Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

It’s 2022! And we’re kicking off the new year and new season with change. Specifically, we’re going to look at how the language we use influences the way we think about and approach the world around us.

As an anchor for the conversation, Nikki gives us a review of I Get To: How using the Right Words Can Radically Transform Your life, Relationships & Business by Alicia Dunams, a book that has helped us to refine the way we think about the language we use and how it influences our own mood as we approach hard things. We communicate through our words, tone of voice, and non-verbal cues such as body language. As Dunams says, “crafting our daily language with effective words and tone is a true art.”

Along the way, we lean on two other resources. The first is the work of Karen Reivich, author of The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles. She gives us a framework to reframe negative thinking in a positive light.

And Emily Campbell gives us insight into how our natural spirit of curiosity — not judgment — is the secret to healthy emotional well-being in her piece, “Six Surprising Benefits of Curiosity” published in Greater Good Magazine by UC Berkeley.

This week’s episode is sponsored by TextExpander from Smile Software. TextExpander is central to our daily productivity and with a little curiosity and exploration, it might just be for you, too. Listeners of the show can save 20% on their first year by visiting textexpander.com/podcast.

Links & Notes

• I Get To: How using the Right Words Can Radically Transform Your life, Relationships & Business by Alicia Dunams
• The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles by Karen Reivich
• “Six Surprising Benefits of Curiosity” by Emily Campbell
• Sponsor: TextExpander from Smile Software
• What Is TextExpander?

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This week, we’re wrapping up our trio of treatment episodes with a conversation on coaching, and how the coaching process can help you integrate your life with your ADHD. Whether or not you have decided to pursue the perfect prescription, or trace a treatment through therapy, a relationship with an ADHD coach can help you turn your awareness, acceptance, and new strategies into action.

This week on the show we talk about what an ADHD coach will do for you. We help identify the key differences between therapy and coaching. And we discuss the gray areas that might call for either a therapist or a coach. Most important, we talk about what it means to be ready for change and to know if managing your ADHD with the help of a trained and certified coach is right for you.

• Learn more about ADHD Coaching
• ADHD Coaching with Nikki

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Have you ever tried talk therapy? It can be intimidating, learning to open yourself up to a stranger, but with the right therapist, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable for long. We’re continuing our series on ADHD interventions with Dr. Sharon Saline, psychologist and ADHD specialist. She joins to talk to you, the therapy novice, about what you can expect from therapy, what you should expect from your relationship with your therapist, and how you can make the therapy relationship thrive in support of your ADHD.

New in ’22

• Join The Purge — Organizing Challenge January ’22
• Register now for Winter 2022 GPS

About Sharon Saline, Psy.D.

Sharon Saline, Psy.D. has focused her work on ADHD, anxiety, learning differences, and mental health challenges and their impact on school and family dynamics for over 30 years. Her unique perspective, a sibling of a child who wrestled with untreated ADHD, combined with decades of academic excellence and clinical experience, assists her in guiding families as they navigate from the confusing maze of diagnoses and conflict to successful interventions and connections. Dr. Saline funnels this expertise into her book, What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew: Working Together to Empower Kids for Success in School and Life. Heralded as an invaluable resource, her book is the recipient of two awards: Best Book Awards winner by American Book Fest and the Gold Medal from Moms' Choice Awards. She recently published The ADHD Solution Deck: 50 Strategies to Help Kids Learn, Reduce Stress & Improve Family Connections.

Find Sharon on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn

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What do you know about your ADHD medications? We didn’t know much, so we brought in the expert, Dr. William Dodson, a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist and one of the first clinicians who specialized in adults with ADHD decades ago.

Because here’s the thing: we don’t deal much with ADHD meds. As a coach, Nikki refers folks to their physicians. And apart from being a patient himself, Pete’s experience dealing with medications is far from diverse. And yet, the field of questions we get from folks in our community relating to medications is vast. Today, we start the process of getting those questions answered.

Not Debunking Myths, Clarifying Understanding

As Dr. Dodson says, no one ultimately is going to care about your specific decision around medication other than you. But it’s important that you have the data you need to get your questions answered before you make that decision yourself. We can say this for sure: Dr. Dodson is a professional in the field with qualified experience in practice and a respected and verified source. We hope you find something you can take away from this discussion that helps you in your decision-making.

About William W. Dodson, M.D., LF-APA

Dr. Bill Dodson is a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist was one of the first clinicians who specialized in adults with ADHD 25 years ago. He has been on the faculties of Georgetown University and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He was named a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in recognition of his clinical contributions to the field of ADHD (2012).

He was the recipient of the national Maxwell Schleifer Award for Distinguished Service to Persons with Disabilities (2006). He has written more than 120 articles and book chapters designed to help a lay audience better understand ADHD and its treatment.

Dr. Dodson is now semi-retired and devotes most of his professional time to working with homeless adolescents on the streets of Denver and writing a book about the optimal treatment of ADHD in both children and adults.

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There isn’t any magic to any one specific episode. But, wow, you all, if you had asked us in 2010 if we had any idea that we’d still be doing this show twelve years and 500 episodes later, well, suffice it to say we’d be as gobsmacked then as we are now for having made it that far.

And we made it so far because of all of you, listeners, study hall attenders, coachees, brain players, and ADHDers who have been riding this podcast train with us, no matter how long you’ve been on board.

This episode is just a bit self-indulgent. We talk through a bit of history, we share a clip or two from the early days, but mostly we celebrate with you, thanks to your numerous submissions sharing what The ADHD Podcast means to you.

Thank you. We love you. We love this show, and we love doing it for you.

Pete & Nikki

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It’s NANOWRIMO TIME! Every year, writers of all sorts come together to contribute to the writing madness that is National Novel Writing Month. The goal: write 50,000 words toward a novel in 30 days. Pete has been participating in NaNoWriMo in some fashion or another since 2003 and will once again be picking up the pen on November 1 to write another book. And...

It’s hard. Really hard. Today on the show we thought we’d use this opportunity to talk about Big Audacious Goals (BAGs) … how are they different from work projects? How do you set yourself up for success? How do you prioritize something that’s important to you when you’re the only one who actually cares about it?

The approach is a little different this week. Pete is going under the guidance of Coach Nikki to reframe his experience with goal setting, shame, and what it means to be successful. We hope the demonstration with a real life project that Pete cares about a lot is a good example for how you might tackle your own Big Audacious Goals!

And if you’re interested in joining us for the NaNoWriMo write this year, make sure you join us in Discord and introduce yourself in the #nanowrimo-2021 channel! The channel is in the public area in the community server so you don’t have to be a supporting patron to join.

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We’re wrapping up ADHD awareness month with just one more message dedicated to everyone puzzling their way through a brand new diagnosis of ADHD. You know who you are. You now have words to describe what you’ve been living through all these years and you’re eagerly downloading every journal article and book about ADHD. You’re listening to podcasts just like ours and you’re drinking from the proverbial fire hose every chance you get.

Here’s a secret: that actually gets tiring. It gets overwhelming, too. You might not think it right now, but at some point, you’re going to wear out, get distracted, and move on to something else. And the person that’s going to impact first is you.

This week on the show, frequent guest James Ochoa is back with us to help us figure out how to build the team. Who do you need to look to for direct support and what do you need to beware of so that you don’t crash into intervention fatigue? James is author of Focused Forward: Navigating the Storms of Adult ADHD and knows a thing or two about all this.

But what’s better than one Ochoa? TWO OCHOAS! James bring his son Jules back to the show, fresh out of grad school and diligently producing season two of their own ADHD podcast, The Complex. We’ve talked about the complex before on the show and we’re big fans of the first season. We’re thrilled to head back into the building to learn more about the ADHD residents and their confused non-ADHD landlord, just trying to do his best for the building.

Patrons get access to episode one of The Complex in their member podcast feed now. Want to hear it? Join up today!

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Jude Parker Koski has dedicated his career to serving marginalized communities through work in the nonprofit sector since 1996. He has helped youth experiencing homelessness access education, advocated for LGBTQIA+ youth and families, worked to reform foster care policy, and helped preserve urban open space and community gardens.

He’s also a transgender professional, and he joins us today to talk about his experience supporting his communities while living with ADHD.

OK, this isn’t one of our shorter episodes. We get that. And it’s just fine if you want to skip around. But here’s why we thought it was important to have this conversation and share it in full: because Jude’s experience overcoming internal and external questions of gender identity sit right at the intersection of the same journey with his ADHD. What he has learned as he continues to live through both experiences can teach us quite a bit about our own journeys. We hope you find the same and perhaps learn a few new lessons about the fluidity of your own lived experience.

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Like any good superhero, we all have our origin stories. Unlike those same superheroes, we sometimes struggle to save the day if we’re distracted by shiny door knobs.

This week, we’re sharing the stories our listener’s submitted about their diagnoses. Where were you? How old where you? What do you remember about the time and how you were treated? Whether you were six years old and super confused, or 36 years old and … well… super confused, your story matters. And we think that these stories have something teach, too. Just hearing how others were first diagnosed offers each of us a chance to reflect on our own path. If nothing else, certainly, they’re a reminder that we are not alone.

Stories of shiny door knobs this week on The ADHD Podcast.

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Why are some tasks harder than others? Is that task itself suddenly that much more challenging that everything else you're doing? Likely not. What's different? The way our brains are triggering as a result of it.

This week on the show we're pulling apart the things that allow us to make some tasks a bigger deal than others. What is it that makes one task evolve into a monstrous clogging task while others breeze by? We pull apart "brain distortions" that impact our thinking and assess our executive functioning challenges that impact our time and process management.

From there, it's all about attitude — can we really take a step back and approach tasks from the perspective of growth and accomplishment even as we're struggling to grow and accomplish it? We'll see this week!

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