Something Shiny: ADHD‪!‬ David Kessler & Isabelle Richards

David and Isabelle welcome Ren, a fellow therapist with ADHD,  who digs into what was rough and unique about being homeschooled as a neurodivergent person. From the spaghettification-like transition to college, to the stereotypes of homeschooling as being for white Jesus-Jumper-wearing Christians (Duggar style), what it means to face things like frustrating and nonsensical busy work, a lack of structure, and learning how to study from television.  Tackling questions about confidence, self-image, and Dickensonian skull-caps. Part II of a series. 

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David wonders what different versions of homeschooling Ren was exposed to growing up—they describe a number of different structures, and that their family lived more on the structured side. Studies were more experiential, going to plays or museums or reading books on your own versus just listening to lectures. You’d do things based on your own pace, and it was almost entirely moms—a lot of it was birth order, the eldest kids had different experience because mom’s had more practice, and got a little more tired. Ren doesn’t want to pain too rosy a picture, it was a big struggle for many when they left the system and hit college—maybe more help with the big transition? Ren spent a lot of their first year of college depressed, going from being the ‘best’ by being a class of 1, do what I want when I want, to suddenly “you expect me to sit in this class multiple hours, multiple times a week, listening to you talk…and then do more stuff later?” Ren never had their time wasted by an authority figure, or the concept of busy work. Isabelle pictures this as a froyo shop model of education, where you get to try so many different things and combinations—a sense of autonomy and a sense of reassurance. In order to feel confident, you need to trust your experience, stealing from Good Inside with Dr. Becky. As caregivers we cut off emotional states, you can’t trust your own assessment of your own experience, and we’re coming in with a counter of “you don’t have to have that feeling,” because you don’t get a gauge for validation. Also offering empathy for Freshman-year Ren, like they saw through the Matrix and had already seen through it. Isabelle feels like the opposite of Ren—she went to school 6 days every week, she had a really old school Polish lessons on Saturdays based on the Polish school system. Isabelle is like the tame bird, while Ren feels like they were free and then were being told to go into a cage.  David is realizing he would not have survived if he was Ren—the hardest thing was everything they just described, he was oppositional, he’d drag his feet at everything. David almost saw this as spaghettification, like if you’re in two places of different pressures you’ll turn into spaghetti (see below, yikes, we edited out a more detailed and graphic description, be warned if you go down this rabbit hole). Ren walked into places with no defenses, which Ren relates to colonization, "oh hi, it's the Pilgrims again." They were touch-starved because as the eldest of 6, they hadn’t gone a day without someone in their space, but they were also failing at the thing they were good at, and they were supposed to learn how to study. They learned about how people do school on tv—they’d gather up their textbooks and just sit at the library for 7 hours because that’s what studying ‘looks like.’ They dealt with it by doing the closest thing to being a home schooler, which was being a theater major. An on-ramp would’ve been nice. Isabelle wants to mention that the part they edited out about spaghettification, if you went down the rabbit hole and it's a lot and you're not alone, and maybe we just trauma bonded and yikes. There was a developmental trajectory that moved more and more into a ‘feeling more free' direction—the more BS David could do, the more autonomy he got, and so he got rewarded for doing the BS which helped him later

David and Isabelle are delighted to be joined by their colleague, Ren, a fellow therapist who describes their journey to understanding their neurodivergence. From to what it was like growing up the eldest of six kids and being homeschooled until college, to how different it is to cope with our neurodivergence when we recognize that it's "for keeps," to how we have a "cartoon" of ourselves that can do it all. Covering questions about structure, how strange it is to remove the pressure of having anxiety all the time through medications and accommodations, and how White supremacy generates the myth that the world is a level or equal place for everyone. Part I of a series.

