0:03

Hey,

0:07

everyone. Welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest

0:09

Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, thanks

0:11

for joining us today. And if you've listened before,

0:14

welcome back. I'm joined today, as

0:16

usual, by Dr. Rick Hanson. Rick is a clinical

0:18

psychologist, a bestselling author, and

0:21

hey, he's also my dad. So, Dad, how are you doing

0:23

today? I'm really good.

0:26

And one thing that makes it really good is this

0:28

opportunity to talk with Dr. John Rady,

0:30

who's a world-class expert on ADHD, and

0:34

remarkably a world-class expert

0:36

on several

0:37

other things as well. So this should be a

0:39

really good conversation. Yeah, I've been

0:41

looking forward to this one a lot. We've somehow made

0:43

it this far in the history of the podcast without having

0:46

a formal ADHD episode,

0:48

a true oversight on our part, but

0:50

we've been waiting to talk about it with somebody like John. So

0:52

Dr. John Rady is an associate clinical

0:55

professor of psychiatry at Harvard

0:57

Medical School an internationally recognized

1:00

expert in neuropsychiatry, and the

1:02

author of 11 books, including Spark

1:04

and the Driven to Distraction series with Dr.

1:07

Ned Halliwell. When Driven to Distraction

1:09

first came out in 1992, it really

1:12

truly revolutionized popular understanding

1:14

of ADHD, and John and Ned recently

1:16

released their newest book in the series ADHD 2.0,

1:20

which if you're watching the video is right behind

1:22

me right now. And it's probably worth mentioning

1:24

here that Dr. Ady and Dr. Halliwell

1:26

are speaking from their own experience because

1:28

they themselves have ADHD.

1:31

So John, thanks for joining us today. How are you doing?

1:34

Oh, I'm doing fine. I'm here in Hawaii

1:36

and loving the weather and want

1:38

to share with everybody but can't

1:40

do that. Yeah,

1:43

I'm excited about seeing Rick again.

1:45

It's been too long.

1:47

Glad to be back with you and your

1:49

podcast sounds great and your son is wonderful.

1:53

Oh, thank you, John. That

1:56

was like the most earnest introduction

1:58

we've like ever gotten and other.

2:00

show. That's fantastic. We

2:02

have come a very long way in

2:05

the popular understanding of ADHD since

2:07

Driven to Distraction came out roughly 30-ish

2:09

years ago. What do you think

2:12

remains some of the biggest misunderstandings

2:14

or misconceptions that people have about

2:16

ADHD? I mean, there

2:18

are misconceptions everywhere amongst

2:20

the populace, amongst patients, and

2:23

amongst psychiatrists and other

2:25

doctors. Some doctors still

2:27

say they

2:28

don't believe in ADHD, which

2:31

freaks us out. Don't believe in

2:33

ADHD. Even when we wrote

2:36

Driven to Distractions, it was the most research

2:39

disorder in all of medicine

2:42

and certainly in psychiatry and certainly

2:44

in job psychiatry. But people still

2:47

don't believe it because everybody has

2:49

a bit of it, right? Everybody doesn't

2:51

have enough attention and they

2:53

can relate to it and they just say buck up,

2:56

you know, get with it. And I think that's

2:59

still a really

3:01

big issue with ADHD

3:03

because there's so many people that can be helped

3:06

just by being aware that this is

3:08

their quirky kind of brain that

3:11

has many benefits and many problems.

3:13

Not even problems, but difficulties and sometimes

3:16

problems. But the benefits are great.

3:19

And so people need

3:21

to know that it is real and

3:24

can be helped quite significantly

3:27

just by understanding and beginning to

3:30

make up their own plan

3:32

for their way their brain works.

3:35

So you mentioned a second ago the word benefits

3:38

and that gets to something that I

3:40

really appreciated about your approach because

3:42

to be disclosing and it's something that she's talked about

3:45

publicly. My partner, Elizabeth, has ADHD.

3:48

She was diagnosed with it semi-recently, relatively

3:50

late in life.

3:51

And when you first

3:54

start

3:55

encountering it as a diagnosis,

3:58

there's a set of symptomology that people.

4:00

commonly attribute to it,

4:02

that for starters can sound pretty dire and

4:04

can sound pretty negative. It could sound like

4:07

you're kind of messed up in the head and

4:09

hey, this is just something that you're going to have to deal with

4:11

for the rest of your life. But

4:13

what I really appreciate about your work is that you

4:15

guys take a really strengths oriented

4:17

approach in the book and you're very clear

4:20

about these benefits that can be associated

4:22

with ADHD, even framing it from time to time

4:24

is like an evolutionary advantage in

4:26

certain kinds of situations. And I was hoping

4:28

you could take a moment to kind of explain that to people because

4:31

it was just really helpful for me personally.

4:33

It really can be and it is an advantage.

4:35

Many of our, I mean our computer

4:38

for instance, which we're talking on, right, is

4:41

made by a lot of ADHD people.

4:43

Our offices were

4:46

right next to MIT and

4:48

Cambridge and this was during

4:51

the time of the evolution of

4:53

the computer and we had a lot

4:56

of people

4:58

from MIT, both students

5:00

and professors, who

5:02

sought our services and the MIT

5:06

medical faculty had us come over there

5:08

to talk to them, to educate them about

5:11

ADHD. And this

5:13

is in the 80s, right, and beginning

5:15

the 90s. And we were just

5:18

sort of recognizing that you

5:21

didn't have to be a child to have ADHD.

5:24

Super bright people like we saw

5:26

at MIT and at Harvard, they

5:28

could compensate for it. So it

5:31

never was MISTO who was seen as they were quirky

5:34

or four plus brilliant and no one could

5:36

understand them. They had problems,

5:40

you know, even with IQs of plus 160

5:44

with getting things done, with getting

5:46

distracted, with getting too angry,

5:49

with getting too overwhelmed,

5:52

with ruminating too much for all the problems

5:55

that we also see with ADHD.

5:58

So I got a copy of your book. was

6:00

a newly minted licensed psychologist,

6:02

I think when your book came out. It was

6:05

kind of my Bible in a lot of ways. And I

6:07

wanna share with you an understanding of

6:09

this territory and to check it with you,

6:11

okay? So

6:13

I think of normal neurological

6:16

temperamental variation,

6:18

constitutional variation of temperaments. And

6:20

so if we think of three dimensions, impulsivity,

6:24

distractibility, and stimulation seeking,

6:27

We can think of people on a range

6:30

of those dimensions. And

6:33

we can think of people who then cluster

6:35

high on distractibility,

6:37

and

6:38

then, as you well know, there's kind of a related

6:40

cluster high on impulsivity and stimulation

6:43

seeking, and then a cluster of all three,

6:45

high on distractibility, high on impulsivity,

6:48

and high on stimulation seeking. They're

6:50

just at that end of the normal temperamental range.

6:53

So for me, that's how I've thought about it. And

6:55

it's not good or bad. It's

6:57

a matter of functionality and fit.

7:00

And I've reflected that through evolution,

7:04

which are human and hominid ancestors,

7:06

lived in small hunter-gatherer bands,

7:09

it was actually adaptive to have temperamental

7:11

diversity in the bands.

