Hey everybody, in today's episode and in part two, we talk very frankly about ADHD and all of that means over the lifetime of a person who has it.
So, if you're a parent with a kiddo who has ADHD, maybe consider listening by yourself first before you share it with them.
Just a thought. Hope you enjoy these episodes.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Jerome Rowan.
You put the three of us together and you got yourself a podcast called Stuff You Should Know.
That's right. And this is the sort of long simmering.
We've had it on the back burner down to as low as it can summer.
Many, many months. The ADHD, what is now going to be a two -part episode because we've had, I mean that's not why we're splitting it up, but we have had a lot of requests for this over the years and it's you know it's big.
It could certainly be more than two episodes and as much as I wanted to try and split this up into AD and HD for fun, it kind of doesn't work that way so we're just thinking of AC -DC.
Oh, okay. That's what I think it is.
I got you. No, Chuck, instead today we're talking about ADHD which stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Kind of wordy, but it really does get the point across because with ADHD, I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with it, especially the people who requested it, it's a, I'm not exactly sure exactly what kind of disorder it is, whether it's a mental disorder, a personality disorder, an externalizing
disorder. There's actually a lot of debate about it, but essentially it's where people have a lot of trouble paying attention, sitting still, focusing, and a bunch of other stuff that we'll talk about and you put it all together and it can make life kind of hard to navigate and at first, we'll talk
about it a lot more, but kids, it used to be like little boys fidgeting essentially was what ADHD or ADD at the time was considered, but over time, it's really kind of expanded.
We've realized way more girls have it than we thought before and we've also come to realize that adults have it too, and that's a, I mean it's a really big, huge disorder and a lot of people just kind of use it as shorthand like, you know, I forgot my keys, it's my ADHD or something like that, but the more
you know about it, the more you realize it's a genuinely debilitating disorder that people have.
Yeah, and sometimes you may lose your keys.
It's true. That is a big part of it.
I mean they're not wrong about that one.
For sure. So, you know, when it comes to something like this that is only in, I mean honestly in the last like 25 -ish years really come more into focus as far as our understanding of it.
When you look back through medical and you know psychiatric literature, you're gonna see it pop up they just didn't know what it was at the time and in this case, you can probably go back all the way to the 18th century with a Scottish physician named Sir Alexander Crichton who in his 1789 book talked
about children who were unable to focus on one thing at a time and you know it's one of those clear cases kind of like oh well it was probably somebody with ADHD.
It is not just a modern condition because kids eat too much sugar and they have screens in their lives.
Screens can, we'll talk about that, can certainly you know make things worse but it's not like oh because people are so busy and there's too many distractions these days and back in the olden times when there were no distractions people didn't suffer from something like this.
It's just not true when you hear about some of these old descriptions.
Yeah, no not at all and our understanding of it has progressed like over the centuries but it is interesting that it started in the 18th century because I mean Crichton nailed it on the head.
He's like there's definitely something here and I guess it just kind of stayed there for a little while until 1902 when a pediatrician from the UK named Sir George Frederick Still...
Ironically. Yeah, I thought that too.
Yeah. He described children who had a defect of moral control which is essentially saying that it's these are kids who have trouble delaying gratification, not thinking about negative consequences when they carry out actions and that's impulsivity.
That's what we call today is impulsivity and that's what Still was essentially describing at the time.
Yeah, in the 30s some more descriptors came along from the courtesy of some German physicians named Franz Kramer and Hans Polnow.
In this case talking about more the hyperactivity side of things and then about five years after that, still in the 1930s, in 1937 a big I guess breakthrough came along when a doctor for the Rhode Island facility for children with neurological problems named Charles Bradley was doing an experiment where he
was doing imaging tests on the brain and specifically in this case with kids he was draining some brain or some fluid around the brain rather, gave the kids headaches, he treated them with benzodrine which is an amphetamine and what he found out was, wow, this doesn't seem to make any intuitive sense
but giving these children amphetamines is, or at least for about half of them, made them less fidgety and more focused and all of a sudden you are onto a pharmaceutical, potential pharmaceutical treatment.
Yeah, I mean what a way to accidentally stumble into that because even today we're not just, you know, they really really work.
Luckily this doctor was like, quit complaining, take some benzodrine and shut up little kids.
And back then, the kids obeyed.
So there was a, so that was actually kind of a diversion, 1937 when when Charles Bradley discovered this, that amphetamines treat ADHD, it didn't like take off like wildfire because there was an interim period between then and like the 50s where psychiatrists and psychologists were like, all this stuff
needs to just be talked out through psychoanalysis that's how you treat, you know, mental disorders and in the 50s finally people were like, no, let's let's start prescribing drugs and one of the first companies was Ciba Gagi pharmaceutical company.
Yeah. I mean you're definitely gonna go out of business if that's the name of your pharmaceutical company but they're the first ones who developed Ritalin and it turns out that the guy who developed the drug Leandro Penazoni, his wife was named Rita and he named it after him.
That's right. Lovely Rita.
Yeah. So it was the first half of the 20th century when things started to change, you know, not, I guess I could say begin in earnest as far as researching this kind of thing.
A lot of like research into brain injuries were happening at the time and they thought that, well hey, this is what's going on with any kind of developmental issue it's it's almost certainly a brain injury.
That can be the case for sure with all kinds of developmental issues including ADHD in this case but in the 1960s that started to go out of favor a little bit and they started to realize that, hey, a lot of this stuff there are a lot of actually distinct conditions and you can't just lump them all in there
and say it's because a kid hit his head when they were young.
No, so in the late 60s the DSM 2, the sequel, introduced diagnosis called hyperkinetic reaction of childhood and it's essentially ADHD that they were talking about and this is the first time it showed up in psychiatry or it's like this is actually a thing.
We just aren't clear what to name it yet clearly because we're calling it hyperkinetic reaction of childhood.
Yeah. And within decade and a half we finally had it nailed down to attention deficit disorder ADD which people of our age that was what the name we were first exposed to it.
Yeah, for sure. It was not ADHD this newfangled version it was ADD and that's the way it was and you liked it.
Right. ADD had a couple of subtypes depending on whether there was hyperactivity involved but it wasn't like a part of the actual definition at this point.
I think seven years later it finally landed upon I guess this would be 1987.
Mm -hmm. I was but a junior I'm sorry a sophomore in high school.
I was 11. Oh you were just a cute little 11 year old I was a pimp well I didn't get pimples luckily but a would -be pimply faced teenager when ADHD finally rolls through the door and I think if you had no hyperactivity attached at that time it was called undifferentiated ADD.
Right. Am I saying on this right?
I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
You totally are. And then in the 90s another big breakthrough came through when they found out hey there's a genetic component to all this and there are actually a lot of adults that have this we thought kids just grew out of this kind of thing but now adults are saying like when they're diagnosing
like Gen Xers basically diagnosing their kids they're saying wait a minute that sounds a lot like me maybe I have it and oh my goodness I do and that maybe also why my kid has it.
Yeah. One of the reasons why they used to think it was just a childhood disorder that you grew out of was because the first batch of kids with ADHD or ADD they weren't followed into adulthood they stopped studying them after they were kids so they just didn't think about it and then also and this is really
sad if you think about this the as an adult as you grow up you get so good at masking your symptoms and blend into society totally that researchers were unaware that there was a whole group of people with a disorder that was just when unrecognized because they were good at disguising it which is a huge
part of ADHD and it turns out just being neurodiverse in general.
Yeah for sure and we'll get to masking more in a little bit but another revision in 94 and the DSM finally divided ADHD up into three types the inattentive type hyperactive impulsive type and then the combined type which is both.
Yep and that's where we are today right?
That's where we are today but you know the more we learn I feel like every 10 years that there's another change so who knows where it's gonna stop.
Yeah they're just gonna keep adding letters.
Maybe. So I say we take a break and come back and talk about how this whole thing kind of works in the brain as far as we know.
Let's do it. Chuck I can't remember if I said it already but I have ADHD myself.
What? Yeah and then Jerry does too it turns out and this is the most amazing part of this Jerry and I were diagnosed within like a week of each other and we both told you on the same day and you found out that you were the only third of stuff you should know that doesn't have ADHD.
I know and I was like oh this is great to know here 15 years into our career.
Yeah I'm surrounded.
I'm surrounded but you guys are both wonderful and understanding this stuff helps everybody understand things because as you'll see throughout this episode ADHD affects you and it affects your your parents, your loved ones, your partners, your business partners and I think the more people understand all
this stuff the more empathy we can all have for each other.
That sounded like a really wordy children's book about ADHD.
Not a kids book writer even though we have a kids book.
Exactly that still holds true.
So Chuck it's clear like you said they have a genetic component or they found a genetic component to this whole thing.
They've also found that there are definite differences in brain structure with people who have ADHD the brains are just simply physically different.
One of the things is that they're smaller in places like they have less volume maybe some parts are thinner some parts may be thicker and it's really important to point out that brain size is not relative to intelligence so if you're very smaller it doesn't mean like you aren't intelligent and maybe
here's a really good place to point out that one of the things I think is kind of overlooked about people with ADHD is they have the same thoughts and feelings and emotions that anybody else does it's just that they have trouble regulating those emotions and regulating those behaviors that the same
impulses that everybody else gets can slip through with a person with ADHD.
That damper that's like well I can't do that because it's socially unacceptable that neurotypical people have is kind of absent for the most part in people with ADHD unless they're really paying attention and trying to hold it back.
Yes, absolutely and what's you know fascinating is that they can detect some of these differences like you know with brain scans physical differences as early as age four yeah which you know it suggests at least that like this is innate like you you were probably born with this if you can be you know
four years old and detect differences in brain scans.
Another big one and this is kind of the real crux of the whole thing is if you were a person with ADHD then that means that you have a deficit of two things that really make a big difference in your life dopamine and norepinephrine two things that we've talked about quite a lot over the years but you
know we we know what dopamine does and part of the challenge of ADHD is if you're not getting a dopamine hit and this is just a sort of a big generalization but I think if you have ADHD you can probably relate if you if you're not getting that hit of a dopamine which is a you know part of the reward
center like hey you did a great job cleaning that room and making that bed and just look at it my dopamine is hitting and I feel great about that if you're not getting that or that's you know dampered in some way then you're not gonna be as interested in cleaning that room or making that bed it's it's
not that your kid doesn't care or is lazy or loves a mess is because they literally don't get that same reward or adults that same reward that someone who doesn't have that neurodiversity does and so they're not gonna be incentivized to do that thing yeah and as we talked about in the dopamine episode
it's not like dopamine gives you that that hit of feeling good it's the thing that comes along with whatever makes you feel good and says this is important learn this and remember this so that the next time you're faced with cleaning a room you can remember oh there's there's some some good feeling
at the end of this and if you don't have that yeah there's there's no reason whatsoever for you to get up and clean a room especially there's like as we'll see there's actual like brain function that's missing or impaired and people with ADHD that allows them to self -arouse and be like I should really
do this I'm gonna get up and do this yeah and fatigue is another sort of I guess co -symptom of ADHD sometimes because maybe you don't sleep as well maybe the hyperactivity is just wearing you out or your anxiety which can also come along so not only are you not getting that dopamine hit and and your
body isn't learning and your brain isn't learning like hey here's the reward that comes with making that bed if you're fatigued at the same time and let's say you're an adult and it's not just like make your bed small child if you have a huge amount of things on your plate and you're fatigued and you're
not getting that dopamine hit it can I'm sure feel like the weight of the world is coming down on you and you could go into shutdown mode yeah so one thing I saw is that there they don't think that people with ADHD produce less dopamine the current understanding is that people with ADHD have more dopamine
transporters so that dopamine gets moved out of the brain faster so you have less of it at any given point in time not that you make less of it the other one you mentioned is norepinephrine and that's usually the thing that allows you to kind of arouse yourself and it helps you also very importantly
regulate emotion regulate self -control regulate attention and so those are the neurotransmitters the big ones that definitely in some way shape or form affect ADHD we just don't fully understand it but one of the other big things that has to do with the brain is the typically the frontal lobe or the frontal
cortex contains like our higher thinking or higher behaviors and that's usually put together in something called executive function which is a suite of behaviors and cognitive abilities that essentially let us just be you know functioning people in society as far as the terms of society require yeah
like how you prioritize your tasks how you handle distractions that come your way how you control what impulses that come your way that may or may not distract you from those tasks and you know we're gonna talk about I guess like six broad executive functioning components and if you have ADHD one or all
