The ASSAP Framework: S is for Structure

Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill… paid the late fee… and then built an entire new budget system that still didn’t fix the problem?

That’s not a motivation issue.
It’s not a discipline issue.
It’s a structure issue.

In this episode, Christine Dunning introduces Structure — the second S in the ASSAP framework (Access, Security, Structure, Anchor, Pace). This is the step where you stop reacting and start asking a more useful question:

What problem are we actually solving?

When you live with ADHD — especially as a single adult without a “second brain” in the house — it’s easy to jump into action too fast. You organize. You reset. You declutter. You download apps. You build systems.

And then it falls apart.

Not because you failed —
But because you solved the symptom instead of the source.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why overwhelm distorts your perception of what the problem is
• How invisible cognitive load creates recurring breakdowns
• Why small problems are better training grounds than big life resets
• The two core Structure questions that reduce mental load
• How clarity (not intensity) is what makes systems work
• A deeply personal story about misidentifying emotional needs — and what changed everything

Structure is not about doing more.
It’s the final step before action — and it’s what makes action sustainable.

If you’ve ever worked incredibly hard on the wrong solution, this episode will land.

Free Resource

If your thinking starts to wobble while you’re trying to sort things out, Christine has created a short, free audio + simple map to help you keep your thinking online during overwhelm.

Find it at:  https://TwoCatsCoaching.com

About Christine
Christine Dunning is a Master Certified Life Coach and founder of Two Cats Coaching. She works with adults with ADHD — especially those living solo — who want to stay functional without constantly starting over.

Coming Next:

Episode 31: Anchor & Pace — Turning clarity into something that survives real life.

