How do you survive holiday travel with ADHD? What about traveling with children, particularly small children? And what happens when you find yourself rushing, leaving things until the last minute, and forgetting your charger once again? David and Isabelle swap stories and share specific tips to traveling and also discuss WHY ARE THERE SOCK NUBBINS AND TAGS. Seriously.
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There can be so much pressure to have a Hallmark, picture-postcard perfect holiday and it’s so important to revise those expectations and think about what you actually want to do, for example, maybe it’s “we go to the this house, tolerate everyone for 45 minutes, you grab the turkey, I grab the mashed potatoes, and we leave.” And what about the uncomfortable holiday clothes? Isabelle laughs and mentions a brilliant SNL fake ad for Macy’s that’s all about children’s clothing and how uncomfortable it is. David describes this might be where task meets emotionality (for definition, see below)—is the task of the holidays spending time with family? David remembers the holidays being hard, everyone fighting on the way there and then fine when they got home, and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and just wanting to leave and it being awful. Isabelle remembers coming home so late and it was freezing and trying to sleep in the back seat, freezing. David had the experience going to his partner’s holiday celebrations and—they don’t have ADHD—everyone got along, hung out, sang songs, played piano—and this is real? Friendsgiving is a thing, and you can make choices, what you do for holidays is a choice: like winter is a choice. Anytime you feel trapped or caught in something, changing the language to “I’m choosing to do blank because blank…” with what needs your meeting with it, changes it from you “have to go see Meemaw” You can take the shoulds, musts, and have-to and change it to choices. And maybe Meemaw doesn’t care what you wear, she just wants to see you. WHY ARE THERE TAGS IN CLOTHING? And NUBBINS ON SOCKS? We have evolved so many incredible things, we have AI, we have genome sequencing, and we have sock nubbins, and who invented pantyhose and shapewear. David likes shape wear because the underarmour stuff he wears is nice and tight. Isabelle describes that it’s more designed to smush you in and sometimes it’s great—this is maybe Isabelle’s trauma after being a 6 ft woman at 14 year old, so she was fitting into shape wear and pantyhose as a kid and hated it so much and it was so uncomfortable. David always got all these hand-me-down socks that were in a constant state of yawn—now David gets the really tight socks that stay up all day, “look at you sock, staying up all day!” And transitioning back to travel—and sometimes travel is really hard because we’re pushing ourselves harder than we should. Having the toolbox is just as important on the airplane or airport, or knowing how long you’re waiting with a toolbox. Whoever’s doing the traveling, your self care is the most important: you can’t control your kids being miserable, they will be, you have to put your oxygen mask, go at your pace, go at your tolerance. Kids will fall apart. You need to be there for them when they do. So what do you need to be there for them? Maybe it’s a treat, maybe it’s slowing down—take care of you. Pack the day before. And always include an extra day back at home before transitioning back. You can change the day back—the end is always going to be the end of the vacation, but you being able to have a different re-entry ritual into your day to day can be game changing. Isabelle shares some tips from her own front line experiences, such as when driving from Indianapolis from Nashville as part of moving, when she forgot the iPad…and everything else, and her kid was stuck in the way back for hours bored out of their mind. Needless to say, iPads are last steps, so it’s a plan B, but it forces them to have lots of plan A—and on this trip, she forgot all the plan B’s and A’s. And everyone is going to have a meltdown—Isabelle, as mom, will also have a breakdown. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, travel will break you at some point. Travel with kids is courting brilliant memories of chaos, so she anticipates and plans on her having a breakdown. So she tells herself that “I’m a good mom who’s reached her limit.” You’re trained from babyhood to meet their needs all the time, but it’s a set up, the game is rigged, and part of the rigging is us thinking we’re never going to lose it ourselves. Maybe it’s the rule, not the exception. What about outsourcing, like checking your bags curbside, strapping your kid into the carseat on the plane (because they’re used to it and airplane seatbelts do nothing). Be kind to yourself. There’s also this idea that a vacation and a trip with kids are two separate things. The labor does not change, but increases, but the expectation for fun and frivolity is also increased, but maybe change the expectations inside. Also okay if it’s extra hard because it actually really is. Take the wins. David names that it’s very hard to hold dialectics, to opposing truths: you can love your kids and they can be too much, really hard, really frustrating. You need to find yourself a support group that can validate all the truths. For David, being a child who had ADHD, and seeing people with kids travel, and typically things feel better when there isn’t as much pressure, when you’re not rushing at the last minute, and have everything you need. Accepting that all of those things are going to be harder with ADHD and smiling when those things don't happen is the key. Accept that win, when you actually remember the charger. We can also flip the shame spiral into gratitude because you can maybe get the thing when you arrive, and David has needed to buy pretty much everything on arrival. Anything important, the things you can’t live without, phone stuff, medication, certain items, should be carry-ons. If ever possible, don’t check a bag, have a very compacted carry on. 

SNL Fake Macy’s commercial for children’s uncomfortable clothing

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

TASK V. EMOTIONALITY

• Task: what you’re trying to do - the ‘work’ of a group or a person. 
  • for example: I am finishing my project this weekend.
• Emotionality: what you do to prepare to do a task - beliefs/fears/assumptions about what you’re doing
  • for example: I’m doing it wrong/right, I always procrastinate, big fear you’ll never get it done, dream that someone will come and save you from having to do it, etc. 

Traveling survival tips

• Prep your go-bag, tool kit (and consider several plans, not just one, like the ipad, because batteries die)
• Kids will fall apart. They will fall apart when they travel. Be there when they do. What do you need to do to be there for them? Go at your pace. Pick up a treat. Do things to make it easier on you. 
• Get ready to leave the night before. Have things packed. 
• Plan to have a day off once you return. The last day of vacation will always suck, but you can make your return to your day to day so much better.
• Plan on your own breakdown. You’re a good parent/partner and you can reach a limit. It’s the rule, not the exception with travel.

How do you survive family dinners? Sitting at a table until everyone is done? Overstimulation? Sticky conversations and setting boundaries?  David and Isabelle talk concrete tips for getting through family dinners, and even enjoying them—and the truth behind ear worm songs’ lyrics that may pop your Thanksgiving Day Parade Spiderman balloons.
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David and Isabelle name that any time you’re meeting with family, traveling, disrupting routine, and then you throw in kids—how do we do this? Let’s start with dinner, and then work our way back to how you get there. Whenever you’re going out to eat with family…family is a tricky word. Family describes ritual—people who get together at different times, don’t have to be related. Whoever is in your network, where you go. Kids really need help knowing the story behind people, understanding the story behind Uncle Jack and Aunt Sue—it can help create connecting moments by throwing in novelty. Kids can be really honest and if it’s boring, they may ask: “Why are you boring?” Also, we love Aunt Sue. Partners might use this, too, not just kids. Let alone how family stuff can be so loaded, you may not want to share the same room with some people, there can be anxiety, and anticipatory dread. Part when you’re going to go visit v. hosting—how do we cope with the different layers of anxiety. With a heavier family situation—bring the toolbox, especially with kids. Before you leave, have a backpack, help your child pick toys (even if they’re 14), headphones, and talk about where you can use your phone or play games. What about the interesting power struggle of having kids sit at the table until everyone is finished eating—let’s think about that differently, because sitting for that long is so hard for kids, and adults, with ADHD—and why is hosting so FUN, because you’re always translating your restlessness into effective hosting. Most people with ADHD fall into really good host and amazing networker, and we can also know how to help people feel connected and welcome because we know how hard it can be to be isolated. Take breaks with your child. Be honest about how long it’s going to be (like 3.5 hours, not "just 15 more minutes"), and be realistic about what battles you’re going to pick with your child.  Sometimes when we think about social norms we’re trying to show and build the frustration tolerance in our children—we place such a load and raise the stakes so much for the holidays, and we forget that that is a set up with kids. The more you raise the expectations and raise the stakes, the more it’s asking for disaster. For the parents who feel that pressure, judgment, and family rules—really hard to have an unreasonable expectations and have them passed on. Can be helped to know that expectations are resentments waiting to happen—and let the table know the expectation we’re actually dealing with (eg. We’re trying to help kid finish food, as opposed to sit quietly for an hour). Have a wonderful moment with your family, knowing that the most unconventional moments are the memory makers. Also can be really overstimulating, and have a plan for what to do then ahead of time, and how to manage that. How do we recognize we are overstimulated? Isabelle went to Costco and only realized 3 hours later how she was overstimulated. We’re all going to feel things differently, but certain things will always be overstimulating: loud noise (increases heart rate) and triggers your fear response. Think about that moment you left a loud concert or house party and that moment when you walk into the cold night air and then you take a breath—knowing that we’re overstimulated is really hard to notice (want to work on with a therapist or close friend)—we can tolerate the heat getting turned up really high and we don’t notice it until it’s at a certain point. David knows he’s overstimulated when he’s worried about breaking things or bumping into people. When Isabelle starts to feel she’s obstacle coursing it, that’s when she’s overstimulated. Sometimes being overstimulated is really good, or really bad—it’s not necessarily one thing or another: it's what’s appropriate for the moment. David will sometimes look at his partner where she’s like “we don’t have time for that.” Getting signs and knowing these things, like with your kid—“I noticed that you were walking around with your hands balled up”—“can I check in on you at Meemaw’s house when you’re hands are clenched, maybe we can go on a walk with me?” Walks are important intervention: changes environment, smells open up, visual stimulation, movement. Or have a place in Dodge—a weighted blanket in the basement, watch a couple of TikTok’s. Isabelle describes the giant mega Christmas party they’d attend that included all these pockets of peace and respite—like smoke breaks (side note: folx with ADHD being drawn to the stimulant with nicotine, but also the habit of taking breaks with a few different people). How valuable it might be not only notice your kid’s cues and give them prompting, but also how it might feel for your kid “I’m getting overstimulated, you know I notice my jaw is tight, and I feel like I’m going to bump into things a lot, I need to go for a walk, want to come with me?” We want to make “Calm Down!” not a swear word. It’s usually the opposite effect—we’re often not saying this to ourselves, we’re telling other people to do it. Do it with a partner, the more premeditated it is—you can be predictable and take a break. Boundaries are not personal, even though they almost always feel that way. David uses the example of the briefcase where he keeps his notes—if he saw anyone going near it, he’d freak out, because it has to do with his boundary around client confidentiality, but it’s not about who is doing it (whether it’s a stranger or a partner). You can set the boundary just by changing the subject. We take boundaries personally, we also think boundaries are about what we’re asking the other person to do, when actually—(pause for effect)—the boundary is what you’re going to do. For example, Isabelle will find herself being asked for therapeutic advice at family functions, but the boundary when she doesn’t want someone to talk about the thing, but it’s the moment she changes the subject, walks away, etc. it’s the moment where I actually set the boundary for myself. It’s not about getting the person to stop talking, it’s giving them something to chew on, like a sandwich, so they can’t talk about it. And another caveat: as inveterate people pleaser, Isabelle’s discomfort shoots up, and it doesn’t feel better to her to set a boundary, but it’s a short term huge burst of discomfort that she’s trading for a long haul sense of self-betrayal, or being worn down, or all the bigger consequences that come from not having a boundary. You tend to have to set boundaries again and again, and it rarely gets easier, you just get more well versed at how you do it. This reminds David of putting on sunscreen—it’s so gross, he hates the greasy stuff, but it’s better than getting the sunburn. The boundary setting can be announced or not announced. And one of the powers of ADHD: engage ADHD distraction mode when someone starts talking about something you’re not about. Like do Delorians need special garages so the doors would still open? Like moths to a flame, we might pay more attention to someone when you’re annoying you, or you’re preparing to debate them. David’s method is singing George of the Jungle to get rid of the earworm. Isabelle thinks about the muzak track in the elevator of your brain, and her’s, since childhood, has b...

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. 
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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.com

Why 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...

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"

Procrastination: (For more, see also Episode 008-Are we designed to procrastinate?)

• 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...

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)
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(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 later
• impulsive type: buys two printers, means to put the other one up for sale, forgets to, sits in a corner for six months
• combination 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)

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

Special Thanks to Ren for sharing their brilliance with us!

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.
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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

Special Thanks to Ren for sharing their brilliance with us!

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). 

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

What do you do when people are openly judging your food sensitivities (or the food sensitivities of your kid)? What's the difference between a soft and hot response to commentary? Why do we go to town over certain foods we love and then have such particular things we dislike and how much the Thanksgiving feast of it all can be about winning the feeling and vibe, rather than 'winning' at some carbon copy idea or expectation of what the holiday (and meal) should be. Filled chock full of food facts, favorite foods, and alternate ways to celebrate, this episode has David and Isabelle so grateful for you, Team Shiny!

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Isabelle wonders if her experience would have been different if her food sensitivities, then cast as being ‘too picky,’ ‘too sensitive’, had been more the norm in her family friend group growing up. She was the odd one out and that left room for so much judgment and commentary. Meanwhile, she sees her partner Bobby’s family and notes that pretty much everyone has food sensitivities, their yucks and yums, so they accept it and roll with it and stock up on what people like and seem to not be phased by it at all. David relates this to his experience being vegetarian for years and how he would feel when people would immediately show him the vegetarian dish on the menu—but he knows now that this was them looking out for him, verifying that this was a place he could eat. He couldn’t hear it then, but as he got older, he would just say “thank you.” The difference when you’re trying to advocate for your kid as a parent v. Others outside of that. David has his soft response—“if there’s ever a night to eat what you like, it’s with family” and his hot response is “should I follow you and talk about what you eat?” Isabelle noticed that she could change the texture of vegetables and thus reinvent her ability to eat vegetables, including the bitter ones she couldn’t handle for so long. There was so much labor put into the food of her Polish Christmas eve celebrations growing up, like pierogi, and there’s this sense of wanting to pass on food pushing and abundance and scarcity. David’s mouth is watering about pocket foods—pierogi, samosas, tamales—delicious. Which links up Isabelle’s fun fact about fried chicken—that frying preserves the food! And then, isn’t it technically a pocket food, too? But, as David points out—the bone! But, Isabelle counters, what about tenders? So is a chicken tender a pocket food with no other filling but chicken? And also foods on sticks. Isabelle likes the risk involved and also chewing on the stick. David doesn’t understand how to eat the food off the stick, but there’s a big difference between impulsive behavior and well thought out behavior. David and Isabelle are now very hungry. Isabelle asks if traditions really aren’t about transmitting memories, and if so, kids won’t remember the meal you served, but they will remember the feeling that someone stood up for them and their needs?  David reframes this: are you trying to win an argument (about food) or win a feeling? Are you aiming for togetherness and connection—it’s not the day to argue about the food, or the screen, or the phone—give yourself that day. This brings Isabelle to asking David about jello with chunks in it, if he likes that kind of texture, and he doesn’t, he likes hard jello. Isabelle is confused by what he means and describes aspic served for Polish Easter, and furthermore, one of the most neurodivergent ways of relating to food, which can include eating copious amounts of the things we love repeatedly. For her, on another holiday with another food profile, she ate 27 eggs. In one day. Gave herself hives from the eggs. And that’s not including the mayonnaise. David meant hard jello like jello made with apple juice. Also as a former bartender, David cautions everyone about drinking and driving around Thanksgiving, a holiday notorious for stress and overindulging, and also about the dangers of alcohol soaked foods like jello shots. And he is grateful to Isabelle and to Team Shiny (we love you, Team Shiny!) For all we have made together, for all the people who now know more about ADHD or have new diagnoses: we’re sad you had to get a diagnosis and happy you had to get a diagnosis? We’re here for all of it. Have a great holiday!

The backstory behind Nashville hot chicken

Frying as a way to preserve food - "Since fried chicken traveled well in hot weather before refrigeration was commonplace and industry growth reduced its cost, it gained further favor across the South." (Source: Wikipedia)

Fascinating rabbithole of a site that makes industrial fryers -- most processed foods are fried!

Recipe for ‘hard jello’ aka Jell-o jigglers (which sadly does not mention apple juice, but does specify the water to gelatin ratio)

And bonus: how to make gelatin out of any fruit juice (like apple juice)

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

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.
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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.”

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 ...

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...

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 two of a series. To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org In this part, we cover masking, loving/hating school, and what's next for the next generation.

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David Flink shares his story, where he had a family that backed him and had a lot of privileges (being a white male in this country), but he was “invited” to leave four schools. He did not have a community. He met with his first student while he was in college, despite their neurodivergence in common, was very different from him—single mom, Cape Verdean family—became the closest person to him. He met Marcus, and they connected about getting their meds at 3p together, and now, 25 years later, here they are. Marcus points out that people think he was always talking about his learning difference, but he wasn’t, he was going to school to become a teacher at King State college, and he was talking with David, and after he shared his experience in the classroom he was student teaching in and seeing the impact that made on the students, he said “no one is going to listen to us, we’re 22,” we both overcompensated, were so extra professional, always showing up to meeting in suits, having to convince people that they could do this. The first person he openly talked about his learning difference with was David. Isabelle jumps in with her story; daughter of Polish immigrants, rags to riches immigrant dream kind of idea, and she had no clue she was neurodivergent until her mid to late 30’s and she hadn’t felt the feeling of what it’s like to be in such a neurodivergent friendly space (with snacks, food, fidgets, people being so direct and honest!) until now, and is so grateful that Marcus and David co-created such a thing. She realizes her community is now other neurodivergent parents who are sitting in their own learning and parenting kids who may be neurodivergent and just working so hard and finding community that way. David wants to normalize what Isabelle is speaking to, which is that we tend to think neurodivergence or learning difference means struggling or hating school, and the truth is so many people realize they are neurodivergent when they lose the structure of school, when they get a new job, when they become parents. David Flink wonders, asking Kayla—we work for you—what are you seeing? What are you hopeful for? What is it like for you? She saw a lot of pull out classes, and her little brother is telling her his experience at school, and it’s a little bit better. She was not pulled out for different classes. In class supports would be helpful, but public school districts are severely underfunded—she hopes that he does not go through so much ridicule and bullying that she had to go through. He’s making genuine friendships; she didn’t have a chance to make those the same way because she was always taken out of classes and kids were too busy realizing her difference. What should we all know about Gen Z? Kayla is describing being in 5th grade, taking these standardized tests and it was on the computer, and she has to take it with the rest of the class. The upside: easier than writing on paper. The downside: everyone is done before her, and everyone is on her “c’mon Kayla, finish up the class” and it just wasn’t enough—if she had the proper accommodations, she wouldn’t have to deal with that bullying. Claudia thinks that this is going to continue to change and evolve. Her Zoomer (wait?! Is this the next generation name?!) Got early intervention and proper accommodations and is dunking in all his classes that are not easy classes. If you have parents that start with acceptance, then seek resources and accommodations for you when you’re really little, the sky is the limit. David names that generationally speaking, don’t sleep on accommodations, and effective early intervention is making a difference we weren’t even able to see before because it wasn’t a resource that was even available to earlier generations. Claudia names that each person’s unique potential and style of intelligence is different, but this sets someone up to live up to their unique greatest potential, whatever that is. Isabelle jumps in with the idea that it’s also a systemic thing, to recognize (as author Julie (see show notes) put it in a talk earlier at the conference) that Gen Z is the first generation of students to even have social emotional learning standards as a part of their curriculum, we’re now seeing the changes because it’s not just on parents to nail it, it’s the larger change that has to happen to a culture through awareness. Marcus names that this cultural change always takes longer than you think it will; when they were first starting Eye to Eye 25 years ago, they were referencing studies just completed by Marshall Raskin about what helped kids with LD to help them launch into adulthood—metacognition, social emotional skills—and David and Marcus were trying to develop an art curriculum that would develop that for students. This was a foreign concept in 2002, and there was a big push for them to “tutor.” They had been tutored, and tutoring means “fixing,” and dyslexia needs “fixing,” and the great book “Overcoming Dyslexia” had just been written (not so great title), and it was awful. Turns out tutoring someone who can’t read by someone who can’t really read is a bad idea. But social emotional learning—BOOM. Changes everything. So they were doing this forever ago, and it’s still something they have to advocate for. It takes generations to make these changes. When David (Kessler) started working with Eye to Eye, he would ask a room full of people “who here has a learning difference” and people would reluctantly barely raise their arms, v. Now- now people own it and they talk about ableism sucking and what can we do to fight society, and… students who know they’re neurodiverse it’s a big difference Kayla sees. She also knows that her school setting matters. She is in a private school for high school, and people who know they have an LD and are proud of it, while her peers in public schools haven’t had the same supports and staff who are also ND modeling it for them. She goes to her teachers at the beginning of the school year, and she advocates for what she needs, and her teachers self-disclose their own ND to her. David describes: kids that aren’t shamed feel better about it. We can’t really learn with shame. Kayla also describes how she has to keep advocating for herself, teachers don't really know what you need and you keep having to explain and name your accommodations.

Julie Lythcott-Haims - OI speaker and author of "How to Raise an Adult" and "Your Turn: How to Be an Adult"

To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
Special Thanks to our amazing panelists: Marcus Soutra, David Flink, Kayla Dumas, and Claudia Bouchacourt for their courage, enthusiasm, and willingness to be vulnerable and real. 
Also, so grateful for everyone at Eye to Eye National: Sabrina Odigie (Eye to Eye Executive Assistant)...

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 one of a series. To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org. In this part we cover how we have moved from the margins to a neurodivergent culture of our own.

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David introduces this live panel and that we’re all here to talk about neurodiversity across generations. There is this potato that came up in Ireland, called lumpers—exploded the population, everyone grew these yummier, bigger potatoes. But a Spanish galleon brought mold that took out only the Lumpers—when we lose diversity, we had the Irish Potato Famine. Throughout the generations we’ve had different pressures to keep or lose different parts of ourselves.  Beginning with a cheesy icebreaker, the panelists introduce themselves - David Flink (co-founder of Eye to Eye National), (he/him), Zennial (born between 1979-1981), and ice cream. Claudia (she/her), Gen X, French fries. Marcus Soutra, elder millennial (remembers dial up sounds and getting one song downloaded during dinner time), French fries. Kayla (she/her), Gen Z (no knowledge of dial up sound), French fries and ice cream together. David (Kessler, SSPOD co-host, he/him), Zennial, French fries. Isabelle (Richards, SSPOD co-host, she/her), elder Millenial and the original AIM Dizzabelle (with no numbers), specifically Five Guys cajun spice fries with strawberry shake. When did you or your loved one first identify as neurodivergent? Kayla shares that she was a premie baby, and already qualified for early intervention, then when she went through the public school system, she realized she learned differently then the rest of her peers, it took more time to get information, spell things differently, kids start to pick at you. Her family went back and forth with the school district to get her properly tested, and it was a battle, but finally, in the 7th grade, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyslcalculia, but her family always knew. How did you family react to your diagnosis? Kayla’s family were totally fine, it wasn’t completely shocking, her uncle and grandfather both had dyslexia, and her grandmother immediately knew because they were high school sweethearts, and she’d help him with his homework, so she saw the signs and immediately knew. Marcus was identified in 3rd grade, sort of the “classic” story, first with dyslexia and then with ADHD. Everybody reading looked like a magic trick that he just didn’t know how to do. His family reacted in a complicated way, they weren’t sure how he would react to the label, his mom has been identified with dyslexia since, and she was fearful of that label, because in her generation, she was labelled “dumb” and “stupid,’ because she didn’t have the luxury that Marcus had of having dyslexia and ADHD identified. When Marcus first heard the word dyslexia, it was from his 4th grade classmate, Karen, who was the one woke Karen (poor Karens everywhere, btw), when they were grouped together in a reading group together. Marcus thought it didn’t sound good, and that was when his mom first talked to him about it. We’re starting to see the differences in how boomer parents reacted to these diagnoses. Claudia noticed that something was different about her son when he was a baby, and went to Dr. Google and researched, and he ended up being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at 18 months, and has since been diagnosed with dysgraphia and dyslexia. David points out the differences in being diagnosed much earlier, and Isabelle notes that you have access to something like Google to get more information if your peers or family doesn’t have access to it. Claudia names that her generation was also prone to Googling harmful things, so she stuck to peer-reviewed, science in her research. David Flink names how different those early years of time, were for him. He is a White man in America, mom is an educator, they had some means, and he was first identified as “stupid,” long before he was identified as dyslexic. That identity still stays with him. We want to give him a big hug. There are parts of our identity that develop in the absence of information. For David, his symbol recognition disorder (form of dyslexia) was caught in 4th grade, because of his spelling, but no one caught his ADHD until he was in college. There’s a part of him that, in the absence of information, always thinks he is in trouble. And this connects to how people respond to our diagnosis. David names he hit the family jackpot, and someone else’s reality is so different. You can chart your life based on who you hang out with—it’s not talked about enough. What happened to those groups when you got your diagnosis? Marcus remembers being in a community of the “odd kids” or “bad kids” that was formed by accident, in a way. Marcus used to have to go to lunch five minutes before everyone to go to the nurse’s office to get his stimulant meds, and so all the kids who left to get their meds would end up sitting at the lunch table together. Kayla had a different experience, once she was diagnosed and her friends realized she was different, she had to let a lot of friendships go, specifically in middle school. Lots of friends weren’t supportive, though her family was. One kid in particular would say “oh, you’re going to the SpEd class” and she didn’t know what to say—they would say degrading things like “you’ll never go to college” and she was so young, she believed those things. She was bawling, hyperventilating, when she learned of her diagnosis, fearing “those kids were right.” Her mother countered this and gave her the example of the author of the “Here’s Hank” books, which helped her learn how to read—he was dyslexic, too. David points out that Kayla had to make choices in who she associated with, to discern who was a support and who was not. Claudia had a similar experience to Kayla, in that she and her son experienced a lot of exclusion; her family excludes them and they are rarely invited to events as a family. Her son was in a collaborative kindergarten, where half the students were neurodivergent or had LDs, half were not. Her son was invited to a birthday party in his class, and she RSVP’d, and it turned out his classmate was a neighbor, two doors down. They became friends and eventually friended each other on Facebook, and Claudia saw that the mom had posted “the only kid we were hoping would not RSVP is the only one who did, what is wrong with El Paso, TX?” They were also a White, military family in a predominantly hispanic area, and they got excluded a lot. It’s not funny to be marginalized and it takes so much courage for Claudia to say this because it is something we have to sit with. David Flink points out that here she is not alone, here she is with family. And we zoom out and acknowledge our large room filled with brilliant neurodivergent people in the audience, that this is part of what Eye to Eye and the Organizing Institute do, is create a safe space for neurodivergent people to come together; here we are not alone. David names the theme: of being marginalized, losing friends, feeling like you’re stupid because you have to take medicine. We all share parts of that story, it’s part of our neurodivergent culture. 

Lumpers and Potato Famine

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David sits down with Eye to Eye's Alyssa Tundidor for the question and answer portion of their fireside chat. The audience members, who are young student leaders from across the country who are neurodivergent or have a learning difference, ask brilliant questions, like what is David most proud of, how do you answer someone who is pitying your neurodivergence, what do. you say when people insist "everyone has a little bit of ADHD!", and to how to share special interests with neurotypical folx. To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org
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Lee asks: David’s talked about making the world better for folks who have LDs or are ND, is there a specific moment he is proud of? David answers: there are so many, and he’s really lucky. He’ll do a rapid fire bunch of them, somebody trying a strawberry for the first time and realizing it was delicious, somebody reading a book, somebody realizing they didn’t have to sit still. Somebody realizing they were worth it and good enough. The time he was called Dr. 13 times even when he kept correcting them. The time he was able to evidence differences in someone’s education plan. The time he talked to parents to help them get their kids diagnosed appropriately, or get them to understand their kids differently. Every speaking event and having to talk to friends about where he just was. Somebody buttdialed him once, and he never listens to voicemail and the person didn’t know they were leaving a message and he hears the person saying that “David helped me understand ADHD differently.” They were talking with their friends like in a chat about what they had learned from me. That made David’s heart explode in a good way. Carly asks: people who are neurotypical use language that is harmful to the neurodivergent community, like calling them stupid, how would you address a discussion like that with someone when you understand their intentions aren’t negative—what’s the appropriate way to approach it? Let’s imagine David it’s someone relatively new in your world. With family members or loved one, it’s about creating parallels that shock them. With someone new, the most important thing is to not fight a belief but contradict it. How many times do you all talk about your neurodivergence in a good way: it doesn’t happen a lot, it’s conditioning. He got a piece of pizza, put in salad, called it a pizza taco, and everyone did it and David was like “yeah, that’s an ADHD thing.” Rebranding! And parallel examples for people to feel more of the intensity. For example, having a teacher saying “how can I get my student to feel more comfortable talking about their learning differences?” And the example: “great, how much do you weigh?” So depending on how well you know the person, throw things out there. Talking people about culture and oppression, and give people the out. People double down when you accuse them; so instead, “I know you didn’t mean to oppress a population, or be an ableist jerk, and call them stupid.” And it's really hard to see people not learn in a typical way, you give them the out. The more you combat the belief of another person, the more you entrench it. Have you ever seen people fight about how tall they are? What does it matter, and they’re getting more and more riled up.  Another Carly asks: advice for seeking a therapist that supports them, especially going through transitions. Lots of language uses infantilizing examples and person first language, and therapists do this as well. One thing about therapy: you are their boss. You hire and pay them. Interview them. Ask them why they said that? We shouldn’t give therapists breaks and also don’t mistreat them. Meet with different therapists and find out who’s better. How good it feels actually talking to the person—do they listen to your expertise on neurodiversity. Do they do say “oh ADHD, that’s hard.” v. “Oh ADHD, that can be really marginalizing, how do you experience that?” One is vacant neglect, one is targeted. You are allowed to be very picky about the people you put into your life.  Another participant asks: My brother is coming from DC to Northwestern and is complaining about the food-is the food at Northwestern really that bad? David names that he will have to deal with the friendliness of the midwest, and he needs to go into Evanston or go off campus to really give the food a try. The midwest nice thing can really unsettle people: why would you know that? The midwest thing is actually: Hi, how are you? They really want to know the answer. It’s a cultural thing. The food is fire, but not on campus. Check out Jeni’s ice cream, and check out Gigio’s. Another question: ADHD as a term is overused and because of that their is a fear of being dismissed—what about the pat on the head, the condescending v. The dismissing? Are those equally bad? David names that it’s probably person, what someone can’t tolerate; he can’t tolerate being infantilized, he’s not a baby, he has a beard and everything. It’s a frequency measure, whichever one you get more of is going to be worse. How do you own your own label differently: you’re modeling it for other people, they’re not modeling it for you. Finding ways to talk about it when you’re the one with the IEP and 504. Finding ways to talk about it privately with teachers, having casual conversations about how people can talk about being neurodivergent without devaluing neurodivergence. There can be a part of everyone that can be a little ADHD if they’re put in the right room or at the right moment—they can use that moment to empathize with us, or they can use that moment to destroy us. He encourages people using the empathy skills to rebrand it. And in school, when you’re talking to a teacher, apologize how the IEP law makes them do extra work. Most IEP plans make teachers work longer hours, cost the school more money, and that’s a fact, so he empathizes with that. And it gently reminds them it’s a law. Their family says that “everyone is a little ADHD or autistic!” When people try to normalize you by saying you’re like everyone else, they dehumanize you. They are getting rid of a lot of parts with you that matter. “I had a hard time picking a sandwich that one time, I’m a little ADHD, but you know how I handled that sandwich picking, I….” But “no, I get two sandwiches all the time and get buyers remorse.” They’re maybe making it a little reductionistic. How would you give advice to people who want to speak about their experiences or feel a type of guilt because it’s not as severe because someone has it worse than me? David didn't hear that because he was thinking of his cat, Blue, who needs medication. Can she ask again? How would you advise someone to not feel guilty or dramatic or fears they’re making it up? I think it’s hard to have courage. It’s really hard. People will always do things that we don’t like when we talk about these things. But how do I tolerate that energy coming back at me? How do I talk about this? People who are neurodivergent think that if it’s hard for them it’s easy for everyone else and if it’s easy for them it’s easy for everyone else, and that’s not true. When we can honor how difficult things are, you’re speaking to other people in our culture. It was really embarrassing for David to ask her to repeat that. But she is important and needs to apologize. People don’t want to acknowledge that, and David had to own that. David’s dad, who was a teacher, was teaching him how to spell piece v. The word peace—what’s wrong with our language? So he had him write each word...

David sits down with Eye to Eye's Alyssa Tundidor for a fireside chat. Covering everything from David’s origin story, to where Something Shiny came from, to co-creating spaces safe enough for folx who are neurodivergent. To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org.
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Alyssa Tundidor (Alyssa Tundidor is Eye to Eye's Senior Mentoring Program Coordinator--for more on Alyssa, see below!) facilitates a fireside chat for the participants of the Eye to Eye Organizing Institute (OI) at the University of Denver. David names this is the first time he is sharing his story and he is not holding a tennis ball and is actually sitting down as he tells it, and he’ll be squirming the whole time as he does it. His first memory is around his story, in 5th grade, he is the kid in school with the really messy hair, and he’d write pages and pages of stories-no one could read them, they were not spelled correctly. And David is quiet when he’s writing in the corner, but nobody cares what he writes. Fast forward to his first year of graduate school at Northwestern University, he feels like a fraud, like they shouldn’t have let him in, did they know he failed a class in high school? And he was in class learning about ADHD and classmate who ran the Eye to Eye Chapter at Reed College says “oh” — he braces himself to be ‘fixed’ or told things, and instead she says “there’s this think called project eye to eye starting where they take college students with learning skills and putting them together with students in high school. Wanna join?" His first encounter with the organization is talking to David Flint, and he asks what he has, and David shares he has symbol recognition disorder and ADHD, and David Flink goes: “Awesome!” And that’s the first time David heard someone react that way without the pity or the “good for you!” Skipping past a lot in high school, getting in trouble a lot, skipping school, all of that, he’s sitting in a room at the OI with 27 other peoples, cross-legged, throwing racket balls against the wall, he felt like he belonged for the first time in his life somewhere. He belonged before…as long as they didn’t know… whatever that “nerghhh” is. OI and Eye to Eye was the first place where he experienced he didn’t have to hide a part of himself. Alyssa had a very similar experience with the OI, she was 23, she was at Radford University, and there were 60 people. What is the story behind Something Shiny? David gives the real story, not the marketing story. He’s a person who thinks really big but doesn’t really think about the details, of course he wants to save the world, he just doesn’t know what to do next. And he was getting paid to do all these trainings on ADHD, and he realized that there’s a paywall around getting good information about ADHD. You have to have certain privilege to know someone, to have money, to get accurate information. And most people trying to put forward accurate information are selling something. And it’s hard to find somethings like this without a sales push. When we can increase the understanding of things, we can decrease suffering. Alyssa speaks about listening to the qualifier episode, and it made her feel really seen and really heard. We had real feels right there. There’s this idea you’re getting at, when we’ve experienced something in the world, we can make it better for someone that follows us. There’s a cultural piece of learning differently when we’re neurodivergent. If you are part of a neurodiverse community, it’s very very hard to grow up without neglect. The people who love you don’t know how to love you. We don’t know what we need, that never happened. You can’t neglect neglect, you have to attend to it. Asking a neurodiverse person “how do you learn?” The answers 30 years ago would be “it’s hard, and it’s good that it hurts” and we all kind of bought into that. And then, all of a sudden, it doesn’t have to hurt. It's okay to swivel in a chair and have every chair in your office be a swivel chair—it’s about speaking to the things that are very hard for us to own because we’re afraid we’re going to get rejected. When you talk about them, you feel like more of community, not less. Alyssa wants to emphasize the belonging aspect—what inspired David to make a safe space for people who are neurodivergent. Someone at work said to him: “Just so you know, it didn’t bother me at all, but your energy was really big—it didn’t bother me, but it could bother someone” — that person saw my energy, and wanted to work together. We have to take steps to work together and not mask. It’s like hiding the parts of us that don’t look like everyone else. “I read books, I sit still, over the weekend, I read books, I sat still.” There’s emotionality and there’s a task, but if the task is understanding what the book says, does it matter if I read it or listen to it? Creating safety is looking at comfort, looking at who you are, and not wearing masks. Immediately take that mask off. Alyssa names that rejection hurts so much when you’re ND, and it’s true. And we’re talking about self-esteem and a sense of worth. How do we feel worth? We’re often getting our sense of worth from other people. When you can find other roles in the world to make a difference in someone else’s life. The big secret with mentorship is reciprocal: whatever you are doing to help someone younger than you, you are giving to yourself. It comes back to you. Don’t want to let someone down, so there’s a power to making a difference to other people’s lives. Alyssa asks: when is the first time you felt accepted as an ND person? It made David accepted and valued for who he was. There’s more places in the world than Eye to Eye—he felt that with his brother, he feels that with his partner, his friends. Who you surround yourself by is so much what you believe about yourself. His friends, his partner, believed in David before he did. What made David decide to become a therapist? David started wanting to save the world that was on fire as he saw it. His own experience with therapists was: they’re not that great. He wanted to be a special education teacher that teaches history, because he wants to fix all of education and name all of the lies and change the world. So, in college, he went through all the teaching classes, and they were going through lesson planning, and he realized that he wouldn’t get to teach what he would teach. He’s TAing psych classes because they’re easy, and he doesn’t mind them. So he ended up leaving education, talked to a psych professor he was friends with, “don’t know what to do now?!” But he learned he could be the difference, and he believes every life represents the world. In front of him, there’s a galaxy, and a galaxy of stars, and for him, it’s incredibly important to save the world. He felt limited that he could only work people in education become better consumers and producers, versus showing people what they want in this world and then destroying the things that don’t matter. It’s a good mic, so he won’t mic drop. What tips would he give young people navigating the world that is not built for them? He names: this world is not built for you, this world makes things worse, and you make things better. The second we pretend it’s built for us, we are ignoring things. We know that if we take weight and shading in different spots, it makes it easier for those with dyslexia to read. Like a dyslexic font. So why isn’t every book printed like that? A neurotypical person can read that book, but now everyone else can. We sit in a world, where you have every answer you want in your pocket that can answer everything, but we’re still working a school system that asks students to remember answers and not ask questions (and he loves teachers)…so no...

Ever shown up at a holiday meal and immediately realized with a sinking feeling- "Not again…I don't can’t eat anything here…" this episode's for you! From honoring the cook's efforts while not betraying your own needs, to recognizing the joys of chewing on pens and ice, join David and Isabelle as we embrace our sensory sensitivities and make our own neurodivergent-friendly and inclusive traditions. Check out our Holiday Survival Guide!

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David and Isabelle stare down the fast moving train of holidays and expectations that is barreling toward us right now. As we approach Thanksgiving we have a bunch of "shoulds" coming at us--we should be like everyone else and even though we have sensory issues with cars, and sounds, and people, and all that stuff. Everything from sitting still from being held hostage on a plane or in the car, or being stuck in a service or sit at a table, or eating - the sound, the food, the overstimulation, while simultaneously coupled with frustration and your routine being destroyed, and all of this at the same time. This explains why Isabelle has a lurching sense of dread approaching this time of year. The holiday dread is real. David and Isabelle have covered other aspects of holidays, like speaking with family, and the glories and pains of holiday travel, and here they are focusing on food and sensory sensitivities. Isabelle remembers how growing up she was known as a picky eater but actually there were a lot of sensory sensitivities going on. She had memories of celebrating “wigilia” (Polish Christmas Eve celebration) and sitting at a much larger table, with much more eyes on her, and as someone who only ate pretty much chicken and white rice and potatoes, she was facing down a traditional non-meat meal of 12 mostly fish-based dishes (such as pickled herring). You fast before this evening meal, and then you commence the eating. She would be lightheaded and nauseous because she’d be so hungry and would fill up on dinner rolls with butter, everyone is judging and commenting, then she lives on the high of opening presents, and then they’d go to midnight mass at midnight, and then they’d light candles and means the oxygen is rapidly leaving the area in an enclosed place and so she’d either pass out and throw up. Everyone can look back in time and find the holiday memories of “we can’t believe we did that on purpose.” We don’t make time any other time of year to have these rituals, and see each other, and it's really about connections, yet we get caught up in following these rules that don’t always work. Isabelle thinks about how for years she carried the shame around this being her fault, she’s the picky eater that would end up passing out or throwing up, but then thinks about how easy it would’ve been to provide some kind of option for her. That there are traditions and ways of keeping the meaning behind the traditions, but also making even small accommodations that can make all the difference to us. How we can always make new traditions. There’s a really hard part with food: there are people that work really hard for hours in the kitchen and they want you to try and see what you like about it and not like about it—how can we try certain things that work for us, and how can we bring our own food—like here’s my tub of Mac and cheese, there has to be a middle path. The way to be a gracious guest and host, and how as neurodivergent folks we can prefer to host because it gives us structure, she can stay on her feet, it helps her mask less. What is this about ADHD and food sensitivities? There’s a lot around taste aversion, what happens when we associate a food item with a thought in our head—like “eww, this tastes like sand” and we don’t eat sand…or boogers. To make the eating experience a lot more about the flavors they’re experiencing rather than the thought in the brain. Is it salty? Sweet? Savory? Textures? David is a texture person, there is a fine line between “this is edible” and “this makes me gag”—like bananas, one day to the next changes. Isabelle and David firmly agree on bananas being this type of thing, and Isabelle does not do overripe bananas, you make it a cooking liquid and you put it in banana bread. David also likes drinkable yogurt and he doesn’t mind it because he’s drinking it. If he’s moving his mouth hole up and down there needs to be something there to fight my mouth.” And crunching is stimulating and stress reducing. Whether we’re chewing ice or almost-cutting-the-top-of-your-mouth bread crust. Is it the act of chewing that’s stress reducing, or something crunchy is stress reducing? Isabelle notices chewy things, like gum, gummy chews, and chip crunch, or a cold crunch, she does not like it—there are special ice cubes that collapse in your mouth that shrink in your mouth. Tiny ball ices at Sonic or certain places have that. David knows chewing gum is a stimulation, and David is hazarding guesses with the crunching thing (like it’s objectively dominating something in your mouth, or you’re making progress, or it’s the sound itself)—there are a lot of parts of that that is soothing. If it’s paired with dopamine, your chocolate chip cookie crunch is paired with delight and celery crunch is a HORROR to Isabelle. David’s favorite crunch is an apple-pear crunch, or a jicama crunch. What is an apple-pear? What is it exactly? This links us to grapples (apples that taste like grapes), and cotton-candy grapes (it’s too much) and champagne grapes and boba. Isabelle loves it, and David describes how he never got boba, he just thought they were fun to launch and make stick to the things, and then years later, it was cold, and he got the boba and then he had a moment when all of a sudden, he chewed it up and was like boba. “Boba, you’re delicious!” And now he’s a full boba fan. There was a challenge to himself to experience it again. Isabelle wants to go on 800 food related tangents and realizes it might be a food related special interest. The sound of the crunch is a tiny sonic boom in your mouth. And David leans on a couch with his hand on his chin and his finger got in and he accidentally came down on his finger absentmindedly, and you can’t even pretend to bite yourself, oh my goodness, it is so painful and powerful. Every time Isabelle bites her tongue or cheek it feels like she severs her tongue. But also, why did David put his finger in his mouth accidentally? And if he put his finger in his mouth and chew it. Isabelle loved chewing pen cap (old school pic pen caps), and she’d chew on everything. She’d also chew on lollipop sticks, she chews on the cupcake wrapper, she doesn’t ingest these things and doesn’t like chewing, but she loves chewing paper and the pen cap, and it got vertical in her mouth and it sliced a line in the center of the tongue, and she still has a divet. Every single person who is listening has done something like that, or has eaten too many sour patch kids, or has eaten hot pizza too fast and burned their mouth open. This connects to masking and needing stimulation, and a little bit of clumsiness, oral gratification, and it’s important. Switching and making new fantasies for the holidays: if you have a picky eater, why don’t you make that with them and bring that with them? Don’t let the family shame you and make you thing you’re doing anything wrong. Take care of your family. Including yourself. So many of us will give kids the room to offer them to ask for what they need or give them alternatives—but we don’t model it ourselves. Grown up an...

