Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

Patrick McGinnis, the person behind the term "FOMO", is back. This time, he introduces us to — as he calls it — the evil brother of FOMO that can ruin your life. That thing is FOBO. The Fear of Better Options. It's the fear that there is always something better for you out there that holds you back from making the most important decisions of today. It foils any effort you might make toward commitm...

Never heard of PACT goals? You’re in for it today! We’re talking about a goal-setting metaphor with greater attention on outcomes than process and we think it has real legs when it comes to ADHD. PACT is a goal-setting technique and stands for Purposeful , Actionable , Continuous , and Trackable . Compared to other methods that focus on outcomes, PACT goals focus on output . What does that mean? W...

Here's the case: a busy professional is struggling with 20-25 overdue, bright red tasks in their task management system every morning. But they have a great system! They know exactly what work needs to get done at any given time. So, why aren't they getting the work out the door? Because of time, dear friends, time. This week on the show, Pete has a walk through a few task systems in an effort to...

You can't do what you want to do. You never finish what you start. You aren't able to focus. Sure, we say this stuff to ourselves when our ADHD is getting the best of us. But how often is that really true? This week on the show, we examine what lives between all and nothing and try to tackle the beast that is all-or-nothing thinking with some tools you can employ right away. (00:00) - Welcome to T...

Kim To is CEO and Founder of Flair, a new platform designed to help you access a range of healthcare services to manage your life with ADHD. She's also Asian living with ADHD, and has spent much of her effort since her diagnosis exploring what it means to experience ADHD in a culture she describes as unaccustomed to the ADHD experience. She joins us today to talk about her ADHD coaching practice,...

We'd never heard of the phrase stinking thinking until Sharon Saline used it with us on the show this week. But we knew what it meant immediately. We live with it. It's the thinking we use about ourselves when we're compromised or when our reserves of resiliency have been tapped, and when what we need more than anything else is just a little bit of self-compassion. But as ADHDers, finding self-com...

Erik “Doc” Anderson is an ADHD coach who specializes in helping people become the hero of their own stories. Erik is an ADHDer and also has Cerebral Palsy. Humans are wired for stories. Our lives, our desires, our hopes, and dreams, they’re all fueled by the metaphors that define who we are. Doc learned early that negative, limiting stories can be as damaging as positive stories are motivating. To...

It’s 2022! And we’re kicking off the new year and new season with change. Specifically, we’re going to look at how the language we use influences the way we think about and approach the world around us. As an anchor for the conversation, Nikki gives us a review of I Get To: How using the Right Words Can Radically Transform Your life, Relationships & Business by Alicia Dunams , a book that has...

This week, we’re wrapping up our trio of treatment episodes with a conversation on coaching, and how the coaching process can help you integrate your life with your ADHD. Whether or not you have decided to pursue the perfect prescription, or trace a treatment through therapy, a relationship with an ADHD coach can help you turn your awareness, acceptance, and new strategies into action. This week o...

Have you ever tried talk therapy? It can be intimidating, learning to open yourself up to a stranger, but with the right therapist, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable for long. We’re continuing our series on ADHD interventions with Dr. Sharon Saline, psychologist and ADHD specialist. She joins to talk to you, the therapy novice, about what you can expect from therapy, what you should expect from...

What do you know about your ADHD medications? We didn’t know much, so we brought in the expert, Dr. William Dodson, a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist and one of the first clinicians who specialized in adults with ADHD decades ago. Because here’s the thing: we don’t deal much with ADHD meds. As a coach, Nikki refers folks to their physicians. And apart from being a patient himself, Pete’s experi...

There isn’t any magic to any one specific episode. But, wow, you all, if you had asked us in 2010 if we had any idea that we’d still be doing this show twelve years and 500 episodes later, well, suffice it to say we’d be as gobsmacked then as we are now for having made it that far. And we made it so far because of all of you, listeners, study hall attenders, coachees, brain players, and ADHDers wh...

It’s NANOWRIMO TIME! Every year, writers of all sorts come together to contribute to the writing madness that is National Novel Writing Month. The goal: write 50,000 words toward a novel in 30 days. Pete has been participating in NaNoWriMo in some fashion or another since 2003 and will once again be picking up the pen on November 1 to write another book. And... It’s hard. Really hard. Today on the...

We’re wrapping up ADHD awareness month with just one more message dedicated to everyone puzzling their way through a brand new diagnosis of ADHD. You know who you are. You now have words to describe what you’ve been living through all these years and you’re eagerly downloading every journal article and book about ADHD. You’re listening to podcasts just like ours and you’re drinking from the prover...

Jude Parker Koski has dedicated his career to serving marginalized communities through work in the nonprofit sector since 1996. He has helped youth experiencing homelessness access education, advocated for LGBTQIA+ youth and families, worked to reform foster care policy, and helped preserve urban open space and community gardens. He’s also a transgender professional, and he joins us today to talk...

Like any good superhero, we all have our origin stories. Unlike those same superheroes, we sometimes struggle to save the day if we’re distracted by shiny door knobs. This week, we’re sharing the stories our listener’s submitted about their diagnoses. Where were you? How old where you? What do you remember about the time and how you were treated? Whether you were six years old and super confused,...

Why are some tasks harder than others? Is that task itself suddenly that much more challenging that everything else you're doing? Likely not. What's different? The way our brains are triggering as a result of it. This week on the show we're pulling apart the things that allow us to make some tasks a bigger deal than others. What is it that makes one task evolve into a monstrous clogging task while...

Coupled with distraction, negative ADHD self-talk is scrawled on the box describing ADHD. If we were in a global competition, we'd gold medal in it. When your ADHD is on lock, that voice can be destructive. This week: how do you manage that little voice when ADHD is having a very good day? How often do you hear it in your own voice? I’m always late. I can never stop when I need to. I can never get...

The last year has been traumatic. For all of us. In some way or another, we've been impacted by COVID and it's upended our lives. We're talking about transitions on the show in this series and coming to terms with the change we've endured in the last 18 months will be important in defining what we want the coming years to look like. As inspiration, Nikki started with an article by Sari Solden, Ima...

Changing gears is hard with ADHD. Moving from one thing to the next can feel like a chore and the range of emotions is wide. Distracted by too many options and moving too quickly? Stuck in hyperfocus and angry or frustrated that you're being shocked into a transition too soon? That's the point today. Moving from one state to the next, one activity to the next, is enough to throw the world into dis...

We're continuing our family series on the podcast with our dear friends Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster of Impact Parents. Together, they have taken their ADHD coaching and evolved their work into an incredible resource for parents raising complex kids. Independence starts today The rock-climbing metaphor is striking. Every move toward independence and confidence happens in the smallest of...

We're continuing our conversations on ADHD and family relationships on The ADHD Podcast with a discussion on teens. "But wait," you might be thinking, "I'm no teen... what do I need with this episode?" Just hang with us a bit. We're talking to the authors of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Teen ADHD , Drs. Karen Bluth and Mark Bertin, a book not written about teens and ADHD, but too them. It's...

We started our conversation with Dr. Norrine Russell with a plan in mind. We wanted to talk with her about the systems and processes she uses with her clients at Russell Coaching to support frustrated kids and families living with ADHD. She told us she'd be fine with that, but then said, "can I tell you what's on my mind?" What was on her mind is something on our minds, too. In our search for proc...

Today on the show we're talking to the kids. Ok, not all the kids. We're starting with our kids, because they're ours, they live with ADHD, and they're pretty astute humans. There are some things they want the rest of us to know about their experience with ADHD that might just surprise you. What the Kids can Teach about ADHD There are a few things that surprised us as we embarked on this journey t...

Before we went on our annual July break, we posted a question to you: What do you do to keep your family running? Living with ADHD inside the complex organism that is your family, we wanted to know what kinds of systems you have in place to keep the trains on time as best you can, together. ADHD Family Solutions You answered! We grouped responses in four broad categories: Alarms, Planning, Cleanin...