ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start here: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
_____

Some brains cannot sit still long enough to be careful. Ella Fielding found a machine that runs on exactly that.

Ella has a BA in Fine Art Sculpture, a Masters in Fine Art, and a chainsaw operator's license, and she uses all three to turn whole trees into monumental sculpture. But she left school at 14 because it was too traumatic to stay. She was quick with her hands and slow to get anything out of her head onto paper, and for most of her life nobody named why. She was 38, running her own art business and drowning in the admin, when a work coach kept mentioning ADHD and she kept insisting she was just dyslexic. Turns out it was both.

Now she carves outside in full gear, running a machine most people won't touch and making it behave like a scalpel. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it. A chainsaw does not let you drift or second-guess or wait for the perfect plan. It demands you be right here, right now, which is the one place her brain has always worked best.

In this episode, Tracy and Ella get into the school years that nearly broke her, the "poof" moment where a thought vanishes the second she reaches for a pen, why immediate and physical beats slow and planned for a brain like hers, and how she reads her own overwhelm as a signal instead of a character flaw.

If you have ever been told you were too much, this one might reframe the whole thing.

Resources:
Website: https://ellafielding.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ella.fielding.sculptor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellafieldingsculptor
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-fielding-sculptor
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start here: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
_____

She was good at the job. She just kept bombing the people.

Dr. Shannan Palma has a PhD from Emory, founded a master's program, and taught as a college professor. Then, in midlife, she found out she was autistic. ADHD turned up right behind it.

For decades she had followed the rules exactly as they were written and could not work out why that kept failing her. She was direct when directness was not wanted. She said no when everyone else said yes and did nothing. She ran full speed until she collapsed, then ramped back up and did it again. The diagnosis did not just explain the pattern. It ended it.

Today she identifies as AuDHD, co-founded the autistic-led nonprofit Independence Through Interdependence, and serves as CEO of ITI Lab, where her team built Decide, an app for decision fatigue.

In this episode, Tracy and Shannan get into why decision fatigue is not a willpower problem, what happens when the autism wants routine and the ADHD wants novelty, the assessment that went badly wrong, and what it takes to rebuild after burnout on your own terms instead of someone else's.

If your brain has ever turned a small decision into a full-body shutdown, this one will help you understand why. And more importantly, what actually helps.

Resources
Website: https://weareiti.org
Website: https://itilab.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannanpalma

ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.

Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
_____

Laura Pasley is a child and youth worker in Ontario, Canada, who has spent more than a decade in intensive mental health and dual-diagnosis treatment programs for children and adolescents. She is the person who runs toward the crisis when everyone else is running away from it.

After postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, complex trauma, and her sixth concussion, Laura started questioning whether ADHD had been part of her story all along. At 32, she finally received the diagnosis that helped her see herself differently. Not as someone who had fooled everyone. Not as someone who was not smart. As someone whose brain had been working hard to keep her alive.

In this episode, Tracy and Laura talk about ADHD, trauma, fawning, concussions, crisis work, motherhood, shame, and what changes when a woman finally stops explaining every struggle through what happened to her. Laura also shares why she is now returning to school, writing a memoir, and learning to embrace being a daydreamer.

If you have ever wondered whether it is ADHD, trauma, anxiety, or all of the above, this conversation offers a gentler question: what if understanding your brain is not about proving what is wrong with you, but finally seeing what has always been true?

Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arttaropy
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@arttaropy

Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Stuck in an ADHD pattern that keeps repeating? SHIFT is a collection of 120 guided audio experiences designed to help you see yourself and your ADHD brain differently. Explore SHIFT here: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
_

How many times have you told yourself, “I’ll do it when I feel more confident”?

When I feel ready, I’ll apply for that job. When I feel more confident, I’ll start the business. When I believe in myself more, I’ll have that hard conversation.

We spend so much of our lives waiting to feel ready. More confident. More certain. More qualified.

But what if we have had it backwards all along?

I want to talk about why confidence does not actually come first. It does not magically appear before we take the risk, try the thing, or do something that scares us.

Confidence comes after.

If you have been waiting to feel ready before taking the next step, this episode will help you stop waiting for confidence and start building it.

ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.

That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start seeing yourself differently, explore SHIFT here: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up

_____

Your kid got labeled the “problem.” The defiant one, the behavior kid, the one who couldn't sit still or keep up. What if the room was the thing that didn't fit?

Beven Byrnes is a neurodivergent educator, nonprofit leader, and a mom of four. She's the Executive Director of Bridges Middle School in Portland, the only middle school in Oregon built specifically for students with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and anxiety.

Beven spent 25 years and raised over $15 million building environments where kids actually fit. But she didn't have her own ADHD diagnosis until this past year, at 50. Cancer treatment forced her into menopause at 45, her estrogen dropped, and the masking she'd done her whole life without knowing it stopped working. The square-peg feeling she'd carried since childhood finally made sense. Now she runs a school on one idea: behavior is communication, and the job isn't to fix the kid, it's to fix the environment around them.

In this episode, Tracy and Beven get into why behavior is almost always communication, what happens to a child's confidence after years of being misread, and what it looks like to build a school around how kids actually learn instead of forcing them to fit.

If your child, or you, ever got treated like the problem to be solved, this one will show you what was actually broken. And it was never the brain.

Resources:
Website: https://www.bridgesms.org/staff-spotlight-beven-byrnes-executive-director
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrs_byrnes
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beven-byrnes

Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com