The second part of an illuminating conversation with David Flink and Marcus Soutra, co-founders of Eye to Eye, friends and pioneers in education equity for neurodivergent folx. The group explores how a story of neurodivergent shame and trauma can shift to feeling like the story of surviving, how the pain stays with us but the reaction of a listener can layer over it, and how we can to begin to heal old wounds. Furthermore, what does it actually mean to be cool or to be a role model people want to look up to? To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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Flink names that in all these schools, there’s an adult who believes that giving young people room to tell their story can change the world. This was before research supporting depressive symptoms go down, self esteem goes up, that this work works. They are saying yes to a young person—and we are the adults now, and we can say yes to a young person. The day Flink met Marcus, his life changed. They were introduced by a professor. And then they had this whole momentum when they all met—and that’s how it started rolling. There are kids right now that are hearing this message on this podcast, through Eye to Eye chapters, and it’s unprecedented, and there are all these other hidden players that make this all possible. Kessler names that the value and the meaning of the story changes when you participate in these kinds of movements, though it doesn’t change the story itself. Kessler’s story started with a sense of being a fraud and was shame based—it wasn’t until he met Flink and Marcus and everyone at Eye to Eye that he started to see the impact of his story. It changed from a fraud story to a survivor story, there was worth in that all of a sudden. We’re grown ups, we made it—when Kessler turned 40, there was this thing that he felt like “he did it! I survived! I didn't know if I was going to do this!” And now he’s one of these old ND people, and he can remember when there weren’t CDs—there’s a part of who he is that’s entrenched in meaning that wasn’t there before. Eye to Eye creates those stories—taking high school and college students with neurodivergence and pairing them with jr high students to tell their stories through art. We have to mask—may the next generation not even know what we’re talking about when we say mask. After a generation of talking about what’s right with kids, there are schools where kids don’t have to wear masks, not like they used to. This daughter who started with Eye to Eye when she was 8, and now she wears her story with pride. How different is your life, when you don’t have to wait until your adulthood to change your narrative?- The environment in and of itself, is changing the story. Isabelle names that developmentally, that junior high age range is around the time our limbic system is storing the most vivid memories then, because they are the firsts and they help us start to make sense of our identities (see "reminiscence bump" info below!). Now imagine that the message you’re getting at that crucial developmental stage is there’s something right with you, that you’re okay, that you can be yourself, and just how contagious that is in a space, not just for kids with learning differences, but also neurotypical kids, everyone at that school. And that when you then retell your story, it doesn’t alter the original experience, but it creates a layer on top of it, and you keep adding those layers upon layers—which rewires the memory. That is actually trauma work, and can only happen in relationship, where you have someone listening. The brilliance of the Eye to Eye model is that it’s deeply relational, it includes these hidden networks and built upon near peer relationships. Kessler also points out that Flink and Marcus are actually cool. These are not people you’re feeling a sense of shame around, you’re seeing them and going “how cool are they?” Marcus agrees, they're the James Dean of dyslexia. There’s a way to normalizing it, and making it okay. Flink and Marcus held hands and took the leap—early on, thinking, he was thinking: “I am professionally neurodiverse, there’s no going back”—there was a fear in the beginning, how are people going to receive this? Finding other cool people who were willing to tell their stories and keep doing it, keep doing. Early on it did not feel as cool as it did now. Flink has a thesis on Kessler’s thesis—“it is always cool to own who you are.” That's what you see when you see Eye to Eye’s young people. Kessler met them at a time when they were really lucky where they had received kids responding to them, mirroring back to them—“your story matters!” If you visit any one of their sites, people with different races, cultures, backgrounds, who are proud of their brains. Proud of themselves. Everybody deserves the right to be proud of who they are, regardless of their background and intersectional identities including neurodiversity. Would Flink and Marcus self-describe themselves as cool? Flink names that talking about trauma sits with you—it’s great to talk about problems in huge public forums. Flink, still has nightmares, including this past week, about what happened to him at school. That’s experience is what’s in front of him able to fully embrace these compliments. Kessler was complimenting something about his essence, he thinks everyone listening is cool because they’re taking a chance. He’s still working on it. He knows that an exclamation point does not go into the middle of word, but it takes something from him to make that correction, and it takes something for him to not be judged. Marcus names how much they're showing our age by using the word cool, and Marcus is a huge Neil Young fan, the song "Keep on Rocking in the Free world," the idea "there goes another kid who will never get to be cool…" there goes another kid we let go as a society, we don’t get to engage in the community, fall in love, be your full self, that’s something—that another kid made us feel validated and cool. It’s not that we set out to be cool (or Fire, or Werk..we are clearly old), it’s that there was a reaction and a response to our stories that made us feel connected and like we weren’t alone, and that changes how you feel about yourself. This makes Isabelle think of What Not To Wear (see link below) the old Bravo makeover show that while on the surface dealt with fashion faux pas, really had more to do with instilling confidence and a sense of self—and she remembers someone saying “you either wear the dress or the dress wears you” and it's like that with brains. Side note, if you can’t take the compliment at the moment, save it in your pocket for a rainy day, just hold on to it, you don’t have to let it in yet but don’t lose it either. So maybe it’s like wearing our brains instead of letting our brains wear us? Kessler sums it up: what it feels like to have a sense of confidence and mastery, what it feels like to belong, what it feels like to have a community, and matter, and have worth. It’s impossible to embody all those things and not be cool or fire or feel your worth. Kessler asks, if everything were gone tomorrow, what would Flink and Marcus want the legacy of Eye to Eye to be? Flink names that they are committed to the next 25 years as much as they’re summing up the first 25, and it boils down to it, young people are not broken. Your brain is beautiful, your story matters, and have the courage to share that with the world. Marcus adds that “no statues,” we are not designing a movement to be remembered, if they’re forgotten, it’s fine, it’s more that it was a spark that started and built up the movement—we...

This week we're revisiting what happens when you show up at a holiday meal and immediately realize with a sinking feeling- "Not again…I can't eat anything here…" From honoring the cook's efforts while not betraying your own needs, to recognizing the joys of chewing on pens and ice, join David and Isabelle as we embrace our sensory sensitivities and make our own neurodivergent-friendly and inclusive traditions. Check out our Holiday Survival Guide! Part of a holiday prep series designed to help take some pressure off the holiday season.

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David and Isabelle stare down the fast moving train of holidays and expectations that is barreling toward us right now. As we approach Thanksgiving we have a bunch of "shoulds" coming at us--we should be like everyone else and even though we have sensory issues with cars, and sounds, and people, and all that stuff. Everything from sitting still from being held hostage on a plane or in the car, or being stuck in a service or sit at a table, or eating - the sound, the food, the overstimulation, while simultaneously coupled with frustration and your routine being destroyed, and all of this at the same time. This explains why Isabelle has a lurching sense of dread approaching this time of year. The holiday dread is real. David and Isabelle have covered other aspects of holidays, like speaking with family, and the glories and pains of holiday travel, and here they are focusing on food and sensory sensitivities. Isabelle remembers how growing up she was known as a picky eater but actually there were a lot of sensory sensitivities going on. She had memories of celebrating “wigilia” (Polish Christmas Eve celebration) and sitting at a much larger table, with much more eyes on her, and as someone who only ate pretty much chicken and white rice and potatoes, she was facing down a traditional non-meat meal of 12 mostly fish-based dishes (such as pickled herring). You fast before this evening meal, and then you commence the eating. She would be lightheaded and nauseous because she’d be so hungry and would fill up on dinner rolls with butter, everyone is judging and commenting, then she lives on the high of opening presents, and then they’d go to midnight mass at midnight, and then they’d light candles and means the oxygen is rapidly leaving the area in an enclosed place and so she’d either pass out and throw up. Everyone can look back in time and find the holiday memories of “we can’t believe we did that on purpose.” We don’t make time any other time of year to have these rituals, and see each other, and it's really about connections, yet we get caught up in following these rules that don’t always work. Isabelle thinks about how for years she carried the shame around this being her fault, she’s the picky eater that would end up passing out or throwing up, but then thinks about how easy it would’ve been to provide some kind of option for her. That there are traditions and ways of keeping the meaning behind the traditions, but also making even small accommodations that can make all the difference to us. How we can always make new traditions. There’s a really hard part with food: there are people that work really hard for hours in the kitchen and they want you to try and see what you like about it and not like about it—how can we try certain things that work for us, and how can we bring our own food—like here’s my tub of Mac and cheese, there has to be a middle path. The way to be a gracious guest and host, and how as neurodivergent folks we can prefer to host because it gives us structure, she can stay on her feet, it helps her mask less. What is this about ADHD and food sensitivities? There’s a lot around taste aversion, what happens when we associate a food item with a thought in our head—like “eww, this tastes like sand” and we don’t eat sand…or boogers. To make the eating experience a lot more about the flavors they’re experiencing rather than the thought in the brain. Is it salty? Sweet? Savory? Textures? David is a texture person, there is a fine line between “this is edible” and “this makes me gag”—like bananas, one day to the next changes. Isabelle and David firmly agree on bananas being this type of thing, and Isabelle does not do overripe bananas, you make it a cooking liquid and you put it in banana bread. David also likes drinkable yogurt and he doesn’t mind it because he’s drinking it. If he’s moving his mouth hole up and down there needs to be something there to fight my mouth.” And crunching is stimulating and stress reducing. Whether we’re chewing ice or almost-cutting-the-top-of-your-mouth bread crust. Is it the act of chewing that’s stress reducing, or something crunchy is stress reducing? Isabelle notices chewy things, like gum, gummy chews, and chip crunch, or a cold crunch, she does not like it—there are special ice cubes that collapse in your mouth that shrink in your mouth. Tiny ball ices at Sonic or certain places have that. David knows chewing gum is a stimulation, and David is hazarding guesses with the crunching thing (like it’s objectively dominating something in your mouth, or you’re making progress, or it’s the sound itself)—there are a lot of parts of that that is soothing. If it’s paired with dopamine, your chocolate chip cookie crunch is paired with delight and celery crunch is a HORROR to Isabelle. David’s favorite crunch is an apple-pear crunch, or a jicama crunch. What is an apple-pear? What is it exactly? This links us to grapples (apples that taste like grapes), and cotton-candy grapes (it’s too much) and champagne grapes and boba. Isabelle loves it, and David describes how he never got boba, he just thought they were fun to launch and make stick to the things, and then years later, it was cold, and he got the boba and then he had a moment when all of a sudden, he chewed it up and was like boba. “Boba, you’re delicious!” And now he’s a full boba fan. There was a challenge to himself to experience it again. Isabelle wants to go on 800 food related tangents and realizes it might be a food related special interest. The sound of the crunch is a tiny sonic boom in your mouth. And David leans on a couch with his hand on his chin and his finger got in and he accidentally came down on his finger absentmindedly, and you can’t even pretend to bite yourself, oh my goodness, it is so painful and powerful. Every time Isabelle bites her tongue or cheek it feels like she severs her tongue. But also, why did David put his finger in his mouth accidentally? And if he put his finger in his mouth and chew it. Isabelle loved chewing pen cap (old school pic pen caps), and she’d chew on everything. She’d also chew on lollipop sticks, she chews on the cupcake wrapper, she doesn’t ingest these things and doesn’t like chewing, but she loves chewing paper and the pen cap, and it got vertical in her mouth and it sliced a line in the center of the tongue, and she still has a divet. Every single person who is listening has done something like that, or has eaten too many sour patch kids, or has eaten hot pizza too fast and burned their mouth open. This connects to masking and needing stimulation, and a little bit of clumsiness, oral gratification, and it’s important. Switching and making new fantasies for the holidays: if you have a picky eater, why don’t you make that with them and bring that with them? Don’t let the family shame you and make you thing you’re doing anything wrong. Take care of your family. Including yourself. So many of us will give kids the room to offer them to...

David and Isabelle are joined by David Flink and Marcus Soutra, co-founders of Eye to Eye, friends, and pioneers in education equity and empowering young neurodivergent folks to know and own their story and change the education system and world for the better. Go deep into how this youth-led movement started 25 years ago, the impacts Marcus and David have witnessed, and what it has always hinged upon: that our neurodivergent stories and culture matter and sharing them can change the lives of others for the better.  To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org.

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David wonders if, given that they have already attended the Organizing Institute of Eye to Eye—and should we talk about it as if it hasn’t already happened? Or as if they are about to go…? Marcus is up for whatever, David Flink points out that this is a really choose your own adventure intro. David Kessler has been involved with Eye to Eye for years and gives an introduction. David Flink and Marcus Soutra are very important people in Kessler’s (SSPOD co-host’s) story. Flink started Project Eye to Eye twenty years ago, he’s been nominated by CNN as person of the year, he’s created a network of community around neurodivergence spanning every state. Marcus is so much around the connections and relationships of this organization, being the boots on the ground, working with so many people in this industry, talking so much about neurodiversity and ADHD in general. What made you think about making the OI, what is it for? The event is the Young Leader’s Organizing Institute (OI), first one held in Jersey City in 2005, and held every year since, including virtually through the pandemic, and young people from around the country come together and build community through their learning difference, neurodivergence, learning how to be a leader and tell their story. It’s a youth-led movement, facilitates their work throughout the year. Some are already activists, and some are new to it. Isabelle names that this is incredible, people are coming and being real and vulnerable and its truly incredible. There are chapters from over 20 states, and two students from each chapter come together and learn real tangible skills to learn how to be leaders and lead a program. Every student coming represents another 10-20 students back home. This event has allowed us to give students the skills and puts their oxygen masks on first, rather than the masking of hiding who you are. How did Flink dream about making Eye to Eye in the first place? It was co-dreaming, it was celebrating 25 years since its inception, and he stepped on this campus 25 years ago. The original version was a pretty small dream. Nobody had told him with any authenticity that there was something about his learning experience was powerful and right. He hit the teacher and family lottery, he did have people cheering him on. He wanted kids to know they’re not alone. And it wasn’t until he met Marcus, they codreamed. They had different life experiences, what would it look like if we brought people from different backgrounds, different states. We need young people from all backgrounds finding their way to love each other through learning differently, and it’s helping educate educators so they can say yes to when young people say what they need. They are 1 in 5 of all students; we need to encourage cross communication between neurotypical and neurodivergent folks. Isabelle gives feedback on what the whole conference experience was like, where there were signs, and no fear sweat, chairs with wheels, fidgets everywhere, and then when someone talks, you actually want to listen. Flink names that there’s where they started, and it was all about people saying something we needed to hear. Flink gave Kessler (SSPOD co-host) a series of vague descriptions of people that were all wandering the airport, and he was going to find them all. David didn’t shame Flink, he was on it—tracking down the people, looking for people who looked lost or had Eye to Eye gear—it became this amazing quest. It was like a Collect ‘Em All Pokemon adventure, and it was screaming and excitement and it was so much fun. David names that for the next 25 years, our environment continues to be helpful, but we are an education equity organization, we are youth driven. We’re here to set up the next generation of young people to ask for what they need and change the school systems. There’s a need for them to say what they need to say. Kessler names that trauma bonding can happen in therapy, where people go into the gory details and it's not helpful. The idea of “sharing your story” can provoke eye rolls. One of the things you first need to know is your story—talk about your story, how you got there. David felt like a fraud, the last thing he wanted to do is to tell anyone how he got there, and then Marcus lead it off by sharing his story, and as he started hearing everyone’s stories, he realized how much he wasn’t alone, he was suddenly aware he was not deficient in this group, not different in this group. Was there a story in particular that spurred this on? The idea is to make this invisible visible, make the hidden culture visible, from how we experience the trauma of school (or home, or work, or family, etc.) Marcus can identify the dyslexic person who points to the menu instead of reading the menu at dinner, and he names it for them, there's a hidden aspect to this.  Marcus had never met with David, and they had never met, but 9/10 they connected on things. Marcus was running an Eye to Eye chapter after school, and working with mentors, and running the art room (where they build social/emotional skills) and the idea was the invention project. Einstein was dyslexic and he was an inventor, so think make an invention that addresses the biggest thing that trips you up. One kid said “I hate school because I get bullied for using extended time on tests,” and he created this invention called Bully Be Gone—he called them death stars—the way he was able to use art and have near peer role models help him navigate that problem. For a 19 year old, a 10 year old—it didn’t matter where we were from, the emotional experience and the ability to connect and communicate with each other. That was where it was. Isabelle wonders about David and Marcus’ meet cute—and she recognizes that bullying is a massive trauma, especially when it goes unrecognized and unacknowledged. It changes how you relate to others and yourself, and it’s this big deal thing, and you’re then able to put art, movement, expression to it because it goes beyond words, and what it means for the older kid/youth—what it means for them to do that. We all want to spare others the suffering others went through—you go into this work because you want the world to not have that, and she’s struck by the amount of healing—what happens when you change the outcome of another person’s story, and that you matter (and it’s also not your job or role to), but what it means to transmute that wound —aka trauma mastery.  Marcus names that he sees this with his mentors—the first thing he says is, your story matters and it can change the life of someone else.

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To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

Special Thanks to: Marcus Soutra and David Flink, co-founders of Eye to Eye, for their honesty and heart, Sabrina Odigie for her logistical wizardry, and Philister Lukacevic, Eye to Eye Director of Marketing and Communications for his patience and help in getting these edits and materials out there!

Isabelle and David continue to reflect upon what it was like to experience the Eye to Eye Young Leader's Organizing Institute Conference—Isabelle describes how strange and surreal it felt to not be judged for things she’s used to having to manage and mask about; what it means to recognize that there is a part of you that goes unseen so much of the time and when you connect with it, the grief that comes. The power of recognizing you are among your particular tribe and the jarring feeling of realizing how rare it is. And also, ADHD podcaster dance offs.  

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Isabelle describes how, partly due to flight delay and the tail end of a cold and such, it was only a day and a half worth of conference experience, and yet it felt very surreal—she kept asking, is this real? And on the second day, was walking around feeling like she was shaming herself for her own behavior (because normally, she would’ve registered people’s looks or reactions to her interrupting them so much, for example). And she also noticed that while she would normally push herself to engage even if she wanted to really shut down, here she felt safe taking time for herself and not engaging, and didn’t even feel the need to try to endear herself or manage relationships excessively to prevent fallout or misunderstandings. She felt very seen and understood. David names that no one in the world is used to not being judged. She wonders if this is a common experience for attendees? David describes that he hasn’t been in this alumni role before; when he was a participant, people would be up all night in the common rooms where they would be staying, someone would be crying, someone would be forming a significant partnership or breaking up with someone, and they would go to bed at 3a and wake up at 7a to do the whole thing over again. It was like being whisked down a torrent of a river without hitting any rocks along the way. To feel so fully accepted, in all your parts, not just the parts that are shiny but all the parts—the closest word to what it feels like is maybe a collective grief, and regret, and then also release. David names that people don’t see all your parts, but they see the parts you spend most of your time hiding.  Having that part show up—it’s exhausting and refreshing and exhilarating to know how long that part has been hidden. As a therapist, when David diagnoses someone as neurodivergent later in life—there’s an initial, “oh my god, that makes so much sense!” And it’s followed by a “oh my god, if I had known earlier…?”  You cannot grab this information without grabbing some of the grief. But it’s also so strange when you’re sitting in a room where the task is to acknowledge it. Isabelle gives the example of, going to a comicon and finding your people v. Going and finding a room full of people who are celebrating a show that was cancelled early (Firefly) and cosplaying as one specific character (Jayne) and it’s that specific and for four days straight. Or it’s like someone is playing the sports ball team and they’re wearing the opposing team’s jersey on someone, it’s like you know you’re on the same side because you’re both wearing the other team’s color. It’s the difference between finding your people under duress or outnumbered. It’s like Isabelle finding a bunch of tall women at the Denver airport and feeling oddly among her people but it’s jarring and delightful too. Isabelle wonders what David’s realization was like—he mentioned all these aspects of grieving his brother’s loss and the loss of being a part of this community in the same way, and here he came back and experienced it again. He is doing great, and he has the feeling of “put me in, coach!” He watched amazing people (like Sawyer, Chloe, for example) and seeing parts of him 10 years ago, looking up to people he thought were really great. It was this moment of feeling like everything was coming full circle and David felt an immense amount of gratitude that he could reconnect with people who were really important to him, and his partner could see what he was doing. They were participating in the ally training group and as neurotypical person, it meant so much to David to see them getting along with everyone because it wasn’t a judgment-filled place. It reminds him how important a lack of judgment means to everyone not just neurodivergent folx. He came back with a renewed sense of worth, mission, and purpose. We are trying to do this with the podcast, we are trying to destroy a stigma. And we are far from the only ones doing it, but the best podcast out there—Isabelle imagines they just challenged all these other amazing podcasters to a dance off and David names they would argue about the song choice and just end up having an amazing hangout. 

