Clients sometimes tell me they “haven’t been doing anything,” and then when we dig into it, it turns out they have been working incredibly hard.

But a lot of that effort is invisible.

Invisible labor can look like

• Emotionally regulating so you can make a phone call
• Being there for a friend having a hard time, while trying to soothe the part of you feeling like you’re not doing a good job in the conversation
• Having to re-wash the laundry three times because you keep forgetting about it while it’s wet (this is me. jk they’re all me)

In other words, needing more time, support, or preparation to do things that other people seem to do with ease.

Your inner critic might call that wasted time and effort. But really it’s what it takes to make it possible for you to show up.

It’s just… not super awesome when what becomes possible is laundry actually smelling clean.

So then people come to me frustrated because they’re still struggling with things that are supposedly “easy": starting tasks, remembering appointments, figuring out and taking the next step in a project.

There's this feeling that they must not be trying hard enough. Because if they were, surely these things would become easy?

It’s painful to struggle with tasks that other people seem to do without much thought. Seriously, how many hours have AuDHDers collectively spent trying to figure out what to eat for lunch?

So my question is:

HOW are you measuring how hard you're working?

We were taught to count what we actually got done. Especially what others would call an achievement.

If you eat lunch, great. Moving on without fanfare.

And that may ignore how much energy it actually took for you, today, in the context of everything else going on.

Which may then make it baffling that you’re feeling tired and don’t have initiation energy for a difficult task in the afternoon.

I've had periods where daily life tasks wore me out so much, I barely had enough energy left to watch TV.

The amount I was “accomplishing” wasn't a good measure of how hard I was working. And that's true for a lot of us!

There’s something else I’ve noticed about the people who resonate with my work.

They’re often good at pattern recognition, and in particular paying attention to and noticing patterns in their own experience.

The good news there is the ability to recognize when approaches aren't working. They're seeking out information and comparing it with what they've experienced in their own brains and bodies.

And it’s another form of invisible labor. Noticing, naming patterns, organizing it in your mind, figuring out what to possibly do about it… that’s all work, and a lot of it is executive function-adjacent (and thus may take more energy for us).

Especially if a lot of this noticing and processing is happening internally and hasn’t come out in words or actions yet, it can feel like a whole lot of nothing. But noticing is a skill in itself that it’s easy to take for granted if you’re naturally good at it.

When someone's been struggling for years, trying so hard, and yet feeling like they're never doing enough, I think it's worth questioning whether effort is actually what's missing.

What if you're already working harder than you realize?

My brain is still mad about that question, and I’ve been asking it to myself for five years. 😅 But it ironically helped create the foundation to actually enjoy my life.

Which I do… Yes, even with a lot of chores not done right now.

cheers,

Mattia

p.s. What if you gave yourself credit for all the effort that goes into doing something, even when it doesn’t get done? (You’re welcome to reply and tell me about it!)