154. Stop Making Everything Harder Than It Needs To Be

If you’ve ever taken a basic task and somehow turned it into a life-or-death project, this episode is for you. That “why is everything so intense?” feeling isn’t proof you’re responsible — it’s usually a sign your default mode is hard. 

In today's episode, I’m naming what’s actually driving that pattern and why it shows up so much for high-achieving SLPs, especially when you add ADHD to the mix. And I’m giving you one simple question to start loosening your grip today. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn: 

• Why “hard” often feels like “better” (even when it’s just burning you out) 
• How over-preparing can be a sneaky attempt to avoid judgment or criticism 
• How ADHD/EF challenges (novelty, complexity, rabbit holes, time blindness) fuel hard mode
• A grounding question to interrupt the spiral: “How would I do this if it had to be easy?” 
• How this pattern impacts energy, relationships, and decision fatigue — and why it matters

Want support untangling this in real life? I can help. Book a free consult today.

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Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Hello, podcast listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 154. I'm just jumping right in, by the way.

Here we go. I am talking to those of you who have ever noticed that they have this amazing ability to turn a very or relatively simple task into something massively huge.

Or maybe you are somebody who takes what isn't necessarily a simple task, but is something that is, you know, a routine, something that you do, you've done before, and yet every time you go to do it, you suddenly make it into this.

This huge, challenging, like life or death scenario, right? Or maybe it for you shows up as like making a decision and spending all this time going through what those options are and overthinking the different possibilities and the different outcomes, right?

Researching every possible scenario. And we tell ourselves when we're doing this, we tell ourselves, we believe that this is us working hard.

This is us working, you know, giving it our best and being productive and responsible. And yet I have experienced, learned, and I coach lots of women who have experienced and discovered that they have actually been making things way better.

harder than they need to be. Okay. Now, if you are listening to this, you could be somebody who has been doing this and you didn't even realize that this is what was happening.

Because for a very long time, that was me. I took everything very, very seriously. And it was, you know, every project or report or session note was, you know, in my mind, I didn't realize that, but it was like make or break.

would put my all into it, not realizing that it wasn't necessary, that it wasn't necessarily even, that it wasn't necessary, that it wasn't always helpful to do that or productive or beneficial.

And it took me a really long time to discover that there were other options available. Okay. So you might be somebody who has been doing this all along and just,

Hasn't realized that it is something that you are choosing and that it is something that is holding you back.

Okay. Then there may be some of you who are very well aware that this is happening. You, you know, you take any task and make it way bigger than it needs to be.

Make it way more serious, more intense than it needs to be. You're aware of it. You just don't know why you do it and you don't know how to do it differently.

You don't know what else to do, right? So either way, whichever category you fall into, and maybe you're in the third category where you don't do this.

I'm going to guess you aren't in that category if you're listening to this podcast episode. But if you're sort of like, well, do I do that?

Maybe just listen in to this episode and, you know, take a look at maybe your past, your day or your past week, or look ahead as you are approaching this day and look for ways that maybe some.

Some of this might be showing up for you, okay? So the reason why we're talking about this, why this matters, is because it's fairly obvious, right?

But this pattern can result in burnout, massive, chronic exhaustion, resentment, anxiety, overwhelm, and can, like I said, lead to burnout, where we are in this cycle of, okay, I got to get through this day.

I got to get through this project. I just got to get this thing done. I got to get this thing done.

We're sacrificing sleep. We are sacrificing time with the people that we love, and we're sacrificing time on the things that we enjoy doing.

Our relationships are suffering as a result. We're disappointing people. We are... Not that disappointing people is a bad thing, by the way, but that's another topic.

We are, you know, people who and relationships that matter to us, things that we want to be showing up for and we want to be present with them, right?

But when we're in this pattern of making everything way harder than it needs to be, we then are often in that fight or flight mode where we're like, no, no, sorry, I can't talk about this right now.

I have to get this thing done. And when you show up like that over and over and over, it fractures the relationships, right?

It also can lead to you feeling guilty and, you know, disappointed and resentful about who you've let down or why can't I just have the time for the things that I want to do, right?

So it impacts our well-being. It impacts our... Our physical health, our mental health, our emotional health, our spiritual health, our relationships, our identity, our relationship with others, our relationship with ourselves, right?

It also can result in things like decision fatigue. Because now if we're hyping something up, chances are we're making more decisions about it.

We are telling ourselves that there's more things to choose through. We're overthinking the decisions that we have to make that didn't really even need all that much thought, right?

Should I use this font or that font? Should it be spaced this way or should I do bullet points, right?

So those types of things can result in the decision fatigue. It can absolutely result in mental noise, mental clutter, that overwhelm, that constant to-do list that's running through your head.

And the worst part about this is that so Well, many of us think that this is how it is.

This is what we signed up for. This is normal, right? And yet we're walking around and we're telling people, we're posting in groups.

We are communicating with colleagues, friends who are SLPs or friends who aren't SLPs and, you know, fellow private practice owners, family members about like this stress that we're feeling and how much this, you know, what this heavy load is that we are carrying without recognizing that there are other options.

And when I say other options, I don't even necessarily mean other careers, other settings, other schedules, okay? What I'm talking about is other ways of looking at this, other ways of approaching your tasks, okay?

And I'm going to, I'm planning on doing a two-part episode. So if this is resonating with you, make sure you come back for next week's episode where I'm going to be talking about this a little bit deeper.

So what I want to offer today is a few reasons why this happens in the effort or in an effort to help give you some ideas of, well, number one, to challenge the way that you approach tasks and just get you on board with the idea that it doesn't have every task doesn't have to be life or death.

OK, and then if you can start listening to like why this happens and are open to the ideas of how there could be a different way, next week's episode is going to be for you.

All right. So first thing I want to say about this, I believe that one of the reasons why we do this, there are lots of reasons in my.

But one of the reasons why I think we do this is because we have this misconception that hard means better, better quality, more value, right?

The harder you work, the better the outcome, the greater your success, right? And we have learned this through so many different ways, so many different places, so many different, you know, in so many different ways, okay?

But we have these beliefs that, okay, the longer it takes, the harder I work, the more effort it requires, the more complicated it is, the more legitimate it feels.

And the bigger the rush at the end when we've gotten it done, right? But that is not always true.

For example, doing your invoices, if you are a private practice owner, doing your billing doesn't have. The outcome of that is not better because you pushed your limits to see how quickly you could get it done and how many you could do in one sitting.

Right. Writing out an evaluation report that includes every single observation and detail that you clocked during the eval that you know is something worth paying attention to as the SLP for this client.

And you believe, right, that putting all of that into the report is better. Well, I want to challenge you with says who?

We may have been taught that either explicitly or implicitly in undergrad, grad, maybe in different internships, externships, work settings, even younger.

Right. Might have also kind of come up from early ed or middle school, high school. Lots of different ways.

I do think that our culture, the culture of our field, perpetuates this for sure. But we need to challenge that belief, that assumption that the harder it is, the better job I did.

Right? What if simple and ease could actually be just as good, if not better? Think about that. All right?

The second point that I want to offer here is this belief that by preparing and working really hard and giving this our all, we are essentially protecting ourselves from being judged, rejected, or criticized.

Right? So the more I research, the more likely it is that I will convince whoever's reading this, that they will see my point and understand what I'm saying, and they will see me as a really good SLP.

The more I plan out my sessions, the better the clients will think I am as a clinician. And so then the better I will look to others and the better I will feel.

Like, I feel like I'm doing a great job that way, right? The more resources that I can come up with for this diagnosis, this population, this client, this colleague, the more serious they will take me.

The better, you know, the more they will know that I know what I'm doing, right? But what if all of that were just false narratives, things that we've just been telling ourselves along the way?

the Thank that we just adopted as truth and never thought to stop and question it, right? Because no matter what you do, you are never able to guarantee that somebody's opinion of you will be the way that you want it to be.

You cannot change someone else's mind about you when you are coming at it from this approach, right? You, and quite frankly, like I tell my kids this, and I've probably said this to some clients, I tell this to myself, it's like someone else's opinion of you is none of your business.

It just isn't. You can never truly know what that person is thinking. And the energy that we put towards trying to portray ourselves a certain way and to get approval from others and be seen as a valid, valuable, trustworthy.

the expert in our field, right? But we, number one, we will never know what those people are thinking. You will never truly know.

So if you're always going to wonder, right, why waste all that energy in that regard? And two, why does their opinion matter any more than your own?

Why does somebody else's opinion of you matter more than your opinion of you? Right? Okay. So I want you to ask yourself, am I doing this?

