The Vibe With Ky Podcast

When you can handle the big, hard things but the five-minute task keeps beating you, it isn’t laziness. Gabrielle Juliano-Villani on ADHD burnout and the easy stuff.

Gabrielle is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and the founder of GJV Consulting & Training. She built a group therapy practice to 15 therapists, burned out completely, and sold it. Then came her ADHD diagnosis, and the small stuff that kept beating her finally made sense. One month her business billed $100,000, and she still couldn’t make herself scan the paper sitting on her desk.

We talk about leading a whole team while privately feeling like she didn’t belong in the role, and the acquisition offer that arrived when she was too depleted to enjoy her first trip away in over a year. Then we get into why the boring, five-minute tasks are the ones that take people down: the email, the phone call, the prescription pickup. Gabrielle explains why those tasks carry no moral value, how she catches every “should,” and why it’s so easy to miss your body’s signals until you’re already running on empty. We also talk about anxiety showing up right alongside ADHD, especially for women who spent decades without a name for any of it.

Then it gets practical. What nervous system regulation actually means on an ordinary Tuesday night (it’s not being zen 24/7), the accommodations she builds in as an introvert, and two small things you can try in the next ten minutes: one deep breath, and noticing glimmers, a term from Deb Dana’s work for small moments of joy. If breathwork doesn’t feel good for you, skip that one. We finish with This or That, including done is better than perfect versus one more pass, and Medicare paperwork versus a room full of strangers at a networking event.

If you’ve ever called yourself a fraud over something that should be easy, this one’s for you.

Free Burnout Recovery Toolkit (Gabrielle’s small steps you can start today): https://gabriellejulianovillani.com/healing-from-burnout/
Gabrielle’s website: https://gabriellejulianovillani.com

If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free and there’s no email required to use it: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

ADHD shame can keep you hiding for decades. Psychologist and ADHDer Joel Schwartz offers another way to see it: part of who you are, neither a gift nor a defect.

Joel is a licensed clinical psychologist who runs NeuroPathways, a neurodiversity affirming therapy and assessment practice in California. He calls himself an ADHDer, and he means it as an identity. In his words, “There’s no separating it.” He was diagnosed as a kid, he almost failed out of grad school, and the way he was treated back then shaped the work he does now.

We talk about what neurodiversity affirming therapy actually looks like, from the lights and the temperature in the room to letting you info dump about the concert you just went to, because until you do, nothing else is getting done. We get into the belief that a successful career rules ADHD out, and what it takes from you to keep hiding so nobody finds out you’re struggling. As Joel puts it, “It’s just so costly.”

Joel walks through what a good ADHD assessment should feel like, and the questions worth asking whoever does yours. We also talk about how ADHD can show up in men, and how to take the hard days and the real limits seriously without letting shame back in the door or pretending it’s all a gift. His lens is a neutral one. If somebody can’t use their legs, you offer a wheelchair and a ramp, and in his words, “There’s no shame in that.”

Then I ask what somebody can do this week to move one inch through the wall, and we play This or That, Star Wars or Star Trek included. Joel’s last answer is one I’m keeping: “You can’t not be you, so stop trying.”

Find Joel:
NeuroPathways: https://www.neuro-pathways.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-schwartz-psyd-40181614/

If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free, and there’s no email required to use it:
https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Moving or traveling abroad with ADHD can take more than a visa and a packing list. Tamarind Murrietta shares what to plan for before you go, not after you land.

Tamarind is the founder of Live Abroad with ADHD, a community for neurodivergent people who want to live, study and travel internationally in ways that actually work for them. She’s spent nearly two decades living across Europe, Africa and Asia. She isn’t a clinician or a coach; what she shares comes from her own years abroad and the people she’s met.

We talk about what comes after you land: finding your grocery store, getting a simple question answered without the language, and what happens when your first new friend isn’t that into you. In Tamarind’s words, “that person looks like a lifeline.”