7:13

And the problem today is

7:16

one of fit, that to be someone

7:18

who in a hunter-gatherer environment or 100

7:21

years ago, maybe in a more rural setting,

7:24

was just wonderful, creative,

7:26

kind of impulsive, looking

7:29

for the new thing, active.

7:31

That was wonderful, but it's tough to be

7:33

that 10-year-old or six-year-old kid

7:36

in a standard conventional classroom or 30

7:39

years later in a corporate cubicle.

7:41

So it's not so much a div for

7:43

a disorder that's located

7:45

within an individual. It's more like

7:48

a pragmatic problem of fit. and

7:50

then a question of skillful means in terms of

7:52

helping people with all that. And so anyway,

7:54

that's been kind of a framing for me. That's

7:57

been de-pathologizing. It may be

7:59

skillful me

8:00

to take medication, okay, and

8:02

maybe skillful means to teach

8:04

a person, you know, forms of self-regulation,

8:08

executive functions, things like that.

8:10

It's not because there's something internally wrong

8:13

with the person or pathologizing

8:16

about it. So for me, anyway, this frame has been really

8:18

helpful. And I wonder what you thought about it.

8:20

That's a good way to think of it. It's

8:23

very close to the way we think of it. But

8:25

you're still right. As an undergather, ADD

8:28

was

8:29

very useful because of the

8:31

high energy, because of the exploring

8:34

need, wish, drivenness

8:37

to do it, to try something new. Let's

8:39

go see what's happening. Let's

8:41

be the first. Let's push the envelope.

8:44

And this is why so many of our innovators

8:47

have this trait.

8:50

The reason why we have the computer now,

8:53

so much of it was done by dyslexics,

8:55

ADHD people and autistic

8:59

folks.

9:00

And it's all about innovation. Innovation.

9:03

Looking for something new, sticking

9:05

with it, having a good idea, and

9:08

hopefully having enough support to follow it

9:10

up. Yeah. And so you're speaking

9:12

here to a couple of things that people

9:14

might not think of

9:16

as in the image that they have

9:18

in their head of what ADHD looks

9:21

like. You're talking about innovation. You mentioned earlier,

9:23

I think moodiness or something

9:25

similar, rumination, like a rheumatoid cycle

9:27

that somebody can get trapped in. So

9:30

you give a phenomenal list in ADHD 2.0

9:33

of a variety of, I don't

9:36

even really want to call them symptoms, but presentations

9:39

that ADHD can take that

9:41

people might be a bit less familiar with. And I was wondering

9:43

if you could share a couple more of them, because I

9:45

just thought that they were really interesting

9:48

how people think of it as an

9:50

intentional trait, but really we're talking

9:52

about a whole brain difference of one kind

9:54

or another. And so that can seep

9:57

into a lot of different areas of life.

10:00

Well, you know, let's look what it's confused

10:02

with often. It's confused

10:04

with depression. It's confused with

10:06

anxiety.

10:07

It's confused with manic depression, the

10:10

bipolar, the swings of mood

10:13

and all. And the swings down into feeling

10:16

bad and feeling bad about themselves,

10:18

feeling like they're failures when they're certainly

10:20

not. One of the issues

10:22

that we really focused on in ADHD 2.0

10:25

is rumination. people can get

10:28

trapped in these thoughts and

10:30

sometimes it's a good idea. You

10:32

know, it leads to them completing

10:35

new

10:36

areas, but it can also

10:38

catch you into repeat again

10:41

and again of some bad news that you're

10:43

trying to deal with.

10:45

And also they can be seen

10:48

as being insensitive because

10:50

they're so moving so inside their brain

10:53

from one thing to another so they

10:55

forget to do things that are commonly

10:58

expected

10:59

like being polite. And it's

11:01

not for want of thinking they're

11:03

better than anybody else, but it just say

11:06

they're moving on to the next issue,

11:09

the next feeling, the next and the next idea.

11:11

Yeah,

11:12

so this list in the book I just think is

11:14

really fantastic. So I'm going to name a couple of things

11:17

on it, because they're all the things that you would expect unexplained

11:19

underachievement, wandering mind,

11:22

trouble organizing and planning, trouble with

11:24

time management, sort of the typical things

11:27

that people say, okay, that's an image that I have

11:29

of somebody with ADHD. But then you

11:31

have all of these other things that are really beautiful,

11:33

like a high degree of creativity and imagination,

11:36

generosity, a unique and active

11:39

sense of humor. And then you have some other

11:41

things that are kind of a mixed bag, an

11:43

exquisite sensitivity to criticism

11:46

or rejection, this rejection sensitivity

11:48

that you talk about in book. Honesty

11:50

to a fault, high energy, even

11:53

things like a susceptibility to addiction, people

11:55

with ADHD are somewhere between 5

11:57

and 10 times more likely to develop various

12:00

addictions in the course of their life than people without.

12:02

But I just thought that it was such an interesting list.

12:05

Yeah, there's a wide variety of

12:07

things that could go wrong or could be

12:09

seen as a problem or as

12:12

a benefit.

12:13

I was really struck by something in ADHD 2.0

12:15

because partly I'm a brain

12:18

geek. And so you were talking about

12:20

these two systems in the brain, the task

12:23

positive network and the default mode network

12:26

and he

12:27

talked about issues that can

12:29

occur for people. I

12:32

got to tell you as a quick sidebar, I

12:34

reflexively resist that last

12:36

D because I don't think

12:38

that it's inherently a disorder. I

12:40

think it's an issue of fit

12:42

and so forth, so I resist that and

12:44

I prefer actually more the spirited

12:47

end of the spectrum. Because statistically,

12:50

if someone is in the top 1 percent or 3 percent,

12:53

let's say of impulsivity, distractibility,

12:56

and stimulation seeking, you know, they're at

12:58

a certain point in the normal temperamental range,

13:01

but it's not that there's something wrong with them. So I'm just

13:03

going to really... What was your

13:05

preferred title for it, John? It was variable

13:07

attention stimulus trait. Was it that?

13:10

Right.

13:11

Vast. Yeah, Rick, that's our preference in

13:14

our book about the fact that... That's sweet.

13:16

I love that. It's not a good name and it's not

13:18

a good way to pathologize it,

13:21

that it is just what you're saying that

13:23

it is a trade and a trade gone wild

13:26

is a way to think of it as a disorder. Too

13:28

much of it can get people into trouble

13:31

and begins to interfere with their

13:33

living and interfere with them doing

13:35

well.

13:36

Pragmatically, I fully recognize the

13:38

issues of fit. But where

13:41

we locate the problem and also

13:43

the language of frankly medicine that's

13:45

inherently oriented around disease

13:47

and dysfunction

13:49

and treating it tends to pathologize

13:51

the individual's so I'm going to wave

13:53

the banner that I think you'll support. But

13:57

back to the brain.

13:58

Can you just unpack for.

14:00

for a general audience, the task

14:02

positive network, the default mode network,

14:04

and the particular ways that

14:07

people who are kind of high on the, I'll

14:09

say, spirited end of the temperamental

14:11

spectrum, how their brains operate.

14:14

Yeah, no, there are lots of

14:16

different networks in the brain, and it's a new way

14:18

of really thinking about the brain,

14:20

unbacking the brain in general.

14:22

The biggest one, the one we know

14:24

that started whole issue

14:27

back in 2006 was

14:29

something called the default mode network and

14:32

basically it shows on the fMRI

14:35

scan, fancy fancy scan,

14:37

when they put people in the fMRI

14:40

they say just let your

14:42

mind wander and that becomes

14:44

the signature, right? Well they

14:46

noticed that these signatures were very

14:50

similar and exactly the same in some

14:52

people,

14:53

one to another that one part

14:55

of the brain, the back part of the brain,

14:57

and the front part of the brain were

15:00

all alive. And this became

15:03

known as a default mode. When you're

15:05

not thinking about anything, when

15:07

you're not focused on anything, this area

15:10

of the brain lights up.

15:12

Now, in that default

15:14

mode, you have your history

15:16

of what you've done, what you care about, what's

15:18

important to you. And

15:20

in the front part,

15:22

that's in the back part of your brain, in the front

15:24

part of of your brain is where you make plans.

15:27

So I'm going to do this. I'm intending to do

15:29

that. And throughout,

15:31

though, there's a constant chatter.

15:34

It's always talking.

15:36

It's always commenting. It's

15:38

always driving you to something. Then

15:41

there is another key network for

15:43

ADD, the Task Positive Network, which

15:46

is where our attention lies.

15:49

And this is involved with really

15:52

the front part of the brain where we

15:54

talk about we're having our

15:56

executive functions. and for

15:59

a while they're a ADHD, or ADD

16:01

was called executive function disorder,

16:04

which I never knew how they were separate

16:07

because it's so much blended on one

16:09

another. But anyway, we're into

16:11

making up new diagnoses

16:14

all the time. It's a vast opportunity

16:17

for you. Oh yeah, yes. Good

16:21

one. Yeah, well, what we know about

16:23

the brain is that when you get

16:26

into this test positive network.

16:29

Your default mode network simmers down,

16:32

shuts up, the energy seems to go

16:34

to your attention in

16:38

the neurotypical case.

16:40

With ADD, that's a very

16:43

different finding. The

16:45

energy doesn't go away from the

16:47

default mode most of the time. And

16:50

so it's constantly pulling the

16:53

information from the frontal cortex

16:56

back into the default mode. So

16:59

it pulls it away from the attention.

17:02

Yeah. And that struggle

17:04

is really what I find so

17:06

illuminating by this

17:08

group of metaphors in terms of our

17:10

understanding of the brain and how this might impact

17:13

our understanding of ADHD. It's

17:16

been very helpful to use that metaphor

17:19

group to explain to

17:21

patients. They look at that and they And

17:23

they say, oh my God, that's exactly what happens.

17:26

That I'm thinking about something and I'm being

17:28

pulled back to some irrelevant

17:31

stuff or some very relevant stuff, or

17:34

oh, I forgot to turn the stove off, or

17:36

oh, I'm a bad person because I didn't excel

17:39

in this course or that course, or whatever it is.

17:42

And so that's why you get people

17:44

who can't stay attentive. Just

17:47

so you know, I laughingly think

17:49

of the default mode network as the

17:52

simulator, or the

17:54

ruminator, right?

17:56

One thing you may know, interestingly, is that when

17:58

people engage in and tiroception,

18:00

the tuned-in to, let's say, the

18:02

internal sensations of breathing, that

18:05

engages the insula, which acts a little bit

18:07

like a circuit breaker and reduces activity

18:09

in the default mode network.

18:11

And maybe later on, we'll talk more

18:13

about practical things, including getting

18:15

in touch with the body through exercise and so forth.

18:18

Yeah, that was super helpful, John, thank you. Yeah,

18:20

no, the sort of the three ways to shut

18:23

up the default mode, and that's the way I

18:25

think of it. Just shut up, leave

18:27

me alone. I want to think about this.

18:30

Don't worry about that later. You know?

18:33

Let me go. Quit

18:36

sucking me back in. Right, exactly.

18:39

It is like a magnet.

18:41

Anyway, it's three ways, just

18:43

in general and practical. Meditation,

18:46

where your intraceptive stuff comes

18:48

in. Exercise or movement,

18:51

which is a big way to shut the whole

18:54

default mode up. And medication.

18:57

Those are tried and true ways

19:00

of allowing your attention to

19:02

function better, and that's all

19:04

it is. And remain in the present,

19:06

because in effect, you're saying as soon as we get pulled

19:09

into the ruminator, the default

19:11

mode, we're no longer in present moment

19:13

awareness.

19:14

Yeah, now the default mode is a great tool,

19:18

right? It's a center for innovation and creativity.

19:21

But

19:22

when we started looking at the default mode,

19:24

did and trying to understand

19:26

it, they got a group

19:28

of people who were really sort

19:31

of far to the success

19:34

of meditators. They were among

19:36

the best meditators.

19:38

And their default modes when they looked

19:40

at their fMRI was almost absent.

19:43

And it's because they were so trained

19:46

in meditation where they were

19:48

just focusing on the present

19:51

being and not being

19:54

bothered not being pulled away by internal

19:57

BS.

20:00

like there are these two different common symptoms

20:02

that can be associated with ADHD. One of them

20:05

is the suction from the default

20:07

mode, you know, being pulled back into the ruminator

20:09

as you were kind of calling it. And then sometimes

20:11

people can fall into the opposite situation.

20:14

I've certainly seen Elizabeth do this from time to time, where

20:16

it's the task positive network that gets

20:19

hyper over activated and you fall into

20:21

the hyper focus trapdoor. So

20:24

you've got this intense over activation

20:27

of each network kind of independent

20:29

of the other, if that sort of makes sense, that

20:31

people with ADHD can get

20:34

pulled into while more neurotypical brains are

20:36

a little bit more adept. And please correct me if

20:38

I'm wrong here, John, at switching back and forth

20:40

between these modes or them using

20:42

them as checks on each other. Is that more or less

20:44

accurate?

20:45

Well, it's more or less accurate. But you know, and it

20:48

always gets confusing when you talk about

20:50

rumination because that's where

20:52

a person stuck but it's

20:54

driven by feelings, okay, but

20:57

which is it's a feeling state

20:59

rather than just a focused state.

21:02

The beauty of ADHD is

21:05

you get an idea and if you can really hyper

21:08

focus on it, if you can remain on it,

21:10

then you can bring it to completion.

21:13

That's why you see ADHD people

21:15

saying leave me alone, I'm thinking about this,

21:18

don't bother me, I want to get this

21:20

down.

21:22

So talking about the role of the feelings that you

21:24

were mentioning a second ago, one of the things that really

21:26

stuck out to me about the book was how much you

21:28

and Ned focused on the importance of social

21:31

connection.

21:32

Oh, God. Warm support from other people,

21:34

feeling in relationship, all of

21:37

that. That just really stood out to me.

21:39

It is the most important part

21:41

of life

21:43

for any of the psychiatric problems,

21:45

any triple along the wellness

21:47

pathway. The best part

21:50

of it is what we call vitamin C, which

21:53

is connection. How important

21:55

that is for health,

21:58

physical health and mental health. You

22:00

know, there's nothing stronger than being

22:03

connected to another person

22:05

or another group or the family

22:07

or the extended family or something

22:11

larger than oneself.

22:13

I was ruminating over here about

22:18

About the particular benefits

22:20

for people at the high-spirited let's say end

22:22

of this

22:23

temperamental range of

22:25

of social contact. And I was thinking

22:28

about polyvagal theory and

22:30

the vagus nerve complex and the ways in

22:32

which the social engagement system, when

22:35

that's really active,

22:37

then is helpful in terms of the earliest

22:39

branch of the vagus nerve complex in terms

22:41

of regulating the viscera and calming

22:44

and centering

22:45

and with greater tone,

22:47

parasympathetic tone, activation of the parasympathetic

22:50

branch of the nervous system. So I began wondering

22:53

about, Huh, in your view

22:55

or understanding, could there be

22:57

particular benefits

22:59

for people at the high-spirited end of the spectrum

23:02

of heartfelt experiences in

23:04

the ways that those are regulatory and

23:06

centering and calming

23:08

and drawing people into the present and thus

23:11

moderating some of the excesses

23:13

of kind of being out there at the end of that

23:15

temperamental range?

23:17

Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly.

23:19

You go both ways. you go

23:21

from upside down, downside

23:24

up. In other words, if you come to Viscera

23:26

Dan, you're gonna be more

23:28

in a nice state of equilibrium, and

23:31

it goes both ways. So

23:33

yeah, no, there's certainly, certainly,

23:36

and that's one of the benefits of

23:38

meditation, of exercise,

23:40

of medication. You know, they all can

23:42

help

23:43

still the body, and

23:46

that's what I've spent a good

23:48

part of my life writing about and thinking about

23:50

is how our body plays such a big

23:53

role in consciousness,

23:55

our feelings and our thinking

23:58

with exercise and with connection. There's

24:01

a feeling of, you know, it's okay,

24:03

your body's okay, you're feeling

24:06

less jazzed. Less threatened.

24:09

There's a soothing aspect, yeah. Yeah,

24:11

and that then leads to an improvement

24:14

in our attention. That partly

24:17

drove me to my time

24:19

spent worrying about, thinking about, writing

24:21

about exercise. In

24:23

all of our books, in our form of 80D

24:26

exercise is always near

24:29

the top of things that we can do

24:31

to make our bodies and

24:34

our brains work better.

24:37

You know, obvious point here, if you have a brain that

24:40

works a bit differently than 90% of the population,

24:43

it's going to be really easy to feel like an outsider.

24:46

And one of the things about ADHD is that

24:48

it's

24:48

socially punished in a lot of

24:51

different ways, in ways that some

24:53

other points of difference are

24:55

not necessarily socially punished. It

24:57

tends to be quite obvious. It tends

24:59

to get pointed out in a classroom environment. It

25:02

tends to get punished, sometimes corporately punished

25:04

by parents. And it can be very hard

25:06

to live with in that way. And because of that, it's very

25:09

easy, like I said a second ago, to just feel

25:11

like an outsider

25:12

and to feel like you're taking

25:14

essentially a lot of abuse for just a function

25:16

of the way that you are.

25:18

We talk about the podcast pretty regularly

25:20

about different kinds of

25:22

restorative or reparative emotional experiences

25:25

and how that can be particularly important for

25:27

people who have a deficit

25:29

of that or who are maybe

25:31

taking on more painful emotional experiences

25:34

than other people are.

25:36

That's maybe another part of the

25:38

why is connection so important for people

25:41

who have ADHD puzzle?

25:43

Oh yeah, no, absolutely. And that's

25:45

the legacy of so many

25:47

of our ADHD adults is having

25:50

that kind of being the oddball

25:52

and the feeling that they're happy

25:54

normal, that things are different for them

25:56

than the rest of the world. they

25:59

then

26:00

think that something wrong. And usually,

26:02

like you're saying in the classroom and even

26:05

with parents and certainly in other

26:07

areas that they're judged as being wrong,

26:10

as bad, as defective.

26:13

That's why it's so important to rehabilitate

26:16

the ADHD from the disorder

26:19

bin and look at it as an

26:21

extreme of a trait that it becomes

26:23

a disorder when it disorders or disrupts

26:25

your life. And that's all that

26:28

it is.

26:29

You know, I spend a lot of time in schools, John, mainly

26:31

elementary schools, some high schools, secondary

26:34

schools, and routinely, as sort

26:36

of the functioning school psychologist,

26:38

the primary referral source would

26:40

be this bright, third grader

26:42

who couldn't sit still, et cetera.

26:45

And when I think about that child,

26:48

or the variation, which was more common

26:50

in girls, as you know, who was

26:52

not stimulation seeking and

26:55

impulsive, but was dreamy

26:57

and inattentive, with

26:58

this wonderfully rich inner world

27:01

in the simulator, in that

27:04

default mode world. In

27:06

either case, what I would observe

27:08

in the classroom and I would hear in their home

27:10

life is that they were getting dinged 20 times

27:13

a day.

27:14

They were disappointing, they didn't get something

27:16

done, they were annoying, they were unruly,

27:20

they were being corrected, they were being brought

27:22

back,

27:23

20 times a day at least, They were having some

27:25

kind of painful, usually mild, but

27:28

it just, the quantity was extraordinary.

27:30

And that gradually leaves emotional residues

27:33

inside

27:34

people, as you well know, by the time

27:36

they land in adulthood.

27:38

One of the takeaways for me was about being extraordinarily

27:41

thoughtful about that,

27:42

if your child is in this more spirited

27:45

or inattentive range of things,

27:48

and balancing, particularly given the brain's

27:50

negativity bias, go after that

27:52

three to one, five to one, 10 to one ratio

27:55

of positive to negative interactions

27:57

from the perspective of that child.

28:00

really important. So now as adults though,

28:02

there's this backlog, there's this residue

28:04

inside and

28:05

as you know myself, I'm very interested

28:08

in deliberate internalization of

28:10

beneficial experiences and engaging

28:13

evidence-based neurological factors to

28:15

heighten internalization, social-emotional

28:18

learning, including to heal

28:20

that backlog of wear

28:22

and tear on your sense of who you are and accumulation

28:25

of emotionally negative experiences which

28:27

can wear down mood

28:28

over time. The problem though is

28:31

for someone to actually internalize a beneficial

28:33

experience, they need to typically stay with it

28:35

for at least a handful of seconds in a row, unlike

28:38

negative experiences that go right in, and

28:41

it becomes a difficulty. How do you help people stay

28:43

with that beneficial experience of accomplishment

28:46

or inclusion or being valued or being

28:48

cool, et cetera, when their

28:50

mind is skittering onto the next thing,

28:52

particularly if they happen to also be very bright

28:55

and giftedness, then masquerades, as

28:57

you said earlier, as an issue of attention when

28:59

in fact they got it already, they're onto the next one.

29:02

And so for me, it's actually been really important for people

29:05

who are more on this end of the spirited

29:07

range

29:08

to help themselves really slow it

29:10

down for a breath or two or longer, feeling

29:13

it in their body and taking it in when

29:15

they do have opportunities to have

29:17

experiences today that are reparative

29:20

and antidoteing and compensatory

29:23

for the painful experiences they've had previously.

29:26

Right, right. The connection allows

29:29

that to maybe allows

29:31

that in past the filters,

29:34

past the noise, past

29:36

the chatterbox, you know, oh yeah,

29:38

so oh I was loved or

29:41

oh I'm okay, oh I

29:43

really did this for that person. I

29:45

really was was good. You know

29:48

recently a patient tells

29:50

me of his parents who didn't

29:53

understand him at all.

29:54

But you know, he was super bright and

29:57

but he got criticized for not studying

29:59

but you getting A plus S. You

30:02

know, it was like that was a point

30:04

of criticism from a parent

30:06

saying this is unnatural

30:10

and that happens early enough.

30:12

This is now first grade this was happening

30:14

to him, right? So you

30:16

get these early areas

30:19

of oh I'm defective,

30:21

I'm not good, I'm not normal

30:24

in there and those, you know, reverberate

30:27

around

30:28

and that becomes part of your

30:30

default mode and part of the shutter box

30:33

that's always there operating.

30:36

A huge part of your work,

30:38

John, has been focused on, like you were saying

30:40

earlier, exercise and movement

30:42

as a tool for people, just for

30:44

all kinds of different brains, maybe particularly

30:47

for people who have ADHD, but it's applicable

30:49

broadly, of course. The earliest

30:52

known medical textbook that we have comes from a Hippocrates

30:54

and he was writing about exercise as a treatment

30:57

for depression back in whatever it was, 380 or 300 BC, I

31:00

probably got my numbers wrong, but whatever it was.

31:03

And so I wanted to ask you, why is exercise

31:06

particularly useful maybe for dealing with some of

31:08

the problems that arise with ADHD and

31:10

then we can kind of talk about exercise more

31:12

in general? We handed our

31:14

book in and our editor wisely

31:16

said, oh, you have to cut at least two-thirds of

31:19

it. Wow. So we did. But

31:21

what survived are two

31:23

of the nine chapters are on exercise.

31:26

So they survived because they're

31:29

so potent

31:30

as an intervention,

31:32

as something to do to help

31:34

repair the process. Just

31:37

general exercise and then working on

31:39

balance and rhythm and coordination

31:43

in the cerebellum. Very

31:45

important areas that are just blossoming

31:48

today. You know, I see

31:50

maybe a month ago another study

31:53

out of

31:54

Australia, big study looking

31:56

at girls

31:57

who exercise versus those who.

32:00

and looking at their attention.

32:02

And by far, those who exercise

32:05

a lot got better attention

32:07

scores than those who didn't. But we're

32:09

seeing this again and again and again. It's not

32:11

like that's new news, but it's

32:14

regurgitated into the present.

32:16

This is what we see when we've

32:18

gone into schools and shifted

32:21

around the priorities and maybe

32:23

even the timing of recess

32:26

and exercise the first

32:29

thing that you get when we went

32:31

into so many of these schools and had

32:34

them shift where they spent 30 minutes

32:36

in the morning exercising, what

32:38

happens? It almost immediately

32:41

drops disciplinary problems.

32:44

Disciplinary problems. Why?

32:47

Because not because the

32:49

kids are tired, they're tired

32:51

out. No, their brains are more switched

32:54

on, their brains are activated

32:57

and And when their brains are activated, they

32:59

want to be in the moment more.

33:02

They want to be present more.

33:05

And the second thing that happens is that they do

33:07

better in schoolwork and all that,

33:09

you know, and this is what seen

33:11

again and again and again.

33:14

So much of our brain is, when

33:16

you look at it, is involved with

33:18

movement. So when you're,

33:21

and especially what

33:23

we think of as a frontal cortex, prefrontal

33:25

cortex, the thinking part of the brain,

33:28

the moving brain is

33:30

the thinking brain.

33:32

And this is what we see.

33:34

So that when you're moving, you're

33:37

activating your brain and those parts of the

33:39

brain that are really activated when you're

33:41

moving are the parts that

33:43

are involved with thinking, with memory,

33:45

with learning,

33:47

with succeeding in life.

33:49

Are there particular kinds of

33:52

exercise that are particularly good for people

33:54

with ADHD? Or is it just

33:56

pick whatever works for you, Something's better than

33:58

nothing. Oh, something's always

34:01

better than nothing, but every individual

34:03

is so different. I mean, it

34:06

is about moving because

34:08

your muscles inactivate your brain to move

34:11

all the way from jump rope to swimming,

34:14

to running, to biking, to dance,

34:17

which

34:18

we talk about dance as being probably

34:20

the best exercise

34:22

you can do because

34:24

it demands so much of your

34:26

brain. Dance does.

34:29

Because you have to focus your movements,

34:32

you have to pay attention to the music,

34:35

you have to move correctly and

34:39

in space with someone

34:41

usually or with the group, you know,

34:43

unless you're doing boomer dancing,

34:45

you know, where you just play around.

34:50

We love a good wedding dance here, John. We're

34:52

not gonna look down at a good wedding dance, you

34:54

know, you're in the corner, you're doing your thing, I think it's

34:57

all okay. So I don't think that you actually know

34:59

this, John. So this is gonna be so fun. But

35:01

my hobby background is actually in dancing.

35:04

I have a serious hobby. I

35:06

do a style of dance called West Coast Swing. Before

35:08

then I did various styles of ballroom and I

35:10

actually met my partner Elizabeth through

35:12

dancing. And I'm gonna paint you

35:15

a kind of case study picture here and you

35:17

can let me know what you think about it.

35:18

Elizabeth for most of her life has

35:20

been involved in various kinds of dance. She

35:22

started doing hula when she

35:25

was, think like six, seven years

35:27

old. And then she transitioned

35:29

into other forms of dance as she aged,

35:32

including doing Argentine tango

35:34

and a variety of different styles of

35:36

dance that came

35:38

along a little bit later for her. And then

35:40

we met basically through West Coast Swing, which

35:42

is the dance that we do now. And

35:44

then the pandemic hit,

35:46

all of the dancing shut down,

35:48

because understandably, you know, you can't be in close

35:50

contact with people. And all of

35:52

a sudden, Elizabeth is starting to

35:55

feel these different symptoms pop up in different

35:57

kinds of ways. So maybe I'm

35:59

having a hard

36:00

time focusing and it's really tough for

36:02

me to be kind of like in this closed in space for

36:04

a long period of time. This eventually leads

36:06

to us getting a formal diagnosis for ADHD. And

36:08

one of

36:10

the kind of pet theories that we've had

36:12

is that all of the movement that she was doing

36:14

was essentially treating a lot

36:16

of the underlying symptomology. And so

36:19

when that got taken away, all of

36:21

a sudden the symptoms showed up in

36:23

a more thorough way. Now, she's for

36:25

her entire life had some ADHD

36:27

symptoms and looking at the list

36:29

in your book and other formal lists of

36:31

symptoms, she's been very able to look at that and go,

36:33

oh yeah, that's always been me, but

36:36

this was how I essentially medicated myself.

36:38

So I just want to kind of affirm your take

36:40

your job by giving our own case

36:42

study on the podcast.

36:44

It's amazing. I'm going over

36:47

to Korea, South Korea for 12 days. A

36:51

large part of it is about using movement

36:53

in schools in Korea

36:56

and meeting with the K-pop dancers.

36:59

Hmm, very cool. Which

37:01

is a really very active

37:03

dance.

37:04

It's really clear that if you're moving,

37:07

your brain is so much more active

37:10

and so much better. That was my first

37:12

index case, by the way. I'll quickly

37:14

try to describe it. When I

37:16

was a second year out of residency

37:20

in 1982, I was talking

37:22

about ADHD and ADD

37:24

at that point and at a cocktail

37:27

party and I was saying, you know, I think a lot of

37:29

adults have it. And I was talking

37:31

about it because I had seen some patients

37:34

have been taken off their medicine, et cetera.

37:36

And this guy said, can I come see you? And

37:39

I said, of course. He

37:41

was a very famous professor at

37:43

Harvard and MIT and

37:46

a MacArthur fellow. So I

37:48

had good credentials. He came in and

37:50

he said, look, I grew up being

37:52

a marathoner. I'm a marathoner

37:54

all my life, but I

37:56

hurt my knee and I haven't.

38:00

been running for months

38:02

and months and months. And I have all the

38:04

symptoms of what you talk about

38:06

of ADHD. Can I come

38:08

and see you? And so he did. Little

38:11

medicine, then his rehabbing occurred.

38:14

He got better and better and better. And I

38:17

saw him continue to see him for

38:19

a number of years.

38:21

And he was absolutely fine when

38:23

he got back to running.

38:25

He did it seven miles a day and

38:28

didn't need to medicine anymore just as

38:30

your partner has the same

38:32

story. Yeah. But that led me on

38:35

my chase for

38:37

exercise and for

38:39

ADHD.

38:41

And if somebody's listening to this and going,

38:43

well, seven miles sounds like an awful lot

38:45

for me, your partner Elizabeth, semi-professional

38:48

dancer, professional dancer for a long time. Wow,

38:50

that's a big exercise regimen. How

38:53

much is a good dose of exercise

38:55

to you, John?

38:57

Anywhere from five to 20 minutes. What

39:00

I tell people, especially

39:01

younger kids and older

39:03

kids, is get a jump rope.

39:05

Get a jump rope. I talk

39:07

about it in Spark, this gal

39:09

who I didn't see. The mother

39:12

who had 80 day and she was very active,

39:14

et cetera, but her daughter was

39:17

in fourth grade,

39:18

really bright kid but was having

39:20

trouble with math and I said

39:23

well give me the scenario and

39:25

so every time she'd sit down to do her math homework

39:27

she'd get frustrated and

39:29

throw everything on the floor and you

39:31

know have a tantrum. I said

39:33

ever start off with jump rope.

39:36

So she did five or ten minutes of jump rope

39:39

and she ended up doing very

39:41

well on math and she's now a master's

39:44

level nurse who who

39:46

also was on a regional jump rope team.

39:48

Hey. Ha ha. Ha

39:51

ha. Love that. She'd travel all

39:53

over the United States doing jump rope. So.

39:56

That's

39:56

awesome. great way to do movement.

40:00

work on balance and coordination, just

40:02

like dance. I mean, it really fits

40:05

the bill for our brain. So you don't

40:07

need to do a lot of it in those starting

40:09

on jump rope,

40:10

whatever your age is, it takes

40:12

a while, just be patient with yourself.

40:15

So I know we're gonna be wrapping

40:17

up pretty soon, but I wanna slip in two topics

40:20

for sure, if we can, before you go. And

40:22

the first of those has to do with one

40:24

of

40:25

my favorites of your books, Go Wild,

40:27

right? And I love the subtitle, Free

40:30

Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions

40:33

of Civilization.

40:35

And going back to our hunter-gatherer

40:38

past, and obviously we're not gonna return to

40:40

the Stone Age, but we can learn lessons from

40:42

the way people live, 97% of the 300,000 years

40:44

that people like you and I have

40:48

walked the earth, right? Until agriculture

40:51

rolled in around 10,000 years ago. I've

40:53

been very struck by the ways in which,

40:56

I would say this informally, People

40:58

I know who are definitely real high

41:00

on the spirited end of the spectrum, including

41:02

impulsive, simulation

41:05

seeking, even aggressive,

41:06

do really well in wilderness. There's

41:09

something about the wild

41:12

that settles.

41:14

And I just wonder what your take is about that. Being

41:17

in wilderness, even just walking in the park. There's

41:20

a chapter in Go Wild about

41:22

co-bio-philia, which is

41:24

our natural love of

41:27

biology, of nature, of being

41:29

in nature. And the Asians

41:31

have developed this over time to

41:34

a treatment. The Japanese call

41:36

it forest bathing, where they've

41:39

taken all these high pressured executives

41:42

from Tokyo into

41:45

one of the many, many forests in Japan

41:47

to spend time

41:49

there, not just talking to trees

41:51

and hugging them, but being around

41:54

them. And yeah,

41:56

there is a nature deficit

41:58

disorder that we all have.

42:00

most of us living in

42:02

the cities.

42:04

And so one of the things we talk about in

42:06

exercise, the best kind of exercise,

42:09

is something that you do with somebody

42:12

and outside, both

42:14

of which will help bring you back to it,

42:17

especially doing it with somebody.

42:19

One thing I speculate about that real

42:22

briefly here is that a lot

42:24

of the activity in the default mode network is

42:26

self-referential, including

42:29

in mental time travel, reflecting about yourself

42:31

in the past, projecting yourself into the future.

42:34

And one of the things that happens that you may

42:36

well know already neurologically is

42:38

that when people move their gaze outward,

42:41

including toward the horizon line, that

42:44

naturally reduces self-referential

42:47

processing, which is gonna naturally

42:49

reduce activity in the default mode network. And

42:51

that's what happens when you're out in

42:54

nature. Your gaze moves out, tends

42:56

to move up. You're taking in a lot

42:58

more information. There's less of that

43:00

self-referential preoccupation, all

43:03

of which, kawoosh,

43:04

now you're in the present.

43:06

Absolutely, it's not just

43:09

having your gaze up, but also watching

43:12

where you're stepping. No, that's

43:14

a big thing for Haiti. Being in the present.

43:17

Yeah, yeah, no, it's

43:19

a big thing, my goodness.

43:22

Well,

43:22

it's a great metaphor for life more

43:24

broadly, not getting tripped up by a root. But

43:27

one of the things that I wanted to ask

43:29

you about at the end of the conversation here, John,

43:31

is something that Elizabeth and I

43:33

have talked a lot about, which is medication,

43:35

and whether or not people should consider

43:37

using medication of one kind or another for ADHD.

43:40

A lot of people have concerns about going

43:43

on a form of medication. They're concerned

43:45

about side effects. They're just broadly a little

43:47

freaked out by psychiatry, just

43:49

a general, which I understand might

43:52

be a little fear about

43:54

interacting with something that's really going to affect

43:56

how your brain functions. There's

43:58

a lot of stuff out there about the potential.

44:00

to get addicted to a stimulant

44:02

or whatever it is that's going on there. And

44:04

so I just wanted to ask you broadly, how do you think about medication

44:07

at this point as somebody who's also engaged

44:09

all of these other more,

44:11

quote unquote, holistic interventions for

44:13

ADHD? That's

44:15

the other side of the coin. I mean,

44:17

because there are a lot of psychiatrists

44:19

who will support, oh, you

44:22

shouldn't go on medicine if you have ADD, you

44:24

know, just buck up

44:25

or find another way. But

44:28

But if you have a serious case of

44:30

attention problems, medicine

44:32

can be a life changer and it can

44:34

be very quick. Don't discount

44:37

it at all. You know, if necessary,

44:40

it's very, very useful.

44:43

And the issues that you raise, the

44:45

side effects and the stair step to

44:47

addiction, you know, the side

44:49

effects are very minimal. It's

44:52

like a big cup of coffee. You

44:54

know, in fact, coffee has more side effects

44:57

then there's most of our stimulants,

45:00

okay? It has more side effects. And

45:03

it's harder to,

45:04

when it wears off, than the symptoms.

45:07

But, no

45:09

really, really, it's really true. No, I can

45:11

speak to that for personal experience. I've gotten a good

45:13

caffeine headache every once in a while. It's not

45:15

fun. Yeah, yeah. About addiction,

45:18

that's very important. We stress this in

45:20

our book. We had a lot in the book

45:22

that was cut by two thirds,

45:25

even more

45:26

because addiction is such a big

45:28

problem with ADHD people, almost

45:31

twice as many people who have

45:33

the diagnosis of ADD will end up

45:35

being addicted to one thing or another. However,

45:38

when they look at people who were treated,

45:41

that is treated with medicine as

45:43

an adolescent, the numbers get

45:46

close to normal in terms

45:48

of those who potentially go on

45:51

to be addicted. Whereas

45:53

the people that have ADD

45:56

and they weren't treated, they

45:58

have... twice as many

46:01

people involved with addictions of

46:03

one form or another. So there's

46:05

lots of evidence.

46:07

It's very reassuring, I think, for people

46:09

to hear because particularly

46:11

people, frankly, who listen to a podcast

46:13

like ours, we're probably interacting with

46:15

a higher density of

46:18

holistically inclined people. And

46:20

there just can be some fear around medication, which

46:22

I get. But again, it's

46:25

something that we've really considered and looked at a

46:27

bunch of options and are probably going

46:29

to try on at some point.

46:31

And so I would encourage people,

46:33

particularly people who have significant

46:36

symptoms that they're having a difficult time controlling

46:38

through other mechanisms to really

46:40

take a look at it, if that's a possibility that's available

46:43

to you. Because I mean, I have friends

46:45

who've tried medication who it was just totally

46:47

transformative for them, completely life-changing.

46:50

And so the upside is really pretty

46:53

extraordinary.

46:55

If I could add kind of a perspective on

46:57

it too. So I'm careful

46:59

about my license. I'm a psychologist,

47:01

not a psychiatrist, so I can comment on

47:04

medication, but I never render a professional

47:06

opinion about whether someone should

47:08

start or stop or change their meds. I say,

47:11

talk to your other doctor

47:13

in that context. One thing I've seen pragmatically

47:17

is that

47:18

people can bring to bear, a person can bring to

47:20

bear in the life of a child

47:22

or their own life as an adult, a

47:24

lot of non-medication interventions.

47:26

And those are great. And one

47:28

of your great services, John, as a

47:31

card-carrying medication prescribing

47:33

psychiatrist, has been to emphasize

47:36

these other important interventions,

47:40

which certainly in the life of a child

47:42

include a lot of nurturance. And

47:44

in the life of an adult, a lot of connection,

47:47

partly to balance the dings

47:50

and bumps and bruises that

47:52

someone who's more spirited is experiencing

47:54

is they kind of bang up against tighter

47:56

controls. I think of metaphorically

47:58

forces heard me use this.

48:00

that there's kind of a normal temperamental

48:02

range between turtles and jackrabbits

48:04

with tweeners kind of in the middle. And

48:06

it's tough to be a jackrabbit trapped in a turtle

48:09

pen, taught by turtles who

48:11

are trying to train you to become a turtle.

48:13

A

48:13

lot of wear and tear adds up over time. Okay,

48:16

so people can do a lot of non-medication

48:18

interventions that may handle

48:21

things,

48:21

the issues of fit, perfectly adequately.

48:24

On the other hand, pragmatically,

48:27

many people will will not do all those

48:30

other interventions, which can sometimes

48:32

include dietary changes,

48:35

lowering inflammatory processes

48:37

in their body that are distracting and are

48:40

one more load, you know, on the person's

48:42

executive functions, things like that, they just

48:44

won't do them. They can't sustain them. It's not

48:46

realistic. And so it's

48:48

in the context of that, that

48:51

medication becomes pragmatically

48:53

more useful as skillful means, because

48:56

you're just not gonna do all those other things. And of course,

48:58

there are people who will do those other things and

49:00

get a lot of benefit

49:01

from a psychostimulant medication of one kind

49:04

or another.

49:04

So for me, that kind of range

49:06

that's pragmatic rather than a binary

49:09

yes or no, do or don't, you

49:11

know, I found it to be a useful way to think about it.

49:14

Oh, absolutely. If people can

49:16

go for it and have enough

49:18

activity and love and things

49:21

that they're pursuing in their life, then

49:23

they may not need medicine. It's

49:26

up to them.

49:27

up to figuring out how

49:29

much this difference is

49:31

affecting their lives. But you're right, you

49:34

talk about the jackrabbits and turtles,

49:36

we talk about the farmers and hunters.

49:39

And that's hard for an hunter

49:41

to sit in a classroom talked by

49:44

a bunch of farmers and expecting

49:46

you to

49:47

just be there and sit and

49:49

not jump up and want to see what the

49:51

hell was going on outside. On the

49:53

other side of the hill. Yeah.

49:56

You know, John, thanks so much for doing this

49:58

with us today. was like utter You're

50:00

really fantastic. You're just a total gem. And

50:02

I just really appreciate it. And thank you for your work

50:04

as well. It's really helped a lot of people.

50:06

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having

50:09

me on. And good to see you again, Rick. And

50:11

hope to see you again sometime.

50:19

I really love today's conversation about ADHD

50:22

with Dr. John Rady. John

50:24

is the author with Ned Halliwell of the new

50:26

book ADHD 2.0. I

50:28

really couldn't recommend it more strongly if

50:31

you or someone you know has ADHD,

50:33

which I think probably

50:35

includes most people at this point, or

50:38

if you're just interested in learning more about ADHD.

50:41

I've found it just a fantastic resource

50:43

in my own life. It's been really helpful for my relationship

50:45

with my partner, Elizabeth, and

50:48

has also just helped

50:50

me develop such a better understanding

50:53

of ADHD. And that's what we began with.

50:55

are some of the common misconceptions or misunderstandings

50:59

that people still have about ADHD,

51:02

even after there's been such an explosion

51:05

of popular awareness of it as an issue

51:07

that people have. And what John

51:09

really emphasized is how there's a common framing

51:11

of ADHD

51:12

as specifically an attentional

51:14

problem.

51:15

It's right there in the name of it, right? Attention,

51:18

deficit, and hyperactivity disorder.

51:21

But ADHD isn't so much a deficit

51:24

of attention, it's a surplus

51:26

of it with absolutely no control

51:28

associated with it. It's basically like having

51:31

a car that has the engine of

51:33

a race car and the brakes of a bicycle.

51:36

The

51:36

problem isn't that your engine isn't big enough, but

51:38

that you lack the brakes that most

51:41

people have to apply that engine

51:43

as effectively as you could.

51:45

And even that framing is a bit

51:47

of a framing of deficit. It's a bit of a framing

51:50

of ADHD as, hey, a disorder,

51:53

again, right there in the name.

51:55

But the truth is that ADHD has

51:57

a whole set of symptoms

52:01

or presentations or traits that are associated

52:03

with it that range from definitely

52:06

inconvenient in a modern world to

52:09

these completely beautiful aspects

52:11

and really wonderful parts of a

52:13

personality structure that can be

52:16

incredibly beneficial for people who

52:18

have it.

52:19

These are strengths like a great deal of

52:21

creativity and imagination,

52:23

a real ability to to sense

52:26

into the emotions of other people

52:28

and act as a kind of emotional weather vane for

52:30

a group.

52:31

Generosity, a unique and active

52:33

sense of humor. And

52:35

one of the things that in the book he refers to

52:37

as an itch to change the conditions

52:39

of life.

52:41

And this can be associated with the ability

52:43

to innovate that we talked about during the conversation

52:45

as well.

52:47

And in this way, John frames

52:49

ADHD in such a wider

52:52

and broader context than the way

52:54

that most people think about it.

52:56

It's not this narrow ailment that needs

52:59

to be essentially beaten

53:02

out of people, where people just need to regulate

53:04

themselves as hard as humanly possible

53:06

in order to overcome their deficient

53:08

brain.

53:09

It's not that. It's a set of traits. There

53:12

are strengths, there are some vulnerabilities. It

53:14

is a whole brain thing.

53:16

What do we do to accentuate the

53:18

strengths and create a context that

53:21

supports those strengths and

53:23

a context wherein those strengths

53:25

can operate at their maximum

53:27

power

53:29

without being as affected by some of

53:31

the vulnerabilities.

53:33

We talked for a while in the middle of the conversation

53:35

about what's going on in the brain of

53:37

somebody who has ADHD, and John

53:39

highlighted these two different networks. Those

53:41

are the Task Positive Network and the Default

53:44

Mode Network. The

53:46

task positive network is associated with the

53:48

feeling of being in the zone or highly

53:50

focused on something.

53:51

While the default mode network is what your

53:53

brain defaults to, it's right there in the name, again,

53:56

when it's not doing anything

53:58

else.

53:59

when you're... imagining or daydreaming.

54:02

Maybe when you're ruminating, although as John said,

54:04

that's got some interaction with the Task Positive Network

54:06

as well. For the brains with people

54:08

who have ADHD, they tend to get sucked into

54:11

the default mode network even when they're

54:13

focusing on something. There's this constant vacuum

54:16

pull back to it in

54:18

the brain,

54:19

which is one of the reasons that it can be tough to

54:21

sustain attention over a long period

54:23

of time.

54:25

On the other side of the coin, because ADHD is

54:27

all about these two very strong

54:29

sides of the coin that both exert a lot

54:31

of influence, it's very possible for

54:34

people with ADHD brains to

54:36

fall into intense periods of

54:38

hyper focus. John described this

54:41

as the desire to get to completion,

54:43

the feeling like they just have to finish

54:45

this thing, they're almost there, and if

54:47

they just finish it, then they'll be able

54:49

to let it go or focus on something else.

54:52

In terms of practically working with ADHD,

54:54

there were three things that we emphasized during the conversation

54:57

and a fourth one that I'll name here

55:00

in the outro. And the three that we talked about

55:02

were the importance of social connection, the

55:04

value of exercise and movement,

55:07

and then the possibility of using medication.

55:10

The fourth one that I'll name here in the outro is

55:13

the importance of setting up an environment

55:15

to set of circumstances around you that

55:18

are supportive of your unique

55:20

brain. And this gets to something

55:22

that ran underneath the conversation as a

55:24

whole, which is the importance of context.

55:27

We have a particular kind of context

55:30

in modern life, right? You're sitting at a desk

55:32

a lot, you're working at a computer a lot, you're

55:34

staring at a phone a lot. Maybe

55:36

you're listening to this podcast while you

55:38

sit in your car and drive to your desk

55:41

job, whatever it is that people are doing. And

55:44

that's one context, but that isn't

55:46

the context that humans existed in. biologically

55:49

modern humans existed in for 97% of

55:51

the time that we've been on this earth.

55:55

And in those different contexts,

55:58

maybe not our modern one?

56:00

Having something like ADHD, having an

56:02

excess of energy, an excess of interest,

56:05

an excess of imagination could

56:07

be profoundly useful for a group of people

56:10

who are trying to survive under very harsh conditions.

56:13

And I would just encourage people who are listening

56:15

to this who themselves maybe have ADHD,

56:18

or if you're somebody like me who's the partner of

56:20

somebody with ADHD,

56:21

to really think about ADHD

56:24

in that way.

56:25

That it is a context-based

56:28

liability. It is a context-based

56:31

issue. And this really takes us out

56:33

of a framework of it where we're blaming

56:35

a person

56:36

for the way in which their unique brain works.

56:39

Because really what's going on here is there's an issue

56:42

of fit. There's

56:43

an issue of fit between the brain of the person

56:45

and the circumstances that they find themselves in.

56:48

And so a key place of intervention

56:51

is, okay, how can we make that fit a little

56:53

bit smoother, a little bit softer, a little bit kinder

56:55

to people?

56:57

I got a ton out out of today's conversation,

56:59

I got even more out of reading John's

57:01

book, which again, he wrote with Dr. Ned Halliwell.

57:04

And I hope you did as well. It was great doing this.

57:06

We've been really delinquent in talking about

57:09

ADHD directly on the podcast.

57:11

I am sure we will have many more episodes

57:13

that include either a deliberate focus

57:15

on ADHD or it as part

57:18

of a different kind of conversation, maybe a broader

57:20

conversation on other topics. There

57:22

are some people who I don't wanna say too

57:24

much now and we haven't really

57:26

confirmed them, we have some experts that will

57:29

probably be coming on the podcast

57:31

in the near future to talk about ADHD,

57:34

and I'm really looking forward to those conversations

57:36

as well.

57:37

If you've been enjoying the podcast for a while, I'd really

57:39

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57:42

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58:21

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58:22

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