How to Navigate ADHD - ADHD Awareness Month

It's ADHD Awareness Month! Join the Men's ADHD Support Group's Founder and President, Marc Almodovar, and Shane Thrapp, the Operations Director, as they dive into the importance of ADHD Awareness. 

In this insightful episode, they discuss what it really means to navigate life with ADHD or autism. Marc and Shane share their perspectives on embracing neurodiversity, tailoring parenting approaches to fit your child's needs, and adopting strength-based mindsets. 

They offer advice for newly diagnosed individuals on seeking support through medication, therapy, and finding your community. 

Tune in for an eye-opening look at how we can create a more ADHD-inclusive world. Marc and Shane aim to spread awareness that ADHD brains are not broken, just different. Their mission is to empower ADHDers to understand themselves better and live fulfilling lives on their own terms.

Check out our website for great blogs, information, and upcoming events! Men's ADHD Support Group Website

If you identify as male and have ADHD Join our Facebook Group!

And follow us on all of our other social media!

Our Facebook Page

Our Instagram

Our Youtube:

Our Twitter

Our TikTok

Our LinkedIn

Transcript

  Okay. All right, we are officially recording. I am here. This is Marc. I'm the president and founder of the Men's ADHD Support Group, and I'm here with my buddy Shane, the operations director of the Men's ADHD Support Group, the  Order to the chaos of an organization run by people with ADHD and a heck of a life coach as well.

And we are here to talk about the fact that we are eight days into ADHD awareness month and We both have a lot to say on this subject of ADHD since starting the men's ADHD support group. I've really, really learned that ADHD is something that can largely impact it. So many different areas of our life and men with ADHD really  when they live with their ADHD brains unnavigated, they can struggle with a variety of things from relationships to careers to business.

It can be a huge, huge deal. So ADHD Awareness Month is something that's really, really important to us. And I am really, really excited to be part of the conversation of one treating ADHD as something that's serious. And making people really aware that it's more than just a focus issue or some little hyperactive thing.

It could be something that if we don't take this seriously, it could be detrimental to our lives. So this ADHD awareness month, I wanted to do an episode just talking about what navigating ADHD means to us, what this month means to us  and, and really just go from there. But. Shane, what does navigating, what does navigating ADHD mean to you?

Oh my God. That's such a huge question.

Is it just apply yourself? 

No, no, it's definitely not. Navigating ADHD is first understanding ADHD and understanding ADHD is kind of understanding that it is a lifelong issue that we deal with because it's how our brain is structured. On top of that, we often grow up in childhoods where there's a lot of trauma and trauma changes the brain as well.

And for people with ADHD, trauma on top of the ADHD causes even more significant struggles throughout our childhood, you know, teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, all the way through until we die. And I think that that is one of the biggest problems that people have. There's so many people who minimize the effects of ADHD on the human mind.

And there's so many people out there in the world who do not understand that ADHD is our brains.  It doesn't register with them, people treat it like it's a disease or that we're broken but ADHD doesn't mean we're broken.

It means we're different. Hmm. And I think that people just need to look at it. In that vein, and this isn't in the vein of superpowers and stuff like that. I hate, I hate it. I hate it when people do that. Same. But we are different, and we have different abilities, and we have different skills, and we have different motivations.

And... Until people start to realize that, then there isn't really any navigating ADHD. 

Hmm. 100%. You know, it's, it's so, it's funny. It's good. It seemed like I'm going off subject, but I'm going to circle back. So about two years ago. Shane had the Facebook. The Facebook group was really starting to take off and Shane had hit me up saying that he wanted to be involved and talk about ways we can work together and things like that.

And I definitely accidentally ghosted Shane and didn't respond. But I remember one point looking into Shane's work. on social media and seeing how he represents himself, the constant that he puts out. And one of the things that made me realize I was like, I actually kind of like this guy and want to work with him is a frequent quote that I see on many of his bios and it's that.

It's okay to live a life that others do not understand. And that theory right there to me is something that largely applies to navigating ADHD. So when I, when I, when I, when I think about my own life, I think about people telling me that I had to live my life a certain way, that I had to chase these nine to five jobs that are boring.

That as a man, I have to do all these things from overworking myself to providing and being someone of strength of all times. And what I've learned is that that that mindset is such a disservice to people with ADHD and especially been a disservice to me. And to Shane's point, I mean, I, I've, I've found myself doing significantly better for myself when I've learned to understand my brain and put myself in environments where my brain works for me.

Is it what my mom and dad wanted for me originally? Not really. But, shit, I ended up being, I'm still working on myself here, but I've created a life for myself where I'm far more fulfilled than I would have been if I went to school and studied to be a doctor or some shit.

I make a decent amount of money, I do well for myself, and that's mainly because I've understood what my, I've learned to understand what my strengths are. I've learned to understand what's which one of those traits will be the things that make me money, and I'm not living my life, trying to be something that I'm not.

And that's the, that's the, the biggest thing that I always want people with ADHD to understand is that. When we, when we see members coming into our group, when we see people who are newly diagnosed, it's almost as if we have this huge misunderstanding that our goal when we're taking ADHD medications, what we're learning about this way of operating is to be normal.

It's not the goal at all. I mean, there are some things like like like I can't I can't live my life. Listen, I can't live my life fully disorganized. It does have to be some structure. I do need to have Google calendars and tools and reminders in place and all that type of stuff, no doubt about it. But

the way that, when it comes to the way that we operate, I mean, the way that I see it is that we have, we have a space in this world and

burnout is, is something that we see quite a lot when it comes to our community. And then with ADHD, turns out when it comes to burnout, masking is a leading cause of it. So what we need to think about is how can we start to unmask and how can we start to put ourselves in positions where our brain is, like I mentioned earlier, working for us.

Whenever we look at the successful people with ADHD and or ADHD and autism or autism on its own, the overwhelming factor in all of them is playing to our strengths and accepting who we are and Masking is not something that we do constantly, but it is something that we kind of put in place in the proper, you know, space, right?

Not to make people feel more comfortable around us and not to make people like us more, but In order for us to be able to not be quite as distracting and some of the more negative habits that we fall into, people pleasing, interruptions, and stuff like that. But... At the same time, we still have to let people understand, Hey, I have ADHD and I may accidentally interrupt you, especially if you say something that excites me and it's kind of just informing them now, that doesn't mean we have to tell every single person around us that we have ADHD, but at the same time, we do have to be authentically who we are because then we are able to be more comfortable in the environment that we're in.

And then we don't have to worry about masking and like masking is what costs us so much mental energy and we develop burnout like you said so easily because we already start our days with a deficit of mental energy because we struggle putting in place all those different routines that a lot of people seem to take for granted and if we're already starting with that, You know, deficit using mental energy to mask when we go to work or when we go to these meetings or when we hang out with our friends or even with our spouses is just costing us, our mental energy and it makes our lives very much more inefficient and we're not able to be as effective as we can be.

However, when we wake up and we put in place those routines like mindfulness and doing a little bit of exercise, making sure we eat a healthy meal, making sure we're doing our self care in the morning, looking at our calendars, using that structure that we need to put in place for ourselves that's very customized to each one of us.

Then we start to see ourselves really being able to be much more successful in the things that we want to do. 

Totally. So here's one thing I actually wanted to ask you on. And, and  I don't, I never really heard your perspective on this. So I'm actually asking this from two places, curiosity, but also selfishly too, because I would love to hear your perspective for me, because it's something I relate to.

All right. So on the people pleasing and masking note, so. What do you say to the people when I'm saying the people I might or might not be talking about me to the people who have been spending so much of their life, masking and people pleasing to the point where we hear something like just be yourself.

And the first thing that comes to mind is, I don't even know who that is. What does. What is solving something like that look like 

it's a lot of introspection and guess what we're really bad at

So this is where therapy and coaching comes into play, right? we need you know, or a good support group or a good support network around us and because ADHD is neurodevelopmental disorder Between ages of 4 and 12, when we should be learning who we are, all we are really learning is who we aren't.

And that's really important to understand, because... You know, there's a statistic out there, or a phrase that's out there, that's fairly old, 2005 or so is the earliest I saw it. But essentially, by the age of 12, the average neurodivergent child has had 20, 000 more criticisms directed towards them than neurotypical children.

And that's because our parents parent like their parents. And their parents didn't understand that there was neurodivergence in the world. And for those of us who are over the age of 25 to 30, expectation was we would be able to meet the same as our peers, whatever thing it was, how we acted, our impulsivity, our ability, our hyperactivity.

