ADHD: Sensitivity, Shame, and Self-Acceptance with Jessica McCabe | Being Well Podcast

0:00hello brains welcome to being well I'm Forest Hansen and today I'm joined by a very special guest author and YouTuber Jessica mccap so Jessica it's great to meet you thanks for doing this today nice to meet you too and hello bins if you're not familiar with Jessica's work she's the creator of the YouTube channel how to ADHD which is over 1 and a half million subscribers which is totally incredible and she's also the new author of the wonderful book how to ADHD an insiders guide to working with your brain not against it uh her stuff is fantastic uh my partner Elizabeth is a therapist who was

0:33diagnosed with ADHD later in life actually and your stuff is one of the first that we went to once you received her diagnosis and it was super helpful for us that's awesome yeah I mean I that's what I kind of hope that um that that I can help on board people to to this diagnosis because when I started the channel I did not understand anything about my ADHD I knew that I had trouble getting distracted um and there was this medication that can help me Focus but that was it I had a lot of misconceptions about it and stuff and so everything I learned personally about

1:01ADHD I put on the channel and so I think for a lot of people it's a good place to start especially if you started the earlier videos you can kind of learn along with me so you were I think 12 when you got diagnosed right yeah I was actually diagnosed for 20 years before I had any idea what that diagnosis meant I was diagnosed at 12 I was told that I had trouble focusing I was given riddlin and that was it you know ADHD solved um I did better in school and that really was all anybody was concerned about so you know I continued to struggle with

1:31life for another 20 years um you know I had trouble planning and prioritizing and sustaining effort toward long-term goals and I got into so many car accidents that um that the car that the insurance company threatened to um told my dad that they were G to have to uninsured uh eating like disordered eating stuff I was really impulsive with relationships I I mean I there were just so many things that I struggled with that I didn't know had anything to do with my ADHD um for 20 years for 20 years I was going to a doctor every month or every 3 months depending on the doctor and how many prescriptions they

2:06were willing to write um between visits and nobody explained my ADHD to me or went you know what like how's your life working because they they asked me if the meds were working I was like oh yeah they help me Focus you know any side effects no uh well nobody asked me if my life was working because I would have been like oh no no no like there are so many so many unpaid parking tickets in my glove box right now that I'm afraid to look at and my credit's terrible and you know I can't keep a job like I would have explained a lot more if anybody had

2:33asked me the right question yeah so you you just said a bunch of things there that I think that if people are unfamiliar with ADHD they might not realize have an association with the diagnosis you said for starters disordered eating uh issues inside of your relationships um I forget the exact word that you used when you were talking about relationships like being chaotic in your relationships or yeah there are times like I remember in high school sitting next to a boy in in um a con in a in assembly or something like that and I was bored and I just impulsively grabbed the guy's hand next to me like I

3:05didn't think about do I actually want this person to be my boyfriend I just knew I was bored and I did something impulsive and so now I had this boyfriend like there were so many examples like that that were just very ADHD in retrospect but I didn't know that one of the questions that Elizabeth was really curious about uh going into this that's you know my partner who has ADHD is how you actually were able to sustain the motivation and like be consistent enough to write a book like this it was so hard I will be honest it's the hardest thing I've ever done I have never completed a long-term project

3:36before and when people point out well but you you know this channel you've been doing for six years I was like not on purpose like I didn't set out to you know spend six years doing a YouTube channel I set out to put a video on the internet that would take a week to do and then I did another one that took a week to do and then I did another one they were all actually a lot of short-term projects that just ended up being a career in the long run but writing a book that's one project that was one project that lasted you know more than a

4:04year it was supposed to last a year it lasted more than a year um but it was so hard to to do but I knew it was going to be hard to do because I'd never accomplished something like that before and so I put a lot of supports in plays you know like first of all I plan I work backwards so I went okay if I'm gonna turn in a draft of the book like if I if I'm G to turn in a manuscript here then I'm going to need time to edit it and then I'm also going to need time to write each chapter so let me block that

4:30time in I'm also going to need some like weeks off so that I don't die because I knew that I would pour everything that I had into this it was a really exciting opportunity and very important so I scheduled four weeks off during the year to like kind of recover and recharge so I didn't completely burn out um and I worked all the way backward until I got to the you know the day that it was then I was like I need to have started already so I you know that kind of kicked me into gear writing the book and then I put accountability in place I

4:55told my editor what my process was like and that I needed that kind of support and so I said the weeks where I'm supposed to be writing can we meet can we meet can I show you what I've got and we can talk through it I'm going to hand you a mess like I'm G to had do a hot mess um those weeks it's not it's maybe not going to make any sense to anybody but me but I need somebody to look at it because if I don't have somebody gon to look at it who's G to care if I'm not on track um I might not do it I might be

5:21like oh it's you know I've got a year to write a book like that's a really long time so I put accountability in place I work backwards when planning it um I used most of the strategies in the book definitely all of the ones in the motivation chapter to get this done um the nice thing was like I had already had this basis of understanding of how my brain worked and where I might struggle where I might run into challenges and I had a a toolbox of strategies already and then as I was writing the book I would I would actually go back and reread certain

5:51sections to like inspire me to keep going so it that helped a lot I I will say um and I also got support like I had had a research consultant that helped with um you know he did all the citations and he was able to talk things through with me he was able to read things and do reality checks like hey am I explaining this well because I I'm a science Communicator I try to simplify these really complex scientific Concepts but I want to do it in a way that that doesn't create like a misunderstanding of what is actually happening like what we actually know from the research and

6:23so let me make sure that I'm translating this correctly I when I when I ran into struggles with organizing my chapters and and chapter one like my my plan immediately fell off track right like I gave myself two weeks to write the first chapter yeah I two weeks in I was like I okay first of all I had to use the first week to figure out how I even want to structure this book I didn't think about that I didn't I didn't think that like thinking about how to structure the book overall would be a part of it I was like I'll just start writing um so I

6:50immediately was off track um and then I was having a really hard time with the first chapter because it didn't fit into the structure that I wanted for the rest of the book so I went to um a writing buddy that I used for um to help me with my tedex talk and to help me with future talks after that and I was like uh can you help me write a book and so she and I spent like three hours on the phone talking through the structure and I think that that was key um not only putting all these strategies in place but also putting supports in place that

7:19I didn't have to do it on my own and that I had to swallow my pride about that yeah I wanted to ask you about that was one of the one of the really common issues for people who have ADHD or any kind of a condition more broadly that that feels is stigmatized feels like a point of difference and can lead to additional um emotional awareness and therefore additional emotional sensitivity like there must have been times where that was pretty difficult it was difficult and and there's a lot of internalized ableism in it too like I should be able to do this on my own yeah

7:52totally right like I i' I've written episodes for the channel I've written talks and stuff like never mind that like I had I had help with some of the talks to but I I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it that I could write a book and I wanted to do it on my own and it it took some swallowing of that pride and some humility to say you know what what's more important to me doing it on my own or accomplishing what it is that I'm trying to accomplish with this book and I had to choose um and I think that for a lot of people

8:21with ADHD it's it's a tough choice but you do have to choose like do I want to do this on my own or do I want it to be done do I want it to be what I want it to be um and and I I kind of want to normalize like I I talk openly about it there's a lot of authors that use um writing support that have a writing assistant or a writing buddy or even a full-on ghost writer that writes it for them that don't talk about it but then what happens is people especially people with ADHD see that and they're like well

8:47they could do it why can't I and so I wanted to talk really openly about the fact that I did need this support even with all the strategies I had even with the experience I have writing my episodes I needed extra support and that's okay was there a a a self-critical aspect that kind of came in that you had to work with oh my God all the time yeah yeah and and like were there particular things that you did or or just like strategies you've developed more broadly to help yourself when that happens and you got to apply a little self-compassion to it the best strategy

9:21I got actually from my research consultant who's also a clinician um Dr Patrick La um and it's it's a pretty CBT technique um he talks about Coach a versus Coach B and I tell the story at the end of the motivation chapter um and it's one that I went back to a few times um but it's this idea that um like imagine a little girl who's playing soccer and she's like eight years old playing soccer she's the goalie and it comes down to the end of the game and it it's down to to her and this person who's about to kick the ball and can she

9:55save this ball and she guesses which way the ball is going to go and Dives in that direction to block it but she guessed wrong and the ball goes in a complete complete different direction flies right into the net and she lost her team the game coach a um brings brings her over and says come here come here like what's wrong with you we went over this in practice you knew what to do like you should have paid attention to this and like you know if if You' if you'd been paying attention or practicing like you were supposed to like he just starts berading her and she feels terrible

10:25right she lost her team the game and like feels awful you know he beat her up she's beating herself up the next time that it comes time to go you know go to practice or maybe even a game maybe she has a tummy ache and she doesn't feel like going she doesn't want to show up well now imagine the same scenario but now um it's the same thing she she misses the ball Dives in the wrong direction but now Coach B is coaching and he calls her over and says well okay like if you want remember if you want to know which way the ball is going to go

10:58pay attention to their eyes eyes look look Which Way their eyes are looking and look at their foot which way is their foot pointing you got it cool you got it yeah we got this you know now you have something to try next time and he he talks about um how he says this to patients and he's like if you wanted your kid to have fun like which coach would you want and most parents would be like well obviously Coach B like I would want the the one who's just GNA be you know supportive and encouraging like give her something else to try and so most people would would choose Coach B

11:26and he goes but what if you wanted her to go pro what if you really wanted her to be good at soccer and you wanted her to go pro but still most people choose coach be because there's not really a whole lot of benefit to just being yelled at about what you did wrong but most of us with EDD like we have this internal these internalized messages and when we mess up that those voices start echoing in her head like what's wrong with you you should have started sooner like you know better like you should have XYZ and I had that for a lot of writing the book I had that pop up of

11:56like H what's wrong with you you should have started sooner you know better like all these voices echoed in my head and so what Patrick teaches his clients to do and what I did for myself as well is ask yourself what would Coach B say well you know coach B would have said you've never written a book before and you had an idea of how how long this might take you to do but now you can adjust based on how long it's actually taking instead of how long you thought it would take and you know you can reach out and you can get help and um it's just a much

12:26more gentle more productive coach that I think we all tap into in a really simple way by asking yourself like what would Coach B say I think it's really telling that you picked three words on the inside kind of book flap to describe the book and they're honest friendly and shame free and that third one I think is really interesting you could have chosen all the words in the word world and you went with shame free as one of the things you wanted to highlight which I think kind of just speaks to what you're saying here the the Primacy of those experiences the ways that they can get

