Julie & Jel Legg discuss the complexities of navigating Christmas with ADHD, focusing on how ADHD-related traits influence experiences of the holiday season.
They reflect on how their perspectives on Christmas have shifted throughout their lives—from childhood excitement to the more nuanced, sometimes overwhelming experience of adulthood. They chat about how ADHD tendencies like impulsivity, overwhelm, and sensory sensitivity can be triggered during the festive season. The conversation explores both the challenges and the strategies to make Christmas more enjoyable and less stressful.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Evolving Relationship with Christmas: Childhood Christmases were full of joy and sensory stimulation (e.g., lights, toys, and TV) without the responsibility of organizing events. As adults, the nature of Christmas changed, becoming a time of social obligation, gift-giving stress, and sensory overload.
- Common ADHD Triggers at Christmas: Overwhelm: Managing shopping, gift-giving, and social interactions all at once can cause emotional and mental shutdowns. Sensory Overload: Crowded shopping centres, family gatherings, and heightened noise and lights can feel overstimulating. Small Talk and Social Pressure: Family gatherings often bring an expectation of small talk, which can be draining and unengaging for those with ADHD.
- Christmas Strategies: Sensory Management: Recognizing when to take a step back to avoid sensory overload. Managing Expectations: Letting go of the idea of a “perfect Christmas” and instead prioritizing rest and well-being.
- Simplifying Plans: Reducing the complexity of holiday obligations, such as opting for simpler meals or rethinking the need for extravagant decorations or gifts.
- Reflections on the Holiday Season: The “all-or-nothing” nature of ADHD can lead to extreme preparation efforts or complete shutdowns. The impulsivity of ADHD can show up in buying unnecessary or excessive gifts, and anxiety over family dynamics and small talk, can make gatherings feel exhausting.
LINKS
- Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024)
- ADHDifference – Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In today’s episode we’ll be talking about ADHD Christmas. Yep, it’s perfect timing, it’s … Christmas is fast approaching.
JEL: Yes. Lots and lots of mixed thoughts about Christmas. And when going over the ideas for this podcast we sort of worked out that our relationship to Christmas has changed entirely from when we were children, to when we’re young adults. Escaping the family for the first time and defining our own lives, through to being parents ourselves. And now to being middle-aged, I think is the word, with all the children between us now adults and living their own lives. So the relationship between Christmas has evolved and changed over time. However, we’ve always had ADHD through that entire process and that’s what got some of the thoughts going on that.
JULIE: Yeah, Christmas is a time you know, when you think about all the ADHD triggers that trip us up you know, it all really, the lead up to Christmas it’s all piled upon us. We’ve got the overwhelm of Christmas shopping. We’ve got the small talk that’s going to be there on this enforced family gathering day. There’s yeah anxiety about whether the social interaction, or the big day, or oh it’s just a huge big blast really isn’t it.
JEL: It is but perhaps if we go back to the first Christmases when we were kids. Everything you’ve just described wasn’t our problem. It was our parents’ problem. So, first of all, just for the record, we are not religious however Christmas is a religious festival. That’s primarily what it is. So that’s just a heads up to everyone out there you know who is religious. I acknowledge what Christmas is. It’s a religious festival time of year and that is I think number one, even though that’s not my relationship to it. So, with that aside and acknowledged and respected, what we’re left with for most people is it’s a commercial, highly commercialized period. It’s an enforced holiday for a lot of, not everyone, but a lot of people. It’s something we all share as a time we all go through it. So starting as kids, I love Christmas and I had Christmases in the UK. We’ll touch on that later, obviously we’re in New Zealand now. But as a kid, Christmas in UK, in the UK just for me was fantastic, you know. It’s grey. The days are short. It’s … you can’t go out and play. It’s cold. It’s miserable. The Christmas lights, the trees, the food, the treats. In the ‘ 70s you know, we didn’t get lots of treats, and lollies, and sweets, and things but at Christmas suddenly they’re everywhere. It’s fantastic. The TV was brilliant too because there used to be lots of great films and shows on and it was just hugely entertaining all day long. As a kid you have TV on in the background and you’re playing with whatever you were playing with like Lego and stuff like that. And I loved it because we got presents. It was new toys, great food and it was wonderful. And so yeah, no problem there. And your Christmases would have been very different.
