Facing ADHD, Fatherhood, And Forgiveness Scott MacLeans story part 1

Ever had your brain pitch a hundred worst-case scenarios before you even dial a number? We sit down with a comedian and construction equipment salesman who found out he had ADHD years into adulthood—and finally felt the volume drop on catastrophic thinking. That quiet gave him enough space to act: make the call, do the work, and stop losing the day to imagined disasters. Then life threw a curveball that no planner could forecast: meeting a partner and becoming a father to twins within months.

What follows is a candid tour through NICU corridors, night feeds that erased memories, and the shock of parenting with someone you barely know. There’s no gloss here—just the grind of pushing a twin stroller while strangers offer small talk you’re too tired to entertain, and the math of surviving Toronto on one income while trying to keep creative dreams alive. When the relationship ends, the real reframe begins. Single fatherhood splits time and identity, turning off-weeks into a rush of distraction, dating, and distrust. If the person with the most to lose could betray you, how do you ever relax again?

We unpack the tools that actually helped. Vipassana meditation to watch thoughts without biting the hook. Indigenous teachings that transform yesterday’s hurt into today’s medicine. A secular take on spirituality that treats inner life like a skill, not a slogan. Forgiveness becomes practical: not a pardon, but a choice to stop letting anger tax every room you walk into. The conversation lands on a sharp question—when does a victim of circumstance become responsible?—and works it through the lens of parenting, accountability, and the kind of model we set for our kids.

If neurodiversity, co‑parenting, late diagnosis, and rebuilding trust are part of your story, you’ll find hard-won insight and steady hope here. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the moment that hit you most—we’ll read the best ones on a future show.

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Transcript

Land Acknowledgement And Mission

Keith "Polar Bear" Gelhorn 0:01

Welcome to the Big Bears Podcast, co-hosted by Chad Grizzly Bear Bunker and Keith Polar Bear Gellhorn. We would like to acknowledge that we are in Mi'kmaq, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people. The people of the Mi'kmaq Nation have lived on this territory for millennia, and we acknowledge them as past, present, and future caretakers of this land. Our mission is to explore the intersection of neurodiversity through a two-wide sea lens, where we share stories of struggle, resilience, grit, and growth. We would appreciate it if you could listen, subscribe, engage, and share this podcast.

Setting Up Today’s Conversation

Keith "Polar Bear" Gelhorn 0:50

Now on to today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah. You have a very deep radio voice.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Thanks, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Like it's like very like it's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

People tell me it's very smooth. Yeah, yeah.

Defining A Lifelong Struggle

SPEAKER_02 1:29

So what was a hard time in your life? Like a very hard struggle when you when you really had a really hard time and you and you and you didn't think you could get through it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

The hard that is a difficult question because there's been a couple key moments. I'm trying to think of what like the the absolute hardest was. But I think I was mentioning to you that I it's not so much a single hard moment, it's more of a continuum of struggles that have occurred through life. Largely, I think, to do with ADHD.

ADHD Diagnosis And Medication

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yes, definitely. Diagnosed, what am I now? I think it was like three or four years ago. And yeah, it would have been, well, maybe five years ago now. I can't exactly remember. I the big problem is I ran out of my prescription. Doctor's appointment later today to get that renewed. But I remember the first time that I took it, I realized I do a lot of cold calling. I sell construction equipment as well. That's the job that makes me money outside of comedy. And cold calling is a highly anxious endeavor when you got to call somebody and say, out of the blue, they just start a conversation with them and nobody wants to talk to a sales guy anyway.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

No, they don't.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Or if you have bad news to break or whatever, it's always like a fear of what are they going to say? Are they gonna make me look like an idiot? And then in your mind, you come up with a million different potential negative outcomes that can come from when you make that phone call and it's like, oh, I'm gonna make myself look like an idiot. This person's never gonna buy from me, word's gonna be spread that I'm a jackass, because he's gonna talk to the other contractors in the area. And then when I the first day that I took Vians, I started taking Vivans, like 30 milligrams, I was driving around, and I I was expecting like I was trying to figure out like what is the big change that I'm noticing here.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

And the only change that I had noticed was oh, I'm not rifling through a million, I'm

Catastrophic Thinking And Work Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 3:37

just doing my job. I'm just not fucking hyper focused on a million different things that might happen. I would just call people up, and it's such a dumb adjustment. But then I started, and this apparently is a pretty common experience is that when people, you know, if they get a late diagnosis of ADHD, they look back to their life and go, oh imagine how much easier it would have been if I would have had been put on something back when I was what, 15 years old?