12:57into us and and how easy it can be for people to obviously have those experiences out in the world but then to start generating those experiences internally due to that internalized ableism that you were talking about earlier yeah eventually we don't even need other people to say these things to us because we're saying them to ourselves I almost want to go back to that 12-year-old version of you and like kind of reflect on it a little bit because that's a that's a long journey that I'm sure you've been on with those issues which are are so primary for people and I'm wondering what that um how that's changed over time for you

13:28when I was 12 again I I knew I had trouble focusing I knew these Ms help me Focus but that was really it and so I didn't feel very empowered personally because there was still so much of life that was a lot of struggle for me and I didn't know why and I had these messages as to why like what society looks at like well you know you have so much potential you just need to try harder uh or you're you're just being lazy or um or I felt stupid or I felt like I had I had all these labels in my head of like like why I struggled with these things I

14:00had all these negative judgments and stuff um learning and and those judgments stayed with me basically until I started learning about my edhd um I was kicking myself in much the same way at 32 as I as I was at 12 years old like what's wrong with you you know like you're you're so dumb like all these really ableist terms that I had internalized um were kind of on repeat they're on Loop um when I started learning about ADHD what happened was I learned new terms for what I was struggling with I learned that I wasn't stupid or um or flaky or ditsy or whatever I learned that I had working

14:38memory challenges and that language helped shift my internal dialogue so now when I run into a situation where I can't remember the instructions on the box I just threw away or I can't remember somebody's name that they just told me um or I can't remember like what I was just talking about much less what the other person was just talking about instead of beating myself up over it I go oh okay this is a working memory issue what can I do can I offload something from my working memory is something distracting me right now that I can get out of my brain so that I can

15:08give this person my full attention um I have much more productive selft talk and I I also have stopped trying to be a different version of myself I've kind of accepted that this is who I am this is how I am these are my specs this is how my brain works and work with that instead of trying to force myself to fit mold that I am never going to fit I'm curious about the self- advocacy aspect of it here because a bunch of the suggestions you give all of these tools in the book which are great and by the way as you might expect uh the book is

15:41extremely ADHD friendly and its structure and its content and the way it's presented one of the things that you do is you consistently highlight particular tools that people can use or or um apply in their life in different ways that might help them out and several of those tools not all of them but several of them are things like accommodate yourself which can include like advocating for yourself in different ways uh saying no to different things taking breaks generally accepting that you have needs and being clear about them like both to yourself and to other people now I got to tell you I am Stone neurotypical and I know a lot of

16:17other Stone neurotypical people and admitting that you have needs even as a totally neurotypical person is really hard like that's a real challenge for people and um in order to get to a place where you can be like hey there's this thing that would be helpful for me it often takes like a lot of internal work for people to get there and I'm wondering what's what's helped you with that and what your process with that was like first of all having it validated that these our needs was really helpful um I think I needed to understand ADHD well enough that I could explain an advocate for myself I could say oh hey

16:54my my working memory is a relative area of weakness so you you know it would it would be helpful for me if or you know I work better if um but I needed to have that foundational understanding and honestly I needed it validated like I love that researchers measure this stuff and you can point to it and say yeah research shows you know XYZ or like Dr Barkley talks a lot about how impairing edhd can be and some people don't love his work because of that and he's very medical model but like to me it's the most empowering thing in the world because he does things like uh I in

17:28taking charge of ADHD he has a a page where he talks about um a study that he did where people self-reported time management issues 98% of people with ADHD self-reported time management issues compared with 8% of the neurotypical population that's a huge difference and so if I didn't have those numbers if I didn't have those statistics it would be a little bit harder for me because it's it's not only the challenges of saying I have needs and they matter and I need them it's also the fact that our needs are weird right and that other people don't need those things so we need to know why we

18:02need these things that other people might not need or that it's imperative for H us to have these things that other people might find helpful but for us it's disabling not to have them there's a really really big difference there right and so I talk about Universal Design and the how to change the World chapter being you know about things that are important for accessibility for people with ADHD also being helpful for other people I'm wondering if there's a particular example that you have of something were accepting that you had a need around it um really enabled you to do something about it practically or a

18:36way in which you've changed how you've worked with your brain over time around a specific issue yeah now for me it's it's a super casual thing like if I'm in the middle of conversation and I'm finding myself um having trouble tracking what the person is talking about I can quickly analyze like is this that I'm I'm holding because I work limited working memory slots everybody does but mine is more limited than most it's it's definitely a relative area of weakness for me me so if I'm distracted by my own thoughts like I I am trying to hold on to something to remember it for later or because I want to say it to the

19:07other person I'm not going to be able to really listen to what they're saying because my working memory slots are being taken up by what I'm thinking about and so one of the things that I I will do is say like hang on I really really want to hear what you have to say it deserves my full brain let me get this out of my head so that I can give you that so I can give you my full attention and it's just like super a super normal thing for me to do now or to say hey I'm filling out this form like can you read me the numbers so that

19:32I don't have to you know that so I don't have to hold them in my head and then like get over to the Forum find the right place and you know it's it seems like a simple task but it's cognitively very demanding for me and so I'll lighten the cognitive load by sharing that task with somebody else and saying hey you read this to me while I write it down or I'll read this to you while you write it down um there's a lot of people in my company I think everybody is neurod Divergent in my company just about um and so we just normalize it

19:57like it's it's just the same as saying like hey I skin my knee can I get a Band-Aid like it's just it's something we do it's something it's in the air it's in the water it's something we talk about openly and freely cool I have this challenge like I need this support um but before I learned about all that what helped me was when somebody would ask and actually be genuinely curious so when I waited tables I was really good I was a really good server after a while after I sto you know spilling drinks on people and forgetting to put orders in um eventually eventually I got really used

