Эпизоды
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Is there a way to switch gears even when you're running late, overhwhelmed, and already past crispy? Isabelle and David explore how changing gears, especially during a transition--whether it's starting a conversation, leaving the house, beginning a work task--is up to us and how hard and real the struggle is and how important it can be to get your reps in. From potato sprouts and Carl Rogers, to neurodivergent trauma as culture, to all those half finished water bottles underneath your carseat, this conversation embraces what it means to share collective wounds as well as adaptations to a world not built for neurodivergent folx.
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Isabelle (speaking of a hard moment trying to get herself and her kids out the door when they're already running so late and then stopping, covering her eyes and ears, and just sitting on the couch)-- thought this "busy-ness" was a personality trait, moving on to the next, to the next, to the next—to always be busy, harried, running behind. And you can’t expect the environment to stop when things feel like too much. Pandemic was not a blessing in disguise (that’s BS), and Isabelle’s experience was that on top of the systemic and personal trauma and wanting to chew her own arm off, it was the first time the world did stop to a degree—it took a lot of demands and choices off the table for her. How often when she is burned out and crispy does she want the world to stop, for things to slow down, to quiet down on a sensory level. And when the world stopped, that wasn’t the answer either, she actually found herself doing more—it’s a lot to realize that the world won’t stop for you and even when it does, it doesn’t address the overwhelm problem. David names that a lot of social expectations changed—doing laundry, doing hygiene. Finding out which things were effective and which weren’t was a lot then. In couples, there’s a big difference between a harsh versus a soft startup, taken from the work of the Gottmans (see links below). The harsh versus soft start up through transitions—are you giving yourself a harsh or a soft start up to a task? What do you need to transition to a particular activity—do you want to get there late, stressed, sweaty? Or do you want to get there and be bored for a bit, because you're about to read to kids in a library and need to come in with less energy? When Isabelle sits and asks for help, she interrupts and resets a harsh start up to a soft start up. She is doing for herself what she wishes another person would do. Sits her down, has her take a moment, helps take away the expectations and demands. Bobby can do that sometimes, but also she can’t expect someone to do that everyday. And it helps her get reps at switching from a soft to a harsh transition. She didn’t think she had a gear shift; she was on and off. It’s existential, you have to reset your own expectations and what it means to stop. Isabelle has to unmask, and reveal how vulnerable she is and ask for what she needs, she has to face trauma. A client of hers recently invented (she thinks?) This term “ADHD trauma.” Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world that’s constructed to benefit and aid neurotypical ways of being generates trauma by virtue of the not having the right manual. And David calls this ADHD culture. We have different problems with friend groups or making purchases or being an imposter, the thing that makes this podcast fun to listen to. Culture is defined by how we dance with trauma. Every kind of culture—race, class, etc.—sets the standard of how you interact with the world. The feeling of going into a class and forgetting you had a test; all those empty water bottles under the seats, if you could clap your hands and the pile of laundry, the corner you forgot existed—and suddenly we feel better because you’re not the one who is like that. Does having ADHD make me allergic to rigid capitalist systems? There’s two people: the ADHD person is going to look down at the cliff and see apples and yells “apples!” And then the other person hears “oh, apples?” and makes an apple farm. We're not all the same but we do have something in common. Anything that overwhelms our capacity to cope or unable to change it—isn’t any identity the world wants you to change but you can’t going to set you up for overwhelming your capacity to cope (you can’t run from it, hide it, fight it, play dead…etc.) David has a thought: when he was getting kicked out of school, his brain coded that as bad. Fast forward, he ended up going to grad school at Northwestern. And not a lot of people at Northwestern got kicked out of high school. It’s definitely not something that you talked about. But then, he started working and advocating with Eye to Eye and other groups—suddenly, his story had worth. The amount of relief he started to see on kids faces that “oh, you can recover from every mistake” and he wasn’t proud when it happened, but now it’s an important part of his origin story. In community and connection, the very thing you’re hiding is what I'm hiding--whoa, we don't have to hide, how much energy we get from not hiding this thing? When David first went to Northwestern he would lie and tell people he went to a local “multidirectional school" —those people weren’t good people and he didn’t want to be branded with those people. Isabelle doesn't want to say where she went to college. Because people from our culture don’t go to schools like that (like Harvard?) David had no models, didn't know how to say it. Everyone ‘thinks they’re the mistake.” Pause for effect, Isabelle went back and looked through her old medical records and she got her records from counseling while at college. In those clinical notes she received an ADHD diagnosis; multiple sessions where she as a client thought she had ADHD, and as many listeners will remember, she didn’t know she had ADHD until 15 years later. Isn't that really interesting—isn't that interesting that she was never told she was diagnosed with ADHD, there was no affirmation or information, and in the notes it indicated even why she was even given the type of antidepressant or weaned off, she walked around telling everyone who knew her "I think I have ADHD because I can’t focus anymore.” She wasn’t told she had a diagnosis. Even when she asked point blank. The world 25 years ago was really different, how much they maybe saved her from a tougher road. When you’re "not supposed to" be there, the messages you get at each of these places, to hide, to shame, to silence, to minimize. "Everyone has some ADHD, right?" The masking component has more consequences to neurospicy culture. We don't have the same the care and feeding instructions as the people around us, we’ll still grow but it's not the same. A potato sprout is going to grow and develop no matter what situation you're in, whether the potato is in the root cellar or planted in the earth (as Carl Rogers states, see actual full quote below). Across animal groups, culture is modifying your environment in order to adapt, at least how Isabelle learned what culture was when studying archaeology and social anthropology in college. We started to cook as a form of survival, the culture we form is the things we try to do to survive and adapt. Because we have to survive and shelter in the same places. Isabelle feels way better being a potato in the root cellar around potatoes also in the root cellar. Or at least better than the shriveled magic spell potato you find behind the drawer—forgotten produce! Another feature of neurodivergent culture.
DEFINITIONS
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Why do we push ourselves so hard, hyperfocus, are ready to do 80 things at once, then crash and run out of steam before we ever move the needle? How much does this boom/bust cycle harm us, our relationships, and our wellbeing? David and Isabelle discuss how, as neurodivergent folx, we can't see our own energy bars and how this gets us into trouble. They also describe a game changing idea, of making their energy bars observable, that has helped them both actually see and attend to their needs well for the first time--and why they were compelled to build this into a Something Shiny toolkit (coming soon!).
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The things we use to help ourselves and reclaim our time doesn’t actually give us more resources, it can take resources away from us. David, for example, feels very successful when he avoids the YouTube video reel hole, scrolling from a sports ball thing to a weird deck someone built…he didn’t notice the spoons were going, he took up energy, he sat too long, he didn’t get something done. Sometimes the things and cycles we get into what we get into when we’re avoiding things, don’t help us. This connects to a big course launch coming soon from Something Shiny! A big aha between David and Isabelle has been recognizing that their energy bars are invisible to them, and with their shorter time horizons, Isabelle assumes that the energy she has is forever, and then halfway through taking on so many tasks sucks. She runs out of all her energy and momentum before she knows it, and it’s hyperfocus and intensity and crash. It hurts her relationships, her life, her health, so how can we actually see our energy bar? Especially in times like this where demands are many and slots are few. David points out that the way they check on their energy bar is odd; you see that your gas tank is full; “I got gas!” And half full “I got gas!” And quarter full “I got gas!” We ask if there’s gas, not if it’s enough, or if it matches what we’re trying to do. We push past this point without knowing it. David and Isabelle crisped themselves during recording this course without even knowing it. David lost the gas to eat, to observe the world. This is why David and Isabelle took time off this summer: a step by step guide to learn how to read and respond to your energy bar that makes it so your life gets easier. It’s fusing together what David and Isabelle know about how neurospicy brains work and then actually building the skills that help. It has deeply altered Isabelle’s sense of how she feels about herself on any given day. It’s the closest she’s coming to what she expects of herself day to day and responds to her needs. Picture the gas tank, but you’re in a car with your whole family, and your whole family has to get to the emergency room, she does not have time to get to the gas station and she needs to get the whole family there STAT. Isabelle’s self-neglect is real. The term “Burnout” is so interesting, coming from Industrial Revolution terms, that when a machine ran out of resources would run out of fuel, the machine destroys itself because it runs out of fuel. It’s not just that we’re running on fumes, it’s that when we’re running on fumes we have destroyed ourselves, our relationships. Isabelle, in her attempt to get to the emergency room, she gets angry, impatient, taking in any request, and then she is engaging in toxic behavior patterns, asking the world to STOP, but she’s hurting herself. David names that you’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting other people, you’re leaking out. When we’re done leaking, we don’t know what we’ve done to hurt other people and we’re hurting—both things are true. David thinks about his behavioral roots: the first thing you do to make change is you make your behavior observable. It’s really hard to actually observe energy, talking about the endings and beginnings we can't see, it makes different parts of back to school or our burnout observable. It’s observable so we can change some of these things: did you need a break? Would it have been better to be late to this? Where do we get those messages about what we’re supposed to do. Even as the term accountable (like “potential”) can make your spine curl, because it's been leveled at us anticipating mistakes we couldn’t, how can we be accountable for our own breaks because no one is going to give them to us. By the time Isabelle is running on fumes, that is not the time she has any bandwidth to think her way out of her feelings, and that's not a strength she has anyway, she can’t tell herself it’s going to be okay, by nervous system does not work this way, she has to take an action to change her internal state, but she’s so crispy to think that she needs a break—the idea of thinking she needs a break and then taking a break is 6 steps too far, and then she gets cranky, she gets grumpy, blaming everything around her, but it’s a set up when you expect others to snap you out of it; depending on others to help you just then breeds aggression, and you can't change it, and you can’t solve it once you’re there. There’s got to be another way, or if there isn’t another way, how can I make it pass quickly and respond accurately. It’s important for us to have people around us to take care of us, and it’s important to have skills and resources around us. When David is saying something about taking breaks yourself, that's not ‘put yourself in a room,’ it’s giving yourself the freedom to go get yourself the things you need. Everyone is going to be aware of what you can’t do. What is different right now that you can do right now for yourself. Big way that Isabelle does something differently, like those 2 out of 3 kitchen magnets, sometimes there’s a random cough from a kid and she has to decision, she is really reliant on routine to keep things moving, as if every day would be the same. Isabelle likes minty coffee and has a sequence, but then she has a perfectly planned routine, this is how we’re going to get out the door in time. The example could really apply to any big transition. But she has to constantly revisit the plan, which is that the environment has altered, the establishing operation has altered—the circumstances around you has been totally altered. But to pivot means disaster, she has no slots left to make new decisions, and so she’s crashing and burning every single day. She just decided that when in doubt, she is going to be late, whenever she hits that panic, it’s her signal that’s something’s up—her panicking is her racing around the house with no discernible direction, thinking she’s getting it done but she's lost the plot. So when she’s in that state, in order to change that state, she has to sit down. She forces herself to sit down. And the second she sits down, “oh, actually, I have to stop and think” and I need to stay in one place, covers her ears, closes her eyes, and asks for help. “I need your help.” And she tries to just think about what she needs help with, “I need help remembering” or “let go of being on time.” And she says it out loud, and she’s changing the establishing operation. She changes what the reinforcement looks like, we get there, as long as we survived, it’s a win—now, the question is "are you safe? Do you have everything?” David points out that all her decisions are lined up very differently right now.DEFINITIONS
Establishing operation. The behavioral word for how a little rat, trained to run a maze, is rewarded by a drop of water. The rat loves the water and does lots of work for the water. But rats don’t naturally love water this much. So the establishing operation is to withold water from the rat for ...
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Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Ep075: Does back to school season hit you hard, too?
Why is it so hard and triggering and exhausting to go back to school (even if you’re not a student or have a student in your life right now)? And what is this idea, “pervasive demand avoidance” (or a persistent drive to autonomy) and how can it crop up during massive transition times? David and Isabelle come back from a summer spent working on exciting new Something Shiny resources and describe some of the demands that may be filling up your slots this time of year. Also included: tangential journeys involving the cinematic classic “Legend,” deep cut Disney songs a la Tim Curry, and Isabelle’s allergy medicine hallucination moment.
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David and Isabelle welcome fall and the new school year, complete with the way germs start circulating and sick days shoot up once the school year kicks in, and then histamine levels and allergy medicines. There may be some links between antihistamines and psychiatric symptoms (see link below!). Isabelle describes a hallucination she had when taking a commonly prescribed allergy medicine, referencing the Tom Cruise movie, Legend. This brings up how intense children’s movies were back in the day, where kids were in real mortal danger a lot and awful things happened a lot. David recalls how intense Willy Wonka was, with the kids getting killed and then the tunnel sequence, which leads to Isabelle remembering how she shopped a class in college about children’s literature and it was all about Roald Dahl and how he hated childhood and was bullied and just dealt with a lot of things that made him hate kids. So, returning to Isabelle’s hallucination, she wakes up from a sleep, she sees Tim Curry in Legend demon costume asking if she has anything to eat, and she knows she’s hallucinating, but it was in the room. She hears him working in the kitchen. She then sees a pig walk in with human hands for feet, she wakes up, she is fully awake, the pig fades away, and she walks into the kitchen, and I say “You’re not real, I’m hallucinating” and he says “of course.” Also, it was almost morning, light was in the space, this wasn’t sleep paralysis or lucid dream, she fixed breakfast, called the doctor, and stopped taking this medicine immediately. Of course she told the whole story to the doctor because of course these details would be important. David names how strange the brain is and all the connections are. And this links up to an amazing CD put out by Disney where Tim Curry sings a Davy Crockett song. David was tormented by this song in elementary school, and they would make fun of him by singing this song at him, but why did this bother him actually? Isabelle recalls that back to school season as more triggering than she realized, she would use the relationship with her teacher to accommodate her, to do the hard things and ask for extensions and try and be. The teacher at her kids’ school was not picking up on her big hand gestures and quirk and charm, so two questions: 1) back to school season being triggering? And 2) when there is a vacuum, she becomes a cartoon character, as their previous guest Ren, brought up. Going back to school is so complicated; David notices that when he sees the back to school supplies on sale, it was a “gulp,” it always meant more work for him, the break being over. Now that he is not in school anymore, it has become a bit more of a “haha, I don’t have to do that anymore.” But regardless he wants to point out that neurotypical or neurodivergent alike, this is a time of intense transitions, beginnings and endings, and routine changes, and waking up earlier (for parents and kids and even fellow commuters who suddenly have to notice when school is in session on their traffic routes), it is a hard, hard time. It’s highly activating on a nervous system level, and germ load aside, kids will need down time and fatiguing and the adjustment period. This brings up the idea of cognitive demands on us—hold up ten fingers, and each slot is taken up with a task or a load: “buying school supplies,” “I’m sad my kid and I won’t have the same together,” and “I gotta change my morning routine” — in the face of so many demands, things become a can’t, not a won’t. In the face of so many demands, I actually can’t do any more, even a pleasant thing, everything is one ask too many or one step too much. And some people don't have ten slots, they have two—for example, a kid being ushered into a transition, even like three requests of a parent is actually too many demands, and they respond with “I don’t wanna” but also what’s in there is they cannot. They can do more, but with help. They’re going to get crispy and ragey, you become oppositional, pick fights, it looks like a sensory overload, or a shutdown, I am going to avoid anything that I perceive as a demand. David not sure how he feels about this diagnostic label because when we’re overwhelmed, we SHOULD react this way. Video of how it felt for a person who is autistic went into a grocery store, the screen started to pixelate the farther into the store they got, it was like a satellite’s images during a storm. David gets into a place where he goes “NOPE” and it comes from a place where he has nothing left. Is he pathologically demand avoidant, but aren’t we all? Actually isn’t this a common thing we share across. Isabelle is going into neuropsychological testing with her family to update things, and carries a lot of curiosity going into it about sensory stuff, and wants to welcome it. You see it reflected in people around you, and ton of people around her identify as being on the autism spectrum and oh, that is where she finds her tribe. For her learning about PDA is the closest she’s come to for resetting her expectations for herself, and “oh, I’m not just trying to avoid hard work,” it’s “oh, I ran out of spoons and slots, I had no bandwidth.” David names that this is a thing that connects with neurodiversity and not being resourced. Power struggles are going to be activating all the time, and just because a power struggle is happening is not PDA—but on the autism spectrum, sound, texture, movement is filling the slots, too. It can help illustrate that it’s important to lower the demands and help your kid (or yourself) by meeting yourself with compassion. David and Isabelle also mention that they are working on a energy bar idea…more to come!
Antihistamines connecting to psychiatric side effects, like hallucinations
Legend (1985, starring Tom Cruise) trailer- Tim Curry is the voice...and shows up around 0:48. YES THIS IS A KID'S MOVIE.
Intense kids movies
Stand by Me (1986) trailer (PS. this is based on a Stephen King short story, "The Body") YES THIS IS A KID'S COMING OF AGE MOVIE.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Tunnel Scene Clip— Again, kid's movie.
Roald Dahl book: Boy
Disney Parks CD track list
Tim Curry sings the Davy Crockett song (side note, Isabelle really did a great impression of this)
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What happens when the rewards for doing something don't show up until way later? Or if it's harder to tell you're making progress on something, like saving money, applying for jobs, buying a house? David and Isabelle are joined by Isabelle's husband, Bobby, who also has ADHD, swapping stories about delaying gratification, shame spirals, and how we ruminate and distract AND hyperfocus for the win.
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The only thing that’s reinforced are tasks toward goal completion. What could I do today that would move me toward that goal? The only question: is it moving toward my goal? If so, it’s effective (or if not, not effective), rather than good or bad. For example, David venting about his paper to his friend helped him be on task, rather than not being on task and going out to eat at Burger King—it’s still about the paper (it’s still on task). How effective is it toward the task? More effective than going to Burger King and not talking or thinking about the paper at all. Long term goals are specifically hard for folx with ADHD because of the delay of gratification. The more you wait, the more you feel like you’re failing. Neurotypical folx will read that waiting as normal or to be expected. Bobby names things like saving for retirement, saving for a house, paying off debt—the progress is so slow it feels so boring. David relies on his awesome neurotypical partner to save for a house by taking what they would pay for a mortgage every month and saving whatever that was on top of their rent (so if their Lego House rent was $10, and they wanted a $30 mortgage, they saved the extra $20 every month). Isabelle wonders if neurotypical shame spirals go as deep as neurodivergent ones—for example, David’s goes to homelessness, and she notices that neurotypical folx notice how close they got the finish (like getting the brick at the bottom of the pool during swimming lessons), and factor that in, whereas for her it’s the outcome that matters and she goes straight to everyone she loves is going to abandon her and ditch her. David names that he has a few shame spirals—for work, it’s homelessness, for relationships—it’s abandonment. This leads to black and white thinking, which is more than just worth mentioning, it’s the difference between “not getting a snack” to “failure begets failure begets FAILURE…” And this extreme is dismissed so often, people don’t get it. As a therapist you’d never say “it’s not a big deal,” you’re invalidating those feelings. What we ADHD folx feel, our level of intensity, is REAL—instead of “it shouldn’t hurt that much,” it’s “that’s extremely frustrating.” Bobby is slurping all this data up, and taking the feels, and feeling them…and that’s what you do. You acknowledge how intensely you’re feeling them. Bobby sits in the role of “Novice EveryDay-er…Every Day Dude” (which is what it says on his nameplate). And not just acknowledging your feels, but acknowledging the intensity of how strongly you feel them. Feel the feeling, know it’s more intense, or it might not be felt by other people. And do what you need to do to regulate—-as opposed to let it go. It’s like telling someone with ADHD not to look at the ceiling (we all looked at the ceiling). Telling someone to fight something is not effective, it can go on forever in a power struggle. Isabelle describes that she prefers the phrase self-soothe to self-regulate, because it can be a pressure to return to masking and appearing as though you are neurotypical or ‘regular.’ David is wondering if self-soothing is the task, actually—you might not be able to soothe or make the injury out of the way, and instead get grounded again. It’s not about getting out of your ADHD mindstate, it’s about lowering your hyper focus and lowering the pressure to act. David does this intermittent fast now and just got distracted about the food he wants to eat (schwarma)—he’s not pretending he’s going back to the point and instead is focusing on food and saying “Schwarma.” The group decides they will say “Schwarma” any time this happens, if they can remember, which Bobby reassures them he will. Isabelle then describes that she thinks Bobby circumvents working memory problems by using some of the rules of comedy, like callbacks, and then…she also loses the plot and goes back to telling her story. Isabelle describes fixations on movies or things across many genres and seems to do with what the movie makes her feel. She is reminded of one of her roommates in college who was a lovely person, but would fixate on one or two somewhat depressing emo songs and for Isabelle, she didn’t like the emotional state it would generate. So she recognizes that she goes through fasts almost, of media that stirs up feelings because she gets so sucked in, so she avoids fiction and movies and music for a while. Then, it’s like a switch flips, and she gets sucked in and rewatches things over and over again. Like the Netflix film “Tall Girl.” Because she is tall. And it hooked her (despite not being the best movie maybe, but she liked it). And she found time, when she has no time, to watch it four times in the span of a week. What is this? David’s like: it’s the definition of hyperfocus. It’s that you fall into it intensely. It’s that you do the same thing over and over again, or a genre—like David only watched shows that only made it one season. Isabelle can daydream for five hours straight while driving, she can rewatch things in her head. David is naming that this is not the safest driving technique, but David is wondering if there were any changes in this span that changes your capacity to move around? Were there things that gave you more unstructured time? Were there things you were avoiding or wanting distraction from on an emotional level? When all of those things happen, hyperfocus can kick in for preservation, like you’re going to get sucked into the Full Metal Alchemist because you don’t want to think about life after graduation. And in another way, rumination can kick in when you don’t move around during the day, which turns into a type of thinking at the end of the day, those thoughts can be a way to get out that energy. Everyone is going to kick into hyperfocus for different reasons and it will vary based on types and on the environment that they’re in. Isabelle connects very much to preservation idea of hyperfocus, how survival-related it feels and the times she was in a fandom over a particular show or movie that relate to major life transitions, like graduation, or career changes, or life changes. David names that it’s probably much easier to remember the relationship she had with those things than the transitions themselves. David names that this is a superpower. It usually happens when you’re sitting in helplessness. Are you sitting in your helplessness, or are you sitting in “these amazing actors and actresses are nailing it?” Isabelle insists Bobby will watch it and grow to love it. It can happen when you don’t have structure or your routine changes, and it provides structure—the reality is, for David, it’s important to go wild if you really are in a state of helplessness—then go to town watching all the shows. But if you’re using it to avoid a task, that’s a whole other story.
Things Isabelle, David, and Bobby have hyper focused on (that are mentioned in the episode):The Matrix
New Girl
Tall Girl
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Full Metal Alchemist
Schwarma
DAVID’S DEFINITIONS:
Black and White Thinking: Believing or acting as if there are only two ways of thinking right or wrong. This includ...
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Why are some of us anxious and some of us excited (or a combo platter of both)? And is it possible to turn anxiety, or anger, or shame spirals, into something else? David and Isabelle swap stories, talk transgenerational trauma, and get curious about how we are socialized to mask and behave...and that perhaps the solution for being overly apologetic lies in the midwestern gem: "ope.”
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Isabelle starts by expanding on the idea of how you think about things, how that inner landscape can connect into tapping into norepinephrine—if you’re practicing going “I see you anxiety, I see what you’re trying to do, and I’m so grateful I have you because it helps me…” what it means to not shame or blame yourself for having an instinct to worry versus what you do know to be true. Short of someone giving you direct feedback, you don’t have data either way, so saying hi to your anxiety or feeling, and taking a few breaths to be grateful. Then when you do have a tough moment, like a hard meeting at work, you won’t beat yourself up about it as much. David even says: you can skip the shame spiral. Norepinephrine is so much about the inertia and movement of something. People with kids who have ADHD either have a very very clean room, or very very messy room. For those with a messy room, they’re like “where to start? Do I burn it and start over again?” Then you give them one specific thing to do, they earn dopamine from that one thing. So you build momentum by building a feedback loop between dopamine and norepinephrine, because you judge yourself on a very reasonable scale. If you make a broad request, it’s like “whaaa?” If you say “pick up your legos” or “Hunt for all the legos you can, you have 7 minutes, you earn 3 snarf points? What’s a snarf point? I’ll tell you in 7 minutes”—you now have specificity, and time pressure, and reward. Isabelle describes that she lives in the anxious side of the spectrum, and David lives in the excitement of it. If anxiety and excitement are the same physiological symptoms, how can you replace the two things? Isabelle wonders at her anxiety, which she is not bummed about, but knows that it’s a part of her, and also knows that it has served her and her people across the generations—like she feels less anxious when she has a very stocked pantry or fridge. How can that be turned into excitement? We’re talking about the interplay of epigenetics, and the interplay of how you lean into the anxiety. If you’re in the United States, you’d be hard pressed to not have a transgenerational history of trauma, and as men and women (and non-binary folx), we are treated differently and are rewarded for going to anger or anxiety. Men are traditionally reinforced for getting angry in the U.S.—it’s reinforcing for them, and it’s not great, and in the same way anxiety may be reinforced for women. Not that it’s so cut and dry and binary-based. David elaborates that his impulsivity has been viewed as confidence, whereas for women, it can be viewed as overemotionality, and can be shamed, or put in corners. David had to work really hard to find excitement, he was way more in that angry place, fighting any system, any person he could. When you get angry, you feel yucky afterwards for like two hours, and he met really good friends, had an amazing brother, and had good supports, and a lot of people don’t have that. And he had a choice in that moment whether to get anxious or excited. Isabelle is so grateful David shared that about himself and felt so seen, really resonating with the idea that whereas David’s impulsivity was viewed as confidence, hers was read as overreacting, or overdramatic. She describes how she makes big gestures and shrieks and has big reactions to things and how often she has to blunt them or try to mask them in her daily life. She also recognizes the layers of privilege she carries as a white, cisgendered woman, that she has gotten a lot of reinforcement for her anxiety. Her asking, let’s say, her kid’s teacher a detail-oriented question seems almost assumed, that she would be the one who needs to be vigilant about the details of things, whereas her husband, Bobby, is seen as winning the day if he gets the kids to school, even though he is more effective at this. How we’re socially viewed impacts how we think about it—perhaps Bobby running late is viewed as he was busy doing important things, whereas Isabelle names she has been conditioned to be extra apologetic and nervous and take it on as some awful thing that she’s running late. David goes into Tavistock group dynamics stuff (see show notes below)—based around the work of Wilfred Bion—where people learn how they are in a group. David was in a group and someone came in late and were overly explaining it, the group ended up attacking her about all her apologies—David named there is an art to being late, and it is this: acknowledging the inconvenience, being very small, and apologizing at the end. Don’t talk too much or give too many specifics, just say “my bad” and be quiet and wait to figure out what’s happening. David and Isabelle both agree that they are habitually late, and hate being late, but will be late because of who they are. They just will be. Isabelle names an old meme: “Sorry I was late, it’s because of who I am as a person.” She mentions connecting with her friends, one of whom says instead of saying “I’m so sorry” for being late, reserve sorries for deep relational healing moments where you feel harm was caused, intentionally or not. For example, being late, or accidentally bumping into someone, or dropping something off late—is not always the context for an “I’m sorry,” but instead, you could use the phrase “thank you for your patience.” David agrees, except for the bumping into someone else part—he has to say he’s sorry. Isabelle thinks a simple midwestern “ope!” Will suffice, which David recently witnessed himself doing in the wild.Ope: (according to Urban Dictionary) - a midwestern U.S. way of acknowledging another person or thing they have encountered. Ope! Sorry I bumped into you, Jim. Ope, there’s my wallet. Ope! I missed my bus!
(added by us): Also known as an interjection of surprise and implied apology.
DAVID’S DEFINITIONS
Epigenetics - from CDC “Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.” (source: CDC)
Transgenerational trauma: from wikipedia
“is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group.” (source: Wikipedia) Imagine the collective trauma experienced by groups of people surviving slavery, wars, famine, natural disasters, etc. and the ways in which epigenetic (see definition above) may alter the way even our genes can express themselves and how we adapt and respond to stressors. For more on this, check out the pioneering work of Yehuda and Lehrner (Article on intergenerational transmission of trauma)Dopamine deficiency? ADHD is often understood as neurobiological (brain) difference, that includes lower levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter (messenger chemical) in our br...
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Why do some of us minimize and reduce the number of choices while others seek excitement and novelty? Why do some of us need everything listed out while others need to just try something blindly? The secret? Different types of ADHD and different ways our ADHD shows up in different environments! David and Isabelle are joined by Bobby and Noah, who also have ADHD, and talk about things like trying to leave the house, deciding what to eat, and why their accommodations all look so different.
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Transitions and choices are hard. Isabelle and David are joined by Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, and David’s friend and fellow clinician, Noah, both of whom also have ADHD to talk about different types of ADHD. We don’t remember all the stuff we have to do to leave the house. Isabelle describes a detailed whiteboard and just how long it took to get into the habit of not forgetting things like lip balm. David puts everything into his bag at night. Isabelle has to do a one-touch rule. Noah’s and Bobby’s work bag are empty. Bobby’s really into minimizing things, which David points out is a wonderful intervention, especially for inattentive type— decision fatigue. Noah does this for going out, always ordering a blackened chicken sandwich. How exhausting it is to make decisions all the time. Noah’s experience in a blind restaurant. Bobby’s picky eating is connected to something ADHD-related—hypersensitivity around texture. David’s experience of this is big after decades of vegetarianism, experiencing the texture of meat for the first time (bacon and hot dogs are great. Other meat for him? Not so much). Isabelle references the Paradox of Choice book (TLDR) and describes the phenomena of randomly remembering facts she’s read, but struggling to remember what she read on command. Recognizing that when there is an overabundance of choice, we think we made the wrong one (or are left more disatisfied) because we always think we could’ve picked better. This relates to Isabelle’s reaction to Tinder as something that makes her nauseous thinking about it: too many choices. Same with old school diner menus. Or Cheesecake Factory menus. David agrees. Isabelle describes novelty seeking with food, whereas Bobby wants the same thing. David went to Superdawg and got everything on the menu he wanted because he couldn’t make a decision. Noah would go there, deliberate what to get for 20 minutes, and leave with nothing. Why do we all sound so different and yet similar? We’re talking about the distinctions between inattentive and impulsive ADHD types. What about combined type? Depends on the mastery of the environment: the more mastery, the more impulsive we can be, the less mastery, the more inattentive.What is Superdawg? If you’re in and around Chicago, you’re welcome to check it out. If you’re not, it’s still a fun place to look into. From the bottom of our pure beefy hearts.
Paradox of Choice - book by Barry Schwartz (TLDR for Isabelle but an interesting summary appears on wikipedia).
DEFINITIONS
ADHD types explained through how we order at a restaurant:
inattentive type: struggles to figure out what to order, stares at menu (accommodations: always orders the same thing or same type of thing, asking the server for their choice/having the chef or someone else choose for you)impulsive type: orders three different entrees (to try them all), or the novel/strange seeming thing on the menu (accommodations: finding new places to eat or food bars where you can throw on whatever you want in that moment)combination type: see above and experience BOTH, often depending on your level of mastery/comfort (more mastery in the environment, the more your impulsivity shows up).Decision fatigue: the more decisions we make, the more our quality of decisions (or ability to do so well) deteriorates. Too many decisions can lead to an overwhelming feeling, burnout and poor decisions. Avoiding the complexity of decisions, can be an adaptive tool for individuals to preserve brain power for more important decisions, especially when the inattentive-type ADHD experience is loud. Here's an article on how to notice when it's happening to you.
Hypersensitivity around texture: some textures are going to make people feel more yucky inside than you would think they could. Often times it can be really helpful to honor these sensitivities, and not try to push through them unless there's serious impact on food and nutrition.
Here's a quick article on how to cope with hypersensitivities to sound, texture, taste, smell, etc.
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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
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David and Isabelle navigated the treacherous landscape of surviving and being the lucky ones; are we trash? Are we seahorses? From defeating the enemy that is loose glitter, to brain regions resembling animals, to why it hurts when we beat up on ourselves, tackling the pain and looking at ourselves with intention.
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Isabelle was told she’s a talker, but she’s also a listener. There’s this thing Isabelle borrows from mindfulness practices and therapy ideas: what you resist persists, what you go with flows, go for the ride. She had this moment the other day, at what point is it going to be bore her? She is easily bored, she is initially excited about and then she loses interest in it, she can be hyper fixated on the thing and then it passes, and then why is it that she’s never been bored in a session—it’s never happened: when will it not be exciting or curious? It’s not the same thing as it being easy or effortless, challenge does not mean something isn’t fun, and maybe it’s one of her favorite things to do. David names: it’s amazing to be put into an environment where it’s dangerous if you don’t pay attention to listening, attending to the patterns and themes in the group—it’s almost what I’ve done in my entire life. Find ways to honor ourselves. I want someone to be able to look at me and respectfully out himself more often, and we don’t see the models are dysfunction. “This kid having ADHD and being in jail” is part of the story. Until everything is shiny! Glitter! Except loose glitter which is Isabelle’s worst nightmare. She learned, the hard way, that loose glitter found it’s way into her world, the moment you try to clean it up, it’s “this glitter will be here always.” The glitter’s arch nemesis is tape—you’re welcome everybody. You still have to sit there for hours, but it makes the cleanup satisfying. David has had the thought of rooms with too much glitter and thought: burn this room. Isabelle names that this is different when there is epoxy style glitter in a floor or a tile, or in a shoe—she loves how there’s a lot of glittery shoes, but the glitter is contained in a plastic shell. And there’s something amazing about the shiny but it needs to stay shiny and not be embedded in anyone’s skin. Isabelle's friend pointed this out: David has a pleasant voice, and Isabelle, back in high school, was on speech team, and she competed in radio speaking, where you essentially you get to be in a room separate from everybody and record into a microphone. That got her over her fear of public speaking, only they used tapes and tape recorders. Who knew? These little things, not exactly fate v. Free will—isn’t it interesting the things that had to come into play were miraculous or exponentially improbable. David thinks his survival in life is pretty lucky. Like LeDerick said, we’re statistically survivors, how did we get there? David is sometimes looking at a river and it’s all pristine and there’s this piece of trash attached to a log not getting sucked down the river, and that's him, he’s a piece of trash, and he got saved. He was powerless being swept by the current—a lot of us were—whether we found partners, or friends, or jobs or something. The odds of David getting an advanced degree, being in a counseling practice, and having the same diagnosis. There was a moment in their office, it was Isabelle’s first or second month, and we were talking about structure and stuff, and it went brain-seahorse. And David went “maybe…maybe…” and everyone else just saw, it’s going to go somewhere else. To finish the thought: once seahorses have partnered, upon the first rays of sunlight entering the ocean, they will do a synchronized dance to each other. Speaking of seahorses: the hippocampus is the part of the brain is responsible for episodic memory, ability to time stamp when something has happened in our life, seal it with a declarative context—and to connect it to David's trash metaphor, how a seahorse gets around: it attaches to kelp or seaweed and it floats on the currents, and it mates for life, and takes care of it’s babies, and it does not make sense, and it exists nonetheless. Isabelle doesn’t think we’re trash on a river, we’re the seahorses. David names that 50% of people with ADHD don’t graduate on time. Isabelle names: a lot seahorses don’t survive, statistically there’s so many don’t make it. David names there’s a lot of compassion and meaning to what we see—Isabelle is doing a lot of shaming to the trash. David is not trying to say we’re mistakes, but he doesn’t think the system sees value in us, but we have to see value in ourselves. You see me, I see you, grab my hand, we’ll do things together, we are trying to survive. David is never going to judge survival. Isabelle quotes Carl Rogers, when the potato sprouts, it’s doesn’t matter if it’s in the earth or in the root cellar, it will reach out toward the little shaft of light, and he talks about it as an actualizing tendency, we’re always going toward the sunlight, and everyone else is casting shame “silly potato” but it’s doing what it does. The labels that we put on things can be really distracting, and there’s a big debate about diagnosing, and David names that labels can be minimizing and restrictive, but with ADHD, there’s some power in that label, in knowing you’re not alone, that it’s really hard when you’re dealing with internal invisible motivational things, it's easy to think there’s something wrong with you, and you need to spend time with people that don’t make you feel like trash, and you spend time doing things, and you don’t trash yourself. But also, David identifies with the trash in the river. ANd things changed when he didn’t need the system to find value. How do you relate to yourself in seeing the value you hold and knowing that. It connects to internal family systems, there’s this interesting idea that the reason why when you’re beating yourself up, it causes actual pain—there’s another part, however small or exiled, there is another part that is taking that hit. When we’re beating ourselves up, a part of us is trying to convince the part that desperately doesn’t want it to be true. It’s like trying to beat down a part that inherently knows it has value. It’s not just practicing and noticing the strengths and the peaks, but also having the space and safety to grieve, that you had a lot more peaks, and lot of people missed it, and you were wrong about you, too—there's a whole reckoning. David would use this question to ground himself: “when did that not happen?” Oh, with these people, in that place, when I’m doing x—“where does it not happen?” Even looking at childhood, “my parents were always angry”—when were they not? This makes Isabelle think of your default neural network—you’re brain is going to always do the thing that it's most used to, because it’s more efficient to do the thing you do every day—if you’re not actively or intentionally trying to counter that, you’re going to coast—and if you’ve been knocked down, and you've been hit harder and felt it more acutely than most, and you’re default mode is going to be rough, and it does take concentrated effort to work with this, and that's where environments and community comes in.
Dr. Daniel Siegel - the neurons that fire together, wire together
Coolest books about seahorses - Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, from Myth to Reality by Dr. Helen Scales, Ph.D.
Carl Rogers quote “potato sprout”
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Does feedback sting extra hard? David introduces the concept of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), where you interpret feedback or questions or redirections as being very harsh and personal, and then really take it to heart—even if that’s not really what is being communicated to you--and how this plays into relationships. This episode, David and Isabelle are joined by fellow ADHD clinician, Noah, and Isabelle's husband, Bobby, who both also have ADHD.
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Isabelle & David welcome Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, and David’s friend and fellow clinician, Noah, who both also have ADHD. David introduces the concept of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), where you interpret feedback or questions or redirections as being very harsh and personal, and then really take it to heart—even if that’s not really what is being communicated to you (example: Did you empty the dishwasher? Someone with RSD: WHY DO YOU THINK I’M LAZY?!) What do you do if you and your partner BOTH have RSD and ADHD? Awareness is gamechanging. How you give people the feedback that maybe they’re taking your feedback too personally/harshly? There is a comedic setup in giving people the feedback that they may not take feedback well. What if your partner is neurotypical and feels like your ADHD hyper focus forgetfulness feels like you’re doing things on purpose, then you go down a shame spiral of forgetting (for example)? The neurotypical partner may have resentment towards the behaviors and also, how can it get better? It will happen again, we will fail. Not trying to be something you’re not, but also always working to improve and putting in effort, as well as paying attention to repairs and actually doing the work to prioritize what your partner’s needs are-speaking their love language (see Gary Chapman’s Love Languages below). How RSD connects to years of feeling like you’re failing and getting social feedback there’s something wrong with you. The importance of finding a partner who accepts you and gets that ADHD is not going away.WHO IS GOTTMAN? Basically John & Julie Gottman are relationship gurus who found an institute years ago where they research how people in relationships interact scientifically. With their experience they define the individual ways we crave, express and accept love from others. For more information, check out: https://www.gottman.com/
DAVID’S DEFINITIONS of Gary Chapman’s Love Languages (https://www.5lovelanguages.com):
1. words of affirmation - talking about your feelings of intimacy, appreciation or praise to another person
2. quality time - making time to be in close proximity with another person doing a preferable task
3. physical touch - acts of touching, kissing, hugging, physical acts of closeness
4. acts of service - being able to take care of things or fix problems for other people
5. receiving gifts - feeling appreciation from the things that are given to you by another person
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cover art by: Sol Vázquez
technical support by: Bobby Richards -
Ever wonder if it’d be easier to be partnered with someone who also has ADHD (or, someone who is neurotypical)? How can you coexist no matter what the combo platter of neurodivergence? Robin, David’s neurotypical partner, and Bobby, Isabelle’s neurodivergent partner, join a relationship round table filled with practical tips on how neurotypical and neurodivergent partners can better support, communicate, and respond in key moments with one another.
---ADHD is often scapegoated within relationships. David & Isabelle are joined by David’s partner, Robin, who is neurotypical, and Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, who also has ADHD. David describes his friendship with Noah, who also has ADHD, and how the two of them have different and complementary needs and accommodation styles (for example, Noah likes structure and being on time, David is more accommodated by not wanting to let Noah down). How relationships could look when people are aware of what they are good at, not so good at, and that they need to work differently. This is similar to how when Bobby and Isabelle were first diagnosed, they had very different ways of experiencing ADHD and their sample size (“but wait, Isabelle’s more organized, she can’t have ADHD!”) impacted their understanding of it. David and Robin describe how Robin gives David a part of a shelf—a place where he could freely be messy and do his thing. Like spots that she, as his neurotypical partner, does not try to manage. The group goes on a tangent about cockroaches running up legs and spiders in your mouth while you sleep (see below). David also observes that Robin does not ask him to do a lot of things so when she does ask him, it feels novel and he received instant gratification for doing the task, so he’s more likely to do it (and eager to please the person he loves). This also connects to how Robin asks him to sweep or clean up crumbs (more thoroughly). Isabelle notes Robin’s warmth—and recognizes that Isabelle and Bobby both aren’t as warm to each other around this feedback. Robin points out that Isabelle (having ADHD) may not see the feedback as it goes, and instead notices the feedback when she’s already overwhelmed. Isabelle and Bobby note what they call a Great America moment (see below) and notes how she was able to observe Bobby circling around distracted, like a shark, and that she was able to see he needed a different environment to complete his tasks and was able to choose to go to Great America anyway (for herself): in short, she didn’t have to jump into the shark circling herself. David points out that children (which he does not have) are like the loveliest hedonist parrots (which Isabelle and Bobby add: are also the best thing ever). David also talks about mirror neurons and how people with ADHD can have much more active empathic responses, where they can really sync up to the moods/emotions of the people around them. As Bobby is circling like a shark, Isabelle’s mirror neurons are activated and she is syncing up, but Isabelle does not need the same level of intensity. How to know when you don’t need that level of intensity, knowing when you can’t think your way out of that circle (AKA Great American moment). Also important and hard to notice when you’ve self-stimulated yourself into some intense emotion but then your next task doesn’t need it. Hard to see yourself clearly in these escalated moments and how a partner can see you more clearly sometimes and help reflect back boundaries or what you need. And so when Isabelle syncs up to Bobby, she’s trying to soothe them both, instead of paying attention to taking a break and NOT syncing up, which will help them both. Bobby notes that podcast recording sessions helps everyone. Robin also names times when she and David need to ask for what they need to sync up (or not sync up). David will call and give her a heads up telling her he’s ‘coming in hot’ from his commute/work time, when she’s on the couch horizontal watching the Office or Park and Rec—how they try to meet them halfway. How both David and Isabelle forget their age all the time.
For more show notes, go to somethingshinypodcast.comWhy is the cockroach named Rick? For no reason, except David and Robin like alliteration.
Isabelle mentions a sacred pact between humans and bugs? Well, it’s an ancient truce predicated on the idea that if a bug is around, that’s fine, we’re on their turf, really, but if a bug is on your body without you electing to have said bug on your body, or the bug is on your bed or perhaps in the bath/shower with you, you will use whatever means necessary to remove said bug from said body/bath/shower/bed.
What is the Great America moment? Let’s say a group of people all want to go to an amazing thrill-ride packed amusement park (like Great America, a Six Flags park in scenic Gurnee, IL), but they’re waiting on one person to finish their work before they go. Instead of making the whole group miss out if that person doesn’t get their work done, you can honor both sets of needs: let the person finish their work and then also let the rest of the group go to Great America. Then circle back and plan another time to go together. The idea is that the person struggling shouldn’t feel the pressure/responsibility of everyone else’s ‘good time’ and that everyone can hold boundaries make autonomous choices that are also understanding and inclusive.
DEFINITIONS
Self esteem: is a global term that has to do with how you feel about yourself, your own sense of self-worth. One thing to consider is that with ADHD, self-esteem can be believing you're going to survive an experience: that the moment of discomfort you're experiencing will be worth it it in the future. This is hard to do when your sense of time can be two modes (now or not now). When everything feels like NOW, it's hard to believe in a later or a change or in growth. And when you believe you can do something, it dramatically increases the odds that you will actually do that thing. Self-esteem is believing that you can survive, you can do the thing, and you don't have to convince yourself of that all over again every time.
Mirror neurons: this is a very complex neurological phenomenon, that is a particular favorite of ours. When you are doing a thing, your brain fires motor neurons (eg. if you know how to ski, your brain will fire the motor fires that help you move on your skis). Mirror neurons fire when you are witnessing (or anticipating) someone else do a thing that your motor neurons do (eg. your mirror neurons fire AS IF YOU ARE SKIING, when you are watching skiing on tv). Put another way, your brain is inhibiting you from acting out what you're witnessing/anticipating, but other than that, you're copying the things you see/anticipate seeing. Think about how much we learn vicariously, through observation and then trying something you've only seen before (like a baby learning how to walk! or draw! or pretty much anything!) The more they're understood, the more we recognize that mirror neurons are also involved in recognizing emotional states and sharing your emotions with others (firing the pathways of movements we do when sad/happy/angry, etc.). Welcome to the rabbit hole, in some assorted articles below:
What we currentl...
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Everything you ever wanted to know about ADHD...continues! WOOHOO! Go back and check out Parts I & III, or start here to learn more about dopamine, how to differentiate someone with ADHD v. someone who is neurotypical, why folx with ADHD run late, and what the impacts are on school (sadly, so far, not great) when someone is labeled with ADHD and receives accommodations. The things that are easy, hard, and all the myths and misperceptions that exist about what is really not a deficit, but rather an abundance and variety of, attention. The third part of a series from David, who has lectured as an expert and advocate on this subject nationally, and assisted by Isabelle, who is eagerly sponging up the information. A neurodivergent and neurotypical blend of friends Christina, AJ, Gabe, and Isabelle's husband, Bobby, sit in to ask questions. (Part III of David’s Lecture Series)
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Isabelle & David welcome Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, and their friends, Christina, AJ, and Gabe, to continue to listen and learn from David’s tried and tested presentation on ADHD, which he normally gives to fellow clinicians (for the first and second parts of this talk, please see episode 4, All About ADHD Part I and episode 6, All About ADHD Part II). David talks about procrastination, and why it raises the stakes, thus generating more dopamine (the chemical in our brain that gives us a feeling of reward or satisfaction), which folx with ADHD are deficient in. He relates this to the idea that winning, or a win/lose condition, as something that generates dopamine: if we leave for somewhere that is 10 minutes away with 9 minutes to go, if we get there in time, we feel like we beat the clock (won). Also, as we run late to something, for example, we raise the stakes and leave so that we will run late—thus, giving us dopamine—but we’re often miserable and blaming ourselves the whole time. Miserable, and loaded with dopamine: reinforcing the behavior that we are also blaming/shaming ourselves for. How struggles with time management (guessing how long something will take or how all the pieces will fit together) make transitions and running late even harder, and how it is important for neurotypical partners and folx to know it is not done on purpose. How to differentiate (or diagnose) someone with ADHD when a lot of symptoms of ADHD also occur in neurotypical folx (like procrastination? Enjoying sex?). Most psychological diagnoses are connected to things many people experience (such as anxiety); and most humans will struggle with executive functioning skills, but all folx with ADHD will struggle with these skills (see below for a list of skills!). Furthermore, when we get into how people recognize and learn from mistakes, that’s when you see ADHD: a person with ADHD will make these mistakes a lot more often and also carry a lot more shame and self-blame for doing them because of just how often they make them. Neuropsych (short for neuropsychological testing) can help find an ADHD diagnosis but can also miss it. For example, audience member AJ names going to go to the store and seeing the coupons, but skipping the step of putting them in your pocket (ADHD)—and a pattern of this experience, over and over again (plus the “Why did I do this AGAIN!” feeling). David’s use of the Yoda voice “There is no later, only now!” Talking about the shame spiral of the pattern of this happening over and over again. Major consequences of growing up with ADHD - social and school. Folx with ADHD, if they are diagnosed as having it impact their learning (remember: ADHD is not necessarily a learning disability, it must be shown to be impacting learning), they are often tracked with lower level classes and are given accommodations to suit lower IQ students (make things easier). Dilemma there is most people with ADHD have above average IQ: with this setup, they are under stimulated in school, and also isolated and marginalized, systemically. Sharing different school experiences, from being in gifted programs to transitional programs, to having LD labels: and the validation of folx with ADHD often disliking school (especially when they receive accommodations). Seen as if you’re doing it on purpose. Especially kicks in around ages 9-10, when peers start normalizing your world v. Your family. Talking about kids will naturally accommodate themselves in school (figure out bare minimum grade, skip homework but do well on a test, for example)—but when they do this, for example, not doing homework, can be read as personal (by the teacher) or avoid the consequences.Dopamine deficiency? ADHD is often understood as neurobiological (brain) difference, that includes lower levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter (messenger chemical) in our brain that gives us feelings of satisfaction and reward—the feeling of YOU DID IT…ahhhhhhh. Another way of viewing it is a neurotypical person has a shot-glass-sized need for dopamine and so little bits of dopamine fill it up enough to feel that satiation, whereas a person with ADHD has a pint-glass-sized need for dopamine. At times, you need a lot more dopamine and are starving for it, but at other times, you have so much dopamine it is so rewarding (and perhaps the reward feeling while eating that doughnut is actually that much greater), but it also makes it even harder to pull away or transition from getting that dopamine to not (imagine how hard it is to not keep watching a show you love or how it would feel if someone suddenly unplugged the tv). Keep in mind that dopamine is just one of the neurotransmitters doing some fun other stuff where ADHD is concerned.
DAVID’S DEFINITIONS:
ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder: is an outdated diagnostic label that also used to a serve as a marker (often perpetuating some shame and stigma) differentiating a person from someone who had ADHD or the hyperactive part of ADHD. Currently, everything is called ADHD, with the following subtypes: inattentive type (too much brakes), impulsive type (too much gas), or combined type (too much of one or the other depending on the environment someone is in). Folx diagnosed with ADD will often present as ADHD inattentive or combined subtype.
Neuropsych(ological) Testing: can be very expensive, and is one way to get an official diagnosis for ADHD (another is meeting with a licensed clinician who does a thorough social/school/work/life history combined with self-diagnosis). Neuropsych tests assess your reactions and responses to different challenges, and can be helpful in either the validation of a diagnosis or awareness in what kinds of supports/accommodation and modifications might be helpful. It should be noted that these tests are largely dependent on the examiner's evaluation, and aren't perfect and can be wrong.From the Cleveland Clinic: "A neuropsychological evaluation is a test to measure how well a person's brain is working. The abilities tested include reading, language usage, attention, learning, processing speed, reasoning, remembering, problem-solving, mood and personality and more"
this is the behavior that occurs in between the assignment of a task, and working on the task. This is waiting to the last minute, or wh...
