Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team!
This week I'm talking with Dr. Mel Houser, a family physician and founder of All Brains Belong, a nonprofit that brings together healthcare and community support for neurodivergent people. Dr. Houser is also Autistic and ADHD herself and the author of A Failure of Imagination: How the Healthcare System Fails Neurodivergent People—and What We're Doing Instead.
In our conversation today, we get into some topics I don't normally cover on the show, including how physical health conditions can overlap for neurodivergent people and what gets missed when we treat each issue as its own separate problem. We also talk about a resource you can bring to your doctor to help get that conversation started.
From there, we get into understanding our capacity, setting boundaries around what we can actually manage, and why rest doesn't always have to mean lying down and doing nothing. And Dr. Houser shares a way of thinking about those moments when we can't stop scrolling: if your foot is already on the gas, what could it look like to steer somewhere else?
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/321
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This episode's Top Tips:
Our boundaries need to account for our capacity. There's a difference between not wanting to do something and not having the capacity to do it, even if those can look the same from the outside. We can still want to answer the phone, go to an event, or help someone and still need to say, "I can't do that right now."

It's important to pay attention to what drains you and what helps you recharge. Whether you think about that in terms of spoons or a battery, the point is to recognize that your energy has limits and those limits can change. Being able to push through something doesn't necessarily mean you have the capacity to keep doing it, especially if you're borrowing from what you'll need later.

When you're having trouble stopping, try changing direction. Dr. Houser describes this as having your foot stuck on the gas: instead of trying to slam on the brakes while the gas is still going, see if you can steer somewhere else. If you're stuck scrolling, getting up while you're still holding your phone might be a first step toward a transition. You don't have to make the entire change at once.

Rest can mean reducing demands, not just stopping everything. A meeting where you can use the chat instead of speaking is one example where you're making participation less demanding. When you're looking for ways to rest, consider which demands you can remove or reduce, even if you can't step away from everything.

Hey Team!
This week we're kicking off a new series on the basics of ADHD management, and why sometimes the best thing we can do when we're struggling isn't to find something new, but to go back to the fundamentals.
One of the things I've found after years of making this podcast is that knowing all these ADHD strategies doesn't mean I'm always going to remember to use them. And sometimes I find myself looking for a new solution when what I really need is to return to something that's already worked for me.
So in this episode, we're starting with one of the most important fundamentals: understanding our ADHD and how it affects the way we approach everyday tasks. We'll look at how identifying what's actually making something difficult can help us find better solutions, why knowing what works isn't always enough to get us to follow through, and how we can revisit old strategies that we might have stopped using along the way and might work for us now
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/320
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips:
Going back to basics isn't going backward. The fundamentals are the foundation of ADHD management, and they're something we need to keep practicing no matter how long we've been managing our ADHD. Returning to a strategy you already know isn't starting over; it's reinforcing something that helps.
Knowing a strategy isn't the same as being able to use it. It's not just about finding strategies that work in theory, but finding ones that work for our brains and that we'll actually use. Even the most effective tool isn't going to help much if we can't reliably put it into practice.
Just because you've stopped using a tool doesn't mean it stopped being useful. Sometimes we abandon strategies because our circumstances change, and sometimes we simply fall out of the habit of using them. Understanding why we stopped can help us figure out whether we need to make adjustments or simply start using something that's already worked for us.

Hey Team!
Welcome to a special Feed Drop episode - this week we're featuring the ADHD Skills Lab which is hosted by none other than Skye Waterson who you all know from our Research Recap series. And today I have the pleasure of hosting an episode from their show How to Stop Panic-Planning and Actually Lower Your ADHD Anxiety. So this show focuses on support for business owners or anyone who does their own thing with ADHD, which honestly is a lot of us. In this episode Skye and Robbie share why some tasks can feel impossible with ADHD and how to reduce overwhelm when doing them and I was really interested in their discussion about perfect systems versus usable systems because that's something that I always struggle with because it's so easy to fall down that rabbit hole.
So join me as we dive into this episode of ADHD Skills Lab!
Link To the ADHD Skills Lab Podcast: tinyurl.com/ADHD-skills-lab
Link To The "Focus Filter" We Like To Give Away For Free: tinyurl.com/focus-filter

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Evidence of Emotion Dysregulation as a Core Symptom of Adult ADHD: A Systematic Review." Just to give a bit of background here, when Skye and I were discussing topics to look into for future episodes, rejection sensitive dysphoria was one that seemed like it might be really interesting to see what's actually out there. In a way, it was interesting because there's just not a whole lot of research on the topic. So instead, we came up with this paper, which asks whether emotion dysregulation should be considered a core fourth symptom of adult ADHD alongside traditional things like inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.
To get started, let's try to get a quick definition of what we're talking about with emotional dysregulation and, of course, rejection sensitive dysphoria. You want to hit that one, Skye?
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/319
https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link
https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

Hey Team!
This week I'm talking with the fantastic Jessica McCabe. Many of you probably know Jessica from her award-winning YouTube Channel, How to ADHD, where she has helped millions of people better understand how ADHD brains work. And Jessica is a returning guest, last time she was on we talked about her then upcoming and now New York Times bestselling book, How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - which just came out in paperback.
And last time Jessica was on the show she was pregnant, so we dive into that a bit on this episode, discussing how having a kid really changed everything for her. And we really do dive into some of those struggles that come with parenting while ADHD and how those can compound with regular ADHD struggles as well through things like sleep, scheduling and how much pressure we put on ourselves. We also get to hear a little about the new book that Jessica is starting to work on.
How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - Barnes & Noble
How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - Amazon
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/318
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This episode's Top Tips:
A system can be a great fit for how your brain works and still stop fitting the life you're actually living. When something that used to work stops working, check what changed around it, be it your schedule, responsibilities, environment, or available support. Then look at what was useful about the old system and what needs to change to fit the life you have now.

Try putting something you actually want to do on the calendar before everything else fills the space. That might also mean scheduling more time for rest or fun than feels strictly necessary, because if we leave those things to whatever time is left over, there often isn't much left. This is something I've talked about before and am still not particularly good at myself, but making space for it deliberately gives that time a much better chance of actually happening.

Progress isn't about reaching a point where everything suddenly becomes easy. Part of it is adjusting what you expect from yourself, and part of it is getting better at recognizing which tools and supports you need. So when you're struggling, instead of making that struggle a verdict about yourself, ask: Why is this hard right now, and what can I do about it?