Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

Caroline Maguire is back! Caroline is an ADHD coach, author, teacher, and speaker with a special focus in social skills supporting kids — and parents of kids — with ADHD. Her book is OUT NOW, Why Will No One Play with Me?: The Play Better Plan to Help Children of All Ages Make Friends and Thrive and we’re thrilled she’s back to talk to us about social success today… Caroline Maguire welcome back t...

Back in the late 1970s, two researchers developed a model for evaluating those suffering through addiction in their journey toward health. The Transtheoretical Model, or more colloquially, Prochaska’s Stages of Change, went on to help social workers and therapists treat those suffering with transformational diagnoses for decades. As it turns out, the Stages of Change model works pretty well for us...

It’s been an emotional month here at The ADHD Podcast. With guests and topics all targeted at the emotional centers of our ADHD, you can be sure our fantastic community has come to us with feedback and questions. So, this week we embrace and extend the November theme of Emotion and ADHD and take on your thoughts about rejection sensitivity, emotional storms, sex, plus a bonus dose of seasonal affe...

We are gearing up for November here at The ADHD Podcast. November marks the start of national novel writing month, 30 days of fiendish exploration of words happening at keyboards around the world. But what happens if your brand of ADHD throws a wrench in your desire to create your masterpiece? This week on the show, illustrator and designer Dani Donovan joins us to talk about her creative process....

This week we’re hosting a frank conversation about sex and ADHD. Our guest is Dr. Ari Tuckman, a psychologist and certified sex therapist, not to mention one of our favorite expert sources who somehow we’ve never had on the show. Today, Ari is here to talk to us about the impact of ADHD on a couple and how the sexual relationship — and our relationship to sexuality — functions in light of ADHD. Th...

Straight from the Life Empowerment Center, James Ochoa is back today to share a story of his own emotional storm and the strategies he employed to move through it. This is one of those important episodes. Important, not just because of the lessons and strategies we share for moving through your own emotional ADHD storms, but for the example that James puts on display. He is, after all, a leading v...

There aren’t many practitioners writing about today’s topic. Unless, that is, you look up the collected works of Dr. Bill Dodson. Dr. Dodson is an award-winning board-certified psychiatrist and specialist in adult ADHD and his contributions to the study of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria bring him to the show today. According to Dr. Dodson, nearly all those living with ADHD live with some level of r...

Living with ADHD can be exhausting. But even at the end of a long day, responsibilities pile up. How do you recharge to stay focused... when your focus has lost its focus? This week’s show is anchored around a recent article by friend-of-the-show Casey Dixon. Her ideas were inspirational for us and spurred our conversation today. Plus, thanks to a listener question, we get to wax dreamily about ou...

The connection between work satisfaction and ADHD is pretty clear if you’re living through the frustration. There are all kinds of reasons to leave a job, but taking the actual step of resigning is one best approached with a clear head. This week on the show, Nikki and Pete share a set of questions that can help you frame your own perspective at work and help find clarity in your desire to leave,...

There are signs in certain kinds of organizations that document the last time staff their experienced an incident. Any sort of incident that leads to work stopping counts, and as soon as it happens, the sign gets reset and everyone starts over at Day Zero . “This facility has worked [0] Days without incident,” the sign says. If there’s anything in our lives that can cause work to stop unpredictabl...

The idea that individual ADHD symptoms exacerbate one another isn’t new to those of us living with the diagnosis. But what happens when symptoms collude to create cycles of behavior and responses? The results can be vastly more damaging than any individual symptom on its own. That’s the question that comes from a listener today: how do you navigate the procrastination-anxiety loop that emerges whe...

Brett Terpstra is a software developer, author, and podcaster and his work has been the subject of Pete’s technology fever dreams for years now. Brett is also unusually candid about his experience living with ADHD and bipolar disorder and after years of processing in public , he’s managed to figure some things out… others, a mystery. This week on the show, Brett joins us to talk about his experien...

It’s one of the most important routines you can manage. Getting it right means you’re impacting every area of your life in some way. You’ll feel better, you’ll think more clearly, you might even be better looking. OK, we can’t guarantee that last one, but you’ll feel better looking! What is this magic routine? It’s meal planning. Figuring out how to best strategize the food you bring into your hom...

Sure, we’re in the middle of our back-to-school series. But whether you’re heading back to school or just getting ready for the seasons to change, there’s never a better time to review your routines. From daily hygiene to writing that next report, this week on the show Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright take on the components of a great routine, and the mindset you’ll need to cultivate to make it stick....

If you’ve ever tried to engage in a discussion of your ADHD with a busy professor and run into frustration, you’re not alone. This week, we asked a group of instructors what they would like to hear when working with ADHD students and the results were puzzling, frustrating, dare we say disappointing? But there’s room for hope thanks to some enterprising student services folks and a general spirit o...

Asking for help is hard, sure. But have you ever stopped to ask why it’s hard for you? See, asking others for support is hard for each of us in a different way. Maybe we live with the anxiety that others will judge us for not being competent in some are or another. Maybe we believe they’ll think we’re not as smart as they are, or as they thought we were. Maybe we struggle with the logistics of ask...

Grace Friedman was diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at twelve years old, wrote her first book about it at 15, and now she’s an advocate for young people with ADHD and founder of the ADDYTeen.com community. Dr. Sarah Cheyette is a pediatric neurologist and expert in working with kids with ADHD. Together, they have written Winning with ADHD: A Playbook for Teens and You...

It's the last episode of our trip through time and what better way to wrap up our July break than with a message from social skills expert Caroline Maguire in her first appearance on the show: never forget the art of the "Polite Pretend" people... it'll save your bacon! Thank you for supporting The ADHD Podcast on Patreon! Do social situations exhaust you? Do you feel like your brain is working in...

Dr. Doug has been on our list to get back on the show seemingly since he first joined us. We're thrilled to say he's on the way! But that won't be until a little later in the fall. Until then, take a trip back in time to his last appearance and hear what he has to say on ADHD Inattentive Type! Thank you for supporting The ADHD Podcast on Patreon! — https://patreon.com/theadhdpodcast Doug Herr is b...

Every day is a great day to check in on your relationship with your partner, and with ADHD, sometimes you can use a pretty clear reminder to do so. That's why today is ALSO a great day to check back in on this episode with our relationship guru Melissa Orlov from 2017! Thank you for supporting The ADHD Podcast on Patreon! — https://patreon.com/theadhdpodcast In this year’s Take Control ADHD survey...

James Ochoa has been on the show four times in the last few years, but all his appearances point back to this episode from 2017 in which he outlined his "Emotional Distress Syndrome" for ADHD. It was transformational for us in how we approach conversations of ADHD and we hope this refresher is equally useful for you this fine July! When we first read his book, Focused Forward: Navigating the Storm...

We're starting our July break, is that a reason to skip the podcast? Of course not! Jane gave us some great tools to deal with the stories we tell ourselves and we thought this would be the perfect way to time travel through podcast history while we're away! Does the internal chatter of ADHD really sound all that different than that of those who don’t live with it? Our guest today has been working...

It’s our last episode before the annual July break, and what a wonderful person we have to introduce you to this week to talk about shame, our relationships, and the daily practice of getting back up on the horse with ADHD. Dr. Michelle Frank is a clinical psychologist specializing in providing diagnostic and treatment services to individuals with ADHD. We love her work because of her focus on str...

Are you a runner ? Or are you a person who runs? Are you a gardener ? Or are you a person who mows the lawn? Figuring out the difference between what we do and who we are is tricky business for all of us as we move through life. With ADHD, the idea of presenting a cogent identity to the world flies out the window. It’s dependent on so many factors — context, focus, weather, anything that can set o...

Do you ever find yourself stuck in research mode? Are you overwhelmed with options? Do you resent regret? If you’ve ever found yourself living in fear of making decisions, you’re not alone. It can be a debilitating cycle knowing that you’re facing the same questions over and over again either because you can’t make a decision, or you can’t live with the decisions you’ve made. This week on the show...