All of those different things, a parent looks at a child and the common books that are out there, like, you know, 12  things to expect when you're expecting or, you know, things of that nature says there's certain milestones that every child should be hitting. The problem is, is when it comes to ADHD, we can be anywhere from two to four years behind our peers in various different issues, like, executive function, you know, hyperactivity.

Impulsivity, you know, sometimes there's going to be cognitive functions that we have struggles with telling time. Sometimes we're going to have issues in memory. Sometimes we're going to have issues with attention. Sometimes we're going to have severe emotional dysregulation where we just freak the fuck out.

And parents aren't prepared for that. And so then we also then get put into an education system that is age based and those teachers have an expectation based on their professional career. That a child who is like four is supposed to act a certain way. A child that is six is supposed to act a certain way.

They're supposed to be able to do a certain thing. They're supposed to be able to meet certain criteria. They're supposed to be able to meet certain expectations. And if you don't, for a very long time, you were just essentially labeled a problem child, which then around and around we go. There's a study out there that shows that children who are age six have the hyperactivity of a four year old.

Marc, I know you don't have kids. My kids, my twins are four. I have two other kids who are  20 and  17. And all of my kids have some sort of neurodivergence. And so when my kids go to school, the teachers had a certain expectation and my son, my four year old, he blew them out of the water completely and utterly blew them out of the water because he is such a stickler for structure to the point that we are looking at autistic tendencies, but he also has emotional dysregulation issues.

So Darcy, my wife has put a lot of things in place  things like timers, things like making sure that he has a place to go freak the fuck out if he needs to, that he knows that he can,  come to us and snuggle and he can come to us and release the energy and we do our best not to match his negative energy.

We stay calm when he, well, we try to stay calm when he's freaking the fuck out, but I have ADHD and so sometimes when he freaks out, I get angry like what the fuck, you know, and here's a child that right now can do multiplication. We're in the car the other day. He goes, daddy, daddy, daddy, 12 fives is 16.

And I was like, what the fuck did you just say to me? Because I was like, wait, what? Like he cursed me or something. And, but it's, it's how his brain works. Yet, I still have to help him get dressed and brush his teeth. His sister gets up in the morning, goes in her bedroom, puts her clothes on, goes to the bathroom, brushes her teeth.

And she comes out, and just starts screaming and hollering, running up and down the hallway, slamming through the door like she's SWAT, and is just losing her mind, but yet she's dressed and ready to go to school. My son is just like, I'm just gonna sit here and sleep and you can't wake me up. It takes me 30 minutes of like constant pushing to wake my son up.

And then when he gets up, he's just completely helpless. He doesn't get dressed. He doesn't brush his teeth. We have to do all that stuff for him. And it's such a huge dynamic difference between the two. But then when he goes to school, he's helping his teachers put up stuff. He's telling the teachers, Hey, we've got five minutes.

Cause the light turned yellow. He's telling the other students where things go, right? He's sitting here doing his letters. He's sitting here doing his math. He's sitting here watching the other students and helping them with what they're working on all without being told.

And a neurotypical parent would look at that and be like, what the fuck? Why do I have to get you dressed when you know how to do that thing? But as parents who understand neurodivergence, it's not that for us. It's, my son is absolutely amazing at math and apparently can do really great with letters and has a lot of different structure and order that he loves to have.

Yeah. I don't mind doing these things for him until he's able to get to that, that milestone on his own. I keep teaching him. I keep pushing him. I keep working with him, but not in the sense of why can't you do it because you can do these other things. And I think that's the most damaging thing

100%. And that kind of keeps following us all the way through school. That keeps following us into middle school and high school and then college. Adulthood. Yeah, all, all of these unrealistic expectations. Of where we are really good at these things, but we're really sucky at these things and well, apparently you're just a fuck up, all of the good that we can do is completely mitigated by all the  struggles that we have.

And so we grow up with that identity of being a fuck up, a failure, a screw up, a problem child. And so we try our best not to be those things, which means we try our best not to be who we are. And we don't learn from our failures. We don't learn from our mistakes. We don't learn how to mitigate our struggles using external tools.

So what we fall back on is masking. We have to fit into these social standards. We have to fit into these social circles. We have to fit into these cognitive standards. We have to fit in with our education system. And we don't have any support from our parents a lot of times. Not because parents don't want to, they don't know how to, they're working two jobs, it's a single parent home.

It's a two parent home, but both people are working fucked up hours. They don't have access to medical care. They don't have access to mental health care. And all of those things are just a vicious cycle where the children grow up and. There's nothing there for them. There's no understanding of who they are.