JULIE: Yeah, well it’s summer in New Zealand of course. It always involved a big lunch and then going for walks really. So walks on the beach, sleeping off a big Christmas dinner, very excited with toys and everything like that as a child. I’m going to fast forward this to more young adult years when, for me, I had a slightly alternative view on Christmas. I’d make Christmas presents for example and for me, I didn’t know I had ADHD at the time, but I’ve always had a yeah alternative view on Christmas. I’d prefer to make things because the joy it gave me crafting and painting or sewing or whatever it may be was far greater than going into a shop and buying something. And so a lot of the Christmas prep for me was actually just a really good excuse to find another hobby. So I really enjoyed that process as a young adult.
JEL: Yeah, I was just thinking my eternal relationship with Christmas always comes back to, and we’re talking the commercial Christmas here not the religious Christmas, as a time for fun for kids. Being a kid it was fun and later in life having children, it’s all about the children. And so I found one of my things, my ADHD, is that I retain a childlike attitude to a lot of things. I can see the wonderment and joy with toys still and playing and just adventures and imagination and all the things that you … I don’t think it’s really healthy not to let go of that child inside you.
JULIE: Yeah, you know, And the same too I guess, you know Christmas Eve, staying up late wrapping presents, and all the fun we have with fake snow and you know, as Santa always writes notes back to the children using our left hand, you know the old tricks. That was a blast too and would’ be absolutely knackered come Christmas morning because we’d stay up all night using our imagination. That was fun. That absolutely was fun.
JEL: Particularly when the children are young perhaps. I can’t put an exact age on it but when they still have that wonderment. I don’t know is that six, seven, maybe eight or so, up to around that age? And so in the process of choosing wrapping and presenting, and seeing them open presents you are that child again. You can imagine yourself in that space. It’s tougher once they get into the teenage years, the in-betweener years.
JULIE: And fast forward now to, in our situation, our boys are grown up. They’re young adults, flown, long flown the coup and our relationship to Christmas changes yet again. One of the biggest things that we’ve done in recent years, and it might seem a little bit … oh what’s the name of that? Oh scrooge-ist. Scrooge. Scrooge-ist. Well, we’re being a bit scrooge-ist, made-up word that I’ll use from now on. We decided … we decided not to actually give out presents on Christmas. We didn’t like, undiagnosed, we didn’t like the overwhelm, and the cost, and the consumerism of playing that game. And maybe that’s part of our alternative thinking. But we went “This is silly.” We ended up buying presents, or receiving presents, that we really didn’t need from … You know, it shouldn’t have been about the money and so we put a halt to Christmas gift giving. And that doesn’t mean that we’re not generous. We’re very generous with lots of love and thoughtfulness but not necessarily on Christmas Day. So we like the idea that we can give, and make those phone calls, and see people with lots of love, but not just keep it to a special day.
JEL: To be fair, in our family we have siblings a similar age to us and Julie’s parents are still alive so it wasn’t actually us that managed to force this through because we are not the patriarch and the matriarch at the top. It took a few years of just sort of realization and it was driven by your parents eventually in the end. As they went further into retirement and looked at the cost of this season and so we still have this thing where our parents are kind of in charge, not really in charge you know what I mean, but we still have this respect and love and look up. And so they did to be fair kind of really get that in place, you know.
JULIE: Yeah which is really … I really appreciate that.