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David and Isabelle welcome their colleague and amazing friend, Ren! David is excited for Ren to share their story because they were not traditionally schooled, but were homeschooled from the second day of 1st grade. On the second day of 1st grade, a kid named Jack who had bullied them all through Kindergarten, was going to do the same thing in first grade, and their mom decided—how about we not? Also, connected to their parents not being pleased with the school system in St. Louis, and they were also evangelical Christian, which factored in. They came to their diagnosis later in life, when they were already working at the Willow Center with David and Isabelle, and their friend Robin was thinking about them being newly diagnosed, and Ren was listening going “it’s not that dramatic, that’s not ADHD?” Do they just think they have ADHD because they work with a bunch of openly neurodivergent people? Then Ren talked to Robin about it for about 12 hours and realized that they were. As part of diagnosis, people are often asked about school, and Ren was not only homeschooled, but fit the eldest daughter stereotype in that they were in charge of their own schooling. And of course their school record looks like everything is fine because they were in charge of their own progress and record. Isabelle wonders what some of the things Ren thought were “normal, not ADHD” were—what tipped them off? Ren describes that them and their friend were both people with advanced degrees, and a big history of anxiety—and the way boredom works and anxiety can serve as a way to self-medicate as an accommodation. It doesn't take three hours to stress yourself out to be able to do a task—the abstract of how you think. You’ve been working with static in your brain forever and everyone else is not doing the static? Ren has done a lot of identity work whereas this is a jacket that just fits—“I don’t have to work myself so hard to work.” David would brag “I just sat down and read the other day.” It’s incredible, I don’t have to fight to keep my eyes on one page, and then I retain it, and then I write about it. About 90% of their anxiety just went away. Isabelle names that when the anxiety is reduced so much, how does she get things done? It came before she was really conscious of accommodation strategies, it felt like she was unmasking way more rapidly than when she was conscious of it and replacing her anxiety with accommodations. It forced her to embrace all these limitations and then it made her feel icky to really face her actual limitations. Ren names that it was different when it is “for keeps” — and Isabelle used to think she had limitless potential but actually now she has to accept the page has been cut off. It serves her more to admit she can’t—but anxiety told me I could, if I just did more! Ren describes it as cartoon you—and also cartoon partner—the real person has limits, and you see yourself as a cartoon that’s limitless, and that contrast can motivate you, but also not. David wasn’t sitting in anxiety as much as shame, and the ADHD diagnosis came later in the life, and all of a sudden the world was not longer level, but had ice shelfs and ridges, and much more complicated environment, meant that he could unpack shame.

In this hodgepodge of truth bombs, David and Isabelle cover a bit about how menopause and hormonal changes make it less rewarding to help others, how to assume your partner is doing more than you and turn tedious tasks into bigger wins, and how much we still need positive reinforcement as adults. That David and Isabelle explore the truth that in every silverware drawer there is a good spoon and a bad fork...and the return of David's beloved industrial-pack of fruit leather for a true ice cream win.

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We talk all about how kids need routine and structure and compassion and positive reinforcement, but you’re going about your life as a parent or adult, and you may want to yell “I need an adult!” And there is no one. David then names that parents beat themselves up because we didn’t do the taxes or whatever—but you just needed help. How much you need to do in a day, it is an impossible task. People that get everything done in a day are not happy. Isabelle shares that it helps her to stay busy when she’s taking care of everything all the time instead of staying present when she’s understimulated by playing with kids in activities she’s not super jazzed about (despite her kids being incredible!) What does it mean to chronically take care of everyone’s needs…and then menopause hits and suddenly, after perhaps toxically trying to take care of everyone all the time and making that where you get your sense of value from, you have to reset? This brings up all the hormonal shifts women experience throughout life—puberty, menstrual cycles, trying to conceive, pregancies, perimenopause and menopause (technically perimenopause lasts on average 3-5 years and menopause lasts on average 7-14 years, so I guess it’s a 10-20 year span depending). David names that dopamine bonds to estrogen, you will naturally feel good taking care of people, and then all of a sudden it cuts off, it’s gone—so doing the things you used to no longer provides any enjoyment and what do you do now? Acknowledging that no one talks about it and partners are left flummoxed. Isabelle is standing on her little rebounder/trampoline and almost fell off because it was hitting her that this makes so much sense but also, WTF?!  Why isn’t this a part of our larger conversation? Because everywhere in medicine, we are following a history and setup that is designed to care for cis, White men and we’re missing so many people and leaving people feeling like they’re doing something wrong. In his day to day, David tries to be extra careful about what he makes other people responsible for, and actively attempts to take things off of someone else’s plate. Because he can see this affecting everyone in his life—checking his male privilege. But beyond this, it’s also that he assumes his partner is doing more than him at all times—whether this is true or not. It changes the establishing operation and puts new value onto the little things. It means because we take the hit we will do it for our team or our group member. It makes tedious tasks into being more important. As a parent you are also busy parenting yourself, you have to see yourself through things as an adult, and you practice doing it for yourself. For neurodivergent folx, we can struggle with identifying with the internal states we have or our emotions or expressing the emotion. Isabelle finds it is easier to externalize her feelings, like visualizing a little you needing things and speaking to that little you makes it easier for her to figure out what she's actually feeling and needing. Also comes from not having a bunch of fellow neurodivergent people around you sometimes, if there is no person around you to validate you, your experience gets missed--you need to get that mirrored back. It's like being a room of neurodivergent people and suddenly feeling that someone else gets how in every drawer there is a "good spoon" and a "bad fork." Isabelle deeply concurs. There are bad forks!

