Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. In today's episode and in part two, we
Speaker 1: talk very frankly about ADHD and all that that means
Speaker 1: over the lifetime of a person who has it. So
Speaker 1: if you're a parent with a kiddo who has ADHD,
Speaker 1: maybe considered listening by yourself first before you share it
Speaker 1: with them. Just a thought. Hope you enjoy these episodes.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w chuck'bryan, and there's Jerry Jerome Roland. You
Speaker 1: put the three of us together and you got yourself
Speaker 1: a podcast called Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3: That's right. And this is the.
Speaker 4: Sort of long simmering we've had it on the back
Speaker 4: burner down to as low as a consummer. You had
Speaker 4: many many months the ADHD. What is now to be
Speaker 4: a two part episode because we've had I mean, that's
Speaker 4: not why we're splitting it up, but we have had
Speaker 4: a lot of requests for this over the years, and
Speaker 4: you know, it's big that could certainly be more than
Speaker 4: two episodes. And as much as I wanted to try
Speaker 4: and split this up into AD and HD for fun,
Speaker 4: and it kind of doesn't work that way, so we're
Speaker 4: just gonna split it up into two parts.
Speaker 1: I think you're more thinking of ac DC.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, that's that's what I think it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I gotcha, No, chuck.
Speaker 1: Instead, today we're talking about ADHD, which stands for attention
Speaker 1: deficit hyperactivity disorder. Kind of wordy, but it really does
Speaker 1: get the point across because with ADHD, I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of people are familiar with it, especially the people
Speaker 1: who requested it. It's a I'm not exactly sure exactly
Speaker 1: what kind of disorder it is, whether it's a mental disorder,
Speaker 1: a personality disorder, an externalizing disorder. There's actually a lot
Speaker 1: of debate about it, but essentially, it's where people have
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble paying attention, sitting still focusing, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other stuff that we'll talk about, and
Speaker 1: you put it all together and it can make life
Speaker 1: kind of hard to navigate. And at first we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it a lot more. But kids, it used to
Speaker 1: be like little boys fidgeting essentially was what ADHD or
Speaker 1: ADD at the time was considered. But over time it's
Speaker 1: really kind of expanded. We've realized way more girls have
Speaker 1: it than we thought before, and we've also come to
Speaker 1: realize that adults have it too, and that's a I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a really big, huge disorder, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people just kind of use it as shorthand, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I forgot my keys, it's my ADHD or something like that.
Speaker 1: But the more you know about it, the more you
Speaker 1: realize it's a genuinely debilitating disorder that people have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes you may lose your keys.
Speaker 1: It's true, that is a big part of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not wrong about that.
Speaker 3: One for sure.
Speaker 4: So you know, when it comes to something like this,
Speaker 4: that is only and I mean, honestly, in the last
Speaker 4: like twenty five ish years, really come more into focus
Speaker 4: as far as our understanding of it.
Speaker 3: When you look.
Speaker 4: Back through medical and you know, psychiatric literature, you're going
Speaker 4: to see it pop up. They just didn't know what
Speaker 4: it was at the time. And in this case you
Speaker 4: can probably go back all the way to the eighteenth
Speaker 4: century with a Scottish physician named Sir Alexander Crichton, who
Speaker 4: in his seventeen eighty nine book talked about children who
Speaker 4: were unable to focus on one thing at a time
Speaker 4: and you know, it's one of those clear cases kind
Speaker 4: of like, oh, well, it was probably somebody with ADHD.
Speaker 4: It is not just a modern condition because kids eat
Speaker 4: too much sugar and they have screens in their lives.
Speaker 4: Screens can we'll talk about that. Can certainly, you know,
Speaker 4: make things worse, But it's not like, oh, because people
Speaker 4: are so busy and there's too many distractions these days,
Speaker 4: and back in the olden times when there were no distractions,
Speaker 4: people didn't suffer from something like this. It's just not
Speaker 4: true when you hear about some of these old descriptions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, not at all. And our understanding of it
Speaker 1: has progressed like over the centuries. But it is interesting
Speaker 1: that it started in the eighteenth century because I mean
Speaker 1: Crichton nailed it on the head, like he's like, there's
Speaker 1: definitely something here, and I guess it just kind of
Speaker 1: stayed there for a little while until nineteen oh two
Speaker 1: when a pediatrician from the UK named Sir George Frederick.
Speaker 1: Still ironically, yeah, I thought that too. He described children
Speaker 1: who had a defect of moral control, which is essentially
Speaker 1: saying that these are kids who have troubled delaying gratification,
Speaker 1: not thinking about negative consequences when they carry out actions,
Speaker 1: and that's impulsivity. That's what we call it today, is impulsivity.
Speaker 1: And that's what Still was essentially describing at the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the thirties, some more descriptors came along from
Speaker 4: the courtesy of some German physicians I named Franz Kramer
Speaker 4: and Hans pol No in this case talking about more
Speaker 4: of the hyperactivity side of things. And then about five
Speaker 4: years after that, still in the nineteen thirties, in nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty seven, a big I guess breakthrough came along when
Speaker 4: a doctor for the Rhode Island Facility for Children with
Speaker 4: neurological problems, saying Charles Bradley was doing an experiment where
Speaker 4: he was doing a imaging test on the brain, and specifically,
Speaker 4: in this case with kids, he was draining some brain
Speaker 4: or some fluid around the brain. Rather gave the kids headaches,
Speaker 4: he treated them with benza dream, which is an amphetamine,
Speaker 4: And what he found out was, Wow, this doesn't seem
Speaker 4: to make any intuitive sense, but giving these children amphetamines
Speaker 4: is at least for about half of them, made them
Speaker 4: less vigety and more focused, and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you're onto a pharmaceutical potential, pharmaceutical treatment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what a way to accidentally stumble into that,
Speaker 1: because even today we're not exactly sure how stimulants like
Speaker 1: take care of ADHD symptoms. We just know they really
Speaker 1: really work. Luckily, this doctor was like quick complaining, take
Speaker 1: some benz adream and shut up little.
