Something Shiny: ADHD!

Written by: David Kessler & Isabelle Richards
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  • Summary

  • 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
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Hygiene & Healthy Living Personal Development Personal Success Psychology
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Episodes
  • Why is the transition to sleep so extra hard?

    Why is the transition to sleep so extra hard?
    Feb 19 2025
    Isabelle and David continue to talk with David’s brother’s friend, Aaron, and dig deep into why winding down and going to sleep is the hardest transition of all: because you're staring into a black hole of no dopamine for hours! And also, a lot of traditional sleep hygiene tricks may not work. Folks with ADHD have higher rates of sleep apnea, among other sleep disorders, and also, can do with staying away from preferred activities before bed. This, sleep tips and tricks, and recognizing the value of being open about your neurodivergence...as well as some really good callbacks to the previous two episodes (096 and 097) regarding "St. Elmo's Fire's" amazing theme song.—-Isabelle and Aaron wonder: what’s with this PDA business (persistent drive for autonomy/persistent demand avoidance)? David explains: It’s hard for us to connect a learned moment with an experience, it’s hard for us to take a moment we're learning now and take it into the future, and we're distractable. If we're in a place with any shame, guilt, or anxiety, distraction becomes highly reinforcing. We are highly reinforced by not paying attention to what we want to pay attention to it. We're not seeing the long term consequence, we don’t understand what we're doing to our future by not doing it in this moment--delay of gratification and response cost. Like, what did you do today? “I watched three seasons of Scrubs and ate a buffet of Indian food.” We can't claim any wins at the end of the day, but in the moment it felt so nice, it was a distraction. Neurologically we don't get a success, norepinephrine —you feel anxious, and it leads into their evening, and for kids and adults, if you're really anxious about the next day, you don't want to go to sleep. “The longer I'm up today, the longer today is! I don't have to face tomorrow if I haven't gone to bed yet.” David has been thinking about this with his friend and colleague Noah, based on this book, Dopamine Nation. If we’re not accommodated or assisted by something during a transition, and then you have nothing else to do, you are looking down a long dark hole of no dopamine—that’s why the evening can look so hard. The road to sleep to extra awful, you have to sit still, you have to tolerate frustration and still yourself enough to go to sleep. David names: we are considered overtired if it takes less than 15 minutes to fall alseep—most ADHD folks, as an accommodation to not sit in the discomfort of staying still with no dopamine, don’t hit the bed until they are beyond exhausted and just crash. Isabelle and Aaron disbelieve this. Isabelle does not compute that this is how people live, that people just lay there for 8, 10, 15 minutes and slowly go to sleep, this has never happened to her. Aaron gets anxious that he won't fall asleep in 5 minutes and then can't stand the guided meditation. David will be snoring watching tv on the couch with his partner but doesn’t confirm he is “tired." with Delayed sleep phase onset, this is a thing we struggle with. Accommodations for sleep? Did you use enough physical energy during the day? You can't go into a preferred activity before bed—you have to find weird shows or things that are interesting but not so interesting it will keep you awake. What is a preferred activity? If you're super into a video game, for example—if you can't sleep, don't play the video game. The things that you prefer and wake you up, engage your hyperfocus. What's the boring video game that’s like paint by numbers? Isabelle will read nonfiction when she’s not feeling very tired, but if she reads compelling fiction she will stay awake. Because, who wants to sit in boredom? These are tips that are not sleep hygiene or what you’d expect. So many tactics to help a kid fall asleep are there to help them get bored enough to stay still and not reach for a preferred activity. The most important task in the brain's development is boredom: One of the most important things is to experience boredom. It's really important and yet we run from it all the time. A neurotypicaly person needs to encounter a certain amount of boredom to get creative. But with ADHD, we are bored a 1000's of times more often in a day than a neurotypical does in a day, and the feeling of being bored is so caustic and our brain is so creative and thinking of fun things all the time. But because we encounter so many micromoments of boredom, it makes it really hard to tolerate the 10 or 15 minutes to fall asleep. Or try something on in the store. The moment of a transition that's boredom and hurts. When do we want to sit with it, when do you want to avoid it? David tries to stop listening to a D&D podcast he wants to, he's trying to train himself to be awake still and do it at a time and then fall asleep, instead of falling asleep when he crashes. AND there are literal sleep disturbances. People with ADHD have a much higher likelihood of getting a CPAP machine and sleep ...
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    34 mins
  • Are folks with ADHD natural promoters?

    Are folks with ADHD natural promoters?
    Feb 12 2025
    Isabelle and David continue to talk with David’s brother’s friend, Aaron, and contemplate why folks with ADHD can be so enthusiastic and excited about interests, people, etc. Is it because we are like puppies who are starved for reinforcement (dopamine)? Or does it come from living a life on the outside and the joy of connection when it has been missed for so long. With callbacks to Greatest American Hero (See Ep095) as well as the real story behind the theme song to St. Elmo's Fire.—-David describes how borrowing from LeDerick Horne and his brilliant theory around leadership, that folks in leadership can have a number of qualities, including being promoters. Folks with ADHD can be natural promoters, and being a promoter is actually a form of leading others. With the caveat that we must be into what we promote. And how excited we are about people and how we talk people up. David names that perhaps this has something to do with how we are starving (for dopamine) and intimacy and connection and relatedness can help us fill that void, we reach for the connection and get excited. Isabelle wonders if this relates to an autism(ASD)-style special interest, how she perpetually is excited and has a working principle that everyone could find common ground if we just found a shared hobby or special interest. David likes to tell people on airplanes that he's a car salesman so he can talk and listen to his heart’s content but he doesn’t have to focus on what he does. Isabelle names that even though David is not very savvy about cars, he could sell a car because he's such a natural salesperson. Isabelle names that anxiety around overselling things, she might encourage people to try new things, take new risks, explore and play—but her working memory is so poor that she doesn't know if she oversold, she has to refer to notes or something as reference. David loved serving as fun because there was a high degree of risk and failing so it helped me remember things. David names that we are not starving puppies with watery eyes, but we are highly susceptible to be reinforced, so when we see someone else’s tail wagging, it shoots up our levels of dopamine, we are highly reinforced. The establishing operation—social connection and social mastery is water for us, like the water-deprived rats being reinforced in Skinner boxes. The environment makes Isabelle’s puppy quality feel safe or good or not; and can lead to her feeling starved of that connection and reinforcement. The feeling when you have no one wagging their tail back at you—how many mistakes we do make, how many social gaffs and miscues, and big ones. It's almost like we find ourselves so marginalized, its like finding a prison gang when we find people who get us. What does it do to your sense of self when you can't do what you want with your morning—how that deflates your sense of self. Isabelle feels like she shares a bond with the other parents and caregivers that are always running late—it flares up imposter syndrome and “if you only saw me five minutes ago." David reframes this as "if only you saw what it took me to get here and I made it!" Aaron is a master of social engineering, even though he's almost always good at it and social interaction, he remains scared the whole time. The anxiety hits because if it doesn't work out, he takes the hits hard: he can take a lot of them, but they hit hard. David shares one of his hits—he was spending a lot of money for grad school, wanting to read all the books for all his classes, he was going to learn it all...but he didn't do any of the readings for one of his classes. The class was talking about this person out loud, “Ed Nafoah” — he was like "what is this Nafoah guy talking about ?” and everyone in class is like “Edna? Her name is Edna Foa.” It took five to ten minutes for David to feel the cabin pressure returning and the lights to come up and to return to his body. Aaron points out that his impulsivity could carry him through it—David had a ballast and in grad school and they were talking about different psychosocial backgrounds, step or two based on privilege. The professor holds up a dollar and says "the first person to…can have this dollar?” He’s never seen someone authorized like that. Aaron sings the theme song from “The Greatest American Hero” which we all know, and the superhero suit is David’s impulsivity. Who is Edna Foa?Greatest American Hero trailer (he is LITERALLY "walking on air")Story behind St. Elmo’s Fire theme song, "Man in Motion" here's the music video and the song A quick synopsis of the backstory behind the song (Source: Wikipedia)And an interview with the songwriter/singer, John Parr, discussing how he came up with the idea and how he snuck it in to be the theme song for this 1980’s Brat Pack Extravaganza. For more about our guest:Aaron Michael Ullrey (he/him)Writing and Editing Specialist, Editor in ChiefResearch Associate, ...
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    27 mins
  • What happens when you be more of the person you want to be?

    What happens when you be more of the person you want to be?
    Jan 15 2025
    Isabelle and David welcome David’s brother’s friend, Aaron, who, as a recently diagnosed ADHDer, brings up the idea of if ADHD is a superpower, it's like the super suit in “Greatest American Hero:” a suit given with a manual that got lost on the first day of use. What happens when you find your ‘ingredient’ for doing the things you previously struggled with and now can do? How does your self esteem and sense of self efficacy impact how you handle days when that ingredient is missing? This plus being puppy dogs together, tackling Mt. Laundry, and why intimacy beats contempt.----David and Isabelle welcome Aaron, a longtime friend of David’s brother, who was recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. In thinking about ADHD, he thinks about this show from the 1970’s, “Greatest American Hero,” where this teacher is given a superpower suit by some aliens, who also give him a manual for the suit, and he loses it on the first day, so he goes around saving people but also is seeking this manual and he always gives it up to save someone. He resonated with this character so much, and for Aaron, medication made a huge difference—he is able to wake up and do the thing and then he is able to do. He’s been medicated for anxiety and depression his whole life and taking medication for ADHD doesn’t make those go away, but it helps him be the person he always wanted to be. Isabelle so resonates with the suit metaphor and how she and Bobby attempted to make their home more ADHD friendly (see “Keeping House While Drowning” and all the ADHD friendly home tips below!) And she forgot her medication and instead of spiraling into anxiety, when she realized why she stalled out all day, she was able to recognize it was “oh, I was missing my ingredient.” David points out that it’s not just medication, because medication is not for everyone, it can be so many things, once we find out what the ingredient is—working out in the morning, the coffee routine, whatever it might be--when you all of a sudden miss it, you can pinpoint it and recover. Even more so, Aaron describes how it is a conscious habit, as a child of the 80’s, he is not about the idea of 'working on his self-esteem,’ but realizes through therapy and his conversations with David that it keeps coming up for a reason, there are wounds there that do shift when you are able to do some of the things you previously struggled with. David can recognize those nasty voices in our heads, the angry voice as a teenager to get himself to do things. Based on his arbitrary math, while it takes 6 weeks to build a neurological bridge, it takes 6 years to build a habit. He chose to make excitement that it will be over the habit over the anger over having to do it. Whether it’s medication or nervousness or anxiety, David recognizes that something has to stimulate him so he has to choose his path and practice it. Aaron remembers his psychologist friend Dave 20 years ago sharing the 3 paths to happiness (he was studying at the time)—the first is excitement, the second is contempt (at least temporarily), and the third is intimacy. Aaron is excitable and comes from a contemptuous family and wants to focus on intimacy. This makes Isabelle make awkward spiders with her hands, the idea of gossiping and spreading shame makes you feel reassured and safe but also brings with it a threat and temporary condition; for Isabelle, intimacy means playfulness, curiosity, a willingness to see what happens next, and as David defines it: a shared vulnerability. Aaron ordered up BRAIN STUFF, and sadly David has no links, so Isabelle tries to fill it by talking about studies that connect to how we associate the negative talk about someone with the gossiper, not the subject of the gossip. David names that he does think ADHD is a superpower with a missing manual, and the tricky part is let’s say we’re talking unbridled enthusiasm: it’s a superpower and contagious and also has an effect on the recipient. David names being okay with someone not wanting to be the recipient at this current moment. THE THINGS WE MENTIONED:Greatest American Hero Opening Credits (Worth it to finally see where this song comes from and for the flying haphazardly imagery)How to Keep House While Drowning by KC DavisSo You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson"Punishing or praising gossipers: How people interpret the motives behind negative gossip shapes its consequences" (source: Social and Personality Psychology Compass)-----Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards
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    29 mins

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