JEL: That does really actually trigger into something else and sorry if it’s yeah … we still look to our parents who are in their 80s as the matriarchs and patriarchs. And there embedded in the whole principle of a family Christmas get together is you can be in your 50s, you can have been gone through the whole parenting, yet you still remain a child, and so you’re not fully in charge. And when Christmas comes around, there’s a part of it for us, well for me as an ADHDer, that reminds me that what am I? Am I the child going into Christmas, or am I the adult, or the parent? Well the kids aren’t even around anymore. They’re in other countries. Or we’re not quite the patriarch and matriarch at the top. And I think when you get to the top, we don’t have grandchildren in the family at all, or nieces or nephews who are grandchildren. I don’t know what the word would be for those. But we haven’t reached the top yet where we can sort of go back to square one and say “It’s all about the kids.” Imagine being 80, it’s all “Ohhh the grandies are around!” I could think that would be glorious, for me the heart of what Christmas is about. So yeah, Jules is right. We don’t give each other presents for birthdays or Christmases or anything, because from an ADHD perspective we’ve spotted on quite early on, before we were diagnosed, there’s an incredible amount of pressure there. Should a birthday present be more special and bigger than a Christmas one? Christmas one, you get to give in front of everyone “Shows how much I love my wife how expensive this present is. What did I get back? It’s going to be a difficult year.” It’s just silly. You know you can take a lot of pressure away, huge anxiety and stress from an ADHD perspective, by side stepping that. And so now when we go to a Christmas we bring our, or host a Christmas, it’s all about love. And a great thing is to just bring a dish towards it.
JULIE: Yeah, and that’s how we’ve done it actually in our family for many years. It’s always a pot luck Christmas lunch and basically you bring what you really want to eat and enough to share with others. So that means everyone you know, whether it’s vegetarians in the family, or great meat-eaters, you bring what you want. And it all works out in the end. And that … and I enjoy that because we still can throw the yummy bits in but it … yeah.
JEL: And that’s culturally that’s probably a far more established stronger thing in Australia and New Zealand than it is in Britain. In Britain I don’t recall ever having a pot luck Christmas dinner. I think whoever hosts ends up getting lumped with the entire process which is pretty stressful. So, you know with ADHD, whatever stage you’re at in life, whether you’re listening to this as a young adult who’s perhaps 18, 19, 20 that sort of age and you’ve done the obligatory turn up for lunch, or you still living at home. And I can remember being this person. As soon as lunch was finished – zoom, you’re off around to your friend’s place. And to hang out with your mates and have your own Christmas. Doesn’t matter what stage you’re at in life, it does have a lot of triggers and it’s a real challenging time to get through. So I think we’ve worked really hard at trying to minimize those triggers around Christmas. And this was before we’re diagnosed and so it was a natural process. So now it’s not a triggering time for us. And as Jules’ made up the word scrooge-ist, we have no decorations. We have no tree. We have no presents to give or receive, and that sounds terribly miserable but it isn’t. It’s not at all.
JULIE: No, and the beauty come Christmas Day, just the quietness of the roads. We live rural and it’s even quieter than usual. For us just that sense of “Oh thank goodness it’s Christmas” because as soon as Christmas lunch is over, or at least on Boxing Day, it’s like “Right. On with it again,” and it’s just that, almost like a compulsory pause after winding up the year and you know, all the pressures, whether it be at work or all the stress leading up to Christmas.
JEL: And there’s no heading to the Boxing Day sales. Never has been. No, not for us. Can’t imagine anything worse. I mean the … we should always bring, we’ve got to bring this back to ADHD. Christmas shopping, the stress of Christmas shopping and how busy it gets, and the car parking, and all that stuff leading up to Christmas Day. Then you get this day off and then Boxing Day you’re back straight into buying the same things you bought a couple of days later for half the price. With all the maddening crowds and everything going on it’s just the trigger and the triggers involved in that. And the stress is horrendous for an ADHD brain well, for our brains, because you just can’t move. You can’t think. You can’t … I can’t imagine anything worse. So avoiding all of that is a pretty good way of not yeah, of dealing with things really.
JULIE: I ask you Jel, so we’re kind of in control of our Christmases really. What strategies or what advice would you give to those with ADHD who are looking at Christmas Day with much excitement and an equal measures dread. And they have to go to this family gathering or they have to do something perhaps, or they have to travel some distance for Christmas Day, whatever could be quite triggering for them. What would you suggest?
