Specific question for my fellow ADHD therapists regarding burnout & admin work
Looking for advice from fellow therapists with lived experience of ADHD here. I've been burned out for probably the past month or so and thankfully have some time off coming up imminently. Part of this burnout had to do with a steep increase in clients, which required me to use very structured modalities that I have a background in, while also juggling tons of complicated life admin tasks (which are ongoing but moving along). Basically the life admin has been like the epitome of submitting three grad school applications given the amount of different information I've had to gather and submit for each so far.
I've briefly noticed this in the past, but now it's *really* apparent that I struggle with frequent communication (I think of this as 2+ back and forth, but especially 3+ back and forth messages a day, even about logistics), and *especially* with sending my clients homework and resources outside of session. At the end of the week, I probably have to send ~7 clients different worksheets/resources. I've been thinking that part of this is absolutely my own issue of mentioning something that resonated with the client on the fly, and then either saying "I'll send it to you" (ugh) or them asking for it, and I know I can tell them to write down the title in that case.
I get a sense of dread when I open my email recently, because I feel like a hamster on a wheel who is constantly behind. I've been thinking of how to own the fact that I'm not always going to be perfectly on the mark when it comes to sending resources and that I don't usually need to resend clients resources when they ask. I also think a lot of this has to do with patterns that are resurfacing, thanks to the burnout.
Part of this is also due to the fact that I don't work well while doing tasks for only a short amount of time each day - I usually do better when I do a "sweep attack" of my notes and admin, but it's hard to make that work in this case. I'm aware of the fact that I'm beating myself up as I write this and anticipating judgment, but ahhhh!! Life is so overwhelming right now....
Thank you so much in advance if any fellow ADHDers read this!
TL;DR I'm an ADHD therapist struggling with burnout and unsure of how to give myself grace while drowning in client homework/worksheets and dealing with dread over the ongoing nature of emails/communication.