The only things that they know who they are, are what they've developed through masking. And masking is based on neurotypicals or movie stars or singers, or anybody who really influenced us as a child, because we we didn't learn who we were as a small child, that developmental stage between the ages of four and 12.

Right. Yeah, that's super interesting. It's like you described me to, to a T there, but I mean, here's the deal when it comes to  and, and, and parenting is, is I'm sure no easy thing to do. And  I, I'm sure the day I become a dad, I will have my, my own set of imperfections, but when it comes to raising a child.

We do have to understand that constant criticism and nagging when it comes to the things that are outside of their control, really, or, or at least or extremely difficult for them. Rather, it's not going to be the thing that is going to help you as a parent, or is it going to help your child grow as an individual?

To that point. I want to make sure that people understand the severity of what we're talking about here, ADHD is an invisible issue. Yeah. It's a mental health issue. Right. And I hate that it's considered a disorder. I get why it's considered a disorder, but I think the DSM five does a huge disservice to ADHD overall and autism for that matter, by the way, y'all, the DSM five is like 30 years old.

Just to let y'all know, I say 30 years old, it's actually like 25, whatever. The thing is, is ADHD is only considered a disorder because people, we, because we live in a neurotypical world and people with ADHD don't quite fit into that stereotypical mold that people want us to fit into. We live in a society where anything different is fucked up.

Right? We've seen this all the way throughout history, and I don't want to get super political about it or anything like that. Black people are dark brown, and obviously they're different. You know, Native Americans are different. Any kind of difference is often vilified at first. And it takes a long time.

LGBT people, they're different. Obviously there's something we should blame. And, when it comes to ADHD though, it's an invisible issue. What you really need to put your mind around is if your child has ADHD or autism, you need to consider how you're speaking to them. 100%. And you need to review if you would speak to your child if they had cerebral palsy that way, or if they were stuck in a wheelchair.

Or if they had to wear glasses, this isn't a severity  comparison or anything like that, but if your child had a physical disability, would you treat them the same way? Would you tell your child who was stuck in a wheelchair to climb up and get that thing in the cabinet, right? Would you just say, no, no, no.

She just do it. Why can't you just do it? Right. So we have to really review how we're looking at our children with ADHD. And not treat them as if they're broken. But recognizing the struggles that they have and accommodating them the best that we can 

And

understanding that accommodating them and helping them win is, is probably going to be different than what you originally thought  so, what I mean by that is like. I think about our viral post that we had a few months ago, where, where, where I, there was that wall poster  for, for kids in school for you to focus.

You must be still eyes must be watching feet must not be moving something like that. And.

What people don't understand, especially the old school people in the education system, is that if someone like me followed that mindset that's encouraged in the poster to sit still and do my best to keep eye contact throughout the whole time while a teacher is giving some boring ass talk, my attention would be so caught up in trying to be still and present myself as this perfect student, so much to the point where my attention is absolutely not On whatever math lesson is going on and that's where people that's where we fall short.

We have to understand that for some of us. I contact is a challenge for some of us fidgeting is a necessity

and that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with that.  Listen, if, doing something like fidgeting, if doing something like. Recording all podcast and speaking events on a standing desk is going to be what works for you, then you doing that is something that. Is a win in my eyes.

The thing is, it has to be within reason. Oh, sure. So there's a number of different issues that I kind of attribute to the struggles that teachers have whenever we look at those kinds of things. First off, our education system isn't designed to allow children, even neurotypical children, the energy blow off, right?

You know, once kids get out of pre K and they get into kindergarten, The children are meant to sit there and learn things throughout the entire day. And there's like a 15 minute recess and then lunch and a 15 minute recess, if that. We know that children need two hours to blow off all of their steam.

What we really need to be looking at is making sure children, all the way through high school, all have adequate time to blow off steam in between classes, whether it's them giving them time to read, giving them time to play, giving them time to just be outside, giving them time to do exercise. We have to understand that children, all the way through adulthood, need to have the space to be able to go out and blow off steam.

This also applies to our work, what we do in the office and things like that. Like, this is a known quantifiable thing. We know that if you give children the space to be able to blow off and get some steam out and go outside and be in the sun and do some exercise or go outside and be in the sun and read a book or anything along those lines, they're able to modulate their behavior in the classroom better.

