22:00

in the fridge? Why? My

22:02

husband will come out of the pantry with like

22:04

the most random thing and be like, you're adorable.

22:06

And like we've gotten to that place, we've been

22:08

married 20 years, so it's taken a lot of

22:10

work. But like, what why did

22:12

I put like my shoes in the pantry?

22:14

I don't know why I don't know why.

22:16

And all

22:18

of those things that I used to beat

22:20

myself up over that I used to lose

22:23

sleep over that I used to spiral in

22:25

shame over. There's answers for them.

22:27

Not to say that I'm a perfect person. Right?

22:30

I still have my own character flaws,

22:32

but now I'm able to separate character

22:35

flaws from ADHD symptoms. And that's a

22:37

very important practice. Yeah,

22:40

I think if people are listening to this

22:42

one thing that they struggle with is chronic

22:44

disorganization. So when you're talking about like, why

22:47

are the shoes in the pantry? Why

22:50

do you think that disorganization

22:52

is one of the glaring

22:55

telltale? It

22:58

is symptoms of ADHD? Well,

23:03

I mean, there's a scientific answer for

23:06

that. And that is that ADHD affects

23:08

our frontal lobe. And

23:10

the frontal lobe is where all of

23:12

the executive functions are housed. And

23:15

the executive functions are the skills

23:17

which allow us to adults, it

23:21

working memory, prioritization, organization,

23:23

planning, problem solving, emotional

23:26

dysregulation, like emotional regulation,

23:29

excuse me, impulsivity, all

23:32

of those executive functions work

23:34

together, or don't work

23:36

together, to allow

23:39

someone to just

23:41

kind of live out this

23:43

adulting lifestyle. And so

23:45

when you have ADHD, your

23:48

executive functions are, to

23:51

varying degrees, very impaired. And

23:53

so it's not just like, I'm

23:56

disorganized, but it's, it's like, I

23:58

don't know how to prioritize. And

24:00

I don't know. what's most important.

24:02

And so everything feels important. The

24:05

way that I describe it, and I think prioritization

24:07

is one of the primary reasons why we

24:09

are disorganized, because everything

24:11

feels for an ADHD or on the same

24:13

level of importance. The way that I

24:15

describe it is a neurotypical

24:18

is naturally going to put things in vertical

24:20

order. Like number one is the top priority

24:22

and then number two is a little lesser.

24:24

Number three, number four, for an ADHD or

24:26

it's all on a horizontal plane. It's all

24:29

the same. They all feel equal. It's

24:31

also like if you think

24:33

of every item in your home as having a

24:36

sound, this is a weird analogy, but if you

24:38

have ADHD, I feel like you're going to get

24:40

it. It's like

24:42

the volume is turned

24:44

up and everything is screaming at you.

24:46

It's like every task is screaming at

24:48

you. Every item is screaming. It's like,

24:51

I'm important. No, I'm important. No, I'm important. And it's

24:54

impossible without some real

24:57

intervention. It's impossible for us at each year's

25:00

to turn the volume down on what has

25:02

a lesser importance and turn

25:04

the volume up on what has the greatest

25:07

importance. And so everything just screams at us

25:09

at the same volume. And so what do

25:11

you do when like people are screaming at

25:13

you? You're like run around, you hide, you

25:15

implode. You feel like you're on the spin

25:17

cycle of the washing machine. It's impossible to

25:20

think because everything's screaming at

25:22

you. Yeah, which

25:24

is for me, so I'm

25:26

an organizing expert, which is bizarre because

25:28

I'm not a naturally organized person. Listen,

25:30

and I teach other people, I coach

25:32

other people, I organize other people's homes

25:34

for them. And my home is organized.

25:36

So how? So I'm going to tell

25:38

you how this worked for me. One,

25:41

I had to declutter because

25:43

my brain was so distracted

25:45

by stuff. So

25:47

I couldn't put the keys in the same

25:50

spot every time. If where the keys are

25:52

supposed to go, there's also a pile of

25:54

other things, because that disrupted my,

25:57

my motion. The other thing I have had

25:59

to do was I had to set up

26:01

systems that worked with how I naturally would

26:04

put things down. So where

26:06

I was naturally putting things that had

26:08

to be the home and the way

26:10

I put things down had to be

26:12

the home. So I can't stop and

26:14

sort papers into file folders. I have to

26:17

have a basket that's like deal

26:19

with this paper once a week. The

26:22

other thing I had to do was have hard

26:24

rules for myself that I

26:26

had to slowly with sticky notes

26:28

everywhere because my big thing with

26:31

disorganization is I forget to remember.

26:34

So I will literally like walk in and I'll have

26:36

bills in my hand and I will forget I even

26:38

have bills in my hand. I'll forget they have to

26:40

be paid. I forget where they have to go even

26:42

though. So I need to rely on

26:44

muscle memory. So the way I do

26:47

that is I'm like okay this is where

26:49

I usually naturally pile stuff. I'm gonna put

26:51

a basket here. I'm gonna have nothing else

26:53

around and I'm gonna have a sticky note

26:55

that is like put the bills in here,

26:57

pay all the bills on Sunday. And then

26:59

I'm like that's all I see. So that's

27:01

my visual cue muscle memory put

27:03

it down. After a week sometimes too I

27:06

no longer need the sticky notes and the

27:08

reminders of the reminders on my phone because

27:10

I've trained my brain. But I had to

27:12

do that for every, I kid you not,

27:15

every stupid thing. My hairbrush,

27:17

my toothbrush, my every thing.

27:19

But it's added up to

27:21

this like I'm

27:24

just now a very very

27:26

organized person within my home with the

27:28

things I currently have. If you add

27:30

something new in I've got

27:32

to train my brain all over again for that. So

27:35

I think people who

27:37

are like I'm so disorganized

27:39

and they're looking at me,

27:41

clutterbug, how do you go from point

27:44

A to point B? It isn't a one-step

27:46

friends. Mm-hmm.

27:49

It is a journey. It's

27:52

a treacherous journey. But

27:55

it is doable and it starts

27:57

with removing some of the noise.

28:00

as Kristen said. So yeah,

28:02

all your stuff is screaming at you. That

28:04

is the best analogy I ever heard. So

28:07

let's put the stuff that's screaming, that is

28:09

not necessary. Let's kick it out of our

28:11

house. So we have

28:13

less noise. I'm

28:16

fully on board with that. And the

28:18

question then is, how

28:20

do we know what we keep

28:23

and what we get rid of? And that

28:26

seems to be the issue when I

28:28

talk about decluttering or minimalism or any

28:31

of these things. It's like a client

28:34

will come back and say, well, that's great, but like,

28:36

how do I know? How do I know what's important?

28:38

How do I know what's not important? And so having

28:40

a criteria of, do I love it?

28:43

Does it work? Is it

28:45

broken? Like if it's broken, get it out, right?

28:47

Have I used it in the last year? Well, that

28:50

could be a hard question because I don't remember.

28:52

So like asking your partner or

28:54

asking your kid, like, hey, do we use

28:56

this? Is it useful?

28:58

And like, again, go back to number

29:00

one, do I love it? I

29:02

kept so much crap in my house because

29:05

my mom gave it to me or because

29:07

it was so and so or because it

29:09

was attached to a memory, but

29:11

not necessarily because I loved it. And what

29:13

I realized is it took up a lot

29:16

of space. It created a lot of noise.

29:18

And if I could really distill down

29:20

to what do I love? What's useful

29:22

to me? But somebody else

29:25

gave it to me and told me I should

29:27

like it, but something that I actually like that

29:30

gives me joy, that is a really good

29:32

criteria, which then is like, well, how do

29:34

I know what I like? It's just like,

29:36

it's so layered for us at each year.

29:38

It is. And I think if we really

29:40

dig deep, for me,

29:42

I know I'm just saying, for me, I

29:45

didn't trust myself to

29:47

declutter. I didn't trust myself to

29:49

do anything because I had proven

29:51

my entire life that I am

29:53

unreliable, that I am irresponsible, that

29:55

I make stupid decisions. I make

29:57

mistakes all the time. I'm crashing.

34:00

again. And so we just, we never were

34:02

able to establish self-trust or some of us

34:04

grew up in healthy enough families, but then

34:06

we had a really toxic boss or a

34:09

really toxic spouse or, you know, and then

34:11

it was eroded in that way. But I

34:13

would say most, I mean, I've coached thousands

34:15

of people and most of

34:17

my clients would say that

34:19

they grew up in families where self-trust

34:21

was really never established. Mm-hmm.

34:25

And it's tough because we do

34:27

sometimes, especially if you're like me

34:29

and you have that like impulsivity,

34:32

flighty inattentiveness, we do do

34:34

things. We make little dumb mistakes more than

34:36

the average person. We do, we do like,

34:38

oh, we put our keys in weird spots

34:40

and we lost this again and we're late

34:43

for this. And it's like, oh, I'm just

34:45

so scatterbrained. But

34:47

that is very different than deciding whether

34:49

you should have something in your home

34:52

or not. Yeah. Like that, that is

34:54

not the same type of flightiness. You

34:56

can be a flighty person that forgets

34:59

your person, is constantly late and needs

35:01

reminders to remember things and still decide,

35:03

is this important enough to stay in

35:06

my house or not? They, two

35:08

completely different things. And

35:11

so it, it

35:14

builds confidence to just try and

35:16

get started because decluttering is 100%

35:18

the first step to getting yourself

35:21

organized because less noise means now

35:23

you're not as distracted and you're

35:25

more likely to actually

35:27

put things where they belong and set up

35:29

homes. And it's slowly like, that's the other

35:31

thing. I didn't trust myself to organize because

35:33

I'm so naturally bad at organizing. But when

35:36

I embrace the fact that I

35:38

just organize differently and I

35:40

need big categories, macro systems, I need to

35:42

be able to toss it like a basketball

35:44

from across the room. When

35:46

I embraced this and set that

35:48

up and saw success, I started

35:51

building confidence in that ability as well

35:53

too. So my friends

35:55

listening, it is

35:58

not, you are not doomed

36:00

to be a disorganized person for your entire life

36:02

because you have ADHD. We

36:04

just have to adapt and have

36:06

coping skills. Yes. Absolutely.

36:09

And be confident enough to know

36:11

what, what works for

36:14

me. So my husband's side of

36:16

the sink, we have a bathroom with two

36:18

sinks for the first time in our lives,

36:20

I feel like a

36:22

queen, a queen

36:25

as of two years ago, you know,

36:27

it's just so fun. So anyway, his

36:29

sink spotless. My

36:32

side of the sink is set

36:34

up for me. I have a

36:36

basket of all the stuff that I toss in.

36:38

I have the things that I use every single,

36:40

you know, at every single, whatever

36:43

washing. It's like, I'm not going

36:45

to hide something under the sink

36:48

that I need every day. And I don't see

36:50

that as clutter. I see that

36:52

as like, this is efficient for me.

36:54

This is setting up my space for

36:56

me. So I think that like

36:59

another encouragement is be

37:02

willing to take up some space in

37:05

your own home for goodness sake,

37:07

and organize your stuff in a

37:10

way that works for you. Yeah.

37:13

Preach. I mean, that's my whole clutter

37:15

bug thing is like organizing isn't one

37:17

size fits all. And hearing you talk,

37:19

you're obviously a visual organizer, which a

37:21

lot of people with ADHD, it's out

37:23

of sight, out of mind. So

37:26

you have to have a visual system because

37:28

you're subconsciously going to leave it out anyway,

37:30

so you might as well put it back

37:33

in an organized way. You can

37:35

all day be like, it belongs down here

37:37

hidden away, but your brain doesn't work like

37:39

that. So I love this so

37:41

much. I

37:44

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38:43

pod. I

38:47

do want to challenge you though. We're

38:49

maybe going to challenge me. Listen, I

38:52

follow you on Instagram and

38:54

you said something that hurt my feelings. Oh

38:57

honey. Because you said

39:00

ADHD is not a

39:02

superpower. And

39:05

I'm gonna say this. I just

39:08

want to tell you a quick story. So I was

39:11

diagnosed by 80 with ADHD by my

39:13

85 year old doctor. I was crying like

39:15

I'm like I'm successful. I don't understand. I

39:17

always forget things. I have to have 50

39:19

alarms. I feel like I work so much

39:21

harder than everyone else just to do the

39:23

daily crap. And I cried to him and

39:25

he said, I think you

39:27

might have ADHD. Take some Ritalin. If it

39:30

gets you high, you don't

39:32

have ADHD. If it

39:34

calms you down, you

39:36

do have ADHD. And

39:39

it did. It calmed me down. Like it

39:41

calmed my brain down. I was less talkative. I

39:44

was less impulsive. I was less like I was

39:46

calmer. Fast

39:49

forward to a few years later and I'm like,

39:51

man, this ADHD is amazing. Because when

39:54

I want to do cool stuff, I

39:56

just don't take a Ritalin. And I'm

39:58

like, over. white,

46:01

rich, and super,

46:03

super, super smart. Yeah,

46:06

he's brilliant. He's brilliant. And like all

46:08

of that is awesome. And he came

46:10

from well-to-do parents. He came from well-to-do

46:12

parents who understood him from the jump

46:15

and accommodated their lives to serve

46:17

his needs. So, which

46:21

all of that is great. His book would have been

46:23

an amazing memoir. I read every single

46:25

word and I wish it were a memoir and

46:28

not a, hey,

46:30

here's how we should look at

46:32

ADHD because he

46:35

only spoke from his position. And

46:38

there, I mean, I have served

46:41

thousands of people globally. It

46:43

is a travesty to me for

46:45

certain people, especially

46:51

people who have a large platform, to

46:55

say something like ADHD is awesome

46:58

when truly there are people losing

47:00

their lives because of ADHD. So

47:03

the point though is you

47:06

are awesome. You have so many superpowers.

47:10

You have so much about you that is

47:12

so compelling that I'm like, I want to

47:15

be besties with this lady. Like she's so

47:17

awesome. That's you. I

47:19

don't want to delegate that to ADHD. Okay, how

47:21

does that feel? I know I came on really

47:23

strong. You did and I see what you're saying

47:25

because I, okay. So I am

47:27

coming also, I know I'm wary of

47:29

your time from a place of privilege

47:31

in that I can do for a

47:33

living something that I'm super passionate

47:36

about. That's what I'm saying. Yes, so good.

47:38

And that makes all the

47:40

bad. I'm able to look

47:42

at the other flip side, but why for me

47:44

that it's important that I look at the good

47:47

side is I left home at 15. I

47:49

flunked out of high school. I was homeless.

47:51

I went to prison. I

47:54

became a drug addict. So I like,

47:57

and now looking back, all

47:59

of those things. were because

48:01

I had undiagnosed ADHD and I was impulsive and

48:04

I was making poor decisions and I couldn't, I

48:07

couldn't self-regulate my emotions and I

48:10

couldn't make good decisions. Like I

48:12

literally couldn't. Totally.

48:15

And now that I'm older, I'm

48:18

like, okay, yes, I have

48:20

to work really hard to cope with all

48:23

of that, but the flip side of all

48:25

of those things can

48:27

be good. The flip side of

48:30

hyperactivity and impulsivity is that

48:32

I jump in with both feet in

48:35

a healthy way when I have rules and

48:37

boundaries. I don't drink, I cannot do drugs,

48:39

I cannot take my credit card with me

48:41

shopping. I have rules and boundaries, but those

48:43

rules and boundaries that I need allow

48:47

me to protect myself from the negative

48:50

and really indulge in the

48:53

other side of that, which

48:55

is sometimes positive.

48:58

I struggle with relationships. You say I'm

49:00

fun. Guess what I hear after

49:02

a good week with someone? You're too much. So

49:07

it's all great to be like this, but

49:09

day in and day out, it's

49:11

exhausting for other people, which I

49:13

completely understand. So I'm gonna, I

49:17

love that you're standing up for everyone,

49:19

but also I don't want people to

49:22

be in this victim mentality of I

49:25

have this, it's

49:27

not fair. I was born with

49:29

basically brain damage and

49:32

it just is what it is and I'm

49:34

destined to live this hard, small life. Is

49:37

that what you feel like my message is? I

49:42

feel like if we

49:44

can focus on the amazing parts of it,

49:47

maybe not calling it a superpower and

49:50

definitely cope with the hard stuff,

49:54

we can lean

49:56

in and be more positive. Does

49:59

that make sense? Yeah. And

50:01

I hope that, first

50:05

of all, I'm so glad that you

50:08

have the inner fire

50:10

to have this conversation. I'm

50:12

so glad. Sorry.

50:14

I'm just throwing it out there. Don't

50:17

you dare apologize. This is like, it's

50:19

so life-giving to me. It's

50:21

so life-giving. I so appreciate

50:23

a really intelligent, healthy back and forth.

50:25

I really do. So I just want

50:27

to honor you for that. I

50:30

so appreciate it. And

50:32

I want to make sure, if you see a

50:34

clip of me on Instagram saying,

50:37

it is not your superpower, it might

50:41

hurt your feelings. And I

50:43

definitely don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But

50:45

when you listen, there's a very

50:48

real reason why my content

50:50

is long form. My

50:52

podcasts are an hour long because

50:54

clips of me saying things

50:56

on Instagram is not enough to understand

50:59

the heart behind the message and what

51:01

I really think of people with ADHD

51:03

because look around like we are successful.

51:06

There is so much hope. But

51:09

I think for me, starting from a

51:11

place of what's the reality that we're

51:13

dealing with? That's where I come from. Start

51:16

with the reality. And then based

51:18

on that, because if ADHD is a superpower, why

51:20

would I treat it? If ADHD is a superpower,

51:22

why am I going to bother to get medication,

51:25

coaching therapy? Right? That

51:28

is true. It's hard. It's right.

51:31

And yes, if you're hearing like, this is

51:34

so great and it's a superpower, then

51:36

you're like, well, then why am I? Because

51:38

90% of people haven't dealt with

51:41

the coping skills and they're really

51:43

struggling. And I struggle. I struggle

51:45

every day. Why is

51:47

my life so hard? So okay. If

51:50

ADHD is a superpower, then I must

51:52

be doing ADHD wrong because it doesn't

51:54

feel like a superpower to me. But

51:57

those are the people that I want to reach.