of these are going to be dinged in some way doesn't mean you can't you have zero executive functioning by any means but it just means with these six things some of them may be worse than others because ADHD like most things sort of exists on the spectrum as far as how severe it might be for each individual
the first part of executive functioning is working memory of course that's just your you know that's your working memory it's just like thoughts at any given moment about what you're doing and what you are remembering to do right you usually think of working memories like remembering a phone number
while you're going to write it down you know but it also involves everything from like engaging in a conversation planning a vacation like anything where you're having to hold a bunch of thoughts like in the front of your mind while you're kind of working it all out that's working memory and it's really
important and it's very frequently impaired in people with ADHD another classic executive function that is essentially universal as far as ADHD symptoms go is self -restraint or inhibition control and not just physically but also emotionally and attentionally too like staying in a conversation not blurting
out something offensive about someone's hair style even though you don't mean to hurt their feelings another one to being on a diet and then just being like I'm just gonna eat a bunch of cookies too who cares a lot of all of those things have to do with inhibition control and that's just a big part
of it yeah and you can still say like geez who wears a mullet these days just say it very quietly to your friend or just think it and that's another thing too I think that's why a lot of people who don't have ADHD recognize the it because they were thinking the same thing but they know not to say it
this person says it you know I'm saying that's the that's the difference yeah if you've ever heard anybody say something like oh I got no filter that person has no filter that person may have ADHD is a good chance you know they're just irresponsible one of the two yeah that's true you can also just
be a jerk planning organizing and problem solving is another big one if you have a goal for work or life or whatever school what you usually do when you're executive and when you're an executive now when you're when you're functioning executively as you take that goal you look at it you break it down
into steps and smaller parts you do an evaluation of like what's the best way to tackle this thing and that's a big big part of problem solving if that is impaired with ADHD and you're thrown a big task or a big work for school project that you may kind of just freeze for a while and you know you know
this sounds bad but you might just sit there and think about something entirely different for a little while yeah you might go to great lengths to avoid that task and also not just procrastinating but like really genuinely having trouble focusing because you don't know what to do you don't know where to
start yeah like you can't do it it's not this a disinterest or anything like that right another one's decision making which kind of ties into that where you know you can't just say yes to everything that's not how life works so you have to take into like account future consequences and you have to figure
out do I have time to do all of these things and if not which one's more important like all that goes into decision making and that can be largely impaired too not just not like necessarily all the time but you were just kind of mentioning something called ADHD paralysis that where like things can get
so overwhelming you cannot know where to start you're you you know like your boss is coming down the hall to get this report you haven't even started on and like you just shut down you can't decide anything you can't really focus on anything that's called ADHD paralysis and that can come from having
to make decisions yeah and that's where as a parent or as a partner business partner or life partner to someone if you don't have that challenge that's when you can really step up and sit down with your kid or your friend or partner and say alright let's sit down and look at this let's talk about the steps
like maybe what a good first step might be maybe get a little help organizing something those are like to be a really active involved parent or partner is key to everyone you know doing the best they can in life yeah totally and we'll talk more about like what parents and like family members and spouses
and all that can do later on down the road but that's great it's a great thing to hit multiple times you know yeah time management is another big one that kind of ties into a little bit of the planning and organization and stuff like that but just being able to allocate your time keep track of the deadlines
it may seem counterintuitive but if you or a person with ADHD you might do much better with a deadline instead of some just amorphous task this handed to you right so like knowing the deadline may be really good for you or the deadline may just come and go sometimes as well yeah and it's not necessarily
because they're like I don't care about this deadline they may have literally forgotten about it I read a horror story Chuck about a guy with ADHD an adult whose boss came to him and said hey you know why don't you run Monday's meeting I'm not gonna be there and the guys was like I knew that this was like
a step toward like getting me ready for like the next level for a promotion into management so he was really excited about it and then over the weekend he totally forgot about it when the Monday meeting came around he sat down with everybody else waiting for the boss wondering where the boss was and they
