Chronic shame makes us feel all kinds of terrible things that often are the triggers that send people to therapy.

It's caused in part by relational rupture without repair, especially as an infant and child.

While there's no quick fix, recognizing the signs and beginning to gently work with it does help over time.

This is episode 10 of a series of 10 that started with 102 AuDHD Therapy That Works with Joe Sosta

I'm working on some more materials to pull all these episodes together in a useful way and will add that here when they're done!

Crisis Resources:

• USA-based anonymous crisis chat
• International crisis lines
• Various types of crisis resources in about 10 countries
• My Medium article, "Please Stay, We Need You"

Mentioned in episode:

• Book Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame: Healing Right Brain Relational Trauma (I recommend this 2nd edition, affiliate link)
• Whack-a-Mole Workshop slides/notes and recordings (latter is free & requires free login; a downloadable PDF is also available there on Patreon)

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Darren Glencross was diagnosed near the beginning of 2025, and since then has written multiple books and come up with a new framework for people to explore outside of the medical model.

It includes: Pattern Language, Inner Orbit with 12 satellites (and Their Orbit), and the Carry Kit

It's exciting to explore community-led models!

Connect with Darren:

1. Message on Instagram @beaconwithin
2. Darren Glencross on LinkedIn

Mentioned in episode:

1. Love Your Brain course (& Sep-Oct live round details)
2. Free workshops already concluded, and will be available most likely in the Patreon soon (I'll update this when they're somewhere!)
3. You may also email questions about Love Your Brain to [email protected]

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AuDHD brains face many challenges when it comes to projects. It's something I've put a great deal of time and learning into, both personally and professionally. This episode covers many ideas and approaches that tend to work for us.

Key Takeaways:

• We usually learn to use what I call the Adrenaline-Anxiety Approach. While effective short-term, it can lead to burnout and other issues.
• A monotropic approach is more sustainable and individualized... and it can feel slow at first.
• Experimentation as a core tool
• Creating just enough structure and safety to get going, without getting bogged down (loose planning)
• Working with the brain states you have
• Managing interruptions, inputs, and daily life
• Finding the balance that works for you

The episode also walks through the Love Your Brain course, designed to help AuDHDers understand their mind-body system, work with brain states, and navigate project challenges. The course emphasizes self-compassion, experimentation, and building processes tailored to individual needs.

Repost - originally posted July 12th 2024

Note: not strictly in the current 10-episode series, but still relevant!

• Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist article, and a PDF if you're not on Medium
• The transcript may be especially useful for this episode! (It'll take a few seconds for the link to fully load to this episode)
• Love Your Brain course (and the Sep/Oct 2025 live round info)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This ep also available on YouTube

"use more lube:" do what you need to do to make life easier, more comfortable, and more pleasurable for you in the moment.

This goes beyond sensory needs, though that's often where we start.

You may not be sure what you want on the grand scale (or it feels impossible to get there). But being kind to yourself, and meeting your needs moment-to-moment, helps create a communication feedback loop with the body.

Better communication and care for the body makes everything easier.

ep. 8 in an interconnected 10-episode series

Mentioned in episode:

1. Free Workshops registration link
2. Love Your Brain course (& Sep-Oct live round details)

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Intuition has been a way to interface with my body, even when the relationship with my body was contentious.

While I won't share the trauma stories that led to the subtitle (Intuition Saved My Life), I have a variety of examples of how unconscious information can surface in a useful way.

ep. 7 in an interconnected 10-episode series

Mentioned in episode:

1. Free Workshops registration link
2. Love Your Brain course (& Sep-Oct live round details)

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It often feels easiest to do what's right in front of us. And that's lovely, a lot of the time, and uses our strengths!

And... it starts to feel bad if we're in whack-a-mole mode almost all of the time, and don't have spacious time to comprehend the whole of our experience.

This ties into our sensory needs and leans more into the psychological side of these needs.

Mentioned in episode:

1. Free Workshops registration link
2. Love Your Brain course (& Sep-Oct live round details)

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maria Bowler recently published the book Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life beyond Productivity. It's a relaxing take on doing what you want to do, and feeling okay while doing it.

One of the main themes is being present, and being true to yourself even if you're doing boring stuff you don't want to do. Finding those moments of resonance that turn the entire activity into building self-trust.

If you already read the book and found it resonant even though it doesn't mention AuDHD... that's because Maria is AuDHD and snuck all that good neurodivergent content in!

Connect with Maria:

1. Maria's website, MariaBowler.com
2. Maria's Substack
3. the book Making Time (affiliate link)

1. Transcript Doc
2. Mattia's Newsletter
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Autistic community has taken many approaches to reframing what the diagnostic criteria calls "Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts." There's the double-empathy problem, for example, in which Autistic people have an easier time understanding each other where allistics struggle and vice versa.

Childhood Emotional Neglect, while a relatively new idea from 2012, aligns remarkably with autistic social "deficits." While I'm by no means trying to draw a single causal line, I also wonder in this episode if maybe some of our social difficulties are actually signs of CEN.

Even if our parents were quite well-meaning, we were more likely to experience CEN via a lack of appropriate mirroring of our internal responses, especially if our internal world was especially intense or complex.

This episode covers the effects of CEN primarily. To learn more about examples of how it can develop, or how to address it, you can read the books below, or search for articles about them.

Books mentioned: 

1. Running On Empty
2. Running On Empty No More

Both are affiliate links

1. Transcript Doc
2. Email Newsletter: Nothing Wrong With Us
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is also on YouTube

If our sensory needs are not met, even an otherwise okay day will still feel... off somehow. And then that gap between how we feel and how we think we "should" feel can make it even worse (that one's not a topic in this episode, just a thing that happens).

If our sensory needs ARE met, sometimes even tough circumstances can feel not that bad.

To be clear, this is not about avoiding bad days, which are bound to happen sometimes!

But meeting both our comfort and mental sensory needs makes everything easier. It's a big part of feeling better first.

1. Transcript Doc
2. Email Newsletter: Nothing Wrong With Us
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)
4. How Can I Help (request coaching support)

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Lessons learned from ~17 years of therapy over the last 20 years. How I'd approach therapy now based on that.

What to look for in therapists, goal-setting in therapy, and reasons to quit your current therapist.

Also connects back to last week's interview with Joe about AuDHD therapy.

Links mentioned:

• Book Decolonizing Therapy (also mentioned last week, affiliate link)
• Blog post on finding a neurodivergent-affirming therapist (with links)

More resources suggested by a community member:

• Dueling Minds, AuDHD Support
• Autistic Girls Network in-person support groups for adults
• ADHD Support Groups in Canada (CADDAC)
• ADDA Virtual Support for ADHD

1. Transcript Doc
2. Email Newsletter: Nothing Wrong With Us
3. Like Your Brain community space (Patreon/Discord)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.