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Something Shiny: ADHD!

Something Shiny: ADHD!

Auteur(s): David Kessler & Isabelle Richards
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À propos de cet audio
 How many times have you tried to understand ADHD...and were left feeling more misunderstood? We get it and we're here to help you build a shiny new relationship with ADHD. We are two therapists (David Kessler & Isabelle Richards) who not only work with people with ADHD, but we also have ADHD ourselves and have been where you are. Every other week on Something Shiny, you'll hear (real) vulnerable conversations, truth bombs from the world of psychology, and have WHOA moments that leave you feeling seen, understood, and...dare we say...knowing you are something shiny, just as you are.2021 Something Shiny Productions Développement personnel Hygiène et mode de vie sain Psychologie Psychologie et santé mentale Réussite
Épisodes
  • Why Emotional Control Is So Much Harder with ADHD (and the Simple Things That Actually Help)

    Why Emotional Control Is So Much Harder with ADHD (and the Simple Things That Actually Help)
    Nov 5 2026
    If you have ADHD, you’ve probably lost your temper and then hated yourself for it. Snapped at your kid over something small. Flipped the table, at least emotionally, before you even understood why. And then came the familiar spiral: I messed up. I did something wrong. I’m a bad person.This episode is about why that keeps happening, and it’s not what you’ve been told. Your nervous system reacts longer, more intensely, and more frequently to everything. You’re taking more swings in a day than most people take in a week, which means more misses, more rejection, more hits. And the emotional regulation skills you’ve been handed since childhood, sit on your hands, inside voice, calm down, were mostly designed to make everyone else comfortable. David asks the question out loud: if ADHD comes with emotional dysregulation, is emotional regulation just masking?Then they get to what helps, and it’s simpler than you think. Not more willpower. Not trying harder inside your own head, which Isabelle points out is asking your brain to do something it’s not wired to do when it’s already on fire. Something else. Something outside of you.In this episode:Why you’re outraged before you even understand why, and what’s actually firing first in your brainThe monkey, the grapes, and what a famous fairness experiment reveals about ADHD rageWhy most people get two or three at-bats a game and ADHD brains take 80 or 90David’s question: is emotional regulation just masking? And Isabelle’s nerdy, honest answerThe thermometer problem: why a more sensitive nervous system picks up everythingWhat actually gives an ADHD brain pause when it’s already on fire-------Wait, What's That? Here are some of the terms and people mentioned in this episode explained:Monotropic Focus Isabelle’s term for how her brain holds attention, possibly, she says, the autism in her: one thing in front of her, usually one distraction, and that’s about all the brain is holding at once. One channel, fully occupied.Moral Injury The feeling Isabelle names when the world feels unjust or life is hitting you extra lifey. Not just witnessing something unfair, but carrying the weight of it in yourself. If dumpster fire be spreading to the roof resonates, this is the term for why.The Monkey Fairness Video Isabelle promised this one in the show notes, and it’s real: primatologist Frans de Waal’s famous capuchin experiment, where two monkeys do the same task and one gets paid better. The underpaid monkey’s reaction is the most relatable thing you’ll watch this week. David retells it his own way, with his own grape math, and honestly his version is also great. Watch it here.The Lag Isabelle said she’d look this one up, so here it is. The research she’s describing comes from Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments: your brain’s readiness to move fires measurably before your conscious decision to move. You move first, then tell yourself you chose to. A clear explainer here.The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean The book Isabelle references on how we came to understand the brain, written by a science writer whose footnotes alone, sometimes two pages long and gloriously tangential, earn her neurospicy seal of approval. Find it here.Classical Conditioning and Positive Reinforcement Defined on tape by Isabelle: adding something right after a behavior as a way of saying you did it, keep doing that. Applaud the trick when it happens, not at the end of the show. It’s how the monkey learned first this, then this, which is exactly why the unfairness landed so hard.Intermittent Reinforcement David’s favorite behavioral wrinkle: the strongest form of reinforcement is not knowing what you’ll get. Slot machines, loot boxes, Pokemon packs. Which makes the monkey’s rage even more interesting, because by the book, surprise grapes should have made it work harder. It didn’t. It called bullshit.ABA Applied Behavior Analysis, a longstanding intervention method for kids on the spectrum that many autistic adults now take serious issue with, because so much of it rewarded looking fine over being fine. Isabelle names it as the clearest example of regulation skills built to contain a person instead of help them.The Marshmallow Test The famous research setup Isabelle references: put a kid in front of a marshmallow, tell them not to eat it, and measure the self-control. Her point is what happens when you give that same test to two kids, one with a brain like hers and one without, then call the results fair.-------💬 What’s the small thing that set you off this week, and when did you figure out what was actually underneath it? Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we read them.🎧 Follow Something Shiny: ADHD for more conversations that help you understand your ADHD and remind you, you were never too much.
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    28 min
  • Why Writing Can Feel Impossible with ADHD (and How to Make It Finally Work)

    Why Writing Can Feel Impossible with ADHD (and How to Make It Finally Work)
    Oct 21 2026

    If you have ADHD, odds are you love consuming books. But if the thought of writing one ever came up, you probably shut it down fast. I could never do that. Maybe you were taught there’s only one way to write. Maybe the sheer amount of structure you thought it required overwhelmed you before you ever started. Maybe you panicked, decided you were just lazy or a bad writer, and stopped.

    This episode is proof that voice was never about you. You have it in you.


    David and Isabelle sit down with Chloe Martinez and Lisa Van Orman Hadley, editors of Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD, a compilation of essays from creatives with ADHD on how they actually get their writing done, published by the University of Chicago Press. They tell the story of how they connected over their own ADHD, went looking for a book like this, and discovered it didn’t exist. So they made it.


    In this episode:

    • The accommodations that took David from “I will never write the books” to being in one
    • What to do when the writing won’t come, and why Chloe doesn’t believe in writer’s block
    • Lisa starts everything and can’t finish. Chloe finishes everything and can’t start. How pairing up got a whole book done.
    • The packed conference room where knitting, stimming, and moving were announced as welcome, and what that unlocked
    • The one word Lisa’s husband noticed in every single essay, and why it, not ADHD, is the real thing to solve
    • How to read your own sensory needs before you write a word, from clearing the desk to leaving for the cafe

    -------

    Wait, What's That? Here are some of the terms and people mentioned in this episode explained:


    AWP The Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. Tens of thousands of creative writers, teachers, and publishers every year. It’s where Chloe and Lisa’s panel on writing and ADHD drew a packed, double-sized room, and where an editor approached them about making the book.


    lawrence-minh bùi davis Contributor behind the essay “Ghosts by the Light of My ADHD.” Chloe points to his writing prompt in particular: an exercise in gathering sensory data about yourself before you ever start writing, so you can build a space that actually works for your brain.


    Immersive Writing From another essay in the book Lisa shares: a writer working on a story set near the Atlantic Ocean who went to the ocean every day and wrote there. If you’re stuck, maybe the fix isn’t more discipline. Maybe it’s a different location.

    -------

    💬 What’s the thing you stopped doing because someone made it hurt? Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we read them!

    🎧 Follow Something Shiny: ADHD for more conversations that help you understand your ADHD and remind you, you were never too much.
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    54 min
  • SUMMER REPLAY: Why "Back to School" Wrecks ADHD Brains (and the Reframe That Helps!)

    SUMMER REPLAY: Why "Back to School" Wrecks ADHD Brains (and the Reframe That Helps!)
    Aug 26 2026
    If you have ADHD, the back to school season hits from every direction at once. The end of summer. The end of freedom, staying up late, seeing your people. Then the start of everything: school, homework, earlier mornings, packed schedules. David calls it two oceans slamming together. If you're a parent watching your kid melt down over grab-your-backpack-let's-go, you're losing bandwidth just as fast as they are. Probably blaming yourself for it too. And no kids? This season still finds you. Your routines scramble right along with everyone else's, whatever's going around the schools lands in your workplace within weeks, and even just seeing the school supplies out in stores can stir up feelings you thought you left behind years ago.The refusing, the stalling, the "I don't wanna," yours or your kid's, is very often something else entirely. David and Isabelle get into why every demand costs more this season. Why even a pleasant thing can feel like one ask too many. Then the reframe that changed how Isabelle parents, sees clients, and talks to herself. When her clients hear it, the first thing they say is some version of: oh my gosh, I'm not lazy or stubborn. She demonstrates it with nothing but her ten fingers, and it comes with real relief you can use this week: what to lower, what to stop expecting of yourself during the transition, and how to respond to the meltdown, yours or theirs, with help instead of blame.Also in here: Isabelle shares something personal she's just starting to explore about her own brain. Plus the greatest allergy medication story ever recorded on this podcast, in which Isabelle, fully awake in her own apartment, watches a hallucinated Tim Curry wander into her kitchen looking for a snack.This is also the last episode of our Summer Replay series. If you're listening in real time, brand-new episodes return Wednesday, September 9!In this episode:Why back to school is the most complicated transition of the year, even years past your last classroomThe ten-fingers demonstration that shows where your bandwidth actually goes every morningThe "I don't wanna" that isn't defiance, what it actually is, and what changes when you can tell the differenceWhat Isabelle is exploring about her own brain, and why doing this for a living didn't make it obviousIsabelle's fully-awake hallucination of Tim Curry asking for a snack, courtesy of a common allergy medThe childhood song David got tormented with, and the recording that might have accidentally healed it-------Wait, What's That? Here are some of the terms and people mentioned in this episode explained:The Histamine Thing Isabelle promises the science on this one, so here it is. Histamine isn't just the allergy chemical, it's a brain neurotransmitter that keeps you awake and alert, and allergy meds that cross into the brain mess with exactly that system. She was not talking pseudoscience. Read the research here. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19843401/)Legend The 1985 fantasy movie starring Tom Cruise covered in glitter, with Tim Curry as a giant horned demon. Eighties scary was a different animal. This one stayed with Isabelle from childhood, which matters once a common allergy medicine meets her subconscious.Boy by Roald Dahl The autobiography of the author behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. Read it once, then you understand why his books are full of kids surviving a scary, unfair world run by cruel adults, and why the sensitive, kind kid is always the hero. Find it here. (https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Tales-Childhood-Roald-Dahl/dp/014241381X)Tim Curry's Davy Crockett A real track from Disney's Music From The Park, a real 1996 album of popular artists covering the classic catalog. The Barenaked Ladies doing Grim Grinning Ghosts is on there too. Tim Curry does Davy Crockett as spoken jazz, fully Tim Curry, at one point just asking "David Crockett?" like he's questioning the man himself. You cannot make this up. It plays a surprising role in this episode. Hear it here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_TvXa3TtPI)Persistent Drive to Autonomy (PDA) A term rooted in the autism community, originally called pathological demand avoidance. David and Isabelle both have complicated feelings about the label. Isabelle prefers pervasive demand avoidance, or persistent drive to autonomy. What it describes is the heart of this episode, and it applies across the whole neurospicy spectrum.AuDHD Having both autism and ADHD. Isabelle shares that she's genuinely curious where she lands. Doing this work professionally hasn't made the answer obvious. Recognizing yourself in the people you love and just get? That's its own kind of data.Spoons Shorthand from spoon theory. You start the day with a limited number, everything costs at least one, and when they're gone, they're gone. Isabelle's clients reach for this language the moment they finally stop calling themselves lazy.-------💬 What's the one demand that broke you this week? The earlier alarm, ...
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    33 min
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