Procrastination: (For more, see also Episode 008-Are we designed to procrastinate?) -
Everything you ever wanted to know about ADHD...continues! WOOHOO! Go back and check out Part I, or start here to learn more about what's happening in the brain, how to use environments to cue ourselves, how debate and manufactured fights can be ways to help you focus, and more! The things that are easy, hard, and all the myths and misperceptions that exist about what is really not a deficit, but rather an abundance and variety of, attention. The second part in a series from David, who has lectured as an expert and advocate on this subject nationally, and assisted by Isabelle, who is eagerly sponging up the information. A neurodivergent and neurotypical blend of friends Christina, AJ, Gabe, and Isabelle's husband, Bobby, sit in to ask questions. (Part II of David’s Lecture Series)
---(Part II of David’s Lecture Series) Isabelle & David welcome Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, and their friends, Christina, AJ, and Gabe, to continue to listen and learn from David’s tried and tested presentation on ADHD, which he normally gives to fellow clinicians (for the first part of this talk, please see episode 4, David’s Lecture: All About ADHD!). We talk about Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) which often also exists alongside ADHD; however, they are two different things. ADHD can make you more prone to distraction when you hear sounds, no APD (see definition below). ADHD can also coexist with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). David gets nerdy about how blood flow to certain parts of our brain connects to distraction, and how our environment can also cue us to shift blood flow to the forebrain (prefrontal cortex). Gabe notes that sports served as an important accommodation. David makes the comparison that it’s like having an energy bar in a video game, and if you don’t use it during your day, it will become anxious rumination at night. David and Bobby get distracted by Bobby’s audio equipment (or Bobby tweaking his audio settings) and David points out that being oppositional rewards us with dopamine. Debate as a dopamine booster. As a parent, how do you get out of power struggles. Talking about ADHD as too much gas (hyperactive) and too much brakes (inattentive); combined type is both, and environmentally cued (the more comfortable you are, the more gas; the less comfortable you are, the more brakes). What about ADHD on vacation? We can get more irritable or more chill, and it can be because we have uprooted our accommodations: the structure we have in place at home that helps us get along. So we can start to manufacture structure (including undertaking vacation-only projects, getting into a predictable arguments, reading a book in a day, etc.). When we understand how ADHD impacts us (for example, starting to write a book on vacation to cleverly avoid interactions we don’t want to have, plus building in structure…but not finishing because we didn’t factor in the response cost of it) we can work with it.
Click here for slides from David’s lecture.
How genetically loaded is ADHD?
Pretty loaded. For more on this, check out this article in Nature (prepare for science!)
On a related note, this article also points to ADHD being more of a spectrum than previously thought; as the article mentions:"Accumulating evidence from family, twin, and molecular genetic studies suggests that the disorder we know as ADHD is the extreme of a dimensional trait in the population. The dimensional nature of ADHD has wide-ranging implications. If we view ADHD as analogous to cholesterol levels, then diagnostic approaches should focus on defining the full continuum of “ADHD-traits” along with clinically meaningful thresholds for defining who does and does not need treatment and who has clinically subthreshold traits that call for careful monitoring. The dimensional nature of ADHD should also shift the debate about the increases in ADHD’s prevalence in recent years. Instead of assuming that misdiagnoses are the main explanation for the increased prevalence, perhaps researchers should explore to what extent the threshold for diagnosis has decreased over time and whether changes in the threshold are clinically sensible or not.”In other words, ADHD is part of a set of traits that live along a spectrum, and since we tend to diagnose ADHD when those traits/behaviors/experiences are read as a problem, we lump it into it’s own bag, when really it might turn out to be a neurodivergent branch of the same tree. And so those with ADHD can exist all along a spectrum, too! Hence: calling it attentional variability rather than a deficit.
DAVID’S DEFINITIONS:
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD): a hearing disorder and has to do with how the brain processes auditory information. APD can impact attention as well, but it’s not ADHD. Note: ADHD can make it harder to hear certain sounds, for example a person’s voice in a noisy setting, but the mechanism behind why it’s hard is different than APD.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs): a group of developmental differences (AKA neurodiversity or differences in the brain) that can cause increased sensitivity to stimulation, social, communication and behavioral challenges.
Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): also known as the forebrain, is a part of the brain that, through dopamine, is linked to executive functioning, or the skills (check out the list below) that help you pay attention, curb your impulses, take in memories (working memory), and play with different scenarios and outcomes (cognitive flexibility), for starters. For further reading, check out this super science-y article.
Forebrain skills that are harder for folks with ADHD (no matter the type):
Response Cost - neurological skill that helps you know the consequences of your actions later on down the road
Delay of Gratification - receiving the reward or win, well after the behavior occurs.
Black and White Thinking - believing or acting as if there are only two ways of thinking right or wrong. Black and white thinking makes it harder to see middle paths during an argument
Time and Organization Skills - knowing how long tasks will take, planning transition times into tasks, appropriately guessing how long something will take, or all parts of time and organizational skills.
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cover art by: Sol Vázquez
technical support by: Bobby Richards -
Everything you ever wanted to know about ADHD. Seriously. From what's happening in the brain, to how it's experienced day to day--the things that are easy, hard, and all the myths and misperceptions that exist about what is really not a deficit, but rather an abundance and variety of, attention. The first part in a series from David, who has lectured as an expert and advocate on this subject nationally, and assisted by Isabelle, who is eagerly sponging up the information. A neurodivergent and neurotypical blend of friends Christina, AJ, Gabe, and Isabelle's husband, Bobby, sit in to ask questions.
(Part I of David's All About ADHD Lecture Series)
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Isabelle & David welcome Isabelle’s husband, Bobby, and their friends, Christina, AJ, and Gabe, to listen and learn from David’s tried and tested presentation on ADHD, which he normally gives to fellow clinicians. ADD and ADHD are the same thing. ADHD is not a learning disability, it’s a brain difference. People with ADHD don’t automatically qualify for accommodations in schools, need to prove they are struggling hard enough. ADHD is all about the forebrain—the roses of our brain—everything that makes you, you, and makes you unique. Blood tends to flow into the forebrain when you are making decisions. For people with ADHD (see below!), being directed to do something is not doing it. You can look at a red dot, for example, just under different environmental contexts. It’s not a deficit of attention, it’s variability of attention. As you’re demanding more focus, you lose the ability to focus, unless there’s a crisis. The root word for patience is suffering. But someone with ADHD experiences much more distress (physiologically) when they are understimulated. Boredom/waiting without structure is the worst. Response cost (see definition below) makes it hard for us to know when we’re doing something that has a consequence further on down the road. The act of debating gives you dopamine. Dopamine deficiency? See more about dopamine deficiency below. Do you ever hear someone get angry when they look away from the screen (WHAT?!) It’s because they’re being starved from dopamine when you’re already starving. What elicits hyperfocus instead of distraction? The environment: safety, comfort, consistency, the person’s experience/mastery. With ADHD, they need greater levels of stimulation (hyperactive type) or structure (inattentive type) to attend? Again, ADHD is best not thought about as a deficit of attention: attention variability. We have an overabundance of attention. A neurotypical person can attend to whatever in whatever environment, and if they can’t, much easier for them to identify and advocate for what’s interfering with that (for example, “I can’t hear you, the fridge is making a weird noise!”) Whereas for someone with ADHD, it connects to self-esteem, much more difficult to ask for what you need because it makes you think you’re different or deficient or you missed the thing that’s interfering to begin with. It’s the ability to have self-esteem to advocate for the learning environment. We start to touch on ADHD and its link to Auditory Processing Disorder.To see some of David's slides from this presentation, click here (or visit somethingshinypodcast.com)
ADHD types explained through how we buy a printer we need:
inattentive type: struggles to buy the printer, doesn’t take into account the cost of a lack of a printer, buys one six months laterimpulsive type: buys two printers, means to put the other one up for sale, forgets to, sits in a corner for six monthscombination type: see above and experience BOTH, often depending on your level of mastery/comfort (more impulsive). Oh, it’s fun.Forebrain skills that are harder for folks with ADHD (no matter the type):
Response Cost: neurological skill that helps you know the consequences of your actions later on down the road
Delay of Gratification - receiving the reward or win, well after the behavior occurs.
Black and White Thinking - believing or acting as if there are only two ways of thinking right or wrong. Black and white thinking makes it harder to see middle paths during an argument
Time and Organization Skills - knowing how long tasks will take, planning transition times into tasks, appropriately guessing how long something will take, or all parts of time and organizational skills.
Dopamine deficiency? ADHD is often understood as neurobiological (brain) difference, that includes lower levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter (messenger chemical) in our brain that gives us feelings of satisfaction and reward—the feeling of YOU DID IT…ahhhhhhh. Keep in mind that dopamine is just one of the neurotransmitters doing some fun other stuff where ADHD is concerned.
The Red Dot Study… came from a book David was reading off his colleague's bookshelf, pre-pandemic. Pandemic happened. Office closed (permanently). No memory of the author. We will keep looking for it, but in the meantime, our apologies and here is a study with similar findings: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763932/
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Cover art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical support by: Bobby Richards
Thank you to Christina, Gabe, and AJ for being our audience -
David and Isabelle welcome Ren, a fellow therapist with ADHD, who digs into what was rough and unique about being homeschooled as a neurodivergent person. From the spaghettification-like transition to college, to the stereotypes of homeschooling as being for white Jesus-Jumper-wearing Christians (Duggar style), what it means to face things like frustrating and nonsensical busy work, a lack of structure, and learning how to study from television. Tackling questions about confidence, self-image, and Dickensonian skull-caps. Part II of a series.
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David wonders what different versions of homeschooling Ren was exposed to growing up—they describe a number of different structures, and that their family lived more on the structured side. Studies were more experiential, going to plays or museums or reading books on your own versus just listening to lectures. You’d do things based on your own pace, and it was almost entirely moms—a lot of it was birth order, the eldest kids had different experience because mom’s had more practice, and got a little more tired. Ren doesn’t want to pain too rosy a picture, it was a big struggle for many when they left the system and hit college—maybe more help with the big transition? Ren spent a lot of their first year of college depressed, going from being the ‘best’ by being a class of 1, do what I want when I want, to suddenly “you expect me to sit in this class multiple hours, multiple times a week, listening to you talk…and then do more stuff later?” Ren never had their time wasted by an authority figure, or the concept of busy work. Isabelle pictures this as a froyo shop model of education, where you get to try so many different things and combinations—a sense of autonomy and a sense of reassurance. In order to feel confident, you need to trust your experience, stealing from Good Inside with Dr. Becky. As caregivers we cut off emotional states, you can’t trust your own assessment of your own experience, and we’re coming in with a counter of “you don’t have to have that feeling,” because you don’t get a gauge for validation. Also offering empathy for Freshman-year Ren, like they saw through the Matrix and had already seen through it. Isabelle feels like the opposite of Ren—she went to school 6 days every week, she had a really old school Polish lessons on Saturdays based on the Polish school system. Isabelle is like the tame bird, while Ren feels like they were free and then were being told to go into a cage. David is realizing he would not have survived if he was Ren—the hardest thing was everything they just described, he was oppositional, he’d drag his feet at everything. David almost saw this as spaghettification, like if you’re in two places of different pressures you’ll turn into spaghetti (see below, yikes, we edited out a more detailed and graphic description, be warned if you go down this rabbit hole). Ren walked into places with no defenses, which Ren relates to colonization, "oh hi, it's the Pilgrims again." They were touch-starved because as the eldest of 6, they hadn’t gone a day without someone in their space, but they were also failing at the thing they were good at, and they were supposed to learn how to study. They learned about how people do school on tv—they’d gather up their textbooks and just sit at the library for 7 hours because that’s what studying ‘looks like.’ They dealt with it by doing the closest thing to being a home schooler, which was being a theater major. An on-ramp would’ve been nice. Isabelle wants to mention that the part they edited out about spaghettification, if you went down the rabbit hole and it's a lot and you're not alone, and maybe we just trauma bonded and yikes. There was a developmental trajectory that moved more and more into a ‘feeling more free' direction—the more BS David could do, the more autonomy he got, and so he got rewarded for doing the BS which helped him later on down the line. Isabelle wonders if Ren was learning more intrinsically v. extrinsically, because you want your own self-reference for building pride and capacity v. approval—where did this anxiety start, if for 18 years they had themselves as their own self-reference? How it can take just one awful educational experience to challenge your sense of self. Up until college, all of Ren’s anxiety was about going to Hell—after college, it switched to everything else—they are getting things wrong in a way that is invisible to me, and everybody else feels like what's going on. Everyone else has seen the same things, but they are outside the bubble, was like an alien trying to blend in. What is a Jesus jumper, you may wonder? A long denim skirt that goes to the ankle, if you think of a potato sack with a sleeplessness. On the other end of the spectrum from Ren's mom, they did not wear Jesus jumpers and let their girls go to the college, but a lot of people think of this. The home school reference for people is white and Duggar style, Jesus jumper. So Ren's identity before college was good at running the household, not being difficult, being good at school and after college they needed to find a new thing, because nobody needs them to run a household anymore and school is requiring tasks that are stupid. So they became a stage manager because that was as close to running a household, and the validation of people needing you and the structure of rehearsals and it became their new thing. David keeps hearing that there are so many people that normalize their life based on TV—it's so real, like the Norman Rockwell version of studying with a feather pen and books on a table in a library, that’s really studying. If it looks right, I'm doing it. Isabelle wonders if this is Norman Rockwell or Dickens—and the reason she suspects this, is because she was really into historical fiction, adoring the American Girl books and she was the kid that actually asked for a quill pen for her birthday, she wanted a candle, melted wax stamps, she’s into everything David is saying. It’s possible that for her for her studying that looked like this Dickensonian image may actually have been an accommodation.
