Leaving the ADHD Label Behind - with Guest Joseph Pack

Episode: Leaving the ADHD Label Behind (with Joseph Pack)

In this conversation, I sit down with my coach, Joseph Pack, to talk about something that might ruffle a few feathers:
What happens when you loosen your grip on the ADHD label?

We both have ADHD. We both coach ADHD’ers. And yet, we’re both speaking about it less and less. Not because we’re denying struggle – but because we’re more interested in the human underneath the diagnosis: values, environment, habits, food, sleep, connection… and what’s actually possible when you stop treating four letters as a life sentence.

We talk about:

• How an ADHD diagnosis can both validate your experience and quietly limit you
• The difference between understanding your brain and living inside a label
• When diagnosis helps – and when it becomes an excuse not to try
• Medication, side-effects, and why Joe had to go looking for alternatives
• Ultra-processed food, inflammation, sleep, and why your “busy brain” might be screaming for a reset
• The power of coaching, challenge, and having someone who refuses to buy your limiting story

This is not an anti-diagnosis episode. It’s an honest, messy, hopeful chat about identity, agency, and what changes when you start asking:

“Who am I beyond ADHD – and what kind of life do I actually want to build?”

People, books & ideas Joseph references

If you want to go deeper into some of the thinkers Joe mentions:

• Dr Sami Timimi – Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress and Neurodiversity
  Book link: Searching for Normal
   
• Prof. Tim Spector – ultra-processed food & gut health
  Channel 4 series What Not To Eat: Show info
   
• Dr Chris van Tulleken – Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food… and Why Can’t We Stop?
  Book link: Ultra-Processed People
   
• Dr Gabor Maté – ADHD and trauma
  ADHD page & his book Scattered Minds: drgabormate.com/adhd
   
• René Girard – Mimetic desire
  The idea that we often desire what others around us desire, which shapes behaviour and identity in deep, often unconscious ways.
• Opal – screen-time & focus app Joe mentions for cutting down distractions
  Website: https://www.opal.so
   

Connect with us

• Host – Ben Cook
  Busy Brain & ADHD Coach
  Podcast: Something for the Busy Brain
  Email: ben@goodtothinkdifferently.com
  
  
• Guest – Joseph Pack
  ADHD coach, founder, consultant (and my own coach)
  Email: hello@josephpack.com 

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to ADHD and Busy Brains
02:53 The Impact of ADHD Diagnosis
05:39 Memetic Desire and Identity Crisis
08:44 The Weight of Diagnosis
11:30 Shattering Limiting Beliefs
14:31 The Role of Coaching in Self-Discovery
17:33 Challenging the ADHD Narrative
20:29 The Subjectivity of ADHD Diagnosis
23:21 Conclusion: Beyond the Diagnosis
24:15 The Missing Heritability Link in ADHD
26:18 ADHD Medication: A Controversial Discussion

Transcript

Leaving the ADHD label behind

Ben (00:01)
Good afternoon, Joe.

Joe (00:03)
Hello, thank you for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Ben (00:05)
No, you're

welcome. So this afternoon I'm recording this episode of the podcast with my own coach, Joseph Pack. Welcome Joe. So I missed out the word ADHD when I said coach.

So Joe is my ADHD coach, but I deliberately omitted the word ADHD, even though it's not a word, because the focus of this episode is about leaving the ADHD label behind, potentially. We're not dismissing ADHD. Joe and I both have it. We're both ADHD coaches, but we're questioning how tightly we need to hang on to those letters, not a word.

ADHD. Now, before we unpack this a little bit further, and there's no, no pun intended on your surname there, Joe. ⁓ as this is something for the Busy Brain podcast, what does having a busy brain mean to you?

Joe (01:13)
well that is good and i've not even thought about answering what having a bit

Ben (01:16)
Well so what you're saying what you're saying Joe

is you're challenging me in no I'm challenging you I'm challenging you in the way that you challenge me then

Joe (01:26)
I

would say having a busy brain, what does it mean to me? I would say it's extremely bloody annoying, actually. But I also think, and again, I think that question is really relevant to why we're doing this episode and the conversation you and I had a week ago that people weren't privy to, but might hear a lot of that in a minute, is that I actually think that the diagnosis of ADHD, which was 10 years ago for me now, almost

Ben (01:33)
Mm-hmm.

Joe (01:56)
justified and normalized the busyness of my brain so that it became not only an identification but and people do not like the word I'm about to use now but it is for me I don't really mind what other people say about themselves but an excuse to not work on the things that are typically challenges for people who are

Ben (02:03)
Okay, yep.

Joe (02:25)
diagnosed with this thing called ADHD. That's it, think. So I don't think that the busy brain is necessarily a problem to be diagnosed. And if we're diagnosed with something like a disorder, it's so easy. I'm quite a strong minded person. I mean, you can see that from my content and over the years and

Ben (02:29)
Mmm.