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So I look back at my entire life and the the catastrophic thinking that would come out that just basically generates a fear of all these potential outcomes that would make you not able to just go, oh fuck it, and just move forward. So that that I would say more as like a has been a struggle for the entire life. I don't have like a key traumatic experience.

Unexpected Fatherhood Of Twins

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I have a lot of like like you know, the the the my children were not planned, for instance. They were hopefully they don't see this. This might be they might be too young. They'll listen to when they get older. Yeah, hopefully. But I I met the actually, there's a comedy sket online already of this that I did back in 2013 about how I met their mother on Plenty of Fish.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

And uh she's been there.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

And the first time we hung out was January 20, I think it was January 28th, 2012, and my twin boys were born September 22nd, 2012. Wow. So I hadn't even known their mother for nine months before I became a father of twins. Wow. So we'll say initially that's the first big struggle that was completely life-changing was I had no intentions, and I mean I always was like, yeah, I'm gonna be a dad someday, but it was always like it was gonna be 10 years down the road. Yeah, that's what I'm like, yeah, I'll do that in 10 years. And then at 21, it'd be like, well, I'll do that in 10 years, and at 22, yeah, 10 years maybe. And then all of a sudden at 24, I'm becoming a father with somebody. I don't, I don't even know this person. Like, I just we just met. And now we have this massive responsibility. And I remember being crushed by that weight, talking to my buddy, being like, what am I gonna do? Like, I have no idea how I'm going to like I'm what do I know about being a fucking dad? What do I know about being a of raising a kid? I don't like I I someone has a baby, I'm like, I don't want to hold the baby because I don't want to drop the baby. Like, I don't know how to take care of a baby. And that's the crazy thing about the hospital. Thank God. Thank God we had twins because they had to spend like, I don't know, a couple days, maybe a week in the neonatal intensive care facility or whatever. So one good thing I didn't have to deal with their first poop, which is apparently like like trying to wipe tar off the butt. But also we actually had like hospital workers around to kind of explain to us how to take care of a baby. I guess we're usually when you have a baby, what happens is they give you the baby, maybe you spend the night, and then they're like, get out. And you're like, How do I take care of this baby? Literally. And then when we were in we were in Ontario, luckily in Mississauga, they had some program where a childcare professional would come out and do like, I don't know if it was monthly checkups or something like that, but they would just check in and say, Okay, you know, you're gonna have to start introducing different foods and whatnot, and and and tell you actually how to take care of this kid because I don't think I think that's a huge resource that a lot of people don't have.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Um, but yeah, big struggle for me was what am I gonna do? Like, do I don't know this person?

Learning Parenthood Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Right. We're about to take on the biggest responsibility ever. I actually left Halifax, moved to Toronto to start doing stand-up because I and partly because my life was too easy. Okay. I was working with two of my best friends. We would go to work, we'd come home. I was living at my parents' place. My parents had recently purchased a pool table. They were both retired. I'd go to work, I'd come home at night, I'd get drunk with my mom and my best friends, and we play pool every now. And then we go out and you know, and but I didn't really have any responsibilities of any kind. And one night I had this epiphany. I was like, I might like what would happen if my parents die. Yeah, exactly. I'm not gonna know how to take care of myself. Like, well, I don't I don't I'm not really I don't really know how to do laundry, I don't really know how to cook or anything like that. Like, because I was I was fortunate enough, which I don't know, I I I wouldn't say it's fortunate long term, that my mother would do that stuff when I was a kid. But that can be a disfortune if somebody misfortune if you have somebody doing all of the tedious struggles things of life, and then you get out on your own, you don't know how to do it yourself. Yeah, so I kind of was like, I need to get out of here, I need to be out of my comfort zone, I need to force responsibility on myself, I need to move to a different city where I know nobody, uh, pursue something and see if I can stay alive because this is just way too much comfort and and so then I moved to Toronto, and then like that would have been 20 mid-20, mate, late 2011, and then I think maybe early 2011, I don't know exactly when the timeline was, but then by early 2012, I was uh learned I was gonna be a father of twin boys. Holy crap! Like it was like it was like the movie knocked up, yeah. Okay, here we go. And and then you're getting trying to get to learn to to know somebody while she's pregnant and hormonal. So the question is is this person the bitch or is it the hormones?

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Probably a little bit. A little bit of both. A little bit of both of both.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

That's what I learned. Yeah, we're no longer together. So so yeah, that was the first, that was a crazy, crazy time was that adjustment. I remember having a really hard time accepting the fact that this was gonna happen. And then at one point, I just said, all right, fuck it. I'm gonna be dead. Like, let's just fucking do it. What do we like? Let's just we'll just do what we're supposed to do, move in together, raise these kids, make it work. It was a big struggle because I was working at like TELUS in Yorkdale Mall, and we were basically single-income trying to raise twin boys in Toronto, like it's not particularly uh lifestyle. And

Leaving Comfort To Grow

SPEAKER_01 10:53

and then we moved back to Halifax 2013. So that was a very big struggle, we'll say, just like we have very different parenting styles. We're still getting to know each other in the most high stress situation you could ever put two people into. Because like having children is a massive responsibility. And I don't think a lot of people a lot of people go, I want to have a baby. That's like you're not having a baby, you're having a human being, you're having a person, and that person might be a giant asshole. Or if you don't raise a big thing, or they've got to be a good person. You're you need you're gonna be raising a human being who's gonna go out there and impact people's lives, and you have to figure out how to make it so that that person impacts those lives as positively as possible, that you're not having a net negative consequence and creating that for the world, which a lot of people don't think it. They just think it's like it's like people that get a puppy. But with a puppy, you get your puppy, once you've done your puppy, you're like, ah, whatever. I'll I I don't want a puppy anymore. We're gonna put it up for adoption or chuck it out or or or put it on the side of the road or take it to a pound. Can't I guess you can kind of do that with a child.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

It's much more if you get social services involved, they'll go right away.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, and it's a little more morally egregious to do it with a child, but but yeah, it it I always kind of looked at that. I was like, wait, I was a baby once, and I'm yeah, I'm now a human being, and I gotta make sure that my child doesn't turn into you know my dickhead co-worker or that asshole that's yelling at the bus driver. Like, I don't want them to turn into that person, and I'm doing that all while learning about another person while we're sleep deprived and impatient. And so that was that was a huge struggle. I guess the perseverance, I don't even know how one made it through that. You just do it, you just go like if if everybody was really shocked when I was going to be when I when I when they found out that I was gonna be a dad because I was the person nobody thought would ever become a father. Everybody was like, Scott will never have kids. And then when they found I'm gonna have kids, they were like, What the f what do you mean? And then I was like, Yeah, I know. And so that was always the reaction is what are you gonna do? Oh my god, dude, are you okay? And it was always treated as this really negative thing. And then I had one buddy, my buddy Nasser Kazmi,

Coping With Sleep Deprivation

SPEAKER_01 13:36

I went to film school with him, and I told him I was outside the Toronto Eaton Center, and I saw him, and I was like, Yeah, man, I'm like, I'm gonna be a dad. And I broke it as if it was like, you know, the heavy, dramatic, bad news that everybody had been responding to it like, and he said, Hey man, congratulations, that's great. And he gave me a big hug. He's like, That's I'm so happy for you. And I was like kind of thrown off. I wasn't used to a positive response to that, and it made me feel really good. It was like the first time someone actually was nice about it, like was like, Congratulations, this is a good thing. And I was like, Oh, like, yeah, I guess maybe this is a good thing. It's like everyone else was panicking and terrified, and that really helped there. But yeah, that I don't, it's hard to say how did I get through that? It was just like you just go through the motions. You you gotta you go to work, you come home, you wake up, you fucking keep waking up because the kids are they would we would have you'd go on one son, I'll go on the other son throughout the night. Okay, and so if if son we'll call it sun one starts crying, it that's I have to get up and feed son one. Sun two starts crying, she'll get up and feed son two, but they would son one would cry at 1 a.m. and son two would cry at 2 a.m. And then it's on three at 3 a.m. and four a. And it was just like you were I don't remember the first like year of my children's lives. I remember little like pockets and moments, but I don't remember when they stopped crying to like like crying through the night. I don't remember I don't remember their first steps. I don't remember how can I remember their first steps? I my brain was not able to form memories because I was so freaking sleep deprived. I remember moments. I remember like I can go and think of, oh yeah, I remember that first time that they were like lifted their head or got up onto all fours or crawled along the couch or whatever. But I can't remember the specific moment because my mind wouldn't wouldn't allow me to engage that.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

So that was really difficult at first to accept it. Then once you got into it, it's just you're going through the motions, you just keep and you've just doing what you do as a parent. Probably one of the more frustrating struggles was you'd be walking, pushing a twin baby carriage.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

And then everybody would stop you and start going, Oh my god, you've got twins. Are they twins? It's like be pretty shocking if they weren't. Yeah. And then they're like, I've got a puppy too. My my my my sister or my cousin's a twin. And it's like, all right, I get it. It's just like I just want to walk my child. I don't need to. I'm aware that other twins exist in the world. I don't want to have I just want to walk and talk to my my girlfriend. I don't want to have small talk conversation about person that I don't know. You just you're so miserable and just sleep deprived at first.

Separation And Single Fatherhood

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So, anyways, we moved back to Nova Scotia, and then the um there's separation. We end up separating. Terms weren't great. I don't want to go into detail of it, but yeah, they uh it was not a good end to that relationship. And then I had to become a single father. And I didn't know what that was like because I was raised my parents are still together. So I didn't know what it was like to be to to be a child going from household to household. I didn't know how it was to be like I can I was trying to think like how does that how would that impact me? How's that gonna impact them? And there was a lot of anger on my part due to the circumstances of the uh of the separation towards her that really, really that was probably like one of the hardest times of my life because there was it was so unfair. Like I didn't get a say in any of this. And then all of a sudden, you're like on this. This is I think a similar experience people have with relationships of any long length. Like if you had a long-term relationship of any kind, I feel like it's there's a lot more weight to it when there's a child involved. But you're on the description I gave it was it's like being on a cruise ship and you're heading to, you know, Bermuda or wherever you're heading, and you're with the people that you're on vacation with, you're having your party, and then next thing you know, the ship sinks, and you're in the middle of the ocean, and you're going where do I where do I swim? You're just floating, and your whole life as it was is completely gone now. Like I don't, I'm not living like before it was you know, go to work, come home, deal with the kids, weekends, take them somewhere or whatever, go to a park, go to a farm, go to whatever,

Trust, Dating, And Attachment Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 19:20

take them to a friggin' playground or whatever. And then now it's like, what do I what what way am I going? All and and that that whole cruise that I was on, that ride that I was on, it was all a big lie. It wasn't actually part of that wasn't even real. So it becomes uh how did I deal with that? Was not well at the at first. There was a lot of anger, there was a lot of probably a lot of drinking and just going out and partying and trying to distract. Like when you when you become a father of 50% of the time, and you only like it's the other 50% of the time, you're like, okay, well, I gotta go out and live live my life that because I and I gotta go out and meet someone because you know who's gonna want to be a who's gonna want to date a single father? Like, I got kids now. It's who's gonna want to attach themselves to that? Yeah, and that was a hard thing to navigate, very difficult. Like, what you have all these anxieties that turn out to be superficial. There's all kinds of people that are willing to date a single father and a single mother. But you don't know that, you're not aware of that. Also, when you if you've been betrayed by the person that is the that is the that you've had children with, yeah, they have the most to lose by doing so. Nobody in the world has more to lose because you have children together, you're gonna be together forever in some capacity anyway, by virtue of having this child that you have to raise. Yep. So that created a ton of anxiety. It's like, well, if I could be betrayed by the person who has the most to lose, why wouldn't I be betrayed by the anybody else who has much less to lose? Like the s the stakes are so much lower in comparison. That's a really difficult thing to to try to figure out. It's it created a huge amount of anxiety. It was like you you you almost get

Anger, Neurodiversity, And Emotion Intensity

SPEAKER_01 21:36

a fear of comfort and happiness because you're like, wait, I was happy somewhere else before, and now and then and then it turned out it was all a lie. This person has a lot less to lose by doing that, so you kind of just put that on top of anybody else. And then that makes you a shitty partner because you're always. Like worried, you know, you become I imagine it's an anxious attachment style or whatnot. So I'm pretty good at that one. Yeah, right. Better at it now. Yeah. But how have you found what have you done to become better at it?

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Meditate. Yeah. I asked Creator to share his knowledge, share your experiences, share your medicine with me.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

So that I can make my experiences yesterday my medicine today. Yeah. So I try to think of it in a positive way. Even if it could be a negative, why not make it your medicine?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

And that's ultimately. What was it? I think it was Stephen Colbert was talking about on a podcast, Who Are We to Judge the Gifts of God? Yes. Which ultimately is he said this after the death of his father or something. His father was murdered or something. I don't know the exact story. Okay. Misinformation. Whatever. He had some kind of traumatic experience. And then that was his response to it was who are we to judge

Forgiveness And Meditation Practices

SPEAKER_01 23:08

the gifts of God? And I I haven't had unfathomably difficult challenges in my life. Like I'm not, I didn't, I wasn't like have severely abused or anything as a child. I never dealt with anything like I'm I haven't had anybody that I'm super close to, like in my family, die or anything like that. So I've never dealt with that kind of that kind of challenge. But I have had a lot of like life has taken has has the circumstances have not necessarily always been fair, and I've had to deal with the consequences of those circumstances. I didn't get a choice to be you know betrayed and then have to become a single father. And and I didn't necessarily I have to navigate how to co-parent with somebody that is I have a lot of anger for. I gotta keep that anger from the kids. I have people in my life who might be angry at that person, and then that person might be angry at other people in my life, and I have to try to spin all these plates and keep every just maintain the peace so that these kids don't get impacted by all this anger that's flying around.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

That's the worst thing you can do.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, and and and and I indulged a lot of that anger for a long time until I realized that you know I'm the only one suffering from this.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

You hold on to your anger, it will take control of you. Yeah, it turns into resentment, it turns into and it just it poisons you. And you become negative more often. Yeah. And to what avail? Like let's say you're mad at somebody and they're not in the room with you.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

So they're out enjoying their life. That means you're being you're having your moment destroyed by emotionally. Emotionally. You're you're like, you're just I'm angry, I'm angry. Fuck that person. They suck,

Spirituality Without Religion

SPEAKER_01 25:16

blah, blah, blah, blah. You have all this anger towards them. You're the only one feeling that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Shitty part is is that for neurodivergent people, we it we intensify the emotions like a hundred times more worse than what a normal person would feel. So, like inside, we are falling apart, the fuck the chains are all attached to us, and we can't move, and it's it's brutal.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

And yeah, and so I found a lot of what helped deal with it was one was forgiveness, big time. Yes. It's forgive yourself. And and and others, and and like I had to forgive her. Look, sir, everybody is a victim of circumstance. Nobody chooses what situation they're gonna be thrown into. I've done a lot of studying on on uh like just the nature of consciousness. And there's a really good book by Sam Harris called Waking Up, and and it's it's uh what do they call it? A guide to spirituality without religion. And his whole idea is that there's there's something called spirituality that religion has had a monopoly on forever. Everyone's always been okay, well but that that thing that is spirituality, is there any room for a scientific approach to it? And you meditate.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yeah, I do spiritual things with the Mi'kmaq and indigenous cultures. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Now, when you meditate, one thing I learned through meditation is that I'm sitting there just trying

Victim Of Circumstance Vs Responsibility

SPEAKER_01 27:06

to I do vipassana meditation or awareness meditation. So you just sit there and just observe what's happening, feel the weight of the chair underneath you, listen to the sounds you're hearing in the room, feel the sensations, just recognize, see a thought that pops into your head and try not to attach to that thought. And what you learn in that process is that I don't control the thoughts that come in my head. Those thoughts just come out of the ether. And we usually react to those thoughts. And we're usually chasing those thoughts. And so with meditation, I was able to eventually feel it's almost like if you've ever quit smoking and you get a craving to smoke, you can eventually just not, you can just distract yourself off of that craving.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

When I I've quit smoking and started again several times, but I quit for like three or four years one time. And the way that I did that was if I ever had a thought or a craving, I would just think of something else. I would just do anything to force myself to think of something other than how badly I wanted to smoke. So I guess with forgiveness, you recognize sorry, in this book with uh with uh by Sam Harris, one of the things he had the conversation was about Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein, who's like a total psychopath, just a the these one of the craziest people and did all kinds of horrible things. But at one point he was a baby. And when you're a baby, you're innocent. You didn't do anything. You didn't ask to be born, you're just here now. And you're just a pro you're a victim of circumstance. He was a baby, and then he was a child, and he was loved, he loved his parents as a baby does. You all love your parents. But even people that have parents that have done horrible things to them, they still have a love for their parents, and that's the thing that hurts the most is what they did. Well, what Saddam Hussein apparently would do, would he take his child Uday into the room while he was torturing political prisoners and beating them and laughing about it. And then that's my dad. He's laughing, he's doing all these horrible things, and he's laughing about it, and he's putting me on his shoulders. Now you hit him with the stick or whatever, and then you hit him. That is a a victim. That child is a victim of a terrible circumstance because this is what he's being taught by the people that he loves. Then the question that gets proposed is when does that innocent victim child go from a victim of circumstance to personally responsible? When does that when does that click?

Closing And Release Schedule

Keith "Polar Bear" Gelhorn 30:07

Thank you for listening to the Big Bears Podcast, a two eyes seeing approach to neurodiversity. We would appreciate it if you could listen, subscribe, engage, and share this podcast. Tune in every second Tuesday at 7 a.m. Atlantic time for a new episode.