Climbing the Wall of Awful

The Idea of the Week

In this first video, Brendan, who coined the term Wall of Awful, shared that there are a few options to deal with the Wall of Awful. Some of them don’t work at all, one does work but is unhealthy, and then there are a few healthier coping options. Let’s break down the not helpful nor effective options first.

Staring at the Wall: This occurs when you focus on the task but don’t take any action to complete it, either internally or externally.

Going Around the Wall: This is like flitting around the room doing other tasks, picking up a game, or scrolling through social media to distract ourselves from the emotional barrier.

Hulk Smash the Wall: Have you procrastinated on an assignment for so long, pushed it off until the last minute, then just before the deadline, you crank out the paper? That’s Hulk-smashing the wall. Hulk smashing may also involve building up enough anger and frustration that you tear through the wall and get to The Thing. This is unhealthy because it can hurt your relationships with others and with yourself.

These three responses are the most instinctive as they correlate with the body’s stress response to fight (Hulk Smash), flight (going around it), and freeze (staring).

The Practice of the Week

Jess and Brenden from How to ADHD share healthier options to Get Past the Wall of Awful, without leaving a mess from Hulk-smashing through the wall.

Put a Door in the Wall

The wall is built up of emotions and past experiences. The quickest way to reach the other side of The Thing without hurting your relationships is to put a door into the wall.

Adding a door to the wall means shifting your emotional state. So, instead of holding onto worry, dread, or fear, you induce a battle-ready spark of motivation! (This is different from the Hulk Smash because we are not leveraging anger; we’re leveraging positive emotions).

This may include motivating music, using novel experiences, exercising, or setting a time limit.

Put Handholds on the Wall

Another option is to climb the wall. To climb the wall, we’ll need to modify it with handholds.

Modifications are the strategies you pick up along the way and add to your toolbox. For instance, ADHD-ers have a hard time guesstimating how long something will take because they conflate emotions with time. Further, the longer they put something off, the bigger the task feels in their mind. If you experience this, try developing time wisdom. Next time you do the task, such as washing the dishes or doing laundry, set a timer and calculate how long it takes you. Next time you experience the Wall of Awful and it says, “Ugh, we can’t do that, it’ll take all day!”, you can pull out your journal and respond, “This actually takes us 2 hours. We can do a half-hour’s worth of it now and then schedule the rest of the time for later.”

Another modification is to set small, clear, and attainable goals. This is similar to SMART goals, only we’re going to make these goals super small! This is not the place to be ambitious.

We also need to ensure that the goal is concrete and that we define what it means to be “done” today. So, instead of “I will do the dishes,” make your goal: “I will clean 3 dishes.” If you do more, hurrah! If you only do the 3 dishes, hurrah! You’ve met your goal anyway.

Other modifications that Brenden offers include allowing time for transition between tasks and reflecting on how things have gone, so in the future, you take less time modifying the Wall of Awful.

Climbing the Wall

Climbing the Wall of Awful can sometimes look like staring at the wall or going around it from the outside. However, when we climb the wall, there is a lot of internal work going on.

Climbing the wall can involve taking one of the bricks from the wall and sitting with it. We grab the brick, holding onto our dread, and we sit with that feeling.

This could mean that we are sitting there staring at the task while we are doing the internal work, or we go do something else that is lower energy while our brains our processing the emotion.

This emotional processing can be achieved through journaling or the arts, both of which are great ways to physically work through the emotions. So, pick up a brick. What feeling arises in your body? Can you feel the emotion in your body? Where is it coming from? Hold the space and allow yourself to feel the emotions. Practice a breathing exercise as you hold the space, or tap on the emotion using our free EFT Tapping guide.

You may also try bringing up this Wall of Awful with your therapist to explore these past experiences and emotions deeper in your sessions

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