JEL: Well … I’m no expert. I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist or counsellor or therapist. I’m none of those things. But stuff I was only reading recently really resonates and it’s the stuff we practice. Your biggest problem is probably when entering that situation with family. You don’t get to choose your family. So with their ADHD you may have members of the family who dismiss it, or belittle it, or whatever negative reactions to it and don’t treat you with the kind of, the way you want to be treated, to feel safe. So really plan very carefully your entrance, the expectations are how long you’ll be there, plan your exit. So if you can be there for just 2 or 3 hours to get through the meal and give your best, and share your love with everyone as best you can, and then exit. And have an exit plan that’s agreed and understood particularly understood by the hosts. And when people bring up things that you … it’s this grey rock thing we’ve talked about before. If people start conversations you don’t want to be involved with or going down the wrong path, simply “That’s very interesting, of course,” and then sort of try to just move away and have a conversation with someone else. You’ve got to minimize the chance of any escalation because you’re under a huge amount of pressure not to kick off, not to have a moment, not to spoil Christmas Day for everyone. So yeah, that whole concept of going into that, and I’ve been in that situation, is not one that fills you with joy because it’s Christmas Day and you’ve got a right to enjoy it too. But you sometimes you just have to accept it’s not fully under your control. So you have to look at how you control your reaction to it. But really the most important thing is not to have an open-ended day. Don’t agree to go and stay for a couple of nights, Christmas Eve, Christmas night. Don’t agree to be the last to leave or expect to be the last to leave. If you’re hosting, well you’d have to really sort of lay out what your expectations were. That’s a tricky one but it’s all about having, it’s like a battle plan. You know that there’s an expression, I love bringing up expressions in these. I think ‘no battle plan survives the first day of engagement with the enemy’ or something like that. Which is so true. So you can’t expect your plan to work perfectly but sticking to your plan even if it seems to start to go wrong is still the best thing to do. If Uncle Joe is starting to really trying to rib you, and dig you, and rub you up the wrong way, and getting you angry, and just for a bit fun, you just got to exit his space. You’ve got to yeah, exit the space. With grace. With grace. It doesn’t have to be this battle all the time. Yeah, “Oh Uncle Joe, sorry. Oh hang on I’m busting. I need to go to the loo. Sorry Uncle Joe.” Gone. That … most situations could survive that I mean that’s a great excuse and stay there for quite a while. [And Uncle Joe will be waiting for you.] Well, stay there for a while, recompose yourself.
JULIE: My thoughts on it would be you know, it’s been a heck of a year, don’t take Christmas Day personally. You know, go in there mindfully going it is your day. You’re just going to be a superhero for the day and you’re going to brush off those moments that would normally trigger you. Maybe be a bit more forgiving you know, to certain situations and make it through. And know at the end of Christmas Day it is your time. Try and be yourself as much as you can with kindness and grace, and that’s being an ADHD self too. It’s not all about you have to mask on Christmas Day.
JEL: I think I’m going to actually yeah, I’m going to challenge that because you may have to mask on that day. And we have practiced and done a lot of masking. That’s one of the things about ADHD. You may have to do a bit of masking if you’ve got particular people that have really going to …. Oh, okay.
JULIE: To clarify that, I mean we’ve done lots of episodes on masking, overwhelm, anxiety a whole bunch of things. There’s a difference between masking and a thing called the grey rock theory. And so masking is when you feel that you have to have this mask on and that’s kind of the only way you’re going to be accepted by putting a mask on and being someone that you’re not really. The grey rock method is slightly different. That’s when you intentionally mask for a very short period of time just to get through a situation. So I’m not talking hours and hours and hours. We’re just talking momentary times when you feel you need a tool in your tool belt to get through maybe a conversation.
JEL: Good differentiator. They’re subtly different but they’re quite different. Yeah even as I’m thinking through the process yeah, yeah you’re quite right. There is a difference. We’ve touched on well, we’re talking about going into family situations but of course there are lots of other Christmas scenarios for a lot of people. Lots of people need to work on Christmas Day and so you know, that may be great. You may love the idea. You’ve worked on Christmas days before haven’t you?