Employees who have ADHD or neurodivergence, When they have the ability to go outside and actually have that space to do so, or even work outside, are more productive. So the  the biggest aspect of all of this is understanding is that the children need breaks in between classes where they can go and blow off steam.

And then they have more energy to be able to focus on the work that we're supposed to be doing. And. Kids do need to know what the expectation is. We saw a couple of people actually respond to that post where they were like, we just want them to understand the expectation. But the teachers also need to understand the expectation.

And that it may be unrealistic for some kids. And that if they need a fidget toy, that that's okay. Like you said. If they need to go to the back of the class where they can have standing desks, where they can still pay attention, but stand and be able to move around, that should be okay. And we don't want to put them in the back of the class as a, some sort of punishment or anything like that, because we also want to make sure the kids who are capable of focusing and paying attention in certain ways aren't being distracted as well.

And there should not be a stigma for being able to go to the back of the class. Everybody should have the access to be able to go to the back of the class and be able to take a, take a quick walk or they need to be able to pace or things like that. And it's really important that people understand that the things that you put in place for neurodivergent children Will also benefit neurotypical children.

Totally. There will, there will not be any harm to any child who has more play time. We won't be 

distracting the other kids as much either. 

Right? Like when my kids come home, it's a snack time and it's getting their ass to fuck outside and I want them running up and down the yard all over the place. I want them to blow off all of the steam.

We don't even talk about homework, or anything like that. Now, granted, they're pre K, so they don't really have homework other than painting or whatever. But, even going forward in the future, we will not even talk about homework until they've had time to blow off steam. And then we'll start talking about homework.

And then we're gonna set a timer for 30 minutes. And then after 30 minutes, we're gonna send their asses outside, or start doing a playing, or we'll switch things. And then when they come back, we'll, we'll do another 30 minutes.

Kids need to have the time to blow off the steam so that they're able to focus and pay attention. Kids with ADHD and autism, doubly so.

Yeah. And. I think 

strength based 

approaches go a long way when we're talking about bringing up kids and adults with, I mean, teens with ADHD. I think of my entire school career and just myself growing up.

First of all, I got that comment that we all cannot stand. But it's like you're the... You're like the dumbest smart kid that I know and shit like this. It's like, but Marc, you, when it comes, it's like, when it comes to Batman, you can name every single writer and artists and all the Robins and everything like that.

But you, you can focus so much on that, but you can't focus on that. You, when I was a music producer, I would spend hours and hours in the studio making beats, but I couldn't spend hours and hours doing my science homework, right? So it's, I think when it comes to navigating, I guess, raising or bringing up neurodivergent kids, kind of like you mentioned, the way that we, the way that we speak to them, and I know this is hard, by the way, but I think the way that we speak to them is something that really matters.

And I am just a big believer in. Thinking about what are the things that we can do to ensure that these kids and these teens feel really confident about themselves. So, like, you mentioned the things about your son, by the way, like, like, how he's just randomly blows your mind with his multiplication skills and everything like that.

But in the morning, brushing his teeth and things like that are hard.

Doesn't make him broken doesn't mean he's doesn't mean he's not going to crush it at whatever he ends up doing later in his life as an adult and everything like that. And these are the type of things that, like, there's ways in my, in my view there, there are ways to get your kids to do stuff. And, and hold them accountable in a way that's, that's healthy and not detrimental to their mental health.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I just, I just, I, I just, I just pushed the message of 

make kids with a d h D and autism. Let's help them grow, but not in a way that makes them feel bad about themselves. 

Help them grow in the way that works for them. Yeah. And teach them early on. Failure is okay. Mistakes are okay.

Here's how we fix them. Here's how we learn from them. Yes, we need accountability, right? We do need accountability to make sure that they are understanding the correct way to behave, but not the correct way to behave like a neurotypical child, but the correct way to behave for themselves. And have expectations set based on their developmental age, not their peer age.

There's a very important distinction there. You wouldn't expect a 4 year old to be able to act as mature as an 8 year old. However, your 8 year old may have the cognitive, social, emotional, Development of a four year old. You have to understand those differences. And when we get our Children into school.

Like, look, I have a whole thing on education system that one of these days I'll wind up talking about on the podcast, but the bottom line boils down to, we need more creative stuff in school. We need theater. We need art. We need a painting. We need, you know, working with clay. We need working on business development.