20:33to where you know everything was in the system and I I was really good at taking care of people I'm a people pleaser I loved doing it I'm very fast very energetic and so and I talk very quickly so I can turn tables really quickly uh there were a lot of things that made me a good server but I have significant organizational challenges which is also very common with adsd so I would fly through the restaurant and take care of all these people and at the end end of the night um it would I would I would because I was such a good server I'd be

21:02like one of two people who got to close and so it would be me and one other person at the end of the night um sitting down to do all of our paperwork and they would inevitably finish way before me and so then the manager who would really like to go home is sitting there waiting on me to finish my paperwork and everything just looked like it looks like I don't know something just exploded in my pocket like every all the receipts are everywhere everything's all skewed I don't know where the coupon is that I need to staple to this other thing um and it's the end of the night I'm off my

21:29meds like it's just I'm exhausted and um and I'm making myself like a pot of coffee to get through this because I know it's going to take me a while um and so it looks like to the managers that I'm milking the clock it looks like it's intentional that I'm trying to you know extend my hours as long as possible so that I can make more money I wanted to go home too but managers would just get annoyed at me frustrated with me they try to rush me hey can you hurry up none of that helped what helped was I had a manager one day come and sit next

21:59to me and look at what I was doing and said hey what's going on and I looked at her and I immediately burst into tears because nobody had ever asked me nobody had ever asked me why I was struggling they just made assumptions and judged me based on those assumptions um or took action based on those assumptions and so I I explained to her I was like it's just I'm really tired I'm exhausted it's the end of the night organizing is hard for me and I it it just takes me a while it takes me a while to find the right receipt to go with the right thing and

22:28she looked at my absolute chaotic mess and went well would it help if you organized your paperwork throughout the night as you go and I almost said yes because obviously right like obviously it would be easier if at the end of the night my stuff was already organized that would make it faster that would make it easier and there's a lot of that with people with ADC like well would it would it be faster if you had a to-do list to work off of sure theoretically right the problem is um actually doing that right like actually putting together TD list and then not losing it and being able to prioritize like

23:01there's a lot of steps that go into having something that would be useful so I looked at her and I could tell that she really was genuinely asking it wasn't a there's a clear right answer here like which is should say yes she actually wanted to know and so I looked at her and I said yeah it would help except my station is way at the front of the restaurant all the staplers are way at the back of the restaurant if I'm trying to fight through all of these tables asking me like oh hey can you give me c some catchup and hey you know have you seen my server and and I'm

23:32trying to take care of all these people as I'm fighting my way to the back line to get to the staplers and then organize you know set shifting right which is impaired in ADHD trying to shift between cognitive tasks care of somebody and bringing them catch up to let me organize paperwork which is a challenge for me I was like I that I don't think I can it would help but I don't think I can and she goes well what would help and nobody had ever asked me that before and I thought about it I was like you you know what would help like if there

24:00were staplers at every station in the restaurant so that the one that I go to to put in my orders usually the one that's closest to my station has a stapler too so that if I have an extra couple of seconds I can staple something really quickly and she said okay so she got staplers for every station in the restaurant that cut the amount of time I was doing paperwork at the end of the night in half it saved the restaurant so much money and it was not only helpful for me but it ended up being helpful for the other servers in the restaurant too so everybody was going to be more

24:29efficient at the end of the night and all it took was somebody saying what's going on would this help what would that's it I mean that's just like such a great summary of of so many issues out there not just with ADHD but with just like the world in general in terms of how we how we set it up who we set it up for who are we thinking about or who are we considering uh in different kinds of environments who are we leaving out in different kinds of ways and just like the sensitivity that you're speaking to to be able to ask um to be able to not

24:59make the assumption that somebody is doing something because they're trying to be a pain in the ass or because they have some ulterior motive that's problematic and instead they're doing it because like either there's a thing that they need that they're not receiving or there's something that would actually make their life much more helpful if they had it and sometimes it just takes 90 seconds of unpacking an issue to figure out what that thing is in a really helpful way for everybody who's involved yeah Rick green of totally add has a great great line that's stuck with me for years which is everybody has their own right answers they just

25:32haven't been asked the right questions is there something where because now you've been doing the channel for seven years it was seven years when I finished the book it's eight years at this point eight years now man okay so you've been doing the channel for eight years you've written this book you must have received roughly a million emails from people being like I've been diagnosed with this thing what do I do now some version of that is there one thing that you find over and over again where when people learn about it or they're able to do it a little bit differently or whatever is kind of jogging your memory or making

26:08you think about right now just really makes a huge difference for them early on in this process in particular I think being believed in their experience is is really huge because at the beginning a lot of us are in a lot of self-doubt ourselves because we've been told by society that we are just lazy or just stupid or just flaky or just irresponsible or all of these things it's really hard for a lot of people to believe that there actually is a condition that this that their struggles are legitimate and it can be a relief for a lot of people to get this diagnosis but even with the diagnosis

26:44there's still that in the back of your head like am I just faking it like what if the test is wrong what if I don't actually have this what if I am just lazy like what if everybody you know all these messages I got growing up were right and so I think being able to to process the diagnosis and what it means and being accepted and being believed is one of the most powerful things um because what some people run into is like you don't have ADHD you don't look ADHD you don't seem ad you know right and then and then you just immediately spiral back into that self-doubt and

