Ash and Cam discuss their upcoming summer break and reflect on the topics covered in the fourth season of their podcast, Translating ADHD. They mention the importance of taking breaks and planning for the future. They recap the various themes explored throughout the season, such as the complexity of ADHD, lived experiences, race and culture, hierarchy of needs, purpose, relationships, the adrenaline response cycle, being misunderstood, advocating for oneself, and wrapping up the season with disruption.

They also mention the potential changes coming to the show, including a possible soft reboot and a focus on sharing more of the coaching process. They express their gratitude to their listeners and discuss the power of language and connection in understanding and navigating the ADHD experience. Cam shares his interest in revisiting and reworking models, particularly the Mount Rainier model, and exploring the nexus of neurodiversity, emotion and leadership. They encourage listeners to embrace curiosity and continue to advocate for themselves. They express their gratitude for the podcast and their ongoing collaboration with each other, and they look forward to their return on the 18th of September for season five.

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The hosts culminate the current theme of disruption and ADHD by exploring how change and disruption can fundamentally change one’s relationship with their ADHD. We often think that once we learn about our ADHD and lock into effective tools, practices and perspectives that our relationship with our ADHD will become fairly immutable. Just like any relationship, though, life events both planned and unplanned will change the dynamic of a relationship, including our relationship with our ADHD.

Ash and Cam discuss the challenges Ash is currently facing with his executive functioning and challenges of managing his ADHD. Ash acknowledges his struggle and the recent discovery of this significant change. Cam points out how Ash had to get both vulnerable and curious to make this observation. Even seasoned ADHD coaches like Ash have to re-navigate their own Understand, Own, Translate process.

Ash reflects on his recent experiences and major life events, including the pandemic, divorce, moving to a new home, his father's passing, his child coming out and his own transition. Ash discusses how these events have led him to reevaluate his relationships, especially with his mother and her family, and how these events allowed him to prioritize authenticity and integrity.

Asher shares the emotional and physical changes he has experienced, as well as the challenges of navigating his ADHD alongside hormonal changes. The discussion touches on the need to let go of expectations of returning to a previous "normal" and embracing the journey of self-discovery and adaptation. Cam highlights the dynamic nature of change and the challenges of pinning down and understanding evolving situations. They discuss the importance of shifting from binary thinking to journey thinking, accepting that change is a continuous process. Ash shares his personal journey of self-acceptance and finding new ways to navigate his ADHD and gender transition.

The episode concludes with Ash expressing gratitude for the support and love he has received from listeners and the greater community. Ash is grateful for the platform to share his story as a trans person and continue their work on the podcast.

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Ash and Cam continue to discuss the topic of disruptions in the context of ADHD. They reflect on previous episodes where they talked about daily hiccups and bigger life disruptions. In this episode, they explore the concept of the new normal all of us are facing, especially post pandemic, and the challenges it poses for those of us with ADHD. They address a paradox with change, where we crave novelty and spontaneity but struggle with unexpected disruptions. They also discuss current disruptions in the world today, such as supply chain issues and medication shortages.

Both hosts share client stories regarding the medication shortage, touching on the frustrations and the difficulties in obtaining prescriptions, as well as the impact on individuals' executive functioning. They mention the importance of tending to one's nervous system and finding ways to relax and reduce stress in order to navigate the constant disruptions of the new normal. Finally, they encourage listeners to take stock of their experiences and consider the challenges they have overcome over the past five years.

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In this episode, Ash and Cam discuss the concept of life disruptions and how individuals with ADHD can navigate them. They start by reflecting on smaller disruptions and the opportunity to anticipate them to achieve better outcomes. They mention the ADHD assumption that life should be free of disruptions harkening back to the concept of greenlight planning.

They then transition to discussing more significant disruptions that require pivoting towards a new normal. Ash shares an example of a client whose adult daughter had a traumatic fall, leading her to move across the country temporarily. They highlight the importance of recognizing when there's no opening for change and supporting clients through disruptions. They also mention the importance of reconnecting clients to what they already know, such as their values, needs, and strengths. They discuss how coaching can prepare clients for pivots and provide resources to navigate disruptions.

Another example is given of a client who lost their job and returned to coaching to reconnect with their identity beyond their previous position. The conversation emphasizes the significance of reconnecting with knowledge and perspectives amidst disruptions. They also discuss how disruptions can lead to new opportunities and the importance of reevaluating goals and priorities. The hosts highlight the challenges of being in a limbo state for individuals with ADHD and the need to find ways to make progress while accepting limitations. Ash and Cam discuss how coaching can play a role in helping clients manage disruptions, navigate new normals, and make choices aligned with their values and aspirations.

