Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

To close out Season 31, we turned the microphones over to someone who knows us better than almost anyone in our community: Melissa Bacheler, our DiscordMom, friend, and occasional chaos agent. Instead of the usual coaching, planning, and problem-solving, Melissa surprises us with a full-blown quiz-show-style conversation designed to reveal stories we’ve never told on air. No points, no pressure—ju...

Emotional planning sounds like one of those concepts you think you already understand — until you realize it has nothing to do with mood journaling, crystal grids, or color-coding your feelings. What Nikki brings forward in this conversation is something far more practical: the idea that ADHD motivation doesn’t start with logic. It starts with emotion. And if we learn to work with that reality ins...

Aging with ADHD often hides in the background of our conversations, even though so many of us feel its effects every day. In this episode, we bring it forward with help from Jami Shapiro , whose work sits right at the intersection of ADHD, transitions, and later-life planning. She’s a senior move manager, ADHD coach, and the voice behind Grandma Has ADHD . Her mix of humor, candor, and lived exper...

We’re revisiting a classic — and for longtime listeners, a foundational topic: the Tolerations List. These are the small, nagging things we put up with every day — the crooked picture, the squeaky door, the wrong clock time — that quietly drain our focus and energy. Pete and Nikki first talked about tolerations all the way back in episode 106, and a decade later, they’re still finding new lessons...

This week, we’re talking about what it means to be both introverted and ADHD , and how those two identities can collide—or beautifully harmonize—when you finally understand yourself. Our guest is Kyrus Keenan Westcott, better known as Ky, the creator behind The Vibe With Ky . With more than 1.5 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, Ky has become a leading voice for ADHD awarene...

When Dr. Nachi Felt first joined us, he introduced two big ideas that stuck with a lot of listeners—the Cycle of Ambiguity and the Cycle of Agency. Those conversations gave language to what so many of us experience every day with ADHD: the frustration of getting stuck, and the relief that comes when we finally start moving again. This time, Nachi is back to take the next step forward with somethin...

We love to say it: “Your future self will thank you.” It’s a mantra for hopeful planning, a reminder that the effort you put in now will pay off later. But for people with ADHD, that phrase can land like a challenge you keep failing to meet — because the gap between Now You and Future You can feel impossibly wide. This week, we welcome back our friend James Ochoa, licensed professional counselor,...

In 1992, a struggling advertising executive in Manhattan walked into his Upper East Side doctor's office with what he thought might be a revelation. His boss had just been diagnosed with ADHD, and the symptoms—the scattered thinking, the time that evaporated, the constant feeling of running to catch up—sounded eerily familiar. The doctor listened, nodded, and delivered his professional opinion: "A...

Imagine this: one person spends ten minutes with their doctor, walks out with a prescription, and calls it an ADHD diagnosis. Another spends an entire day in a psychologist’s office, testing memory, attention, and executive function, only to arrive at the very same conclusion. Which one is “real”? Which one counts? In this episode, Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer talk with psychologist Dr. Amie DeHar...

Here's a puzzle that will stop you cold: ADHD has exploded into public consciousness. More diagnoses than ever. More research. More conversations. And yet? Turn on your television. What stares back at you? The class clown. The scatterbrained sidekick. The walking punchline. Something doesn't add up. This disconnect—between lived reality and screen reality—forms the heart of this week’s conversatio...

Money is rarely just about math—it’s about stories, habits, emotions, and, for ADHDers, often a deep sense of shame. In this episode, Pete and Nikki sit down with Nicole Stanley, financial coach and founder of Arise Financial Coaching, to unpack the hidden ways ADHD intersects with our finances—and how we can finally start to build a healthier, ADHD-friendly relationship with money. Nicole shares...

Money and ADHD: two words that often stir up stress, shame, or avoidance. But what if we stopped thinking of planning as punishment and instead saw it as a path to clarity, confidence, and even peace of mind? This week, Pete and Nikki welcome Ben Barlowe and Ernie Reppe—the Budget Nerds of YNAB—to talk about why the word budgeting is going out of style and how we’re still all-in on the money minds...

Side hustles can be exciting, creative, and empowering—especially when you have ADHD. But they can also be overwhelming, unsustainable, and, let’s be real, joy-draining if you’re not careful. In this kickoff to our new series on ADHD and money, we’re talking all things side gig —from handmade crafts and tutoring gigs to late-night freelance projects and full-on mini-businesses. We break down the b...

Music isn’t just background noise—it can be a tool. This week, we’re joined by Dr. Kevin J.P. Woods, cognitive neuroscientist and Director of Science at Brain.fm, to explore the science behind audio designed to do something: improve focus, enhance rest, and support attention regulation, especially for ADHD brains. Dr. Woods breaks down the neuroscience of “functional music,” explaining how Brain.f...

Memory isn’t just about recall — it’s about learning, encoding, storing, and retrieving information in ways that actually work with your brain. In this conversation, Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer continue the ADHD in College series with returning guest Dr. Daniella Karidi, diving deep into the practical study strategies that help students and adults build lasting memory. From note-taking that actua...

Welcome to Season 31 of Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast ! In this episode, Pete and Nikki kick off the Back-to-School Series for college students with ADHD by tackling one of the most essential—and overwhelming—skills for academic success: planning . From understanding the logic of a syllabus to building an ADHD-friendly workflow using calendars, task managers, and learning management systems, th...

In this bonus drop for all listeners, Pete and Melissa peel back the curtain on their personal email habits—and how ADHD continues to complicate even the simplest message. This is the fifth installment in the ongoing email challenge (the first four were re-released to Patreon earlier this year), and it’s a rich mix of confession, coaching, and curiosity. We recap where the challenge began in 2018...

It’s summer rebroadcast season! Ok, let's get this out of the way: We're big fans of You Need a Budget. Like, huge fans. Massive, life-changing kind of product fans. So you can imagine that we're a bit beside ourselves this week. See, for someone who has had struggles with money in the past, discovering a tool that has the capacity to rewire your brain around budgeting and spending is a pretty big...

It’s summer rebroadcast season! We all have that one project—the thing we swore we’d get done before the end of summer. Whether it’s clearing out a garage, taming your inbox, or finally tackling that closet of doom, this episode is your nudge to pick a project and actually finish it. Nikki and Pete walk through how to choose the right project (hint: it should matter to you ), how to break it into...

It's Summer Rebroadcast Season! If you’re a well-practiced student, you probably have your own system and set of practices for doing that job. Taking notes, studying, preparing projects, taking exams ... you know what works for you, right? It turns out, it’s pretty easy to develop a false sense of security in our own systems to the point that they might not actually be helping you do the real work...

Join Pete and Nikki this week as they dive into the world of planning tools, focusing on the concepts of "inboxing" and "workboxing” from their new book, Unapologetically ADHD . They explore the challenges of managing the constant influx of information and tasks that come with ADHD, emphasizing the importance of a systematic approach. Nikki and Pete discuss the common struggle of finding the "perf...

Time and ADHD, they’re just not great bedfellows Just as soon as time’s wind is at your back and you feel like the world is opening up to you, it can turn and make hours feel like days. We’re talking about the messy and inconsistent nature of time as we continue our exploration of our new book, Unapologetically ADHD ( which you can order right here! ) Pete introduces the idea of time as an antagon...

We spend a lot of time building gates and systems to protect ourselves from distraction of ADHD. But, what might we be losing at the expense of saying No? This week on the show, Pete talks about control and ADHD. Spinning off of the concept of Margin as discussed by Shawn Blanc and Richard Swenson before him, what does it mean for ADHD when our systems and processes that we use to protect ourselve...

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...

As we kick off our summer break, we’re re-releasing a few classic episodes that still hit home—like this one on email from way back in 2017. Yes, some of the tools we mention (hello, Evernote) have aged out of our workflows, but the core ideas about attention, overwhelm, and building ADHD-friendly systems are still spot-on. Think of this as a time capsule with a message that’s still relevant today...