To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

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Isabelle and David reflect upon what it was like to experience the Eye to Eye Young Leader's Organizing Institute Conference--in a nutshell, for David, figuring out 20 some odd years ago that his learning style was valuable, and then reclaiming hope after great loss, and for Isabelle, just this past year, feeling like she discovered her home planet in a conference room in Denver. Covering bits about medications, creating neurodivergent-friendly spaces, and masking, David and Isabelle go deep, and also discuss how there should be a "leave no trace" pact between a chair's fabric and your leg.

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Isabelle updates David that she’s been on stimulant meds (in extended release form), but would crash at the end of the day, and so her prescriber gave her an immediate release form she could use to help the end of day transitions (bedtime). They are going through schedule puberty as they transition to the kids being in school again but also not being in school yet and she just wants the discomfort to be over. She forgot to take her booster dose today, and it is so obvious to her, she is noticing just how much textures and sensations get to her. David names that it’s almost as if she didn’t have an accommodation to avoid distraction and wasn’t aware how many physical distractions would push through. She is so itchy and uncomfortable and so distracted by physical distractions. This comes up with the right variables. Just a few weeks ago, it was really humid, and David was like “I’m not wearing a shirt or pants” and it was just too much and he didn’t want to sit on certain fabrics, doesn’t want to sit on something that peels off, why can’t we just hold each and just leave each other as we found each other. Then there are other chairs that leave a butt print and so he gets up and wipes the seat off as he gets up. David and Isabelle went to the Eye to Eye Young Leader's Organizing Institute, where train their mentors and gear them up for the coming school year. They attended the portion of the institute designed for allies and former mentors of the program. Isabelle noticed that she found her way to where she needed to go on her first try, which has never happened at a conference before. It felt like reconnected with friends-in-waiting or long lost cousins. There were ample snacks and beverages. It just felt delightful and moving. David describes how this place has a different feeling to it because our nervous system operates differently. We didn’t have to get anxious to get where they needed to go. It’s this place where we see accommodations everywhere. We get to see both of it. There is no shame in this group of people to spin a fidget spinner, draw, or doodle, and people didn’t have to sit in nothingness. And the reason is mattered is that there so many things you normally have to think about, the anxiety level is so high, and halfway through the lecture, all Isabelle wants is a snack, and all she thinks about is the bar that she can’t get out of her bag, and then she is opening the notebook, the whole thing is hyper vigilance around how she is presenting. This was like instant unmasking, she didn't have to anxiously ask someone where to go. It’s incredible when the task isn’t being quiet, but the task is participation. You can eat crinkly snacks! David thinks about culture that we really have, that is a part of being neurodivergent. Any person who has to excuse why they’re running late, having an accommodation in school, not wanting to play scrabble—this is a cultural piece, when we see these things as a part of our culture, not our difference, and have them attended to, we feel safer. Oh my goodness, not having to fight for every moment to pay attention, gives us a lot more energy in a lot of ways. Isabelle names that where she has previously felt it were in places or spaces she would co-create. She has felt this before when visiting Poland, where her parents and family are from, and she’d have this sense of home. But this was the first time she had the feeling in a room of other people having the feeling. It’s like finding her home planet. Where has this been? I’m so happy it’s here! What is this feeling? This is the part of knowing you’re all of a sudden part of a group, you’re part of a group this world wasn’t built for, and you have to do it our way. And when you see hundreds of people not asking permission and not getting in trouble. People were attending to the task with incredible precision, and it’s an honor to watch these young people making the world we’re going to live in. David went the first time 20 years ago, and it’s the first time in his life someone made his learning style feel valuable. In his grad school program, one of his classmates was like “hey, you’re talking about ADHD, any interest in starting a program where they take college students with LDs and match them up with middle school students and seeing what happens?” And he gets ready for an interview with David Flink. He was interested in hearing his story but not in an exploitive way. It felt really holding, we’d love to have you be a mentor, come out to Brown university, we’ll teach you how to be a mentor. He’s at the OI, and David Flink and Marcus Soutra (Eye to Eye co-founders) are standing at the easel with Marcus and dream boarding stuff. Grady (if you hear this, David misses you and you changed his life!) was bouncing a racketball, and David looked around, waiting for him to get in trouble, and he looked around and no one cared. And they’re playing catch with this racketball and bouncing it off and playing this elaborate game during this presentation. At the same time we’re playing with these racketballs, obviously distracted. Marcus - “does anyone know how to spell benign?” This question usually makes David go small, and the room goes quiet and goes crickets. “All right then” he writes “B” and the number “9.” David realizes: "It’s not that we’re not paying attention because we're bouncing a ball; we're answering all the questions."  He wasn’t trying to hide, and he didn't get 'caught' and noticed he started to shake off the 'just about to be caught doing the thing I’m not supposed to be doing' feeling. He does 20 years with this, traveling around. And then a short while ago, one of the people closest to David, died. The moment he found out his brother was dying, David was talking with Jennifer Kane, saying “I’m done.” He never thought he would see anyone again. This reminded him to have hope in people, and people will surprise you. It started with 27 people sitting around the table, and now there’s levels of things and sophistication with apps and fidgets. Coming back and being amazed about how incredible this is. It’s like coming face to face with a dragon, but finding out it’s friendly, and then having it shrink to a size of a pea and living in your heart. 

To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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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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David and Isabelle grapple with flipping the focus from ADHD symptoms into strengths, as survivors in a neurotypically-geared world. From questioning why we don’t use our toes more often, to the Boxcar Children, to maybe "outgrowing ADHD" is more connected to growing up, having more power, and choosing your own adventure. 

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Isabelle struggles with going in and out doors, getting on/off escalators, and also not injuring herself or others in revolving doors—it’s like the old Far Side comic, “Midvale School for the Gifted” where the kid is pushing on the pull door. David names that it’s an engineering flaw, you’re supposed to intuitively know which way to open a door, there should be no handle on a push door, for example, it’s not all our fault. Most of Isabelle’s family does not live in this country, and she has memories of different light switches, or doors, or the placement of things in bathrooms, or where the handles are on shower heads—the way you habituate yourself in your space is so engrained. Every time they clean the little island on casters in the kitchen is moved, and the next day is a series of humans hitting things a lot and going “what?!” Isabelle would walk while reading a lot, she couldn’t handle transitions and she needed something in her hand to do, and as David points out it increases the degree of difficulty. She was reading Boxcar children, and also—what were we reading? It was going to be the best to live in a boxcar? And half the book was “and then Violet made curtains" and she oddly wanted to make curtains. And because she was walking and reading and she learned to pick up things with their toes. She can hold a pen with her toes, and she can probably write something with toes—why do we forget our toes are just foot fingers? If anything looks like it wants to be helpful, it's a toe. It wants to do more than just stabilize you while moving. Isabelle remembers flying across the Atlantic and is by herself (as a kid, maybe 10 years old) and she was sitting next to an older teen, backpacking, he was really nice. They were talking, and she never forgot this and she was a very nervous flyer and it meant a lot to be distracted by this, and had a regular size middle finger, and his middle toe was the exact same length as his middle finger. The middle toe was proportionate to the other toes, the foot looked normal, and it was a large, basketball player sized foot, he must’ve been tall? He had regular sized fingers, but his toe was the same size. David doesn’t know where to put this in his brain: in the black box never to be revisited. I mean, literally there’s a foot out there that can drive a car if needed, and also what is this happening to a 10 year old (he felt like a chill camp counselor, not creepy at all), and then you think: could you cook with it? Could you be flipping eggs on the pan? You learn how to do things with your feet—is it just a social norm that we don’t do things with our toes? Did you know that when you’re born blind you can’t have hallucinations—you have zero chance of having schizophrenia, because hallucinations can be smells, feelings, lots of things. When you don’t have eyes, the whole part of your brain gets usurped, their senses are so much more sophisticated, they can’t have random errors. What about ADHD brains: we are so used to having lots of thoughts in our brain, and it lends us to be in situations where we cannot have dysfunction where other people do. How a blind person doesn’t have any form of hallucination. There are a lot of environments built for us that make our differences disappear. This is not a one-size fits all for everyone: when people get their environmental needs met with ADHD, there are not problems. To someone having auditory hallucinations, that part of the brain that is activated when they hear someone talking, it’s actually happening (same part of the brain is happening)—to that person it’s indistinguishable. The other parts of the brain grow into that region that’s missed—more parts of the brain deal with other senses, and your brain is use-dependent, and it just fills it in and becomes more sophisticated, and it's very easy finding the ghosts in the machine. It’s better at picking up “this is not matching the pattern of reality” and because they’re using all their senses. Isabelle references a radiolab episode where a man uses echolocation, and using clicks, and can ride bicycles and stuff, and they’re picking up on the space and materials and everything just from the sound. Whatever the brain does it gets better at. As someone with ADHD, we’re superpowered? David is saying we are, and referencing D&D. Make some stat categories super low and others super high —I don’t care about wisdom and coordination, but my reflexes are really high. David, for example, looking at what teachers references: also likes to talk, really distracted by helping people, wants people to feel better, also highly distracted, food motivated. We get caught up on getting little David to do homework. We don’t get caught up on “that little David is so good at building social emotional connections to people.” How do we get that better? Little Susan is insanely good at video game play and programming—how do we get them MORE of that instead of “get them off the screens.” Is your strength just sitting in the car driving fast? That’s a strength. We (ADHD folx and people in the world) have to be careful to not see the negative first, we have to see the strength first. David can clearly see, take a minute listener and think of the people you knew were really good at, what did you want to do when you were left alone. How do those things line up with yourself now? “I used to have ADHD and then I grew out of it!” NO, you grew up and got old enough to choose your own adventures and now you’re fine! We have peaks and valleys and we have to think about the peaks more. 

Midvale School for the Gifted Far Side comic by Gary Larson

What were we reading? The Boxcar Children

A Beautiful Mind

Radiolab with echolocating man is actually an Invisibilia episode about Daniel Kish

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

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Isabelle and David reflect on going on 3 years of working on this podcast (note: this is now are 4th year working on it! WHAT?! WE LOVE YOU!) and how much the common way of interacting with inanimate objects is “did I break it?” And when we don’t, the realization of: “it’s more better!” Thinking about all the shiny neurodivergent folks gleaming around the planet, the power of your suggestions and ideas for shaping this podcast, and things we’ve learned as adults that changed the game (see: logos, gas station hacks, successfully getting everything for a recipe at the grocery store).

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David and Isabelle reflect on this being their 3rd anniversary of recording the podcast. David describes how he used to walk to Isabelle and Bobby’s place past a McDonald’s every time to record, mulling over what they would talk about or what they could do. But this McDonald’s had a lit awning but was also closed a bunch of the time, and was filled with the most awkward sidewalk and road configuration so you need to do a lot of things to find out they are closed. David would like to barter, somehow.  On Isabelle’s end she remembers getting the table ready after putting their kid down for bed, and getting excited to have a guest over. Almost everything is improved by snacking, but also less ice, is better. The two ponder about what to talk about, or going meta with the podcast. David wants to go there because it has been so cool to see what happened since we started this. We started wanting to remove the paywall from good information about ADHD, reduce suffering. The letters and emails we’ve gotten, the reviews we’ve seen posted, David is constantly in awe and reminded that sometimes people hear something we’ve talked about and it makes them feel less alone or more seen. It’s so cool that it’s happening so much. And he’s sitting with ADHD in that he doesn’t respond. “This person is amazing, their heart is true, and man, I need to sit down and write an honest letter that matches the energy.” Isabelle is trying so hard to respond. David cries and wants to respond, and here is his verbal accommodation to responding. It’s really incredible and rewarding in ways he wouldn’t have thought. For Isabelle, it relates a delayed gratification time, having a roughly regular way of interacting with David is so rewarding.  For a long time in person, this was the lifeline to getting to see each other and it is delightful and brought me so much, and then she turns to Bobby and goes “have you listened to the podcast?” Because they actually use this in their every day life. Let’s figure that out. In terms of the immediacy of what this means, every time she goes to listen and edits old episodes, it’s delightful, and then she gets something from it. And then she sits and edits and gets better and faster and it’s not her chosen profession, so she’s picked up a lot as she’s gone. And then she feels the growing load of never putting this out and it’s fine as long as there’s an episode up. And then we get a review, or a letter, or an email, and it’s like holy flying pieces of flaming something. And then it's a conversation. You’re listening on the other end of this. And she listens to the other end of this, she’s just listener, too. It makes her think of the first “X-Men” movie and Professor X in his machine, Cerebro, and seeing all of the shiny people all around the world. And David names, we can struggle with premeditation, and not rehearsing, or scripting anything, but these are very real conversations that can feel scary and vulnerable because they’re not here. There are certain topics and suggestions that lots of people have written in and we’ve been so excited to cover them and maybe do it. It’s really helpful if people tell us “give us more information on x” and that gives us structure, or like help me with littles, and how do we sit here and deal with partners, how do you reclaim a life when you learn you’re neurodivergent into your later adulthood?  What might be really great, and maybe do a conversation around them, there are no capital A answers, but there are lots of answers to these things. We should rope in more people so we have more ways of talking about it, both from parents and non-parents, and more of a Q&A roundtable - and maybe we make it an event, a virtual, zoom type things. David gets balloons no matter what. On Isabelle’s scale of decorations, the top one is little paper accordions made of tissue paper, loves the opening of party decorations and then she closes them and they are flat. David has kept some of those up because why would you take them down. It’s like a 3D animation, now it’s flat and now it’s slowly getting not flat. Am I going to break it? It’s more better!  This sums up half of Isabelle’s interactions with inanimate objects. Giant learning moments of things you didn’t know until way late and it changed the game: David was in his late 20s when he learned how to spell kitchen, and he got it and it was funny, but he did learn how to spell that word. That’s a hard word! Isabelle’s kid is in that ‘teaching himself to read’ kind of state, and describing the difference between “to,” “too,” and “two” —try explaining that to a kid. And David thinks the English language is needlessly insane and he hates it. And in case anyone doesn’t know, Isabelle sits there and types out the show notes. The word she has never once spelled accurately—not to brag, but she was the 3rd place winner of the Polish National Alliance spelling bee (which is in English)—she never spells accommodate. There are too many consonants in “kitchen.” And there’s so many words David can’t spell that don’t matter, but if you have to do it every day. Neurochemistry makes sense—he can spell amygdala - “Amy G Dala.” He realized excitement and enthusiasm is an accommodation for anxiety. You can choose to label the experience differently. David was prepping for an event and he was chomping at the bit to go on and then he started jumping up and down and shadowboxing and he's doing these moves and all of a sudden, all of that pent up anxiety was embodied into excitement in his body. That’s something he's done again and again in life. Every once in a while, he will think of something he wants to cook, goes to the store, gets all that he needs, and then prepping things-and that’s some sexiness right there. He feels so good when he does that. This makes Isabelle think of porn for housewives (so sexist)-novelty books—and you open this up and it is pictures of very generically handsome men and women of all stripes just doing various household tasks, the word bubbles are saying things like “I scheduled all the kids’ doctor’s appointments and picked up dinner” and it's just a task, and what David just described all those sequences, preparation, initiating and follow through — very sexy for an ADHD brain. And David has learned he has to have to have all the ingredients have to fit on the post it note and he can’t do any other shopping and it can only be to get ingredients for that meal. And if he adds more, he'll get 35%-95% of it—has to be a targeted mission. That makes Isabelle think of how to try to make gf baking ten years before there were mixes, and the kinds of things she forced herself to eat, because she worked so hard on them. It totally blew Isabelle’s mind that logos had more to them than just letters—she didn’t learn this until this last year. And it makes fun to look at, and you realize how much work put people into it and you have to be very talented. Two things she learned within the last five years: how to remember which side of the car the gas tank is on? You can look at the little gas tank icon on your dash and there’s an arrow next to it, and...

While we reunite (in person!) and prep some amazing new episodes, here's one of our top ever: 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.

For our younger ears: there is a swear in the last minute of the episode. Be warned.
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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.com

Why 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, e...

Isabelle and David explore more strengths of neurodivergence, such as adaptability and responding in crisis/pressure situations (like a Ferrari on a racetrack, versus the parking lot of practice), and explore the question: why do we use so many qualifiers? Saying things like “I know I’m talking too fast,” to “nerd alert!” to “I know you hate me and want to kill me, but…” thinking about how we try to make ourselves appear aware, or harmless, or signal our vulnerability or fear of being put into a box, and how curiosity can work in our favor to make this a conscious choice rather than an automatic habit. 

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David shares the stat that is most closely tied to income (not your test scores or math scores or writing ability)…but your vocabulary, the words you understand. It’s connected to travel, how well you can shift between different environments and understand things. We’re so used to thinking about things in different ways we may not even realize how adept we are at traveling between worlds. Isabelle recognizes how the oral tradition, storytelling, there’s some things she doesn’t take away from the written word that she takes away from hearing about it. How wonderful is it that she found her way into a profession where her role is a listener. She may not regurgitate all the info or nail that standardized test but If you look at her facility to adapt to novel or unusual or crisis circumstances, she wouldn’t trade all her masking for that ability, because she can chameleon her way through a lot of situations. She was recently on a panel and hadn’t been in front of so many humans in a long time. And she noticed that she doesn’t necessarily have the same stress response others have. When they were practicing for the panel, she didn’t do as well and the other amazing panelists seemed at home. When it came time to do it, she got in the zone, and their nerves were visible and it changed their performance. They went from being so organized and put together and getting nervous, whereas she noticed she was more at home and at ease under pressure. All these intangible but real things that we don’t give ourselves credit for. David names that her brain has always been a Ferrari, and when they’re doing the pre-planning, that’s like driving around a parking lot. It would be clunky. The panel itself was the racetrack and she could let herself go. This brings David to something he noticed lately when talking with his lovely colleague; he said “I know you’re going to kill me and hate me, but…I like football.” And his colleague pointed out that he says that sometimes. And his brain opened up the neurodivergent qualifier canyon—“but, I dunno, is it? I do” All the “am I taking up too much space? Talking too fast? Moving too much?” It’s something David has worked on so much. When we’re qualifying, we’re taking ammo out of someone else’s arsenal. We say the thing we’re scared someone is going to say to us, then when someone says something terrible to us, we’re not upset. David notices he does this with things he really, really likes but that he has a conflict around.  He’s owning that he’s a really, really big football fan. And he’s the only football fan in his family, this wasn’t handed down, this was something he stumbled on that he loves. He’s also spent the last 30 years studying brains, trauma, and behavior, so it’s complicated, but he still loves football. He says “don’t kill me, I love football” as a way of saying “don’t worry, I know football is bad, it’s a guilty pleasure.” But in all moments when qualifiers come out, we disrupt other people’s agency. The questions need to be okay. The conflicts need to be okay. We’re allowed to be guarded, we’re allowed to be vulnerable, but it’s not always easy liking little shiny things, because you might like a shiny thing that someone else doesn’t like. The qualifiers are the ways we use language to soften blows for ourselves, to stop our rocket from fully going wild across the field, they’re like really sophisticated bumper guards. It’s a part of having self esteem hits from ADHD, but it’s not all bad. This makes Isabelle think of how many qualifiers she uses in a moment let alone a day. It also makes her think of how she first came across qualifiers in a book on negotiation that calls them accusational audits, where you disarm someone’s argument by naming the thing you think they’ll use against you (e.g. ‘I know I’m young and experienced, but…”) She also thinks she uses phrases like “nerd alert” and “get ready, I’m about to geek out on you…” because there’s a lot about herself she was the last to find out about. She feels like she’s the last to know and she misses a lot. That’s also a strength/vulnerability of neurodivergence, the sense of our own self-appraisal being off, and/or really knowing our own limits. It’s like a way to broadcast to the world, “hey, don’t worry, I may be ten steps behind, but there’s a thin line of awareness here, there is a fin on this rocket, it’s way back here, but don’t worry!” Like a little person holding a kite string to the rocket. David is also joining this, qualifiers aren’t good or bad, “how come I didn’t know that?” But noticing where it shows up in safe and secure relationships. Qualifiers around “did that make sense?” And “I’m going to sum it up here” all make sense as cues to the listener, but where are we most vulnerable and what things make us create qualifiers. It’s interesting to David that it comes up at work, where he doesn’t feel very guarded—it doesn’t strike him as a choice, it’s part of the ADHD repetoire. If he thinks about it as a symptom, it feels gross. If he thinks about it as a behavior, he feels better.  A behavior is just a thing, it’s neutral on it’s own: this is my dunking the basketball behavior, this is my crying the corner behavior, it’s just a thing. So, to make sure she understands, Isabelle checks that qualifiers are indeed the judgments you say about the thing that you fear someone will say about the thing that you put out there ahead of time. Maybe another way of saying “vulnerability alert, vulnerability alert” or “no harm meant!” Showing your soft underbelly. But yet, we’re often saying qualifiers about the behaviors we’re doing that are automatic (like talking quickly, changing topics, going on tangents, talking a lot, etc.) and also the qualifying itself is a behavior that is connected to ADHD. David explains that you know it’s automatic when you don’t choose to do it (or not do it). The first thing we do to change a behavior is to observe it, just observing it changes it. He doesn’t need people to hold him accountable or say it to him while he’s talking, but he wants to notice it so he can choose where it happens so that the qualifiers don’t get in the way of building intimacy. It’s like the idea of toastmasters, if you’re trying to practice doing something like speaking, you gotta take away the qualifiers. It makes Isabelle think of pickle ball and how she was clunky and loving it but found herself qualifying and apologizing a lot, and her friend/coach told her “when you do that a lot, you take the fun out of it.” It sets you up to accept yourself differently, she just accepted she’s a poor pickle ball player and it was more fun. And it also means you get to play more because you need safety and trust to start to play. It’s so hard to play when you’re busy going “don’t hurt me, don’t kill me.” It’s like farting in the waiting room. No one wants that. It’s like two dogs doing cute little play bow, and one dog starts going “i’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the other dog stops going play...