27:14shame of like maybe I tricked them right like it's a kind of imposter syndrome um it's it's just it's so hard I like to me it's it's almost should be part of the diagnostic criteria there are so many people who right before their diagnosis go what if it's not ADHD what if I'm just lazy I'm like well good news um I hear that a lot from people right before they get diagnosed so totally I I want to go back to what we were talking about at the very very very beginning which was uh you were naming these these things that you struggled with that might not fit a lot of people's picture

27:51of what ADHD looks like and I'm wondering what do you think some of the most common misconceptions about the D diagnosis are yeah I actually outlined them in Chapter 2 um and I'm this is my favorite thing I'm like I already did this work let me just open to that chapter real it's great and this is a very common ADCC thing too like I had this Epiphany and then I completely forgot about it and then I have it again and like we redo the same work over and over again so I'm like I already did this work I can just read it to you um first

28:20of all like this idea that ADHD is an is an attention deficit it is not it is not an attention deficit it's a terrible name because it implies that it is an attention no it doesn't imply it states outright this is an attention deficit disorder it is not it's about attention regulation so this is such a a huge misconception and it keeps people from getting diagnosed when they otherwise may be diagnosed because a parent will look at a child and be like well he doesn't have an attention deficit he can play video games for 17 hours straight you got to be like he clearly does not

28:52have this condition when it's actually coming from the same place we have plenty of attention what we have trouble with is directing that attention so sometimes we're going to get distracted by everything and we try to focus on something and it's like trying to nail Jello to the wall it's just impossible and we keep getting distracted by things and sometimes we're focused so intensely that we can't pull ourselves away and that all comes from the same place which is attention disregulation um difficulty regulating our attention not an attention deficit um another one is you don't have to look hyperactive to have ADHD there's a lot of people who are

29:23like you don't seem ADHD because somebody's not bouncing off the walls or they don't fit into that stereotypical like boy getting into trouble stereotype but that's not first of all you don't have to have hyperactivity to have ADHD because there are three presentations there's a primarily inattentive primarily um hyperactive impulsive and then combined type which means you qualify for both which I do um but also even people who have the hyperactive impulsive presentation it doesn't always look like physical hyperactivity it could be racing thoughts it could be having a million tabs open and switching between them it could be having a billion projects going at once or speaking

29:59really quickly with no spaces between your words um there's a lot of ways that hyperactivity can show up that aren't necessarily as obvious to people um and these are you know these misconceptions are exacerbated by stereotypes you don't usually see somebody on a you know on TV that has ADHD who's sitting quietly and daydreaming but that happens too yeah um what else the another one oh yeah this is a really important one ADHD is neurological it's not behavioral for a long time it was categorized as a behavioral disorder it is not we Now understand that the behavioral differences that we see in ADHD are due to neurological differences

30:37neurodevelopmental differences in the brain and so you can't punish away ADHD because it is not a behavioral issue it is it is a difference in how your brain works and so the reason why people with adht do certain things is going to be different from the reason why somebody who's neurotypical might do it um if somebody's you typical is like fidgeting and looking down and stuff like that they might um they might be bored they might be distracting themselves with something else for somebody with ADHD they might be doing it to help them Focus because they have you know their attentions bouncing all over the room

31:10picking up a fidget can actually help them pay attention to the person that they're talking to so um yeah just know knowing that there are neurological reasons behind the behaviors that we see in ADHD that's a really important one to understand because otherwise it's really easy for people to assume well he just needs more discipline right you're watching a parent like with an outof control child and you're like God he just needs a he just needs time out you know it's like no um no he needs he needs probably support is more than anything and so does that parent yeah the emotional um the emotional aspect of

31:49it I think was the the aspect of it that was really helpful for me as the the partner of somebody who has ADHD and I'm curious what she'd say about this if she were here she would have loved to join but she has clients today so you know the emotional regulation aspect of it was really helpful for Elizabeth to learn about uh that the emotional sensitivity the uh deep empathy and sensitivity you can have toward other people uh due to a profound ability to attune uh in a way that I think a lot of people don't realize can kind of come with the soup of ADHD just like extreme

32:22sensitivity toward very minor cues in other people this gets a little bit to rejection sensitive and for me just as a partner as a as a heart as you like to refer to it sometimes um of somebody with ADHD it was like really helpful to kind of get the realness of that and just the difficulty of it for people who have it and how big the emotions can be yeah I wrote a whole chapter in the book called How to feel because it is such a big thing for people with ADHD and the emotional issues um the emotional disregulation that comes with ADHD is something that we've known about as long

32:57as people have been talking about ADHD but it got left out of the DSM it got left out of diagnostic criteria so a lot of clinicians aren't aware of this and so as a result a lot of times um we end up getting misdiagnosed um with mood disorders when it's actually just the edhd it's emotional disregulation from the edhd the difference is there's you know it's the top down versus bottom up like we are feeling the same emotions the same intensity and the same strength of emotion as somebody without edhd but our brains don't and regulate that emotion so that intensity stays um we have a harder time redirecting our Focus

33:34we have a harder time um calming ourselves down we have a harder time um you know just yeah regulating regulating our emotions and that combined with a history of real and perceived Rejection it makes it really tough for us and it it makes it really painful because we are not able to regulate our emotions very well and we have this history of being being rejected by our peers by our you know by our colleagues by our teachers um you know we get way more Corrections um there was one study done that was like I forget the exact stats but it was something like kids with ADHD