How do you teach yourself (and/or children) how to stop, especially when you want to keep going/overcommitting/hyperfocusing? Like videogames, sugar, saying yes to everyone and being—anything addictive—how do you actually stop? David and Isabelle explore the difference between maximizing your time and actually setting reality checks for time blindness (which is real! We have FIVE MINUTES, after all…), how we experientially learn how to start/spot hyper focus things (when we have opportunity to do them), operationalizing and externalizing tasks, and digging into parenting strategies like punishments and limits (not just for parents, btw). 

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It’s a dog whistle, if anyone listens to our show not on double speed, they are our friend, welcome to team shiny. Isabelle is still digesting the idea of what it means to put things down, to pause, to slow down, to ask herself “is now the time to do the thing?” And she wonders if this comes up against how rough time blindness is real. The idea that things are either now or not now. If she doesn’t do it now, when she’s thinking of it, and she has the wherewithal to do it—she’s going to forget it and not do it. She’s gotten ten messages at the same time telling her “multitasking is not great” and find a way to do one thing at a time, and in a sequence. But she does better with more stimulation, so isn’t more is better in terms of keeping more tabs open at the same time? Which David agrees, if we close a tab, we’re never going to remember about the website, we have to have tabs open—the way we see the world, and object relations. When we put things on a table, it just becomes a part of the table. You won’t notice it again until someone says something about it and you have to address it. There is an immediacy to things. David wants to rebrand what multitasking is, we have to find new ways to think of time. There was a TikTok where someone goes “5 minutes is an eternity, but 300 seconds is not an eternity” if David thought he had 300 seconds he might not do so much, but if it’s five minutes he’s going to do ten things like change jacket and switch shoes and start dishes and unload laundry.  We will naturally try to maximize what we’re doing in a time frame. And the end of time is a transition—it’s really hard to stop and complete the task. The dilemma is: how many things can we do in this moment in time so we feel like we’ve maximized the 15 pounds of material in the 10 pound bag. There is a lot of starting on 18 things—but then the same thing happens, all those things in motion become part of the scenery, and then we’re stuck without the things we didn’t complete. So when we stack our time with 10 things, we lose every time because we have 5 things we don’t complete. Isabelle is into embroidery, her new hyperfixation—it’s always a loss to put it down, and it hits extra hard to stop hyperfocus. And then there's the thing where she doesn't want to do something and she has five minutes and she’s going to do so much before she gets to her doctor’s appointment. This is not dissimilar to how she habitually overcommits herself. Of course she wants to help, and it's always a yes, it’s always enthusiastic consent. But when she's faced with doing it, she feels total failure, and it connects to the thing where actually she feels like she’s failing even more. David is clarifying: one intervention is just for one person. So for David, he puts on his good day socks and thinks of something to do—so he makes a note. Then, when he has a pocket of time in his day, he looks at his list of things and picks one—he knows he cannot do them all. But then Isabelle wonders: how do you remember to only do one thing? David names that this connects to hyper focus and momentum, like when Isabelle is getting into the knitting—to which she replies, no, it is not knitting, where you count stitches, she cannot do that. This is embroidery, wher

Why is it that I have 1000 planners/calendars/whiteboards and still forget stuff all the time? It’s not you, it’s them: they don’t ask you to attend to them, they are passive things that don’t ask you to attend to them. David and Isabelle dig into why voice assistants (like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri) are a potentially useful neurodivergent accommodation strategy—and no judgment if you value your privacy above the outsourcing your working memory. Covering visual timers, what to avoid if you’re setting up a reminder program, and the power of a slow clap.  