We need real life skills. We need all of these different things. And we need athletics of some sort because different children have different skill sets. We need to really move away from worrying about advanced mathematics for all students. And we need to really move away from advanced, you know, English or advanced, you know, history or things of that nature.

Those should be the electives. Children need basic understanding of all the different things that they need in their lives. They need to have the options to learn the things they really enjoy. There should be a basic social studies, there should be a basic history, there should be, you know, you know, intermediate history, and then children should get to choose what advanced classes that they want to take.

And if that fits that child, then they can follow that path. And I'm a big proponent that Science is a creative art, and science should be the basis of everything that they do. And, you know, making that change in our education system probably would change the entire paradigm of our society as a whole.

No doubt about it. 

No doubt. All right, so we are, we're approaching... 1 p. m. And I kind of wanted to descend on on this note, but a lot of people that are looking into ADHD Awareness Month  and they're either newly diagnosed with ADHD, or they have a child teen or spouse that was just diagnosed with ADHD to what do you say to people?

Regarding, okay, like, I learned that I have this type of brain. What's the next step in my life? What do you 

say to those people? Stop fucking doing it by yourself. Yeah. That's the first thing I tell my clients. Oh my god. Stop trying to fight through these issues that you're facing alone. Right? If you don't have help here, I get it.

Try to build a social circle of people who understand and who will listen. If you have the ability to have, to have healthcare and things like that, work with an ADHD informed therapist, and specifically, look for trauma informed therapists. If you don't know how to look for one, talk to your PCP, your, your primary care physician, and say, I need a therapist who understands ADHD, or ADHD and autism, or ADHD and trauma.

Can you refer me to somebody, right? First get diagnosed by a psychiatrist or a psychologist who has the background necessary to diagnose. You may need medication to help you get through certain things, but Not always, because if you can put in place the therapy, if you can put in place the, like, cognitive behavioral therapy, if you can put in place the trauma therapy and start processing through those things, you don't have to lean so hard on medication.

You may need medication for emotional dysregulation if you have severe trauma, and you have PTSD style outbursts, or just specifically emotional dysregulation outbursts. You may need emotional specific medications like  Lamictal or...  Guanfacine or clonidine, you may need those medications to help you with the emotional aspect of things.

However, for the most part, there's a large number of different holistic methodologies that you can put in place that will allow you to manage your ADHD fairly effectively. But your biggest change needs to be in mindset. You're not neurotypical. I had a 4 foot 11, 90 pound black woman sit here and scream in my face that there was no normal.

I needed that. It was a wake up call for me. And it was... That's the thing. There is no normal, right? There's nobody out there who is normal. Everybody has a large number of differences in who they are and we have to recognize that neurodiversity is just a sign of that and we have to learn that masking and trying to fit into these neurotypical mindsets and trying to fit into these different social circles and things of those natures  is the problem that we have and we have to make sure that we are utilizing our social circles.

Getting the support that we need from therapists, social and support groups, and psychiatrists, and moving forward with our life, understanding that we are different, and that that's okay. 100%. 100%. 

In agreement with everything that Shane said. Is that understanding that when you're learning about this brain and you're pursuing your life after knowledge of the fact that you have ADHD, you need to understand that in addition to all those tools that were just mentioned, that one of the most critical things for yourself is going to be how you speak to yourself.

It's like getting self confidence or building self confidence. It's almost half the battle for those of us with ADHD, often due to how we were raised trauma, all these types of things. So. As you're learning about your brain and you're getting on medication, you're doing the coaching, you are in support groups and all those type of things, you need to understand that your life's going to improve.

But there are moments in which your ADHD will still get the best of you. You're never going to be 100 percent perfect. If you're someone like me, there's still going to be moments where you accidentally double booked yourself for meetings or you get disorganized and all these types of things. What we need to do in these moments is understand that there's such thing as healthy self accountability.

It's not My room is a mess again. I am the worst person ever. How could I have allowed this to happen? It's not that. It's my room is a mess again. The good news is that I'm not defined by this. And what can I learn from this so that this doesn't happen again, or it happens less. That is the type of conversation in which we need to have with ourselves.

And just like everybody else, we, as people with ADHD or autism are worthy of self confidence. 

 So, you know. Just to let y'all know, we are going to be doing these a little bit more regularly, because I have it on the calendar, and I am going to harp on Marc until he settles down into the schedule and sets aside this time. So, please understand that we are going to produce these a lot more, and we really appreciate all the people out there who are listening.