Am I overcompensating? Over, am I, you know, overpreparing, overperforming because I'm seeking safety or something similar to that? Okay.

And then a third reason why we do this, make things way harder than they need to be, is, this is for my neurodivergent listeners, right?

Is that the ADHD brain or the neurodivergent brain loves. To make things really hard and also likes novelty. So when you have those things combined, like if you look at, look at both of those pieces, the brains, the neurodivergent brain, the neurodivergent brain's desire for novelty and the neurodivergent brain's desire for complexity.

And you put both of those things together in one scenario, you absolutely have a recipe for, I was going to say disaster, but you've got a recipe for hard, for sure.

You are creating hard. So for so many of us who have ADHD, suspect we have ADHD, when things are simple, that is boring.

Like that is not motivating. That is not enticing. And so we can take something that is simple and overcomplicate it.

brain brain. Thank you. We also could take something that simple and just avoid it and then go for the things that are really hard and make them even harder than they need to be, right?

We also love to create, ironically, so many of us love to create a plan, create a system, create spreadsheets to track things.

All these things that seem to many people to be like, oh, that's very type A, right? And yet, once those things are in place, we're not actually using them or using them effectively or using them consistently, okay?

So ask yourself, what role might my ADHD be playing? And I also want to offer, if you're listening to this and you're someone who doesn't have ADHD, you do have executive functioning skills, right?

You do, right? Spoiler alert. If you have a brain. You need to utilize your executive functioning skills to do just about anything and everything, okay?

And if you have executive functioning skills, so far it should be all of you who are listening, your executive functioning skills will be impacted in situations where you are stressed, tired, emotional, know, dysregulated, fill in the blanks, okay?

So these patterns and these strategies, whether you have ADHD or not, can still hold true for those of you who are listening.

And for those of you with ADHD, they will probably ring even truer, right? We also, with a neurodivergent brain, we also tend to get very pulled in.

We tend to get pulled in into different rabbit holes of exploring this. Exploring that. And then when you factor in time blindness, time awareness, as being a challenge, we're not always aware even that this is happening when it's happening.

So to be able to like pull ourselves out of it, you have to recognize it first. But if we aren't sensing the passage of time, if we aren't looking up and around and actually checking what time it is, if we aren't stopping and thinking about how much time do we have available, how much time do I think this is going to take?

How much time do I want to spend on this? If we're not factoring that in at all and we're just getting into it and then going down these rabbit holes, hours could pass.

We could look up and be in a very different place than we were when we started and yet have accomplished next to nothing.

Okay, so there's absolutely a role. That there is a role that ADHD plays here for sure. So I want you to ask yourself, is this something that I have experienced and how could I see or how could it be possible that it is my ADHD or executive functioning breakdowns that are getting in the way?

Okay. I remember, I still remember where I was when I was in coach training and learned that that pattern of making things harder than they needed to be was a, one of the, like a very ADHD characteristic.

I remember exactly where I was when I learned that it blew my mind. had no idea. And then in sort of like looking back, right.

I could kind of reflect and it's. Things started to make a lot more sense, for sure. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that if you make something harder than it needs to be, that automatically means you have ADHD.

And I'm not saying that every person with ADHD makes things harder than they need to be. And of course, as you know, but I will go ahead and say it, this episode and everything that is in this episode is just my own experience, my lived experience, my professional experience as a coach.

But of course, I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, and clinical therapist in any of that way. So this is not meant to give you any type of advice.

Okay. All right. So hopefully, those three patterns, those three explanations of why we tend to make things harder than they need to be, is helping you to start to explore how this might be showing up for you.

Okay. So here is what I want you to do this week. When you find yourself in or approaching a task that

It seems to be difficult. I want you to stop and ask yourself, how would I do this if it had to be easy?

If this thing had to be easy, how would I do it? I love that question. I would love for you to ask yourself that question and see what comes up.

And of course, if this episode or any episode really hits too close to home and you're realizing that you've been in these patterns, you've been living in the hard mode for a while, please know that you don't have to do this alone.

This is exactly the kind of work that I do with my coaching clients and I would love to talk you through how I could help coach you through it together.

The link to book a free consult is always in the show notes. All right. That's it for today's episode.

Thanks for tuning in and I will see you back here for next week's episode. This awesome, yet slightly triggering topic.

I'll see you then.