Transcript

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Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill and now you have a late fee? Honestly, if you are like me and you have ADHD, of course you have. And so then you decide, okay, that's it. I'm fixing my finances. And you spend three hours writing a new budget. You're going to know where every penny goes. But then, you know, two months later, you forget again. Because the real problem wasn't your budget, was that you don't have any kind of reminder system for this bill. And that's the kind of mistake I want to look at today. If you've been listening to the last couple of episodes, uh, numbers 28 and 29, for those of you keeping track, you already know a few important things. And if not, I'm gonna link these below because I really suggest you start there. You know that when everything feels wrong and you can't explain why, that that's normal for those of us with ADHD brains. Confusion isn't failure, it's the access point. You know that being told to calm down doesn't seem to help. Being overwhelmed, it's not a motivational problem. It's a capacity problem. And that being secure is about keeping your thinking online long enough to work with it. So now the obvious next question. What's next? Hi, I'm Christine Dunning. I'm a master's certified life coach and the owner of Two Heads Coaching, and this is episode 30 of a solo person's guide to ADHD. And today I want to talk about structure. Um, it's the second S in my ASAP framework program. And this really just means now we're going to take the time to figure out what the problem actually is. Because here's what usually happens next. Once people feel a little steadier, once you've preserved your thinking or it's back online and you've been able to get curious about what's going on, then you immediately jump into action. Let's say you forgot to pay that bill, and now you have a hefty late fee. You get mad first, but then you start organizing, you declutter, you make a plan, you install a system, but probably it falls apart. Not because you failed, but because you tried to solve a symptom and not the source of the problem. You worked hard, but on the wrong thing. So when our mental load is high, our perception gets distorted. Everything feels urgent, everything feels big, everything feels like an emergency. And then when you're single, you've got that added layer of you're not just doing the task, you're remembering it, tracking it, restarting the systems when they fail, trying to notice when things slip. That invisible cognitive labor is often the real problem. But it's also the easiest one to miss because you keep fixing what you see. So again, structure is not going to be about action. This is not the action step. This is the last step before action. Because it's how you answer those access questions in a way that reduces your load instead of increasing it. It's really just about two main things. What problem are we actually solving? And where is this problem? Where does it live? Is it in my brain? Is it my calendar? Is it my environment? Or is something else? Or maybe a combination? If I ask most people what they want to work on, they they usually name big things. Oh, my finances are terrible, my house is a mess, my health is bad, I don't eat well or exercise enough. I just need a total reset. Well, those are New Year's resolution type goals. But here's the counterintuitive truth. Small problems can teach structure better than big ones. Say that again. Small problems are where you learn to create effective structure. As we get started on this process, it'll be better to look at a small problem than the big ones are, at least at first. That's true because the stakes are lower. Failure isn't quite as catastrophic, and your feedback should be pretty obvious. Big problems hide that feedback, but the small problems will reveal it. And big problems, honestly, they're usually made of many small ones anyway. When you build structure for the small stuff, the big stuff often improves on its own. This ASAP framework, it's not about fixing everything. It's about learning how your brain responds to overwhelm, loss, friction, invisible load, and learning to place supports where you actually need them. And that way, if something doesn't work, it's not a disaster. It's just more data. It improves with use. You try something, it doesn't work. You take that information and try again. A quick pause here. If your brain is starting to feel a little overloaded right now, this is to be expected. This is the kind of thinking that can make your system wobble before it actually steps in to help. Reminder that if you need something to help keep your footing, I'm gonna have a free short resource on my website at 2Cats Coaching. It's a really brief audio and simple map designed for the moments when your thinking starts to disappear. So you don't lose access to what you're trying to understand a problem. No fixing, no homework, just some support. Okay, back to structure. I want to give you an example that genuinely changed my life. Years ago, I struggled deeply with um wanting romantic relationships. I'd really grown up with the idea that that was to be expected. For a lot of reasons. First of all, it was societal. You know, I graduated from high school in 1981. People were expected to get married pretty quickly. I know a lot of people who did. My parents actually got married six weeks after they met. Uh, granted, it was during World War II, and my dad was a marine and shipping out. But still, you know, you grow up with this idea of um love at first sight, which is how my mother described it. I wish I I had my father's description, I don't because he passed away. But it's what I grew up with, and I expected to have one. And I carried a lot of shame because I just really struggled, couldn't find the right guy, couldn't do what was expected. I honestly blamed a lot of my problems on being single. And then this takes place about 20 years ago. It starts with I decided to take a break. I was doing online dating. It was the early in the online dating days. It was horrible. Um, and I just got fed up. I actually had been in a in a short-term relationship and it had really not gone well. And turns out he was married, and yeah, all those things that we've all we've all been there and done this, right? So it's a couple months after that, into my break. And I was driving, and I really don't remember what happened. But I was crying hard. Whatever the issue was, my brain had decided it would all be solved if I just had a partner, a husband, a boyfriend. So my inner dialogue kind of went like this. Oh, why don't I just have a husband who can take care of this for me? Why do I have to do everything by myself? I'm such a loser. You know, only it was a little more sincere than I can think of it now. Honestly, that wasn't a new thought for me. Something that cropped up a lot. If I wanted to make myself cry, I thought about the fact that I was alone. And then out of nowhere, another thought sort of cut in. Are you sure that's what you need? And that really stopped me. Do I need a romantic partner? Maybe I needed a father. And again, that landed hard. I just mentioned my father died young. He died when I was three and a half. Um, and my mother remarried and he was wonderful and adopted me, but he also passed away in my uh early twenties. So I never experienced as an adult having a relationship with a father. And I realized that a lot of this longing that I had it wasn't about romance, it was about support, feeling like somebody was there for me. And that didn't solve my issue, but it started to give me some clarity. I didn't need a relationship to solve that particular problem. But I wasn't done. That inner dialogue went on, and okay, I don't have a living father. What is it I really need? And I realized in that moment what I needed was to pull up my big girl britches and get whatever the thing was done myself. You know, and know that if I didn't have the skills or the muscles to do it myself, I could hire someone. I wasn't at that point in my life anymore where I didn't have any money. Um never been really well off, but you know, I I was doing okay. I had a full-time job and a part-time job, and you know, the money was decent. And that was it. The problem was solvable. Was it convenient? No. Easy, no. Was I gonna have to shell out some bucks? Eh, probably. But honestly, who gives a crap, right? And although I don't remember all the specifics of that day, I remember so much the emotions I felt. And that was the day that I realized I could take care of myself completely. That I didn't need a relationship because I couldn't take care of myself. And honestly, that was the moment I started becoming a happy single. And now I honestly haven't dated since then because dating was not pleasant. And I can do it by myself, and I'm happier. So understand, you know, I'm I'm telling you my backstory here, just to point out the clear problem. You don't necessarily, you're not necessarily gonna have to delve into your childhood to figure out, you know, and if I needed to see a therapist to deal with my feelings of abandonment I felt from the death of my father, then a therapist I will see. That's not what a life coach does. In terms of the ASAP framework, do you see what ended up happening here? I let myself cry. But I kept my thinking brain going. Honestly, it just interrupted me. I don't think I did it on purpose. I do now, but I didn't then. And I kept flipping back and forth between access and structure. What's going on? What's really the problem? Are you sure that's really the solution? What's going on? What's the problem? Are you sure that's really the solution? Until the real problem clicked into place. If I had acted on that first layer, oh, boo-hoo-hoo, I need a guy in my life, I would have downloaded another dating app. Well, we didn't call them dating apps in those days, but you know what I mean. And that wouldn't have solved anything else. If I'd acted on the second one, realizing that this was yet another part of my feeling abandonment over the death of my father, I certainly would have had some clarity. But not it's still a solution. So here's the bar of knowing that structure is working. If this works when you're tired, you're stressed, you're sick, you're distracted, then you're there. If not, it's not really structure yet. You may go back and forth a number of times, and maybe not all at the same moment. Redefining redefining the problem isn't failure, it's clarity. And clarity is what allows systems to work. Now, if you're looking at all this and going, oh yeah, but then what do I actually do, Christine? What's the thing? Well, that's anchoring. And we're gonna talk about that next. So just notice. What are you tracking only with your brain? What small decisions do you continue to make over and over again? What would it feel lighter if it lived outside your head? Then these issues get down to that root cause. And again, it's a loop. You're gonna run it multiple times. And then we're gonna answer with an anchoring part. Is this really it or is there more? If things feel impossible, it's probably not you. Before we wrap up again, I want to slow things down just a little bit, because structure can feel deceptively demanding. If this episode made you feel how often you've worked hard on the wrong problem, that's not discouraging. That's progress, and take it as such. Clarity can feel destabilizing at first, especially if you're used to just jumping straight into action just to relieve the pressure. But redefining the problem isn't failure. It's what allows systems to finally work. I want to remind you of something important. At any point in this process, access, security, or structure, you feel things starting to slip. It's not a sign to push through, it's a sign to get some help. And again, I've created this resource that is especially going to help you through those moments. You can find it on my website at 2Cats Coaching. Again, my name is Christine Dunning. I'm a master certified life coach, and I work with adults who have ADHD, especially those of us who are single and managing life without that second built-in brain. This podcast, a solar person's guide to ADHD, shares the framework behind my coaching work. I also offer one-on-one coaching for people who want to help apply these ideas directly into their lives, so you're not carrying all this alone. If you'd like to stay connected, listen to more episodes. This is episode 30. I've got a few. You can also explore free resources and coaching options on my website. And if you follow along on social media, it's Two Cats Coaching with the little at sign in the front. Remember, structure isn't about doing more, it's about making the right things easier. We have one more episode in this series. We're gonna talk about everything together. How to turn what you've ever fought into something.