She tells the story of her first midterms in grad school overseas, when she found out the testing accommodations she’d been promised only applied to her final exams, a year and a half away. It led to the line at the heart of this episode: “If you don’t know the question to ask, you can’t ask it.”

We also get into the sensory side of travel that nobody prepped me for, from why I’d rather walk Barcelona’s main strip early or late to the outdoor markets in Lagos, where an hour or two of picking up basic items could leave her done for the entire day. For the parents listening, she turns the question around and asks you to plan for yourself, not only your kid. And if you take medication, she makes the case for planning for it before you leave.

Then we play This or That: aisle or window, an overplanned itinerary or an open day, and learning 10 words of the language before you land.

CONNECT WITH TAMARIND MURRIETTA

Special link for Vibers (ADHD Traveler & Expat Community and a free ADHD International Travel Checklist): https://tr.ee/liveabroad_vibewithky

Her podcast, Live Abroad with ADHD, on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/liveabroadwithadhd/

CONNECT WITH KY

Website: https://thevibewithky.com/

Subscriber Hub: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky

Free Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

If this conversation brought something up for you, the Mental Health Resources Hub above is free and there’s no email required to use it.

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Time anxiety is that constant feeling that you’re behind, that time is running out, and that you should be doing something important right now, even when you can’t say what it is.

My friend Chris Guillebeau wrote a whole book about this feeling. Chris is a New York Times bestselling author, the host of the daily podcast Side Hustle School, and the founder of NeuroDiversion, an annual gathering of neurodivergent adults. He isn’t a clinician. He’s a writer who was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and knows this feeling from the inside.

We talk about the two sides of time anxiety: the big fear that you’ve missed your chance in life, and the daily feeling that there’s never enough time in the day. Chris tells me about the book manuscript he turned in four months late in his thirties, after a lot of outward success, and why getting more efficient isn’t the same as being effective.

I share what two large research reviews found about how people with ADHD judge time. It’s not everybody with ADHD, and plenty of people without ADHD feel this too. And if you got your ADHD diagnosis later in life and you’ve been counting the years since, this conversation is for you.

We also get into the time rules most of us follow without anyone asking us to, how depression changes what time anxiety feels like, a simple tip for anyone who’s always running late, and one question you can ask yourself at the end of today.

NeuroDiversion 2027 is March 24 to 27, 2027 in Austin, Texas. I’ll be there, and because you listen to this show, you get $50 off your ticket. Tickets go on sale in January.

NeuroDiversion 2027, $50 off your ticket: https://www.neurodiversion.org/thevibewithky

Time Anxiety, Chris’s book: https://timeanxiety.com/

You can also find Chris’s daily podcast, Side Hustle School, wherever you listen to podcasts.

If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free, with no email required: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

If you’re struggling right now, in the US you can call or text 988. In the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans at 116 123. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists local lines.

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Making friends with ADHD can be hard. Keeping them can be harder when it takes everything you have just to get through the day. So what do you do when you can’t find your people?

My guest is Trina Haynes, the founder of My Lady ADHD, a community for late-diagnosed women with ADHD, and a community builder with NeuroDiversion. She’s not a clinician, and neither am I. When Trina was diagnosed in her thirties, she went looking for one or two other women like her. She found about 200,000. She’s also a close friend of mine, and one of the people who welcomed me into the ADHD community.

We talk about a feeling a lot of you will recognize: sitting down at the end of the day and realizing you never texted that person back. Trina is honest about how that guilt piles up and what it does to your self-esteem.

Then we get practical: the small things that help her stay close to people, why she believes so many people are waiting for an invitation, and the idea at the center of this conversation. If you can’t find the community you’re looking for, you build it yourself. In Trina’s words, “No one is going to join your group if you don’t tell anyone about it.”

She also shares how her friend Meredith Carder changed the way she thinks about burnout, by planning each day around preventing it instead of waiting to crash.