34:12receive on average 20,000 more Corrections than their neurotypical peers do at the age of 12 and I think it was like five more a day it's it's a lot we get a lot of negative messages we get a lot of Corrections we get a lot of rejections partly because of the neurodevelopment till partly because of the ADHD symptoms um if you are constantly interrupting somebody um you know it's a little bit harder to make friends if you're constantly info dumping at them instead of like listening to them if you don't remember their name like there are all of these challenges that go into um making friends that people with ADHD face and

34:44then as adults like there's a chapter on that too how to people where um I talk about uh how it's also the mindset with which we approach friendships and the ne all the negative messages all the negative talk where we go in with this scarcity mindset of like who would possibly want to be friends with me um and so then when we see evidence that confirms that it it hurts and we and we take that on and we keep keep going with that mindset and sometimes we end up in friendships that are not a good fit for us because we have this scarcity mindset of like you know I'll take anybody and

35:16like I just have to put up with what I get because who else would want to be friends with me right and so there's there's all of these these challenges that go into it um but long story short like we end up feeling these really big feelings and then getting messages about our feelings being wrong too so we often try to suppress them ignore them distract ourselves from them instead of learning what we're feeling and how to manage that and regulate it we end up trying to suppress it and then what happens is you can only do that for so long and then you know it all kind of explodes out of

35:50us so like it as simple as example is um after school restraint collapse where like kid comes home from school and has like kind of been managing trying to manage their stuff all day and comes home and just like explodes at their mom because they can't like regulate anymore it just all bubbles to the surface so yeah the the EM motion regulation piece was really surprising for me to understand as well because it's not in the DSM nobody had ever explained that to me I just thought I was too sensitive that's what that's that was a diagnosis I got from everybody around me growing up you're just too sensitive what was

36:23really reparative for you here in terms of well one of the things we talk about on the podcast all the time is how what happens to us when we're young really matters in different kinds of ways and like you're saying you know somebody with ADHD so many more Corrections so many more messages about them being problematic so many more little moments in relationships where something goes a little bit sideways that might not have gone sideways for somebody else like that's a lot that's a lot of water under the bridge and you've mentioned just during what we've said so far how learning about ADHD was really helpful

36:55and kind of getting that understanding of yourself that came from that um and I don't know maybe I'm prying a little bit here but like I there's just such an emotional aspect to this too and so I'm wondering what you just found really helpful in working with kind of the residues of all those experiences I think the biggest thing was connecting with other people who had ADHD because it really normalized the experiences it was something that we could talk about stuff openly and not be judged and not be shamed because it's like oh yeah like we would joke about it right like I I have a Discord community through patreon

37:27which is um a great service where people can support the work that creators are doing and um and so the people in the Discord Community would just like joke about how long they've left their laundry in the washer how many times they've had to restart it and to us it's just normal and it's something that that we can just joke about and we don't have to explain why it's hard for us or that we're not just bad people who don't care about the environment and that's why we don't care how many times you know what I mean like there's not that same judgment and so finding acceptance and

37:58community and um and having it be normalized because these struggles are normal when you have ADHD but when you when you have ADHD and you're living in a very neurotypical world that's going to expect you to be neurotypical like sometimes people look at you like you've got two heads or like you must be doing this on purpose or you must not be trying hard enough or whatever it is um being even people who mean well like there are a lot of neurotypical doctors who are like have you tried a calendar and we're like no no I've never heard of that like yes of course I've tried a

38:30calendar right like that's not going to matter all this um so there's a lot of people who are well-meaning who just don't get it and so being around people who get it and there's this kind of shared language this shared understanding this normalization of the struggles that was really really helpful and what ended up happening was um I was able you know we were able to see each other for for who we were besides the challenges because I think so much of it is like you face these challenges so much and you feel like you're kind of seen as the problem instead of as you've got challenges that you're that you're

39:05facing so like you know I'm the I'm the bad employee I'm the employee who's always late or I'm the you know I'm the one who struggles with this and like can't organize my paperwork and you start to like see yourself through the lens of like where you're too much or not enough and in a community with other people with ADHD it's like oh we're all too much and not enough like right we're all like this so you start to see the other things you start to see how like great everybody's sense of humor is or how energetic people are or it's it ends up being really interesting like what

39:35what's your hyperfocus right now like oh cool you can explain like you know everything about this one topic like that sounds cool like let me learn about that and we're able to see each other as people not as problems and I think that that's been really helpful to me and very healing for the the people out there who are related to somebody with ADHD and a Rel relationship with somebody with ADHD is there something that you would either a really want them to know or B that you think would be really helpful for them to understand yeah um go check out the book I I don't

40:09even care if you buy it like go to a Barnes & Noble go look at chapter 12 it's called how to heart go read it um this chapter is specifically for the for hearts for people who are there to learn about edhd because they care about somebody with ADHD and in that chapter I try to validate the experience of the frustration that comes with like your partner won't do what you want or need them to do it is very frustrating and very tough because it seems like they're not trying and it seems like they don't care and like there's all these even me even me who knows better at this point

40:44can still fall into that trap of like did you not care about like I have to watch that right because it it's such an easy trap to fall into and so is parenting your partner like and you know okay well they're not going to remember to lock the door so I got to make sure that I'm the one who locks the door and I I got to remember to you know to to plan things and I have to do this and I have to um I have to remind my partner about X Y and Z 1700 times and it can be really easy to take on the role of

