Something Shiny: ADHD!

De: David Kessler & Isabelle Richards
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  • Resumen

  • How many times have you tried to understand ADHD...and were left feeling more misunderstood? We get it and we're here to help you build a shiny new relationship with ADHD. We are two therapists (David Kessler & Isabelle Richards) who not only work with people with ADHD, but we also have ADHD ourselves and have been where you are. Every other week on Something Shiny, you'll hear (real) vulnerable conversations, truth bombs from the world of psychology, and have WHOA moments that leave you feeling seen, understood, and...dare we say...knowing you are something shiny, just as you are.
    2021 Something Shiny Productions
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Desarrollo Personal Hygiene & Healthy Living Psicología Psicología y Salud Mental Éxito Personal
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Episodios
  • Loneliness and Changes to How We Mask - with Marcus Soutra, For the Good Consulting

    Loneliness and Changes to How We Mask - with Marcus Soutra, For the Good Consulting
    Mar 5 2025
    Isabelle and David welcome back Marcus Soutra, co-founder of Eye to Eye and founder of For the Good Consulting, and explore the nature of authenticity, "coolness" and the meaning of masking with nation-wide advocacy expert and fellow ADHD and LD-er. How did being "cool" go from being rich and unaffected to being authentic and open about ND/LD identities? From the loneliness and high masking rates of ADHDers, to Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts and social media, the ways ND culture has approached masking and unmasking.----Isabelle talks about how being wealthy and affording the performance/clothes of ‘coolness’ growing up was Abercrombie & Fitch back in her high school days--these were expensive clothes that you had to get at the mall and were part of the performance of being 'cool.' And what about how much of coolness, at least for a time, was defined by money, or access to certain expensive clothing brands (like Abercrombie and Fitch) What it means to perform and be high masking, for her. There is a coolness factor, the kid who can pick up what’s cool has an advantage over the kid who doesn’t. Marcus sums it up: are you able to fit in and be embraced by the neurotypical world? And if you can’t, there’s the loner path, the bully path? The empathy he has for the bully path—they were, in his past, the LD/ND kids who were dealing with loneliness and not masking well and it was their way of finding their way to a role in the school community. 60% of people with ADHD say they mask on regular basis and 33% say there is a loneliness to the experience of having ADHD. Then there’s also the pain of being high-masking or being accepted by the neurotypical world, how little practice you have at sitting with who you really are, and finding a stable sense of self. There is a way to be a self to fit in that is not the same as an authentic, self-confident knowing-who-you-are self. The difference between doing it in a healthy way v. doing it in a way to survive. Hard to know what parts of you are okay, and when you’re blending into a neurotypical world, there’s a significant advantage of being able to read the rooms around social cues. Marginalized senses of self are real, having to exist believing you’re less than. Or believing if the mask ever falls, it’s terrifying. Isabelle names that there’s a management around masking and the layers, like she can unmask and say “I have ADHD!” but she doesn’t say, “I have ADHD and I screwed up the finances again so I can’t afford the school bill.” Something for her connects coolness to unaffectedness, not being vulnerable, or not caring what others think. Beyond the unique person who owns where they are, where does coolness come from in our culture? Marcus responds that it's often the people at the top of the social hierarchy, it’s the celebrities, the role models. Growing up for Marcus, there were the most attractive movie stars who were dyslexia, like Tom Cruise, Orlando Bloom, not Paul Giamatti. When it came to Aspergers (previous name for low support need Autism, check out more in depth on this history below) or Autism (before it was known as Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD) were superheroes, like RainMan, Temple Grandin, and that was our introduction to the autism community. If you’re dyslexic, the way to make it out is to have hotness or have superhero qualities, and if you don’t fit into either one of those, good luck. This brings up how celebrities are not so far removed anymore, from the days that you got these bland PR stories or tabloids, now you have people sharing their stories and unmasking on social media. Marcus names that authenticity is now a part of social media, and it’s important for celebrities to have a cause, to be speaking to some aspect of this. If we'recynical, it could be a branding strategy, or it could be a shift in culture, because this emphasis on authenticity rather than hiding has been a big change in the last five years. What is Abercrombie & Fitch? The following documentary covers it pretty much:"White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch" (Netflix documentary)DEFINITIONS:Masking: Often used in referenced to autistic folx (Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)), it also applies to folx with ADHD, OCD, and all kinds of neurodivergence (ND) and learning differences (LD), like dyslexia, dycalculia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, etc. It’s the idea that you have to wear a neurotypical "mask" to be accepted or to engage in a world made for those that are neurotypical. You 'pretend' as if you brain and nervous system work in ways they don't. It can be (and feel like) a matter of survival. From a great article on the topic:“For many neurodivergent people, masking is a survival tool for engaging in neurotypical societies and organizations. Masking (also called camouflaging) is the artificial performance of social behaviors deemed more “socially acceptable” in a neurotypical culture.”For more on Marcus ...
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    15 m
  • From "toughen up" to "the trauma ends with me" - with guest, Marcus Soutra (For the Good Consulting)

    From "toughen up" to "the trauma ends with me" - with guest, Marcus Soutra (For the Good Consulting)
    Feb 26 2025
    Isabelle and David welcome back Marcus Soutra, co-founder of Eye to Eye and founder of For the Good Consulting, and ask an interesting question of this nation-wide advocacy expert and fellow ADHD and LD-er: how has life in schools changed for neurodivergent kids, especially now that some of us are parents/educators/in charge? Are kids still afraid, as David was, of having to go to the nurses' office? And how has what's "cool" been redefined in the past decades? From trauma modes to collared shirts, from shifting ADHD from a diagnosis to an identity, the three explore perspectives on masking (AKA using energy to appear as neurotypical), which can be both a poison and a salve.----David wonders, given that Marcus travels across the continental United States…what is he seeing as patterns in neurodivergent culture? Marcus describes that he sees the elder millennials having kids who are now being identified as being neurodivergent, and naming, “The trauma ends with me,” and they’re refusing to hand this off to the next generation, and because a generation that grew up with these labels are now turning into parents, school leaders, caregivers, people in charge. David likens this to growing up in an earlier generation where he was taught to toughen up, to take the knocks and handle it. Isabelle relates this to how when you’re living in survival mode, you can’t also be processing the trauma and making meaning of it, you first have to survive—and part of survival mode is to have tunnel vision, to stay tough, to not pause to feel. So it would make sense for a generation that maybe always was in survival mode to try to pass that on to their kids in the form of “toughen up.” She relates to wanting to break this cycle, though, so hard, as a parent. And also—what does David mean by the “boy named Sue” generation? (Answer: it’s a reference to a Johnny Cash song, see below). Marcus describes how this compares to other movements, where something that used to be a diagnosis or label is then taken back as an identity. As he has ADHD, he was hoping this change would happen so much faster, in his small, privileged ND community this change happened so rapidly. It does take these generational shifts and changes to make these things stick. David names that individually, we all have individual struggles that rub up against the system. It felt like school was meant to take parts of us away, it was like an eraser trying to shave parts off. But we are be keepers of that. In school there was no concept of advocating for an accommodation, it was just: do you want to look weird? Leaving class early to go get his meds. How has this changed for kids and adults? It’s hard to generalize because “you know one neurodivergent person, you know one neurodivergent person.” But having an open conversation about something and talk about it and acknowledge and not other it—it does set it up for students to have a teacher they can talk to and ask for what they need (even one adult in that building). The needle has moved from the average high schooler even knowing what dyslexia/ADHD/any ND or LD is. Marcus wasn’t bummed out about dyslexic, but back in high school, it was other people were going to see him being different. He refused to get accommodations for the third time, because if he got accommodations for it, he wouldn’t take the SAT at the same time. Isabelle remembers that as a full body memory, taking the SAT being a production back in the day and even in her own experience being bussed on the short bus into a different school for a Gifted program and how it signaled you were different but also you didn’t want to belong to this select tribe, either. David names: different is dangerous in some ways, not just for kids but for adults, too. You walk into a room and everyone is wearing a blue “I’m here for a reason” shirt and you might slowly back out of the room and go “I don’t belong.” Trying to be like everyone else is both the salve and the poison—it helps keep us save when we’re masking—what does everyone else is doing? It helps us mask, but David’s first time being a room where people admitted they were neurodivergent, Grady was bouncing a racket ball, the relief and joy you feel when you can join in being more authentically yourself. Isabelle is thinking of the “Cool Bean” book (see below) and how in that story, the beans are ‘cool’ not just because they are performing as cool and have style and whatnot, but also because they are willing to take risks and help those who are being bullied or laughed at, that are able to stand up for others and themselves in a way. This is so different than ‘coolness’ as Isabelle experienced it in her little bubble growing up in suburban Chicago, where coolness felt way more about avoiding being targeting and felt meaner and scarier and more about social power and wielding it (with meanness). Marcus names how his masking helped him in...
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    27 m
  • Why is the transition to sleep so extra hard?