Isabelle and David explore a bit about dyslexia, dyscalculia, and all the ways we walk around accommodating ourselves without knowing it. From making ADHD pasta, to thinking about ourselves in behavioral terms and moving from being driven by feelings to being able to make choices, the question really is, when do you want to learn how to swim? When you're in a pool, or when you're thrown into the ocean? 

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Isabelle describes hanging out with a dear friend (who she hopes will be a guest on the podcast soon) who late in life was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and also with a mild form of dyscalculia and dyslexia; her handwriting is all over the place, and she may have a mild form (not officially diagnosed), but realizing that she may be accommodating a lot more than she realized, and now she thinks that she may have a moderate form of dyscalculia, and her numbers and analog time switch on her. David wants to give her a hug; neurodiversity is our brains working differently, and we can get hung up on the pathology of it, but all things like slow processing, dyslexia, dyscalculia, and all of it—it changes how we think about attention cycles and how to attend and how to use accommodations. Some kids have ADHD symptoms, then they get glasses and suddenly they lose the ADHD symptoms. But they were blurting things out because they weren’t seeing prompts and once they could see them, they could move through it better. So many of us just move forward going “it’s just me” because we don’t want to talk about the broken or damaged parts of us and we think it’s just going to be hard. This is where it gets complicated, the part of this that David gets stuck with—neurodivergence, dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, autism—that’s your brain all the time. That’s not your brain breaking. For David, ADHD is part of his brain all the time, but it makes things awesome. We don’t say “that’s ADHD pasta, you like that pasta, huh?” Because he’s experimenting with cooking. We could say, that’s creative, or we could say that’s impulsive. For people who have to learn differently, we’re creative, out of the box thinking, problem solving is through the roof. They’re not symptoms, they’re behaviors. We gotta normalize people and experiences, often times it’s used as an excuse. “I can’t, because my ADHD, or it’s out of control all the time.” Isabelle also has ADHD pasta, which is the spices she gathers that’s different every week and it’s so interesting, even the way she frames it. Friend was telling her about how to take the reading comprehension test; she would read the passage, then read the question, then re-read the passage to answer every question. And friend pointed out that some people are able to read the passage and keep that in their working memory as they then answer the questions. It’s a fleeting moment of talking with her, that makes it feel like someone gets what it’s like to do it the way you do it, and what it might be like to be neurotypical. A near peer mentor, especially someone who is doing well. We’re caught in that damaged place where we think it’s just our fault and we’re bad at the thing everyone else can do. The way that David has always thought about it, is that it could be working memory, or it could be that when you read the questions, you get structure about where to put everything else. We have incredible visual and spatial memory, David gets caught in how we organize stuff, and there’s this incredible guy Barkeley, who does a lot of great work, and he talks about it in a medical model where he talks about it with a symptoms and problems. David talks really fast—it’s either a symptom of ADHD or a behavior with ADHD. One is about sickness and one is just a thing. Isabelle is reminded of Sam Kean’s “Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons” and his glorious tangents and neurodivergent-friendly, fact-filled writing style, and she takes away that we commonly think our prefrontal cortex makes a decision and then our motor neurons follow it. Like if she wants to reach for the coffee cup, she decides to reach for the coffee cup, and then does the movement to reach for it. But your body actually reaches for the coffee cup before you consciously decide you are reaching for the coffee cup. Our brain and explanation for what we do is always lagging to the motions and things we’re doing. David’s turn to the do the Isabelle moment: whoa. The behavior comes first, our thoughts about it come second. Same with emotions, they come first, the thoughts come second. David’s first training was behavioral psychology, he thinks we’re stimulus and response creatures, but we really like to imagine we make a lot of conscious choices, when we don't. Nine times out of ten we think we make decisions, but we are on autopilot and don’t look at the menu at the fast food restaurant, we know what we’re getting already. We have to practice the habits we want to institute in our lives when it doesn’t matter. We need to initiate the routines, habits, and rituals when there’s low stakes, no time pressure, and nobody holding me accountable? WHAT?!  Thinking about accommodations: when do you want to learn how to swim? Do you want to learn how to swim in a swimming pool, or jumping off a ship? That’s what military training is in a way, you make it automatic so that the behavior is going to happen when you’re in that zone. As David points out, they also intentionally desentisize people to threats and vulnerabilities so they don’t get derailed when practicing the automated parts. So getting rid of threats is negatively reinforcing, which is removing the thing that’s painful as you go so you get relief. Other forms of negative reinforcement are the beeping going away when you buckle your seatbelt, or the sweet silence when the annoying alarm clock sound goes away when you hit the snooze button. Isabelle wonders if that connects to medication or caffeine, is it habit building because it gives a sense of calm? David counters: medication or not, any successful intervention dramatically increases self-esteem, dramatically makes the person feel better; it is naturally reinforcing because you’re able to feel the difference in your pain points. Reinforcement is just increasing the frequency of the thing that came before it. When we’re taking medications or doing any accommodations that work, we are more accurately appraising our performance, we are not motivated by feelings, we are motivated by behaviors, which is very different, and it creates a more tangible grasp on time. If you’re going to be motivated by behavior v. emotion, it’s reintroducing choice—what if folx who are neurodivergent, what if it’s just there less of a hold, ‘no no no, explain it all, make it all make sense’ that lives in us. More neurodivergent ways of thinking, like a horse with no reins—don’t get why anyone would need them? Imagine half the world is rockets with tail fins and they shoot off and people come down with parachute. And every once in a while, there is a rocket with no fins on it, and that’s David. It’s terrifying, but also goes everywhere, and you may be dodging it, the point is that accommodations, the medications, are fins for the rockets. We’re going to self-medicate with emotions, with anxiety, anger, excitement, shame, OR you can have that medication, you can take that coffee, you can go for that run, and then you increase that stimulation but you get to pick the feeling it’s attached to. Without accommodations, we’re just going to move from one threat to the next. With accommodations, we’ll face a threat and then have 30 minutes to pass before the next threat arises. And in terms ...

David and Isabelle name that a big part of any behavior change is a change in how you identify; to go from “I’m a damaged person full of failure” to “I’m a person who’s needs have not been met by the world and I’m doing my best and what can I do?” Furthermore, it is vulnerable and anxiety-producing to be neurodivergent and to live with failure on the regular. How to take the wins while honoring the hurt and healing the hits to our sense of self.

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We don’t exactly always know when to ask for help; Isabelle asked for help and asked for an icepack after injuring herself, which was a big deal. Isabelle names that some people are lone wolves when sick (arr! Stay away) whereas some people are teddy bears that want cuddles and care. Isabelle is more of a lone wolf. One of the last parts of habit formation is changing how you identify. Like quitting smoking: if you live thinking you're a smoker, then every time you don’t smoke, you’re constantly denying yourself, rather than thinking of yourself as a former smoker (and look at me go!)—enforcing a positive thing about yourself rather than resisting a temptation over and over again. With ADHD, thinking about how she is hacking her brain and doing is easier than taking. David is taking it in like a raccoon on light speed, “big eyes, lotsa lights!” This piece around identity is big. This is around self-esteem—“I’m a damaged person full of failure” v. “I’m a person who has never been seen correctly, and my needs have not been met by the world and what can I do?”—instead of trying to fix what’s broken, trying to get curious. Everyone of us is in this battle, too: changing your perception of what it’s like to be neurodivergent in this world. We have to shift our identity—for example, I’m not ever going to pair another sock in my life, or I’m going to make a game of pairing socks. Either way you go, you can be that person. No one has time for laces, or multiple trips for groceries. Now for a tangent, going back to the raccoon traveling light speed But what about if you’re going light speed, do you not hear the screaming and the farting until you stop? And the sonic boom is the displaced air from moving so fast? If you’re in space, does sound move the same way? Big questions. Isabelle describes Brian Cox and how her and Bobby went to go see a lecture by him for their anniversary, it’s a moment where they understand it, and then you see him drawing multiverses and you sorta get it and then you totally don’t. We were talking about awesome people, and podcasts, and one of the things David is thinking about lately is anxiety. We’re supposed to feel it, it’s a part of life. But anxiety stops us from getting answers. Fear is what happens once we see the answer and face it. Resiliency is what happens when you face your fears. These things are all difficult things: changing your identity is hard. It’s not about running from your anxiety, it’s about finding a safe group of people to experience it with. You don’t have to do it alone. It’s doing things together that makes doing the podcast really special. This is scary stuff that we’re doing on the podcast. At any point in time, we can make mistakes and make them last forever, there’s anxiety in that, but David doesn’t feel it with Isabelle—they are accommodations for that with each other. It’s not that we don’t do it alone, we do it together. And Isabelle names this recurring joke about “why are there no Bigfoot bones, because other Bigfoot eat them!”  Fear is intended to mobilize, it’s intended to help you focus and do the thing. Isabelle thinks of anxiety, related to trauma, survival and conditioned experiences around things she learned are not safe, but may be safe (but may perceive as unsafe). It’s impossible to feel fear if you’re also curious, like even if in the midst of fear or anxiety, you can cultivate a little curiosity, it gives you a little room to work with. When someone is with you, it’s that you co-regulate with someone, they validate and affirm that you’re safe and okay, and are able to say, you’re getting these little blips that can burst through that conditioning that can signal to you “you’re safe enough” someone is here to tell you “you got this, you’re good!” But it’s not just about taking what you perceive v. What is real—it’s not just that it’s real that the world is neurodivergent friendly, but it’s also true that when you don’t have people you can connect with and get that reinforcement from (those near peer mentors!) You are accurately actually vulnerable (like Isabelle feels vulnerable when she interrupts people or tangents), she spends so much energy masking. It takes a lot of courage to own you’re anxiety or fear or your resiliency, or to have a concept of “that’s what’s happening to me.” Don’t know if we give ourselves enough credit. Because she can’t not pay attention to things, she can’t not pay attention to her feelings either. On the one side, she’s sensitive, emotional, etc. she’s also hyperaware of herself. The fear and subtle bits of oppression to neordivergence—it’s a rough go. When you’re able to know it’s not your fault. Imagine profusely sweating and feeling gross but no one else is sweating—it’s dysregulating. But if everyone is sweating, you feel better. But we don’t do a lot in America to normalize neurodivergence, and neurodivergent folx sometimes get pity “let me make it easier,” but we don’t need easier, you need more different. We encounter more failure before breakfast, you actually don’t get to skip that and it’s a fun saying, but it’s actually quite painful. How little we think of learning differently—think about how we know there are fonts that would help everyone read, every single person without dyslexia could read it, too—but we don’t do that. Some people with ADHD need breaks, some don’t—but we don’t plan a world where you can choose, either you’re supposed to work it or take breaks (one or the other). When we can go to habits, rituals, chunking, outsourcing things, decision fatigue reduction, whatever you can do to make it easier, do it, take the win. 

What is a sonic boom? A sonic boom is a sound associated with shock waves created when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound (see Wikipedia)

 How does sound move through space? It doesn't. "You cannot hear any sounds in near-empty regions of space. Sound travels through the vibration of atoms and molecules in a medium (such as air or water). In space, where there is no air, sound has no way to travel." (see: CalTech Cool Cosmos site)

Brian Cox (the physicist, not the Succession actor)

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

Chunking: taking two unlike or like items and smashing them together. We all do it a ton in wake up and go to bed routines—all those things get chunked together into one thing “night time routine” (eg. Brushing teeth, putting on pjs, getting into bed, etc.)

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 i...

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

David and Isabelle explore the myriad injuries and ponder the links between clumsiness and ADHD--is it because we're clumsy (which there are some fascinating links) or do we try and do too much? And speaking of doing things we don't want to do, but we care about doing, how does chunking help? All this, plus how we try to win by getting all the groceries in the house in one trip.
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Isabelle recounts a series of minor injuries, a bum knee, menstruating, and funny bone elbow stuff, and as she was sitting down she hit bone on bone throughout the day and sit down and had no self-regulation and was crying and then taking a ice pack that she is rotating to every injury. Is this clumsiness/injury-prone-ness ADHD? Or is this just her life? David names that there is a real thing about ADHD and clumsiness, and also some times you just have a bad night. Way more common to injure yourself with ADHD. Both clumsy and not clumsy exist in ADHD; there is some data around balance and your cerebellum and ADHD.  David taking in all his groceries in one trip is maybe the dumbest thing in the world. He has a bag of cat litter on his head, bags up and down his arm and they’re both in front of him and then facing the obstacle of the door, he is trying to get the key in the door, but then the door explodes open, and he lands on cat litter—and that’s just taking in the groceries. You have to elbow pinch, and using your whole body to align the key with the keyhole, it's a whole thing. But this whole thing is not clumsy—he’s doing way too much in a moment.  But is it really clumsiness, or going for the win, or the lack of response cost—it would’ve been shorter to take two trips, but it was about winning and he had to do it in one.  Isabelle witnesses this in her kids—neurotypical, neurodivergent, all kids—the way you do the task is the way you decided it needed to be done to get the win, rather than what would actually be simplest. And sometimes you step in, and sometimes you just let it fly. While she was just in the doctor’s office where she was getting her knee checked out, and she brings her foot up to tie her shoe, the time it takes it takes for you to do this, just take two trips—and that’s what her kid does, too, and of course, because she does it, too. Six years ago, David said, fuck laces. No more laces, too much time, can’t do velcro professionally, but professional shoes you can’t just step in because you'll ruin the heels, so now he's doing this sequence of kicking up his heel to try to jack the shoe in while standing without ruining the heel...and now he is resisting the urge to jump up and show that he does this. Makes David think of chunking, taking two unlike or like items and smashing them together. So every time David takes out the garbage, he cleans the litter box—pairing two things together, he won’t forget to take out the garbage. When you can put multiple things together, it makes you feel more effective with your time, why not take care of future you a little bit and make a transition more effective?  Isabelle tries to take an object from one room to another, like anything that you need to rehouse to that room you take with. David names we all do this in our morning routine and going to bed routine — we have "hitting alarm, stretching, brushing teeth, getting dressed, get coffee" and it becomes “wake up routine;” we have "take shower, brush teeth, put on pj's, read a book" and becomes "going to bed routine," all those steps into one chunk.  Isabelle tried this with a client during packing, and actually physically chunking to make a bunch of things just one category of thing, so you don’t have to remember all of it, you just have to remember the category (like here is your bag of toiletries). David would chunk together his sequence of actions upon arriving home after travel—initially it was hard, but now it’s a reflex—he immediately takes all his clothes and puts it in the laundry, and puts his suitcase away (all right away). Isabelle thinks of the game “my name is Joe and I like to Jump” (she was Isabelle who ice skates and she hates ice skating for the record)—it’s like a memorization technique. You’re trying to outsource the working memory, so you’re building a habit so you don’t have to think about it so much any more. Takes six weeks of consistency to build a neurological habit. It’s a long long time, but not a long time. But once you’ve built the connection, any time you justify not doing the thing, everything is broken. When you’ve been on vacation, and then you return, and then everything’s awful for two weeks. Working memory is hard for all of us, but anytime you can outsource it you can. Isabelle hates changing the sheets on beds, especially her kids’ low loft bed. The feeling of a clean sheet, maybe top five sensations, after you’ve freshly showered or bathed, and you have clean sheets—and she takes the thing where she cleans already every week, she adds in changing the sheets. Is it also giving a bigger norepinephrine something, or momentum, or a sense of productivity (and David is furiously thumbs upping it). David affirms: we have to find a way to do the things we care about. When we’re able to do the things that make us feel better, even when we don’t want to do them, that’s norepinephrine— “look at you, you made the bed, stripped the bed, changed the sheets, etc." check mark for the day!

Here is just one of many articles on clumsiness and ADHD - essentially, the cerebellum, which is the part of the brain we understand is responsible for learning to move your body in a sequence, etc. is also structurally different and may be connected to the executive functioning and motor sequencing differences in neurodivergent folx (Source: NIH article)

You can continue down a whole long rabbit hole ADHD/cerebellum rabbit hole:

 Cerebellum hypothetically tied to impulsivity and compulsivity (Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2019)

Also, (from 2011 article) children with ADHD are more likely to have dyspraxia, or differences in performing motor skills like writing, playing sports and games, tying shoelaces, and eating with a knife and fork. 

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

Chunking: taking two unlike or like items and smashing them together. We all do it a ton in wake up and go to bed routines—all those things get chunked together into one thing “night time routine” (eg. Brushing teeth, putting on pjs, getting into bed, etc.)

Proprioception (from ScienceDirect’s Encyclopedia of Neuroscience): “Proprioception, or kinesthesia, is the sense that lets us perceive the location, movement, and action of parts of the body. It encompasses a complex of sensations, including perception of joint position and movement, muscle force, and effort.”

Response Cost: a neurological skill that helps you know the consequences of your actions later on down the road. This is a forebrain skill that is often harder for folx with ADHD.

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

In honor of summer travel plans and it's own type of holiday magic, we revisit this classic (Episode 038): How do you survive traveling with ADHD? What about traveling with children, particularly small children? And what happens when you find yourself rushing, leaving things until the last minute, and forgetting your charger once again? David and Isabelle swap stories and share specific tips to traveling and also discuss WHY ARE THERE SOCK NUBBINS AND TAGS. Seriously.
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There can be so much pressure to have a Hallmark, picture-postcard perfect holiday and it’s so important to revise those expectations and think about what you actually want to do, for example, maybe it’s “we go to the this house, tolerate everyone for 45 minutes, you grab the turkey, I grab the mashed potatoes, and we leave.” And what about the uncomfortable holiday clothes? Isabelle laughs and mentions a brilliant SNL fake ad for Macy’s that’s all about children’s clothing and how uncomfortable it is. David describes this might be where task meets emotionality (for definition, see below)—is the task of the holidays spending time with family? David remembers the holidays being hard, everyone fighting on the way there and then fine when they got home, and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and just wanting to leave and it being awful. Isabelle remembers coming home so late and it was freezing and trying to sleep in the back seat, freezing. David had the experience going to his partner’s holiday celebrations and—they don’t have ADHD—everyone got along, hung out, sang songs, played piano—and this is real? Friendsgiving is a thing, and you can make choices, what you do for holidays is a choice: like winter is a choice. Anytime you feel trapped or caught in something, changing the language to “I’m choosing to do blank because blank…” with what needs your meeting with it, changes it from you “have to go see Meemaw” You can take the shoulds, musts, and have-to and change it to choices. And maybe Meemaw doesn’t care what you wear, she just wants to see you. WHY ARE THERE TAGS IN CLOTHING? And NUBBINS ON SOCKS? We have evolved so many incredible things, we have AI, we have genome sequencing, and we have sock nubbins, and who invented pantyhose and shapewear. David likes shape wear because the underarmour stuff he wears is nice and tight. Isabelle describes that it’s more designed to smush you in and sometimes it’s great—this is maybe Isabelle’s trauma after being a 6 ft woman at 14 year old, so she was fitting into shape wear and pantyhose as a kid and hated it so much and it was so uncomfortable. David always got all these hand-me-down socks that were in a constant state of yawn—now David gets the really tight socks that stay up all day, “look at you sock, staying up all day!” And transitioning back to travel—and sometimes travel is really hard because we’re pushing ourselves harder than we should. Having the toolbox is just as important on the airplane or airport, or knowing how long you’re waiting with a toolbox. Whoever’s doing the traveling, your self care is the most important: you can’t control your kids being miserable, they will be, you have to put your oxygen mask, go at your pace, go at your tolerance. Kids will fall apart. You need to be there for them when they do. So what do you need to be there for them? Maybe it’s a treat, maybe it’s slowing down—take care of you. Pack the day before. And always include an extra day back at home before transitioning back. You can change the day back—the end is always going to be the end of the vacation, but you being able to have a different re-entry ritual into your day to day can be game changing. Isabelle shares some tips from her own front line experiences, such as when driving from Indianapolis from Nashville as part of moving, when she forgot the iPad…and everything else, and her kid was stuck in the way back for hours bored out of their mind. Needless to say, iPads are last steps, so it’s a plan B, but it forces them to have lots of plan A—and on this trip, she forgot all the plan B’s and A’s. And everyone is going to have a meltdown—Isabelle, as mom, will also have a breakdown. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, travel will break you at some point. Travel with kids is courting brilliant memories of chaos, so she anticipates and plans on her having a breakdown. So she tells herself that “I’m a good mom who’s reached her limit.” You’re trained from babyhood to meet their needs all the time, but it’s a set up, the game is rigged, and part of the rigging is us thinking we’re never going to lose it ourselves. Maybe it’s the rule, not the exception. What about outsourcing, like checking your bags curbside, strapping your kid into the carseat on the plane (because they’re used to it and airplane seatbelts do nothing). Be kind to yourself. There’s also this idea that a vacation and a trip with kids are two separate things. The labor does not change, but increases, but the expectation for fun and frivolity is also increased, but maybe change the expectations inside. Also okay if it’s extra hard because it actually really is. Take the wins. David names that it’s very hard to hold dialectics, to opposing truths: you can love your kids and they can be too much, really hard, really frustrating. You need to find yourself a support group that can validate all the truths. For David, being a child who had ADHD, and seeing people with kids travel, and typically things feel better when there isn’t as much pressure, when you’re not rushing at the last minute, and have everything you need. Accepting that all of those things are going to be harder with ADHD and smiling when those things don't happen is the key. Accept that win, when you actually remember the charger. We can also flip the shame spiral into gratitude because you can maybe get the thing when you arrive, and David has needed to buy pretty much everything on arrival. Anything important, the things you can’t live without, phone stuff, medication, certain items, should be carry-ons. If ever possible, don’t check a bag, have a very compacted carry on. David is so grateful for you shiny people out there that send us really incredible messages, and he’s really excited for our next season, as is Isabelle. We’re going to bring guests on next season, and Isabelle is super excited and grateful, too, that it’s building into an actual conversation, and so cool to be able to have that moment. Let’s all raise a fist in the air as Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club at the right pace and the right angle. We’re closing out this year with these holiday episodes, we’ve gotta turn around practice self-care, taking a couple of weeks off, and coming back in the next year with a new intro, new guests, and same ol' David and Isabelle--we can't wait to talk more, Team Shiny!

