Hey Team! This week I'm talking with Dr. Mel Houser, a family physician and founder of All Brains Belong, a nonprofit that brings together healthcare and community support for neurodivergent people. Dr. Houser is also Autistic and ADHD herself and the author of A Failure of Imagination: How the Healthcare System Fails Neurodivergent People—and What We're Doing Instead. In our conversation today, we get into some topics I don't normally cover on the show, including how physical health conditions can overlap for neurodivergent people and what gets missed when we treat each issue as its own separate problem. We also talk about a resource you can bring to your doctor to help get that conversation started. From there, we get into understanding our capacity, setting boundaries around what we can actually manage, and why rest doesn't always have to mean lying down and doing nothing. And Dr. Houser shares a way of thinking about those moments when we can't stop scrolling: if your foot is already on the gas, what could it look like to steer somewhere else? If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/321 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This episode's Top Tips: Our boundaries need to account for our capacity. There's a difference between not wanting to do something and not having the capacity to do it, even if those can look the same from the outside. We can still want to answer the phone, go to an event, or help someone and still need to say, "I can't do that right now." It's important to pay attention to what drains you and what helps you recharge. Whether you think about that in terms of spoons or a battery, the point is to recognize that your energy has limits and those limits can change. Being able to push through something doesn't necessarily mean you have the capacity to keep doing it, especially if you're borrowing from what you'll need later. When you're having trouble stopping, try changing direction. Dr. Houser describes this as having your foot stuck on the gas: instead of trying to slam on the brakes while the gas is still going, see if you can steer somewhere else. If you're stuck scrolling, getting up while you're still holding your phone might be a first step toward a transition. You don't have to make the entire change at once. Rest can mean reducing demands, not just stopping everything. A meeting where you can use the chat instead of speaking is one example where you're making participation less demanding. When you're looking for ways to rest, consider which demands you can remove or reduce, even if you can't step away from everything.

Hey Team! This week we're kicking off a new series on the basics of ADHD management, and why sometimes the best thing we can do when we're struggling isn't to find something new, but to go back to the fundamentals. One of the things I've found after years of making this podcast is that knowing all these ADHD strategies doesn't mean I'm always going to remember to use them. And sometimes I find myself looking for a new solution when what I really need is to return to something that's already worked for me. So in this episode, we're starting with one of the most important fundamentals: understanding our ADHD and how it affects the way we approach everyday tasks. We'll look at how identifying what's actually making something difficult can help us find better solutions, why knowing what works isn't always enough to get us to follow through, and how we can revisit old strategies that we might have stopped using along the way and might work for us now If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/320 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This Episode's Top Tips: Going back to basics isn't going backward. The fundamentals are the foundation of ADHD management, and they're something we need to keep practicing no matter how long we've been managing our ADHD. Returning to a strategy you already know isn't starting over; it's reinforcing something that helps. Knowing a strategy isn't the same as being able to use it. It's not just about finding strategies that work in theory, but finding ones that work for our brains and that we'll actually use. Even the most effective tool isn't going to help much if we can't reliably put it into practice. Just because you've stopped using a tool doesn't mean it stopped being useful. Sometimes we abandon strategies because our circumstances change, and sometimes we simply fall out of the habit of using them. Understanding why we stopped can help us figure out whether we need to make adjustments or simply start using something that's already worked for us.

Hey Team! Welcome to a special Feed Drop episode - this week we're featuring the ADHD Skills Lab which is hosted by none other than Skye Waterson who you all know from our Research Recap series. And today I have the pleasure of hosting an episode from their show How to Stop Panic-Planning and Actually Lower Your ADHD Anxiety. So this show focuses on support for business owners or anyone who does their own thing with ADHD, which honestly is a lot of us. In this episode Skye and Robbie share why some tasks can feel impossible with ADHD and how to reduce overwhelm when doing them and I was really interested in their discussion about perfect systems versus usable systems because that's something that I always struggle with because it's so easy to fall down that rabbit hole. So join me as we dive into this episode of ADHD Skills Lab! Link To the ADHD Skills Lab Podcast: tinyurl.com/ADHD-skills-lab Link To The "Focus Filter" We Like To Give Away For Free: tinyurl.com/focus-filter