And we talk about NeuroDiversion, where I finally met a lot of my online friends in person. NeuroDiversion 2027 is March 24 to 27, 2027 in Austin, Texas, for ADHD, autistic, and every other kind of neurodivergent person, plus the people who love them. The last two years sold out. I’ll be there, and I’m working with the organizers on something special for everyone who comes. Because you listen to this show, you get $50 off your ticket with the link below.

$50 off NeuroDiversion 2027: https://www.neurodiversion.org/thevibewithky

Trina on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myladyadhd/

Trina’s website: https://www.ladyadhd.net/

Meredith Carder’s book, It All Makes Sense Now: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748033/it-all-makes-sense-now-by-meredith-carder

If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Do you need an ADHD diagnosis to understand your own brain? Paul Bowers is 67, has never been formally assessed, and has spent decades learning how his brain works anyway.

Paul is a commercial photographer and video director with more than forty years behind the camera. He's not a clinician, and neither am I. He's also a motorcyclist, a mechanic, a landscape designer, a husband and a father, and for most of his life he heard one phrase as a put-down: jack of all trades, master of none.

We talk about what it's like to be good at a lot of things in a world that keeps asking you to pick one, and how one subject in school convinced Paul for decades that he was secretly stupid. He explains why so few people are actually qualified to notice what's going on, and what believing "nobody noticed, so it wasn't that bad" can cost in relationships.

Then we get into the question underneath this whole conversation: does it count without the paperwork? Paul is honest about why he never pursued an assessment. For him, the label matters less than knowing his own patterns. He describes the rejection sensitivity that still shows up before every interview he does, after photographing thousands of people. Rejection sensitive dysphoria isn't a formal diagnosis, but a lot of you will recognize it.

I also share a number from a 2020 meta-analysis of adults 50 and over: about 2 in 100 showed ADHD-level symptoms on validated scales, but only about 2 in 1,000 had a diagnosis in their medical records.

And Paul shares the one small thing he does on his own that changed how he sees himself, plus what he wrote on a label and stuck on his motorcycle throttle.

Paul's work lives on his website, and he's on Instagram.

Paul Bowers: https://www.paulmbowers.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulmbowers/

If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

They're not giving you a hard time, they're having one. That single sentence is the heart of autism support for grandparents, parents, teachers, and first responders.

Jennifer Kaufman is a school principal with over a decade serving students with autism in northern New Jersey, and the grandmother of a child with autism. She's an educator, not a clinician, and she's honest about the moment her expertise stopped being what her family needed. When her grandson was diagnosed, her daughter wasn't looking for a principal on the other end of the phone. She was looking for her mom.

We talk about why grandparents, who have raised kids of their own, can find this shift the hardest, and why following the parents' lead matters so much, because your adult child is the expert in their own child. Jennifer walks through the training she gives police officers, first responders, and campus security teams through First Response Autism, where the most useful strategies are often the simplest: more time to answer, lower lights, less noise, and removing the audience. She explains the curb cut effect, the idea that a change made for one group ends up helping everyone, and why meeting a student with curiosity over judgment changes what happens next.

When I asked her for one small thing anybody could start this week, her answer costs nothing. And near the end, she tells the story of a sentence her father said to her, and when he said it, which has carried her through the toughest times in her life.

Her book is Grandparenting on the Spectrum: A Journey from Both Sides of the Desk, and everything she does lives on her website.

Jennifer Kaufman: https://jenkaufman.com
Grandparenting on the Spectrum: https://www.grandparentingonthespectrum.com

If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

ADHD task paralysis is not a wanting problem. Brendan Mahan named the Wall of Awful, and he explains what is actually happening when a small task feels impossible.

There is something on your list right now. Not the big thing. The small one. The phone call, the form, the email you have opened four times and closed four times. At some point it stopped being a task and turned into evidence about you.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed., M.S., is an ADHD and executive function coach and consultant, a former teacher and mental health counselor, and the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast. He is not a clinician and does not practice as one. He is also the man who built the Wall of Awful, the model millions of people now use for that gap between wanting to do something and being able to start it.

