trolley token WOT
Hiya,
I abandoned a trolley token in the IKEA carpark in Richmond this week.
One I'd had for over a year, that lived in my bag and had survived three handbag clean-outs. I left it sitting in the trolley bay, because I could not get back into the elevator with the trolley to take it to its docking station. I was too overstimulated and needed to just get out of there.
Let me back up.
It had been a full day. Three client zooms, back-to-back. All the good kind, the ones where I'm switched on and present and being the version of me who shows up for other people. I love that work. It also takes everything I've got –think herding cats because that’s what we are like.
And then the day didn't stop. Post office. Kmart, because my man child needed clothes as its freezing degrees here and he’s still in shorts. Food shopping, all the outside tasks I find so much harder to do on my own. Simon usually body doubles, but he’s in Perth. Rude.
By the time I was in that carpark, there was nothing left.
The trolley token, the one small thing asking me to walk it back, might as well have asked me to run a marathon. So, I let it go. Farewell, trolley token. You served me well.
Here's the bit I want you to sit with.
That wasn't me being dramatic. That was my nervous system telling the truth and more importantly, me listening to it..
There's a thing called the Window of Tolerance.
Picture a window. When you're inside it, you can cope. You can think, decide, deal with the small annoying stuff like walking a trolley back, making decisions about dinner, or what email to respond to. When you get pushed outside it, your brain flips into survival mode. Everything feels like too much, because it is too much.
For a brain like ours, that window is often smaller to begin with at the start of the day. And a day of being on uses it up faster than we like to admit, like the free version of Claude Fable 5 at the moment, my new hyperfocus – anyone else?
I hadn't run out of willpower in that carpark. I'd run out of window (of tolerance).
Here's what I know and what I want you to know.
The answer isn't to push through. Pushing through is how we end up shattered, snapping at the people we love, lying awake at 2am wired and exhausted at the same time. There is no reward for burning out.
The answer is to know your limits before you hit them. To make accommodations for the brain you actually have, not the one you keep expecting yourself to be.
For me, that looks like not stacking every outside errand onto the end of a heavy client day. It looks like doing the tasks that I know overstimulate me with a friend or wait till Simon returns, so I'm not doing them alone. And some days it looks like leaving a trolley token behind andforgiving myself before I've even reached the car.
Knowing your window of tolerance isn't giving up. It's self-care, self-understanding and the most honest thing you can do for yourself.
If you want to understand your own window a bit better, I wrote an ebook on it. Plain language, no jargon, the whole thing laid out properly so you can spot the edges of your own window before you tumble out of it and has the sciency stuff I love.
Download the Window of Tolerance ebook
If any of this landed a little too close, you're not the only one.When you want to talk about what real support could look like for your brain,your bandwidth and your business, I'm right here. No pressure, no pitch. A proper conversation.
Mel x
P.S. The man child got his clothes and is instantly warmer. He has not noticed the great trolley token saga, and he never will. Some sacrifices go entirely undocumented.
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ADHD Village- PO Box 475, Clifton Hill, 3068, Australia
