ADHDifference

S2E32: ADHD & Outdoors - Healing in Nature + guest Ryan DeLena

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 32

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Julie Legg speaks with Ryan DeLena - a professional mountaineer, author, and mental health advocate. Ryan shares the harrowing realities of his childhood, growing up in therapeutic institutions where physical restraint was a regular response to neurodivergent behaviour. Misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and traumatised, it was ultimately the mountains, and the freedom they offered, that helped him find his way back to himself.

Now a seasoned skier, guide, and the author of Without Restraint, Ryan shares how physical movement, flow states, and deep connection to nature became lifelines. His story is one of resilience, self-discovery, and the radical healing power of passion. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or neurodivergent yourself, this episode is a reminder that regulation doesn’t always come from the systems around us but from reconnecting with what lights us up inside.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Ryan’s early years in therapeutic schools where physical restraint was used routinely
  • The trauma of misdiagnosis and over-medication, and how it delayed his healing
  • How ADHD was masked by trauma, and why clarity only came in adulthood
  • The emotional and nervous system regulation that came from skiing and nature
  • Why the flow state is so beneficial for ADHD minds
  • The danger of systems that pathologise neurodivergent kids instead of understanding them
  • His documentary 91 and what skiing 91 routes taught him about persistence
  • Passion as a survival tool — why doing what you love can be a lifeline
  • Ryan’s message of hope to anyone feeling trapped or unseen in the system

Links

BOOK: https://www.without-restraint-book.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.delena.970397/

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@extreme_ryan_delena

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/extreme_ryan_delena/

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📖 BOOK: The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD

ℹ️ DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or ADHDifference. Read More

RYAN: If I can step outside and move a little bit, I generally find that helps. It helps to get away from the situation that is causing the dysregulation because sometimes you can get stuck in a bubble. I also think again like doing challenging activities has helped me because I think being in the mountains you kind of you learn to solve problems and you also learn to like really evaluate what's worth being stressed about.

JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece, a woman's guide to understanding, diagnosing, and living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humor and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I'm joined by Ryan DeLena, a professional mountaineer, and mental health advocate, author, and documentarian who has skied to some of the most remote places on Earth, including Antarctica and Svalbard. But before any of that, Ryan was a child repeatedly restrained in therapeutic school. Misunderstood, dysregulated, and searching for relief, everything changed when he discovered the outdoors. Skiing became more than a passion. It became a way to regulate, heal, and reclaim his sense of self. Ryan, welcome to the show. Good to be here. Look, your childhood was very different from most, including being restrained. Can you take us back to those early years and share what it felt like for you then? 

RYAN: Yeah. It was really challenging because at a very young age they identified that I learned differently and I struggled in a traditional classroom setting. And the best answer that they had at the time was to move me to a therapeutic school. And essentially their method of behavior modification at this school was anytime you got out of line and weren't willing to sit in a timeout chair, they would just restrain you. Sometimes they didn't even give you that option. Sometimes they'd move straight to a restraint. And in other programs I saw down the line, it was usually used as a last resort. But in this particular program, it was actually kind of part of their methodology in a way. They thought if they just restrained you enough, eventually you'd stop misbehaving. And it kind of had the opposite effect on me because I was learning to associate conflict with adults ending in violence. And this was back before the laws changed. So they could restrain you on the floor, they could get on top of you, they could cover your mouth. So I'd go home with bruises. I'd feel like I couldn't breathe. It was a really traumatizing experience. And this started from the age of kindergarten. So from when I was 5 to when I was nine, I was being restrained regularly. And they taught every babysitter I had as a kid how to do this, any family members who were regularly around me. And it took ultimately my dad stopped doing it at home. And he noticed that I was much calmer and much better behaved at home. And that was when he first started to question like maybe they're wrong about this. Maybe there isn't just some threshold we need to reach of it getting worse before it gets better. Maybe it's only getting worse and we've been wrong all along. And once he started challenging the schools, then that really was the beginning of the fight. 

JULIE: And looking back now, how do you understand your younger self? 

RYAN: Yeah. I went through a whole journey of diagnosis in my lifetime. Pretty early on they tried to rule out ADHD because I was getting more hyper from taking the ADHD medication than less hyper. Now in my adult life, my most recent therapy experience has kind of confirmed that like I was definitely ADHD all along. And I've been following some formational accounts about it as well and learning about how some of the traits could express themselves. And like it's very clearly what I was dealing with all along. But at the time they tried to like treat it as like autism spectrum disorder and then once I had PTSD. They were treating it as like a mood disorder or some sort of like early bipolar. So I was being medicated like I was bipolar and then obviously it wasn't working because I was still being triggered by the same things because it was trauma that I was working through not a mood disorder. So they'd, you know, keep upping the doses and keep not having it work. So I went through this whole other journey of going on all these medications and then having to go off all of these medications. And currently I don't take any medication and that's been the best thing for me. But it's really challenging when you're misdiagnosed and again they're kind of, you know, expecting that it'll get worse until it gets better, but it's actually only getting worse because we've had the wrong idea. 

JULIE: When you look at other children around you growing up, what do you think made your experience so different? And what do you wish the adults in your life had understood about you back then? 

RYAN: Yeah. When I was younger I think one of the things I struggled with is that I was a very kinesthetic learner and I wasn't really being taught my learning style. Like this sort of sit still and be lectured style wasn't working for me and I think I just needed to be engaged more. I think another thing is that I was just really young at the time when really big decisions about my life were being made. So don't forget this all started when I was in preschool when I was like four or 5 years old. I got moved to this first therapeutic school when I was in kindergarten. So you know how much a concept of what a productive member of society looks like did you have when you were five? You know, all I knew is that I would get up and walk around the classroom, do whatever I wanted when I was five and people would get up and follow me. All of a sudden, I'm in this therapeutic school. Now, when I do that I get punished, and I get punished physically. So, it was this very stark shift in my life and I think I needed to grow out of some things. I needed to get to a point where I could understand that like all right like if every time I get up and I walk around like I get in trouble. That's kind of annoying to always be in trouble and you know, maybe I don't want to like go to the principal's office. Maybe I don't want to go home and have my dessert taken away or something and then you start to fall in line. That's how everybody learns. Everybody learns that doing what you want all the time while fun in theory is not worth it because it comes with consequences. And I just didn't have the concept of that when I was five. So I wish the adults in my life at the time gave me a little bit more grace and you know, maybe let me get into some of the higher grades and grow up a little bit and if things still weren't working maybe then we consider other options. But we just made the decision so quickly. 

JULIE: So, at some point for you, skiing and the outdoors became a turning point, not just a hobby, but a lifeline. What was it about being in the mountains that helped regulate what nothing else seemed to reach? 

RYAN: I think at the most basic level, in the very beginning, when I was a kid, I just loved it.  I just really enjoyed skiing and, you know, being out in nature, challenging myself, just the physical act of sliding on snow. But I think as I've grown, I've come to understand some of like the deeper healing powers and ultimately being in the outdoors, especially in the mountains, and challenging yourself and kind of going through these elective challenges where you're intentionally putting yourself into a situation where you do need to rise to the occasion and do this hard thing. And not only is it rewarding when you overcome these challenges, but you build self-efficacy in knowing that you are a person who can approach a challenging thing or goal and see it through. And I think that it's just become my lens for understanding the world. I've, you know, gone through experiences of overcoming self-doubt, overcoming pessimism, like these sort of patterns that are put into your brain through trauma. You can overcome them by going and doing challenging things in the mountains. And I think that's the power of it. Doing elective hardship activities just yields stronger, more capable people. But there's also the aspect of getting away from the noise. And I think that the outdoors, aside from offering challenge, can also offer peace. It's just nice to be out there. And one of the nice things about it is the mountains aren't prejudiced against you. On one hand that can make them dangerous because the mountains don't pick favorites. You can be experienced and you could have no experience and the danger still remains the same. But it also means that you can be anybody and you can show up to the mountains and you can rise to the occasion and you can find enjoyment out of them. So it offers a place where maybe if in your life you're experiencing judgment or separateness from what you're going through. You can go to these outdoor spaces that don't that don't judge you. They don't care who you are. You can just go there and enjoy them. And you have to be very much on your toes and present don't you really to survive in those extreme situations. 

JULIE: What have extreme environments and physical challenge and movement taught to you about regulating your nervous system? 

RYAN: Well, I guess part of that piece you just touched on is presence in a way and I think especially for ADHD minds you can experience something through movement. I get this a lot through rock climbing or through like particular types of skiing where your mind just goes quiet because you enter what's called the flow state. And reaching the flow state happens when the level of challenge meets your level of ability level and that can be a really powerful place to be because it might be or the one of the few places in life where your mind can truly be quiet. And if you're somebody who struggles with that, it can be really powerful to experience that. I also think that movement just helps, for lack of better words, move through things. Like sometimes I'll go for a long walk in the mountains, even if it's just a hike, and weird little things of sadness or anger come up that aren't necessarily related to the day, like nothing happened out there that cause those emotions to arise, but you know, it'll surface. Thought loops and things that maybe I'd been pushing down and had enough distraction for in my everyday life, but now that I'm out here just silently walking up this hill and maybe I'm sweating a bit, maybe I'm kind of causing just some like some physical strain in my body by doing what I'm doing now. These things are coming up and then you kind of process them out there and work through them. And usually by the end of the hike, whatever those things are aren't affecting me in the same way or at all by the end. So I think that you can use physical movement to move through emotional tension, which is very cool. 

JULIE: It certainly is. And your memoir, you have written a book called Without Restraint, which feels very symbolic in many ways. What are the biggest lessons you've taken from your childhood experiences, even the painful ones?

RYAN: Yeah. Without Restraint, I think ultimately covers my journey, but it can also be one that a lot of people can relate to. We had a lot of people come forward who I never would have expected and said like, "Oh, I went through really similar things when I was a kid." And even if it wasn't necessarily physical restraint or just going through the special ed system or the mental health system, they had some sort of scars from that and they felt like they couldn't necessarily relate to anybody. So I think one of the big takeaways you could draw from it is that you're not alone. And I think the other big takeaway is that you can get through it. And I think a big part of that is having some sort of passion as a guiding light. I think sometimes people don't necessarily want to open the book because they don't ski or they don't understand skiing, but skiing is really just a vehicle in this book. The book could be about basket weaving. The important thing is not so much the skiing, it's about the passion. And it can be what you learn from the passion but or it can also just be the very nature of having something to love, something to look forward to if you're really struggling and your everyday life is very challenging. Like knowing that at the end of the week, or at the end of the month, or even if it's just a couple times a year, there's something that you really love that you really want to pour your energy into that you'll get to connect with at some point can be enough to motivate you to slog through whatever you're going through in your everyday. 

JULIE: Yeah, that joy having something that really gives you all the feels, all the positive feels with so many benefits. It's incredible to have a passion. You touched on it. We're talking about finding a passion. So, one of the questions I wanted to ask was, can everybody heal emotional dysregulation or mental health struggle by finding a passion or is it more nuanced than that?

RYAN: I think it's more nuanced than that. I think all of the things that I've listed before are certainly like I would put them as bullet points on why finding a passion would help. So it's like a yes and a no question. I think you can you can cover a lot of ground by having something you're passionate about but it's not necessarily a cure all. For one, I think an important part of my story is that I went through a lot of misdiagnosis. So a lot of the things that I sort of struggled with, you know, I was mis-medicated for or I was mistreated for. And there's people who you know do benefit from medications or do benefit from certain therapies. I don't think anybody benefits from restraint. I wish we would stop doing that. But I don't think that the answer in the story is like you should like quit therapy and you should learn to juggle or to do motocross or BMX biking like whatever it is. It's like I think you should definitely find something that you love and I think it'll teach you a lot and it'll help you heal a lot but I think you should also stay in touch with other ways of healing. Be that you know, meditation and breath work, be that some form of therapy. Every person's different and what's going to work for them is going to be different but I wouldn't describe it as this like magical cure all. If everybody puts a pair of skis on, there'll be no mental health issues. Yeah, that's great. 

JULIE: So, passion plus support together being the winner. Awesome. Now, today you are a professional mountaineer. You're a guide. You're an advocate and an author with a documentary coming out soon. Very exciting stuff. So, what's happening right now about the work you're doing and the stories you're telling that's exciting you the most? 

RYAN: Yeah. Right now what's most exciting is obviously this documentary that you just mentioned that's coming out. The film's called 91. It's going to be shown at the Mount Washington Backcountry Ski Festival. It's also going to be shown at the Maynard Theater of the Arts. I think that's what it's called. It's like not like sticking to the top of my head right now but that'll be on February 1st in May, Massachusetts. So those are the two locations we have so far. That list will likely expand. But the film is about this story we've been talking about now. But it's also a lot about a big project that I've had over the last four years officially, six total, of skiing every route in this guide book called Presidential Skiing. So, there's 91 routes in it. All of them are serious steep skiing descents in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. And essentially I started skiing in the range in 2019, kind of end of 2020. The book came out and in 2021. I formally announced that I wanted to attempt to ski every route in the book. So that's why I say four years officially, six total because I had already skied a bunch of things that were in the book at that point, but I still had a lot to go. And so I spent years cracking away at it. There were all sorts of challenges because a lot of these mines are very ephemeral. They need super specific conditions to form in, you know, safely skiable shape and a lot of them are also technical. So, they might have ice cliffs in the middle that you need to climb up and repel over in order to ski the line through. They might have really long approaches. So, you're walking 15 miles in a day to like ski one run. If you want to go out there and ski two or three, it's this huge day and maybe there's, you know, five or six in the area total. So, you need to keep coming back to this area again and again and continue to get these conditions to line up. So for the film, we filmed my last two. One of them is the, what I would call the sleeper crux of the whole project. It's kind of one I knew was going to be hard, but I think I underestimated just how hard it was going to be. This route called PF Flyer. And we happened to really score on the conditions on the day we did it and we were able to ski it without a rope, which there's only a handful of people who have done so. And then the other line is one that I intentionally saved for last called Stove Pipe, which is still like a cool and like steep line, but it's one that is regularly in condition. Like pretty much any year you go out in the spring, you can go ski Stove Pipe. And it's in the an area called Tuckerman Ravine, which is probably the most famous skiing zone in the northeast, if not in the whole country. And it was where I did my first run in the presidential range and in the guide book and I thought it'd be really cool to have the project finisher be in the same ravine. So that was kind of my idea there. 

JULIE: Wow, how exciting. And how long did it take to film the documentary? 

RYAN: So it took 2 days of going out and skiing, which again like super fortunate because it's very hard to ski the calendar and there was a lot of just like trusting intuition that the days I picked were going to work out. And I don't know, I'd call it like a one in a million that we were able to go out and film and ski on the days we were able to because not only like at the time I had just been taking the winter off and any day when things were in condition I was just going to go do it, but to also have it line up with like this random date on the calendar you picked long before you could see the weather and have there be, you know, low enough wind that you can fly the drone and things like that. Like we really just we scored big time on that. So we only spent two days filming the skiing, but then there were like two other days, no, like maybe like three or four other days where we were walking around with cameras filming like other things like my childhood home and we had to get a bunch of B-roll. We got a lot of me in my van, which is like where I am right now, the place that I live, just you know cooking or organizing my gear or walking around the Mount Washington Valley looking at stuff, grocery shopping. Like there's so much we filmed that we didn't end up using because you can only fit so much into like a a 38 minute segment. But it was really silly. Some of the things just like walking around like looking at like which sausages to buy with like you know Mark standing there with this huge camera like people were so confused. 

JULIE: Yeah, act natural with his big camera. Wow. Oh, that sounds like an adventure in itself. Ryan, if we look at a strategy or a shift or a mindset that works for you when things feel overwhelming. Now, now you've gone through the journey and you understand your brain more and you have lots of support at your fingertips. So, when you're feeling overwhelmed mentally or emotionally, what helps you reset or sort of come back into your body?

RYAN: It sounds really simple, but just if I can step outside and move a little bit, I generally find that helps. It helps to get away from the situation that is causing the dysregulation because sometimes you can get stuck in a bubble. I also think again like doing challenging activities has helped me because I think being in the mountains you kind of you learn to solve problems and you also learn to like really evaluate what's worth being stressed about. And you know, if it's blowing, you know, 40 mph winds and it's, you know, -20 windchill and you are on an exposed ridge and you need to like keep yourself warm, like that's a problem. That's like a thing worth like getting a little perked up about. But when you're, I don't know, when someone cuts you off in traffic, like it's easier to like step out of that and just be like, "This is like not a big deal." Like, we're not in a rush. We're not racing daylight, you know? We're not in on the verge of getting hypothermic, running out of food. We're not evaluating if this slope is going to avalanche or not. Like, it just makes a lot of the like first world problems feel like very simple. But I won't pretend that it's like turned me into like a monk. Like the one thing that still gets to me more than anything is I hate when technology acts up. Oh man, if I spend all day editing and make this like 30 minute video and then I go to share it and it spends like an hour sharing only to tell me at the very end it failed to upload. I could yell at a computer all day. And I need to recognize in those situations like, okay, like I'm getting myself worked up and staying here next to this computer that's pissing me off and like continuing to like beat my head against the wall is not going to make this get better. I need to just like step away from this and do something else until I feel better. 

JULIE: I love that. I also like earlier when you were talking about perspective, wasn't it? You know, when you're contemplating survival rates at the top of a mountain versus being stuck in rush hour traffic, it's all about perspective. Well done. And I've got another question for you and that is for young people or parents who feel trapped in systems that don't seem to fit and you have been there. What would you most want them to hear?

RYAN: You know, on one hand, what can I really tell those people who are really going through it that is going to be all that meaningful? Because I know how much it sucks and how much I wouldn't have wanted to hear it because to some degree you're just trying to get through the day when you're stuck in in the system. But I think the thing I would say is that there is hope. I want to have my story serve as an example that you can go through all of the things that I went through and maybe the listener is going through and still have a happy and successful life. I think that one of the biggest things that I struggled with when I was still in the therapeutic school system is like I couldn't look around and point to anybody who seemed like they made it. Like there was no one out in the world who was like an icon who like went through this. And I think it's a really, really weird especially the mental health system because like we especially in America, I don't know if it's the same in New Zealand, it's really easy for us to identify with like a rags to riches story. So like when you have somebody that like you know grew up and couldn't afford food on a regular basis and you know like lived in a really impoverished area and managed to make something of themselves like that's something that's like glorified and to be proud of. But like when you are going through mental health struggles and all of the struggles are happening inside your head, even though they're very real, they're not as tangible. It doesn't... like you don't hear about those success stories as much and it kind of feels like "Oh people are going to think this is weird if they knew this. This isn't something to be proud of." But it is something to be proud of because you go you go through something every day and you continue to show up for yourself and you continue to keep trying and anyone who does that is admirable.

JULIE: Talking about success stories though, Ryan, for those listeners tuning in for today's episode, you surely are one of those success stories and I do appreciate not the rags to riches when you internalize so much of your mental health experiences, but you being so bold and sharing openly and honestly about your journey is much appreciated and will resonate with so many. 

RYAN: And if you want to read Without Restraint, the book we mentioned, it's available pretty much anywhere books are sold. Sometimes you got to look for the one that's about skiing. There's a couple by the same names that I'm pretty sure are like smut books, so you got to like it's not the one that's not about skiing. 

JULIE: Absolutely, Ryan. And those links I'll have in the show notes so listeners will be able to go straight to those notes and link on through to see and hear more of you. Thank you. [Thank you.]

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Ryan DeLena

Guest