JULIE: I have and in two parts. One when I was younger, I was doing a waitressing at a big hotel and they did the Christmas banquet. And that was fun. I enjoyed that. It was the buzz of everyone else having a good time. I really enjoyed it and yeah, I made it home back to my own Christmas dinner late, but I didn’t mind that experience. That versus I was doing social media for some clients and that you know, 24/7 social media and also on Christmas Day. And I remember we were camping and I had to literally go and find a hill to climb up to get some Wi-Fi reception so I could check social media. Just so I can monitor it making sure nothing disastrous had happened and I didn’t like that one. But I really felt that you know, my Christmas Day was ripped away from me. Yeah, it only took half an hour but just that idea that one, the waitress scenario was full of energy and positivity and the other one was a very solo act. [Quite sad really.] Yeah, of climbing a hill going gosh you know, I wonder if anyone even notices? Of course they wouldn’t. So yeah, working on Christmas Day is an interesting one.
JEL: So, we’re making the assumption here that people listening share our views that it can be a bit stressy going into an enforced day that is not like any other day. But actually, you might be the opposite. You may be someone who adores Christmas Day, adores family time and can’t be in it because you need to work. Or, you maybe sort of otherwise incapacitated in hospital or something. So you know, what can we say there is other than well 364 days a year when hopefully you can have some quality time. Which kind of then goes full circle back to one of the things we struggle with Christmas, and birthdays, and certain occasions, is we will be catching up with people but we do love to catch up with people mostly one-on-one on any other random day of the year. And for us it’s always been the case with friends and family, rather than gathering everyone together and having shallow conversations that are pointless, we love all of them equally and we love the different quality time we have of each person and the great conversations we have when we don’t have everyone else around.
JULIE: So therefore, Christmas Day is a day, it’s not the only day. And so if you can’t be with your family or loved ones on Christmas Day, there’s the day after. There’s the week after. There’s two months before. And I think it’s just sharing love and that personal one-on-one time to really have those great conversations. And you know, we talk about the small talk on Christmas Day and shallow conversations that can be a bit frustrating. When you’ve got the whole family together and in some cases it can be in very large numbers. And you’re still talking about the weather and the rugby results in the weekend. That can be quite frustrating for us. But again, taking it in our stride saying it’s just a day. It is just a day.
JEL: And you get asked the question “How’s work?” It’s Christmas Day and you’re asking me how work is? Jules touched on something much earlier and I’m trying to remember what it was now. It’s to do with the craziness and all everything building up, and then Christmas Day can be a strangely quiet day. I want to touch on one of the things with ADHD with me is over stimulus, too much stimulus. Too much going on. You know, ironically, I think Christmas Day is a bit like the eye of a hurricane. You’ve got it all going on before and then so much it going on after now, far more than it used to be. I mean the sales, Boxing Day sales, they start Christmas day now. So try … don’t go online if you want to avoid the sales because they come at you from Christmas morning before anyone’s even looked at what been bought and given. But with Christmas Day you … I know what it was. In New Zealand because it was sunny and lovely you go to the beach or have an outdoor meal and you go for a walk. Well actually ironically, in the middle of a cold English winter, it was very common to go for a walk in the afternoon too, even if it was miserable and a bit rainy. Because you’re walking off your dinner and I always love the fact there were so few cars, and there were no buses, and no trains. That was a big thing in Britain. The trains don’t run. Everything shuts down. The shops are shut. And the big one was the pubs are shut. It’s just amazing. It’s one of those Covid lockdown days that happens once every year. And when you go for a walk, and there’s one day even in miserable old England I’m sorry to say, that people will say “Morning, or afternoon. Happy Christmas.” Any other day they just walk past you and ignore you and stare at the ground. So it was just a lovely day to go out and walk around your neighbourhood without all the stimuli that you get on any other day, you know. So, I think that’s quite a special thing if you get a chance to do that. It’s funny enough the day, think of it as an antidote for everything leads up to it and comes after, until it settles down about a week later. Of course, then a week later you’ve got New Year’s which is kind of like Christmas repeating itself all again, isn’t it.
JULIE: Oh no, that’s a different kettle of fish. We will come to an end this Christmas Eve and just want to say, look ADHDers out there, do Christmas your way. You will get through it. Find the joy in little moments and know it’s just a day and you’ve got the rest of the year as well ahead of you, and behind you. So, from us, thank you for tuning in today and we wish you a very Merry Christmas.
JEL: Merry Christmas.