Daily routines for ADHD and otherwise neurodivergent women are essential for our mental health. Here’s how to get them started.
The story.
I settled into my chair with a cup of hot tea, a small, contented smile playing on my lips. I took a sip. Perfect. Not fifteen minutes before, I’d eased out of bed after greeting my husband with a kiss, taken a leisurely shower, then dressed.
Now, I clicked onto a nature video and engrossed myself in the content while I relaxed my way into the new day.
Record scratch. I wish. That’s how my husband starts his day. Only the videos are usually about Minecraft or movies.
Me? Until recently, my daily morning routine consisted of sliding out of bed, dressing and brushing my teeth. After doing a few obligatory stretches with zero enjoyment whatsoever, I immediately jumped into crossing off the first item on the day’s to-do list.
In other words, I started the day stressing myself out.
My husband had it right, intuitively engaging in appropriate self-care for a neurodivergent person. I, however, was behaving like a neurotypical person, and it was taking its toll.
The importance of simple, gentle daily routines for ADHD, autism, and HSPs.
If you have any kind of Neurodivergence, chances are high that you are much more sensitive than most people. The sensitivities may be physical, emotional, or both. The filtering systems in our brains are out of whack, so that we experience everything more strongly than our neurological systems are geared to take.
That’s why burnouts, meltdowns, and mental illness are so prevalent among people with ADHD and autism.
And that is why it is critical for us to start the day easy and end it at least as easy. Our brains require gentle transitions into the day and back out of it, into sleep. Like a fluffy cloud, simple daily routines carry us into and through the day. Like an anchor, they help keep us grounded so we can face life’s challenges with greater power and strength.
Simple daily routines are an essential part of self-care for neurodivergent women.
By “gentle,” I mean the routines need to reflect kindness and compassion for ourselves. Women in general are notorious for caring more for others than they do for themselves. It’s harmful enough for neurotypical women; for neurodivergent women, it can literally be deadly. We must prioritize self-care and stress relief, and establishing daily routines is a non-negotiable. They will help you, if I may invent a cute word, “happlify” your life.
They have for me.
Steps for creating a simple daily routine for neurodivergent women.
- Write down what you’re already doing for the first hour and last hour of the day.
- Assess the various steps in your current routine. Which (showering, brushing teeth) are non-negotiable? Which make your entire morning feel rushed? What are you already doing to relax for a few minutes? What are you doing that may be gradually raising your stress levels (scrolling through news headlines and social media, forcing yourself to do a hard workout)?
- As much as is realistic, eliminate the tasks and activities that make you feel rushed or stressed. Craft new systems that enable you to have a lighter burden in the morning (is there some prep you can do the evening before? Later in the morning?). Give up the non-essentials – like reading news headlines – that you know are only serving to increase you anxiety. This is an important part of building gentle daily routines to support your neurodivergent brain.
- Look over what’s left. Are you like me, and have developed some sort of resentment toward the non-negotiables like brushing teeth or stretching? How can you make them more relaxing? Play soft music while engaging in them? Pray? Repeat positive phrases in your head? Visualize your “happy place”?
- Add two or three relaxing activities to both your morning and evening routines. They can be long-ish, like drinking a hot drink while doing some light reading, or taking a warm bath. They can be brief, like two minutes of full-body stretches or taking a few deep breaths while standing outside.
Besides shifting my attitude about the mundane tasks, I added playing the guitar for ten minutes to my morning routine. I’d been ignoring the musician in me for far too long, relegating it to the margins of my day instead of prioritizing it. Now I begin my day by making music, and the tedious parts of life have become a lot more bearable.
For the love of all that is evening and sleeping.
Somehow, crafting a morning routine that nourishes and rejuvenates comes easier than doing the same with an evening routine. But when we’re talking about simple, daily routines for neurodivergent women, it’s equally important to end your day on a relaxing note as it is to begin it.
Especially if you have ADHD, with a brain that likes to accumulate all sorts of thoughts during the day and then spin them around your head at a million miles per hour the instant you lay your head on your pillow.
Regardless of your type of neurodivergence, you need as much time to transition into sleep as you do into a calm and fulfilling day. An ideal evening routine will begin about at least an hour before bed, and exclude any use of screens. I don’t care if you have blue light-filtering glasses – stimulating your brain with entertainment or information shortly before trying to sleep is not going to help you.
I like to include either coloring in a coloring book or zendoodling as part of my gentle evening routine, with relaxing music playing in the background.
This inexpensive PDF provides more ideas on what to include in both a morning and evening routine, as well as a blank template for writing out your routines.
Simple daily routines for neurodivergent women: are yours as gentle as they could be?
Since learning about the importance of calm transitions for autistic women, as well as women with ADHD, somehow the middle of my days have become more streamlined. Having an easier time getting to sleep and beginning my days more calmly give my nervous system a critical reset. It’s easier to face challenges, to prioritize, and to get done the things that need to get done.
How about you? What are you doing to refresh yourself with daily routines? Let us know in the comments!
