Latest / ADHD Strategies & Support for Women / Why Can’t My Brain Just Accept Things? ADHD, Skepticism & The Need for Clarity | Ep 158

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Why Can’t My Brain Just Accept Things? ADHD, Skepticism & The Need for Clarity | Ep 158 · ADHD Strategies & Support for Women

• 0:29
  Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
• 0:31
  I'm Renee Alan, the host of this podcast.
• 0:33
  Excited to be here today to talk to you about.
• 0:40
  Trying to think of how to put it.
• 0:42
  When you have a resistance to accepting information, more commonly than not, that's probably not a good way to explain it.
• 0:52
  But if you ever find yourself listening to somebody or looking at an Instagram story or reading an article and your first thought is, nuh.
• 1:05
  Or someone's talking to you and you just want to push back, you want to just push back.
• 1:09
  And this can happen a lot, especially if you're perceiving some information that you don't agree with.
• 1:14
  But what if it's new information?
• 1:16
  You don't even know that much about it.
• 1:18
  Or if you really sat and thought about it, you probably wouldn't resist it, but you have this, almost this defiance of wanting to argue against an idea or.
• 1:34
  Or just listen to someone talk.
• 1:35
  And.
• 1:36
  And I don't know if I'd say, be critical, but just think, I don't know.
• 1:41
  I wouldn't do it that way, or I wouldn't say it that way, or I.
• 1:43
  I don't know if I can accept that, or I don't even know if that's true, or, you know, just kind of ripping it apart before you even let them finish the sentence or complete the idea.
• 1:56
  Because sometimes if you do hear the whole idea, you're actually.
• 2:00
  It's a little different than what you think.
• 2:02
  So if you find yourself being defiant at times or you have a child who's doing that or someone in your life, maybe this will help you understand that person a little more.
• 2:18
  Because there are a lot of people that hear things and just go, yeah, you know, and.
• 2:22
  And they accept it and they take that new idea and they don't need to evaluate it, or maybe they just agree or they don't get caught up in the little nitpicky things, but you find that you get caught
• 2:33
  up in the nitpicky things.
• 2:35
  And then you say something like, let's say somebody's talking to you about two Christmases ago when these people came to visit, and you could sit there and listen to the rest of the story and be entertained.
• 2:50
  And there might be a lot of other people, and maybe it's a funny story, but you want to stop them and say, it wasn't two Christmases ago, it was three Christmases ago, because you're hung up on that one
• 3:00
  little thing.
• 3:00
  So it could be a big idea or it could be something tiny that maybe isn't significant.
• 3:06
  But in your mind it is.
• 3:08
  And I found this with my husband, meaning that I was the perpetrator, the person that resisting that.
• 3:14
  There were times that we'd be in a group sitting, because if it was one on one, I might say, was that really two years ago or was that three?
• 3:21
  And then we talk about it, we'd figure it out.
• 3:23
  But when he's telling the story and then I say something like, no, like, Todd wasn't there, it was Jay who was there.
• 3:32
  Or that was actually when, you know, and I'm correcting the story, and to me, I want the story to line up, I want it to be right.
• 3:40
  And I might have that perfectionism in the details where to him that doesn't really affect the story.
• 3:47
  Just let me tell the story.
• 3:49
  And if you find that your brain wants to reject things or wants them to be right or is just really skeptical and that you really need to analyze and go deeper, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 4:02
  But if you're debating with people all the time, then maybe it can disrupt relationships.
• 4:07
  And that's one of the key points of having a diagnosis with adhd, is that it is affecting these different areas of your life.
• 4:15
  It's not just that you have the symptoms.
• 4:17
  It's not just that you have ADHD symptoms.
• 4:19
  And dealing with overwhelm or executive dysfunction or time blindness or losing things or running into things or whatever it is, having ideas that just never stop coming up in your head or songs that play over and over.
• 4:33
  It's just this one line of the song and it just plays for a whole day or two days or three days, or who knows?
• 4:38
  It just keeps coming up.
• 4:40
  We have these symptoms and we could spend all day telling a doctor about them.
• 4:46
  But one thing they want to know is, have you had any of these symptoms that they're asking about?
• 4:50
  Maybe they wouldn't ask you about the songs because maybe they've never had adhd, never known anybody.
• 4:54
  Well, first of all, it's not part of the diagnostic process, but they may not even know that's part of it.
• 4:59
  You know, if they don't have someone close to them in their lives or they don't have that symptom or adhd, then they may not understand that.
• 5:07
  But going back to the other things is one of the criteria.
• 5:13
  What criteria?
• 5:14
  One of the one criteria item.
• 5:17
  I don't know what the plurals is, that is that it's disruptive in multiple areas of your life.
• 5:26
  It could be at work, it could be at school, it can be at home, it can be in relationships.
• 5:31
  So it can be how you function in different settings, how it affects your grades or your ability to be on time for an appointment.
• 5:38
  If you don't have a full time job or you're not going to school and you are working at home and you go in for a diagnosis, you might, you know, like, no, I don't go to school, but when
• 5:49
  I was in school, this or yeah, it shows up in, in different, in different public settings, you know, like being on time for a doctor's appointment or showing up and not remembering that you're supposed to bring some paperwork
• 6:03
  with you or something like that.
• 6:04
  So.
• 6:05
  So yeah, it shows up in different areas.
• 6:08
  And this is one area where it could show up and affect relationships or even a job situation if you have a need to debate things a lot.
• 6:21
  And I think of it as kind of when I tried to define it when I was looking into this, because I didn't really think that I did this until maybe the last four or five years, but I definitely
• 6:33
  saw it.
• 6:33
  One of my children saw it all the time as the mom, because I was the one that he was defiant against.
• 6:40
  Or I mean, not necessarily like bad bad, but just arguing, debating everything and, and even like it's time to get up in the morning.
• 6:52
  And maybe I said three or four words before that and somehow he found something that he wanted to debate in those three or four weeks before that when the real point was just it's time to get up, you
• 7:05
  know, but he would get into the logic of it or if that was actually correct and get hung up on that.
• 7:13
  And as a mom, it was frustrate, frustrating.
• 7:15
  I didn't know at the time that he had adhd.
• 7:18
  I didn't know very much at all about adhd and I definitely didn't know I had it, but I didn't think I did that.
• 7:24
  And I find now that I do.
• 7:26
  And even though I said I don't think it showed up until the past five years, when I look back at my marriage, it did.
• 7:32
  Because early on I had to learn that that was disruptive in a conversation or something that my husband didn't like was for me to debate, interrupt.
• 7:44
  He doesn't really care if I interrupt otherwise, but if I'm correcting him, he doesn't like it unless it's one on one.
• 7:51
  So you know, maybe it can ruin the flow of a story if you're telling a story or talking about something.
• 7:57
  But in my mind it's like, but that's not correct.
• 8:00
  You know, maybe it's that perfectionism.
• 8:02
  And.
• 8:02
  But there are a lot of reasons that we can get into that debate mode or get into a correcting mode, and let's look into them.
• 8:10
  So your ADHD brain doesn't have a good functioning system for processing dopamine.
• 8:21
  And you might feel like you don't have enough dopamine or that you are like, let's say low dopamine.
• 8:27
  Doesn't mean your body's not making it for whatever reason.
• 8:30
  It's not firing into the places, meeting the needs that your brain needs to be able to do things that you need dopamine for.
• 8:38
  And part of things that you need dopamine for is to feel good inside, to feel like you can continue to go with things.
• 8:45
  And if you have that fat deficit, or let's just call it low dopamine, and you might be seeking in different ways, like it was a little bit ago, looking for some sugar or whatever.
• 8:55
  There are other things that help you get that dopamine.
• 8:57
  And it can be, you know, scrolling through your phone or, or, or things like that that just is, is a passive activity.
• 9:05
  And it, and it, it helps feed that, but it's, it's not a continuous supply and it's not really helping anything.
• 9:12
  It just feels good in the moment.
• 9:14
  But analyzing, poking holes at things, find the nitpicky things and not necessarily to prove an idea right or wrong to somebody else.
• 9:25
  You might not feel like, I'm somebody that has to be right, like I have to be right.
• 9:30
  You might be open to hearing what other people say or learning like, actually, I made a mistake, I was wrong.
• 9:39
  But proving an idea right and proving somebody else right or wrong is different.
• 9:44
  So proving the idea right or looking into it more can give you enough stimulation that it triggers a dopamine release.
• 9:54
  And it helps you get that dopamine that you need in your brain to feel good and to do things.
• 9:59
  So when you have a little doubt about something or a curiosity, and that's one of the symptoms with adhd, is having this curious mind.
• 10:10
  What are you curious about?
• 10:12
  What do you want to know more about?
• 10:13
  What questions does come up?
• 10:15
  Because if you have this popcorn brain that you have ideas and you can have ideas about, you know, how do you want to pack for a trip or what do you want to wear, or how you're going to
• 10:25
  plan a party or, you know, who knows what.
• 10:27
  It could just your ideas don't even have to make sense or I'll go to the same thing.
• 10:31
  But you can also have curiosity that invites more information and instead of just having ideas come up in your mind, questions come up in your mind.
• 10:43
  So you might be a questioning person where someone else is like, oh, that's cool.
• 10:49
  And oh, yeah, that makes sense.
• 10:51
  And they may not even be hearing all the details or care about all the details, but some are just glaring out at you and you latch onto it and it triggers some curiosity and it triggers this, oh, I'm
• 11:05
  excited about it.
• 11:06
  Even though you may not look excited, but when you're in that mode, it's creating this uptake of dopamine.
• 11:15
  And it can help you feel better.
• 11:17
  And we act upon and act in a way that makes us feel better.
• 11:22
  It's a lot easier to act that way.
• 11:24
  And so when you are hearing something and it's not logical, it doesn't make sense to you, or you think, is that really true?
• 11:33
  You know, and you're just the skeptical mind, then your brain has something to do.
• 11:40
  You have a little puzzle, and you get to figure it out.
• 11:43
  And whether you're just figuring it out in your mind, like, nuh.
• 11:46
  Because.
• 11:47
  And then you're looking back, it couldn't have been that Christmas, because two years ago, Grandma and Grandpa were there, and that Christmas, when this story happened, Grandma and Grandpa weren't there.
• 11:56
  Like, you can be.
• 11:57
  That can be.
• 11:58
  Your curiosity is in your own mind.
• 12:00
  You're putting all those ideas together.
• 12:02
  You're connecting all the do.
• 12:03
  And that can be exciting.
• 12:05
  Or go on your computer and you look it up or you ask somebody else or you get fired up with, how can they even have a whole Instagram story about this when that's not even true, you know, or
• 12:16
  whatever.
• 12:17
  Obviously there can be a lot of stories that aren't true, but it just gives this.
• 12:23
  This little task that your brain can do, and your brain feels more compelled to act and do and.
• 12:31
  And continue on.
• 12:33
  And for me, with the kind of the hyperactivity part of adhd, and even if you're not diagnosed with that presentation, the hyperactive, impulsive presentation, you may have some of those symptoms, even if you don't have enough for that
• 12:49
  part of a diagnosis, does that make sense?
• 12:52
  So you might have this energy that's just in you anyway, and then this is activated.
• 12:58
  And to be able to just sit on it and not be able to look it up, or to sit on it and not be able to say, but, nuh, nuh, that's not correct.
• 13:08
  It builds up inside of you, and then you just start to feel like, oh, I'm gonna burst, I'm gonna burst.
• 13:13
  I'M gonna burst.
• 13:14
  And one thing I think about with this is watching a movie, and this is just a curiosity thing.
• 13:20
  It's not really a.
• 13:21
  It's a problem to solve in your mind, right?
• 13:24
  Is when you're watching a movie or a TV show and you see an actor and actress and you think, I know I've seen them before, but what movie, What TV show have I seen them in?
• 13:34
  It must be a Jane Austen movie.
• 13:36
  It must be this, you know, so you have this idea and you have this new puzzle, and then you might ask the person next to you if they'll let you talk to them during the movie, and they might
• 13:46
  say, oh, yeah, yeah, like, I know who she is.
• 13:48
  And they tell you, and you get your answer, or you open up IMDb, it tells you everything.
• 13:55
  Or, you know, you Google it, or however you look up information and you find that out.
• 14:00
  If you're in a movie theater, you might be going crazy because you're not going to open your phone.
• 14:04
  You might not talk to the person next to you, and it might just be eating at you to solve that problem.
