ADHD, PTSD & SEXUAL TRAUMA is a heart-breaking yet powerful episode with my guest Bianca Rose. Bianca vulnerably shared with me how her own sexual abuse during her childhood led to her misdiagnosis with all sorts of 'disorders' such as anxiety, depression and how she was put on a cocktail of medications as a young child. What followed was a downward spiral of alcohol & drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, running away from home, and attempted suicide. Bianca was often accused of being 'checked out' or 'not present'... yet what she was doing was simply disassociating from her body, due to her sexual abuse. Millions of children around the world have experienced sexual trauma and were misdiagnosed as having ADHD instead of PTSD. Why do parents not look beyond the symptoms and the labels? Why do we medicate our children, essentially masking the red flags that tell us that the child is dealing with something much deeper than a bunch of medically declared 'symptoms'? Listen in for yourself and see how you can support your own children so this kind of sexual abuse and ultimately stimulant drug abuse doesn't happen to your own children. For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

BOYS LACK INITIATIONS is a powerful episode with Philip Folsom. Philip is an Anthropologist, Culture Development expert, and president & CEO of Wolf Tribe. In addition, he is the co-founder of VALOR, a PTS and resiliency program for warriors and first responders. Philip is known for his unique adventure programming and Tribe workshop that focuses on the primary culture components of building healthy and high-performing teams. Philip Folsom’s reputation in the team development world is legendary. His in-person events, seminars, and experiences have dramatically improved the lives of over 500,000 people teaching the importance of peace, power, and sacred purpose. Philip is a regular contributor at the USC Marshall School of Business and sits on the High-Performance Board of Red Bull. His work is regularly featured on television and podcasts around the world. Philip’s current clients include Microsoft, Apple, Snapchat, Space X, and Riot Games. Philip and I talked about the importance of initiating boys to successfully and powerfully transition from boyhood into adulthood. Some culture, the Jewish for example has such rituals as part of their cultural heritage. Usually, there is an element of religion to it, but the kind of initiations that Philip talks about are simply boy meets world and gets prepared for incoming challenges. Philip and I both believe that by 'prepping' young man to become responsible men with 'grit' we will make the world and our planet a huge favor! So, what do we do? What can we do today to prepare our young boys for manhood? Are we doing enough as parents? Could we do more? Unfortunately, comfort and convenience are trying to prevent us from upgrading our [human] operating system. But now that we know that, we can make our old habits die and create new ones. How? Listen in to this episode... For more information on Philip and his work, please visit www.mywolftribe.com For more information on this podcast please visit www.adhdisover.com

ANTHROPOLOGISTS QUESTION ADHD is an episode in which I share my personal thoughts on a recent article (May 2020) by biological anthropologists Kristen Syme and Edward Hagen from Washington State University called "Researchers call for new approach to some mental disorders". In the paper, published in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, the researchers propose a new approach to mental illness that would be informed by human evolution, noting that modern psychology, and in particular its use of drugs like antidepressants, has largely failed to reduce the prevalence of mental disorders. For example, the global prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders remained steady at 4.4% and 4% respectively from 1990 to 2010. The anthropologists argue that some conditions might be a mismatch between modern and ancestral environments such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD. Hagen pointed out that there is little in our evolutionary history that accounts for children sitting at desks quietly while watching a teacher do math equations at a board. Other disorders such as depression, anxiety and PTSD are not hereditary, occur at any age and are often tied to threatening experiences. Hagen and Syme propose they may be responses to adversity and serve as signals, much like physical pain does, to make people aware of the need for help. Here is a link to the article: https://news.wsu.edu/2020/05/26/researchers-call-new-approach-mental-disorders/ For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

IT'S NOT GENETIC is a clear cut, scientific episode with genetic scientist Chris Ramsey on how mental 'disorders' such as ADHD are not 'genetic', but rather 'epigenetic'. As Dr. Bruce Lipton likes to say: "We're not victims of our hereditary blueprint, therefore we are in charge of our lives and we can change our genes through changing our environments." Chris and I talked about ADHD as a disorder, children as unique souls and the effect labels such as ADHD might have on our children. In short, we've been sold another false narrative that ADHD is genetic. It's just simply not the truth. Keep questioning those narratives and trust your intuition, parents! For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

THE NURTURED HEART APPROACH is a beautiful episode with Howard Glasser, the Founder of the Children’s Success Foundation and creator of the Nurtured Heart Approach®. He likes to think of himself as a voice for children’s greatness so that ultimately children can find their own voice of greatness. Howard’s training background is in family treatment, clinical studies and educational leadership and his body of work has been inspired from his work with some of the most intense and challenging children. He has been referred to as one of the more influential living persons working to reduce children’s reliance on psychiatric medications and his work has been featured on CNN, in Esquire Magazine, as well as in now inspiring a growing number of programs worldwide. Howard is the author of 15 books, including Transforming the Difficult Child, Notching Up the Nurtured Heart Approach, and Igniting Greatness and is a sought after Keynote speaker at conferences in areas of treatment and education. The Nurtured Heart Approach has been successfully adopted by the state of New Jersey’s Coordinated System of Care and is being examined as a model of care by other states as well as being currently researched by both by Rutgers University and the University of Arizona’s Zuckerman School of Public Health with findings soon to be published. He currently teaches certification trainings on his method, teaches at Andrew Weil’s renowned program at the University of Arizona’s School of Integrative Medicine as well as in the new Transformational Wellness program at U of A’s School of Public Health. Howard and I had a moving conversation around ADHD children and our society's need to honor children for who they are and not try to mold them into who we think they should be! For more information on Howard Glasser and The Nurtured Heart Approach, please visit http://www.howardglasser.com For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

IAN TURNED OUT is another perfect example of a young adult, Ian who was diagnosed and medicated as a child and ended up self-medicating with drugs and almost committing suicide. Luckily, he turned his life around and got himself off of the stimulant drugs that were leading him towards darkness. The notion that unmedicated children with ADHD will self-medicate later in life is simply a made-up narrative that doesn't hold up when it comes to the latest scientific evidence. Many parents are intimidated by teachers, principles, and doctors alike with this fable of doom. It's gotta stop! Listen to Ian and you will hear for yourself, yet again, that if children with adverse childhood experiences in life are 'sedated' with stimulant medication, they will more likely end up facing trouble than children who were not medicated. For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

WHERE ARE THE FATHERS is a deep exploration of the notion that fatherless households majorly impact a child's experience of the world, his or her environment, and himself or herself. Most of the time, divorces are not peaceful and conscious and the children end up in the crosshairs of two angry parents, unintentionally dragged into the drama, ultimately creating family trauma that creates in a child the behaviors we then call symptoms and label them as a disorder know as 'ADHD'. If you're a father of a child diagnosed with ADHD, please listen to this podcast carefully as we as men have a duty, a responsibitlity to be there for our kids... NO MATTER WHAT! Our absences in our children's lives are creating much of the 'disorder' in our world today. We can do better than that. We can start today. We can stop running now! Fathers, join me on this movement to end ADHD by putting a stake in the ground as confident, grounded, and masculine role models full of certainty about life! For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com or follow us on Facebook @adhdisover

MAD IN AMERICA is a powerful episode that aims to debunk the most common misconceptions around ADHD (it's a brain disorder, it's genetic, it's due to a chemical imbalance, Medication is the most effective treatment, etc.)with the help of Robert Whitaker. We also discussed the Russell Barkley lead 2002 'Global ADHD Consensus' and how misleading and incomplete the paper was. Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history. He is the author of five books, three of which cover the history or practice of modern psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for science writing, and in 1998 he was part of a team writing for the Boston Globe that was shortlisted for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles questioning the ethics of psychiatric research in which unsuspecting patients were given drugs expected to heighten their psychosis. He is the founder and publisher of Mad in America, a webzine critical of the modern psychiatric establishment. For more information on Robert Whitaker and Mad in America, please visit: www.madinamerica.com For more information on our podcast and the movement, please visit: www.adhdisover.com

WHY IMPULSIVITY MATTERS is a delicate and textured download around impulsivity. We've all heard it before: "He's so impulsive." As if it was a bad thing. Even when we diagnose children with mental disorders such as ADHD, impulsivity is listed as one of the symptoms of this so-called 'brain disorder'. But if we have it all wrong? What if Impulsivity is actually a needed skill to hone our own intuition? What will happen if we keep sedating our children's impulsivity with stimulant medication? Can an adult who was medicated as a child properly use their intuition? Listen in and see if you resonate with what I channeled here in this episode. For more information on this podcast, please visit www.adhdisover.com

A DISEASE CALLED CHILDHOOD not only describes how we feel about the overdiagnosis of children with ADHD, but it's also the title of one of the award-winning books by Dr. Marilyn Wedge. Dr. Wedge is an award-winning family therapist and author of several books (‘Pills are not for Preschoolers’, ‘A Disease called Childhood’, to name a couple), and numerous professional articles in the field of family therapy. Dr. Wedge has had blogs on the Huffington Post and Psychology Today, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal She has consulted for People Magazine, Parenting Magazine and Natural Health Magazine on issues of child development and how to raise happy, healthy children. In this episode, Dr. Wedge tells us about the most common causes for ADHD... and it's not what you might think! Join us as we dive deep into the world of ADHD, family, trauma and mostly find out how to start healing the entire family when a child with ADHD is present. For more information on Dr. Wedge, please visit http://www.marilynwedgephd.com For more information on this podcast and our movement, please visit http://www.adhdisover.com