Speaker 3: Kids, and back then the kids obeyed, So.
Speaker 1: There was a so that was actually kind of a
Speaker 1: diversion nineteen thirty seven when when Charles Bradley discovered this
Speaker 1: that amphetamines treat ADHD, it didn't like take off like wildfire,
Speaker 1: because there was an interim period between then and like
Speaker 1: the fifties where psychiatrists and psychologists were like, all this
Speaker 1: stuff needs to just be talked out through psychoanalysis. That's
Speaker 1: how you treat you know, mental disorders. And in the
Speaker 1: fifties finally people were like, no, let's start prescribing drugs.
Speaker 1: And one of the first companies was Siba Geige pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're definitely going to go out of business
Speaker 1: if that's the name of your pharmaceutical company. But they're
Speaker 1: the first ones who developed Riddlin. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that the guy who developed the drug leandro penzone penizone.
Speaker 1: His wife was named Rita and he named it as.
Speaker 3: That's right, lovely Rita.
Speaker 4: So it was the first half of the twentieth century
Speaker 4: when things started to change, you know, you know not
Speaker 4: I guess I could say begin in earnest as far
Speaker 4: as researching this kind of thing. A lot of like
Speaker 4: research into brain injuries were happening at the time, and
Speaker 4: they thought that, well, hey, this is what's going on
Speaker 4: with any kind of developmental issue. It's almost certainly a
Speaker 4: brain injury. That can be the case for sure with
Speaker 4: all kinds of developmental issues, including ADHD in this case.
Speaker 4: But in the nineteen sixties that started to go out
Speaker 4: of favor a little bit and they started to realize that, hey,
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: actually distinct conditions, and you can't just lump them all
Speaker 4: in there and say it's because a kid hit his
Speaker 4: head when they were young.
Speaker 1: No. So in the late sixties, the DSM two, the sequel,
Speaker 1: the introduced to diagnosis called hyperkinetic Reaction of childhood and
Speaker 1: it's essentially ADHD that they were talking about, And this
Speaker 1: is the first time it showed up in psychiatry or
Speaker 1: it's like, this is actually a thing. We just aren't
Speaker 1: clear what to name it yet, clearly because we're calling
Speaker 1: it hyperkinetic reaction of childhood. And within a decade and
Speaker 1: a half we finally had it nailed down to attention
Speaker 1: deficit disorder ADD, which people of our age, that was
Speaker 1: what the name we were first exposed to. For sure,
Speaker 1: it was not ADHD, this new fangled version. It was
Speaker 1: ad D and that's the way it was, and you.
Speaker 3: Liked it, right, right.
Speaker 4: ADD had a couple of subtypes depending on whether there
Speaker 4: was hyperactivity involved, but they it wasn't like a part
Speaker 4: of the actual definition at this point. I think seven
Speaker 4: years later it finally landed upon I guess this would
Speaker 4: be nineteen eighty seven. But a junior, I'm sorry, sophomore
Speaker 4: in high school?
Speaker 1: How is eleven?
Speaker 3: Oh, you were just a cute little eleven year old.
Speaker 4: How was a well I didn't get pimples, luckily, but
Speaker 4: it would be pimply faced teenager when ADHD finally rolls
Speaker 4: through the door. And I think if you had no
Speaker 4: hyperactivity attached at that time, it could it was called
Speaker 4: undifferentiated ADD Right am I.
Speaker 3: Saying all this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I think so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You totally.
Speaker 4: And then in the nineties, another big breakthrough came through
Speaker 4: when they found out, hey, there's a genetic component to
Speaker 4: all this, and there are actually a lot of.
Speaker 3: Adults that have this.
Speaker 4: We thought kids just grew out of this kind of thing,
Speaker 4: but now adults are saying, like when they're diagnosing like
Speaker 4: gen xers, basically diagnosing their kids, they're saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: that sounds a lot like me, maybe I have it,
Speaker 4: and oh, my goodness, I do, and that maybe also
Speaker 4: why my kid has it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the reasons why they used to think
Speaker 1: it was just a child the disorder that you grew
Speaker 1: out of was because the first batch of kids with
Speaker 1: ADHD or ADD they weren't followed into adulthood. They stopped
Speaker 1: studying them after they were kids, so they just didn't
Speaker 1: think about it. And then also, and this is really
Speaker 1: sad if you think about this as an adult. As
Speaker 1: you grow up, you get so good at masking your
Speaker 1: symptoms in order to blend into society totally that researchers
Speaker 1: were unaware that there was a whole group of people
Speaker 1: with a disorder that was just went unrecognized because they
Speaker 1: were good at disguising it, which is a huge part
Speaker 1: of ADHD, and it turns out just being neurodiverse in general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And we'll get to masking more in
Speaker 4: a little bit. But another revision in ninety four in
Speaker 4: the DSM finally divided ADHD up into three types, the
Speaker 4: enotent of type, hyperactive impulsive type, and then the combined type,
Speaker 4: which is both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where we are today.
Speaker 3: Right where we are today.
Speaker 4: But you know, the more we learn, I feel like
Speaker 4: every ten years that there's another change.
Speaker 3: So who knows where it's gonna stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just going to keep adding letters. Maybe, So
Speaker 1: I say we take a break and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about how this whole thing kind of works in
Speaker 1: the brain.
Speaker 3: As far as we know, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Definitely should know a.
Speaker 5: Y s K. Lately I've been learning some stop about
Speaker 5: insoma or aluminia.
Speaker 2: How about the one on border like disorder, that ynder order,
Speaker 2: that one be warm But it was so nice I
Speaker 2: learned this, why definitely, body listen, stop stop.
Speaker 3: Chuck.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if I said it already, but I
Speaker 1: have ADHD myself. What Yeah, And then Jerry does too.
Speaker 1: It turns out this is the most amazing part of this.
Speaker 1: Jerry and I were diagnosed within like a week of
Speaker 1: each other, and we both told you on the same day,
Speaker 1: and you found out that you were the only third
Speaker 1: of stuff you should know that doesn't have ADHD.
Speaker 4: Now, and I was like, oh, this is great to
Speaker 4: know here fifteen years into our career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm surrounded.
Speaker 4: I'm surrounded. But you guys are both wonderful and understanding
Speaker 4: this stuff helps everybody understand things because, as you'll see
Speaker 4: throughout this episode, ADHD affects you, and it affects your parents,
Speaker 4: your loved ones, your partners, your business partners. And I
Speaker 4: think the more people understand all this stuff, the more
Speaker 4: empathy we can all have for each other.
Speaker 1: That sounded like a really word prey children's book.
Speaker 3: About ADHD, not a kid's book writer. Even though we
Speaker 3: have a kid's book exactly.
Speaker 1: That still holds true. So Chuck, there's like it's clear,
Speaker 1: like you said, they have a genetic or they found
Speaker 1: a genetic component to this whole thing. They've also found
Speaker 1: that there are definite differences in brain structure with people
Speaker 1: who have ADHD. The brains are just simply physically different.
Speaker 1: One of the things is that they're smaller in places,
Speaker 1: like they have less volume. Maybe some parts are thinner,
Speaker 1: some parts maybe thicker. And it's really important to point
Speaker 1: out that brain size is not relative to intelligence. So
Speaker 1: if you're verin smaller doesn't mean like you aren't intelligent.
Speaker 1: And maybe here's a really good place to point out
Speaker 1: that one of the things that I think is kind
Speaker 1: of overlooked about people with ADHD is they have the
Speaker 1: same thoughts and feelings and emotions that anybody else does.
Speaker 1: It's just that they have trouble regulating those emotions and
Speaker 1: regulating those behaviors that the same impulses that everybody else
Speaker 1: gets can slip through with a person with ADHD. That
Speaker 1: that damper that's like, well, I can't do that because
Speaker 1: it's socially unacceptable that neurotypical people have is kind of
Speaker 1: absent for the most part in people with ADHD unless
Speaker 1: they're really paying attention and trying to hold it back.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And what's you know fascinating is that they can
Speaker 4: detect some of these differences, like you know, with brain scans,
Speaker 4: physical differences as early as age four h which you know,
Speaker 4: it suggests at least that like this is innate like
Speaker 4: you were probably born with this if you can be
Speaker 4: you know, four years old and detect differences in brain scans.
Speaker 4: Another big one, and this is kind of the the
Speaker 4: real crux of the whole thing is if you were
Speaker 4: a person with ADHD, then that means that you have
Speaker 4: a deficit of two things that really make a big
Speaker 4: difference in your life. Dopamine and nora epinephrine, two things
Speaker 4: that we've talked about quite a lot over the years.
Speaker 4: But you know, we know what dopamine does. And part
Speaker 4: of the challenge of ADHD is if you're not getting
Speaker 4: a dopamine hit. And this is just a sort of
Speaker 4: a big generalization, but I think if you have ADHD,
Speaker 4: you can probably relate if you're not getting that hit
Speaker 4: of a dopamine, which is a you know, part of
Speaker 4: the reward center, like, hey, you did a great job
Speaker 4: cleaning that room and making that bed, and just look
Speaker 4: at it, my dopamine is hitting and I feel great
Speaker 4: about that. If you're not getting that, or that's you know,
Speaker 4: dampered in some way, then you're not gonna be as
Speaker 4: interested in cleaning that room or making that bed.
Speaker 3: It's not that.
Speaker 4: Your kid doesn't care or as lazy or loves a
Speaker 4: mess is because they literally don't get that same reward
Speaker 4: or adults that same reward that someone who doesn't have
Speaker 4: that neurodiversity does.
Speaker 3: And so they're not going to be incentivized to do
Speaker 3: that thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as we talked about in the dopamine episode, it's
Speaker 1: not like dopamine gives you that hit of feeling good.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that comes along with whatever makes you
Speaker 1: feel good and says this is important, learn this and
Speaker 1: remember this so that the next time you're faced with
Speaker 1: cleaning a room, you can remember, Oh, there's some good
Speaker 1: feeling at the end of this, and if you don't
Speaker 1: have that, yeah, there's there's no reason whatsoever for you
Speaker 1: to get up and clean a room. Especially there's like,
Speaker 1: as we'll see, there's actual brain function that's missing or
Speaker 1: impaired in people with ADHD that allows them to self
Speaker 1: arouse and be like, I should really do this. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get up and do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And fatigue is another sort of I guess, cosymptom of
Speaker 4: ADHD sometimes because maybe you don't sleep as well, maybe
Speaker 4: the hyperactivity is just wearing you out, or your anxiety which.
Speaker 3: Can also come along.
Speaker 4: So not only are you not getting that dopamine hit,
Speaker 4: and your body isn't learning and your brain isn't learning, Like, hey,
Speaker 4: here's the reward that comes with making that bed if
Speaker 4: you're fatigued at the same time, and let's say you're
Speaker 4: an adult and it's not just like make your bed,
Speaker 4: small child. If you have a huge amount of things
Speaker 4: on your plate and you're fatigued and you're not getting
Speaker 4: that dopamine hit, it can I'm sure feel like the
Speaker 4: weight of the world is coming down on you and
Speaker 4: you could go into shutdown mode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So one thing I saw is that they don't
Speaker 1: think that people with ADHD produce less dopamine. The current
Speaker 1: understanding is that people with ADHD have more dopamine transporters,
Speaker 1: so that dopamine gets moved out of the brain faster,
Speaker 1: so you have less of it at any given point
Speaker 1: in time, not that you make less of it. The
Speaker 1: other one you mentioned is nora pineffron, and that's usually
Speaker 1: the thing that allows you to kind of rouse yourself,
Speaker 1: and it helps you also very import and regulate emotion,
Speaker 1: regulate self control, regulate attention. And so those are the neurotransmitters,
Speaker 1: the big ones that definitely in some way, shape or
Speaker 1: form effect ADHD. We just don't fully understand it. But
Speaker 1: one of the other big things that has to do
Speaker 1: with the brain is the typically the frontal lobe or
Speaker 1: the frontal cortex contains like our higher thinking, our higher behaviors,
Speaker 1: and that's usually put together in something called executive function
Speaker 1: which is a suite of behaviors and cognitive abilities that
Speaker 1: essentially let us just be you know, functioning people in
Speaker 1: society as far as the terms of society.
Speaker 4: Require, Yeah, like how you prioritize your tasks, how you
Speaker 4: handle distractions that come your way, how you control what
Speaker 4: impulses that come your way that may or may not
Speaker 4: distract you from those tasks. And you know, we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about I guess like six broad executive functioning components,
Speaker 4: and if you have ADHD, one or all of these
Speaker 4: are going to be dinged in some way. Doesn't mean
Speaker 4: you can't you have zero executive functioning by any means,
Speaker 4: but it just means with these six things, some of
Speaker 4: them may be worse than others because ADHD, like most things,
Speaker 4: sort of exist on the spectrum as far as how
Speaker 4: sibiera might be for each individual. The first part of
Speaker 4: that executive functioning is working memory. Of course, that's just
Speaker 4: your you know, that's your working memory. It's just like
Speaker 4: thoughts at any given moment about what you're doing and
Speaker 4: what you are remembering to do.
Speaker 1: Right. You usually think of working memories like remembering a
Speaker 1: phone number while you're going to write it down, you know,
Speaker 1: but it also involves everything from like engaging in a conversation,
Speaker 1: planning a vacation, like anything where you're having to hold
Speaker 1: a bunch of thoughts like in the front of your
Speaker 1: mind while you're kind of working it all out. That's
Speaker 1: working memory, and it's really important and it's very frequently
Speaker 1: impaired in people with ADHD. Another classic executive function that
Speaker 1: is essentially universal as far as ADHD symptoms go is
Speaker 1: self restraint or inhibition control, and not just physically, but
Speaker 1: also emotionally and attentionally too, like staying in a conversation
Speaker 1: not blurting out something offensive about someone's hair style even
Speaker 1: though you don't mean to hurt their feelings. Another one too,
Speaker 1: being on a diet and then just being like, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna eat a bunch of cookies too. Who cares
Speaker 1: a lot of all of those things? Have to do
Speaker 1: with inhibition control, and that's just a big part of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can still say, like geez, who wears
Speaker 4: a mullet these days? Just say it very quietly to
Speaker 4: your friend.
Speaker 1: Or just think it. And that's another thing too. I
Speaker 1: think that's why a lot of people who don't have
Speaker 1: ADHD recognize because they were thinking the same thing, but
Speaker 1: they know not to say it. This person says it,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. That's the friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you've ever heard anybody say something like, oh,
Speaker 4: I got no filter, that person has no filter.
Speaker 3: That person may have ADHD.
Speaker 1: Is a good chance, you know, they're just irresponsible one
Speaker 1: of the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. You can also just be a jerk.
Speaker 4: Planning, organizing, and problem solving is another big one. If
Speaker 4: you have a goal for work or life or whatever, school,
Speaker 4: what you usually do when you're executive and when you're
Speaker 4: an executive, no, when you're when you're functioning executively. As
Speaker 4: you take that goal, you look at it, you break
Speaker 4: it down into steps and smaller parts. You do an
Speaker 4: evaluation of, like what's the best way to tackle this thing?
Speaker 4: And that's a big, big part of problem solving. If
Speaker 4: that is impaired with ADHD, and you're throwing a big
Speaker 4: task or a big worker school project, you may kind
Speaker 4: of just freeze for a while, and you know, you
Speaker 4: know this sounds bad, but you might just sit there
Speaker 4: and think about something entirely different for a little while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might go to great links to avoid that task.
Speaker 1: And also not just procrastinating, but like really genuinely having
Speaker 1: trouble focusing because you don't know what to do. You
Speaker 1: don't know where to start.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like you can't do it. It's not that's a
Speaker 4: disinterest or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Right. Another one's decision making, which kind of ties into that,
Speaker 1: where you know, you can't just say yes to everything.
Speaker 1: That's not how life works. So you have to take
Speaker 1: into like account future consequences and you have to figure
Speaker 1: out do I have time to do all of these things,
Speaker 1: and if not, which one's more important? Like all that
Speaker 1: goes into decision making, and that can be largely impaired too,
Speaker 1: not just not like necessarily all the time, But you
Speaker 1: were just kind of mentioning something called ADHD paralysis that
Speaker 1: where like things can get so overwhelming you cannot know
Speaker 1: where to start your you know, like your bosses coming
Speaker 1: down the hall to get this report. You haven't even
Speaker 1: started on, and like you just shut down. You can't
Speaker 1: decide anything, you can't really focus on anything. That's called
Speaker 1: ADHD paralysis, and that can come from having to make decisions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's where as a parent or as a partner,
Speaker 4: a business partner or life partner to someone, if you
Speaker 4: don't have that challenge, that's when you can really step
Speaker 4: up and sit down with your kid or your friend
Speaker 4: or partner and say, all right, let's sit down and
Speaker 4: look at this. Let's talk about the steps, like maybe
Speaker 4: what a good first step might be, maybe get a
Speaker 4: little help organizing something. Those are Like to be a
Speaker 4: really active involved parent or partner is key to everyone,
Speaker 4: you know, doing the best they can in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more about like what parents and like
Speaker 1: family members and spouses and all that can do later
Speaker 1: on down the road. But that's a great that's a
Speaker 1: great thing to hit multiple times, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Time management is another big one that kind of ties
Speaker 4: into a little bit of the planning and organization and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. But just being able to allocate your time,
Speaker 4: keep track of the deadlines.
Speaker 3: It may seem counterintuitive.
Speaker 4: But if you are a person with ADHD, you might
Speaker 4: do much better with a deadline instead of some just
Speaker 4: amorphous task this handed to you. So like knowing the
Speaker 4: deadline may be really good for you, or the deadline
Speaker 4: may just come and go sometimes as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not necessarily because they're like I don't
Speaker 1: care about this deadline. They may have literally forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: I read a horror story Chuck about a guy with
Speaker 1: ADHD an adult whose boss came to him and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't you run Monday's meeting. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be there, And the guy was like, I
Speaker 1: knew that this was like a step toward like getting
Speaker 1: me ready for the next level, for a promotion into management,
Speaker 1: So he was really excited about it, and then over
Speaker 1: the weekend he totally forgot about it. When the Monday
Speaker 1: meeting came around, he sat down with everybody else waiting
Speaker 1: for the boss, wondering where the boss was, and they
Speaker 1: all just left the meeting and went back to work,
Speaker 1: and his boss came and asked him how the meeting went,
Speaker 1: and he's like, what are you talking about? And it
Speaker 1: finally sunk into him, like what had just happened, and
Speaker 1: think about that, like, he just probably totally scuttled any
Speaker 1: chance of that promotion. Yeah, because he just forgot about it.
Speaker 1: And that's just something that can happen with it. That's
Speaker 1: a frequent reason people with ADHD miss deadlines. They just
Speaker 1: forget that they have one.
Speaker 4: You should have saved that for Halloween. That horror story, Yeah,
Speaker 4: where's the knocker?
Speaker 1: Didn't that just turn your stomach least imagining that guy
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 4: And then the last part of executive functioning that can
Speaker 4: be impaired is another big one. It's called task shifting,
Speaker 4: and it leads into a couple of things we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about. That means you get out of your
Speaker 4: default mode, which we'll expand on here in a second,
Speaker 4: and doing something called set shifting, which is you know,
Speaker 4: being able to switch from task to task, being flexible
Speaker 4: as you're doing that, maybe realizing that different tasks and
Speaker 4: different situations require different rules. And if you don't have that,
Speaker 4: if that's impaired, you might be really rigid in how
Speaker 4: you think something has to be done, a very black
Speaker 4: and white thinking. They can come across to others as stubborn,
Speaker 4: but in the ADHD mind, you just have a hard
Speaker 4: time task shifting right exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge classic one too, like you just
Speaker 1: focus on one thing or you can't start another thing too.
Speaker 1: And if you put all that together in life, people
Speaker 1: with ADHD, they have trouble remembering to pay bills, they
Speaker 1: forget that they have homework, They say or do in
Speaker 1: appropriate things like not waiting for their turn to speak.
Speaker 1: They have trouble self motivating, staying on task. They misplace things,
Speaker 1: They have false memories, which is a really big one
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about. They can't remember important dates or
Speaker 1: that they're supposed to run a meeting. And another big
Speaker 1: one too is that they'll very frequently ADHD causes you
Speaker 1: to walk into a room and you have no idea
Speaker 1: what you went in there for. You knew you went
Speaker 1: in there for. Something that happens sometimes too, but imagine
Speaker 1: every time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now I can't because it's it's frustrating and it
Speaker 4: can also be alarming.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's another thing too, is especially as you age
Speaker 1: with ADHD, you can still be like, okay, is this
Speaker 1: ADHD or am I developing early on said dementia? Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of overlap and it can be very scary,
Speaker 1: but sure you also learn tricks like you just leave
Speaker 1: the room and go back out to where you just were,
Speaker 1: and you're going to see like a clue that will
Speaker 1: prompt you to remember, and then you just think about
Speaker 1: it while you're going into the room and then you remember.
Speaker 1: It's usually just amounts to an extra trip back out
Speaker 1: of the room and then back into it. But it
Speaker 1: is just frustrating for sure.
Speaker 4: You know what they call that in the l film biz.
Speaker 4: Do you remember a mcguffin, Now you go back to one?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, that's right, that's right back to one.
Speaker 1: Dad saying that he would always pinch the bridge of
Speaker 1: his nose while he was saying, yeah, back.
Speaker 3: To one just means first position of that scene.
Speaker 4: Like if the scene starts and you're in the doorway,
Speaker 4: go back to one, You go back to that doorway.
Speaker 4: So maybe that's a fun way to remember that kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Way to go.
Speaker 4: Now, let's not take a break yet, because I think
Speaker 4: we should talk. I mentioned default mode. Default mode network
Speaker 4: is a very big part of this, at least understanding
Speaker 4: of this. The brain regions collectively that function when you're
Speaker 4: just hanging out when you're hanging out on the couch,
Speaker 4: you don't have anything to do in the moment. I
Speaker 4: mean people with no children can identify with this, maybe
Speaker 4: I can't. But the times of the day where you
Speaker 4: can just sit around and introspect and daydream and zone
Speaker 4: out a little bit, that's called default mode. And when
Speaker 4: you're doing that, there are parts of your brain that
Speaker 4: become really active and light up during default mode. And
Speaker 4: if you have if you're a neurotypical person, going between
Speaker 4: default mode, because once you have to kick into action mode,
Speaker 4: that default mode turns off and switching between those if
Speaker 4: your neurotypical is you know, it works as it should
Speaker 4: if you have ADHD, and the problem is that default
Speaker 4: mode stays on sometimes they've shown this in brain imaging studies.
Speaker 4: So if you're doing a task that requires focus, your
Speaker 4: default mode still may be on and that's active at
Speaker 4: the same time. And those two things are not SYMPATICO.
Speaker 1: No, and like by sometimes it's pretty much all the time,
Speaker 1: like it just does not shut off. So that amounts
Speaker 1: to there's a psychiatrist and Ned Hollowell, MD, who put
Speaker 1: it as a persistent magnetic pull away from the task
Speaker 1: at hand into distraction. So you're because your brain is
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, we're over here, We're going to daydream.
Speaker 1: Because your default mode network is on, you can't focus
Speaker 1: for long periods on the task at hand, or if
Speaker 1: you can, it's a constant struggle to resist. You're letting
Speaker 1: your mind wander. You have to actively keep it focused
Speaker 1: on the thing you're doing because you're like you said,
Speaker 1: the action network didn't take over and the default mode
Speaker 1: network go down, you know, proportionately to one another. Now
Speaker 1: they're just both.
Speaker 3: On default net network go down turned into tuk took
Speaker 3: for me?
Speaker 4: Yeahs is so, And we'll talk about medication and you know,
Speaker 4: I guess probably in part two. But aside from medication,
Speaker 4: if you are trying to help turn that default mode
Speaker 4: network down or off, breathing techniques are a big part
Speaker 4: of that, Like trying to stay in the present, bring
Speaker 4: yourself back to the present through breathing techniques and mindfulness exercises,
Speaker 4: those can go a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Do you want to take a break
Speaker 1: and then come back and talk some more about you
Speaker 1: know ADHD Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, so it three here.
Speaker 1: Definitely should know.
Speaker 4: Y s K get.
Speaker 5: Lately, I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia.
Speaker 2: How about the one on borderlight disorder that are under order?
Speaker 2: Heard that one before, but it was.
Speaker 1: So nice I learned this.
Speaker 5: Why except everybody listen up.
Speaker 2: Shot, stop stop stop?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 4: So, uh, this is a big one, maybe one of
Speaker 4: the biggest sort of downsides to ADHD. Uh, And don't worry,
Speaker 4: there are some upsides too, because you know there are
Speaker 4: some quote ADHD superpowers here and there that we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about, so take heart. But one of the
Speaker 4: biggest drawbacks is called rejection sensitive dysphoria or RSD.
Speaker 3: It's a very.
Speaker 4: Destructive thing if you have it. It's very destructive to
Speaker 4: people around you. It's the basically it's basically when any
Speaker 4: any kind of rejection or even appearance of rejection, even
Speaker 4: if it's not rejection, will trigger a very very intense
Speaker 4: flood of emotion that is, it almost has and can
Speaker 4: feel like it's having, and can have an actual physical
Speaker 4: effect that is so strong. Not just a fear of rejection,
Speaker 4: just a because no one likes rejection, but if you
Speaker 4: have ADHD and RSD anything like that can bring a
Speaker 4: real flood of negativity around you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can be actual rejection, but it can also
Speaker 1: be something like constructive criticism, which is important to be
Speaker 1: able to take a perceived slight, maybe a made up slight,
Speaker 1: somebody's fleeting facial expression, and offhand comment your own false beliefs.
Speaker 1: And then there's two ways generally that a person with
Speaker 1: RSD or we should just say ADHD will respond to
Speaker 1: that to that perceived rejection. They can internalize where they'll
Speaker 1: just emotionally curl up into a ball and just shut down,
Speaker 1: or they may also lash out and they'll have a
Speaker 1: meltdown or an outburst, or they'll become angry. That's called externalization.
Speaker 1: And so to really kind of put it in perspective,
Speaker 1: imagine either one of those being the response that you
Speaker 1: get when you ask someone to not leave their dirty
Speaker 1: dishes in the sink.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like that's RST.
Speaker 1: That's what it's like living with RSC. That's what it's
Speaker 1: like having with RSC. And the big problem is the
Speaker 1: whole thing is instant. It's not like I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: an outbur burst, I'm gonna melt down, I'm gonna emotionally
Speaker 1: ball up. It just it just it goes from trigger
Speaker 1: to response with nothing in between.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then you know, the person in your life
Speaker 4: may end up, even if they're understanding of what's going on,
Speaker 4: may end up walking on eggshells, may not want to
Speaker 4: criticize or constructively or otherwise anything about that person in
Speaker 4: fear of like a meltdown or an emotional outburst or
Speaker 4: something like that, because it can it can really disrupt
Speaker 4: like a relationship. So you know, you've got one side
Speaker 4: where someone can't help something, and you've got the other
Speaker 4: side where even if that person can't help it, it's
Speaker 4: destructive to the relationship. So I'm just gonna do everything
Speaker 4: I can to avoid any sort of confrontation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes it really hard to have a connection
Speaker 1: with somebody who might just melt down at you at
Speaker 1: the slightest provocation, right, Yeah, and you said something the
Speaker 1: person can't help it. The person with RC cannot help this.
Speaker 1: They're not being a jerk, like, they can't not do this.
Speaker 1: And one of the problems with it is that it's
Speaker 1: really fleeting. It's like a tidal wave or getting punched
Speaker 1: in the stomach, that's what it feels like. The overwhelming emotion,
Speaker 1: like you said, but that's fairly fleeting, and then that
Speaker 1: gets replaced by regret and then feelings of shame every
Speaker 1: time because you're just so ashamed you can't control yourself. Right, So,
Speaker 1: some people who have RSD will become people pleasers where
Speaker 1: they don't share their thoughts, they're true emotions, they're true opinions,
Speaker 1: they don't share themselves because what they're doing is cutting
Speaker 1: off as much risk as possible of being rejected and
Speaker 1: thus triggering an about of RSD.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's a vicious cycle, it is.
Speaker 1: And so initially they used to think that it was
Speaker 1: comorbid with ADHD, that it was a separate thing, and
Speaker 1: it's not even recognized in the DSM yet. It's that
Speaker 1: that recently recognized. But apparently studies have found that essentially
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of people with ADHD also have RSD.
Speaker 1: So they're just basically coming to the conclusion that it's
Speaker 1: a it's a terrible symptom of ADHD.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: We'd mentioned some benefits and positive things. Hyper focus is
Speaker 4: one of them. It's sometimes called the superpower of ADHD.
Speaker 4: If you and I've seen this with all kinds of
Speaker 4: people in my life that have ADHD, if it's there,
Speaker 4: if it's something they're into and they're interested in, and
Speaker 4: they can zero in on that thing. It is like,
Speaker 4: I mean, hyper focus doesn't even begin to describe it.
Speaker 4: They can tune out everything, and sometimes to their own detriment,
Speaker 4: you know, if it's like other things in their life
Speaker 4: that need attention, hyper focus can distract away from those.
Speaker 3: But it can also be a great thing. If you
Speaker 3: are someone.
Speaker 4: With ADHD, you may have a real like a real
Speaker 4: skill for like zoning in on something. Maybe a particular
Speaker 4: kind of job might be really really good for you, right,
Speaker 4: or particular tasks maybe really really great for you, and
Speaker 4: you can get a lot done sometimes that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the exact opposite of your inability to
Speaker 1: self motivate, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw a corporate study bandied about the statistic all
Speaker 1: over the place, but essentially this one company found that
Speaker 1: a person, a neurodiverse person who is locked into something
Speaker 1: that interests them in their work will essentially do the
Speaker 1: job of two people. They produce between ninety and one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty percent more work than their peers in
Speaker 1: the same, say, department, and that their work is consistent
Speaker 1: and error free, typically because they're just totally laser focused
Speaker 1: on that thing. So if you can find a job
Speaker 1: that holds your interests like that, you're you're very much
Speaker 1: in luck, because unfortunately, one of the things that is
Speaker 1: a huge challenge for people with ADHD is finding a job.
Speaker 1: When you have to find a job that doesn't hold
Speaker 1: your interests, it's very difficult to arouse yourself to do that,
Speaker 1: even though you know like you have to do this
Speaker 1: and you should be doing it and you feel terrible
Speaker 1: for not doing it, it's really hard to do sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is why I sort of understanding yourself and
Speaker 4: your challenges is like really key when you go out
Speaker 4: into the world and join the workforce, Like it's important
Speaker 4: for anyone to go into the job starts thinking like,
Speaker 4: all right, what am I really good at and what
Speaker 4: are my challenges? But I just think it's probably times
Speaker 4: a million if you have ADHD.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, for sure. Another kind of something related
Speaker 1: to this is you can become laser focused on just
Speaker 1: everyday tasks that end up catching your interest somehow surprisingly,
Speaker 1: and so people with ADHD, if they're doing a task
Speaker 1: and they're in hyper focus, it'll take them way longer
Speaker 1: to do it frequently, But that's because they're doing a
Speaker 1: perfect job of it. So, like say vacuuming the car,
Speaker 1: you just go to vacuum the car and you're like, huh,
Speaker 1: this caught my interest in Now I'm totally focused on
Speaker 1: making this car immaculately clean in every way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: So of course it's going to go from taking fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes to taking an hour and a half. You know,
Speaker 1: but when you're done, the car looks awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So maybe they're probably CEOs all over the place now
Speaker 4: trying to staff up certain departments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually a thing, and there.
Speaker 4: Are probably people that should be auto detailers and start
Speaker 4: up your own a small business that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one of the things I saw I read
Speaker 1: a del Watt or how do you say that that
Speaker 1: consulting firm.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I read one of their reports and they were saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, traditionally people think like, Okay, there's there's got
Speaker 1: to be a good job for a neurodiverse person, like
Speaker 1: maybe programming or coding or something like that. Just let
Speaker 1: them go off and be themselves by themselves. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're starting to recognize like, no, like you can put
Speaker 1: somebody that's neurodiverse in any job, and if they find
Speaker 1: something interesting in it, they're going to excel at it.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily a specific field that applies to neurodiverse people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And you know, kind of tagging onto what we were
Speaker 4: just talking about, viewing yourself as you know, not having
Speaker 4: some sort of defect or deficit and like, hey, this
Speaker 4: is who I am, this is.
Speaker 3: How I like.
Speaker 4: I have no choice but to operate this way and
Speaker 4: try and work, you know, within that framework, not the
Speaker 4: framework of somebody who doesn't have this, who doesn't have ADHD.
Speaker 4: Like it's a the world and jobs a lot of
Speaker 4: times are kind of structured around I mean, yeah, the
Speaker 4: entire world is structured around people who aren't neurodiverse. So
Speaker 4: fitting into that world can be a real challenge no
Speaker 4: matter what your neurodiversity is. So kind of working with
Speaker 4: who you are and understanding that is a real key
Speaker 4: to moving forward in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are a lot of positives upsides to
Speaker 1: having ADHD that kind of give you talents that other
Speaker 1: people don't necessarily have. Like one of them is I
Speaker 1: saw it described as you're getting so much noise at
Speaker 1: any given time you're inevitably going to also get more
Speaker 1: data points than other people at any given time, And
Speaker 1: people with ADHD have a typically an ability to connect
Speaker 1: dots that other people make, connections that other people can't see.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. Another one is like, if you
Speaker 1: are multitasking and you actually get those projects done, that
Speaker 1: kind of boundless energy that's synonymous with the hyperactive part
Speaker 1: of ADHD, you're gonna get a ton of stuff done
Speaker 1: in any given day, way more than like a neurotypical
Speaker 1: person who you know, poops out halfway through the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Another potential positive is, you know, earlier when we were
Speaker 4: talking about some of the impaired executive functions and being
Speaker 4: super just sort of black and white and rigid, when
Speaker 4: you apply that to a moral code, you may have
Speaker 4: a very strong moral compass, whereas somebody who's a little
Speaker 4: more sees like the gray instead of the black and
Speaker 4: white might be like, well, you know, it's really not
Speaker 4: so bad if this kind of if you do this
Speaker 4: kind of thing, Whereas if you have a very strict
Speaker 4: sort of view of right and wrong in a black
Speaker 4: and white sense of that, you may be like, no,
Speaker 4: that's just wrong.
Speaker 1: Chuck, there was this one time where I tried to
Speaker 1: fight two guys who I thought were throwing rocks at
Speaker 1: a manateee and like I was seeing red. You me
Speaker 1: was even like it's not a manity stop and I
Speaker 1: didn't even hear. And those guys were like, it's a rock,
Speaker 1: We're not throwing rocks amanities. I was like, oh all right,
Speaker 1: and luckily they were cool with it. But I was
Speaker 1: ready to fight two dudes for throwing rocks at amanity.
Speaker 1: Like my sense of justice was just that stricken.
Speaker 3: I wish I would have been there. How might we
Speaker 3: might have fought them anyway.
Speaker 4: Josh, Just because I've never been in a fight, right, So,
Speaker 4: like I don't know, it'd be fun to get in
Speaker 4: a fight.
Speaker 3: With you, right, sure?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah back to back?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly with the two Musketeers.
Speaker 1: Another one Chuck is if a person with ADHD gets excited,
Speaker 1: it's infectious. Typically if they're in a place where they
Speaker 1: feel safe and comfortable, like just showing their excitement and
Speaker 1: just letting it hang out, You're probably going to get
Speaker 1: excited along with them because it's just so it just
Speaker 1: fills over. It can be really nice to.
Speaker 3: Be around, for sure.
Speaker 1: One more thing if you have ADHD, you very typically
Speaker 1: catastrophize as far as thinking goes. You're just constantly expecting
Speaker 1: the worst, just because over and over and over again
Speaker 1: in your life the worst has come around because you
Speaker 1: forgot to do something or whatever. So that catastrophic thinking
Speaker 1: can actually be an asset in that you can look
Speaker 1: at something that everybody's about to do, like, well, we're
Speaker 1: all gonna die if we do this that no one
Speaker 1: else saw, and you can find a safer option in
Speaker 1: that way. It's actually a huge benefit of having ADHD,
Speaker 1: even though you have to suffer with catastrophic thinking in
Speaker 1: order for that to be an asset too.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chuck, I say that we end part.
Speaker 3: One here, Yeah, just getting cooking too, and then we're.
Speaker 1: Going to pick up part two and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about ADHD and part two, and then while
Speaker 1: we're talking about ADHD, we'll eventually finish part two and
Speaker 1: then that will complete part one and two of ADHD.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that.
Speaker 3: For a plan? I think that sounds great.
Speaker 4: And as is custom here, we don't do listener mail
Speaker 4: or anything for these two parters, so I guess we'll
Speaker 4: just say see you Thursday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and finish on that dramatic pause, like the very
Speaker 1: special episode of Different Strokes.
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