41:11partner or of parent it can be really easy to take on the role of parent as opposed to partner but that's not good for the relationship because that can come at the expense of the role that you already have but it is what happens by default and we see it over and over again in the in these um in these relationships um these patterns right and so in that chapter I talk about Alternatives I talk about how you can kind of get out of that pattern and I also debunk a couple of things like you know I explain how it can look like we don't care but here's

41:42what's actually going on under the surface um and yeah that whole chapter is just literally written for people who care about somebody with ADHD mostly from the perspective of like as a partner but it it same applies if you actually are a parent or if you care about somebody with ADHD in any way um if you're a good friend whatever um I think like the the strategies in that are are really important and the the last one is take care of yourself because it it that's important too ADHD is frustrating and it's taxing on both people and so setting your own healthy boundaries and engaging outside outside

42:17support for yourself and allowing yourself to have feelings it's okay they frustrated by this Behavior we are too like everybody gets to be frustrated by the fact that we can't remember to put the milk back that's you know that's okay um you don't have to not be frustrated with us just because you know we're struggling or it's a disability that's fine you can have feelings too and then and then take breaks when you need to because it can be really easy to want to support your partner who's struggling in all of the ways that you could possibly support them but that's not healthy for either person one of the

42:46things you just mentioned that I thought was really interesting was that idea of parenting your partner and I think that that's a trap that I've F fallen into a couple of times where you just start getting into to a pattern where where it's just really easy to be the constant reminder to be the the I am becoming a calendar in human form for for lack of better way of putting it maybe where where that's just what we're doing now and and I I feel like I'm kind of embodying that mom role a little bit um are there things inside of your relationships that have like helped you

43:18step out of that common Dynamic yeah I actually rewrote the ending anecdote for that chapter three times um because my relationship was evolving and I my own understanding of the best way to approach this really challenging Dynamic was was evolving too and at first it was a lot of acceptance right like accept that this is how their brain works and that you know they're going to struggle with these things and that's okay and like find other Solutions and stuff and then and then the second version was like yeah accept that um accept your partner like see see who they are understand that they're not going to be

43:48neurotypical and all those things but also part of that acceptance is like accepting that you may need a greater level of support you cannot be your partner's therapist you cannot be your partner's coach you cannot be their you know accountabil buddy on everything at least like maybe on certain things like cool we both want to work out let's work out together fine but like you want to work out I will check in with you every Tuesday to see how your workouts are going not as great right so like part of the acceptance is accepting that you might need more support your partner might need support other than you and

44:20then the third iteration was just like what's the plan it was it was like uh like just you know late late at night and it's just it's dark and it's in a bar and it's Smoky and you're just like okay I'm jaded like I've been through the battle and like what's the plan um because I think it's like what I ended up realizing is it's unrealistic and it's naive to think that you're that the ADHD won't impact the relationship it will um not only the ADHD but usually ADHD comes with friends so there's also anxiety going on or depression or Autism or any number of other things trauma

44:55PTSD like there's something else going on on top of the edhd usually so it's really unrealistic to think that that's not going to impact your relationship and so what's the plan for dealing with it if you make a plan together as partners rather than one person who needs to parent the other then you're in much better shape because now you're not parenting that's really the difference like you deciding that you're in charge of reminding your partner for all of the things that they need to do it's it's infantilizing it's disempowering for them it's it's frustrating and you know can cause resentment in you because you're having to do all these things

45:29that are not fun because your partner can't do them to you go okay like what actually what is important here what are you doing what am I doing like what kind of support you need how are you going to get that support what role do you want me to play if you make that plan together now you're Partners again and so that's what my partner and I ended up realizing that we needed to do I need to I needed to actually take a step back from trying to do all of these things for him because I I expressed my frustration I was like I'm doing doing

45:56like 90% of the work in this relationship and blah and he just looks at me and he goes I didn't ask you to and I was like oh he didn't he did not ask me to so you know now we try and make sure that everything's consensual um it's a weird thing to talk about consent in terms of giving but consent in terms of giving is really important too if you're doing things for your partner make sure that they want you to be doing those things yeah are you doing those things because you think that they're for the other person are you doing them because you want them done

46:28and you think that they should be done like what's the motivation that's happening there and that's that's been a huge thing that I've had to had to explore and work on in my own life so that's been a major issue for me for sure yeah and that's why asking what's the plan is important because because the other part of that conversation when he was like well I didn't ask you to I was like you're right you didn't at the same time what am I supposed to do because this is impacting both of us so I need there to be a plan this isn't working for me so like what is the plan

46:54for this working because if there's not a plan that we have agreed on together I'm going to end up trying to fix it on my own right like we need to have a plan like it can't just be like well and then that's just we just live with it like that's not you know was certain things that wasn't going to work for me and so we had to we had to really collaborate and come up with a plan and you know it's it's it's give and take like any relationship um but it is I'm happy to say now like my relationship is the happiest healthiest relationship I have

47:23ever been in it it was worth the extra effort um and it forced us to learn how to communicate and collaborate in a way that most most couples I don't think ever have to we had to which was hard but now we're in a really good space because of it that's really great to hear and Jessica thanks so much for doing this with me today this has been totally fun I've completely enjoyed it and I just think that you're doing great work that's helping so many people thank you I really appreciate you having me on this is super cool yeah totally tell your partner said hi yeah I totally will

