Following up on last week’s episode of emotional autopilot, Ash and Cam explore some of the motivations for this behavior. We do what we need to to get through our days, and emotional autopilot is a coping mechanism for managing strong emotions and the limiting stories that can accompany them. Cam shares three specific examples of limiting stories and how we can uncover the ADHD that is operating in the background. When we explore causation, we can start to poke holes in our stories that don't serve us. Cam specifically points to 'One Down' or 'I am not enough.' The conflict avoider and the misunderstood rebel. Ash points out distinctions where awareness, agency and choice can completely change the dynamic for the better. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher Episode 10 - Cause, Effect, and the Universal ADHD Question (pt. 1) Episode 60 - Revisiting our ADHD Cause and Effect Metaphor: The Valleys For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Ash and Cam continue to pull the thread on getting distance from the Adrenaline Response Cycle as they explore common emotional responses when faced with uncertainty and challenge. Today they share the concept of emotional autopilot. We can approach our days and plans in an autopilot fashion expecting our day to go off without a hitch. We can also set our emotions on autopilot or conveniently set them aside - partitioning them from our day. We all know how this plays out. When things don't go according to plan, our emotions come out in anger or disappointment and often at a higher intensity due to emotional dysregulation. Cam and Ash tack against common suggestions regarding emotional regulation, addressing the challenge more at causation than at manifestation. According to findings in neuroscience, the more aware we are of our emotions the more we can utilize them as a resource. Like Kelly McGonigal’s work on stress, if we shift the way we view emotions, we can turn them into the resources they are. Emotions drive our desires, our attention and our motivation for change. They can also be difficult to manage because they are stronger than positive emotions. Often the big signal is negative in nature and when we do explore emotions, the first thing we hear is our own internal negative self-talk. The hosts share different ways we can resource emotions and ‘crack the lid on the mason jar’ to let emotions inform, and not drive, behavior or responses. Ash distinguishes emotions and the story associated with the emotions. He also shares an example where a client uses her own body awareness to better understand how her migraines are an indication of surpassing a threshold and entering the crash phase of ARC. Cam shares an example where a client uses time to process emotions in an interaction with a coworker. The hosts emphasize well known podcast concepts like curiosity and pause, disrupt, pivot to shift away from the autopilot mode. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher Emotional Health Ladder Episode 78  Navigating the Fight, Flight, or Freeze Stress Response with ADHD – Translating ADHD Podcast Kelly McGonigal Ted Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend/c Susan David - https://www.susandavid.com/ Positive Intelligence - https://www.positiveintelligence.com/ For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

To be untethered can mean a lot of things in mental health circles. Often it is referred to as one not being grounded or tethered to reality. With respect to ADHD, it can take on a whole different meaning. Ash and Cam discuss how as coaching clients unravel themselves from the react and respond mode of the Adrenaline Response Cycle, they can find themselves in a rather uncomfortable in-between place straight out of a Dr Seuss book. This is the place of lots of awareness and little change, and a place where many turn back from. The hosts share how tethers serve to anchor ADHD individuals to strengths, values and purpose. Anchoring to a journey thinking mindset can assist people as they move to their more authentic version of themselves motivated by inspiration and opportunity. Ash shares numerous examples from his Purpose class on how students are developing knowledge without the destination of a clear purpose. Cam shares two specific examples of how this in-between place can feel disorienting for the Big Brainer (freefalling) and the Fast Brainer (infinite acceleration). The hosts share several examples of what listeners can do while they inhabit the in-between place. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

This week we are delighted to present another special episode dedicated to exploring the lived experiences of people of color with ADHD by presenting an interview with ADHD advocate and influencer Rach Idowu. When Rach’s own diagnosis was disrupted due to the Covid pandemic, she took it upon herself to educate herself about ADHD. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she started to share her own experience on social media as a black professional woman living in London. Rach discusses the challenges she faced as a young girl of immigrant parents trying to succeed without knowing she had ADHD. She talks about how she met resistance in the diagnosis process but used her curiosity and tenacity to keep asking questions and not being satisfied with the status quo. She shares with Cam her passion for advocacy and love of gaming and how gaming serves as a model and metaphor for approaching difficult dilemmas. Finally, Rach shares how her love of helping others and spreading the word about ADHD has fueled her enthusiasm and efforts in a very popular newsletter and her own line of ADHD flashcards. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher Rach’s Twitter Rach’s Linktree For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Ash and Cam bring the conversation down to earth from last week’s big picture view on journey thinking and detaching from outcome. Chasing big signal items like drama, shiny objects or avoiding conflict has us beholden to the Adrenaline Response Cycle of delay, hyper-focus, crash, recovery. This is often fueled by destination thinking and attaching to outcomes. Both Ash and Cam bring in examples of where clients design their own practices or experiments to limit ARC-fueled behaviors. Cam talks about how in coaching we look at behaviors that are not working prior to building new behaviors. He shares an example where a client wants to have less of an emotional experience, specifically FOMO or fear of missing out, while he day-trades stocks. Key to the experience are guidelines or rules of engagement and identifying the learning opportunity. The learning opportunity in this experiment is to bring the Keen Observer to his own emotional experience and see what big signal he is attached to. ADHD executive function challenges make it very difficult to let go or release a thought or belief or some picture of an outcome. The client over a period of experiments was able to generate new awareness and pull the learning forward into how he shows up at work, addressing two of the three barriers of ADHD (See below for link). Ash illustrates how a liability like emotional lability can be turned into a strength like empathy or intuition - that they can be two sides of the same coin. The hosts leave listeners with some places to start looking at building experiments of their own. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com Navigating the Three Barriers of ADHD Book: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

Ash and Cam continue to discuss the Adrenaline Response Cycle and ways to create some distance from ARC. The hosts revisit the concept of Journey Thinking - a cornerstone of coaching principles and a common theme on the podcast. Those of us with ADHD are prone to Destination Thinking or a propensity for attaching to specific outcomes. Both Cam and Ash share their own examples of Journey Thinking and what they did to address it. Ash brings back a popular metaphor of rocks in a foggy pond to illustrate the challenge of next steps and Cam shares how ADHD can exacerbate Destination Thinking. Part of the attaching to outcome dilemma is that it is often connected to a big signal either positive or negative. Along with that big signal is a limiting story and often intense emotions. The hosts share the practice of catch and release - a way to hold thoughts and feelings less tightly. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher Episode 9 - Embracing Journey Thinking More on ARC from Cam’s Blog Adrenaline Response Cycle (image below) For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Ash and Cam shift from exploring the phases of the Adrenaline Response Cycle to discussing how to become less beholden to the cycle. The hosts share that this work is central to any ADHD coaching relationship - locating motivators other than urgency and hyperfocus to get things done. Ash and Cam focus on three main discussion points in today’s episode. Building awareness around how we can rationalize our avoidant behaviors prolonging the Delay phase. Building awareness of how we can hunt for meaning in everything we do and everything we don’t do. And starting to shift away from our binary (now/not now) approach to time and urgency. The hosts also look at how awareness of big signals can help to create important new learning about the ARC process. Cam and Ash share numerous examples of how each individual’s approach to this dilemma is unique to that individual and the significance of owning one's own process here. Ash shares a different take on the “Just do it!” approach, and both hosts discuss the importance of popping the ‘fantasy bubble’ and share the limitations of popular phrases like time blindness. Finally, the hosts talk about how they use concepts like emotion, space and social connections to make time more discernible for both Cam and Ash. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher More on ARC from Cam’s Blog Adrenaline Response Cycle (image below) For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Asher and Cam dive deeper into the Adrenaline Response Cycle, exploring the Delay phase that preceeds the Intense Activity phase. Last week they explored the Crash-Recovery phases, so the hosts thought it wise to look at the phase that so many of us with ADHD spend lots of time grappling with. In common circles this is referred to as procrastination, but hosts Cam and Ash prefer to not use this language because it doesn't get to the root of the dilemma. They share several examples of how Delay can play out from doing everything but the urgent task to doing much more than the specific challenge. Ash reiterates the distinction between constructive and productive  work. Cam shares how our contextual wiring can wreak havoc when fueled by fear and urgency, playing out catastrophic scenarios or taking us to valley moments. Both hosts talk about how pause, disrupt and pivot can be useful during the delay phase and the power of acceptance. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher More on ARC from Cam’s Blog Adrenaline Response Cycle (image below) For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Ash and Cam continue to look at the dynamic nature of boundary creation and management by revisiting the very popular Adrenaline Response Cycle from Episode 4. The hosts share how our boundaries naturally adjust as a result of our current mode of activity. For so many of us with ADHD our daily mode is governed by the ARC Model – when we are beholden to the urgency of the current big signal. This urgency elicits an adrenaline and dopamine response that allows us to access our task management network and engage with our work. Ash and Cam actually focus more on the periods of the cycle other than the intense activity period, when we are enjoying a state of hyper-focus. Asher shares how he has learned to develop healthy boundaries around his own recovery periods, distinguishing healthy recovery time from post-crash recovery time. We often put so much focus on production and hyper-focus , we don’t realize the cost of a prolonged crash/recovery sequence. Ash reshares his Hoth rebel base metaphor for recovery periods he had little agency over. Finally, Ash shares a personal example of how he actively managed boundaries around a big signal that in the past would have had him jettison all other obligations and commitments and would result in a big crash and long recovery. He discusses effectively communicating needs, clarifying ‘the ask’ and managing expectations, all the while seeing himself ‘in the picture’. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher Rebel Base Hoth Metaphor Episode More on ARC from Cam’s Blog Adrenaline Response Cycle (image below) For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Asher and Cam revisit boundaries after their initial boundary discussion way back in episode 25 almost three years ago. The hosts discuss why it is so hard for those of us with ADHD to establish and maintain boundaries, and they share ways to create boundaries that can work for a brain wired for context. Ash and Cam bring an inside/out approach to boundary development by asking the listener to think more about what they are defending than what they are defending against. The podcast concept of seeing oneself in the picture can be subjective and difficult to quantify. They introduce the concept of the ‘performative judge’, an inner critic character that focuses on everything related to doing and nothing to do with being. This performance judge along with one down can set us up for difficult boundary management. Ash shares an example where a client uses metaphor concepts of saving money to illustrate effective time and boundary management. Both hosts discuss the power of perspective, and that pausing to create space can be helpful. Cam talks about creating space between ourselves and that performative judge, and Ash shares another example where the client creates space between the ask and the reply. Lastly the hosts discuss the vulnerable spot we can find ourselves between new awareness and new actions to change and how we can protect ourselves through boundaries. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Asher For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com