Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team!
This week I'm talking with Dr. Megan Anna Neff, an AuDHD clinical psychologist, author, and educator. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from George Fox University, which she completed the same year that she was diagnosed as autistic. Dr. Neff has moved away from traditional clinical practice to focus on creating research-informed, lived-experience-centered, and emotionally resonant resources and training through her platform Neurodivergent Insights.
In our conversation today, we discuss her diagnosis, how ADHD and Autism tend to run in families, and the ripple effects that can happen from there. We get into sensory processing and its role in burnout and self-regulation. We also hit on interoception, alexithymia, and self-care, and round things out with some frameworks and ideas on how we can work with our brains. It's a conversation of identity and self-attunement that I really enjoyed.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/311
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
Alexithymia, sometimes called emotional blindness, is a trait where you can have difficulties processing or describing your emotions and is often felt in ADHD with the experience of going from 0 to 100 with an emotion. While this can feel impossible to work on in the moment, learning to name your emotions and tracking how you feel through socio-emotional training can provide measurable improvements.
Self-care starts with figuring out where you're at, but most advice on self-care often assumes that you already know what you need. With ADHD and poor interoception that can be a hard read. When we're feeling dysregulated, often our first step needs to be checking in with ourselves, and as Dr. Neff suggests, creating more sensory predictability.
Masking can train you out of listening to your body because it is a learned way of suppressing yourself. While this insight won't necessarily fix what's going on here, it gives you a starting point to notice when you're not listening to your body because you're just not noticing, versus when you've trained yourself out of it.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Psychological Implications of Exclusion in Individuals with ADHD Symptomatology." That's a hard word there. This study asked a deceptively simple question: when people with ADHD symptoms are socially excluded, do their bodies respond differently than those without ADHD?

And so basically, what we're talking about today is RSD, or Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is something that a lot of people have really started to resonate with, but there isn't a ton of research on yet. And I think this is a great place for us to kind of dive in on that research. So let's get into it.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/310
https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link
https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube
https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon

Hey team!

This week I'm talking with James and Sam Brown, co-authors of Focus: The ADHD guide to productivity that actually works - James is a science communicator with a PhD in Biomedical Science, and 20+ years in academia and Chair of the adult ADHD charity ADHDadultUK. Sam, also known as Mrs. AuDHD online, is an Executive Administrator with ADHD-informed PA expertise, an ADHD coach, Director and Secretary of JBHD Ltd, and a Trustee of ADHDadultUK. Together (with Alex Conner) they co-host The ADHD Adults podcast. As both of them were diagnosed as adults, they use their lived (but evidence-based) experience with late diagnosis to help others navigate their own ADHD and Autism.
In this episode we spend some time talking about their book and the very ADHD process in which it was written. But we also cover the gamut of boundaries (both with ourselves and others), the need to keep doing and how hard it can be to give ourselves credit or accept it from others. This is a deep episode where the themes of self-acceptance and how that swirls through burnout plays a big role. And of course we also discuss all the usual ADHD shenanigans and how some days the ADHD just wins.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/309
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
The things we say no to are often just as important as the things we say yes to. With ADHD we often run on a default mode of saying yes to every interesting thing that we come across, but we simply don't have the time or capacity to say yes to everything. By choosing what we're saying no to, it gives us space to really embrace the "yeses" in our lives.
While setting and maintaining boundaries with others can be difficult, it is often even harder to set them with ourselves. Playing directly with what we say no to, James says: "it's sometimes healthier to accept it may be a passion project now, but ask yourself, is it going to be in three months' time when you're stressed with everything else?" It's okay to let things go and change your mind about what's important.
Try Sam's three-at-a-time rule. With two master lists (work and "side quests"), pull three tasks and focus on just doing those three until they're done. Once complete, move them to a done list, and you can move on to the next three. But also remember to periodically go through and delete what's no longer important in your lists. We all build up to-do's that no longer need to be and can be let go of.

Hey Team!
This week I got a chance to catch up with my good friend Brendan Mahan and talk with him about his upcoming book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful. Brendan is one of the first people I got to know in the ADHD space and I feel lucky to have done so because for one he's just an awesome guy, but also because his approach to ADHD has always just felt so real and coming from a place of lived experience. Brendan is the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast, a board member of the Men's ADHD Support Group and the Director of Professional Resources for Calmer Con: Boston - and also one of the few people I know who gets me to sit down and listen because it's always worth hearing what he has to say.
Today on the show we're going to be talking about a book that Brendan spent a decade being asked to write. After finding his co-writer, Alex Hughes Capell, Brendan brought us the book we've been waiting for. So for those of you who are unfamiliar, the Wall of Awful is a concept that Brendan developed to explain the metaphorical emotional barrier that builds up over time and makes starting basic, everyday tasks feel nearly impossible. Or, in simpler terms, the barrier that keeps us from starting what often feels like a simple task, such as doing the dishes or starting our homework.
In our conversation, we discuss the ways that we build up these walls and also ways that we can work on getting past these walls (and what doesn't work). We also dive into the distinction between burnout and the wall and get into the nitty-gritty of the Wall of Awful.
If you'd like to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/308
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
Worth restating here, the Wall of Awful is a metaphorical emotional barrier that builds up over time and makes starting basic, everyday tasks feel nearly impossible. And it's important to acknowledge that we can build this wall from both real and perceived failure.
While smashing through our walls by activating through anger or anxiety often works, it's not always enough to get us completely through the wall. So while it may get us started it doesn't always get us to the finish line. As well, smashing often comes with a cost in terms of relationships, both to ourselves and to others who are hurt in the process of smashing through the wall.
It's important that we're able to distinguish our walls from preferences and boundaries. While our walls are built out of the emotional response to failure, preferences aren't built out of failure. It may be something we don't like doing but we can get past it without reaching for our wall tools. And boundaries are choices that we make not out of our sense of failure but instead our sense of who we are.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what that paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "The Experiences of Adults with ADHD in Interpersonal Relationships and Online Communities: A Qualitative Study."
This study looks at how young adults with ADHD navigate real-world interpersonal relationships, how they mask their symptoms to fit into a neurotypical world, and what happens when they turn to online platforms like TikTok and Facebook.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/307
https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link
https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube
https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon