Taking Control: The Adhd Podcast

Here's something nobody tells you about aging with ADHD: the part that feels like decline might not be decline at all. It might be retirement. Or perimenopause. Or just the fact that the external structure that quietly managed your symptoms for thirty years finally disappeared — and nobody warned you it was doing that much work. The question isn't whether your brain is changing. It is. The question is whether you understand why, and what the research actually says about where it leads.Dr. Brandy Callahan is a clinical neuropsychologist, Canada Research Chair in Adult Clinical Neuropsychology, and the founder of the LiBra Lab — the Lifespan Brain Health Lab at the University of Calgary. Her research sits at the intersection most researchers haven't bothered to explore: what happens to the ADHD brain across decades, and specifically, what connects ADHD to elevated dementia risk. What she's finding — about allostatic burden, about the gap between how people perform in a lab versus how they function in a grocery

What happens to your sense of self when the coping strategies you've relied on your whole life start to give out? For a lot of us, "pushing through" wasn't just a strategy, it was the story we told ourselves about why we kept making it. And when that story stops being true, what we're left with can look a lot like grief.Dr. Kathleen Nadeau has spent decades sitting with people in that moment. She's interviewed 150 older adults with ADHD about what the losses actually feel like — the unmet retirement fantasies, the disorientation of late diagnosis, the particular sting of watching younger generations get the support that was never offered to them. She knows what keeps people stuck. And she has a lot to say about what's possible on the other side.This is the second episode of our ADHD and Aging series, and it goes somewhere we didn't fully anticipate. Kathleen pushes back on the idea that aging with ADHD is mostly a story of subtraction. She makes the case, grounded in decades of research, that our brains are m

"You forgot because you didn't care enough." Most people with ADHD have been told that — or have told themselves that — more times than they can count.Dr. Daniella Karidi returns to challenge it. She's a PhD researcher from Northwestern who has spent her career studying memory in ADHD, and her opening argument is one of those ideas that reframes everything that comes after: forgetfulness isn't a failure. It's the default of the system.This episode also kicks off a new series on ADHD and aging — what happens when the structure we've built around our ADHD starts to change, how to tell normal forgetting from something more serious, and why brain fog in perimenopause and menopause is absolutely not your imagination.Dr. Daniella Karidi is the founder of ADHD Time and a board member of CHADD Greater Los Angeles. Find her at adhdtime.com and on YouTube at ADHD Time on Air.Links & NotesSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (00:46)

If you've ever given everything to a friendship and been left wondering what went wrong, Caroline Maguire has a gentle but clarifying answer: you probably gave too much, too soon, to someone who hadn't yet earned it. That's not a character flaw — it's the ADHD brain doing what it does when it finally finds someone who sees it. The dopamine hit of new connection can tip straight into hyperfocus, and suddenly you're all-in on a relationship that hasn't had time to prove itself. Caroline calls it the impulsive friendship cycle, and she has spent years helping neurodivergent adults find their way out of it.Caroline is a social emotional learning expert, ADHD coach, and author of the award-winning Why Will No One Play With Me. Her new book, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults, arrives April 14th — and it's not another book that asks you to fix yourself to fit a friendship model built for someone else's social battery. Instead, she starts with a reframe that carries the whole conversation: our friendship st

If you've ever spent an entire day performing a version of yourself that felt nothing like the real you — holding it together at work, seeming calm when you're not, passing as organized — you already know something about masking. But knowing it and understanding it are two different things. Dr. Sharon Saline returns to help Pete and Nikki unpack what masking actually is: hiding traits, suppressing impulses, and overcompensating to appear more polished than you feel. It's a coping mechanism that can be useful, but for adults with ADHD, chronic masking carries real costs — increased anxiety, emotional exhaustion, a growing disconnect between who you show the world and who you actually are.One of the most important distinctions in this conversation is the difference between masking and presentation. We all show up differently in different contexts — there's a version of you at work, with close friends, with your partner. That's not masking; that's healthy. Masking is specifically about hiding, about a core sense

It's not the blow-ups that do the most damage in a relationship — it's the quieter stuff. The look you misread, the deadline you missed again, the apology you've given so many times it stopped meaning anything. For those of us with ADHD, these small misconnections harden faster because we arrive already carrying a lifetime of being told we're too much or not enough. Dr. Dodge Rea is back to help us name what's really happening beneath the surface when relationships start to calcify.Dodge walks us through the concept of misattunement — the challenge of being both intact and in touch at the same time — and why ADHD brains and neurotypical brains can miss each other without anyone being at fault. He shares a powerful reframe: "It's not your fault and it's not your fate, but it is yours." Both partners have ownership work to do, and it starts with putting down the shame long enough to actually talk about what's hard. From the kitchen stepladder analogy to his expanded Ferrari metaphor, Dodge offers language that

If you have ADHD, chances are you've developed a deeply ingrained habit of apologizing — for being late, for forgetting, for talking too long, for existing in a way that feels like an inconvenience. In this episode, Nikki and Pete unpack why over-apologizing is so common in the ADHD experience and how rejection sensitive dysphoria fuels the cycle. They explore what happens on the receiving end when apologies become emotional labor for someone else, and why pre-apologizing can actually undermine your credibility and prevent others from having their own authentic reactions.The conversation moves from apology into repair — a critical distinction. Where an apology is one-directional, repair is a two-party activity built on acknowledging impact, taking responsibility, and resetting the relationship. Nikki walks through the framework of acknowledge, repair, reset, and Pete shares a powerful lesson from his own therapist: your power ends with your skin. You get to own your part, but you don't get to own someone else

Being called "low maintenance" feels like a win — until you realize the price you've been paying to earn it. In this episode, Pete and Nikki dig into why so many people with ADHD build their identity around not needing anything from anyone, and what happens when the bill comes due.Pete defines maintenance as the information, time, supports, accommodations, and care that let you function without constant internal triage — and argues that nobody is maintenance free. Together they explore the privatized support behaviors that keep ADHDers silent: not asking for written instructions, not requesting deadline extensions while drowning, saying "whatever works for you" when you have strong preferences, and hiding the enormous effort required to look effortless.The conversation introduces two low maintenance archetypes — the Ghost, who disappears when overwhelmed and returns like nothing happened, and the Fixer, who over-functions to become indispensable and then collapses. Pete and Nikki explore what both patterns co

GPS is Now Open! Visit https://takecontroladhd.com/gps to learn more and take control of your planning today!This episode turns into a stealth self-care intervention when James Ochoa joins Pete and Nikki and immediately drags “motivation” out of the tidy, planner-friendly realm and into the messy, bodily reality of fear, avoidance, and chronic stress. They start with the familiar ADHD paradox—knowing exactly what to do and still not being able to do it—and James reframes that stuckness as normal rather than shameful, then introduces “resourcing” as the practical antidote: not a single trick, but layered supports (internal and external) that make motion possible even when meaning, willpower, and good intentions aren’t showing up.From there, the conversation gets uncomfortably specific in the best way, as Pete uses a long-avoided dermatologist appointment to walk through what “functional pressure” and relationship-based accountability can look like in real time. They explore why the hardest part is often the mo

GPS is Now Open! Visit https://takecontroladhd.com/gps to learn more and take control of your planning today!That “this year will be different” promise feels so good when it’s fresh… and so brutal when the old patterns quietly return. In this episode, Pete and Nikki unpack why that boom-and-bust cycle hits so hard for ADHD brains: the early dopamine of a new system (or a newly organized sock drawer), the unrealistic maintenance expectations baked into most productivity advice, and the emotional crash that follows when the setup doesn’t hold.They dig into the real trap underneath the resolution mindset—living in the gap between who you were yesterday and who you hope to be tomorrow—and how to pull your attention back to the only place you actually have leverage: today. Along the way, they talk about why asking for help can feel so risky (hello, shame and RSD), how to regulate before you ask, and what it looks like to reframe help as advocacy instead of rescue. The goal isn’t becoming someone new. It’s learning

When you're running on empty, your emotions hit harder and last longer. This week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, Pete and Nikki explore what happens to emotional regulation when you're already depleted—and what you can actually do about it.Building on last week's conversation about compassionate reframing, this episode dives into the physiology behind emotional dysregulation and RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria). Pete shares insights from the polyvagal theory and the concept of the "vagal brake," explaining why breathing alone isn't enough when you're in fight-or-flight mode.Nikki breaks down the differences between emotional regulation, emotional dysregulation, and RSD with real examples that anyone with ADHD will recognize. Then they walk through practical grounding techniques that actually work—from ice cold water to wall push-ups to finding safe connection with others.You'll learn why your ADHD brain feels emotions at 100% when others are at 50%, why that negative comment from ten years ago still

Pete and Nikki kick off the new season by naming the thing nobody wants to put on a vision board: the post-holiday crash. If you’ve come out the other side feeling “behind,” they argue you’re not failing—you’re recovering. And because ADHD loves a transition about as much as it loves a quiet restaurant, that return-to-normal whiplash can hit harder than you expect.The temptation, of course, is to fix the feeling by buying a brand-new feeling: new planner, new system, new you, new personality, new carbon-based lifeform. Nikki gently drags that impulse into the daylight and offers a more realistic move—skip the reinvention and reestablish one anchor routine you already know helps. Something small, repeatable, and boring in the way that’s actually useful, whether it’s hydration, an end-of-day reset, or getting sleep back on purpose instead of by accident.They also lean into compassionate reframing—swapping the “I blew it” narrative for language that’s both true and less cruel—because shame is a famously unreliab

To close out Season 31, we turned the microphones over to someone who knows us better than almost anyone in our community: Melissa Bacheler, our DiscordMom, friend, and occasional chaos agent. Instead of the usual coaching, planning, and problem-solving, Melissa surprises us with a full-blown quiz-show-style conversation designed to reveal stories we’ve never told on air. No points, no pressure—just questions that spark nostalgia, laughter, and a surprising amount of self-reflection.Melissa steers us through three big categories: personal hobbies, memories from childhood and adolescence, and a handful of wildly imaginative “what if” scenarios. Nikki talks about her deep love of puzzles, watercolor, country music, and solitude. Pete shares his affection for filmmaking, collaborative storytelling, woodworking, and turning every car he’s ever owned into a “Doctor.” Together, they trade stories about childhood fears, nicknames that should never have been uttered in public, their dream cars, early celebrity crushe

Emotional planning sounds like one of those concepts you think you already understand — until you realize it has nothing to do with mood journaling, crystal grids, or color-coding your feelings. What Nikki brings forward in this conversation is something far more practical: the idea that ADHD motivation doesn’t start with logic. It starts with emotion. And if we learn to work with that reality instead of trying to muscle our way through it, the whole experience of getting things done changes.This episode was sparked by a discussion inside GPS, where members were reflecting on our earlier conversation with financial coach Nicole Stanley. Nicole talked about how emotionally meaningful goals are the ones we actually stick with — even when motivation falters. That hit a nerve. If emotional meaning helps us save money, why can’t it help us take out the trash, send the email, or finally make that dreaded insurance phone call?From there, Nikki pulls the curtain back on the truth most ADHDers already know in their bo

Aging with ADHD often hides in the background of our conversations, even though so many of us feel its effects every day. In this episode, we bring it forward with help from Jami Shapiro, whose work sits right at the intersection of ADHD, transitions, and later-life planning. She’s a senior move manager, ADHD coach, and the voice behind Grandma Has ADHD. Her mix of humor, candor, and lived experience sets the tone for a conversation that feels both comforting and disarming.Jami’s ADHD diagnosis arrived in her mid-40s, long after she had built a career, raised children, and weathered major life changes. The bigger surprise came later: realizing her mother had been living with ADHD as well, completely undiagnosed into her seventies. That discovery reshaped not only Jami’s understanding of her family history but also the emotional patterns she had carried for decades. It softened old misunderstandings and gave her and her mother a way to talk to each other that hadn’t existed before.From there, the conversation

We’re revisiting a classic — and for longtime listeners, a foundational topic: the Tolerations List. These are the small, nagging things we put up with every day — the crooked picture, the squeaky door, the wrong clock time — that quietly drain our focus and energy. Pete and Nikki first talked about tolerations all the way back in episode 106, and a decade later, they’re still finding new lessons in this deceptively simple coaching exercise.In this episode, they explore how tolerations evolve over time and how ADHD brains are especially vulnerable to letting them pile up. Nikki brings fresh perspective from her early coaching school days, where the idea originated as a way to identify and release mental clutter. They dive into how tolerations become invisible over time — from broken stove knobs and unpainted bathrooms to window coverings that never got ordered. Together they unpack the emotional undercurrent of these seemingly minor annoyances: why we live with them, how we rationalize them, and what it means

This week, we’re talking about what it means to be both introverted and ADHD, and how those two identities can collide—or beautifully harmonize—when you finally understand yourself. Our guest is Kyrus Keenan Westcott, better known as Ky, the creator behind The Vibe With Ky. With more than 1.5 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, Ky has become a leading voice for ADHD awareness, mental health, and the art of adulting without apology.Ky joins Pete and Nikki to share his story of a late ADHD diagnosis at age 35—how it reshaped his understanding of his past, and how he processed it through stages of grief, anger, and acceptance. We talk about what it means to find peace after years of wondering, “If I had only known sooner.”Then we dig into introversion. Ky helps us debunk the myths—no, being an introvert doesn’t mean you hate people, and it’s not the same as social anxiety. It’s about energy: how you spend it, how you recover it, and how to protect it through healthy boundaries. From managin

When Dr. Nachi Felt first joined us, he introduced two big ideas that stuck with a lot of listeners—the Cycle of Ambiguity and the Cycle of Agency. Those conversations gave language to what so many of us experience every day with ADHD: the frustration of getting stuck, and the relief that comes when we finally start moving again.This time, Nachi is back to take the next step forward with something new: the Cycle of Accountability. It’s not about guilt or discipline or “holding yourself to higher standards.” It’s about what happens when you stop treating accountability like punishment and start seeing it as connection—to your values, to your sense of purpose, to the people who matter to you.Together, we dig into how meaning drives motivation for ADHD brains, why avoidance feels so sneaky and familiar, and how the smallest acts of self-acceptance can spark real change. Along the way, Nachi talks about trauma, growth, and what it means to finally believe that you matter enough to take ownership of your own story

We love to say it: “Your future self will thank you.” It’s a mantra for hopeful planning, a reminder that the effort you put in now will pay off later. But for people with ADHD, that phrase can land like a challenge you keep failing to meet — because the gap between Now You and Future You can feel impossibly wide.This week, we welcome back our friend James Ochoa, licensed professional counselor, author of Focused Forward, and creator of the new reflective tool 11Q Your ADHD. Together, we’re digging into what makes long-term planning feel so fraught for ADHD brains — and how we can reconnect with the version of ourselves we’re trying to help.We’ll talk about the emotional weight of goal-setting, how perfectionism sabotages progress, and why redefining responsibility as self-support — not pressure — changes everything. James highlights how planning isn’t about control or productivity; it’s about compassion. When you treat “future you” like someone worth caring for, you create the emotional safety that makes rea

In 1992, a struggling advertising executive in Manhattan walked into his Upper East Side doctor's office with what he thought might be a revelation. His boss had just been diagnosed with ADHD, and the symptoms—the scattered thinking, the time that evaporated, the constant feeling of running to catch up—sounded eerily familiar. The doctor listened, nodded, and delivered his professional opinion: "ADD is a myth created by the media. You just need to do more crossword puzzles."Alan Brown took that advice seriously. For five years, he became exceptional at the New York Times crossword puzzle—almost able to complete the notoriously difficult Saturday edition. His ADHD, however, remained completely uncured.This week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, Alan Brown—now known as the ADD Crusher—returns after nine years to unpack a question that haunts nearly everyone with ADHD after diagnosis: Now what?Because here's what nobody tells you: getting diagnosed is the easy part. The hard part is learning to ask for what y