all just left the meeting and went back to work and his boss came and asked him how the meeting went and he's like what are you talking about and it finally sunk into him like what had just happened and I think about that like he just probably totally scuttled any chance of that promotion because he
just forgot about it and that's just something that can happen with it that's a frequent reason people with ADHD missed deadlines they just forget that they have one you should have saved that for Halloween that horror story yeah where's the knocker doesn't that just turn your stomach it really does
imagining that guy for sure and then the last part of executive functioning that can be impaired is another big one it's called task shifting and it leads into a couple of things we're going to talk about that means you get out of your default mode which will expand on here in a second and doing something
called set shifting which is you know being able to switch from task to task being flexible as you're doing that maybe realizing like different tasks and different situations require different rules and if you don't have that if that's impaired you might be really rigid in how you think something has to
be done a very black -and -white thinking that can come across to others as stubborn but in the ADHD mind you just have a hard time task shifting right exactly and that's a huge classic one too like you just focus on one thing or you can't start another thing too if you put all that together in in life
people with ADHD they have trouble remembering to pay bills they forget that they have homework they say or do inappropriate things like not waiting for their turn to speak they have trouble self -motivating staying on task they misplace things they have false memories which is a really big one that we'll
talk about they they can't remember important dates or that they're supposed to run a meeting and another big one too is that they'll they'll very frequently ADHD causes you to walk into a room and you have no idea what you went in there for you knew you went in there for something that happens to me
sometimes too like but imagine every time yeah no I can't because it's it's frustrating and it can also be alarming yes that's another thing too is especially as you age with ADHD you can be like okay is this ADHD or am I developing early on set dementia like they there there's a lot of overlap and it
can be very scary but sure you also learn tricks like you just leave the room and go back out to where you just were and you're gonna see like a clue that that will prompt you to remember and then you just think about it while you're going into the room and then you remember it's usually just amounts
to an extra trip back out of the room and then back into it but it is just frustrating for sure you know they call that in the old film biz you remember a you go back to one okay yeah that's right that's right I'd saying that he would always pinch the bridge of his nose while he was saying yeah back
to one just means first position of that scene like if the scene starts and you're in the doorway go back to one you go back to that doorway so maybe that's a fun a fun way to remember that kind of thing yeah I love that way to go um let no let's not take a break yet cuz I think we should talk I mentioned
default mode default mode network is a very big part of this at least understanding of this the the brain regions collectively that function when you're just hanging out when you're hanging out on the couch you don't have anything to do in the moment I mean people with no children can identify with this maybe
I can't but the times of the day where you can just sit around and introspect and daydream and zone out a little bit that's called default mode and when you're doing that there are parts of your brain that become really active and light up during default mode and if you have if you're a neurotypical
person going between default mode because once you have to kick into action mode that default mode turns off when switching between those if you're neurotypical is you know it works as it should if you have ADHD and the problem is that default mode stays on sometimes they've like shown this in brain imaging
studies so if you're doing a task that requires focus your default mode still may be on and that's active at the same time those two things are not simpatico no and like by sometimes it's pretty much all the time like you're it just does not shut off so that amounts to there's a psychiatrist named Ned
Hollowell MD who put it as a persistent magnetic pull away from the task at hand into distraction so you're because your brain is like no no we're over here we're going to daydream because your default mode network is on you can't focus for long periods on the task at hand or if you can it's a constant
struggle to resist you're letting your mind wander you have to actively keep it focused on the thing you're doing because you're like you said the action network didn't take over in the default mode network go down you know proportionately to one another now they're just both on default network go down
the took took from yeah so we'll talk about medication and you know I guess probably in part two but aside from medication if you are trying to help turn that default mode network down or off breathing techniques are a big part of that like trying to stay in the present bring yourself back to the present
through breathing techniques and mindfulness exercises those can go a long way yeah for sure do you want to take a break and then come back and talk some more about you know ADHD yeah sure since we're here nice all right so this is a big one maybe one of the biggest sort of downsides to ADHD and don't
worry there are some upsides too because you know there are some quote ADHD superpowers here and there that we're gonna talk about so take heart but one of the biggest drawbacks is called rejection sensitive dysphoria or RSD it's a very destructive thing if you have it it's very destructive to people