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After a deep dive into being misunderstood with ADHD, Asher and Cam pivot to managing disruptions with ADHD. They start by looking at the smaller variety of disruptions that are a part of modern living. Ash separates these into internal and external categories. Small external disruptions are the ones like hiccups in our calendars, when things don't go according to plan. Internal disruptions are those where we start to hyper-focus on a thought or feeling, a misstep or a miscue. Cam introduces the concept of expectation inertia that can come into play with external disruptions. We can really struggle when plans don’t go according to plan, or as Ash explains with a client example, when we are faced with a "different kind of month,” say one with an abundance of birthday celebrations.

Ash continues to share another client example where awareness and self-compassion, along with a practice of anticipating little disruptions, can open the door for real change. Discerning what we can and can not control really matters in managing disruptions. Cam finishes out the episode with a client example where a client kept getting tripped up by the shifting roles through the year. Thinking about these periods as seasons helped to anticipate the impending changes about to occur.

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Asher and Cam shift from advocating one’s value at work to discussing how to deliver one’s value. This brings in the universal question from one of our earliest episodes (ep 10 and 11) -  Why do I not do what I know I ought to do? Ash and Cam spend considerable time talking about what value work is and typical barriers to delivering value work. Value work is often the work that is not necessarily in a job description and that no one is expecting to see today. Here in lies an ADHD dilemma - How do you deliver consistent value work when it keeps slipping off your To-Do list to the next day?

The hosts share a series of obstacles from the tyranny of the urgent, to the challenge of perfection. They share a few client examples and invite clients to locate advocates to discuss and develop space for getting touches on the high value work. They dig deep into the meaning of completion and how an iterative process of experimentation can help develop best practices here. Common themes like journey thinking and pause, disrupt, pivot are visited.

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Asher and Cam have discussed advocacy in past episodes but not in the context of the current theme of being misunderstood. The hosts share lots of client examples of advocating for one’s needs and how each situation is dependent on several factors. Is the environment a safe place to share and advocate? Is it more ADHD or more about challenges beyond our control? They discuss how we tend to not communicate our value assuming it is known and how advocating is nearly impossible when you don’t see yourself in the picture. The hosts emphasize that it takes time in the coaching process to discover challenges clients are facing and they encourage listeners to do the same when considering support at work. They share the BEANS acronym from previous episodes - Boundaries, Expectations, Agreements, Needs and Safety focusing mostly on the latter two. They share what needs to be present in an environment to advocate (respect, clear mission and roles and safety) and red flags to be wary of (politics, unwritten rules, ego and intense emotionality). Cam shares an example of one client’s journey from a challenging environment to one that is supportive and engaging. Both discuss how confidence is something that is a product of effective advocacy, signals of reassurance and feeling like a contributing member of an organization.

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Asher and Cam stay with the being misunderstood with ADHD theme and take a big step back to look at the larger context of trying to seek understanding and support in a world quick to judge everything ADHD. Cam shares how a recent BCC investigative news story on private ADHD clinics in the UK unleashed a torrent of follow up stories - common fear-based themes that ADHD is overdiagnosed, that the medicines are not beneficial and stories that call into question the very existence of ADHD.

Seeking support personally and professionally is an ever changing obstacle course when people and organizations have such strong opinions about something they know very little about. Everything we’ve known about ADHD has been reinforced by research and advances in neuroimaging - that ADHD is cognitive in nature, that it is a neuro-developmental condition and that it is hereditary, that it impacts the executive function center of the brain and that it can have a dramatic effect on our ability to have agency and fulfillment in our lives.

Asher makes a key distinction between advocating for oneself and advocacy, where the latter is about general education to create greater systemic change and the former is about identifying specific areas of support for a specific situation. Ash also discusses the meaning of a label, and how ADHD is a starting place to create change. He also discusses the misunderstanding gap and compares the ADHD lived experience with his trans lived experience - that as a trans ally he made assumptions about what it is to be trans. No one can know your lived experience like you, so don’t let their strong feelings define your reality.

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Asher and Cam continue in the vein of being misunderstood with ADHD, and how we can create our own misunderstanding in the form of red herrings that distract us from the real challenges and real opportunities at work. When we let fear inform our behavior, we can manage by avoidance.

Managing by avoidance is to avoid looking bad or to avoid not having the answer. We will avoid rocking the boat or avoid the spotlight. When we embrace journey thinking and look for the learning opportunity in every situation, we can start to get a clearer picture of the real dilemmas we are facing at work and the real opportunities at hand. Ash and Cam share numerous client stories to illustrate this dilemma and how listeners can start down this all-important path to change.

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• Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode