When self-judgment about your distractibility becomes overwhelming, try this exercise.
Think back to a specific moment in childhood when your distractibility caused you emotional pain. Maybe you were yelled at for not sitting still when stillness felt impossible. Maybe you were chastised for speaking out of turn in class. Maybe you were called names for your impulsivity.
Identify how old you were in that memory. Say you were six.
Now visualize that child. That's "Six."
Your job now is to protect Six.
When self-judgment comes—when you're beating yourself up for losing focus again, for missing something obvious, for failing to do what seems easy for others—think: "I need to protect Six."
That child didn't choose to have a brain wired this way. That child was doing their best with the neurology they had. That child deserved patience and understanding, not criticism and shame.
You are still that child, grown up. You still deserve that protection.
This reframes your limitations as non-intentional and non-malicious—just a mismatch between your wiring and the environment. And it opens the door to questioning what's actually modifiable.
Sometimes you need to adapt. Sometimes the situation does. Protecting Six helps you ask better questions about which is which.
Maybe the deadline was arbitrary. Maybe the system could have included a reminder. Maybe the meeting didn't need to be that long. Maybe the criticism was about the other person's frustration, not your actual failure.
You can use whatever age resonates—Protect Eight, Protect Twelve, whatever carries emotional weight for you. The point is to access the protective compassion you'd naturally feel for a struggling child, and extend it to yourself.