Why Reminders ‘Don’t Work,’ and learning ACT for ADHD
Reminders seem useless for some people with ADHD. If you’re stuck, some evidence based therapies can really help.
*I’m using ‘we’ in this blog, because I have 40-years lived experience with ADHD.
In my therapy practice here in Denver, I see a lot of folks who are living with ADHD and coming to terms with what it means in their work, their relationships, and the way they view themselves. Some of our work together focuses on new ways to look at ADHD and what it means to have or be ADHD or neurodivergent. And some or our work is learning and practicing new strategies for living with a brain that works differently from what’s expected by jobs, schools, and partners in a busy, modern world.
One of the first things we talk about is the tool of reminders. Reminders are a critical tool for anyone, (but they’re especially relevant for ADHDers). We use them constantly, even to the point of being ridiculous. Hey—we’re not the ones that made a world where people have to remember a bajillion little things, appointments, lists, chores, tasks, and people’s names in any given day. We’re just the people who live here. But while the “typical,” non-ADHDer, can seem to hold and recall a reasonable amount of these things, ADHDers tend to, well—what were we talking about?
Remembering! Right! So let’s talk about our relationship to reminders.
Inevitably, whenever we talk about reminders as a tool, people inform me that they simply don’t work. They’ve tried everything—using their phone alarm, their calendar notifications, journals, sticky-notes, and even writing on their own hands. And they just. Don’t. Work. It turns out that the hardest part about remembering stuff is remembering to remember.
Sometimes reminders become one more way to say “I’m not good enough.”
Having established that these methods haven’t worked well, let’s go one step deeper. At this point, clients often say, “I don’t know why they don’t work— maybe I’m just stupid, or broken, or my brain doesn’t work right.” For many of us, this is what we’ve heard from others our whole lives—that if we only tried hard enough or cared enough, then reminders would work. Or we wouldn’t even need reminders. But let’s set this aside for a moment. (We will come back to it). Let’s just look at our behavior in the moment, on why, in the moment, reminders don’t work.
I’ll list some of the main reasons that reminders haven’t historically worked for people, and you see if any of these seem familiar to you.
Top 10 Reasons Reminders Don’t Work.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
There was an earthquake.
If this list applies to you or someone you know—if reminders like notes, alarms, and notifications are just ignored—I invite you to be curious about why. Why do we ignore reminders? The answer may surprise you.
When I ask my clients why they ignore reminders from their phone or their partner or their notepad—they usually shrug and show a cringing look of guilt or shame. In that look I see the little kid they were when their parents or their teachers hovered over them saying, “Why can’t you remember?! You’re not trying hard enough! You’re being lazy! You don’t care!” ADHDers know all-too-well the terrible feeling of being “reminded.”
We’ve been told that shouldn’t need reminders if we “really cared.” These messages have made reminders toxic.
Many of us wear the scars of such scoldings as, “You don’t need a reminder! You just need to remember! If you really cared, then you’d remember!” In such an environment, reminders themselves become assertions of our inadequacy. Instead of reminding us to do our homework, they remind us that we’re not good enough and we’ll probably mess up. Instead of reminding us to make that appointment, they remind us that we’re not good enough and we’ll probably miss the appointment even if we book it. Looking at it through this lens, it makes sense why we’d ignore them.
There is another factor that often renders a reminder useless. If I don’t have the resources to accomplish a task, all the reminders in the world won’t help me get it done. The resources that would make the task achievable might include an environment free from distraction, ample time, stimming (for instance the ability to move one’s body), healthy encouragement, energy, sustained attention, managing emotions, and more. If we don’t have these resources to accomplish certain kinds of tasks, then the reminders to do those tasks are—once again—useless, and it makes perfect sense why we’d ignore them.
So what do we do?
When I meet with ADHDers who want to have more control in their lives—to improve their work, their play, their relationships—we often begin with two main goals: 1) Relearning that we’re not broken/stupid/inadequate, and 2) cultivating the inner and outer resources to be able to accomplish our goals—big and small. These are big goals, but very achievable. And when we do this work, it changes our relationship to reminders. Through this work, reminders become welcomed, useful tools; they become like gifts given by a caring friend who truly believes in us and wants us to succeed.
I teach people to use ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to accomplish the two big goals above while also improving flexible and focussed attention, relationships to time and organization, and emotions and impulse management. ACT (prounounced like the word ‘act’) is an intuitive and creative method for tuning into who we really are—who we were before all the programming—and what we truly want, and then for building the life we want with openness and curiosity. And yes, we learn to use reminders. But we learn to use the kinder reminder.
What’s the Kinder Reminder? Well, first off, it rhymes— thank you very much. But other than being terribly clever, it’s a way to flip the script on reminders and what they represent. People who are struggling with ADHD can get stuck when using reminders because they feel like needle pricks; they’re small jabs that sting, and so we recoil. A kinder reminder, one made with a conscious connection to our personal values and with reasonable expectations of what is possible—that reminder is an encouraging hand on the shoulder, a loving nudge in the right direction.
You are not alone in your search for a better life.
Through consistent practice, we can learn to treat ourselves differently and break the cycle of negative self talk that keeps us stuck. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out to an ACT therapist near you. You may be surprised what you’re capable of. (And let me know if you need a reminder.)
