someone else did is valid. You feeling hurt about
someone saying something that's hurtful is valid. And you having a reaction to their bad
behavior is not. You being mean. It's not. You consciously retaliating against them. It's a
consequence of bad behavior for them. You are not evil or mean or bad for there being
consequences to someone else's bad behavior.
You are not too emotional for having an emotional response to things. Don't let anyone
tell you otherwise. And if they do, tell me where they live. Just kidding. Oh, God. Could
you imagine? We start getting this influx of addresses of people, and it's like the
testimonials or reviews on the podcast. Like, she said to tell me where this bad person
lived, and then I never heard of her going there and doing anything about it. She makes
false promises on this podcast.
Don't listen.
© 2022 - 2023 Katie McManus – Business Strategy For Weenie ADHD-preneurs