SNL Fake Macy’s commercial for children’s uncomfortable clothing

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

TASK V. EMOTIONALITY

• Task: what you’re trying to do - the ‘work’ of a group or a person.
  • for example: I am finishing my project this weekend.
• Emotionality: what you do to prepare to do a task - beliefs/fears/assumptions about what you’re doing
  • for example: I’m doing it wrong/right, I always procrastinate, big fear you’ll never get it done, dream that someone will come and save you from having to do it, etc.

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We replay one of our favorites (Episode 022): Are folx with ADHD made to be night owls? Or early birds? Or does your early bird/night owl setting, which feels so engrained in your personality, actually have more to do with giving yourself distraction-less time? David and Isabelle explore myths, misperceptions, and truth bombs about the nature of sleep and ADHD, including tips on setting up your morning or evening (or all day) routines, dropping the shame, and embracing what you may be doing right in staying up late (or waking up early).
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Isabelle is super tired and is tired of her own choosing. She has been waking up earlier than usual in an attempt for her and Bobby to each get some alone time in the morning to get situated and start their routines and transitions differently. She does yoga, exercises, meditates, and can see that it gives her more energy. She wonders if folx with ADHD are actually night owls by nature, having spent years waking really early, then sleeping in—but is it ADHD? Delayed sleep phase is one idea, but David mentions that folx with ADHD seek out a distraction-free environment, and where you get that time (whether in the morning or in the night time) is the kind of person you become (early bird or night owl). So you adapt to achieve the distraction less time in the morning or at night. We carry so much of a load for all the things we’re not doing (I still need to call this person, I still need to do all these chores, etc). the escape of things being too late or too early to do also gives us distraction-less time. Being up early or staying up late gets really simple, it takes away choices. What happens when you are hyper vigilant all the time that you’ve made a mistake and someone is going to call you on making a mistake before you realize you’ve made a mistake? Or that you’ll later be embarrassed for doing something impulsively? This connects to how often is anxiety used by us to drive things, the anxiety of being an imposter, being seen as incompetent—there are lots of these themes for people. Certain environments shut off the anxiety or the drives. How much shame we have determines the intensity of the anxiety, hyperfocus, hyper vigilance. One of the reasons we are doing this podcast is to reduce that shame: there’s no shame in your night game! If you are still getting up and doing the things you need to do in the morning, go for it. If you like to wake up super early and run for hours—we can self-authorize to do the things we like and need. And shoutout to new parents, from David, that in between all of the unsolicited parenting advice, you need to believe in yourself and your needs, and not have shame for your needs. There can be so much anxiety for the ongoing assault of judgment about how you should be doing it; or how you should be spending your evenings. Or how you should be spending our mornings. Or how neurotypical you should look, how you should ‘do’ ADHD. There is no right way. If the task gets done, drop the how. Isabelle points out that early birds are often praised while night owls get the shame. David names that it’s more about finding mastery over your behavior. The answer is yes, there is no better, the real question is: are you getting up for the things you need to get up for? It’s the metacognition (see definition below), that gives you awareness that you have some mastery over your behavior (eg. Like waking up early easing your morning transitions. Isabelle is so tired she realizes her tangents are in slow motion and David names that he sees her turning on her blinker to make her tangent. Isabelle remembers reading a book about sleep that mentioned a method used by the military to fall asleep in two minutes (see article below), that includes relaxing your jaw. David names that sleep training often relies upon fatigue, and fatiguing your body. Weighted blankets can help (but with a word of caution, they are quite heavy, so if you try to throw it across your bed like a regular blanket, you will throw your shoulder out). It’s tough to plan what time to go to bed without factoring in what time you want to wake up, nor that you need to wake up earlier the day before so that you’re actually tired and fatigued when you try to go to bed early. Isabelle experiences this every time she tried to go to bed early before a trip. David is trying to actively do this now by waking up earlier the day before and drinking lots of chamomile tea. David names: we often do the right things but we don’t know why. When you’re staying up later, you’re getting the alone time that you need, but you’re not allowed to have it. Or if you’re listening to music all the time it’s helping you tune the distractions or scary noises out. Sleep hygiene is a place where we should all over ourselves (stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself). Sleep hygiene is creating routines: does it help? Does it help you get sleep? It’s also effective to chunk time together, going to sleep could connect to when you wake up, what you do in the mornings. David names that he needs to lay on the sofa breathing and thinking before he goes to bed. Sometimes he doesn’t make it to bed, but it’s not because he wants to avoid his partner (it’s the opposite of sitcom plots). Isabelle can feel that she’s getting too tired, her face feels dead. Isabelle goes on a tangent where sleep is a reflex or a drive that happens, and you have to get out of the way or essentially distract yourself. One way to distract yourself is to play categories, where you pick a category and then try to name something that starts with the letter A in that category, then the letter B, and so on—essentially bore yourself to sleep. Another trick that David and Isabelle both reveal is that you can scratch your pillow to be your own DJ or hear your own heartbeat like it’s a train—and in a final twist, that a chip crunching in your mouth is actually a miniature sonic boom (source below)! 

Falling asleep in 2 minutes military (navy pilot) hack

More on sleep and how it’s a drive/reflex rather than something you do (Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine):

“Your body can’t force you to eat when you’re hungry, but when you’re tired, it can put you to sleep, even if you’re in a meeting or behind the wheel of a car. When you’re exhausted, your body is even able to engage in microsleep episodes of one or two seconds while your eyes are open.” 

Chip crunches are tiny sonic booms — check out the book “Gulp” by Mary Roach, or her shorter NY Times article in 2013, “The Marvels In Your Mouth” 

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

Delayed sleep phase: Specific to some people whose bodies don’t produce melatonin at the same level, it's very difficult to go to sleep and notice tired signals (not necessarily ADHD). 

Metacognition: Thinking about thinking. Understanding and awareness of why you do the things you do. When you reach this point with any behavior, you’re more than halfway there. 

Sleep Drive: Your body craves sleep like it craves food, except your body can put you to sleep if it needs to, whenever it finally needs to, which is why driving or operating heavy machinery or making big decisions while very tired are usually...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how much shame we carry around our bodies and how that impacts so much of our wellness, the way women's pain and experiences are minimized and questioned, the need to stop protecting men from discomfort, and what advice they would give their younger neurodivergent selves. (Part IV of a series)

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Full Show Notes:

Sarah names we do not talk about bodies—as women, we are sexualized, but we don’t talk about our bodies, we carry so much shame around our bodies. How much about her body she didn’t know until pregnancy. This is a systemic issue, that we are not informing about things we need to know.  For example, one of her friends was embarrassed to share a story about poop. But we all poop! Everybody poops, that’s a good sign when we poop. But there’s so much shame around everything related to bodies, it’s not surprising that then we don’t talk about ‘hey my period seems off,’ and ‘this one day I feel so low’ because no one’s talking about bodies. Or it falls under this ‘mystery’ of PMS or menopause or postpartum—there’s a ton of needless suffering, including the way endometriosis is treated, and the way our pain is minimized. When Isabelle was birthing both of her children, she was not on painkillers, and these doctors—who were women—did not believe she was having contractions, and she was saying ‘I’m about to push” — it’s an unmistakable feeling. To demystify it, it’s the biggest poop of your life and you can’t stop it from happening. It’s ostensibly a very different poop and location (because it’s a baby), but it's that sensation nonetheless. David makes a great joke that it is a “holy shit.” Isabelle was conscious and there and happened to be in pain, and nobody believed her pain or experience. The resident replied, “I just checked you, no you don’t have to push, there's no way." The moment when Isabelle started getting angry and not overriding whatever anyone told her with what she knew in her bones—the “I will never betray my own knowing” kind of feeling is the moment that she felt her womanhood. The resident checks for dilation again when Isabelle insists, and goes ashen and states “I see a head" and suddenly everyone is mobilized for a very imminent delivery. This is just one example of how women's experiences are minimized, and doubted, and the internalized misogyny and minimization we carry within ourselves.  It relates to minimizing and dismissing ADHD as well; Isabelle notices a pattern where the men who come into her office state they have ADHD or suspect they do; the women typically go around and doubt themselves so much—which comes from a lifetime of being doubted. David acknowledges that this is so big, there’s no way to have this whole conversation in one go—so it’s a lot of little conversations that are so important to have. David states that we cannot take care of men in having these conversations: if a man can’t handle having a conversation about a period, that’s a threshold measure—if you can’t pass a driving test, you don’t get a license. If someone cannot understand hearing about a menstrual cycle, which are things that happen with frequency to people we care about, we (as dudes) project that we are fragile, and that we put that out into the world. That’s all of our learning in a pretty toxic system. He describes how with his colleagues and friends, isabelle, Sarah, and Caily, they often talk about trauma all the time, we share the most intense stories, but we keep this real lived experience of something like a period in a gendered silo? It creates a lot of opportunity to marginalize people. David has bought tampons before and is now the dumb dude talking and recognizes this is so complicated—Isabelle points out that the tampons cost x amount of money, and that the costs of being a woman in the world, the so-called ‘pink tax’ is real. And what’s marketed to women and upcharged? And David hates that as a man he gets blue and only blue as his color choices. In some grocery stores, Caily shares that tampons are listed under “luxury items.” The amount of years it took for people to realize that scents and chlorine found in tampons could be harmful to our bodies—the layers of the anger you could sit with this, is real. David gives the time machine question, to their 9-12 year old self, to do it in a short amount of time, with lasers and chaotic lightning. Sarah had heinous periods, and was the latest to get it in among her peers, and she wants to say to herself “you’re going to get a period.” And also “be prepared, you’re going to have a very heavy period and you’re going to need lots of supplies, and it’s okay to carry a pad to the bathroom and for people to know, because bodies are normal.” Isabelle: “people exist because of periods! We all exist because of periods!” Sarah would also go back to pre-having a child moment, and “FYI, your estrogen levels are going to go up and down and you have ADHD, and this will be exacerbated…” Caily would go back and say to herself “as long as it gets done, and nobody gets hurt, and you don’t get hurt—you got there! And also, it’s okay to procrastinate.” How many Sundays she couldn’t get a start on homework and wasting time procrastinating. She would normalize procrastination, and being in touch with her anger in a healthy way that’s self-protective, and “it’s not your fault you have a hard time paying attention sometimes, you’re not lazy.” Sarah realizes that she wants to redo her answer because she was hyperfocusing on periods, but then Caily thought she was mishearing the question. Isabelle would go to her pre-pregnancy days or preadolescence, she’d say some combo platter: “it’s not your fault, I got your back, you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, there is help, and the world’s absurd.” She holds a deep appreciation for her younger self, and is so grateful to little Sarah, and little Caily, and little David—it’s not certain if she would’ve understood what ADHD was before she reached the age she did, it feels like the most important thing is you’re not alone. And that you will find your tribe. We are here for you, we get it, go Team Shiny!

Pink tax - gender based price discrepancies, so that products marketed toward women are typically more expensive than similar products marketed to men (and that basic needs for women, like menstrual products, are so costly and considered "luxury" items) For more on this, check out this article by the World Economic Forum and the UN call for countries to end the pink tax.

Menstrual Care products with harmful chemicals and toxins...what? See below:
Tampons and other products and vaginal routes of exposure to harmful chemicals (NIH Paper)
Cleveland Clinic: Why scented products aren't great for your vagina and health
Sanitary pads and diapers have higher levels of toxic chemicals (2019 Reproductive Toxicology study)

Menstrual cycle hormonal changes (in a nutshell): "Estrogen levels rise and fall twice during the menstrual cycle. Estrogen levels rise during the mid-follicular phase and th...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how we don’t talk about hormonal changes and their impacts on ADHD enough: in short, your hormones change your ADHD symptoms during your menstrual cycles, pregnancies, post-partum, and into menopause. They cover PMDD, postpartum depression and anxiety, and a whole host of ways neurodivergent—and all—women’s experiences are systemically invalidated, and what we can do. (Part III of a series)

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How do we start a conversation, say about how PMDD is a real thing for women with ADHD—there’s a vacuum in conversations and normalizing this. How do we start that kind of conversation? It blows Caily’s mind how little we talk about hormones related to ADHD. Estrogen and dopamine are interrelated; when estrogen is highest, women will report thinking clearer, less hyperactivity, etc. and in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen dramatically drops and progesterone rises, estrogen is important in up regulating dopamine levels, and so when it drops, it exacerbates your ADHD symptoms.  Also, progesterone rising can inhibit medication effectiveness.  Doctors don’t talk about dose titration, and so little research on it, but it would make sense, if you look at the hormonal changes across your menstrual cycle, you would titrate your medication and take more before and during your period. The connection between dopamine and serotonin and estrogen and progesterone also makes it much more likely for women with ADHD to have PMDD. It’s incredibly invalidating to have this not be discussed. What is PMDD? We all have PMS (premenstrual syndrome) to a certain degree, but it’s exaggerated in PMDD, PMS symptoms that become clinically significant for a short period of time. Caily noticed and pinpointed the day, per month, where she feels like she’s going to lose her mind, she feels really depressed, off, irritable—her best friend could pinpoint that day. The most validating thing was getting a period tracker and being able to anticipate that day. Nobody ever explained to Isabelle that upon becoming a mother, she learned a lot about her periods in 6th grade for a half hour. So there’s much more to learn. You go through a big hormone change with pregnancy, and the idea of “pregnancy brain” or postpartum “mommy brain” is real. Your progesterone levels shoot up during pregnancy and your estrogen levels (which go up to, but it's a combo platter cocktail) and also you are discouraged from taking stimulant medications (please talk to your doctor) but it means you have less accommodations that usual. Then, you throw in that postpartum when your periods return, they are really changed up, and pregnancy throws your body into a 2.0 or 3.0 version of itself, where you suddenly develop eczema, or your thyroid levels are different, and voila, your periods are different, too. And then covering the postpartum period, with the baby blues, postpartum depression or anxiety—your postpartum time is also marked by a dramatic estrogen drop, so your ADHD symptoms also can be exacerbated. We are also much more likely to have postpartum depression because of the drop of estrogen. Also, your hormones fluctuate prior to your period returning, you will maybe not even notice it’s PMDD.  Please seek your own medical guidance, and talk to your people and know that some of this information is harder to come by. Another thing to name is that a number of women don’t get diagnosed with ADHD until they reach menopause because it’s another time of estrogen drops and hormone fluctuations—if you already have a dopamine imbalance, it’s super exacerbated. In particular the brain fog, tiredness, and inattentiveness. And then there’s invalidation, “I can’t have ADHD, I’m just getting older!” If you’re a menopausal women just getting diagnosed, we see you! There’s so much support out there for you. Sarah is so enraged—as someone who has two children already, it explains so much, but why is this information more accessible? She didn’t know any of this. The SYSTEM!!  You feel so much shame, thinking there’s something wrong with you versus it’s something that can be explained. Caily names that ADHD wasn’t added to the DSM until 1960 and it’s unbelievable looking at the research how little women are represented, and it’s so important to understand how intensely hormones impact medication. Isabelle names that it is a known factor that hormones impact medication effectiveness, which is why so many studies on medications were originally normed on and studied on men. Thinking about how people listen to their patients and clients—and the way the word “hormonal” is used to dismiss, discount, and pathologize women. It’s a biological part, it’s neutral, it’s part of a cycle. And furthermore, you can appear to have depression, anxiety, or be a new mom who’s stressed and tired but it can be a symptom of serious conditions like PCOS, thyroid conditions, autoimmune conditions that carry real consequences down the road if they are missed. It can be deadly. David reaffirms that there is a massive gap in our information about medications and also we can silo too far—men need to listen up and ask better questions. There’s a way to be supportive, understanding and then there’s a way to be a part of the problem. For anyone with ADHD, male, female, trans, nonbinary, it’s hard to know when to ask for help and it’s hard to know you can ask for help. For so many people with ADHD they’ll be like “it’s raining nails and I’m stepping on glass, oh well, four more miles” and they’ll just go, or they’ll lay down and take a nap. We will accept the most intense, hard conditions because “other people have done it, so I can do it, too.” You don’t have agency if you are offered no real choice, there’s no agency in that. How do we have agency in helping women in asking questions of their prescribers, like “I need to account for more hormonal fluctuations—how do I do that? Do I need to see an endocrinologist? Do I need a second opinion?” There’s also a lot of supplements marketed to women to “calm” us, and to stress just how much these things are dangerous without medical supervision. Also, women have a higher pain threshold, ostensibly because we have to bear children. Isabelle honors that she has been socialized to think that if she talks about her period in front of men it’ll make them squirm, and Caily, too. All the women in your life have different conversations about their periods or the pain they feel and how regularly they feel it. Isabelle references the amazing show “Fleabag” and how women are born with pain built in. 