Good Inside with Dr. Becky - talking about confidence
Spaghettification
Homeschool representation tends to be white and fundamentalist and wearing a Jesus Jumper (like the Duggars)-----
Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
Special Thanks to Ren for sharing their brilliance with us!
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David and Isabelle are delighted to be joined by their colleague, Ren, a fellow therapist who describes their journey to understanding their neurodivergence. From to what it was like growing up the eldest of six kids and being homeschooled until college, to how different it is to cope with our neurodivergence when we recognize that it's "for keeps," to how we have a "cartoon" of ourselves that can do it all. Covering questions about structure, how strange it is to remove the pressure of having anxiety all the time through medications and accommodations, and how White supremacy generates the myth that the world is a level or equal place for everyone. Part I of a series.
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David and Isabelle welcome their colleague and amazing friend, Ren! David is excited for Ren to share their story because they were not traditionally schooled, but were homeschooled from the second day of 1st grade. On the second day of 1st grade, a kid named Jack who had bullied them all through Kindergarten, was going to do the same thing in first grade, and their mom decided—how about we not? Also, connected to their parents not being pleased with the school system in St. Louis, and they were also evangelical Christian, which factored in. They came to their diagnosis later in life, when they were already working at the Willow Center with David and Isabelle, and their friend Robin was thinking about them being newly diagnosed, and Ren was listening going “it’s not that dramatic, that’s not ADHD?” Do they just think they have ADHD because they work with a bunch of openly neurodivergent people? Then Ren talked to Robin about it for about 12 hours and realized that they were. As part of diagnosis, people are often asked about school, and Ren was not only homeschooled, but fit the eldest daughter stereotype in that they were in charge of their own schooling. And of course their school record looks like everything is fine because they were in charge of their own progress and record. Isabelle wonders what some of the things Ren thought were “normal, not ADHD” were—what tipped them off? Ren describes that them and their friend were both people with advanced degrees, and a big history of anxiety—and the way boredom works and anxiety can serve as a way to self-medicate as an accommodation. It doesn't take three hours to stress yourself out to be able to do a task—the abstract of how you think. You’ve been working with static in your brain forever and everyone else is not doing the static? Ren has done a lot of identity work whereas this is a jacket that just fits—“I don’t have to work myself so hard to work.” David would brag “I just sat down and read the other day.” It’s incredible, I don’t have to fight to keep my eyes on one page, and then I retain it, and then I write about it. About 90% of their anxiety just went away. Isabelle names that when the anxiety is reduced so much, how does she get things done? It came before she was really conscious of accommodation strategies, it felt like she was unmasking way more rapidly than when she was conscious of it and replacing her anxiety with accommodations. It forced her to embrace all these limitations and then it made her feel icky to really face her actual limitations. Ren names that it was different when it is “for keeps” — and Isabelle used to think she had limitless potential but actually now she has to accept the page has been cut off. It serves her more to admit she can’t—but anxiety told me I could, if I just did more! Ren describes it as cartoon you—and also cartoon partner—the real person has limits, and you see yourself as a cartoon that’s limitless, and that contrast can motivate you, but also not. David wasn’t sitting in anxiety as much as shame, and the ADHD diagnosis came later in the life, and all of a sudden the world was not longer level, but had ice shelfs and ridges, and much more complicated environment, meant that he could unpack shame. But also this is how white supremacy affects all of us, the idea that the world is level is ridiculous. Ren is Black, AFAB, Queer, nonbinary, and so the concept of the world is level is not a real thing. In the 80’s and 90’s, David names that there was this whole idea that the world should be equal, mainstreaming, “you got your needs met, so you’re failing now…” and it didn’t really work. David’s bias is around creating inclusion and having all sorts of neurotypical and meurodivergent kids doing the same work with different expectations and breaking the illusion that the world is level. Ren’s way of homeschooling was the way that the schooling then applied to her other 5 siblings; they were the type A, just want to learn something. Their mom was still asleep and they woke their mom up, saying “it’s time for you to teach me something.” Their brother was diagnosed early, took their fridge apart, and Ren was reading and researching all the things. They were already at the top off the hierarchy in terms of learning, and you could tell which kids in the homeschooling group could adapt to the school environment and which kids never should be in this environment. Isabelle is curious what the homeschool environment looks like? What was the structure like? 13 year age gap between all the kids, their mom had the most executive functioning in the family—there was a list of subjects and a bunch of criteria for the subjects; she purchased textbooks, literature, and a homeschool group of a couple hundred, and they would get together and swap resources. Couple of a moms were good at music, and art, and match, and everyone would swap resources. Their transition to college was “oh God, so much being told what to do at all time.” Every year they took a state test to see what grade level they were at, and would get progress reports. Their mom worked in education her whole life, so she was not dropping standards but doing it for religious reasons. There was a vibrant community and not being penalized for wiggling. It was an evangelical Christian homeschool bubble, but nobody’s mom had the time or energy to be committed to you sitting still, they were trying to pack lunch for 8 people. For Ren, that concept of asking an authority figure for permission to move their body from place to place—this only happened on tv.
-----Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
Special Thanks to Ren for sharing their brilliance with us!
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In this hodgepodge of truth bombs, David and Isabelle cover a bit about how menopause and hormonal changes make it less rewarding to help others, how to assume your partner is doing more than you and turn tedious tasks into bigger wins, and how much we still need positive reinforcement as adults. That David and Isabelle explore the truth that in every silverware drawer there is a good spoon and a bad fork...and the return of David's beloved industrial-pack of fruit leather for a true ice cream win.
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We talk all about how kids need routine and structure and compassion and positive reinforcement, but you’re going about your life as a parent or adult, and you may want to yell “I need an adult!” And there is no one. David then names that parents beat themselves up because we didn’t do the taxes or whatever—but you just needed help. How much you need to do in a day, it is an impossible task. People that get everything done in a day are not happy. Isabelle shares that it helps her to stay busy when she’s taking care of everything all the time instead of staying present when she’s understimulated by playing with kids in activities she’s not super jazzed about (despite her kids being incredible!) What does it mean to chronically take care of everyone’s needs…and then menopause hits and suddenly, after perhaps toxically trying to take care of everyone all the time and making that where you get your sense of value from, you have to reset? This brings up all the hormonal shifts women experience throughout life—puberty, menstrual cycles, trying to conceive, pregancies, perimenopause and menopause (technically perimenopause lasts on average 3-5 years and menopause lasts on average 7-14 years, so I guess it’s a 10-20 year span depending). David names that dopamine bonds to estrogen, you will naturally feel good taking care of people, and then all of a sudden it cuts off, it’s gone—so doing the things you used to no longer provides any enjoyment and what do you do now? Acknowledging that no one talks about it and partners are left flummoxed. Isabelle is standing on her little rebounder/trampoline and almost fell off because it was hitting her that this makes so much sense but also, WTF?! Why isn’t this a part of our larger conversation? Because everywhere in medicine, we are following a history and setup that is designed to care for cis, White men and we’re missing so many people and leaving people feeling like they’re doing something wrong. In his day to day, David tries to be extra careful about what he makes other people responsible for, and actively attempts to take things off of someone else’s plate. Because he can see this affecting everyone in his life—checking his male privilege. But beyond this, it’s also that he assumes his partner is doing more than him at all times—whether this is true or not. It changes the establishing operation and puts new value onto the little things. It means because we take the hit we will do it for our team or our group member. It makes tedious tasks into being more important. As a parent you are also busy parenting yourself, you have to see yourself through things as an adult, and you practice doing it for yourself. For neurodivergent folx, we can struggle with identifying with the internal states we have or our emotions or expressing the emotion. Isabelle finds it is easier to externalize her feelings, like visualizing a little you needing things and speaking to that little you makes it easier for her to figure out what she's actually feeling and needing. Also comes from not having a bunch of fellow neurodivergent people around you sometimes, if there is no person around you to validate you, your experience gets missed--you need to get that mirrored back. It's like being a room of neurodivergent people and suddenly feeling that someone else gets how in every drawer there is a "good spoon" and a "bad fork." Isabelle deeply concurs. There are bad forks! There are good spoons! there’s a good spoon in every drawer—which leads Isabelle down the road of ice cream spades and sample spoons (go Jeni’s) — and what about ice cream scoops? David thinks we should be able to slice out our ice cream with dental floss or peel away the outside of the carton, or even have a timer system and go to town. Isabelle remembers how her friends that worked at ice cream shops would grow massive Popeye arms (just on the side they were scooping with). Her kid also showed her how to use the ice cream scoop, she’s hacking away at the ice cream scoop, it’s not dissimilar to how to watch kids pick things up—full squat to pick things up. Because of heaviness and just nature, kid let the weight of the scoop do the work and then twisted it. She has not been able to be replicate it, and it is maybe part her and part scoop that leads to this problem she has with the scoops. David believes it is still an engineering flaw. David then shares his recent ice cream invention, using his giant packs of fruit leather. Cut out like wide pizza slices of fruit leather, fill with a spoonful of ice cream, then wrap fruit leather around the ice cream. You gotta work fast because it freezes instantly...but then you can handhold your ice cream. We will totally collaborate with a listener who wants to partner with us on creating the perfect ice cream scoop. This also brings up how for David, the key to being able to wait for his fruit leather was totally forgetting about it. The best hack for delaying gratification? Forgetting you're waiting. Forgetting is way easier than remembering, actually--you skip the extra steps and accommodations you use to remember (like marking your calendar, flagging the email, writingi it down)...and voila! Distract yourself! Teflon mind (minus the hazardous chemicals).
Rocky Road to Perimenopause (Harvard Health)
Menopausal transition (NIH Institute on Aging)
Dopamine loss with estrogen loss (as in menopause)
Dopamine’s relationship to serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate
Jeni’s is an OHIO thing
The spoons mentioned are the Jeni's tasting spoons and ice cream spades; if you go to your local Jeni's or order from your specific closer shop, you can find them; they won't appear on the main Jeni's merch site.
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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
Special Thanks to Jeni's. For our ice cream tasting spoons, spades, and flavors. Isabelle recalls the glory of your ol' sundaes...with that dark chocolate and amarena cherries and candied pecans and buttery fresh whipped cream...(sigh).
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How do you teach yourself (and/or children) how to stop, especially when you want to keep going/overcommitting/hyperfocusing? Like videogames, sugar, saying yes to everyone and being—anything addictive—how do you actually stop? David and Isabelle explore the difference between maximizing your time and actually setting reality checks for time blindness (which is real! We have FIVE MINUTES, after all…), how we experientially learn how to start/spot hyper focus things (when we have opportunity to do them), operationalizing and externalizing tasks, and digging into parenting strategies like punishments and limits (not just for parents, btw).
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It’s a dog whistle, if anyone listens to our show not on double speed, they are our friend, welcome to team shiny. Isabelle is still digesting the idea of what it means to put things down, to pause, to slow down, to ask herself “is now the time to do the thing?” And she wonders if this comes up against how rough time blindness is real. The idea that things are either now or not now. If she doesn’t do it now, when she’s thinking of it, and she has the wherewithal to do it—she’s going to forget it and not do it. She’s gotten ten messages at the same time telling her “multitasking is not great” and find a way to do one thing at a time, and in a sequence. But she does better with more stimulation, so isn’t more is better in terms of keeping more tabs open at the same time? Which David agrees, if we close a tab, we’re never going to remember about the website, we have to have tabs open—the way we see the world, and object relations. When we put things on a table, it just becomes a part of the table. You won’t notice it again until someone says something about it and you have to address it. There is an immediacy to things. David wants to rebrand what multitasking is, we have to find new ways to think of time. There was a TikTok where someone goes “5 minutes is an eternity, but 300 seconds is not an eternity” if David thought he had 300 seconds he might not do so much, but if it’s five minutes he’s going to do ten things like change jacket and switch shoes and start dishes and unload laundry. We will naturally try to maximize what we’re doing in a time frame. And the end of time is a transition—it’s really hard to stop and complete the task. The dilemma is: how many things can we do in this moment in time so we feel like we’ve maximized the 15 pounds of material in the 10 pound bag. There is a lot of starting on 18 things—but then the same thing happens, all those things in motion become part of the scenery, and then we’re stuck without the things we didn’t complete. So when we stack our time with 10 things, we lose every time because we have 5 things we don’t complete. Isabelle is into embroidery, her new hyperfixation—it’s always a loss to put it down, and it hits extra hard to stop hyperfocus. And then there's the thing where she doesn't want to do something and she has five minutes and she’s going to do so much before she gets to her doctor’s appointment. This is not dissimilar to how she habitually overcommits herself. Of course she wants to help, and it's always a yes, it’s always enthusiastic consent. But when she's faced with doing it, she feels total failure, and it connects to the thing where actually she feels like she’s failing even more. David is clarifying: one intervention is just for one person. So for David, he puts on his good day socks and thinks of something to do—so he makes a note. Then, when he has a pocket of time in his day, he looks at his list of things and picks one—he knows he cannot do them all. But then Isabelle wonders: how do you remember to only do one thing? David names that this connects to hyper focus and momentum, like when Isabelle is getting into the knitting—to which she replies, no, it is not knitting, where you count stitches, she cannot do that. This is embroidery, where you stab cloth over and over again and see results real fast. And David wonders, as an adult, you can dictate space and time to do this—but what if you wanted to do something, but you couldn’t dictate the time to do it—it would be sad making, but more than that, you’d want to do the thing MORE. Is this what happens with kids and video games? With a lot of addictive things, like candy, eating— the more rigid we are, the more we reinforce counter control, the more likely they're going to want the things we’re supposed to have. This is how kids with candy in the house don't grow up to binge on candy because it was normalized how to interact with it. This resonates with a book Isabelle has yet to read, Low Demand Parenting (see below) that connects to how limits on screen time, routines, punishments, even gentle parenting techniques that are really reflective and ask the kids to really think about their thoughts and feelings may not easily apply to neurodivergent kids—because they all emphasize self-regulation and executive functioning, which is the whole thing we’re not great at. So she just thought about the values she thought about building up relationship and confidence, you don’t have to do hard things alone, building up autonomy, if it’s kept from me and someone else is the game keeper, I never learn how to manage it though practicing. And David adds, you never get satiation, you never get ‘enough,’ you never internally experientially learn “it’s not the right amount for me,” like the tummy ache you get when you eat too much sugar. It’s also that you innately start to learn what to do when, including hyper focusing on things: it's not that you're not that you’re not allowed to do it, it’s when you do it. And you don’t have to earn it, what's the baseline you get for just being a human and it doesn’t get taken away. Never take away a coping mechanism, a self-soothing mechanism, like videogames, or books, or interacting with friends, because if you take away the coping skill as punishment you are taking away the thing you need to self-regulate, so you have less of the thing you need to be able to stop or regulate. Also, you get locked in power struggles, which with neurodivergent folk is like watching the bears eat each other, as Isabelle puts it. David names: the emphasis should not be providing consequences to make someone to do “right,” it’s how can you get someone to feel enough wins to feel good—this helps with behavior change. If punishment works, it only works with that reinforcer (aka with that person). You don't learn to not do the thing in general, you learn to not do the thing with that person. Or like larger rules, a family David knows would tell the kid “don’t touch, it’s hot and dangerous!” And that became the thing they'd say when something was dangerous “that’s hot!” And then when it came time for the kid to actually test the boundaries they felt like they couldn't really trust what people said because things…weren’t hot. Isabelle is by no means a perfect parent. In fact, she yells, she meltdown, she shame spirals all the time—this is a thing she’s very much learning. And she’ll give herself credit that when unmasked, she is pretty direct and blunt, and takes away the mystery and just names the thing and the context for the thing, like swearing. This makes her think of swearing and her dear friend who is neurodivergent, who delivers data on a thing with maximum warmth and bluntness. This is something she wishes would visit her when she’s doing too much: “Dear, that's impossible. Pick one thing.”
Low Demand Parenting by Amanda Diekman
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Why is it that I have 1000 planners/calendars/whiteboards and still forget stuff all the time? It’s not you, it’s them: they don’t ask you to attend to them, they are passive things that don’t ask you to attend to them. David and Isabelle dig into why voice assistants (like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri) are a potentially useful neurodivergent accommodation strategy—and no judgment if you value your privacy above the outsourcing your working memory. Covering visual timers, what to avoid if you’re setting up a reminder program, and the power of a slow clap.
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Isabelle does not like to be scheduling, she likes to have scheduled. She does not like to holiday, she likes to have had a holiday season. During the recent holiday break, it was a structureless day, the kids were home, Bobby was working, and Isabelle was in one room all day, and realized how much of her executive functioning short circuited, and also how much her memory is reliant upon changing rooms, and sequences of physical actions, all of which were missing because everyone was on break and out of routine. So she found a cheap system for a voice assistant. And it has been game changing for her family. It doesn't have to live inside her head, the routines, the rhythms. There is an external nag doing the nagging for her and the rest of the family. She wonders why all her planners and lists and things don’t do it but this voice assistant does? David explains that it’s because it comes to you, you don’t have to go to it to get the information. Unless it exploded or fired out papers into the world, you have to attend to it to be reminded. It’s a partner in executive functioning. Instead of having to outsource it to your partner so much. You can program skills, sequences of actions, routines, etc. Kids are learning a whole sequence but I don’t have to teach them all the time. A lot of people ask us for parenting help, and we can talk about all the strategies to do to change behavior. The most important thing you can do is notice when they’re doing something good. When it tells them to do the thing, and they do this thing, you get to come in and celebrate them and notice it. This is a big gift it has given Isabelle and her family: instead of interacting around a stress point, and we get frustrated with the system instead of with each other. You can program it to applaud, and it has a feature where you get it to slow clap, and Isabelle names they have a legit slow clap in the house, and the kids love it. What you’re seeing is why this works, it is a legit intervention. Those kinds of systems are not always helpful for people. Isabelle learned the hard way that it was left on storytelling for too long and wild and they had to wrangle in a more soothing bedtime routine. But as David reminds us, if you’re not listening to it as it reminds you, you will learn to never listen to it. Same as with a visual timer, you have to keep yourself to it, because otherwise you are learning to ignore. Isabelle has a certain feature where she has to answer a question to a reminder, the beeping doesn’t go away unless you interact with it. Also, setting up timers with music, setting environmental cues through music and setting up an ambience with parts of their routine. David never uses timers, because he only uses them when it’s go-time. He’s a person who really values privacy. It’s an emotional battle, unless you’ve gone through the options to change your phone settings, they are listening to it. The different options are essentially a whiteboard that speaks to you, a diary that buzzes after you, a friend that doesn’t forget—you do have those resources if you don’t have this device. This is also so you know you can find options that aren’t digital—but be careful of overly depending on people, because dependency breeds aggression, and that is one of the things about these robot overlords, are you can be as dependent as you want on them and be as aggressive as you want to be and it doesn’t hurt a person. When kids get frustrated with it, or I get frustrated with it, it’s happening to an object rather than to yourself, or someone else. Isabelle casts no judgment on those who choose privacy over these devices, because she tried one out a few years back and she was very much against it, it felt creepy to her. She didn’t really explore it or work with it. The thing that changed her minds was the realization of how much of the working memory and routine and reminders this offloads, the difference is it’s not on her to remember. So she’s like “go ahead and sell me all the dog food, because it's worth it.” David is a good person, he’s not worried about the things it finds out about me…so it would sell me the fruit leather? But it might be so clever it would question if David really wants 4 cases of 500 of them. So David decides he would NEVER get one because he doesn’t.
What is Bluey?
Isabelle notes: Brace yourself, this show is powerful and not just for kids/parents/caregivers of kids. 7 minute episodes with brilliant writing and solid visuals all teaching you how to be a human modeled by cartoon dogs. Special ND note: Many fans argue that the shows titular character is a ND tribe member (I welcome her with open arms); there is more overt mention in the episode “Army," which features a character named Jack (who continues on in the show) who many argue represents a neurodivergent kid—to watch him find connection and confidence is pretty incredible....OH THE FEELS.
----Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
Special Thanks to Bluey. Best show that sums up real life for kids (and grownups) with humor, compassion, and just plain brilliance. Watch “Flat Pack.”
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Isabelle struggles with the idea of doing 'little yucks' because her to-do list is endless, she never stops, and the demands on her feel endless--how can you even think about what you need or stop to rest without feeling guilty/lost/overwhelmed with unstructured time? David counters with a behavioral truth bomb: the power of knowing your establishing operation. What levers did the environment around you press?
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Isabelle wonders whether she even knows what a little yuck is; she turns everything else in to a big yuck, or a bunch of ‘to-do’s’ — for David, a little yuck helps the larger household, but the timing and the coping of it is just for you. Like doing the dishes so he can prep for a speech, or laundry (even though he had just done laundry) because he wants the option to wear a certain pair of pants. The same energy level existed, it was not on today’s to-do list, and he just did it to keep moving his hands. Isabelle is suffering from a blindspot here: she doesn’t really permit herself to do a little yuck, then return to something you enjoy…but she doesn’t have a to-do list anymore? That feels impossible, she doesn’t know how to not to-do list. David describes how he doesn’t have a written to-do list, it’s connected to a day off physical routine and he calls a friend and then goes for it. But for his to-do list on his day off, when he didn’t have a bunch of things he had to do. He held back from going off the rails and doing too much, he actually held back and stuck to his easy-level plans. Isabelle describes how she does not like to cook or bake, but if she can do it at her leisure, then she enjoys it. She embraces doing it without pressure and she doesn’t feel the chore of it. But the load of things she has to do feels endless, she has never carved out the time where there is nothing for her to do…she doesn’t have the experience of time where something is not expected of her, or she doesn’t expect it of herself. David’s boat is privileged in that he doesn’t have kids and he is not a super person. He is very aware of how much time is taken from someone around childcare, he sees parents doing everything, and doing everything you need or everything your child needs, you can’t really do both. The messages from society is “you’re not allowed to take care of you,” or “you’re supposed to take care of other people.” This feels more like a “mom” thing than a “dad” thing—but it's not accurate. When we’re talking about trying to find the little yuck in Isabelle’s life, the equation is different. For Isabelle, in her world, there are several agents of chaos that enter and are rerouted to priority, and there’s never a moment where she can’t be interrupted or distracted from whatever is happening. There isn’t enough time to feel the thought “I have a lot of energy and there’s nowhere for it to go.” She thinks of a meme she saw where a woman ushers her family out the door. And she finally has time to herself; does she sit and stare at a wall or does she panic clean? Isabelle really struggles with making a decision with what to do with her time when she doesn’t have the constant demands, the volley of little yucks stops, but then why does she choose a little yuck? David goes really complicated, with this thing called an establishing operation. The behavioral word for how a little rat, trained to run a maze, is rewarded by a drop of water; the rat loves the water and does lots of work for the water, but rats don’t naturally love water this much. So the establishing operation is to withhold water from the rat for 24 hours first: the establishing operation changes the reinforcement of the reinforcer. So the yuck meter for Isabelle is totally blown out. So you have to take into account what is the establishing operation for her—and it might be that what do you do to make this time guilt-free or how you set it up to make it yours. What can you do so you don’t feel bad for watching 3 hours when everyone gets home? That really rings a bell for Isabelle; it really connects for her around the challenge of what it means, to even sit down. She really doesn't ever sit down. She recovered from a fractured pelvis because she didn't sit enough. This means changing her relationship to resting or hitting the pause button and carving out the unique, new structure, when she is on her own, or has a lot of energy, or has the agency and privilege to exercise it. She has to change her establishing operation. David names that you have to give yourself the real reinforcement that you need, and not trick yourself into doing chores (that would normally ‘reward’ you with a different set up). Isabelle names that recent training with Hallowell and Ratey (see ADHD 2.0 book link below) is that rumination neural network in the brain is designed for creating problems, and another neural network runs when you’re not doing anything, and another neural network is task positive (you’re trying to do the thing). Now with neurotypical folx, you can flip a switch and go from one mode to another—you can choose! Like what a lot of therapy models use. But if you’re neurodivergent, the environment is what presses the levers, otherwise they’re all going at the same time. Isabelle recognized that the rumination network is always running, and how something about how she can’t switch the levers has to do with the fact that her environment for rest is not different from her environment for everything else (her home). She really needs external cue to signal to her that the thing you think you’re working with is different; she needs a solid external boundary to help with this. She needs to know when they take the water away. Otherwise she’ll keep working and not attend to herself. And she doesn’t know it changed. The rules don’t work anymore, it's not “you,” —maybe it’s everything else? Or is it maybelline?
“Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s maybelline.” (Commercial from the 90's: brace yourselves, this is so 90's it's almost unbearable).
Huberman lab episode on little yucks — he calls them “Micro sucks”
DEFINITIONS
Body Doubling: Someone else in the same room or within view of the person who is trying to get a task done—the other person doing the task creates the illusion of structure. In essence, a buddy is sits with you as you work on something (could be doing a task, or just quietly there, maybe giving you cues or reminders). In reference to in films, this term is used to describe a body double, or a stand in for lead actors in certain shots. Here are some basic ideas.
Establishing operation (EO): Depriving or altering the access to something to make it more enticing and rewarding. The behavioral word for how a little rat, trained to run a maze, is rewarded by a drop of water, and rat loves the water and does lots of work for the water...but rats don’t naturally love water this much. So the establishing operation is to withhold water from the rat for 24 hours first: the establishing operation changes the reinforcement of the water, makes it more enticing and more 'rewarding' for the rat.
Reiserfeiber - “Literally translated, Reisefieber means “travel fever” – but it’s not the type of sickness that keeps you ...
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Isabelle and David catch up and grapple with those moments when you have a ton of energy or anxiety or excitement, and you tackle way more and up the difficulty on your video game of life, instead of going for an easy win. The way we tend to think more is better when it comes to interventions or accommodations when actually it’s the little stuff. The power of the little yuck, and also the way we buy 4 cases of fruit leather and only later consider where we will store them.
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David is sharing how time doesn’t make sense (5 minutes v. 299 seconds=2 different things). Isabelle names how she tries to operate this way all the time or much of the time, remembering all this Team Shiny stuff, but it really is such a hard thing to acknowledge that her working memory is as poor as it is. Whaddayamean nobody moved the keys? (except past her, who forgot she moved the keys?) She gets so angry at herself, maybe now that she knows more about ADHD/attentional variability/ND — she is kinder to herself faster, but she also gets angrier. David names that anger is a path toward adaptive humor—“are you kidding me?” Can turn into a laugh moment or it can turn into berating yourself more. David had a beautiful ADHD moment. David has a bonus at his job, and what does he do with a bonus? Is it a vacation? A box of chocolates? A piece of furniture? Video game? The rule that we have is that anything labelled like this is getting a treat. Bonus or treat yo’self. David decides he’s going to get the best fruit leather than exists, and he decides to order it. First thought: This is excellent, this is funny. Second thought: I can’t wait to tell everyone about this, this is so cool. Third thought: Wait a minute—how much space does this much fruit leather take up? Fourth thought: Does it go bad? Fifth thought: Does it need to be refrigerated? My cats won’t get into it….What did I just do to myself? He is excited and terrified about much fruit leather. He minimizes his impulsivity. What shipping option did he pick? No idea. It doesn’t say what kind of shipping. It reminds Isabelle of how fascinated she is by a ‘lifetime supply’ prize of things: how much is a lifetime supply? Like a steady supply? All at once? How much did you buy exactly…are we talking, pounds? David got 4 cases, so he could pick the flavors. Isabelle-that might be an elementary school’s summer camp order. She thinks you could polish this off, using her kids as a baseline. Will he keep enjoying fruit leather 100 fruit leathers in? David knows that we don’t enjoy the next bite as much as the first, it does wear off. He’s not going to Golem them, he’s going to share the fruit leathers. The last time he had this thought, it happened with Jordan almonds. But they also break people’s teeth and not everyone likes them. Isabelle is delighted because every Polish baby shower and wedding shower, and it was just little baggies of them. Isabelle throws in three fun food facts: frying food is originally to preserve the food without the refrigeration, so fried food, it keeps longer. When you coat something in sugar, or in a salt, it keeps longer. Isabelle also thinks about learning what is the first thing to put on a cut? David responds…not hydrogen peroxide or alcohol, and Isabelle learned that doing that messes with the skin barrier because you scrub away all the good stuff, its then more likely to get infected. Which is shocking, because you'd think more is better. David *names that that’s why soap works: it’s the bubbles! And the friction! That makes soap work. THIS MORE IS BETTER is something we see in clinical work all the time. People throw in so many ADHD interventions, and it fails, and actually…less is more. Like simple things, like where you put your phone at night. Isabelle’s metaphor of late is the idea that we often do all or nothing, but we get bored with playing the video game at easy, and instead of upping the difficulty to medium, we think we have to make it extremely hard, and then you die right away, and you get extremely frustrated and then you quit the game. Here’s Isabelle’s boring task: she needs to go through the kids clothes. What does she do, she then signs up for three consignment sales and figure out delivery dates, and then it raises the anti, and it makes her feel like she’s doing something, but she overwhelms her stimulus load, and then passes her sweet spot so darn fast. David names that easy level on this game is just collecting clothes and putting them in one spot. Medium is putting them into a sort. And super hard level is taking them there and not having them in their house. David notices that people don’t even see the easy options. And then Isabelle also opened three other games, to play at the same time. The more games we’re playing, the harder it is to get into a rhythm. All the interventions he knows are habits and rhythms. David doesn’t really know how to distinguish anxiety or excitement, he’s getting all excited for a party, and the settings all got to difficult. There was no easy option; everything started on difficult. Only parallel is like when you’re about to go to Disney World, everything is set to excited and anxious and difficult. And so he just started doing easy wins; normally he takes that energy and just does way too much. So he did a lot of small little things, he listened to a book and did the dishes. The weirdest thing is he actually thought he could do this, and have all this stuff get done. Part of him was surrendering to an easy mode; he didn’t think of all the things he could accomplish, but rather…what to do with this energy so future Dave will not be mad at him. Isabelle very slowly processes this. Is it like having a big to do list, but actually those things are very difficult things, very little movement, lots of executive functioning. But the awareness of “I have a ton of energy,” the practice of where is your thermostat is living; feels difficult anyway, and then where can I put this so future me is not mad at me, is like body doubling yourself. Both Isabelle and David geek out about Huberman Lab and wanting to hang out with Andrew Huberman in an encapsulated experience, how important it is for our brains to experience little yucks. Doing little sucky things throughout the day creates more good things in a day. The variation of experiences is what helps you feel good, feel the peaks of goodness. Imagine doing exactly what you want to do for 10 hours, Isabelle feels like a piece of poop—but you were getting what you wanted, but instead there’s the sneaking suspicion of impending guilt, or this isn’t how it goes in this game of life. We need the variation in order to actually feel the highs. Like imagine you took breaks and did little yucks throughout the day, and then return to your phone, you have a better day. If you have anxious or excited energy, what are the little yucks I can do with this energy while I am self-medicated (through the anxiety and excitement to do so)? Isabelle thinks about “reiserfieber”, which is a German term for exactly how you feel before a big trip. This is how Isabelle functions this way during nap time, it’s the little yucks. Or the contrast of dropping the kids off at school after 6 snow days; the contrast is what makes you appreciate things. Also pandemic shut down flashbacks. But no, David names, that’s a big yuck. This is actually about little yucsk. It’s something that’s small and not future-oriented, just asking yourself: I have energy and 10 minutes…what’s a little yuck I can do? And keep it easy. On purpose. -
In a panel recorded live in front of an audience at the 2023 Eye to Eye National Friends and Allies conference, David and Isabelle sit down with Eye to Eye co-founders David Flink and Marcus Soutra, Eye to Eye student leader Kayla and an Eye to Eye student leader’s parent Claudia to discuss what it is like to be neurodivergent—or a parent to a neurodivergent kid—across different generations. Part three of three. To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org In this part, we cover the everyone’s favorite accommodations, how to confront stigma, and what everyone would say to their littler selves.
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David (Kessler) asks: what are everyone’s favorite accommodations? For Marcus, who was stuck carrying a giant suitcase to listen to audiotapes, audiobooks were originally not his favorite. He’d get the material two weeks after everyone else and it made him stand out in a way he didn’t like and kept it secret. Then he was working with a 10 year old kid through Eye to Eye, and the kid made a mold of his ear for an art project, saying that he doesn’t read with his eyes, he reads with his ears. Now he listens to every email he receives and sends, it’s how he reads; thanks to resources like Audible.com, it’s everywhere. It’s not just about the perception of the tool, it’s about the availability of the tool. If he could travel back in time to speak to a younger version of himself, because Kessler has a button he can press to make this happen, but only for a short time, Marcus would tell himself that “you’re not broken. The system is.” (Pause for applause). Isabelle wonders if there could be a time travel sound effect and after Flink suggests a Chewbacca noise, Kessler obliges. Claudia’s favorite accommodation is asking students what they need, and listening to them about what type of structure they like. Some like more, some less, some need a quiet room, some need to get up and walk around. David asks, is this essentially giving students the agency back? She agrees. And if she could go back in time, she would tell herself “Everything is going to be okay.” (Pause for snaps galore). After a tough rock-paper-scissors round, Kayla goes next. Kayla’s favorite accommodation is speech-to-text, she’ll step out of the classroom and talk it into her phone. Going back in time, she would tell herself “don’t listen to everything your peers tell you.” (Pause for snaps). Often the hurtful words don’t have anything to do with you, they have to do with what’s going on for them, like a kid who came up to her after saying something hurtful confessing that he was just hiding his own dyslexia. The second thing she would say is “Do you. Don’t think about the way people look at you because of the accommodations you use, or the things you need to do, because at the end of the day, it’s all about making an even playing field.” Her getting extra time on a test is to level the playing field. Flink goes next and shares his least favorite accommodation was getting extra time on tests, because it was him still having to do a test poorly designed for him. As an adult, it's his favorite accommodation, because he now sees it as kindness to have extra time for how he learns and thinks. If he had a time machine, he’d tell himself: “look, you’re going to have to have a strong backbone, but keep your wishbone strong, too.” Isabelle just asks, before we ask questions, that we close the time travel loops and return to the present moment. (Cue Chewbacca noise and a small disagreement about whether Star Wars technically involves time travel). Now it’s time for questions from the audience, the first one being: How is everyone doing? Everyone is doing well, considering they just shared something so vulnerable in front of hundreds of people. Another audience member asks: How can we educate ALL our students? How can we set it up so that we don’t feel stupid or incapable? Kayla starts: building communities, like with Eye to Eye, where there is a place where you have allies and you can see people going on to do great things, like Kayla witnesses when attending the Eye to Eye conference. Claudia names that schools and teacher trainings are underfunded, and they want to learn more and be better equipped but they’re not able to afford those trainings. She also wishes for students with single parents and those who don’t have the means to get access to resources and supports, too. David names that teachers are absolutely amazing and are doing the impossible. We are working with antiquated education system; we have phones that can look up data but we still get graded on memory, v. The questions we ask; teachers get punished if students don’t fit the mold and don’t perform well, but the mold itself is out of date. What about noticing the complexity of the questions students ask, rather than what they know? Marcus wonders why did it take us so long to embrace technology? One of the things he was always told was, “Marcus, you’re not going to have a calculator everywhere you go.” Everyone freaks out. David was told “you're not going to have spellcheck everywhere you go…” Marcus wonders at the teachers who scorn their student’s use of AI, but then they go home and use it to make their lesson plans…it’s odd to see this kind of resistance always, to new technology. He references that when ink pens first came out, there was pushback that quill pens are how you should write. There was a time period in this country when left-handedness was illegal. When left-handedness was made legal, there were skyrocketing rates of left handedness, then it plateaued. He suspects we’re in a similar situation with neurodiversity, where “every single kid is being labeled with LD” and that’s not true, it's more than we’re learning more about the brain every single day, we’re decreasing the stigma as we go. Kessler wonders: who wouldn’t benefit from an individualized education plan? And from desegregation of classrooms? Having different people of different abilities doing the work, together? Flink wants to add that yes, culture change, yes to funding, but what do we do right now? Tomorrow? We are a people-powered movement and country, we can create the change we wish to see by sharing our stories and advocating for ourselves. Chloe asks: how do you combat the stigma around LD and ND within yourself, and how does it work when you’re a part of the education system and an educator? Kessler wonders in general how to address stigma—Claudia responds that as someone who identifies as neurotypical, she tries to build relationships and share her story. Kayla describes going above and beyond; she remembers how her case manager, who was in charge of her IEP, thought she should stick to a trade school and work with agriculture. Kayla’s family responded that this didn’t track with Kayla’s interests; the case manager responded with “you better get used to it, because that’s going to be the only thing she can do;” Kayla’s grandmother was LIVID, she doesn’t take anything from anybody, she told her off, she got Kayla a new case manager, she found tutor after tutor until something clicked. Kessler names how hard Kayla had to work to see a future for herself. David tackles the stigma question himself, with all of his vulnerabilities up. He has a therapist: not because he is broken, or deficient, but so that he doesn’t feel things alone. There is a shadow side to stigma: anyt...
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