    Why is the transition to sleep so extra hard?
    Feb 19 2025
    Isabelle and David continue to talk with David’s brother’s friend, Aaron, and dig deep into why winding down and going to sleep is the hardest transition of all: because you're staring into a black hole of no dopamine for hours! And also, a lot of traditional sleep hygiene tricks may not work. Folks with ADHD have higher rates of sleep apnea, among other sleep disorders, and also, can do with staying away from preferred activities before bed. This, sleep tips and tricks, and recognizing the value of being open about your neurodivergence...as well as some really good callbacks to the previous two episodes (096 and 097) regarding "St. Elmo's Fire's" amazing theme song.—-Isabelle and Aaron wonder: what’s with this PDA business (persistent drive for autonomy/persistent demand avoidance)? David explains: It’s hard for us to connect a learned moment with an experience, it’s hard for us to take a moment we're learning now and take it into the future, and we're distractable. If we're in a place with any shame, guilt, or anxiety, distraction becomes highly reinforcing. We are highly reinforced by not paying attention to what we want to pay attention to it. We're not seeing the long term consequence, we don’t understand what we're doing to our future by not doing it in this moment--delay of gratification and response cost. Like, what did you do today? “I watched three seasons of Scrubs and ate a buffet of Indian food.” We can't claim any wins at the end of the day, but in the moment it felt so nice, it was a distraction. Neurologically we don't get a success, norepinephrine —you feel anxious, and it leads into their evening, and for kids and adults, if you're really anxious about the next day, you don't want to go to sleep. “The longer I'm up today, the longer today is! I don't have to face tomorrow if I haven't gone to bed yet.” David has been thinking about this with his friend and colleague Noah, based on this book, Dopamine Nation. If we’re not accommodated or assisted by something during a transition, and then you have nothing else to do, you are looking down a long dark hole of no dopamine—that’s why the evening can look so hard. The road to sleep to extra awful, you have to sit still, you have to tolerate frustration and still yourself enough to go to sleep. David names: we are considered overtired if it takes less than 15 minutes to fall alseep—most ADHD folks, as an accommodation to not sit in the discomfort of staying still with no dopamine, don’t hit the bed until they are beyond exhausted and just crash. Isabelle and Aaron disbelieve this. Isabelle does not compute that this is how people live, that people just lay there for 8, 10, 15 minutes and slowly go to sleep, this has never happened to her. Aaron gets anxious that he won't fall asleep in 5 minutes and then can't stand the guided meditation. David will be snoring watching tv on the couch with his partner but doesn’t confirm he is “tired." with Delayed sleep phase onset, this is a thing we struggle with. Accommodations for sleep? Did you use enough physical energy during the day? You can't go into a preferred activity before bed—you have to find weird shows or things that are interesting but not so interesting it will keep you awake. What is a preferred activity? If you're super into a video game, for example—if you can't sleep, don't play the video game. The things that you prefer and wake you up, engage your hyperfocus. What's the boring video game that’s like paint by numbers? Isabelle will read nonfiction when she’s not feeling very tired, but if she reads compelling fiction she will stay awake. Because, who wants to sit in boredom? These are tips that are not sleep hygiene or what you’d expect. So many tactics to help a kid fall asleep are there to help them get bored enough to stay still and not reach for a preferred activity. The most important task in the brain's development is boredom: One of the most important things is to experience boredom. It's really important and yet we run from it all the time. A neurotypicaly person needs to encounter a certain amount of boredom to get creative. But with ADHD, we are bored a 1000's of times more often in a day than a neurotypical does in a day, and the feeling of being bored is so caustic and our brain is so creative and thinking of fun things all the time. But because we encounter so many micromoments of boredom, it makes it really hard to tolerate the 10 or 15 minutes to fall asleep. Or try something on in the store. The moment of a transition that's boredom and hurts. When do we want to sit with it, when do you want to avoid it? David tries to stop listening to a D&D podcast he wants to, he's trying to train himself to be awake still and do it at a time and then fall asleep, instead of falling asleep when he crashes. AND there are literal sleep disturbances. People with ADHD have a much higher likelihood of getting a CPAP machine and sleep ...
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    34 m

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