• 14:11
  And it might hit you partway through, and then you.
• 14:14
  And then you relax.
• 14:15
  Ooh.
• 14:16
  You know, like, you no longer have that stress, and there's actually just this release, this happiness of, hey, you know, like, and that.
• 14:25
  And that can also be a dopamine release of, you know, like, I solved the problem.
• 14:29
  You know, you get the excitement of playing the game and then feel a relief from knowing the answer or feel a relief from talking to the other person or even, you know, being online.
• 14:42
  I think that's why a lot of these conversations happen.
• 14:45
  I find myself on Reddit sometimes, and I'm going to just involve myself in some conversation about a TV show or something.
• 14:53
  And I think, why am I doing this?
• 14:55
  And it's because I get excited by it.
• 14:58
  And then I want to share and I want to say, oh, actually, that wasn't last season.
• 15:03
  That was the season before of Survivor or whatever.
• 15:05
  Like, it's not like I'm the, you know, the expert on Survivor episodes, but just doing that sometimes I think, why are you wasting your time doing this?
• 15:14
  Like, this person doesn't need to hear from you.
• 15:16
  And at the same time, it feels good to do it.
• 15:18
  It feels good to complete that task that's come up in my head of, oh, I'm gonna.
• 15:24
  I'm gonna help this person out or whatever it is.
• 15:27
  So.
• 15:29
  Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 15:30
  So you get the stimulus or the stimulating effect from analyzing things, from figuring it out from hyper focusing Whether it's doing it on your own or hyper focusing on a detail or deconstructing it.
• 15:49
  One of my daughters and I love to analyze things.
• 15:52
  We love to do that together.
• 15:53
  Not everyone in our family thinks that's as fun.
• 15:56
  So they're kind of like, why are you still talking about this?
• 16:00
  Number one?
• 16:01
  Or it could sound like an argument.
• 16:03
  Sometimes it's really not.
• 16:04
  It's just a curiosity driven conversation.
• 16:07
  But not everyone enjoys that.
• 16:08
  And it's fun when you find someone who does.
• 16:11
  So the other thing is how our brains work with adhd.
• 16:21
  So part of the brain deals with being flexible cognitively.
• 16:29
  So with ideas that you can shift how you're feeling about something to something else.
• 16:36
  It doesn't mean this doesn't in any way mean that you're accepting something that you know, like that that's wrong, that you, that you shouldn't accept in your life.
• 16:44
  But there are a lot of times in life that you just need to let something go, that you just need to let it go and, and not worry about it.
• 16:53
  I mentioned a few weeks ago going into a restaurant, finding out, I can't remember what was it, 14 minutes after or was it 20 minutes?
• 17:03
  I can't remember sitting there at the restaurant not knowing that when I checked in, said, we have four of us, you know, this is my name, and sat back down.
• 17:13
  I didn't know they were going to notify me for a table by my phone.
• 17:16
  By the time I found it out, many, many, many other people had sat down in front of us while we were just sitting there.
• 17:23
  And once I found that out, was it horrible that we sat that long?
• 17:27
  No, but it was just the injustice of it all that, like, wait, all those people went before us and I thought, you know, everything, you know, you can give yourself all the little things to help you feel better.
• 17:39
  Everything happens for a reason.
• 17:40
  What if those people are sitting at that table because then they got to see somebody they hadn't seen in a long time?
• 17:44
  You know, I can make up stuff like that in my mind or we're sitting here, this is fine.
• 17:48
  I need this experience.
• 17:49
  Who knows what I'm going through to try to get myself to calm down.
• 17:53
  But my cognitive flexibility, it wasn't that smooth that day because I didn't really struggle with the idea that we waited longer.
• 18:04
  I struggled with the idea that the person, the manager that I spoke to to ask about it.
• 18:15
  Wasn't, wasn't, wasn't caring in any way and wasn't following logic.
• 18:22
  He just wasn't.
• 18:22
  And I Don't have to get into the details, but the fact that he wasn't logical.
• 18:27
  When people don't get things logically, even like, customer service calls, and you're like, do you understand this?
• 18:33
  And I'm really not mean to customer service people.
• 18:35
  I'm really not.
• 18:36
  But sometimes you talk to people who are trained to read off of something, to respond to what you say to them, and then when you say something to them that's a little different than that, and you try to
• 18:48
  help them understand what you're actually saying, and then they go back to that, and then you say, well, can you see how this is?
• 18:55
  You know, this way it can be hard to let go of the idea of somebody else may not get it, Especially when it's a customer service thing.
• 19:06
  I think that bothers me.
• 19:08
  And then, you know, and then the logic of, well, can't you see that?
• 19:11
  You know, Anyway, yeah.
• 19:14
  So my ability to shift from that situation to sitting down at the table and just being happy, I did it.
• 19:22
  I did it actually better than I thought of.
• 19:24
  I could or wanted to, but emotionally, it was difficult.
• 19:30
  I could feel it in my body for quite a bit of time.
• 19:33
  And when we have adhd, we often struggle with this smooth flexibility.
• 19:41
  Sometimes we're gripping and someone's just saying, it's okay, it's okay.
• 19:45
  Just let it go.
• 19:46
  And you're like, it's not okay.
• 19:48
  It's not okay.
• 19:49
  You know, like, I want the justice of it all to be right, and it's not.
• 19:55
  So when a premise, when an idea, when a situation conflicts with the internal logic of your brain from your past experiences, from what you've learned, what you've been taught, what you've experienced, most of the people in your life
• 20:11
  would agree, and you hit a little speed bump.
• 20:16
  You find a situation that's.
• 20:18
  That conflicts with that, how well do you adjust?
• 20:23
  And I'm talking in these situations where you don't need to be the mama bear, you don't need to go in there and, you know, say, hey, this isn't right.
• 20:29
  My child's been treated this way.
• 20:31
  You know, sometimes you have to stand up and bite.
• 20:33
  But a lot of times it's really not a battle that you should worry about.
• 20:37
  It's really something.
• 20:38
  You can just go on your way and you'd be better off.
• 20:41
  You don't need to call customer service back and complain.
• 20:44
  You're just giving energy to that and just let it go.
• 20:48
  Think of something else.
• 20:49
  You know, talk to somebody else.
• 20:51
  Not about that, but just to get your brain and your body off of it because we can't always get ourselves to shift.
• 20:59
  But if we're presented with something totally different and we, we can feel a lot better.
• 21:06
  It can take some time.
• 21:08
  It can take music.
• 21:10
  I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I was at Disney World, oh, I don't know, three years ago or something.
• 21:16
  We've lived here four years.
• 21:18
  One of the, the first time I went to Hollywood Studios and if you're not familiar with Disney World, we were a Disneyland family living in California our whole lives.
• 21:25
  But Disney World, instead of having Disneyland, has the Castle place, that's Disneyland.
• 21:30
  And then California Adventure has a lot of other rides.
• 21:34
  They first opened that as a California themed park and then they changed it so there's not very much California in there.
• 21:40
  Here's some.
• 21:41
  But Disney World, their Disneyland or their Castle Land with Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and Space Mountain and stuff is Magic Kingdom.
• 21:52
  And I wish they just called that Disney World.
• 21:54
  In my mind that matches.
• 21:55
  In fact, that's probably some of my inflexibility that I have in my brain is I think, why can't they just do that?
• 22:02
  Why do we have to call it Magic Kingdom?
• 22:04
  You know, I have some cognitive rigidity with that.
• 22:08
  That it's, it kind of bothered me, like, why can't, why do we have to call it Magic Kingdom?
• 22:12
  They don't call it Magic Kingdom at Disneyland and maybe it's a nickname, I don't know, I've never heard that.
• 22:18
  But they have Magic Kingdom's Hollywood Studios that has some of the same rights or areas as Disneyland.
• 22:24
  And then they have Epcot, which has some of the Tomorrowland things.
• 22:29
  What else?
• 22:30
  What am I missing?
• 22:33
  Oh, Animal Kingdom.
• 22:34
  So they got the four Lands.
• 22:36
  Anyway, first time I was at Hollywood Studios and actually that tangent on the Four Kingdoms doesn't even matter, but it was my first time at Hollywood Studios.
• 22:46
  My daughter in law was with me, my grandchildren, my son, and not my son that's married to my daughter in law, but my other son.
• 22:52
  And so we were taking the kids and we were going there.
