Clear your head: tips for less stress

Our author has so much on his mind that he pays too little attention to some. And then in turn is easily distracted. Man! His idea: sort it once, please.

TEST OBJECT

Roland Rödermund, author – that's how he thinks.

TEST ENVIRONMENT

The world in your head when the world is upside down.

MISSION

Focus, Roland, focus!

The initial situation roughly summarized: I recently told a friend about this new restaurant where I had dinner with a friend: "We absolutely have to go there!" She replies: "Um, there you were with me …" Unpleasant, but unfortunately typical: Sometimes I do not only miss last names and PIN numbers, but complete situations.

"I'm a messy me"

Then there was the day when I forgot my travel bag on the train to Berlin in the morning and left my wallet on the bench on the platform in the evening before my return trip … I was distracted, had quickly spoken a voice message, maybe Googled orphaned dogs new horror movie trailers and a poem written in my head at the same time. I can do it! But sometimes something falls by the wayside.

This is not a new development that I could explain with the overload in an ever faster world. My disgust was confirmed early on: "Roland often distracts others and likes to be distracted himself." That was the conclusion of my primary school certificates, and it is still valid today. I'm a mess. These are those who are enthusiastic about everything, wandering between topics, interests and ideas without ever sticking to one thing. My thoughts overtake each other like on a multi-lane highway at rush hour. Almost every day I lose and forget something. And even if, after my trip to Berlin, I was able to pick up both objects at the DB lost and found office a week later, with more luck than brains: It can't go on like this.

Being a little confused is okay, sounds more amusing as a self-description than "With me everything has its place". Nevertheless, I would like to have a clearing up action for my head, a sorting guide for my thoughts. Before I start, I go to the neuropsychiatric center in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel to be tested for AD (H) D, an attention deficit disorder. It is not only children who suffer from this: 60 percent of those affected take the symptoms with them into adulthood, where they cause problems such as lack of concentration or inner restlessness. Maybe I would just like to receive an official apology for my constant driving behavior: "I'm listening to you. But my ADHD has something against it – oh, look, a squirrel!"

Attention Deficit Disorder – Yes or No?

On the table in front of me in the small practice room is a stack of questionnaires about my "condition". And they get down to business. I am squeezed out 50 pages about my current psychological stress, complaints as a child and inner unrest. A colleague explains to me that after these 50 pages there is still a neuropsychological attention test for sustained attention, as well as a hearing test.

Then I get hectic in front of the computer screen: I have to remember rapidly changing colors and shapes or recognize structures in a very short time. There are lots of different colored circles, triangles, squares, and I should remember in less than two seconds whether their arrangement has changed in the following picture.

Uff, done. I feel like I did after the math exams: exhausted and insecure. In a few days I will receive my result, I leave the practice feeling a little queasy. Suddenly, being chaotic feels so … serious.

Opening up – the prerequisite for change

In the meantime, I would like to actively clean up and make an appointment with Christine Dohler, who, as a systemic coach and meditation trainer, helps people find their inner balance. Because of Corona, our meeting has to take place via Skype. Satisfied, I squint at my desk, which I've littered a lot less in the last few days, everything has its place now. But my coach has a completely different approach: "I go from the inside out," she says. "When your inside is sorted, it also projects outwards." I see. Then we start with a meditation …

Now it's not like I've never done this before. I've also done autogenic training before. And a walk on the Elbe calms me down anyway. But I know that while I am getting jittery and thinking about later points in the day, my thoughts jump from here to there and there. And again there is a complete mess in my head – where was I again?

I sit in front of my laptop, close my eyes, hear what Christine is saying … She draws my attention to my breath, and later to different parts of the body. Then she says nothing for a few minutes. I feel how my body sits there, how my breath moves it slightly, and then my thoughts wander off again, very slowly and only in one direction, out into the world. Although I am calm and look at the corona chaos from a safe distance, a tear suddenly rolls down my cheek. Hey, that's more intense now than I would like! And what does that have to do with internal order? "You open up," says Christine, "that is a good prerequisite for change."

She gives me tasks, but no self-structuring tips, as I actually expected, but a few meditation exercises. She recommends that I combine these with physical exercises because you don't sit there lost when you can feel your body.

The test result

In the evening I read that there are other aids in Zen Buddhism that can keep you engaged in meditation, for example a trick question, called a koan, which cannot be answered with logical thinking and is assigned to a student. So: "How does a hand clap sound?" Or: "Where are you when a bird sings?" I like that. And although this is certainly not in the sense of any master, I choose the koan with the bird.

So I now do my ritual every morning: After getting up, I go to the plank position for two minutes, the forearm support. Then I try to just watch my breath while meditating for twelve minutes, which sometimes works better, sometimes worse, but still makes me calmer. Then I force myself to do 20 pushups and meditate on the bird for another twelve minutes. Where am I when he sings? Am i the bird The melody? I have not yet solved the riddle, and in between I get frustrated. But after a little over a week I clearly notice that the pace on my thought highway is slowing down. When meditating, it is, presumably because I feel my body intensely through the sports exercises, as if the thoughts were gradually floating in the back of my head. Where they can be better endured.

The test result is there. The psychotherapist Hanna Siemoneit evaluated my AD (H) D questionnaires. She explains to me that my responses to inattentiveness and memory problems are the same as those of adult AD (H) D patients. A psychological interview is needed for one hundred percent clarification. My brain rattles off immediately and then gets stuck with a question: "How was I able to‘ become a journalist? " Hanna Siemoneit sees it this way: "You can also get something out of AD (H) S. Your job has to do with creativity and speed in your head, that actually fits very well. And the tests suggest that you have developed very good coping strategies to have." We will then postpone the detailed clarification to Corona.

ROLAND RÖDERMUND has lost nothing in the past few weeks. But like almost all of them, he was hardly on the road.