He takes Ky back to the kitchen where he first said those words out loud, talking to a mother whose son would not start his homework. He explains why he refuses the word lazy, calling it an answer without a solution. And he draws a line that is hard to shake: if you forget to make a phone call, that is ADHD, that is working memory. If you know you should make it, pick the phone up, and put it back down, that is not ADHD. That is something else sitting on top of it.

They get into what forcing your way through by sheer will costs you, what changes when your bricks got built in doctors' offices instead of classrooms, and the smallest thing you can do tonight that costs nothing and needs nobody's permission.

Brendan's podcast, ADHD Essentials:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adhd-essentials/id1332788588

His first book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful: Why It's Hard to Get Things Done with ADHD, Autism, and Anxiety (and How to Do Them Anyway), out now from Balance:
https://brendanmahan.com/the-wall-of-awful-book/

Free mental health resources, no email required:
https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Rebellious curiosity means asking the question no one wants to ask, and answering it without blame. Dr. Yemi Penn says the one you've been waiting to save you is already you.

That is the heart of this conversation. Dr. Yemi Penn is an engineer by first profession who became a researcher, keynote speaker, and filmmaker, and she hosts the Decolonising Trauma podcast. She holds a PhD, and to be clear, she is not a clinician. What she offers is lived experience and years of research, not medical advice.

We get into what rebellious curiosity actually looks like day to day, how she went from an engineer who lived on fixed answers to a self-described Cultural Alchemist who "lives in the tolerance," and what it means to decolonise trauma, to step back from the one story we were all handed and ask what else might be true. Yemi walks through how to tell the difference between your real self and the inherited story running the show, and why the reality that feels most permanent might be one that is quietly keeping you company.

I also share something personal: the years my existential OCD kept me locked in a version of reality that felt one step from collapse, and how her framing genuinely reframed it for me. By the end, she leaves us with something Tarana Burke and Brene Brown said best, that you are your best thing, shadow parts and all. This one is warm and honest, and it lands somewhere hopeful without pretending the hard parts are not hard.

More from Dr. Yemi Penn:
Her podcast, Decolonising Trauma (a verified Apple or Spotify show URL unblocks this link)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.yemipenn/
Website: https://www.yemipenn.com

If you need support:
Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this is not medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Nobody prepares you for the second time. The first climb out of something hard gets support and attention. The second one is quieter, because you already used up the big reaction and you already told everybody you were okay.

Tim McDonald is living inside that right now. A few weeks before this conversation, he learned his cancer is back after almost six years. He is a patient advocate, a speaker, and the author of From Patient to Advocate, and he is a stage four colorectal cancer survivor and a liver transplant recipient speaking entirely from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice.

He explains, in his own words, what a blood test told him and why there is nothing to treat yet. He talks honestly about the first week, the one he calls mentally hellacious, when he was not eating much and doing the bare minimum and playing the what-if game he says he hates. Then he walks through the question that got him moving again: what has actually changed? His answer was that one piece of information changed, and everything else about his life was exactly the same.

From there the conversation turns to self-advocacy, and this is where it stops being about cancer. Tim did not wait for a referral. He researched, made his own calls, and drove eight hours round trip for a one hour appointment to reach the right expert. His first oncologist told him to get a second, third, tenth opinion and keep going until he believed what he was hearing. That applies just as directly in a psychiatrist's office, at an assessment, or with a GP who is not listening.

If something you thought you had put down has come back on you, whatever your version of that is, this one is for you.

Tim's book, From Patient to Advocate:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GL3BQMH6

Tim's website:
https://www.timmcdonaldadvocate.com/

Mental Health Resources Hub:
https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/

Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and his content is not medical advice.

Much love. Good vibes. - Ky