ADHD, Stress & Men's Health - Men's Group Session

In this week's episode, we have a special treat! This is a recording of our weekly peer-to-peer support group calls that we got approval from the participants to turn into a podcast. 
In this podcast, we have an open and honest discussion about managing ADHD symptoms and improving mental and physical health.

We explore how ADHD symptoms like impulsiveness, forgetfulness, and distractibility frequently undermine basic self-care routines like sleep, nutrition, exercise, and medication adherence. We share personal struggles and tips for making gradual improvements in these areas.

Other topics include the importance of social connections for mental health, facing fears of rejection, and having new experiences that get you out of your comfort zone. We must learn to start small with sustainable changes, reframing failure as learning experiences, and being patient with ourselves.

Laughing, dancing, improv, and other creative pursuits are recommended to process emotions, build confidence, and practice social skills. We stress the need to stop comparing yourself to others and focus on your progress and self-acceptance.

We also dive into the difficulties of masking and feeling inauthentic in social situations. Often, this excessive masking drains mental energy, and we cover it and much more! 

Check it out! 

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Transcript

 Today we're going to talk about ADHD, stress, and physical health. We deal with a lot of stress. And stress and frustration are the two driving forces behind emotional dysregulation. We feel things more. So we feel stress more. We feel frustration more. And those things really boil over eventually in our bodies as we get older.

 It's easier for 18 year olds to deal with it, 20 year olds to deal with it, 22 years old, 25, 28, 30 years old. But eventually, just like with athletes, our brains start going, fuck,  we're done. Right? We're done with the whole thing.  And this sometimes turns into physical health issues. Some of those are so detrimental that it even cuts off about 13 years of our  📍 lives.

It's a  combination of different factors,  right?  We have a higher rate of hypertension. We have a higher rate of blood pressure issues, cardiac issues  our mental health tanks. We have a higher suicidal ideation. We have a higher follow through with suicidal ideation.  And we often do not take care of our physical health. 

because of not taking care of any kind of health issues. We don't brush our teeth often enough. We don't take showers well enough. We don't eat well enough. We don't drink well enough.  We don't exercise like we should, and we have a propensity to being overweight. Now, technically speaking, overweight doesn't necessarily mean you're unhealthy, but there's a higher rate of unhealthiness when you are overweight.

So, that is a thing.  And  ironically enough, I know that I'm probably not the person who looks like they should be talking on this. However, I am going to be working with Dave, who is somebody who understands this. I do also want to talk about the fact that we do have a podcast and we actually talk to a really amazing physical  person, Liam Danger Park, who's been a part of the group for years and who is an expert on physical health.

So y'all should go check that out by the way. When we look at the different factors for people with ADHD, when it comes to physical health.  What do you think, Dave,  is the one that really drives  us to really struggle the most with?  What do you think is the most serious physical issue  that you or what you've experienced deal with when it comes to physical health? 

Yeah, so it's interesting because it's  like, I think about kind of food health, right? Because, alright, on the complete opposite other end of it, right?  I am someone who's underweight for my size. I have been chronically way too skinny  where if I'm way too active and I'm not eating enough, I lose weight really quickly where it looks like you can see The bones through my skin kind of thing.

It can be pretty freaky and it can be really kind of dangerous. So I find that also I think  I find two things, right? So I think  what you eat and making sure it's not processed foods and having a healthy diet really affects your body chemistry, right? Like understanding what you need to eat, recognizing your own allergies and what's going to help.

And I think the other thing is having enough if you have a job where you're sitting a lot, if you're not physically moving, right, we need to be able to get the body  Active, particularly for our serotonin, our dopamine and those kind of effects. So one of the things that, that I think personally that can help a lot, we talked about this last  last week's meeting to a lot of people talk about exercise, like going out for a run, my kind of daily routine is a few pushups.

And I also like to mention, I think this is what Shane was trying to get into was laughing. I think one of the best forms of physical health that you can do for yourself.  Is laughing,  by the ability to laugh what it does if you can laugh for five to ten minutes And doesn't have to be like jokey laughter of like you hear a joke But if you just go ho ha ha ha it sends off a signal to your brain to release  dopamine serotonin and as you laugh quarter it releases  Reduces cortisol levels because it's you start to shake out the stress Because where does stress go in the butt the stress goes into the body?

So if we're not Dealing with the stress either goes to our head and gives us that mental,  that crazy mental health, or goes into the body. And this is where you get those physical kind of aches and pains and those physical kind of health problems that come up from it. But learning how to just go, Oh, ha ha ha, he, he, he, for 15 minutes a day has been proven with science that it actually helps you create a better physical kind of health.

And that's what I find, I think is the.  Is one of the things that I think is really powerful and being able to start our day off right to help our physical health and our stress because it's think about it like you're starting a car engine like and it's cold outside. You can't just go right into 5th gear.

You have to start to slow and ramp up. So starting off with a little bit of stretching, drinking a glass of water. First thing lubricate the system and thinking about your body is a machine that you can't just go right away Especially I think as we get older like you  have to ramp it up like build up to it But it's finding in for our physical health is finding the small little activities we can do To work into our daily routines and our habits  to help us out.

Especially if you're sitting all day long, you need to make sure you're getting up, activating, moving the body, doing just even a little kind of shakes and going, oh, right here, right? I'm just doing this, but this is starting to shake out.  Yeah, Jonathan Greer, laughter boosts the immune system. And Jonathan Greer has an amazing laugh as well.

But like laughter and being able to just kind of move the body. It's a good way of starting with that kind of health and recognizing it's not about being overweight or underweight, being too heavy or too skinny, but it's finding the right weight and the right size that you feel comfortable in.



The things that I had really expanded on that for me was my wife got bariatric surgery a few years ago  and it was talking to the bariatric doctor. And I was like, look, I don't want to be this one 65, one 85 dude. And he looked me dead in my eye and he's do not dare get near one 85 at six foot for your frame. 

And I'm like,  Oh,  what, should I look for? He goes to 50  max.  That's, what you should be at. I can tell you right now just from looking at you.  So, a lot of us get really hung up on the number, right? The number  of how much you weigh.  And the thing about  understanding your body is that all of those different things that are out there are all averages.

They're averages across the board. BMI, all of those different things are averages.  And their estimations put out there to give us like guidelines,  think about the FDA's thing about a 2000 calorie diet,  right? That's not the, that's a recommended average for people, but for me to maintain my,  my ideal weight.

I'm at 2, 500 calories per day, ish, roughly speaking.  And  it's really important that your weight and how you exercise and all of those different things is very personal to you. Like a lot of the time we get bored doing certain things like just walking.

And it's important to understand that for some people, especially when you're dealing with disabilities and things along those lines, you may have to do a little bit of research to find the exercises that you can do. To speak on what Dave was talking about, if we sit all day at a desk,  get a standing desk.

Right and get one of those really comfortable mats that you can stand on and you're already doing better than nothing,  right?  There's a really interesting program that's out there that my wellness coach got me into that seems really crazy and weird, but it's called infant development exercises. 

Think of a baby Right? Think of a baby that's born, it's laying on it's back, it's kicking it's legs up in the air.  It's building it's core. When they roll over onto their stomach and they start lifting their head up, they're building a top part of their core and they're building up their back muscles. 

And so they walked me through a number of different exercises that are essentially me going from the baby process of sitting on my back, to eventually standing and walking. Because I've got a lot of chronic fatigue issues and chronic pain issues due to fibromyalgia.  And it's  really, really interesting  to get to a place where  I can feel my abs.

Now you can't see them because I got a lot of padding and everything, but my core is really strong now and it's really improved my back pain.  Because I'm actually using my core the way it's supposed to be used. I'm using my back muscles the way that they're supposed to be used in healthy ways.  And, , you have to find the exercise that works best for you.

Yoga. Amazing. I think it's boring as shit. So I do tai chi,  right? Similar mindset, right? Mindfulness, being in the moment, movement, things of that nature. Some people find that lifting weights is something that they enjoy. The challenge, right? We always look for those in cup, right? Interesting, novel challenges that have urgency and  follow our passions.

So there's ways that we can get really passionate about them, especially when we're doing things, where we're trying to hit a certain weight. Urgency. I want to hit this certain weight by this certain time. And, We're constantly driving ourselves forward,  making goals such as I want to do a triathlon.

I want to do a marathon. I want to do a half marathon. I want to walk a mile,  right? These are ways that we start to really drive ourselves through to find the exercises that work best for us. And it's always very personal. 

So yeah, this one hits deep in the core here because in the last year I've been I've been going to pretty much a regular bootcamp and workout. 

I do weights, I do swimming and, I underemphasize myself and I don't appreciate my gain in terms of my, I don't appreciate pretty much. And I'm trying not to use only because that's been  my Nick picking myself, I lost 35 pounds,  but, and I gained muscle though, and definition,  I've also been like, I tiptoed over 300 and I've been trying to get it down and it just, I can't bolt and lose in the same time. 

But I know the importance of maintaining muscle and that, that doesn't tend to scale fast or anything. So, I've yo yoed around, tried to do under 1800 calories, tried to do no carbs, tried to do no this, and  I've, eventually just kept going back and forth and overly failing, but Kept going out to exercises and I've,  I am more limber, more energetic, more of the things, and it's really taught me the value of just going there to do the gains of energy,  gaining, doing the energy of muscle building, not necessarily aesthetics or the numbers on a scale, which it will come  eventually.

I, just have to go there for my mental wellness.  And that is something that is hard to convince myself. Took a whole year to finally just get over the whole hype about  that, because I kept thinking, damn it, I only lost 35 pounds. That fucking sucks. But I have to see the other way because I've gained  more mental clarity, I've gained more awareness, I've gained muscle, I've gained energy, and I will not undermine my emphasis anymore.

So, it was a worthy tradeoff with not enough pounds being lost. So, I just wanted to say that.  

It's always important to really start to recognize the totality of what you gain. Versus just the number of what you've lost. So it's a really valuable lesson that you're learning there, Adam. Great job. Excellent job on that, and for the rest of y'all, it's really important to understand this, that muscle weighs more than fat. 

The mu more muscle that you start packing on from working out, especially if you're doing weightlifting, you're not going to see your weight loss as  specifically as you would if you were just eating well and doing aerobic workouts, walking or something along, along, along those lines, because your muscle is going to start building up the more pressure that you put under it.

And I'm saying this from as a former weightlifter.  iT's really important that you start to gauge a total body and mind improvement and start measuring your biometrics by that. Right? How clear are you thinking? How easy is it for you to move around? How are, how well are you feeling, right?  One of the things that we see when people are really gaining a lot of horrible weight or bad weight is it's hard to wake up in the morning.

It's hard to get out of bed. It's hard to get moving in the morning. There's a lot of lethargy to our day because we don't actually have the energy and we're not burning our fat efficiently. It's being stored instead of being burned. And when that's happening, we're not having the metabolic  processes working throughout our body the way that they're supposed to.

Once fat is stored in the fat, the old fat cells in your body and your stomach and things of that nature, it's not going to be processed through your system the way that it's supposed to be. It's only through really working out and doing a lot of different things like that, so that you're getting that calorie deficit that you need in order for it to start going, where the fuck is my energy at?

And then start really firing up or burning those areas out. I am massively oversimplifying that by the way, and I'm just, it's. A complicated process. So you definitely want to be working with a wellness expert or something along those lines, that understands healthy eating, healthy exercise, and listens to you.

When you say that you have ADHD, that's actually really important. By the way, understanding that having somebody who gets that, who isn't the just do it, Nike guy.  is actually huge for our mental health and physical health. Jed, what you got boss? 

So first thing I wanted to say is the most important thing, especially for people with ADHD that we forget is we need to maintain manageable goals, not goals that are too big because we tendency have to try to make goals bigger than what is actually attainable to make it so that we have this self fulfilling prophecy.

That we're a failure because we're not reaching the goals that we set for ourselves. So I think the most important thing is maintaining an awareness and being able to have either yourself or have people around you to be able to work on having manageable goals. Because it's critical, especially with working out or any of those things, to be having that, to build it up so that you don't get down on yourself, because we're really good at shitting on ourselves, and making it so that we don't want to do it again by trying to create that narrative, that negative narrative self talk that we create.

So I think... The most important thing, at least from what I'm hearing and talking, that I think I needed to be said, was that we have to really be careful with the goals that we're setting, and really set attainable goals that are able to help us work on being able to manage all the things that we do, to be able to move forward, to be able to make better progress in 

what we're doing moving forward.

That is absolutely fucking correct. Holy shit, yeah.  So back to my story about the bariatric surgeon, right? He was like, you need to be around two 50 my entire life. My brain had been telling me I needed to be this one 85 dot guy. That's what the myth is that's out. There is if you're six foot, the key weight for you to hit is one 85.

That's ignoring. My bone density, which is higher than average my frame, which is larger than average and just literally just how my body is shaped. And his thing was don't pay attention to your weight, pay attention to your calorie intake and make sure that you're at a deficit for what you should be eating based on your height, weight, and all the other different factors of your activity.

And if you can just do that, then Start weighing yourself once a week and then paying attention to that and you'll see that significantly drop off. The second you start exercising, you're adding to your your deficit. YOu're burning more calories. As long as you don't continue to eat, like Adam was saying he's sitting at 1800 calories.

That's actually a lot more attainable than people think about if you're going out and doing an hour long workout, doing weightlifting, and you're burning 600 calories.  When you sit here and you add in the fact that you walk or you go for a walk for a mile, you're burning to 250 to 300  calories.

If you're just sitting, standing at your standing desk instead of sitting over an eight hour period, you're burning over 600 calories. That's, the science behind that. And so it's really important to understand these different factors when it comes into how you're looking at your goals, right?

Pay attention to how you feel more than the numbers on the wall that you're trying to hit. Pay attention to that and get an accurate assessment with a medical professional based on the actual things that you have, your metabolism, the way that you eat, all of those different things, to get a better idea of what that looks like going forward.

And don't sit here and say, I want to run a marathon if you're six foot one, 400 pounds  in a year, you know what I'm going to run in the marathon for as long as I can.  That's a huge goal. That's a great goal. Go for it. And, but just make sure you're being healthy about it. Make sure you're being realistic about it and celebrate the win.

If you're doing more than you, if you're doing it more often than you don't.  The success is not in the outcome, it's in the journey moving forward. And if you keep moving forward, if your bar keeps going up like this, you're eventually going to get to where you want to go. That's all I've got to say on that one.

Jonathan Greer, I know you walk often.  Why do you walk? What do you enjoy about walking?  

For me, walking is therapeutic, and I actually started walking in August.  I found that during the whatever spectrum you are on it,  when we work from home, my wife and I, we would do it every night.

And I found it to be really therapeutic and I kept waiting, kept waiting. I said, you know what? What's stopping you? So, in August, I said, okay, go walking. So. In my neighborhood,  if I walk like, along the call the 2nd, it's about 1 point. So for me, I start my day when I stick to it and I'm getting better because I took some of last week off.

But nevertheless,  for me, it's therapeutic because I start my day with listening to gospel music and praying while I walk. And I found that in walking that I'm less stressed. If I start my day off like that, because I have a plan, I'll usually put out my  workout clothes on my dresser. And, or  already know what I'm planning to wear.

And then I'll put in my earphones. And then once I hit my music, I know, okay, Greer,  this is on. And then I use the app  map my walk. So, that's been therapeutic for me just the walking because I found that it helps me to be less stressed, walking. And  I'm glad you talked about like weight. My goal was, I don't know why.  I guess  my goal was 165, but I don't think I'm going to get back there  for the simple fact that  I've done intermittent fasting. 

It doesn't work. So I'm like at a, like between 170 and 175 ish. But the weird thing is, and I'm glad you said that is I've lost inches.  My shorts, they're loose. Like, they're super loose. My pants, they're super loose, but I'm still at like 170, 175. Now, my gut, I would think, ooh, but it's getting smaller. It's weird.

It's getting smaller. Like, before I had the, dad, abs But that's not the case anymore, but I've lost, like I said, inches. So that's the other motivation. So that my clothes fits a little, I'm not wearing a 36 cause I'm only five, six. So as long as I don't have applause because therefore while I was one 85 and I had moves  and I, that, that wasn't working, I didn't want to, I didn't like jumping and then feeling like there was applause under my belly.

So that's  my other motivation. And, Like I said, mentally, and also it sets the example for my family. It's not enough for me to tell my family, okay, I should be healthy. And then I'm eating a whole row of cookies or, honey buns every day. So  that's the thing, but I really, do find that walking. 

It's therapeutic for me, and I found that I'm less  reactive, with having a routine and having routines helps me. So that's just an additional routine that helps me focus

excellent.  And, my doctor, he was like, Hey, why don't you go for a walk in the morning? And I'm like, Oh my God, walking is so boring. And for me, it is, it's super boring. Even if I have an audio book on like my brain still does this thing that there's just nothing there. And,  but then I went for a walk the other day  and. 

I was just appreciating the, nature, right? I live kind of rural area, like just outside of a major city. So it's not super rural, but like it was, the leaves are red, right? I love living in the South in the fall. And  I was like, Oh shit.  This isn't as boring as I used to think it was.  And there, there has to be a recognition that things are going to change over time.

You're going to find yourself enjoying things differently than you used to enjoy them. And so as we're like looking at these things and thinking about these things, it's really important to get to grasp that understanding that it's okay to go back and try different things that you've tried in the past that you didn't enjoy. 

Because something may have changed in the past, in the recent history, where your brain is in a different place. Thank you. And we are beings of change, beings of chaos. And so what didn't work before may work now because we have a different mindset about what our goals are. And it's easier for us.

You had mentioned intermittent fasting. That's actually a really effective one for us because a lot of times we forget to eat anyways. So why not plan for it? For those who don't know intermittent fasting is where you take you eat regularly for, every couple hours for eight hours and then you take a 16 hour off or there's other frame frameworks that are out there where you're just essentially starving your body for a certain amount of time in a much more controlled manner.

So, it's something to think about and consider if y'all are out there looking for it. But again, always talk to a doctor and find out what kind of system will work best for you. For me, what I do is portion control. Meat, size of my palm, right? That's what my goal is, right?  Vegetables,  well, what vegetables I can eat due to sensory issues and stuff like that. 

Handful a day, ? And, I try to stay away from candy. I try to stay away from sodas. Like, my goal is not to drink a soda every day, because I used to get into a habit of drinking three 12 ounce Mountain Dews a day. That was something I used to do.  But the more that I really focused on making sure I'm drinking more water, by just drinking three of these every day, these are 40 ounces.

That's 120 ounces of water I'm drinking every day. And water is one of those things that's super key

one thing I wanted to say is, that we also try to compare ourselves against other people, which is a false. sense of problematic situations, which can cause us down the path also of negativity. We try to do that as well at times. So it's comparing yourself versus yourself and doing what you can to try to improve one step at a time. 

And I also wanted to say, as far as on the fitness thing, when I was growing up my dad exercised a lot and I saw that he was doing it and it turned me off because You got injured and he was doing crazy stuff and I'm like, I don't want to fucking be like that. It's fucking crazy. 

But eventually, when I got older in my 20s, I went to personal training and I learned how to be able to work out properly and I had structure. And  I use that structure as a platform for me to be able to work out on a more consistent basis. So I use that as part of my daily routine, knowing that kind of helps manage my emotions.

And now I've moved it more to the morning, working with my therapist on that, it's various mixed results. It's not what I want it to be, but you know what I'm working out in the morning and I'm doing something positive in the morning. And that I think has a more impactful situation in general, doing my cardio stuff in the morning, just to help maintain my mental health. 

And just getting out of the house and just doing that and just by the act of getting out of the house going to the gym, even if it's for 15 20 minutes of doing some type of cardio is way better. We get stuck if we stay at home, it becomes a  shit show because we stay at home we get lost in our heads. 

So the more we're able to be around people and be out there in the world, the less will be in our heads. So I think that also pulls us out of these situations, even when we're struggling editing that external polls also helps us so. All those different types of things, having a fitness class, I used to do kickball  or, dodge ball, or now I'm going to do pickleball just to be able to get out of my head and do physical activity, doing something social, because I find that regardless if you make friends or not, keeps you more being able to be focused on a task and less about all the other stuff that gets stuck in your head.

So that was just my two cents and that's what I was planning on saying. 

Yeah.  Definitely agree with you. And we're actually going to get into that more a little bit here in just a few minutes about the other benefits of exercise and physical health. Remy, what about you? What kind of stuff do you do, if anything at all?

I  try to do a good amount of walking. I live in the Greater Queens area, and I, our offices used to be in Midtown, so I was used to walking to the train.  When  We were in season, I would play on my company's softball team,  which I've been doing for, I think,  four or five years at this point, which, as soon as COVID hit, that's when it got real for me, like I didn't care that the world shut down as soon as the commissioner said, you know, 13 softballs canceled.

That was my COVID moment,  which, of course, I didn't realize then why I like softball so much was,  regularity, structure, familiarity with the people I was playing with. And yeah, so I used to do that.  I would play Pick Up Ultimate Frisbee pretty frequently.  There's a WhatsApp group that I fell out of habit of checking, and a group in my neighborhood in one of the local parks, which again, also fell out of going to.

But now that it's hopefully going to be a little bit more better and not that cold, I'm going to try to,  Make it out to more of those games. So that's what I try to do with the varying degrees of success given personal stuff that I'm going through. Every little bit helps. Every little bit helps.

And Now is really the time to really get back out there and start picking that stuff up So I totally encourage you to start picking that up and getting and going through that. It will actually help you with what's going on in your world right now,  and because I know stress frustration, we've talked about in the past about what you've been going through. 

I want to switch gears though.

We touched on this. One of our first started, and Judge just talked about it as well,  stress, frustration, our emotional regulation.  These things often can really start making our lives significantly harder. The reason is, the more that our brains are burnt out, the less likely we are to do things. 

Right? It makes all of our ADHD symptoms significantly worse. The more stress and frustration we're under, the more emotional dysregulation we have, the more likely we're not going to pay attention to the things that need to get done. We're going to have a bigger struggle with,  Paying attention at work, focusing on the tasks that we need to get done, being consistent in what we do, even more so than we do normally. 

And, if we're not working with a psychiatrist, if we're not working with a therapist, if we are not dealing with treatment and stuff like that,  We are going to get worse over time.  That kind of goes all the way in line with what I was talking about with the suicidal ideation and things of that nature.

Judd brought up a great point whenever he was talking about getting out of the house and being in those environments where we are around other people because the other aspect of that is we are not just burning calories and things of that nature.  We are actually helping our mental health. We're doing things that lets us burn off stress.

One of the number one tools in managing stress and frustration and emotional regulation is exercise, being out of the house in social situations, and doing things with other people.  That's also how we make friends.  We actually saw a bunch of posts about this recently. It's like learning how to connect with people. 

Through a shared experience, a shared hobby, a walking group, a pickleball group, a frisbee group, a WhatsApp group,  these are connecting with people that if, as we are moving forward in that conversation, we may find other things that we enjoy doing, and the more that we find those other things that we enjoy doing together, the better and easier it is, to form a relationship with that person. 

And, look, if you just have friends that you go hang out with and all you do is pickleball, they're still your friends.  If you have people that you hang out with on a regular basis, going to play frisbee and things like that, but y'all don't really connect anywhere else, they're still your friends,  right? I have friends of mine who are some of my best friends that all I really do with them is play Dungeons and Dragons. 

And it's really important to understand that connection is key, because we also need people who accept us.  Because having people around us who accept us for who we are allows us to also feel more comfortable in accepting who we are.  And if they get it, if they also  likely going to have some sort of neurodivergence themselves, because like draws like,  it's just really important to understand that social connection is what also helps us with managing our ADHD symptoms,  right?

We're able to build those connections. We're also able to build romantic relationships.   That's how you build relationships, is finding those things that you enjoy doing together with other people and getting introduced to other people who enjoy those similar things. And so it's just really important to understand, like what Judd was saying, is getting out of the house.

Speaking of Judd, what do you got boss?

My next thing is, it's not always about finding what you want to do when you get out. It's about finding something just to do in general. I think we try to focus so much on what it is that we're going to do. And it has to be something that we want to do and we get caught up in all the details, but more about getting out of the house than it is about what kind of activity we're doing.

Because the thing is, that we normally can really go in 6 ways into Sunday by telling us about what we actually like. I think that it's not about liking it. It's about being out of the house, being able to out be able to prove ourselves and less about focusing on what good activities are there.

What can I do that? I'm going to actually enjoy because you don't know when you go out to do that. We're assuming beings were horrible predictors of knowing what we're going to actually like when we go out and do something. And the only way we're going to really know what we're like doing is actually doing it.

So when we learn about what we do, then we actually are functioning, and that's really the most important thing. So that's just about what I wanted 

to say.  That actually reminds me of something me and my wife did the other day. My wife and I had gone out of town and we went to a small town that has one of those downtowns that's revitalizing and things like that.

And my wife had actually noticed that the local playhouse got back open.  And she'd always loved going to that local playhouse, but she,  because we had moved away from there, we just hadn't gone back there. And she actually wound up buying  tickets to rent  the play.  And so we wound up going and doing that.

And that's one of those situations where you may go out and about and see a poster for a concert. And you're like, holy shit, I know that band. I've seen them on Spotify or whatever. And that can inspire you to try that out. You may walk by a Kung Fu studio, or a Taekwondo studio, or a boxing studio, a dancing studio, and get the ADHD impulse to go, Hey, fuck, I'm gonna go check that out and see what it's about.

And these are really good times to do that because exercising that impulse and letting it actually go into something that is  A,  letting us spin that allows us to let that little valve off the steam engine that we have when it comes to impulsive spending and impulsively doing things.

Let's actually use that thing for good. For the entire example of this, Mark Almodovar created this group because he was walking down the street and just said, Hey, there's a, there's no men's ADHD support groups.  And look at where we're at now.  So just imagine that, like Judd was saying, just get out of the house and go downtown.

Get out of the house and go, check out Meetup or, and see if there's anything on there to check, to go do. And let's actually just start exploring the world. Explore the world. Just let yourself get out there and be out there and be connecting with people about that stuff. These are ways that you can easily manage your ADHD, emotional regulation, because that's what it does.

Start facing the fear.  A lot of us fear rejection. In fact, one of them, rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, is one of those things that we always hear about. Because we do fear rejection. But the thing about that is...  We need to celebrate rejection in some cases, because what that is, the person telling you no. 

And that's okay.  They aren't meant for us. People are not going to like us all the time. Like, we may be oversharing, or things of that nature. But there are a lot of people out there that, when we can regulate ourselves, and we do work on those different issues that we struggle with,  The appreciate that and show that appreciation and then start encouraging us to continue to be better. 

So David, what are some things that you have found that you were surprised by that you actually wound up enjoying that was from an impulsive idea?  

Moving to Ireland. That was an impulsive idea. So  just to finish off the, point there, right, I always think of the movie. What about Bob?

And in that movie he talks about baby steps, right? Like the psychologist says, baby step to the door, baby step to this. So some of the impulsive things that I've that really helped me is I got into doing stand up comedy. When I was trying to get sober, I still wanted to go hang out in bars and other spaces and realize that I was really good in.

Doing standup and enjoyed being in front of a crowd.  Learning how to go talk to people on the street. When I moved to Ireland, I had a really big kind of, I wanted to start getting into the dating and social scene. So I ended up like the guy was like, you should take a boxing class. It was like, all right, cool.

Take a boxing class. And that was one of the things that also helped with my mental health too, as we've been talking about our physical health  is that boxing really helps me feel the confidence. Confidence in meeting new people, so one of the things it would do, cause like, all right, I want to go make friends and get social. I would go to a dance class.  And there was always an activity going on that I could hop myself into, practice my social skills, and do something I really enjoyed as well. And I, that's a great way of meeting people, but it was also just really good for getting me out of my shell.

Because if you've ever moved to a place where you don't know anyone, you've moved to a completely different part of the country, or into a completely different country altogether. Like, there's that fear, and then, but when you start to get to know and meet people, you start to Shane said, you have your D& D friends, I had my dancing friends, I had my AA friends, I had my work friends, and I was able to create this, social environment,  around myself by having these impulsive things turn into some really creative ideas.

And I made some deep friendships and connections with it, which helped my mental health. And it was one of those things that I tried to continue to do. And it's been a little bit more difficult since coming out of like the lockdowns and COVID, but it's like pushing myself back out there again of taking the baby steps.

It goes back to taking small little daily actions.  To push yourself into those kind of situations to get the most out of it.

I mean, absolutely.  I did not think I would actually like ballroom dancing. This is actually a social stereotype. As to why I didn't think I would like ballroom dancing. Cause I was just like, it's ballroom dancing, 

I grew it up with a very weird concept of what ballroom dancing was, 

but  once I actually got into a class and started doing it with my wife, it was so much fun, the people who were out there.

Who wanted to, do it  were actually a lot more varied because I expected a whole lot of old white people to be in these classes, but it wasn't it was a lot of different people who were there and who were wanting just to have fun doing this thing. And there's this structure to it. There's these different steps that you have to learn and memory is not the best, but. 

Because you're doing it with so many different people during the dancing and everything, you start to pick it up a lot easier. And again, it's also movement, which is good for us. It's great for our mental health and physical health and things of that nature. Judd, what about you? I know you're a dancer as well.

So props on you, Bubba. 

One of the things I wanted to say is that I started off doing a group on, you know, Then I started doing improv. Then after that, I started doing acting classes and then I eventually moved over to do ballroom dancing and do those things. And that by just getting started doing one thing and evolving to other things.

So I think it's about not just focusing on doing all of them at once and not trying to get overwhelmed, but this is just doing one step at a time, trying to get a little bit more on each one. You don't know which one's going to hit to be able to deal with that. You're going to improve you as much, but it's about being able to try different things and seeing what works.

Yeah, absolutely.  

And Meetup is actually 

a really good tool. Meetup. com.  Go on there and just see if something catches your fancy. If it's already something that you enjoy doing, why not go ahead and try it out? But like Judd said, don't overbook yourself. Don't overtax yourself.

 I think one of my favorite things that really helped me  understand some of the other issues that I deal with when it comes to social situations was like Judd said, improv.  I used to just go to improv thing where it's an improv speech. A lot of y'all may have heard about Toastmasters. 

And  it was where I started realizing that I loved doing public speaking.  And I had this inkling that I knew this because I used to be a pastor at a church, I used to be associate pastor. And I loved being in front of the crowd and preaching. I loved being able to speak. And there was a certain kind of connection to it that would feed me energy. 

And it's so weird because I'm an introvert, or I've always thought of myself as an introvert.  But there was something different about being in that situation in front of that crowd. That once I started facing the fear of the judgment, the criticisms and stuff like that,  really started opening something up in me. 

And  the structure around it, I could go up there and I could just let myself speak about a specific thing. It didn't wear me out. It didn't exhaust me. What exhausted me was the after. Having to deal with all the different people face to face and things of that nature. And so I started understanding, yes, I can do this thing, but if I have to be very involved with the social aspect afterwards with a lot of people I don't know, I'm probably going to need to rest for a few days after that. 

And that's a really valuable thing to understand, right? Your social battery, how much energy you can put into that,  can really help us gauge what I'm going to have to do. So when I plan events like that, I know the day before and the day after need to be rest days.  So that I'm building myself up, and I'm resting and relaxing and building my battery back up a little bit the day after. 

And I challenge you to check these things out. Check out improv, check out the different stand up comedy things, check out the different,  theater groups, or dancing, or something along those lines, and see if that's something that you enjoy doing. If it's not, there's nothing wrong with that, but  there's something to it.

When a person comes up to you and says, dude, you did amazing, right? There's that dopamine rush that we get the, recognition response, euphoria that we get. Ned Hallowell, coined that term. It's the opposite of rejection sensitivity.  There's something to that really resonates with a lot of us, and I challenge you to check it out.

Because very rarely is anybody going to come up to you and be really shitty and negative criticism.  They may give you positive feedback to say, Hey, this was really good. Here's some ideas to help you out moving forward. So,  check it out, and see if that's something that you enjoy doing. Remy, what do you got, boss?

I just,  I'm thinking back to Improv in general  during the start of the pandemic,  my brother  invited me to this. It was D& D style, like an apocalyptic Western kind of, storyline with him and a couple of his friends  that we all did on Zoom. I've always been really close with my friends with the friends of my older brother.

We're about three years age difference, so it worked out that way.  But  I was in the Zoom call during one of the campaigns.  And one of my brother's friends said something like, what do you want to do? We're like, what's the next step? What do you want your character to do? And, as someone that never really liked ambiguity  I didn't know what to do.

This kind of, the free, the open worldness of that kind of thing,  it just didn't make sense to me because I never thought of myself as that, as a creative in that sense.  And then one of the other guys,  one of the other people who joined us without missing a beat said, yes. And which I,  know is very much a classic improv  prompt. 

But  yeah, it was just a very  good reminder of how  that stuff is very hard to do.  And, to be comfortable in that  storytelling space. it's a very admirable thing,, to be like confident and feel safe in that environment.

I 100 percent understand where you're coming from.

I've actually been in bad d and d groups, right? I've been in a group where it was not safe to, to just let myself be who I wanted to be, right? And I had developed this huge character. My creativity had gone absolutely nuts. I had a huge backstory for them and everything. And I was playing them right. I was not playing myself.

And I found it really empowering being with certain people. In certain groups where  they really resonated with my character and I could just be that person for a little while it was like an escapism, but it was a healthy escapism. And I found that really fun and then when I found other improv groups where it was very similar and actually D& D  was like in person D& D where we were just really actively being that character, 

the feedback that we get and the amount of creativity that it took to be in that mode really resonated with my brain, because our ADHD brains are creative. Now, creativity may be a huge, broad range of different things. You may be creative in business development, like me. You may be creative  artistically, like drawing and painting or poetry or...

writing or things like that. You may be creative in how you design things in the 3D printer. You may be creative in how you work on cars. Creativity is such a huge factor for people with ADHD and the reason why all of this is relevant to physical and mental men's health is because these are all activities that allow us to, to process and make sure our emotions are being able to stay regulated on a more regular basis.

Judd, you had more to say. 

Yeah, I wanted to say that it also helps deal with being, living in the discomfort and being able to do things anyway. Because I think that we sometimes have trouble believing that we can live through the discomfort and be able to do stuff and be able to get to where we need to be.

And that kind of stuff  helps, chip away at that narrative that we create for ourselves that we're not going to be able to do this because our, because we're going to get overwhelmed and that things are going to go out of control.  And it's by being that doing that stuff helps challenge that narrative and giving you an opportunity in small ways to be able to start challenging and be able to give you the confidence to do more things. 

It's not really starting from the larger things like giving confidence about the smaller things that give you the confidence that you can handle less stuff to be able to really chip away at that narrative and really give you the opportunity to succeed.

Kind of along those lines Tuesday when you're starting a new kind of thing, right? It's so easy for our,  rejection sensitivity to kick in or feeling like that anxiety of Oh, my God, I'm gonna fail doing this new thing.

I take a reframe on this of like, I'm in a laboratory, and I'm trying a new thing. And it's not about succeeding, pass or fail. It's about what did I learn from that experience, especially to use the example of dance, like, if you're starting off to be in dance, especially as the leader, the male part,  You have a lot of steps to memorize and everything else isn't I get the steps, right?

It's like, all right What one move did I get down? Right? What it's one thing. I got reframing that to instead of oh my god I suck at dancing to all right. What did I learn from this class? What did I gain from that experience? reframing that thing to being like a scientist in a lab of like, all right, we're going to try some things out.

Some things are going to work. Some things are not going to work. And what can we learn from the experience versus, Oh, you know what? I tried weightlifting once and I couldn't lift the 50 pound thing. So now I must suck at weightlifting, or I went out and I tried, baking, or I went to a language thing.

And I Totally was too shy and I didn't say anything so I must not be good at it like whatever it is, right? Or I tried dnd and like my character died in the  first round of combat like I must be sucked at dnd like no, it's all right What did I learn from that experience and it's part of that is a good reframe of handling our stress as well, right?

Like Wizards, yes wizards will down in the first round of combat every time.  No, let's say ultra shabazz you but that's those are warlocks But it is going to that idea of, like, when we're trying these things,  when we're trying to push ourselves out the comfort zone, and this is too, I think, where a lot of our stress comes from, it comes from staying too much within our comfort zone bubble, we become complacent, we talk about the physical movement, but it's also the mental movement as well  I'm not sure about you guys, if, like, when you get a job or something, it becomes that mind numbingness, Thanks.

To it and you start to oh my god, and then it like more it takes more energy to do a simple task Versus something you're excited about so creating that excitement creating that kind of  Mental like reframe of okay. I'm gonna try This thing I don't think it's going to succeed but i'm going to go at it for it I'm going to try because I want to learn something from this versus.

Oh my god, like An example of talking to women if you're trying to go out and date, right? Oh my god, if I go talk to her and then she says no I must be a I must no girls ever is going to date me again or like I must be ugly or weirdo like no All right. Hey, I went out and I went and said hello and then I ran away You know what?

I went up and I said hello and then  you take your little wins you take your little things of What did I gain from the experience and whatever that may be?  So especially when we're talking about doing these new social things or pushing ourselves out that comfort zone Reframing it so that so it comes from a point of what did I learn from that experience?

If you talk to anyone in improv, they never say oh man, you're crappy at improv. They're like, okay What can you learn from that? How can you grow from that?   

We're just celebrating the little wins  granted, there's this woman that I met at a cookie crawl of all things about a few years ago.

It was a brilliant concept where we went to places that serve cookies instead of bars. I was with a group of friends at a bar.  After,  a Ultimate Frisbee game, and granted I was still drinking, which is why I probably have the balls to even do this,  but it was a group of us in this bar outside, these two women came up to us, Just to talk.

It was like their birthday. And they ended up walking around with us for a lot of the day.  And  I was really uncomfortable. I didn't really say anything. But this one woman. At one point, even in the conversation, she said you don't really say anything or you have a lot of interesting things to say.

You just need to be confident enough to say them or something to that extent. And I was so drunk that was the only reason why I even had the guts to, but as she was leaving the bar, I went up to her. And said, I know I don't say so much, but let me change that. What's your number ?

Granted, and it didn't go anywhere, but I didn't talk to this really close female friend of mine afterwards. And I told her that story, and even she was like, that's smooth. Granted, it was in the context of  the kind of half drunk Remy that, in fact, I  that used that,  but even then, when I went back to the table, a guy that I played Frisbee with, he actually gave me a a fist bump afterwards and sent him a WhatsApp message,  saying, It meant a lot that you said good job. 

Because as I, said to him, like it genuinely meant a lot because you're not my brother, you're not like a family member. So I, I felt like it was genuine, like you weren't trying to just, blow smoke on my ass.   

I was put into a 

very odd situation one time whenever I went dancing with my wife. I'm sitting here dancing, right, and there was this older couple there. And I mean older, like 85 ish. Or something along those lines and I was dancing and I was watching them dance and I, you could tell it was one of those gross old couples who had been together for 50 years and were madly in love with each other still.

And I was dancing and my wife and I were doing it and we were having a lot of fun and the old man comes over me, he taps me on the shoulder and I turn around look down and he's  would you dance with my wife?  And I looked at him and I'm like, 

Sure,  I know that sounds weird to you young folks, but this is how we used to do things back in the day  and I'm like, sure  yeah, I'm Shane, I'm Charles, this is my wife, Edna, I  was like, of course, that's what y'all's names are,  

and this old lady, and I, do the thing and we're in the dance that we're doing is  this this waltz and 

this tiny ass old lady is in my arms and she's you don't gotta be frail with me boy. Just you grab a hold of me and you just do the thing. And I'm like, Okay. All right. And so I started dancing with her and she started giving me pointers.

Oh no po. You need to point that toe a little bit more this way. You go, there you go. You step on my toes. We may have a problem.  my, my husband, have to take care of you outside. And it was the funniest shit ever. And I was having such a hard time staying serious with this 

old lady. 

And it was so fun though.  It was just a random activity but that's a memory though. That's an experience that I have to think about  that was different. It wasn't me being at home, me being stuck at home or anything like that. It was just an experience to get, and those are what makes life worth living, is those experiences when we get out and go do things and take those chances.

I want to kind of switch steps though,  because one of the things that we deal with is fear,  right? Fear of negative criticism, fear of rejection, fear, shame, guilt, all of those different things.

David, what is one of the biggest fears that you've had that looking back, you're just like.

Oh, that's a good one. Cause I was about to type into the chat there of I heard this in an AA meeting fear is fuck everything and run or face everything and receive.  And like one of my biggest fears, and I still struggle with this fear is, the fear of. Like not just failure, but of also success the fear of the more kind of responsibility and things give me then I'm gonna fuck it up more because when more is on my shoulders, then I'm gonna  fail at it  and like the way I've tried to overcome that is that I think the way to Kind of you have you can't run away from fear like courage is found when facing fear, right?

like I'm struggling with my like trying to move into this entrepreneurial space trying to be a coach trying to do these things and I have a lot of fear around it. I have a lot of fear that I'm going to fail at it.  But I have to remember, failure is just a first attempt at learning. And it's, the thing that holds me back the most is not putting myself out there.

And I have nothing to lose by putting myself out there. I have, it's, it goes back to the Michael Jordan quote. He had like he lost 2000 games Was told to take the game winning shot 26 times and missed And failed over and over again, and that's why he succeeded and it's that recognizing that when  Fear is just an emotional thing that we've connected, especially going into just the idea of emotion.

Emotion is a reaction in the body. We've created a word attached to this physical reaction that happens into our body. So if we can learn how to feel the physical sensations, but not attach necessarily the word to it, like  excitement and nervousness. Feel the exact same way in my body the outside situation may be a bit different but the feelings inside tightening of the chest,  butterflies in the stomach racing pulse Sweaty palms right right before I go on stage to do comedy that hits me there and i'll close my eyes  And I'll just feel the feelings inside the body, not associate any word to it, because it's a mind body thing, right?

Because at a young age, we had this physical sensations where they, Oh, this must be fear. Oh, this must be anxiety. Oh, this must be excitement. This must be this thing. But all that it really is, just a, your body reacting to outside stimuli. And so you're just feeling the physical sensations, recognizing I'm going through this physical sensation. 

I'm going to breathe through it and recognize that and it allows me to drop the walls and be able to go up on stage or be able to go talk to the girl or put myself out there for my coaching and things like that. And it's,  recognizing that I'm not allowing my fear to rule me, but my reason and my logical choice and am I letting my emotions run me or am I trying to make conscious, active decisions?

If that makes sense. 

Honestly, yeah, I gotta tell you, man, I know exactly what I mean about the stage thing  right before I get on stage,  my brain goes into overdrive. And I know, logically speaking,  that I'm going to do great.  Now, the reason I know that is because I've gotten so much feedback from speaking coaches, improv actors, different people who have been there in that position with me, who gave me tips, tricks, and encouragement.

Right? And that's the key. That's why building those relationships is so valuable. And being open to those relationships is so valuable.  That's what gives you the tools to face the fear. Right? That's why whenever we're sitting here talking about men's health, we're actually putting so much emphasis on the social aspect of it. 

It's because fear is what holds us back from so many different things in our world. The worst thing that's going to happen when that girl tells you no,  she told you no. 

Here's the thing, 

that's okay, because she's not meant for you, and we've, but we've already built up this thing in our brains with this person that we think is going to be this absolutely amazing thing, we think we're that good guy that she probably deserves to be with,  but we've put too much expectations on the next steps that we've overwhelmed ourselves and forgot the very first step, and that's saying hi.

It's introducing ourselves. That's taking the chance, saying, Hey, you said that I didn't talk a whole lot. Let's change that. What's your number? Remy taking that chance, even half drunk Remy doing that,  is facing that fear. And the thing is, he at least tried.  There's another famous quote out there, and I forget who said that.

The only failure that actually exists is not trying at all.   Here's the thing. Again, the worst that's going to happen is no, or you're going to fail.  And as David said earlier, failure is the first part of learning. But here's what goes further with that. The more that you do it, the easier it gets. 

And that's with everything that we do, right? The more that we take those chances, the easier it gets to accept the no for what it is. The more that we do the things that we're afraid of,  The easier it gets to keep doing them until we don't even fear it anymore.  

And that's what confidence is, right? And that's what confidence is.

Because confidence is just evidence based, right? Like, when you're trying something new, you have no evidence to back it up. no previous experiences that, Say, all right, you're gonna succeed but it's only when you do it over and over again anything think about your own mental health, right?

If you've reprogrammed said i'm a worst piece of shit ever and ever again you start to believe it But if you start to say hey, i'm like worthy and worthwhile I have value to this world. I had to reprogram a lot of my negative self beliefs and self thinking To help move past fear to help move past things  doesn't mean that i've like it's gone forever It just becomes a new kind of there's a new block ahead that I learned to overcome like i'm living in a cabin like not making money trying to be a clown basically at Three days a month and trying to make it work and try to be a coach and all this other stuff I live in my Future in laws cabin like and when it rains, I get poured on like leaks and shit, but I have to keep moving forward because there's nowhere else to go.

And I think also what you're saying too is right. We live in our heads versus living in reality of what's actually presented in front of us and looking at the objective kind of truth in front of us versus what we think, right? Most of our fears live in our head, but aren't what's actually happens in the reality of it. 

I'm done. Remy, what you got? 

Just a point about, oh, two things. One,  I'm lucky that I can talk to my mom about,  anything. And,  I was having a really bad,  just,  in a bad headspace.  And she said, point blank,  You have to understand,  for the I Hate Remy Club, you were the only one in it. 

It's a club of one in terms of the kind of script that you're telling yourself, and, it was letting my mind wander past couple of days, and I realized, to the point about, feeling something without necessarily having an emotion, a specific emotion to it,  because of the kind of very late.

Journey I've had  with ADHD I just realized for so long,  I had this kind of internal mindset of, none of you fuckers are going to see me break. And then you're tying it back to mental health that it took me a long time to realize oh, that's  the, modus operandi that I was working with.

And if you have that mindset and you have that approach to your mental health  no wonder you are. Creating the perfect kind of thunderstorm, the perfect,  atmosphere for burnout and overbooking yourself and, not,  being very resistant  to talk to your coworkers about, feel like you're giving me too much, or I don't know how to handle this  or, for the past 5 years, even though you've given me this job and trained me  I, , still feel like  never going to be good enough for the, the training that you felt I, deserved in the first place.

So, yeah, I can totally get the,  the dangers that come from going with emotion over going with objectivity. 

Absolutely. We, think too fast. That's our biggest problem. We think too fast. We...  Have already built narratives in our brain  of what all is going to most often fail in a situation,  right? I'm going to sit here and say something to this girl and she's going to think I'm some fucking weirdo creep.

And of course she's going to hate me. She's going to go talk to her girlfriends. Tell them that I was some loser ass shitbag who tried to sit here and hit her up. And of course they're going to laugh at me behind my back. And of course, now they're going to sit here and spread that same story to everybody around them.

And now I'm going to be the laughing stock in this bar. We've done that in a split second that we thought about, Hey, I'm gonna go say hi to that girl.



And we don't have that confidence when we do say hi to her, if we do it, at all, bothering it with it.  And then, it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe she doesn't actually go off and do it, but our brains have already built the narrative that she is and will.  And so that ruins the entire night for us, because now we have this fear that everybody around us saw us get rejected, and since they saw us get rejected, we're some loser ass shitbag.



We've already built the narrative.  What we have to do is we have to take a step back and be in the moment. And like Remy said and, Judd said, and Dave said, we need to be objective and really pay attention to the now and then just live. Adam, what do you got boss? Hey.



So yeah, I was and this is to relay a little bit of what I had a conversation with Dotson.  Because I tell him like what's my four core, what's the core symptoms that I think it's the prevalent over and I got the four time blindness, poor memory, distractibility and impulsivity. And he said something like, ah, there's often a misnomer that nobody puts undervaluing yourself,  especially when there's an adult that discovers diagnosis and everything like that. 

People people often miss that miss that core symptom, which it is going to be a core symptoms, but it keeps getting sweltered away by the other popular ones that ADHD brings. And it makes me think, and there was a person that went to a life coach  and he had such an anxiety  to approach  women  and he worked with him for a whole year. Got to talk to a few women here and there, got to talk to them about some speech kind of stuff, how to approach, and given the end of the year, this guy was going to go on a trip. 

He was going to go on a couple states and  then, come back and do life coaching. So the guy went on a trip,  and when he got back on the trip, like a couple weeks later  the life goes says, So how's the trip go? Good. I went to a lot of parks. I went to a lot of bars. I went to a lot of malls and I talked to as most women as I can. 

And I said, Oh, that's good. You put your practice in. And and the guy said, I do not need you anymore.  And he's, one of those very fast impulse speakers. I don't know yet ADHD, but I was be suspicious. And I said, why? Because I talked to 628 women. Yeah. And I'm not afraid anymore, and it took him that many women to talk to get it over him.

But the thing is, he didn't really evaluate how much he's gonna do. He just did the grit. He did the work, and  it just, I'm sure it's not gonna take 600 for a lot of people, but for him to having that. revolutionary kind of thing of it would have got to an end point that I will work up and exercise this thing out of me.

It is possible.  And I just wanted to relay that story because it's just one of those favorite stories of mine. 

No lie. This is actually happened to me as the ADHD coach.  I've actually had a client who I was going to be working with. They'd already put their deposit down and everything. They went on a trip and they wound up having a lot of fun with a couple of people and they came back, they said, Hey, actually I've realized something.

I just need to just do things. And I'm like.  Well, yes, technically speaking,  and I was just like, Oh, well, that's, actually all I was going to teach you was how to do things. And so if you've got it, go for it. If you ever need help, let me know.  He's actually in the group too. I won't share who he is, but he's doing great. 

 The thing that I, love the most about Different aspects of, dating and things of that nature was I always went by a 1 rule,  right?

And my mindset on this was, I'm going to talk to 10 different women.  Of those 10 different women, 5 aren't going to like me. 5 may enjoy having a conversation.  3 of them I may wind up getting a phone number from and talking to them later on down the road. One of them is probably going to be somebody I'm going to wind up dating or going on a couple of dates with. 

And that's all I really ever looked for,  right? Outside of that, I really didn't have any expectations. I was just going to be who I was. I was authentically going to be who I was. I decided this when I was 28. I was not going to mask anymore. I was just going to be me.  And  I was blown away by what it meant to not have that fear anymore. 

To be able just to be who I was. We spend a lot of mental energy in masking.  That we do not come off authentic, and that's a huge red flag for a lot of people. Not just in relationships with girls, or spouses, or partners, or boyfriends, but in general. When people do not really feel like you're authentically being who you are,  that sets off this very, very, very primal negative imagery of who you are. 

Because that's actually a really, really bad  habit of people who are abusers,? They do not put the actual person out there. They put themselves out there as this ideal,  and then Once they have you, they trap you, and there's a primal response to a lot of that masking that we do that does drive people away.

It also tires us out, masking requires a metric fuckton of mental energy. And  if you're autistic, or ADHD with social issues, or something along those lines, you've built this mask based on your expectations of what people  are. And a lot of times it may be based on... Like literally manual logistical calculations that we're doing in our minds,  which was one of my biggest problems. 

I had this logical mindset of what emotions were that for so long, I didn't allow myself to actually experience emotions.  And so, when I started putting myself out there and just letting myself experience the emotions, not only did I learn how to actually speak to people, I also learned myself and learned my own emotions, and that was the biggest first step I made in emotional regulation when it came to ADHD.

So,  David just asked a question, and  I love that question.  Remy, what is one of the tools that you use to handle stress?  That has worked the best for you. 

Yeah,  that's tough. I'm still learning it. I think just, giving myself the permission to be slower. It's not a  process that I have fully mastered yet, but it's certainly something that I'm slowly  trying to, integrate more. As someone that didn't realize that I've been white knuckling for 27 years. Yeah, so that's my  tool, just giving myself the permission I think there was this,  Instagram video that I saw of this woman saying that for people that are autistic or on the spectrum, that when you see a poster that says, give 100%, the reality is for a lot of us, we're actually giving 125 percent all the time

you have to, whether it be, stress or mental health,  you have to give yourself the permission to realize that your 75 percent is in actuality the 100 percent that a lot of other people probably do.  So  I think that's been,  even though it's more kind of philosophical,  the tool that I've been using, I'm just trying to remind myself, either consciously or subconsciously that.

You're 75 is as good as the 100.

Absolutely. True.  It's very hard for us to relax. We learned so many different things  about what we should expect from a conversation that we're just too busy,  mentally speaking.

Yeah. And,  to that point, I probably don't even remember necessarily what I got  when I got this diagnosis, but  a couple of years ago, I actually asked my mom flat out was I ever diagnosed as being autistic? It was in relation to an online post  that I wanted to make.  And she said, your diagnosis was  not autism, but we don't know what to call it. 

So I think for me, early on, that was a very big thing was this idea of because I Wasn't  and plus I was born in 95. So  there was even this idea of being on the spectrum wasn't even a thing yet. Realistically, so that was also, I think.

Recently, a very big learning thing for me  was because I was told, not autism, but we don't know what to call it.  I think there was this weird sense of Oh, I don't mask all the time because I'm not autistic and my autistic people mask, but I'm not that. I don't mask.  I never made the connection for years of the stress of having to be on all the time in a corporate environment or, having to be boisterous or more, traditionally forward.

I never knew that was,  even though I didn't necessarily like that role  I never knew that it was masking because my thought was like only autistic people mask, And because I'm not autistic.  Even though I don't know what I am, I don't mask,  but I'm now learning the hard way that you, sure fucking did for a long time. 

Masking is such an insidious thing. Because what it really is doing  is   hiding the parts of us that we were told were unacceptable. And the thing is, is we were being told that those things were unacceptable by people who didn't even know who we were. And  so there's a lot of trauma response here, right?, there's a lot of trauma responses that we deal with because we were told from such a young age that whatever we were, whatever, whoever we were was not acceptable.

No, boys aren't supposed to play with dolls, boys aren't supposed to, be creative, the boys aren't supposed to like poetry, boys aren't supposed to, do any of these different things, right?  Men are supposed to be stoic, and control themselves, and be leaders, and be powerful, and they're providers, and all of that different stuff.

And, some of us didn't live up to those standards in the way that people expected us to.  And because we didn't meet that expectation, then we were dismissed as you're not man enough. You're not masculine enough. You like girly shit,? Fuck off a lot of them people, right? And it's just really important to understand  the reason what all this has to do with Men's health is because the body and the mind are intrinsically linked. 

There is no body slash mind. It's all together.  it's all part of the same whole. Me and Liam talked about this in the in the podcast. There is no separation of the body mind,  right? It's all part and parcel of who we are.  And if our mind is not being taken care of, if we are not taking the chances, facing the fear, and doing the social situations, if we are not taking time to be mindful and being in the moment and objectively living our life the way that we want to, respecting other people's boundaries and the things that they need.

then we are going to wind up having physical reactions to that stress and frustration  that it takes  to, constantly walk on eggshells around people. That's what causes more and more stress and frustration in our lives.  Masking takes up so much mental energy that we are constantly  fatigued being in social situations. 

Which then makes us think that we are introverts,  when in actuality what it really is, is we are so busy masking that we aren't allowing ourselves to be who we are, and being who we are may actually be a lot more extroverted than we thought. And so I just want to wrap up today with this reminder,  take the chance, get out there, and just...

Try to have fun.  Stay in the moment and let yourself enjoy things. Build up experiences and  live. Also work on your physical health.  Anything is better than nothing at all.