Fleabag quote (written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, performed by Kristin Scott Thomas): 

“Women are born with pain built in,” she says. “It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t. They have to seek it out, they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the f***ing menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful f*...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how ADHD and anxiety can go hand in hand in women with ADHD, how anxiety and discouraged anger relate, how gender norms for women set up neurodivergent women to mask, and the value of just TAKING AWAY THE CHAIR. All this in twenty-some minutes? Believe it. (Part II of a series)

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David and Isabelle continue their conversation with colleagues Caily and Sarah, two therapists who identify as women who also have ADHD. David names that there are some sexist structures that women are supposed to be ‘daydreamers’ and ‘forgetful’ and when someone fits those norms (misogyny) and they are also fitting inattentive ADHD norms that impacts their ability to build self-esteem, an identity, why am I different? Why am I deficient? Etc. Caily names that so many women with inattentive ADHD go undiagnosed or get misdiagnosed with anxiety, because there are many overlapping characteristics. And women are socialized and feel the pressure to perform tasks that require high levels of organization, executive functioning, and task switching, all of which are super hard to do when you have ADHD. This is true of women and mothers, and it can feel like it’s okay to be messy or disorganized when you’re a man, and it’s okay to get help from someone, but if you’re a girl, the message we get is you can’t be messy, because then we’re told “you’re lazy.” There’s a layer of rage Isabelle is noticing rising up, and also she wants to go 100 places with this and picks one. With the anxiety piece, there’s a way where you walk around with this high bar for moms that is not as high for dads (see Jimmy Kimmel’s asking dads info about their kids). Imagine you are walking around with a higher bar, and Isabelle, for example, is not great at any of these things, people judge you as not only a person who is struggling with some things, but you’re seen as not a good mom, because your role as mom is to run the constant ticker tape of all the things, not just keeping your kids alive. But also single women carry more of this burden and pressure than single men, too—how would this not promote anxiety? And then Isabelle doubles down on the soapbox of how an emotional component that is often missing in women she works with is a healthy sense of anger.  One of the reasons Isabelle looks up to Sarah is that she has a fight in her, because we’re so socially conditioned to be peacemakers, to be nurturing, to carry the emotional load and not ruffle the waters. And it all combines to SUCK. Sarah seconds this, how could you not be anxious if in the message you do something and you’re told you’re bad—how does that not create anxiety and an urge to hide these things because you feel like you’re doing something wrong? In her case, Sarah was not very anxious, because her anger got to come out at the injustice of the system itself—internalized anger can translate to anxiety.  But if you express your anger, if you get to externalize it and depersonalize it, you also get to know that you’re not the problem. She wants Isabelle and Caily to know that it’s not you, you were set up for failure. Everyone with ADHD is set up for failure. Sarah recounts a moment when her and Caily were both on a zoom call and they both stood up to recross their legs to sit back down because neither likes to sit with her feet on the ground, and this was a moment of connection and shared understanding that can be so rare. Sarah has been shamed her whole life for not keeping her feet on the ground, hearing phrases like “Can’t you just sit with your feet on the ground”—and even the ways we talk about  “getting grounded” is the opposite of how she gets grounded.  She sees this with her daughter, who also has ADHD, who has a hard time focusing while sitting at dinner, so Sarah takes away the chair—take away the chair, take a bite, twirl in a circle, do whatever you need to do to attend to the thing I am asking you to attend to. That would  have been so lovely growing up. And she heard her own parents’ voice saying “can’t you just sit down and eat your food?” Sarah realizes that her daughter cannot, so let's actually take away the chair, because the system is what’s setting you up for failure. David names that when you’re authorized to fight, things are different. Get it done, not about how—there’s a lot more HOWs applied to women, rather than men. Having anxiety is different from having healthy fear responses to threats, and the threats are everywhere, and is how the world tends to articulate experiences. David starts to explain that there’s this relationship researcher guy John Gottman, of the Gottman Institute—which Isabelle points out is actually founded and run by the Gottmans, (it’s not just John, it’s Julie and John Gottman)—which David checks himself and names he is regurgitating another societal narrative that leaves women out. (Isabelle also names that Erik Erikson’s wife (Joan). David references the Gottmans’ work on the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse (see below) and that there is a significant difference between a complaint, which is not great, and contempt, which is worse. Complaint is about a behavior; contempt is about a person’s character. An example is “you didn’t take out the garbage today” v. “you never take out the garbage.” With the criticism leveled at women is contemptuous stuff, it’s not “i’m not good at organizing” it’s “I’m disorganized and a mess.” Take away the how’s and let yourself be: be messy, take away the chairs, who cares? Caily brings up how if you’re taught to not be angry, we pathologize anger, you are going to ignore the signals and messages that a need has not been met. If you are going to tune out those signals, or it’s not allowed for you to express those signals, then it also then sets you up to go along with a system that is wrong or not healthy. Sarah chimes in that then the anger is stuck in your body, if you can’t let anger out, it gets stuck in her body. And that as much as you can personal take away the chair and challenge these norms and systems at home, you are still navigating a world that is not set up for you and doesn’t know enough about neurodivergence. There is still a lot of judgment and stigma and workplaces that are not going to allow the accommodations you need. Compliance is a big thing, and compliance comes with a lot of privilege. You get compliance privilege if you do the thing that everyone else is doing. I don’t know know anyone who doesn’t fit in, it feels good, and privileges come with that. Sarah got in trouble a lot, but was also an entertainer, that gave her a sense of fitting in, or set up a place for her, but she would also get if she doesn’t fit in, she saw it as the wrong place for her. She didn’t care what people thought, including fashion trends and other markers of ‘fitting in,’ and that made it hard for her to fit in with her peers, and even if she didn’t care, the people around her did care, and it’s layered in families. David names what LeDerick Horne (see Episode 042: A Conversation with LeDerick Horne - Part II - “Being seen by somebody like you”) said about near-peer mentors, and it’s so important for us to talk about this and for women to talk about it. It’s incredible to hear someone speaking to you that knows your experience in a different way. It’s also going against the image of ADHD that was propagated for so long which was a white teenage boy—there is so much more to gender, sex, biology and more that adds layers ...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how they came to feel something was wrong with them, or the system around them, how girls are often socialized to mask impulsiveness or hyperactivity, and how stereotypes around ADHD impact all gender expressions. (Part I of a series)
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After a technical difficulty, David and Isabelle reintroduce Caily and Sarah, two therapists who identify as women who also have ADHD. Caily had shared how when she was little, she wanted to be the teacher’s pet, and remembers a math manipulative (say that five times fast)—these little teddy bear toys, that were colorful—and the moment when a strict teacher said you have to have a calm body, sit still, and not touch the teddy bears until she said so. She was speaking slowly and using the manipulative to do a subtraction problem, and Caily was staring at the teddy bears, and what she wanted to do with play with them, their life stories, and she ended up saying “Caily, write your name on the board” and that meant she had to sit out for recess, and remembers thinking “I’m so bad, I’m so awful” but also “I didn’t mean to, I was focusing so hard on not touching them.” David points out that she got in trouble for playing with a toy as a first grader. Caily names that it was something new and novel, which makes it so much harder not to do—and refers to Sarah, who just talked about how she knew the system was off. Sarah's story was one where she was ditching class, acting out, getting into trouble, and struggling in school. Sarah remembers being in first grade and was sent to the principal’s office after discovering where the ‘leprechaun left candy’ around St. Patrick’s Day—when it wasn’t her turn, but she knew it was dumb to get into trouble for something that she was supposed to find. It wouldn’t occur to Sarah to not touch the teddy bears, she would have immediately touched it, rather than sitting on her hands or resisting the impulse the way David and Isabelle would have wanted to. The set up is wrong: you don’t want 7 year olds to touch teddy bears? Don’t bring them out until they can touch them. She was so impulsive and did things that she wasn’t supposed to do, she broke rules because she thought the rules were dumb. Growing up, the dress code was that all the girls had to wear skirts or dresses, and so she wore pants, and got sent to detention every day for wearing pants. One day the principal even drove her home to change. This was not the 1950’s, this was the 1990’s. Her dad thought it was ridiculous and called WOW, a women’s rights organization—who contacted the school and indeed, the dress code was changed overnight. It was pivotal for Sarah to know she can change the system, and this continues to this day. Her dad was a political activist who encouraged this, but her mom was compliant and trying to fit into her suburban world as a divorced mom. David names that hyperactive (or impulsive type) ADHD, and true hyperactive type is rare, rather than a combination like David or Isabelle. So often people aren’t seen as having ADHD, but rather are seen as obstinate, oppositional, etc. and then there’s an expectancy effect, teachers see you that way and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and often times you need to start over. In 8th grade, Sarah was labeled as oppositional, no one in her elementary school was talking about ADHD, and in high school, she only saw boys with the diagnosis, and didn’t know that girls could be diagnosed with this. Her paths to high school were catholic all girls’ school, or military school, but her dad encouraged her to write a letter of recommendation for herself to get into a selective enrollment school. The principal had never read something similar and gave her a trial year and gave her an extra class and a chance to prove she can read; previously she had tested at reading at an 8th grade level, after a year of hyper focus proving she could, she was reading at a 13th grade level (college level). No one previously thought she had capacity before, and it made a world of difference. David names it’s a hard thing to recognize how healing or destructive labels can be. So many people with hyperactive ADHD are labeled as bad, or need to be broken in (like a horse? Getting the wild out of the horse?) Punish it enough, be strict enough to not be wild anymore. This is similar to Sarah being pushed to a military option—it takes a special thing to teach a kid to lean into their strengths, and we don’t teach them how to fight. And meanwhile Sarah was taught how to fight, and they were not ready for you. Isabelle resonates with Caily’s compliance growing up, and was scared of getting in trouble, and spaced out and daydreamed a lot, and talked a lot, and would get a lot of feedback about her distracting the other students. Also, this was Catholic school and she had to wear jumpers and skirts and walk through Chicago snowy winters in knee socks, or wearing pants underneath and them taking them off. In 2nd grade, she would be doing SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) and her teacher would take her to the back of the classroom and she would bring her coloring supplies and extra books (lots of Jack London). Isabelle struggles with the idea that the system is messed up, and there’s something in feeling more inattentive part, she would walk around feeling like I missed something. The sensation that getting into trouble was not after standing up for herself, it was more, “I know I’m wrong and I can’t fight back because I didn’t hear what you said the first time.” If she’s driving, and a car beeps anywhere, it’s “that’s my fault.” Isabelle describes how eventually the teachers didn’t know what to do with her and were suggesting she skip a few grades, which her mother advocated against because it would mess her up socially. Isabelle always felt years behind socially, much younger than her peers, even into puberty, still thinking “let’s play with My Little Pony!” When the other girls were getting into makeup and dating. And so she was tracked into a gifted program where the ratio of boys to girls was 3 to 1, and likely 9 out of 10 students were neurodivergent. The girls all turned on each other and were really mean, but there was a new transfer student who Isabelle befriended who had an ADHD diagnosis and was unmedicated during a playdate—and Isabelle loved her. She was energetic and couldn’t stop talking and was so excitable and there was this sense that they could play together all day, but she also sensed that that was not okay, that how the girl was behaving was somehow judged as wrong. And boys were those stereotypically diagnosed as having ADHD, so if a girl had it...that must be really bad?  David talks about social conditioning, and he knows that being a guy, there was a lowered set of expectations for him: of course he couldn’t settle down, pay attention, use too much paste, etc. “boys just being boys.” He got into so much trouble in high school, and no one was surprised, because “you’re a boy.” He got kicked out of high school and went to a specialized high school for kids with learning differences, and about 18 or 19 people—and only 5 women, and they were like classical stereotypes of “bad girls,” getting into trouble with boys, or hating everyone. We are all looking at the same dilemma with very different expertise. David has learned that his perspective of “it’s a mess, no big deal” means a big deal to a women who has been socialized to not make messes. Emotions are validated for women (because we’re “irrational,” heavy on the air quotes), whereas of course guys don’t have feelings, because they’re “idiot robots.” Or they can only show a range of anger or assertiveness. Sara...

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities, LeDerick Horne—and get to hear him recite some of his incredible spoken word poems. They talk about how songs taught them to spell, the power of oral traditions, and an incredible school in Kenya that expanding education and access for those with disabilities. Seriously, his poetry will give you life. (Part IV of IV)

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LeDerick continues sharing some of his poetry, describing his father’s record collection and his mother’s love of music—he recites his poem, “Alice Street Soundtrack,” Alice Street being the street where he grew up. The website understood.org (see below) shot an interview with them and how in one of his last lines, he spells out the word “FRESH,” which is one of the first words he learned how to spell, and it’s also how David learned how to spell it first time. LeDerick and David share how they learned to spell Common from his songs, too. David feels so seen, having symbol recognition disorder, he has a 4th or 5th grade spelling level and learning how to spell words was always hard, the power of songs to be able to help us learn to spell (like Gwen Stefani with “Bananas” and Fergie with “Glamorous”). LeDerick describes how the written word (thanks, Gutenberg!) Has become such a big force in the world, which he respects, but he has a deep love of the spoken word and the necessity of the spoken word, with rhyme, with rhythm. He describes the Griots (for more info, see below) being the first MC’s in Africa. LeDerick shares one more poem he wrote in 2020, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ADA and also the national uprisings related to social justice and policing—and he wanted to write something about the beauty of those with disabilities. He recites “Until Every Barrier Falls.” David hearing LeDerick talking about the things he does in his poetry changed his understanding of LeDerick. Isabelle sees all the images as LeDerick is speaking, as does David. LeDerick describes the African word, “nomo,” which refers to the magic of the spoken word. We need to speak it into being, and like his Aunt Kay said, as long as we say someone’s name, a person who has passed, they live. He comes from strong oral traditions, his dad was a cross-country coach, and his grandfather was President of his chapter of the NAACP, and LeDerick aspires to continue those traditions, and continue their work. If he’s doing his job well, you can see it, poetry doesn’t say, it shows. Isabelle and David are so honored that LeDerick has been Something Shiny’s first guest (upon David’s insistence, and LeDerick’s generous sharing of time and energy), and we are here to promote whatever LeDerick wants to promote. He mentions the Rare Gem Talent School in Kenya that supports students with disabilities, and right now they’re renting an old hotel and providing education for about 120, and were able to raise funds to get through the pandemic. Now they’re trying to raise money for the land they’re on and to eventually create a complex that will support 500 students with dyslexia, ADHD, etc. and have a huge waitlist. Nancy was just at the International Dyslexia Conference—you can’t do it on your own (for more information and how to support this amazing school, see below!)

Songs we mention that help us spell words

“Fresh” -  Fresh 3 M.C.’s “Fresh” 

“Common” - De La Soul’s “The Bizness” 

Bananas - “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani 

Glamorous - “Glamorous” by Fergi 

More info on the amazing school in Kenya:

Rare Gem Talent School

Video from understood.org featuring LeDerick

Video for “Until Every Barrier Falls” (WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW) 

More on LeDerick Horne

(here's a brief bio)

(here's his amazing link tree)

LeDerick and Dr. Margo Izzo’s book, Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success 

Black and Dyslexic Podcast (hosted by Winifred Winston and LeDerick Horne)

Celebrating Black History and People with Disabilities - Youtube series 

A glimpse of LeDerick's live events - from the Nevada Student Leadership Transition Summit (NSLTS)

The vision boards LeDerick talks about appear in this video at 18:45 - December 14, 2021, Humboldt County School District School Board Meeting - The Lowry High School NSLTS Team presents on their efforts, including self-directed IEPs

New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education

All in for Inclusive Education
 

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

Disproportionality: the racial or ethnic differences that exist in how students with learning differences are identified, placed, and disciplined—for example, how black and brown students with ADHD might be labeled as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder or “behavioral issues” while white students are identified as having ADHD and thus treated very differently.

Griot: a West African ethnic group dating back to the 14th century that act as storytellers, mediators, royal advisors, and bards, the keepers of oral histories and stories for families and tribes. For more, check out this wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griot

Learning Difference (LD): Because learning disability is a crummy, inaccurate term. For example, David does not have a learning disability, he has a sitting still disability.

Inclusion/Inclusive Education: This refers to the idea that all students should have an equal opportunity to learn, and relates to parts of the law and education system that attempt to achieve this by acknowledging it is more effective and socially beneficial for all students (as research and endless evidence shows) to be in classrooms and experiences together, rather than segregated into different tracks or programs.  For a much more thorough description of all of the nuances around this, check out:

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities, LeDerick Horne—from how the LD/ADHD community often generates it’s knowledge base from peers and social media, to losing resources by ignoring people, to recognizing that the suffering is real and the urge to help someone not suffer as you did has a big fancy psychology term for it (transmuting internalization, PHEW). Go further into the depth of how you’re not alone and also hear one of LeDerick’s incredible poems - Dare to Dream. (Part III of a series)
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LeDerick talks about a multimedia approached to activism, making a Youtube series on Celebrating Black History & People with Disabilities, and starting up a TikTok account (see links below)—and the importance of recognizing that for most people with disabilities, the information is transmitted peer to peer, rather than parent to child. At most of his events, he notices that parents are sitting on the sidelines, and the kids are interacting about the best apps to use for accommodations—we’re not going to read the book, access the study, but we can listen to a podcast. David jumps in about a shared oral history and the access to that oral history is geography—and now podcasts can overcome that. Given the history of segregation, and New Jersey being the 6th most segregated state in the nation, and living in a blue color, primarily black and Latinx community—you need to be able to cross over to other parts of town and communities to access information. Segregation cuts us off from resources, from information, and the power of having these conversations for everyone to be able to find out in the world. The power of sports or other activities to bring people together—he was able to meet folks that were not in special ed because he ran track and cross country. If he had just stayed in those classrooms, he wouldn’t have had access to them professionally. LeDerick was invited to Harvard, the UN, the White House—connecting to others with a shared passion and from all walks of life. LD/ADHD crosses all lines, and it’s important to recognize, and there is privilege that comes in there and makes the experience of being LD/ADHD so different. David names—when we’re talking about people in this world, whether the color of their skin, their neurodivergence, their gender—there isn’t one way to receive a message in this world.  And there’s no way for a message to become universal, and it stretches, and we need to have these conversations more often, not just the right way. It’s important to honor choice and agency—and with LD and ADHD, we’re looking at exceptional people that are being missed. There are people who could be potentially curing major diseases, changing the world, we’re losing resources by ignoring people. LeDerick went to school with some folks who he looked up to intellectually, artistically, and who were in the same classrooms as him—and whether it was resources at home, luck—the story ended very differently. The three of us—LeDerick, David, and Isabelle—we’re the survivors, we’re the ones who made. As he takes his last breath, LeDerick wants to know he’s made the world a better place, so no one has to go through the same sort of suffering. David drops the transmuting internalization—it’s the quantum leap of psychology, you don’t want others to suffer as you do and you go back and try to the right the wrong that was done to you, for someone else. David doesn’t want people to suffer, but he wants people to suffer (not as a jerk)—but he is what he is because of what he suffered. But what are the right ways to suffer? There’s a lot of needless suffering. There’s a lot of bad returns on investment, so being able to right these wrongs, and wanting to correct something that’s wrong in the world, they can feel it, because they can tell that you’re not correcting them. This makes Isabelle thing of trauma mastery, and how we can be unconsciously drawn to scenarios and relationships that reenact the trauma we suffered because we want to rewrite the script this time. And also the difference between pain and suffering, and there’s some disease (leprosy or Hansen's disease) that numbs your ability to tell you’ve had an injury, so you keep going and keep going and this leads to infections and loss of fingers, etc. (See below)—the idea of pain as a messenger, as something that indicates you need to notice something so you can change it, versus suffering as feeling isolated and stuck in that pain and aloneness. Trauma work as requiring community, and connection and vulnerability, and how trauma can’t be healed in isolation. David loses his thought around how this connects to inclusion, and the three pause for an insert, and then he thinks of what he wanted to say! He pulls up the example of PTSD rates and how countries that are facing war, like Israel, might be assumed to have the highest rates of PTSD—and yet Israel has the lowest rate, which relates to how when people return from being in military service, everyone gets it (because it’s required and thus more commonly experienced). David is not listening to LeDerick and Isabelle’s story trying to figure out what’s wrong with them, they’re just listening and sharing and gaining that common experience. Trauma reenactments can be scary, and around inclusion, everyone can have an accommodation and individualized education. Who wouldn’t benefit from an individualized education plan? What if everyone had it and it’s not a weird thing. LeDerick talks about his friend Mark McLendon. He had an emotional breakdown in his early 20s, leaves a family event and lays down in the car, going through it. Through the glass, his friend Mark knocks, and he said “you know, I don’t exactly know what you’re going through right now, and I know in this world that has a lot of suffering, but none of us has to suffer alone.” There’s the idea of the dignity of failure, and there’s a desire to wrap kids in a protective bubbles, and it’s not treating you like a human being, we fall, we get our knees scraped, mistakes happen-you don’t want to be so fragile that when that happens you break. It’s important to go through the experience with words. David asks LeDerick if he could gift us with some poetry, and he graciously does, sharing the poem he wrote to high school kids: Dare to Dream. It’s incredible, please listen to it now! It speaks to 10 year old Isabelle, and David was sort of expecting poetry (womp womp) and instead he saw him grabbing his hand and getting him out, and then wow. He tried for 8 years to record LeDerick speaking this poem to no avail. LeDerick remembered going to a Dare to Dream conference out of the New Jersey Office of Special Education and Bob Haugh, was encouraging him to put to words the specific experience and communication to the kids at the conference, witnessing these panels--and like so many things, the specific became more general and resonant. 