47:55I totally well she'll she'll just love this she's going to she's going to die I had a great time today talking with Jessica McCabe she's the creator of the wonderful YouTube channel how to ADHD and author of the Apparently recent New York Times best-selling book by the same name how to ADHD an Insider guide to working with your brain not against it so huge congratulations to Jessica that is a incredible accomplishment we started today's conversation by talking about Jessica's experience with ADHD she was diagnosed at 12 she was given a prescription and that was kind of it she really was not taught how to work with

48:33her mind and one of the problems for many people who have ADHD is that the common things that we're taught to look for are really just a very small set of all of the symptoms that can come with ADHD it's right there in the name attention deficit and hyperactivity but there are plenty of people with ADHD who aren't hyperactive and by and large the issue with ad HD is not a deficit of attention it's actually a surplus of it but without the ability to regulate it effectively so you have all these people out there who have a lived experience that really does not look like the model

49:08of ADHD that we have in our minds while still absolutely 100% being diagnosable for this condition a while back we talked with John Rady who is one of the co-authors of ADHD 2.0 he's kind of a legendary guy in the ADHD space and in his book he gave a phenomenal list and description of much more holistic ADHD symptoms Than People typically get and they include things like unexplained under achievement trouble organizing and planning a high degree of creativity and Imagination a strong will stubbornness and often a refusal of help a unique and active sense of humor an Exquisite sensitivity to criticism or rejection and itch to change the conditions of

49:54life and these are are all things that uh like Jessica said during the conversation one of the things that she thinks could be added to the diagnostic criteria she said this a little tongue and cheek but it you know is true in her experience is that a lot of people who have ADHD question whether or not they really should qualify for ADHD you know do I have ADHD or am I just lazy I think was the example that she gave during the conversation this is all to say that it's really understandable why somebody could get to their 30s or their 40s or their 60s and just not realize that they

50:25have ADHD because the model that we have of it the uh the image of it that gets shot out into the culture is really pretty inaccurate we then turn to how Jessica was able to sustain motivation and the consistency that was required to write a big book I've co-authored a book as a perfectly neurotypical person and man writing a book is really really hard and as Jessica said it was one of the hardest things she's ever done she talked about a couple of specific things and she names many more in the book itself she talked talked about having a accountability buddy having somebody who she was responsible to this was her

51:00editor who helped really Keep Her On Track she also talked about bringing in the support that she needed to accomplish the parts of the task that just weren't going to get done without it and one of the things that she really kind of kept coming back to during the conversation was the importance of social support of different kinds whether that's finding a community of people who also have ADHD so you can share and empathize and be seen in it and really just normalize your experiences that's really helpful if you're a fish and you're surrounded by birds all day you're going to feel like an outsider and you can only pretend to

51:34be a bird for so long before man it gets really real that you are just a fish this is how it is and it can be incredibly helpful to find a little school of fellow fish to swim with that's been incredibly helpful for Elizabeth it's clearly been really helpful for Jessica as well one of the things that's really helpful for us to be aware of particularly when we're trying to sustain our motivation toward some kind of a goal is the selft talk that we use and the tone that selft talk takes and one of the examples that Jessica gave were these two different coach voices the first coach uh you're a

52:07goalie playing soccer the other team you know scores a goal they win the game very sad first coach just berates you for it says you messed up you should feel shitty do better next time second coach says Hey when you're in that kind of a situation here's what you can do in the future and there are two important questions first which coach do you want to have if you want uh the person to enjoy playing soccer more the answer is the second coach but which coach do you want to have if you want to become a professional soccer player the answer is still the second coach it both feels

52:40better and is better to be able to speak to yourself with that more constructive orientation inside a lot of people fool themselves into thinking that if they are more self-critical it will make them more effective but we know that ADHD is not a behavioral issue it's a neurological issue this is how your brain is wired this is the way it' be okay so it can't be punished out of somebody you can speak to yourself critically until you're blue in the face the behavior isn't going to go away because again it's not a behavioral issue it's based on a neurological difference we also talked about self- advocacy and how Jessica was able to get

53:19to a place where she could claim her authentic needs as somebody with ADHD and get more comfortable expressing those needs to other people and that then took us into a conversation about relationships and there's a great chapter on relationships in the book and there was a part of it that was really helpful for me as somebody who is in a relationship with somebody who has ADHD and that's the very basic notion that empathy goes both ways here as the uh more neurotypical member of the partnership I need to have a lot of empathy for Elizabeth's experience I need to get that her experience is real I need to take it seriously I need to

53:53really get that she's not acting in a way that frustrates me because she's trying to frustrate me this is just how her brain works and there is a huge place for empathy and understanding there and there's also a huge place for honoring my own needs and uh what I want out of a relationship and I thought it was really great how Jessica closed by talking about hey what's our plan here what are our agreements what are we committing to how are we going to deal with these kinds of issues in the future just getting really granular about what we're actually all signing up for here in a way that extends empathy in both

54:27directions so both people can feel uh seen and heard by the situation I really enjoyed talking with Jessica today I've been a big fan of her work for a long time I would really recommend checking out her Channel if you have ADHD or know somebody who does it's how to ADHD on YouTube take a look at her book I think that you'll really enjoy it and hey if you'd like to support our podcast you can subscribe wherever you're listening to it now on you can tell a friend about it you can leave a rating and a positive review on on iTunes that really helps us out and hey if you'd like to support us

54:58in other ways you can find me on substack and you can find the podcast on patreon it's patreon.com beingwell podcast and for just a few dollars a month you can support the show and you'll get a bunch of bonuses in return until next time thanks for listening and I'll talk to you [Music] soon [Music]