around you it's the basically it's basically when any any kind of rejection or even appearance of rejection even if it's not rejection will trigger a very very intense flood of emotion that is it almost has and can feel like it's having and can have an actual physical effect that is so strong not just
a fear of rejection just a because no one likes rejection but if you have ADHD and RSD anything like that can bring a real flood of negativity around you yeah it can be actual rejection but it can also be something like constructive criticism which is important to be able to take a perceived slight
maybe a made -up slight somebody's fleeting facial expression and offhand comment your own false beliefs and then there's two ways generally that a person with RSD or we should just say ADHD will respond to that to that perceived rejection they can internalize where they'll just emotionally curl up into
a ball and just shut down or they may also lash out and they'll have a meltdown or an outburst or they'll become angry that's called externalization and so to really kind of put it in perspective imagine either one of those being the response that you get when you ask someone to not leave their dirty
dishes in the sink yeah like that's RSD that's what it's like living with RSD that's what it's like having with RSD and the big problem is the whole thing is instantaneous it's not like I'm gonna have an outbursts I'm gonna melt I'm gonna emotionally ball up it just it just you it goes from trigger
to response with nothing in between yeah and then you know the person in your life may end up even if their understanding of what's going on may end up walking on eggshells may not want to criticize or constructively or otherwise anything about that person in fear of like a meltdown or an emotional
outburst or something like that because it can you can really disrupt like a relationship so you know you've got one side where someone can't help something and you've got the other side where even if that person can't help it it's destructive to the relationship so I'm just gonna do everything I can to
avoid any sort of confrontation yeah it makes it really hard to have a connection with somebody who might just melt down at you at the slightest provocation right yeah and you said something the person can't help it the person with RSD cannot help this they're not being a jerk like they can't not do
this and one of the problems with it is that it's really fleeting it's a huge it's like a tidal wave or getting punched in the stomach that's what it feels like the overwhelming emotion like you said but that's fairly fleeting and then that gets replaced by regret and then feelings of shame every time
because you're just so ashamed you can't control yourself right so some people who have RSD will become people pleasers where they don't share their thoughts their true emotions their true opinions they don't share themselves at because what they're doing is cutting off as much risk as possible of brain rejected
and that's triggering about of RSD yeah yeah that's a vicious cycle it is it's in so initially they used to think that it was comorbid with ADHD that it was a separate thing and it's not even recognized in the DSM yet it's that that recently recognized but apparently studies have found that essentially
a hundred percent of people with ADHD also have RSD so they're just basically coming to the conclusion that it's it's a it's a terrible symptom of ADHD yeah exactly we'd mentioned some benefits and positive things hyper focus is one of them it's sometimes called a superpower of ADHD if you and I've
seen this with with all kinds of people in my life that have ADHD if it's there if it's something they're into and they're interested in and they can see around on that thing it is like I mean hyper focus doesn't even begin to describe it they can tune out everything and sometimes to to their own detriment
you know if it's like other things in their life that need attention hyper focus can distract away from those but it can also be a great thing if you are someone with ADHD you may have a real like a real skill for like zoning in on something maybe a particular kind of job might be really really good
for you right or particular tasks may be really really great for you and you can get a lot done sometimes that way yeah it's like the exact opposite of your inability to self -motivate right yeah I saw a corporate study bandied about the statistic all over the place but essentially this this one company
found that a person a neurodiverse person who is locked into something that interests them in their work will essentially do the job of two people they produce between 90 and 140 percent more work than their peers in the same say department and that their work is consistent in error free typically because they're
just totally laser focused on that thing so if you can find a job that holds your interests like that you're you're very much in luck because unfortunately one of the things that is a huge challenge for people with ADHD is finding a job when you have to find a job that doesn't hold your interest it's
it's very difficult to rouse yourself to do that even though you know like you have to do this and you should be doing it you feel terrible for not doing it it's really hard to do sometimes yeah which is why I sort of understanding yourself and your challenges is like really key when you go out into
the world and join the workforce like it's important for anyone to go into the job search thinking like all right what am I really good at and what are my challenges but I just think it's probably times a million if you have ADHD yeah yeah for sure another kind of something related to this is as you
can become laser focused on just everyday tasks that end up catching your interests somehow surprisingly and so people with ADHD if they're doing a task and they're in hyper focus it'll take them way longer to do it frequently but that's because they're doing a perfect job of it so like say vacuuming
the car you just go to vacuum the car you're like huh this caught my interest and now I'm totally focused on making this car immaculately clean in every way shape or form so of course it's gonna go from taking 15 minutes to taking an hour and a half you know but when when you're done the car looks awesome
yeah so maybe there are probably CEOs all over the place now trying to staff up certain departments yeah that's actually a thing and there are probably people that should be auto detailers and start up your own small business that way yeah well one of the things I saw I read a Del Watt or Del how do
you say that that consulting firm I don't know it doesn't matter well I read one of the reports and they were saying that you know traditionally people think like okay there's probably there's got to be a good job for a neurodiverse person like maybe programming or coding or something like that just
let them go off and be themselves by themselves yeah and they're starting to recognize like no it's like you can put somebody that's neurodiverse in any job and if they find something interesting in it they're going to excel at it it's not necessarily a specific field that applies to neurodiverse people
yeah yeah for sure and you know kind of tagging on to what we were just talking about viewing yourself is you know not having a some sort of defect or deficit and like hey this is who I am this is how I like I have no choice but to operate this way and try and work you know with within that framework
not the framework of somebody who doesn't have this who doesn't have ADHD like it's a the world and jobs a lot of times are kind of structured around I mean yeah the entire world is structured around people who aren't neurodiverse so fitting into that world can be a real challenge no matter what your
neurodiversity is so kind of working with who you are and understanding that is a real key to moving forward in life yeah and there are a lot of positives upsides to having ADHD that kind of give you talents that other people don't necessarily have like one of them is as I saw it described as you're
getting so much noise at any given time you're inevitably going to also get more data points than other people at any given time and people with ADHD have a typically an ability to connect dots that other people make connections that other people can't see that's a big one another one is like if you
are multitasking and you actually get those projects done that kind of boundless energy that's synonymous with the hyperactive part of ADHD you're going to get a ton of stuff done and if any given day way more than like a neurotypical person who you know poops out halfway through the day yeah for sure
another potential positive is you know earlier when we were talking about some of the impaired executive functions and being super just sort of black and white and rigid when you apply that to a moral code you may have a very strong moral compass whereas somebody who's a little more sees like the gray
instead of the black and white might be like well you know it's really not so bad if this kind of if you do this kind of thing whereas if you have a very strict sort of view of right and wrong and a black and white sense of that you may be like no that's just wrong Chuck there's this one time where I
tried to fight two guys who I thought were throwing rocks at a manatee and like I was I was seeing red Yumi was even like it's not a manatee stop and I didn't even hear and those guys were like it's a rock we're not throwing rocks at manatees I was like oh all right and luckily they were cool with it
but I was ready to fight two dudes for throwing rocks at a manatee like my sense of justice was just that stricken I wish I would have been there I might have we might have fought him anyway Josh just cuz I've never been in a fight right so like I don't know it'd be fun to get in a fight with you right
yeah back -to -back yeah yeah exactly two musketeers another one Chuck is if a person with ADHD gets excited it's infectious typically if they're in a place where they feel safe and comfortable like just showing their excitement and just letting it hang out you're probably going to get excited along with them
because just so it just spills over it's it can be really nice to be around for sure one more thing if you have ADHD you very typically catastrophize as far as thinking goes you're just constantly expecting the worst just because over and over and over again in your life the worst has come around because you
forgot to do something or whatever so that catastrophic thinking can actually be an asset in that you can look at something that everybody's about to do and be like well we're all gonna die if we do this that no one else saw and you can find a safer option in that way it's like it's actually a huge
benefit of having ADHD even though you have to suffer with catastrophic thinking in order for that to be an asset to you know yeah Chuck I say that we end part one here yeah just getting cooking too and then we're gonna pick up part two and we're gonna talk some more about ADHD in part two and then
while we're talking about ADHD we'll eventually finish part two and then that will complete part one and two of ADHD what do you think about that for a plan I think that sounds great and as is custom here we don't do a listener mail or anything for these two parters so I guess we'll just say see you
Thursday yeah and finish on that dramatic pause like the very special episode of different strokes stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