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Isabelle does not like to be scheduling, she likes to have scheduled. She does not like to holiday, she likes to have had a holiday season. During the recent holiday break, it was a structureless day, the kids were home, Bobby was working, and Isabelle was in one room all day, and realized how much of her executive functioning short circuited, and also how much her memory is reliant upon changing rooms, and sequences of physical actions, all of which were missing because everyone was on break and out of routine. So she found a cheap system for a voice assistant. And it has been game changing for her family. It doesn't have to live inside her head, the routines, the rhythms. There is an external nag doing the nagging for her and the rest of the family. She wonders why all her planners and lists and things don’t do it but this voice assistant does? David explains that it’s because it comes to you, you don’t have to go to it to get the information. Unless it exploded or fired out papers into the world, you have to attend to it to be reminded. It’s a partner in executive functioning. Instead of having to outsource it to your partner so much. You can program skills, sequences of actions, routines, etc. Kids are learning a whole sequence but I don’t have to teach them all the time. A lot of people ask us for parenting help, and we can talk about all the strategies to do to change behavior. The most important thing you can do is notice when they’re doing something good. When it tells them to do the thing, and they do this thing, you get to come in and celebrate them and notice it. This is a big gift it has given Isabelle and her family: instead of interacting around a stress point, and we get frustrated with the system instead of with each other.  You can program it to applaud, and it has a feature where you get it to slow clap, and Isabelle names they  have a legit slow clap in the house, and the kids love it. What you’re seeing is why this works, it is a legit intervention. Those kinds of systems are not always helpful for people. Isabelle learned the hard way that it was left on storytelling for too long and wild and they had to wrangle in a more soothing bedtime routine. But as David reminds us, if you’re not listening to it as it reminds you, you will learn to never listen to it. Same as with a visual timer, you have to keep yourself to it, because otherwise you are learning to ignore. Isabelle has a certain feature where she has to answer a question to a reminder, the beeping doesn’t go away unless you interact with it. Also, setting up timers with music, setting environmental cues through music and setting up an ambience with parts of their routine. David never uses timers, because he only uses them when it’s go-time. He’s a person who really values privacy. It’s an emotional battle, unless you’ve gone through the options to change your phone settings, they are listening to it. The different options are essentially a whiteboard that speaks to you, a diary that buzzes after you, a friend that doesn’t forget—you do have those resources if you don’t have this device. This is also so you know you can find options that aren’t digital—but be careful of overly depending on people, because dependency breeds aggression, and that is one of the things about these robot overlords, are you can be as depend

Isabelle struggles with the idea of doing 'little yucks' because her to-do list is endless, she never stops, and the demands on her feel endless--how can you even think about what you need or stop to rest without feeling guilty/lost/overwhelmed with unstructured time? David counters with a behavioral truth bomb: the power of knowing your establishing operation. What levers did the environment around you press?
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Isabelle wonders whether she even knows what a little yuck is; she turns everything else in to a big yuck, or a bunch of ‘to-do’s’ — for David, a little yuck helps the larger household, but the timing and the coping of it is just for you. Like doing the dishes so he can prep for a speech, or laundry (even though he had just done laundry) because he wants the option to wear a certain pair of pants. The same energy level existed, it was not on today’s to-do list, and he just did it to keep moving his hands. Isabelle is suffering from a blindspot here: she doesn’t really permit herself to do a little yuck, then return to something you enjoy…but she doesn’t have a to-do list anymore? That feels impossible, she doesn’t know how to not to-do list. David describes how he doesn’t have a written to-do list, it’s connected to a day off physical routine and he calls a friend and then goes for it. But for his to-do list on his day off, when he didn’t have a bunch of things he had to do. He held back from going off the rails and doing too much, he actually held back and stuck to his easy-level plans. Isabelle describes how she does not like to cook or bake, but if she can do it at her leisure, then she enjoys it. She embraces doing it without pressure and she doesn’t feel the chore of it. But the load of things she has to do feels endless, she has never carved out the time where there is nothing for her to do…she doesn’t have the experience of time where something is not expected of her, or she doesn’t expect it of herself. David’s boat is privileged in that he doesn’t have kids and he is not a super person. He is very aware of how much time is taken from someone around childcare, he sees parents doing everything, and doing everything you need or everything your child needs, you can’t really do both. The messages from society is “you’re not allowed to take care of you,” or “you’re supposed to take care of other people.” This feels more like a “mom” thing than a “dad” thing—but it's not accurate. When we’re talking about trying to find the little yuck in Isabelle’s life, the equation is different. For Isabelle, in her world, there are several agents of chaos that enter and are rerouted to priority, and there’s never a moment where she can’t be interrupted or distracted from whatever is happening. There isn’t enough time to feel the thought “I have a lot of energy and there’s nowhere for it to go.” She thinks of a meme she saw where a woman ushers her family out the door. And she finally has time to herself; does she sit and stare at a wall or does she panic clean? Isabelle really struggles with making a decision with what to do with her time when she doesn’t have the constant demands, the volley of little yucks stops, but then why does she choose a little yuck? David goes really complicated, with this thing called an establishing operation.  The behavioral word for how a little rat, trained to run a maze, is rewarded by a drop of water; the rat loves the water and does lots of work for the water, but rats don’t naturally love water this much. So the establishing operation is to withhold water from the rat for 24 hours first: the establishing operation changes the reinforcement of the reinforcer. So the yuck meter for Isabelle is totally blown out. So you have to take into account what is the establishing operation for her—and it might be that what do you do to make this time guilt-free or how you set it up to make it yours. What can you do so y