Joe (02:53)
things I've done in my career and whatever but even I was just totally wrapped up in the the diagnostic explanation of ADHD to the point where I actually think that the diagnostic explanation of ADHD governed my behavior and actions and certainly limited me. I don't think it explained me, I think it actually was almost subconsciously manipulating me to be a certain way.

Ben (03:12)
Mmm

It's interesting that you say limits you because I think your experience is probably not dissimilar to my own when you're working with clients. From my perspective, a client will invariably come to me fresh off the back of a relatively recent diagnosis. They're having a mini identity crisis and they're consumed by those four letters ADHD.

and they want to know what it means and make sense of things.

If you take the ADHD away from someone, what are you left with? Exactly the same thing, exactly the same person. You're left with an individual. And I've had that own experience through my clients. I've had that own experience myself. You try and explore what ADHD means to you rather than actually understanding yourself.

You know, I know from my diagnosis about 12 years back, I told everyone I'd got ADHD for about two years. That's all I talked about. I didn't even know what it meant to me.

Joe (04:39)
That's

exactly what I did. And you know, when I got diagnosed with ADHD, I was struggling the most that I had ever struggled in my life. I was 26. I had not long come out of hospital after having the seizures that anyone that knows me knows about. And I was desperately seeking something stable to hold on to. And I couldn't find anything. I was very, very, I really was very, very lonely at the time.

Ben (05:04)
Yeah, OK.

Joe (05:09)
and I was seeking success at any cost and it wasn't coming even though that is completely and utterly subjective what does that even mean? I don't know I really don't and I don't think it even and I don't know and I don't think it even matters like it was obviously you know it was it was probably memetic desire I think and I think that that if you don't know what memetic desire means it was a

Ben (05:19)
What was behind that then? Sorry!

Joe (05:39)
coined by René Girard, the philosopher. And it's basically where I think it explains human behaviour to a T, which is that we will often take on the characteristics of those around us completely subconsciously. We have no control over it. We often want what the others in the community want right down to the very specific colour of something. We can often fall into it. And you think...

Ben (05:54)
Mmm.

Joe (06:06)
Why do people with ADHD all seem to be similar to each other when you get them in a room? It's not because of some diagnosis, it's because of memetic desire. And I think that that's exactly the same thing that happened to me in my mid twenties. It was around about the time that, you know, things like Instagram and YouTube and stuff were really flying. And I worked in the marketing world and marketing agency, that's what I owned. And it was all about success and growth and

ego and one-upmanship and all this kind of thing and you just fall into it and no matter how well you are doing objectively you don't feel that you're doing well and actually when I look back to say that I was 20 I mean I was 22 or 21 when I started that business to think about how well we were doing not just financially which was great but in terms of like the clients we worked with and what opportunities we had at 23 it was just bloody ridiculous but I didn't feel it didn't feel it at all felt

Ben (07:03)
Mmm.

Joe (07:06)
like it just wasn't working, but it really was. And then three years later, I obviously get this diagnosis of ADHD and finally something to hold onto, something to tell everybody, you know that, you know that, you know that how I'm not very good at that thing. It's cause of this ADHD. You know how I was late then that's cause of ADHD. Do you know? And then all of a sudden there's like a relaxation. A lot of people that get diagnosed with ADHD, obviously I've spoken to so many people that have been diagnosed with ADHD over the past several years.

Ben (07:24)
Yep.

Joe (07:35)
there's either a of like a feeling of what do call it?

grieving, that's it, I couldn't think of the word, there's a grieving, or there's a great weight lifted. Well the great, that was for me, was a great weight lifted. Why? Because all of a sudden I didn't have to try harder to be on time for X. I just said, I've got ADHD. And some people I've worked with take that to the absolute extreme and it doesn't improve, it makes their life significantly worse and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that they could

Ben (07:45)
Hmm. Yep. Yep.

ADHD.

Joe (08:13)
that they could, there's nothing stopping them from learning how to be on time. But the diagnosis of ADHD, listen, I'm being very careful with the wording. I'm not saying ADHD. I'm saying the diagnosis of ADHD is actually making it easier for them to not try to be on time. I'm not saying that it's easy for us to be on time. I'm not saying that people with busy brains, I much prefer that. I much prefer the idea that we have busy brains. There's perhaps some people with busy brains and some people that don't have busy brains. It doesn't have to be a disorder.

Ben (08:26)
Alright.

Thank

Mm.

Joe (08:44)
I'm not saying that it's not difficult for us to be on time. I know it is. So I'm not denying that, but it doesn't mean that we cannot learn to be on time. We can. The diagnosis of ADHD for some people, for a lot of people can make it much more difficult for them to be on time. It's totally counterintuitive. And this is what Dr. Kami Tomei mean. Go on, go for it.

Ben (09:02)
That's the interesting thing you said there.

You said about the diagnosis and you said specifically about the diagnosis. So what is it about a formal diagnosis that does make a difference?

Joe (09:24)
it's, guess there's multiple different lenses to look at that through. I suppose at the time at 26 years old, all I could find were positives. But, but with the benefit of hindsight, 10 years later, I don't think that they were positives at all. And I think that they, I think over the last 10 years, I have significantly limited myself in my attempt and effort to get better at the things that I believed I could never get good at because I have this disorder.