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 to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Evidence of Emotion Dysregulation as a Core Symptom of Adult ADHD: A Systematic Review." Just to give a bit of background here, when Skye and I were discussing topics to look into for future episodes, rejection sensitive dysphoria was one that seemed like it might be really interesting to see what's actually out there. In a way, it was interesting because there's just not a whole lot of research on the topic. So instead, we came up with this paper, which asks whether emotion dysregulation should be considered a core fourth symptom of adult ADHD alongside traditional things like inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. To get started, let's try to get a quick definition of what we're talking about with emotional dysregulation and, of course, rejection sensitive dysphoria. You want to hit that one, Skye? If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/319 https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

Hey Team! This week I'm talking with the fantastic Jessica McCabe. Many of you probably know Jessica from her award-winning YouTube Channel, How to ADHD, where she has helped millions of people better understand how ADHD brains work. And Jessica is a returning guest, last time she was on we talked about her then upcoming and now New York Times bestselling book, How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - which just came out in paperback. And last time Jessica was on the show she was pregnant, so we dive into that a bit on this episode, discussing how having a kid really changed everything for her. And we really do dive into some of those struggles that come with parenting while ADHD and how those can compound with regular ADHD struggles as well through things like sleep, scheduling and how much pressure we put on ourselves. We also get to hear a little about the new book that Jessica is starting to work on. How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - Barnes & Noble How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - Amazon If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/318 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This episode's Top Tips: A system can be a great fit for how your brain works and still stop fitting the life you're actually living. When something that used to work stops working, check what changed around it, be it your schedule, responsibilities, environment, or available support. Then look at what was useful about the old system and what needs to change to fit the life you have now. Try putting something you actually want to do on the calendar before everything else fills the space. That might also mean scheduling more time for rest or fun than feels strictly necessary, because if we leave those things to whatever time is left over, there often isn't much left. This is something I've talked about before and am still not particularly good at myself, but making space for it deliberately gives that time a much better chance of actually happening. Progress isn't about reaching a point where everything suddenly becomes easy. Part of it is adjusting what you expect from yourself, and part of it is getting better at recognizing which tools and supports you need. So when you're struggling, instead of making that struggle a verdict about yourself, ask: Why is this hard right now, and what can I do about it?

Hey Team! This week I'm talking with someone who has an impressive 12 years of podcasting and over 800 episodes, Eric Zimmer, is the host of The One You Feed podcast, taking the name from the parable of the two wolves inside you and asking which one grows, well, it's the one you feed. After struggling with heroin addiction and homelessness in his twenties, Zimmer became deeply interested in how people make lasting changes in their lives. Drawing on both behavioral science and his own experience with addiction and recovery, Zimmer's work focuses on exploring behavior change, meaning, and what helps people build better lives. Zimmer is also the author of How a Little Becomes a Lot. In our conversation, Eric and I talk about why lasting change is usually built with the small, unglamorous days after the big moment and not in the moment itself. We explore how structure can reduce the need for willpower, how it can help separate deciding from doing, and how change becomes easier when we treat it as a skill to practice rather than a test of character. And while Eric hasn't been diagnosed with ADHD himself, we still get into topics like time blindness, using tools without shame, and why a little bit of something often beats a lot of nothing. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/317 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This episode's Top Tips: Change is a skill you can get better at, not a trait that is set in stone. While it can feel impossible to change at first, it is something that we can get better at, it just takes practice. This doesn't mean that the process will be easy, just that if you keep at it you can make progress. When possible, make the decision about what you're going to do, before you're in the moment of having to act. By giving yourself a little structure, you're not asking yourself to make a fresh decision every minute. And while you'll still have a choice to make when the time comes, you've already made that choice at least a little easier. Often our plans are built out of our best case scenarios and can break down when we hit the speed bumps of real life. So it's important that we remember that a little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. This means that we want to decide the minimum version of what we're doing instead of relying on that best case scenario.