More on LeDerick Horne

(here's a brief bio)

(here's his amazing link tree)

LeDerick and Dr. Margo Izzo’s book, Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success 

Black and Dyslexic Podcast (hosted by Winifred Winston and LeDerick Horne)

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with David’s dear and incredible friend, LeDerick Horne—a poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities. From vision boarding your IEP, to the importance of near-peer mentors and role models who have walked a little further down the LD/ADHD road, to accommodations and frustrations in LeDerick’s multiple roles (as businessperson, activist, poet, writer, tree farmer, etc.). Go deeper into recognizing an inclusive view of success, and what success can look like for each of us individually. (Part II in a series)
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David describes how in education, it might be helpful to facilitate extra resources and have other eyes on schools and supporting the staff and professional development, just as therapists need supervision, eyes on their work. LeDerick points out that nobody builds a building or a car or anything by themselves, most problems get solved in teams professionally, so when it comes to building up and supporting a child, it takes a village, too. When we say we want to educate all students, it takes a team effort to actually create the diversity needed to honor the students. Inclusion is a richer experience for most educators, too—the first two or three years for teachers is burnout city for teachers, and it’s important to come to their support and help create this environment. LeDerick got his start being a motivational, assembly-style speaker in college, when he was part of a group of a support program for tutoring and accommodations to have community to celebrate surviving another week of college together. Someone suggested going back to their high schools—and it was great PR for the program he was a part of, but it also had a lasting impact on him and these young people.  When we think about this work from a civil rights, from an activitist point of view—young people should be the ones leading the work and informing and forming the voices of it. Training people to be better self-advocates, to run their own IEP meetings, to understand their rights under the law, to use their voice as an agent of change. Its important to give a voice to those who are overlooked, or being used—how important it is to make sure you’re listening, not just directing. David names how LeDerick’s experience is shattering expectations; we’re taught to mask, to hide our LD’s, to not talk about how hard the road is, to not talk about what to avoid, everything is good enough or not good enough — but we needs what’s an inclusive view of success? What can success look like, because it’s not going to look the same all the time. What’s a model people can go to? Isabelle references Lawrence of Arabia—the potential of youth (see full quote below). There’s something so important about people seeing someone who has actually walked the path be able to talk about the things we’re not supposed to talk about. LeDerick wrote a book with his colleague, Dr. Margo Izzo (who also has ADHD -- see link below), and the use of narratives as well best practices for kids transitioning from high school into their next steps. The importance of near-peer mentors—the people who have recently been where you’ve been, the need for that. LeDerick talks about how the State of Nevada hired young adult facilitators going back into their high schools, and they make a vision-board/dream-board that speak directly to the IEP sections, and they teach cohorts of students how to capture the IEP sections in this board and present it in a visual way. Once the pandemic hit, the vision boards became PowerPoints and using social media images to help tell the story. One school created a club for people who are feeling marginalized, some students want to do teacher education, or getting on the loudspeaker at school and sharing a new disability diagnosis, to raise awareness. There’s a video LeDerick mentions showcasing this: HERE IT IS (VIDEO OF VISION BOARD/STATE OF NEVADA).  What if we could make dream boards for work? How could we break some of the neurotypical molds we’re caught in, sometimes without even realizing it. What it might mean to not have to constantly translate yourself to be understood by this neurotypical world. Being seen by somebody like you is so key. David appears to be paying attention but he is totally not—and the moment somebody gets that, they understand each other on a new level. He quotes Ruth Bader Ginsberg (see quote below) and describes how it may not be their fault, but the world carries a neurotypical gaze and it dictates what transitions should look like, what IEPs should look like.  We want kids in schools who are on IEPs to advocate and know what’s on their IEP—because when they know what’s on their IEP and how it works, they do better in school and more importantly, feel less shame around that. When IEP’s were rolled out, parents were not given this instruction—kids were told to not come to the meeting, seen as something to be embarrassed by. It can mean a lot of have differences seen and validated—and more importantly, shared—it starts normalizing people’s experiences and makes vulnerabilities understandable. It’s like getting punched in the back of the kneecap, you don’t have to make that part strong, you just have to acknowledge that it hurts. David’s first exposure to not having to be perfect, it was through LeDerick’s work—and they’re still carrying the torch. Isabelle wonders what is nourishing LeDerick in this mission and what are some of the hard parts—LeDerick describes how sometimes he goes into a school and it feels like a prison. LeDerick and his co-host, Winifred Winston, on the Black and Dyslexic podcast (see link below), they interviewed Dr. Julie Washington, this researcher and expert on literacy, and she said how dyslexia and ADHD is a label of privilege—black and brown folks are labeled with emotional or behavioral disabilities, that leads to more restrictive environments our schools or society has, as opposed to the academic supports. Once in a while, LeDerick gets into one of those environments and has to really care for himself within those environments. Another hard part can be all the emails he has to write, and bookkeeping—and his wife Samyukta is incredibly supportive—she handles a lot of supports as far as business management, and he has hired other people with other professional supports. LeDerick is still trying to hack how to stay on top of email, and he’s got a lot of stuff around his LD, but to break down emails into small and actionable steps instead of being overwhelmed—and how to ask for help! That is so important but also so challenging. LeDerick’s work has pivoted in 2020, at home and seeing the murder of George Floyd, the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery—and people started coming out to LeDerick to come and do Diversity and Inclusion work. He said no a lot, because people weren’t necessarily prepared for the work—like not giving their Diversity and Inclusion board any power or say. He wanted to make sure his work was really making a difference for people of color, particularly black folks. His work on the Black and Dyslexic podcast—it’s really an intersection of pain points—Winifred came up with Black and Dyslexic parents (BADass parents!). He received a grant to increase access with folks with developmental and intellectual disabilities in New Jersey’s black communities to the resources—that work has been so rewarding, but also carries so much administrative work. It’s about how we show up in spaces, how to be your authentic self,  the head of a project, and someone with LD—and how to leverage technology, accommodations. Sometimes he needs the first three lines/bu...

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 ...

David starts by introducing his incredible friend—poet, speaker, and advocate for all people with disabilities, LeDerick Horne. He uses LeDerick’s own advice about introducing people: think of the last time you saw them and then why they’re here now. David last remembers walking with LeDerick on a cold Chicago day after eating delicious Ethiopian food and talking up a storm almost a year before this recording, and the reason for LeDerick being on Something Shiny goes deeper. When David was first learning about how to be an advocate and unmask his own LD/ADHD (side note: David does not like frosting on cakes, he just doesn’t), LeDerick was one of David's first mentors in this field, but he’s also a poet, a playwright, a businessperson, a consultant, a fellow D&D enthusiast, advocate for the voiceless, tree farmer, and the list could go on—David wants to be like LeDerick when he grows up. LeDerick feels likewise with David, a good friend and remarkable human being—and it’s been great for them to go on this journey together. Isabelle is so giddy to hear more and to witness such love and friendship. LeDerick was a founding board chair for a mentoring organization, Project Eye to Eye (see link below for more), where he and David first met, but the two became closer when they were working for the State of Nevada, where an event for young people with disabilities, primarily LD/ADHD coming from all over the state of Nevada, talking about transition with the state's leaders shifted into building a community, and David makes that happen. David was the first one to talk and break the ice, and these were teams of young people throughout the state (as both the most rural and urban state in America)—where some were the only ones with an LD/ADHD in the county, others coming from Vegas and huge school districts—and David was sent in to break the ice and pull them all together, and he would make that connection, and the resources that were able to share for the young people. It was this ability to look around the room and realize you were not alone, and as leaders, LeDerick and David had to embody the modeling. David also realized that the power of being who we were, and not coaching people to be perfect, because being perfect misses the point. David wonders, what would LeDerick want to tell a younger version of himself—he was just in a room with an 18 yo kid who was about to go transition post high school, and he wanted him to hear: “if nothing else happens, you need to hear that you are okay just as you are now. You are not broken. Nothing about you needs to be fixed. That you are beautiful: your mind, your body, the way you show up in this world, you are beautiful right now.” He tries to chip away the edges of shame, embarrassment that then let someone be who they really are, like a sculptor. David wonders how you can say that and convey this without it feeling like patting someone on the head—are you, LeDerick, aware how you embody this in such a powerful way? LeDericks shares still feeling nervous, and how many different settings he’s been in, whether it’s a setting where he felt like people could attack him for what he was saying in a presentation to school, v. Speaking to a bunch of academics, to speaking to one kid in a room—he’s passionate about inclusion, having come from a segregated experience himself.  But he’s able to carry himself in this way through collaboration, a network of support, and also knowing that our representation and our narrative matters. It’s one thing for a parent, teacher, or counselor to say you’re going to be okay, but the it comes from someone who has lived it, it’s different and hits very differently, covering the ups and downs. “It’s not just the message, it’s also the messenger.”  And he uses poetry and it’s cuts through the BS, it gets to the heart of the message. David makes a reference to one of his favorite book series, the Gunslinger (see below), and there’s a line in it where Roland says “I can tell you’re a good person, I’ve seen you fight naked” — there’s a vulnerability and a naked fighting that happens. David is in an organizing council with fellow folks with LD/ADHD, at Eye to Eye, and he’s having this incredible community experience, and then LeDerick puts on a full play, and did spoken word poetry, and sat and talked with people for hours, and the whole time he was doing it he was effortless. David has never met somebody with an LD that moved like water, was so carefree, so confident—it was embodied in you, and you fight for anyone that is marginalized in a system and the importance of inclusion. Teachers are working an impossible task, and are crunched in the middle of the system and kids and parents, and it’s very simple for people to say “advocate for the use of accommodations” but what does it actually mean for there to be an inclusive classroom. LeDerick has just come from a municipality conference and the mayor of Hillside named how educators are really nation builders. LeDerick shares his own history, he started in a Catholic school, and then was told the school sent him to the public school because they didn’t have the resources to support him, and then by 3rd grade was outed as being LD and embarrassed in front of his class, and it let to evaluations, and then a resource room and then a self-contained special education classroom, where he was with the same teacher and kids for the next three years, and it was just that classroom on the playground during recess. He knows that negative self-concept and a lot of that was ingrained from passing through the education system in that way, reinforced a lot of negative practices in our schooling, it was predominantly a class of black and brown boys. They were separated from everyone else and fed the idea they were not as good as everyone else. And the teachers who ran that classroom, that were incredible and loving, holding very high expectations for the students, but despite that, the segregation is still speaking to you, still making you feel less then. LeDerick was able to graduate, despite all this and an emotional breakdown when he was 17—he aims to go to college, and it would be the first time he’d be in classes with everyone else, and needing accommodations. He remembers that change being so fast, “here’s how your mind works, and here’s the tech you need, and what accommodations you need” and within a few months, it felt like school is easy. Because I don’t have to worry about spelling, I can just write? Okay, I’m going to be a poet. Oh, I can use a calculator? I’m going to major in mathematics. There were still elements of being in a more inclusive educational setting, it honored LeDerick as a human being, as a student, in a way he hadn’t been honored before. Project Connections, an amazing LD support program (which sadly no longer exists), he was able to finish and transfer and end up taking 26 credits his last summer. He had started sharing his story in college, and was sharing his story on a panel, Bob Haugh and Bill Freeman saw him on this panel and gave him an opportunity to speak at a conference, which led to him being the MC at state conferences in New Jersey called Dare to Dream. Inclusion works and it’s more about being in the same room together, and with teachers who don’t have foundations or supports and don’t know what to do. Honoring teachers and giving them an opportunity to collaborate, having time to work as a team, bringing in specialists with specific backgrounds, whether speech or language, social interactions, when someone can show up and share interventions, school schedul...

Here's a REPLAY of good ol' episode 11 to help ease your transition into 2023-with new episodes coming soon! -- 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

(originally episode 08! rerun for your holiday break enjoyment!) How do we separate a task from our emotions about it? Especially when it comes to our own battles with procrastination? Isabelle is struggling with this and Bobby, her husband, is curious to hear more. David breaks it down like this: let’s say the task is running 5 miles in 60 minutes, which sounds very hard to Bobby. Does it matter what you’re wearing? What time of day you go? If it’s raining or not? There’s lots of things we can get caught up in the ‘emotionality’: I don’t have the right clothes, I don’t like the weather, etc. The emotionality is the stuff that we get caught up in that doesn’t matter. Our view of how it needs to be done that gets in the way. Can you walk while watching a video, for example. Isabelle tries to break a sweat once a day. But it only counts if she goes to the exercise class she signed up for. Bobby asks: why does a brain with ADHD is likely to procrastinate in the first place and then why do we discount doing it differently? ADHD individual needs a specific amount of stimulation to do a task; not enough or too much, they need to self-medicate. The emotions we use to self-medicate include anger, anxiety or excitement, etc. Medication can give you the stimulation without the anger, anxiety, or excitement. We procrastinate because it boosts the stakes, gives us a threat, so every moment of working on the task is alleviating the stress so there’s no delay in gratification, we’re instantly rewarded (yay dopamine!) for working on it. If you had worked on it two weeks earlier, you wouldn’t feel any different because there was no stress/threat you were relieving, you wouldn’t get that feeling of reward. So let’s teach people how to procrastinate better, rather than trying to undo it. What if you knew you weren’t going to work on the report until Saturday—what could you prep for Saturday, instead of beating yourself up for not working on it until then, if that’s the sweet spot of stress/crunch time for you? Your brain needs to experience that threat to feel that relief. A person with ADHD can be an angry, anxious, etc. — I’m going to be a monster when I’m focusing on this, so what can we do to ask for what we need? Is it easier to find a quiet place to be a monster or not become a monster (let’s say you get angry when you work yourself up to focus on something)? Bobby and Isabelle share that they would set each other off and both need accommodations in their relationships, but realizing that the meta-awareness of knowing it connects to ADHD and what they need has helped them navigate situations and help get out of each other’s way rather than asking that person to magically change. David points out that we’re normalizing that folx with ADHD can all become monsters in this sense and that not all monsters are bad—you could be angry/anxious to the max and find ways to create room for that that minimize the hurt and ill effects on those around you. There’s lots of relational trauma for people with ADHD and other forms of learning differences. You see everyone sit down and do something one way and you do it differently, your brain tells you it’s because you’re stupid/not following the rules/not doing it right, etc. Right around between ages 7-11, kids' peers normalize their world rather than their parents. For example, how are relaxation and self care portrayed? As wine and spa time—what if you don’t like wine and baths/spas (for example, like Isabelle). David makes the point that everyone else is doing it right, we’re just not taking in the input right. Maybe no more boring baths. Something needs to move. What we can do with the optical illusion of snow falling or a shower rain falling. The ADHD brain is meant and designed to procrastinate, but people with ADHD are made to believe their thoughts are naturally wrong. Healing comes from acknowledging this.

Does cranberry juice prevent UTI’s? Yes (and no).

• Side note, one thing Isabelle learned on this internet rabbit hole about cranberry juice and UTI’s was this: “Cranberry is a term derived from the contraction of “crane berry.” This name is derived from the nickname of the bilberry flower, which, when it withers, is similar in appearance to the head and neck of the sand crane, a bird that often feeds on the berries of this plant.” Who knew? For the full fascinating scientific article about cranberries and UTIs, click here.
  
  

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

• Task: what you’re trying to do - the ‘work’ of a group or a person.
  • for example: I am finishing my project this weekend.
• Emotionality: what you do to prepare to do a task - beliefs/fears/assumptions about what you’re doing
  • for example: I’m doing it wrong/right, I always procrastinate, big fear you’ll never get it done, dream that someone will come and save you from having to do it, etc.
• PROCRASTINATION: 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 what we do when we don't want to start work.

Why do folx with ADHD procrastinate? Waiting for the last minute, or delaying starting can be self medication for someone with ADHD. Excitement, Anxiety, Anger are all feelings that trigger stimulate us (our heart rate increases). Once this happens we remove any delay in reinforcement, as all acts towards work completion reduce that feeling/stimulation. It can also really increase the feeling of winning, if deadlines are met.

What do you mean by 'monster'?
We all have a monster part. Our monster is the part of us that comes out when something changes in a way we don’t like or we don’t get our way; in other words, it is our extinction burst (see below). The trick is to not pretend it doesn’t happen or somehow shame it away, but instead make space for it—even plan on it showing up—and reduce the impact on innocent others.

• Example: You really don’t want to write a paper, but you have to. As you work through the heightened stimulation you need to switch from prep work to actually working on it, your behavior is changing and you don’t like it (it’s so hard when you’re not getting the thrill of something novel, or that you enjoy, and really with procrastination you’re just getting the relief of a stressor being reduced). SO, you may turn into a ‘monster,’ — get irritated, annoyed, angry at anyone near you for getting in the way as you settle in to sit down to write it—which is ALSO giving you dopamine because emotions like anger, anxiety and excitement stimulate us (by way of building adrenaline, which ends up leading to more dopamine, among other things). Suddenly you have what you need to switch from prep to work, but—if you know this is how you work sometimes, you could let the people around you know/get out of dodge/have them be in other rooms, for example, so you’re not inadvertently getting angry/anxious AT them (it’ll happen regardless)—and that way you won’t get the double reinforcement that you’re some monster all the time ;).

Extinction burst: Connected to behavioral theory, when you’re no longer getting the reinforcement you want, your behavior dramatically increases in frequency, duration, and intensity as y...

How do you survive traveling with ADHD? What about traveling with children, particularly small children? And what happens when you find yourself rushing, leaving things until the last minute, and forgetting your charger once again? David and Isabelle swap stories and share specific tips to traveling and also discuss WHY ARE THERE SOCK NUBBINS AND TAGS. Seriously.
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There can be so much pressure to have a Hallmark, picture-postcard perfect holiday and it’s so important to revise those expectations and think about what you actually want to do, for example, maybe it’s “we go to the this house, tolerate everyone for 45 minutes, you grab the turkey, I grab the mashed potatoes, and we leave.” And what about the uncomfortable holiday clothes? Isabelle laughs and mentions a brilliant SNL fake ad for Macy’s that’s all about children’s clothing and how uncomfortable it is. David describes this might be where task meets emotionality (for definition, see below)—is the task of the holidays spending time with family? David remembers the holidays being hard, everyone fighting on the way there and then fine when they got home, and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and just wanting to leave and it being awful. Isabelle remembers coming home so late and it was freezing and trying to sleep in the back seat, freezing. David had the experience going to his partner’s holiday celebrations and—they don’t have ADHD—everyone got along, hung out, sang songs, played piano—and this is real? Friendsgiving is a thing, and you can make choices, what you do for holidays is a choice: like winter is a choice. Anytime you feel trapped or caught in something, changing the language to “I’m choosing to do blank because blank…” with what needs your meeting with it, changes it from you “have to go see Meemaw” You can take the shoulds, musts, and have-to and change it to choices. And maybe Meemaw doesn’t care what you wear, she just wants to see you. WHY ARE THERE TAGS IN CLOTHING? And NUBBINS ON SOCKS? We have evolved so many incredible things, we have AI, we have genome sequencing, and we have sock nubbins, and who invented pantyhose and shapewear. David likes shape wear because the underarmour stuff he wears is nice and tight. Isabelle describes that it’s more designed to smush you in and sometimes it’s great—this is maybe Isabelle’s trauma after being a 6 ft woman at 14 year old, so she was fitting into shape wear and pantyhose as a kid and hated it so much and it was so uncomfortable. David always got all these hand-me-down socks that were in a constant state of yawn—now David gets the really tight socks that stay up all day, “look at you sock, staying up all day!” And transitioning back to travel—and sometimes travel is really hard because we’re pushing ourselves harder than we should. Having the toolbox is just as important on the airplane or airport, or knowing how long you’re waiting with a toolbox. Whoever’s doing the traveling, your self care is the most important: you can’t control your kids being miserable, they will be, you have to put your oxygen mask, go at your pace, go at your tolerance. Kids will fall apart. You need to be there for them when they do. So what do you need to be there for them? Maybe it’s a treat, maybe it’s slowing down—take care of you. Pack the day before. And always include an extra day back at home before transitioning back. You can change the day back—the end is always going to be the end of the vacation, but you being able to have a different re-entry ritual into your day to day can be game changing. Isabelle shares some tips from her own front line experiences, such as when driving from Indianapolis from Nashville as part of moving, when she forgot the iPad…and everything else, and her kid was stuck in the way back for hours bored out of their mind. Needless to say, iPads are last steps, so it’s a plan B, but it forces them to have lots of plan A—and on this trip, she forgot all the plan B’s and A’s. And everyone is going to have a meltdown—Isabelle, as mom, will also have a breakdown. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, travel will break you at some point. Travel with kids is courting brilliant memories of chaos, so she anticipates and plans on her having a breakdown. So she tells herself that “I’m a good mom who’s reached her limit.” You’re trained from babyhood to meet their needs all the time, but it’s a set up, the game is rigged, and part of the rigging is us thinking we’re never going to lose it ourselves. Maybe it’s the rule, not the exception. What about outsourcing, like checking your bags curbside, strapping your kid into the carseat on the plane (because they’re used to it and airplane seatbelts do nothing). Be kind to yourself. There’s also this idea that a vacation and a trip with kids are two separate things. The labor does not change, but increases, but the expectation for fun and frivolity is also increased, but maybe change the expectations inside. Also okay if it’s extra hard because it actually really is. Take the wins. David names that it’s very hard to hold dialectics, to opposing truths: you can love your kids and they can be too much, really hard, really frustrating. You need to find yourself a support group that can validate all the truths. For David, being a child who had ADHD, and seeing people with kids travel, and typically things feel better when there isn’t as much pressure, when you’re not rushing at the last minute, and have everything you need. Accepting that all of those things are going to be harder with ADHD and smiling when those things don't happen is the key. Accept that win, when you actually remember the charger. We can also flip the shame spiral into gratitude because you can maybe get the thing when you arrive, and David has needed to buy pretty much everything on arrival. Anything important, the things you can’t live without, phone stuff, medication, certain items, should be carry-ons. If ever possible, don’t check a bag, have a very compacted carry on. David is so grateful for you shiny people out there that send us really incredible messages, and he’s really excited for our next season, as is Isabelle. We’re going to bring guests on next season, and Isabelle is super excited and grateful, too, that it’s building into an actual conversation, and so cool to be able to have that moment. Let’s all raise a fist in the air as Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club at the right pace and the right angle. We’re closing out this year with these holiday episodes, we’ve gotta turn around practice self-care, taking a couple of weeks off, and coming back in the next year with a new intro, new guests, and same ol' David and Isabelle--we can't wait to talk more, Team Shiny! 

SNL Fake Macy’s commercial for children’s uncomfortable clothing

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

TASK V. EMOTIONALITY

• Task: what you’re trying to do - the ‘work’ of a group or a person. 
  • for example: I am finishing my project this weekend.
• Emotionality: what you do to prepare to do a task - beliefs/fears/assumptions about what you’re doing
  • for example: I’m doing it wrong/right, I always procrastinate, big fear you’ll never get it done, dream that someone will come and save you from having to do it, etc. 

Traveling survival tips

• Prep your go-bag, tool kit (and consider several plans, not just one,...