Ben (09:54)
Mmm.

Joe (09:55)
And Dr. Sammy Timimi, who I think is one of the wisest people on the subject of ADHD and autism, in his book, Searching for Normal, he actually says in there that everyone in the sort of ADHD influence the space and I've been guilty of this as well, so I'll hold my hands up. As said, know, people with ADHD are more likely to commit suicide, people with ADHD are more likely to do X, Y and Z, very, very negative things.

Ben (10:15)
You

Joe (10:22)
He says, if you really closely look at the data, it's actually nothing to do with ADHD, it's to do with the diagnosis. So people diagnosed with ADHD are much more likely to commit suicide. That's true. There's got nothing to do with ADHD. It's to do with the diagnosis. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. So once you, and this is really prevalent with autism where, you know, children that have been diagnosed with autism are then, particularly boys, then just feel completely limited.

Ben (10:27)
and

But that's the separation.

Joe (10:52)
there and like well what's the point and he has told me and I think he wrote about this in the book in searching for normal you know he's he the way he was a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for like 40 years so he's seen all of these cases time and time again you know young boys trying to kill themselves basically like nine ten eleven twelve years old because they believe that this diagnosis of autism is means that their life will be crap like they'll never achieve anything whatsoever

And when he's basically lifted the shackles of that diagnosis from them and said, you don't have autism and it works with the person, doesn't mean it doesn't have struggles. This boy has the boys have struggles, but once that's lifted, then he can help them see positive future and they change completely. And I, that's, that is why I have dropped my ADHD diagnosis because I'm, I'm saying 2026 is the year of shattering.

Ben (11:30)
Mmm.

Mmm.

Joe (11:48)
my limiting beliefs. I have spent the last decade swimming in limiting beliefs.

Ben (11:54)
Go on, me some examples.

Joe (11:57)
Okay. So for example, no, not consistently exercising, right? Intimidate. So for example, not having a habit dashboard, like habit tracker on the wall in my office, right? Because I think, well, what's the point? I've got ADHD. I'll never stick. I'll never put all the crosses in, you know, each day or like, ⁓ learning a language. So actually I have been wanting to learn a language for so long, but I just believed what, how

It's such a difficult thing to do and someone with ADHD, that's going to be even more, that's going to be so much more difficult. Exactly. I've lifted that from me. I've been learning Italian and I'm sticking to it every single day. Right. It's, it does, it's just the time for...

Ben (12:31)
How can I stick with it?

What's been the

difference there?

Joe (12:44)
that ⁓ I believe now. I believe I can do it now. There's no excuse now. Like, so for example, I've missed a day from a habit or ADHD. I'll never get back on it again. Now it's like, I've missed a day. I'll just do it tomorrow.

It was just a switch. Something... There were several things that happened last year that have led up to this. There were things like people in the... You know, a lot of... I felt that the conversation of ADHD and autism... I'm using autism because my son is very severely autistic, so I'm very much in that world. So the conversation is just being dominated by celebrities who just talk out their arse all the time. They have no idea what they're talking about.

Which is why if you go and pay close attention to, say, Dr. Sammy Timimi, Dr. Asad Rafi, right, people who are very trustworthy, they will tell you something completely different to what these celebrities are spouting. But because of the nature of the world that we live in, obviously the doctors aren't the ones that people are listening to, they're just listening to the celebrities and the celebrities are wrong. you know, so there was that and then I started to sort of...

Ben (13:40)
Mmm.

Joe (14:00)
pull out, pull away from that kind of ADHD world a little bit. I'm still coaching clients and I really do enjoy that. ⁓ But it's, yeah. And then I just made the decision to drop the diagnosis to see what would happen. If it's just for one year of my life and I was to go back to it in 2027, so be it. But there's no way that's gonna happen now. And it was, now that I can see that it's like,

Ben (14:04)
Same.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Joe (14:31)
The most important thing really is if I don't stick to the habit, then it's okay, I'll get back on the horse tomorrow. And that wasn't the case for 10 years. There was always that, ⁓ ADHD makes that way more difficult. ADHD, and it's just an excuse.

Ben (14:41)
yeah.

Hmm. And I think...

Joe (14:51)
Obviously

you've been diagnosed with ADHD and when I, there are going to be some people listening to this that are going to be so unbelievably offended. And you know, that gets me onto another point that we can come to later, is that ADHD is not, the most prevalent part of the ADHD is not the diagnosis, is it? It's the identity. So if you go, we were talking about diabetes type, say type one diabetes that most people, that's genetic, no one's going to get offended.

Ben (15:00)
You

Yeah, 100 %

Mmm. Yep.

Joe (15:19)
If we talk about it and say, maybe the doctors have got it all wrong, like, look at all this data, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, one's going to get offended. But as soon as you start talking about ADHD, it's not, we're talking about a diagnosis anymore, a medical thing, we're just talking about an identification. And actually, you can go to a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu and debate them all day about their religion, but you try and do that to someone who is diagnosed with ADHD and wedded to the neurodiversity movement, you will not.

Ben (15:48)
Mmmmm

Joe (15:49)
be to debate them, they will shut you down immediately. So what's that? That's like, okay, if we look at that through a religious lens, what are we doing? Or is it like arguing with a fundamentalist Christian or something? you know, there are obviously religious people out there that will not debate you, but they tend to be the most hardcore, extreme fundamentalists. Try debating with a neurodiversity person who believes in neurodiversity, you will get the exact same response. They just won't have the conversation.

Ben (16:15)
I think

there's something here around, I think so many people will have had that formal diagnosis, will have tried to figure out what that means to them. ⁓ They'll have disappeared down a rabbit hole, Googling things and reading every textbook under the planet and going, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me.

⁓ I found through coaching one of the best ways to understand yourself and understand ADHD is talking to people with that life experience, particularly those who might be further on down the road. But then I think there's a challenge sometimes from, and I'm guilty of it, when you find your tribe, you want to find other neurodivergents.

you mix with other people and it's great because you can still have that narrative of, that's just ADHD, but then you laugh about it collectively and I think that becomes the norm. And I've noticed it with me that a laugh about those things

And that takes away from how utterly debilitating it can be. Now, I think there are clearly better ways of exploring ourselves, of unearthing our potential. This brings me into coaching with you. Now,

You and I first had a conversation I think about three years ago. And I think I said to you back then, I can see myself working with you at some point, but I don't think that point is me right now. And that's cool because you're probably the fifth, maybe sixth coach I've had. And you work with different coaches at different points in terms of where you are at and the coach that meets your needs for where you are at.

But what I particularly like about working with you Joe, and this this sort of extends to anyone listening, is you challenge the good in me. You challenge me when I put those limitations on myself. So I think having those people around you that can support you, that can champion you, enable you to lean into the best.

of yourself and explore that. And you do bloody challenge me. You really do. But I like that. I like the fact that often it's deeply uncomfortable and I sit there because I know I'm also in that safe space that you provide to explore what could be if I looked at things differently. And I think the benefit, you know, not a coaching plug, but the benefit of seeing things through a coaching lens is you're looking at what you're looking at, how you move forward.

And I think you and I have both got to a point very much aligned with each other, working together. We've had those conversations where we are both realizing the things that have been holding us back, but we also know what we are capable of. And I think that limitation that people can impose on themselves through ADHD as a label,

can be incredibly frustrating as a coach when you see so much potential. So, you know, I think we need to be, we need to look at how we better ourselves, how we better explore ourselves. And sometimes that is a case of asking ourselves uncomfortable questions around, the people who are my tribe, are the people I'm around?

holding me back or do I just need some more people in my life who see the way I see things, see the potential, see the world changing innovations that you've got and allow you to get there.

Joe (20:31)
Yep.

And I genuinely believe that.

The removal of an ADHD diagnosis that has to be a completely and utterly personal decision, of course, is the gateway to being able to do that. And I think that the ADHD diagnosis will always be a weight around the neck of a person who even has the intention to do those things, like me. You know, the other thing is that, you know, if anyone, a lot of people are going to be disagreeing with this and that's fine.

Ben (21:00)
Mmm.

Mm.

and that's fine.

Joe (21:22)
Again,

they're good actually and that we shouldn't, know, the people in the neurodiversity space I was talking about five minutes ago that won't have anyone disagree with them, they need to just shut up for a bit because there is an opportunity to have a conversation between two people that completely disagree with each other and see where we can get to. And it doesn't, even if you get to the end of that conversation and you haven't changed your mind, so what? There may have been one little thing that maybe helps you see something slightly differently so long as we can be open. But I will say this, and this is going to

probably upset people. An ADHD diagnosis is actually extremely easy to get and I would, I feel quite confident I would be able to pick anyone off the street and within 30 minutes train them to get one. Now, of course, forgetting the fact that if an ADHD diagnosis is done properly, know, family members and stuff needs to have written basically a report about you or answered some questions at least, but not all ADHD diagnoses are done that way.

Ben (22:04)
Mmm.

Joe (22:21)
But, you know, if you look at the diagnostic criteria, it says things like excessive fidgeting, excessive distractibility, excessive blah blah blah. Well, what the hell does excessive mean? So there are two ways of looking at this. One is you and I might have totally different views of what excessive means. Two psychiatrists might have two different views of what excessive means. That's just in this country. Now imagine that in Japan, for example, excessive is very different to in Indonesia.

Ben (22:32)
Yeah.

Joe (22:51)
So how the hell can you know with absolute certainty that the thing that you are being diagnosed with is correct? Especially when if scientists are being completely honest about this, that there is no DNA link with ADHD. There's no gene found that's ADHD at all. So, and there's certainly nothing in brain scans, at least brain scans that are non-fraudulent. So...

It's a subjective thing. So that again, does not mean that people who have been diagnosed with ADHD are not distractible and late and fidgety. But also you might have been diagnosed with ADHD at say 11 and be very fidgety and blah, blah. But now you're 30 and you're not anymore. And all these people in neurodiversity world on LinkedIn and Instagram will tell you that it's for life.

It's not for life. Because it's just a word. It's not even a word, like you said. It's just a collection of letters pointing to a description of something. It's not diabetes. It's not cancer. It's not a heart attack. It's not those things. It's just a description. It's just a description. That's it. That is it.

Ben (23:52)
You

Hmm.

And I think if you.

And I think that that's

it.

Joe (24:15)
Well, on that DNA thing, I don't think people realised, there have actually been tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people who have been analysed in genetic heritability studies, who have been diagnosed with ADHD, and they've found nothing. And it's so much so, they've found so little, that now, occasionally, if you're on the internet, you'll find that people talk about this thing called the missing heritability link. I know if you've heard of that before.

Ben (24:43)
No, haven't, no!

Joe (24:44)
You'll hear neurodiversity

people talking about the missing heritability link and what they're basically saying is we couldn't find anything in the tens of thousands of people that we've tested over all these studies. So there must be something though. I mean, look at us all. We're all the same, aren't we? We're different to those people over there. So there must be something. So that's the missing thing. We're just still looking for it. That's not how science works. Science must... That's basically coming at it from the assumption that something exists.

Ben (25:07)
Mmm.

Joe (25:14)
Science doesn't work like that. I'm no scientist, but the very basic ⁓ foundation of science is that you start from something called a null hypothesis, which basically means you start under the assumption that there's nothing there.

So basically, you're, so let's use ADHD medication as an example, which is a controversial subject. ADHD medication, one that I enjoy talking about, yeah. So ADHD medication, a big pharma should do all of their research based on the assumption that it does not work and that it's dangerous. And they have to prove that that's wrong. So it's the opposite. They have to prove that it doesn't work and that it's dangerous is wrong.

Ben (25:36)
one that you enjoy talking about.

Joe (25:59)
I'm being really careful with my words there. They're not starting off with the assumption that it's wrong and proving that it works. They're proving that the assumption that it's dangerous is wrong. That's actually different to proving that it's not dangerous.

Ben (26:02)
Yeah, I know.

Yeah, see ya.

Joe (26:20)
That's how all- but they don't do it that way. Which is why you get- I was literally just talking to someone the other day and I'm not gonna disclose their name at all, but, ⁓ he was in- he's someone who is in his late forties, I believe, been diagnosed with ADHD recently. And he was in a relationship with someone who had two children, two boys, teenagers, and their father died when they were eight and ten.

and he, the younger one who is now in his maybe I don't know 13 or something, he has been diagnosed with ADHD and has been put on ADHD medication. Okay, if you look at, if you believe a lot again another controversial figure in the ADHD world, Gabor Mate. Gabor Mate says that ADHD is really a, again Gabor Mate says ADHD is not a lifelong condition, right? He says that again and again and again and he says it's the result of trauma.

Ben (27:15)
Mmm.

Joe (27:18)
various types of trauma. Well, obviously this boy who has father died at eight, has experienced extreme trauma and it's manifesting as what looks like this thing called ADHD. So basically they put him on these stimulants, but now these stimulants are an inflammatory. So they inflame the entire body basically, and then they are hunger suppressant as well. So he's basically, ⁓

taking the medication all day and then coming home and then binge eating junk food, which is then inflaming the body even more. Well, that just makes him need more medication the next day because if his body's inflamed, he, the so-called ADHD symptoms will be significantly more severe the next day. Or let's use what we said, the busy brain will be so busy, then the ADHD medication, ⁓ it looks like it works. It seems to make him focus. Well, it will do, it's a stimulant.

Ben (27:53)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Joe (28:17)
but then there's more inflammation and it's a cycle and it adds and adds and and adds and adds and adds and then after three to five years that's when people generally come to me or have done the past few years because they did once believe that this ADHD medication was some sort of like magic miracle thing that was going to make them feel better which it does feel like that for 18 months but then it doesn't

Ben (28:17)
Yeah.

Magic pill.

Yep.

Joe (28:40)
So, yeah, mean, it's...

It's such a difficult subject because I just really, I hope that people do understand that I'm not trying to take anything away from the individual struggles of anyone. I'm not saying you're not distracted and fidgety and...

late and whatever else apparently makes you have ADHD. I'm just saying I don't think that ADHD diagnosis itself and what that leads to which is limited beliefs, potential medication and everything all the bad stuff that comes with that. I don't think it's very good for us.

Ben (29:20)
Yeah, I think I just, was frantically scribbling away so that I didn't ⁓ have that wayward train moment like I did about five minutes ago. And I think what's, what's interesting here, Joe, is you and I, for very different reasons have, have had a reason to explore what, what can support.

ADHD. So we've opened the door to exploring things beyond medication. So for me, when I was diagnosed,

I didn't know what I wanted to achieve from the diagnosis. I just wanted to make sense of things. I previously worked in sales and marketing and there was order, systems, process, protocol. So I knew what I was working with and if information came in, I knew where to store it. And then I went and worked in the charity sector.

and it was the most multifaceted job role I'd ever had. data storage was what? I've got a Word doc or a scrumpled up piece of paper over there with some notes on. And I couldn't make sense of things. So I couldn't make sense of my brain. And because I was struggling, and I know why I was struggling looking back on it, hindsight and the experience, the knowledge I've acquired since,

But I was looking for answers and I thought one of those answers was getting, was exploring the ADHD diagnosis. And then I still spent two years trying to explore how that was the answer. And I tried different, I tried different medications. I tried stimulants, I tried non-stimulants. The side effects were horrific. I won't go into them because some of them were deeply personal. But it...

They were horrific. So I had to go, okay, what needs to change here? Now, I was working in the charity sector so I could put my heart and my energy into things. I remember asking the head of Wales programmes at a Christmas party after a few beers, why I was chosen for the role?

and he said, you beat 68 other applicants. And I would say, and I said, what was it about me? And he said, you're a rough diamond. There was that energy. There was something about you. And he'd say, I'd say that was because of your ADHD. So I got in there because of me before I knew I had ADHD. I got in there because of me. That was, that was it. The slowest I moved,

Joe (32:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ben (32:36)
moving forwards was those two years when I got the ADHD diagnosis and I tried to figure out what the f**k it actually meant to me. But you know and I know that nothing was

Joe (32:43)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (32:52)
that the medication wasn't helping. When I found medication that calmed my brain, it didn't turn me into that guy who could just go out there and sign up people left, right and center. People would say, how do you do that? I don't know. It's just something that I do.

Joe (33:12)
Exactly.

Ben (33:14)
And I think I would like you to give your account of why you had to explore alternatives. And I know you're a deep, long, avid learner. You have this thirst for knowledge. You've quoted people and books and speakers like no one I've ever heard before. And that was actually how I was going to introduce you. But I thought, no, I'll...

I'll see if he drops a few in and you haven't let me down. But I think it would be really beneficial for people to hear that you had to explore alternatives to medication because it wasn't the magic pill. So, you know, please give a little bit of a backstory, Joe.

Joe (33:45)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I did try the medication for a couple of weeks, but it was, and I shouldn't have done, I wasn't supposed to, because I'd had these seizures in 2016 and they were caused by exhaustion and caffeine, basically, huge amounts of caffeine that I was taking every single day, in a form of coffee. And, um...

So.

I had no choice basically but to explore other methods and I found that meditation, breathing techniques, cold exposure were very, very beneficial. And then actually in the last two years or so I've found particularly diet and exercise have been extremely important.

God, you could get so nerdy about this, but it's, it's, you go in such a rabbit hole. You know, like it's, it's mad how

Ben (35:00)
Go on, go on. You won't surprise me, Joe.

Joe (35:08)
Okay, so if you go into a supermarket and look at the ingredients on everything that you buy in your shopping trolley, if you don't recognize one of the, several ingredients in it, put it back on the shelf immediately. And if you do that, that's a really quick sort of shortcut. You'll feel better very quickly.

without going into a huge amount. So it will be, if you don't have never heard of that ingredient or can't go and find it in a field somewhere, then it will be made in a factory and therefore it will be ultra processed. And if it's all processed, will not, yeah, your body will not be able to process it properly. And as there's so much evidence on this, it's been led by, what's it called again? Well, there's Dr. Tim Spector.

Ben (35:32)
Go on, explain that.

So what you're doing there is making a conscious decision.

Joe (36:00)
who has got a TV show on channel four at the moment. And he's part of his what company is he part of now? Bloody hell, forgotten. You'll find go and Google Dr. Tim Spectrum, you'll find there's a company that he's like the chief scientist, science officer for chief medical officer for. And basically the research has that ⁓ ultra processed foods effectively kills your microbiome. Microbiome is called

Ben (36:18)
We can put it in the list afterwards.

Joe (36:31)
And the microbiome is like trillions of little cells that live inside your stomach. And when you eat, they basically eat the food you've eaten.

⁓ Certain foods help the microbiome flourish, even grow in number. things like fermented foods like kimchi, kombucha, temper, tofu, that kind of thing, that helps to grow the microbiome, that actually increases the numbers. Foods that are ultra processed. like for example, ⁓ most of the things in the freezer aisle in the supermarket, most of the things on the crisps and the chocolate aisle.

most of the things in the supermarket, unfortunately, have some one or more ⁓ ultra processed additive in that serves really either one of two purposes to keep it on the shelf longer or to make it uniform. So I don't know why this comes to mind, but if you look at, for example, a Cadbury's finger, right, every single you line up every single Cadbury's finger that's ever been made in history, billions and billions of them, every single one will look exactly the same.

Ben (37:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joe (37:42)
That is ultra processed. So there are different categories of food. There is natural food, which is milk, for example. And then there's processed food, which is cheese. So it's taking milk and processing it into cheese. Now you can make an ultra processed cheese, like for example, a cheese string. You're not going to be able to make a cheese string outside of a lab. It'd have to be in a lab or a factory, right?

Ben (38:05)
Mmm.

Night.

Joe (38:13)
Once you cut all of those things out of your diet, and I've just given you the easiest shortcut in the world, which is to look on the back of the packet, and if it's got an ingredient on you don't understand, put it back, that will make an enormous difference to you. One of the main reasons for that is because it will help you sleep better. So even if you're getting, say, eight hours of sleep a night, lucky you, I don't even get that. That's the joy of having little children. But if you do, it's likely that if you're eating ultra-processed foods and all the...

Ben (38:37)
You

Joe (38:42)
habits that may not be very good for the body. Sleep will be poor and poor sleep also leads to inflammation and then inflammation makes things like fidgeting, distractibility, lateness, blah blah blah more difficult to deal with and there's no wonder that you're struggling. And by the way, Dr. Chris Van Toliken, again another wonderful doctor said, it's not your fault. I totally agree with him. Of course it's not your fault. The supermarket is stacked.

Ben (38:56)
Yep.

Joe (39:12)
full of foods that's toxic.

Ben (39:15)
Mmm.

Joe (39:17)
We don't know. We don't know. They're also so addictive. It's really difficult not to eat those foods. I'm not perfect, by the way. I'm not pretending to be perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, again, it's just a vicious cycle. And eating these ultra processed foods makes it more difficult to have the motivation to exercise. but then on the flip side, exercising can make it easier to eat better foods.

Ben (39:24)
⁓ and I'm massively struggling with sugar cravings at the moment.

Mmm.

Joe (39:45)
So it's all, you know, if we went back a hundred years, not only would there not have been ADHD around, there wouldn't have been because there wouldn't have been an environment for it to flourish because people worked with their bodies physically. There was no such thing as ultra processed foods at all. And there were no screens. Apart from what we're going, what 1926, there would have been a black and white TV with two channels or one. You know, people read books, there's this

Ben (40:11)
Yeah.

Joe (40:14)
fascinating book that was about working class people in the north of England who were basically working in a mine all day or a factory and then going home and reading these extremely intellectual books and having book group meetings about it. You know, it was a completely different time and now as one scientist said, I forget his name, that our brains have not developed to cut to

Ben (40:32)
I think.

Joe (40:42)
to take in the amount of information that we have today. So we're fucked really. And we can undo it and I genuinely believe that the first step is questioning this diagnosis. But still respecting the fact that you are distracted and fidgeting and blah blah blah. Still respecting all those things and going, right, okay, one by one I can work on these things. And this ADHD thing is not for life. This is an environment, it's totally environment.

Ben (40:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Joe (41:09)
And in fact, could be, it's not just environmental, it's cultural as well. I think it's a cultural construct.

Ben (41:13)
Yeah, I think

there were things that you said there and again I was frantically scribbling things down because I think it's important for us to sort of make some of the connections, connect some of those dots for people listening. I think, and I'm going to be processing this out loud.

There's a lot of common sense that we all know there are things that we should do that make us function better. You you hit on sleep as the water, less caffeine, less alcohol. There are things that we know, but we just go, yeah, but I don't want to give that up. And that's fine. But these are things that we know the food that we put in, you know, you can be a result of the food that you put in. I know...

I'm struggling ⁓ with energy crashes at the moment, but I also know I'm eating vast amounts of sugar and I know that that crash is my brain shutting down after I've just fed it with a load of crap.

Joe (42:23)
Yeah. Well, look at what we did, what

I was doing at 26 before I had the seizures and got diagnosed with the ADHD. ⁓ I'm really tired. I need a coffee. ⁓ I know, I'm tired. So this coffee, that is so normalized in society. Tired, coffee, more fix it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, Yeah. Tired, sleep, not tired coffee. And I, you know, I just got it completely wrong. And I'm glad that that happened because it woke me up basically.

Ben (42:32)
Yeah. Mmm.

I've had a tough day, I'll have a glass of wine to blame them.

Yeah. So I think.

There's something here about...

actually stopping, not pausing, actually stopping to think for ourselves because everything is available like that on screens, tech, AI, you know, so there's no patience. So I think we we've lost a degree of exploration and trying to understand things. ⁓

And actually, like you said, listening to the body, if you, if someone said to you, if you said, I'm permanently, I'm permanently exhausted, permanently exhausted. And I get to this point and I keep nodding off. So what do you do? ⁓ well, I force myself to carry on watching the thing on the TV or I make myself a coffee.

So we know there is so many things that are obvious in front of us and we know why that's happening. And I think it's very easy. And I'm trying to bring this back to the ADHD label thing because I know that when certain things are missing in my life,

my symptoms are significantly worse, significantly worse. we can either, and this is the bit that I'm, that I'm sort of thinking through out loud. You can either try and explore ADHD, explore the medication and find the things that can, that can be the sticky plaster for what's currently broken.

Joe (44:24)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (44:51)
Or you can say, actually, there are more healthier things to explore here. You mentioned the environment, the environment critical. Earlier on, I mentioned the people that you're with, the foods that you consume. I think let's look at, it's very much through a coaching lens, but it's obvious.

let's look at who we are when we are our best, when we're at our best. If you look at the times when you worked incredibly well, and I look at certain points in my life where I look back and just go, holy shit, how did I achieve that? And when I take that apart and understand why I achieved that, my environment was different. The people around me were different. I was, I was going to the gym all the time. ⁓

I was investing, I was investing in me and you and I are coaches. And I think the key thing here is listen to yourself, invest in yourself, invest in what you need as a human. You are an individual. So explore what makes you individual, not what makes you the same as that other person over there with ADHD. that's, that's the sort of

You

Joe (46:14)
Well, I think if you can

do, I mean, I've been fortunate that I've been able to build a know, ADHD coaching business on basically based on posting things on the internet and getting people to pay attention to me and blah, blah. My best advice for anyone who really is like likes what we're saying is to just close all of that off completely because well, shut it down straight away. So there's, for example,

Ben (46:37)
How do you do that?

Joe (46:42)
practical steps there is an app called Opal that you can just download that will block all your social media apps and I would even get to the point where maybe you just delete those apps from your phone if you're really serious about it. Also turn your phone to greyscale mode so it takes all the color out of it so it makes the phone look boring and then just slowly get back to the point of being a human rather than just being a consuming organism which is basically what we become.

Ben (47:05)
There is some,

there's, there's a, think there is a link though. There's, well, there's a missing bridge between knowing that you want to find the answers, knowing that you want to improve and actually making that first step. And I'm going to ask you openly now, we talked previously about do, about recording a different podcast episode around resets.

And I think sometimes when you are feeling lost, you can't find the answers. you go, you know, you can't find them in yourself because your brain is blown. So you go asking people, you go reading books, you've disappeared down rabbit holes on the internet. so, ⁓

Where's that going? Help me Joe, was I going?

Joe (48:04)
What are you going

to ask like, ⁓ what... I mean, don't know exactly what you're going to ask, but what came to mind straight away was would you recommend... I don't know if this is kind of linked to what you're asking, is that I would actually recommend people do a really extreme reset. I don't think it should be done in plunks. I think it should just be done, yeah, like full blast. Like it's got to be an extreme. has to be the exact opposite to what you're doing.

Ben (48:11)
You

We'll see.

Resets. That was it. That was it. Thank you, Joe.

Yeah.

And I think rather than us opening that dialogue now, thank you so much for bringing me back to the resets because I think where we want to get to, if we're going to leave things behind, if we are potentially going to acknowledge the label, take more control over where or if we want ADHD to form a key role in us navigating our way forwards.

I think you need to be able to stop, take stock of where you're at and see things from a different perspective. And you're not going to be able to do that if you're wired, but tired and you're struggling with burnout. So I think there is a place for resets and

to work through those resets because I think when you're left to your own devices, it can feel really difficult to take that first step. When someone is there to support you or something or someone guides you through it, I think it would be great to have an episode where we work through those things. We work through the breath work, you know, and we do it in a way that

Joe (49:30)
Absolutely.

Ben (49:57)
people can pick up. do it in a practical, you know, in a, very practical way, not suggesting you and I have a, have an ice bath on a video. No one needs to see that. And I'm just talking from my own perspective, but I think practically.

actually supporting someone through that to go, yes, you can say I've tried breath work, didn't work for me. Don't close the door. It's about doing it properly.

Joe (50:27)
Absolutely. And you know, I would, a hundred percent will do that. It's interesting just before we finish now, there's one last thing I think it's that ⁓ earlier on I said ADHD or the ADHD diagnosis is environmental. I think it's also cultural in that. So people will say, ⁓ but there's, you know, ADHD diagnoses are skyrocketing today. And they'll say, why?

Ben (50:29)
So I think a separate session on resets. Yeah.

Joe (50:55)
And then there'll be one argument, people have been under-diagnosed for ages, it's just catching up. No, that's not true. It's just a cultural shift. So all those things, fidgeting, distractibility, blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah, that are being created by the environment we live in, are considered bad. So then, but why? What if they're not? What about if we remove all those distractions, those things that are causing that?

then that whatever's left is whatever's left. Maybe 50, 60, 70, 80 % of the people no longer have excessive anything. And the ones that do are just people with excessive that. An excessive fidgeting ⁓ based on a UK standard of fidgeting, which is not the same in Japan.

Ben (51:45)
I think that's perfect place to leave, Jo. That's some great food for thought.

Joe (51:46)
So yeah, exactly.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Ben (51:55)
Thank you so much for coming on and for helping me when I lost my way. Brilliant. Have a great afternoon Joe. Cheers for your time. See you mate. Bye bye.

Joe (51:57)
A lot of fun.

Yeah, that's I'm here for.

Thank you.