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, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways. In this episode, we're discussing a paper called "Evaluating Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Review of Current Methods and Issues." This is a continuation of what we were talking about two weeks ago. This is Part 2 because the paper was so long and densely packed with information. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/316 https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

Hey Team! This week I'm talking with Dana K. White, the creator of A Slob Comes Clean and the author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, and her newest book Procrastinators Get Stuff Done: How to Go from Overwhelmed to Finished. Her work grew out of her own struggles with clutter and home management, and she's become known for practical, reality-based strategies designed for people who feel like traditional organizing advice just doesn't work for them. This was a real fun episode and I just gotta say that I love that title, A Slob Comes Clean - it's a pun, it tells you exactly what to expect and gives that little of hey I was there too and we both can get out. Also as a slob myself, it's very validating.  So, in our conversation today we work through her decluttering methodology, from where we should start to where something goes to how we really should be using containers. We also talk about clutter thresholds, family-buy-in, ways to reframe what a win actually looks like. She also shares some of the ways her advice has changed over the years, including things she used to recommend and now recommends against. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/315 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This Episode's Top Tips When putting stuff away it's important to decide where you'd look for an item and put it there instead of just thinking about where it "should" go. By putting something where you'd look for it first, when it comes time to look for the thing you know exactly where to go. While a container's first job is to hold things, it also serves as a way to set limits on how much of something can go in there. When the container is full, that's it, that's the limit and that decision is made for you. If we can change our goals from "done" to "better" we can shift our entire mentality around cleaning, organizing and decluttering. Instead of needing to set aside a whole weekend to completely upend your house, you can do five minutes and that progress still counts as a win.

Hey Team! This week I'm talking with Dr. Jolene Brighten, a naturopathic doctor, women's health educator, and author whose work focuses on hormones, reproductive health, and the ways hormonal changes can affect women across their lifespan. She's the author of Beyond the Pill and Is This Normal?, and her newest work, ADHD and Women, coming out October 6th, explores the intersection of hormones and ADHD in women. I know hormones and ADHD is a topic we've explored before, but Dr. Brighten was a delight to have on the show, and this conversation went in all kinds of directions. So yes, we talked about how hormonal shifts across your life affect ADHD symptoms, why medication can sometimes feel less effective at different points, and some of the ways those changes may show up differently for women with ADHD. But we also got into the much more practical question of what you actually do when you know your brain isn't going to perform exactly the same way every day, like externalizing executive function instead of trying to remember harder, building small pleasures into the day, and recognizing that sometimes the best intervention isn't the full protocol, it's finding the smallest lever you can actually pull. Dr. Brighten's Book ADHD & Women: https://drbrighten.com/adhd-and-women/ Dr. Brighten's Website: https://drbrighten.com Dr. Brighten's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjolenebrighten Dr. Brighten's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrJoleneBrighten Dr. Brighten's Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjolenebrighten Dr. Brighten's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drbrighten/ If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/314 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD This Episode's Top Tips With ADHD it's often said that we know what to do, but have trouble executing on those ideas. For something like exercise, the best idea is then to work towards making it accessible. Instead of focusing on getting the biggest result, we can look toward what we actually enjoy doing and can sustain, even if for just a little bit, we're going to see far more consistent results. It's important to remember that everything has a cost, even if we're not noticing it at the moment. These costs can compound when we're not paying attention and lead us to wonder why doing just one simple task can leave us exhausted. This doesn't mean that we necessarily need to be doing less, but it does mean we need to pay extra attention to what something is actually going to cost us. Our brains are not meant to be at peak productivity all month, and that applies doubly if you experience a cycle. As Dr. Brighten says, "that is [just] how you are physiologically designed." This means that it's important that we're giving ourselves grace and letting ourselves block out time on the calendar for when we're not going to be at our peak (and again, we do not need to be at our peak all the time, or even most of the time; it's called the peak for a reason).

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 Evaluating Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD: A Review of Current Methods and Issues. And this paper is a narrative review that surveys the current landscape of ADHD diagnosis, where the DSM criteria came from, how they've evolved, and any known problem areas that are in there. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/313 https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon