Hey Team!

We've all had those moments where we walk away from a conversation and immediately spiral into a "self-regulation hangover," wondering if we said too much or if we were just being "tolerated" rather than included. Feeling like maybe this whole friendship thing maybe just isn't for us.

This week, I'm talking with Caroline Maguire, a veteran social skills coach and the founder of the Social Excellence training program. She holds a Master's in Social Emotional Learning and is one of the few experts who approaches social skills as a "muscle" that can be built, rather than an innate talent you either have or you don't. Her first book, Why Will No One Play with Me?, became an instant staple for neurodivergent families helping children struggling with social skills to make friends. And with what she learned from that book she is now bringing to her upcoming book, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults: A Guide for the Anxious, Uniquely Wired, and Easily Distracted.

In this episode, we're looking at the mechanics of friendship through a neurodivergent lens. We talk about the importance of proximity and "shared interest fuel" in bypassing the awkwardness of small talk. We also touch on the "rejection lens" and how our history of being bullied or marginalized can often color our current adult relationships. Caroline also walks me through some of her most practical frameworks, including the "Ice Cream Scoop" method for building trust and why having a "third place" is essential for creating low-pressure social friction.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/285

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. ADHD impulsivity often leads to "oversharing," which creates a "self-regulation hangover" of shame. The shift here is to view sharing as taking one "scoop" at a time, waiting for the other person to match your level of intimacy before offering more, which protects your trust and your energy.
   2. Our brains naturally hang on to negative social stories like Velcro while letting positive ones slide off like Teflon. Recognizing this biological bias allows you to challenge the "rejection lens" and realize that a friend's lack of a text might be about their own hard time rather than a reflection of your worth.
   3. Making friends isn't a 1-2-3 prescriptive step; it's about "social friction" and proximity. By prioritizing showing up at the same place consistently, you allow people to get used to you, which lowers the barrier for entry into community and future friendships.
   4. Remember, deep friendship doesn't happen instantly and takes work. Don't be discouraged if you're first attempts don't work out, keep at it and build up those friendships over time.

Is it possible to take ADHD off "Hard Mode"?

We often hear that living with ADHD is like playing a video game where the difficulty slider is permanently stuck on "Hard." But while the challenges of executive dysfunction are very real, we sometimes make things even more difficult for ourselves by insisting on doing things the "right" (read: hardest) way.

In this classic monologue episode, William Curb explores the concept of Easy Mode. What would it look like if your morning routine felt effortless? What if your workspace didn't feel like a barrier to your productivity?

By utilizing the "Focusing Question" from Gary Keller's The One Thing, William breaks down how to find the lead domino that makes every other task easier—or completely unnecessary.

• The "Easy Mode" Vision: Defining what a low-friction life actually looks like (and why a perfect life might actually be a bit boring).

• The Focusing Question: Learning to ask, "What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

• The Domino Effect: Why focusing on small, strategic tasks creates the momentum needed to tackle the big ones.

• Environment Design: Using the three parts of a task (Setup, Doing, and Cleanup) to reduce the cognitive load of starting.

• Progress over Perfection: Shifting the goal from "fixing" your ADHD to simply sliding that difficulty scale down a few notches.

• The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

• The "Walls of Awful" concept (shoutout to Brendan Mahan)

• Checklists & Automation: Tools to make remembering "unnecessary."

"Sometimes life is hard because our ADHD is making it harder, and sometimes it's because we're choosing to do things in the hardest way possible."

Find the full show notes and transcript at: hackingyouradhd.com/191

Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/hackingyouradhd

Hey Team!

We often talk about the "internal" struggles of ADHD, the messy desks and the forgotten appointments, but we don't always talk about how the outside world reacts to those traits. I'm joined by Brooke Schnittman, an ADHD coach and the best-selling author of Activate Your ADHD Potential. Brooke has worked with thousands of individuals to help them develop sustainable systems for focus and emotional regulation, but today, she's here to talk about a global study she conducted on the link between ADHD and bullying.

So in today's episode, we're talking about how this study was conducted and what we can garner from that data. We also discuss the "invisible disability" penalty, where our symptoms are misinterpreted as character flaws, and how "masking" can actually prevent us from progressing because we're too busy being chameleons. And we also cover some practical ways to identify safe people and build a "reciprocal" support system that helps buffer against the impact of chronic criticism.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/283

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. When faced with a threat or bullying, the ADHD brain often experiences a physiological "freeze" where the parasympathetic nervous system takes over. It's important for us to understand that we're not always in control of this shift, and not to be self-critical about how we react in the moment and give ourselves grace to do better in the future.
   2. To effectively manage a bullying situation, we have to understand the framework: repetition, power imbalance, and harm. Recognizing that a power imbalance can be "social status" or "neurotypical norms" rather than just a boss-employee hierarchy allows us to identify why a situation feels "off".
   3. Many ADHDers stay in bullying situations because the executive function required to leave (interviewing, onboarding, starting over) feels more overwhelming than the bullying itself. Shifting the perspective to "body data"—how your nervous system feels around that person—can be a more reliable indicator than your internal pro/con list.
   4. Since bullying often triggers a survival response that shuts down your executive functions, you can't rely on logic in the moment. To combat this, Brooke suggests focusing on nervous system regulation tools (like EMDR or grounding) to help your body feel safe again. You have to train your brain before the situation occurs so that "doing X when Y happens" becomes a more automatic habit.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what it says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways.

In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Improvement of Anxiety and ADHD following goal-focused cognitive remediation: a randomized controlled trial." This study investigates goal-focused interventions and looks at whether they can improve executive function and emotional well-being for adults with ADHD. There's not too much to the intro, so let's get into it.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/282

https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link

https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon

If you only listen to one episode this year to ground your understanding of ADHD, make it this one. We are dipping back into the archives to bring you a masterclass from Dr. Stephen Faraone, a world-renowned expert ranked in the top 0.01% of scientists globally.

In a world of 60-second TikTok "diagnoses" and viral misinformation, Dr. Faraone joins William to discuss the ADHD Evidence Project. They strip away the noise to look at what 208 internationally supported research statements actually tell us about the ADHD brain.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/202

What's Inside This Encore:

• The "Pyramid of Evidence": Why a charismatic story on social media isn't the same as a peer-reviewed meta-analysis.

• Debunking the "Modern Invention" Myth: Did you know ADHD was described in medical texts as far back as the 1700s?

• The Truth About Environment: From "Screen Time" to "Bad Parenting" and what actually causes ADHD (and what definitely doesn't).

• The Medication Gap: A look at the real-world costs of not treating ADHD, including the staggering statistics within prison populations.

• The "Default Mode Network": A fascinating look at why the ADHD brain struggles to flip the switch between daydreaming and "Executive Mode."

Why We're Re-Sharing This: This episode serves as a vital "BS detector" for anyone navigating ADHD. Dr. Faraone reminds us that while ADHD is a significant part of our lives, it doesn't define our entire identity: it's just the operating system we're working with.

In today's special rebroadcast, we're revisiting a deeply personal and essential conversation from the Hacking Your ADHD archives. When the world feels heavy and focus feels like a luxury we can't afford, how do we keep moving forward?

Will opens up about the "surreal" experience of navigating life's mundane demands: laundry, dishes, and school runs all while grappling with the sudden loss of his mother. It's a raw look at the cognitive dissonance of surviving a personal tragedy while the rest of the world refuses to hit the pause button.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/212

What You'll Re-Learn:

• Numbing vs. Resting: How to tell if you're actually recharging or just hiding from your feelings.

• The "Go Big or Go Home" Trap: Why your ADHD brain loves a fantasy plan, and why "going home" is usually the result.

• The Power of the Bucket: Shifting from the despair of being alone to the strength of community.

• Self-Grace: A much-needed reminder that being hard on yourself is never the productivity hack you think it is.

Whether you're hearing this for the first time or the fifth, William's insights on "resisting despair" are as timely today as they were when this episode first dropped

Hey team!

This week, I'm talking with Dr. Anupriya Gogne, a psychiatrist at Brown University Health in Rhode Island. Dr. Gonge works at the crossroads of addiction psychiatry and neurodevelopmental disorders, with a specific focus on treating ADHD during pregnancy and the postpartum period. She's dedicated to clearing up the misinformation surrounding medication safety during pregnancy, which can be seen in her book, Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Adult Women: Special Considerations in the Perinatal Period.

In our conversation, we dive into why hormonal fluctuations turn ADHD symptoms into a "perfect storm," the actual science behind "mom brain," and why your internal systems for keeping your life together tend to implode the moment a baby enters the picture. We also get into the nuances of how ADHD presents in women versus men, specifically regarding internal hyperactivity and emotional regulation.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/281

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. When ADHD symptoms suddenly appear or worsen, it's often not because the brain has changed, but rather that the environment's demands have finally exceeded the brain's compensatory systems. When life transitions occur, such as having a child, external chaos disrupts the systems that previously helped keep the ADHD in check.
   2. Chronic sleep deprivation isn't just being tired; it's also a failure of the memory consolidation system. While we are in deep sleep, our brain is encoding the day's events. If you aren't getting those stages, your working memory cannot function properly. These memory issues then compound with ADHD symptoms which can make it feel like you are experiencing early-onset dementia.
   3. In many adults, and especially in women, hyperactivity often isn't physical; instead, it's mental. It can manifest as negative self-talk on a loop, racing thoughts, or just feel like you have too many tabs open in your brain. Shifting the mental model to see internal ruminating as a form of hyperactivity helps identify the need for mental breaks rather than just physical outlets.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways.

In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Use of Cosmetics in Pregnancy and Neurotoxicity: Can it Increase the Risks of Congenital Enteric Neuropathies?" That's a lot. In this, the authors explore the hypothesis of neurotoxins such as microplastics, parabens, benzophenones, phthalates, and metals that can cross the placental barrier and disrupt the development of the fetal nervous system.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/280

https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link

https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon

Hey Team!

This week I've got Cate Osborn and Erik Gude on the show. Cate, known online as Catieosaurus, holds an M.Ed and uses her background in research and sex education to help neurodivergent folks navigate relationships and communication. Erik, known online as HeyGude, is an advocate and speaker who uses his platform to destigmatize the messy internal monologue of the ADHD brain. Honestly, it almost feels like I don't need to introduce these two given everything they've produced; they are definitely an online powerhouses. I've been a fan of their podcast, Catie and Erik's Infinite Quest: An ADHD Adventure, for quite a while now. So I imagine you've probably seen at least something from them.

And they've spent the last few years distilling their combined experiences into a new book designed to act as a foundational knowledge base for neurodivergent adults. The book The ADHD Field Guide for Adults was a ton of fun to read; it's written in an incredibly ADHD-friendly manner, and I really appreciated the approach, making this a book for adults where I don't feel like I'm being talked down to. So in the episode, we're definitely talking about the book, but we go into a ton of different topics. We talk about the "systems-first" approach to ADHD management. We break down the precision of language and why understanding that distinction matters. And a whole lot more, there's just a ton of stuff in this episode.

Check out The ADHD Field Guide for Adults which is available in hardcover, e-book, and as an audiobook narrated by the authors Cate and Erik.

Visit Catieosaurus.com for information on Cate's national tour, "Wildly Unprepared," and upcoming book signing events.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/279

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Understand the difference between shame (a fixed belief about who you are) and guilt (a feeling about what you did). Shame is an unchangeable dead end, but guilt is a "window for change" that allows you to acknowledge a behavior, such as being late or having a messy car, without condemning your entire identity.
   2. Recognize that "defeat" is often more comfortable than "failure" because defeat asks nothing of you; it simply means the game is over. Overcoming ADHD difficulties requires a healthy relationship with failure. Try viewing failure as a data point for "dissecting the system" rather than a reason to just stop trying.
   3. Many ADHD systems fail because they are built to satisfy "residual gook" from childhood. We often have internalized rules about how things "should" be done, like folding socks or separating silverware that have no basis beyond that it's just how we've always done it. Audit your tasks to see if you actually care about the result; if you don't, dismantling the expectation (like using bins instead of folding laundry) can remove the cognitive load of a performance you don't actually value.

Hey Team,

I've been working on a presentation for an upcoming conference called Neurodiversion, and when I was thinking about what I wanted to present, the idea of memes came to me, and I'm gonna be honest here: this was mostly out of a desire to just make looking at memes part of work. As I started looking into the concept more and putting together the presentation, I realized there's a lot more to it than I initially thought.

Memes are more than just digital clutter; they're a fairly vital part of modern culture. I know how that sounds, but this is visual shorthand. They give us a way to communicate that we are part of an in-group simply by understanding what the meme is. They are these inside jokes across entire online communities, and the more I dove in, the more I realized that memes are more important than they seem on the surface. They aren't just jokes; they're ways to find community, understanding, and meaning in our own experience. That's important even if they come from something silly.

And so that's what we're going to explore in this episode: how memes can give us meaning, how they can give us community, and how they can be a little dangerous.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/278

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. For ADHD brains, traditional social upkeep sometimes requires more executive function than we have available. "Pebbling" allows for a low-stakes connection that signals "I am thinking of you" without the cognitive load of a conversation.
   2. Digital content can act as a starting point for self-discovery, but it's still not a diagnostic tool. A meme can point you in the right direction, but it doesn't represent the actual lived experience of your impairment. Don't mistake a "relatable quirk" for the totality of the disorder.
   3. Virality is not a proxy for truth. ADHD brains can be prone to "sticky" ideas and sometimes skip steps on verifying facts. The shift here is moving from "It's relatable, so it's true" to "It's relatable, but what's the source?"

Hey team!

This week I'm talking with Dani Donovan, a neurodivergent artist and designer whose ADHD comics have been shared all over the internet. Dani holds a BFA in Visual Communication and Design and is the creator of The Anti-Planner. She's spent years as an advocate for neurodivergence, using her background in design to simplify those complicated, invisible daily struggles we all face. In our conversation today, we're diving into why traditional planners often feel like they never work how we want them to and how we can transition into a "toolbox" mindset instead. We explore the concept of "anti-shame" tactics and how to stop using mean-spirited self-motivation. Dani shares some of her favorite hacks for the mundane stuff, like an "Inbox Sprint" for tackling email debt and some unconventional strategies, including how she uses "worst drafts" and even Magic: The Gathering packs to keep herself moving.

Check Out the Anti-Planner: https://www.anti-planner.com/

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/277

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. We often beat ourselves up for "failing" to use a planner reliably after three months, but the reality is that our brains stop responding to the same stimuli once the novelty wears off. Instead of trying to find the one system you'll use forever, you can try building a "toolbox" of multiple strategies.
   2. Executive dysfunction isn't a monolith; it's a collection of specific emotional roadblocks like being intimidated, over-committed, or paralyzed by perfectionism. Approaching every task with a standard to-do list is like trying to use a hammer on a screw; it's the wrong tool for the specific resistance you're facing. By identifying the specific flavor of your resistance first, you can choose a tool designed to dismantle that exact barrier.
   3. Many of us have spent a lifetime using "mean" self-talk as a primary motivator because getting in trouble was the only thing that worked in the past. However, shame is a paralyzing emotion that actually increases avoidance. Shifting to an objective, "engineering" mindset allows you to view a failure not as a character flaw, but as a data point . Asking "Why did this fail?" instead of "Why am I like this?" allows you to troubleshoot the system rather than blaming the person.