• 22:54
  My daughter in law had been there before, so she was excited about being there, but we both had to go through customer service to take care of something before we, we go in.
• 23:05
  And you know, it's like the Internet's not working well or you don't have enough cellular, like you have to have things up there in your app.
• 23:10
  So there's a little bit of stress and stuff like that.
• 23:12
  But I go up to talk to the customer service lady and.
• 23:20
  And it didn't work out well, let's just say what I needed she wasn't able to do.
• 23:25
  And she was super rigid about it.
• 23:27
  And.
• 23:27
  And she kept asking me questions.
• 23:30
  And the more she asked me questions, I was trying to figure out why the answers I was giving weren't right because they'd worked out before.
• 23:38
  I knew this is sounding really vague, but none of it worked out.
• 23:41
  So I felt really dejected.
• 23:45
  But I had to accept it.
• 23:47
  That's just the way it was.
• 23:48
  I walked away.
• 23:49
  My daughter in law walked up wanting to get the same thing.
• 23:52
  She said, let me try.
• 23:53
  She went up, got it right away.
• 23:54
  She answered the right questions and I was being truthful and she was being truthful.
• 23:57
  But I think I was second guessing it so much that I kept seeing doing the wrong thing.
• 24:02
  Anyway, it affected me emotionally and I could not get my brain out of that.
• 24:09
  And then I couldn't get my emotions out of that.
• 24:11
  I couldn't feel good and happy walking down the main street, whatever they call it there at Hollywood Studios.
• 24:19
  So it was hot outside.
• 24:20
  First thing we did was go to the Frozen show, which is like a dancing and singing on stage thing.
• 24:25
  And I've been to it multiple times since and it's really fun.
• 24:29
  But the first time I was like, this is fun.
• 24:32
  But I was stuck.
• 24:34
  I was stuck shifting from what had just happened.
• 24:39
  Kept thinking about, trying not to think about it and stuff.
• 24:42
  And then as the Frozen songs play on the giant screen instead of enjoying it, I'm crying because I'm thinking about when my daughters were younger.
• 24:51
  Yeah.
• 24:52
  So anyway, yeah, I was in a weird space.
• 24:56
  I could not talk myself into shifting.
• 24:58
  But I kept trying and I kept trying and I kept trying.
• 25:00
  Finally we go on to this ride, which I actually didn't super love.
• 25:03
  It was a.
• 25:03
  I don't know if they're still have it or I think they're going to replace it.
• 25:07
  It's called Rock and Roller Coaster and it's a roller coaster.
• 25:09
  And it made me dizzy because there was a lot of CGI at the beginning with Aerosmith.
• 25:16
  I had to think, who's Steven Tyler's band Aerosmith?
• 25:19
  So they were there and the CGI just makes you really dizzy.
• 25:22
  And so I thought, oh, don't look, don't look, don't look.
• 25:24
  But it was already like messing up my brain.
• 25:25
  So I was closing my eyes, closing my eyes in that first room.
• 25:28
  And then they said, we're going to open the doors at the side and you need to walk through that door.
• 25:34
  But the way that they said it was Walk this Way.
• 25:37
  And they started playing the real song of Aerosmith, Walk this Way.
• 25:41
  And the guitar play part, you know, I mean, I was like, immediately it did a shift.
• 25:47
  And sometimes we can't get the brain to shift on its own, but we can find an activity to do it.
• 25:53
  And it wasn't enough for me just to walk through Disney World a little bit.
• 25:56
  It was the song.
• 25:57
  It was a song that.
• 25:58
  Who knew?
• 25:58
  I loved it that much, but it just immediately made me happy.
• 26:02
  I'm walking this way, I'm walking to the beat I'm just.
• 26:05
  It completely shifted.
• 26:07
  And so sometimes when you're feeling that way and the people around you, they may not be saying anything, but it might be affecting them.
• 26:14
  They may not be like, really, like, I kind of wish, you know, she wasn't being so grouchy or whatever.
• 26:22
  I wish she was just in a better mood, you know, I wasn't being grouchy, but I was just trying.
• 26:25
  I wasn't happy like I was in my normal happiness.
• 26:28
  And sometimes it can be hard to let things slide and you might just have some of that rigidity.
• 26:32
  You might have emotional dysregulation.
• 26:34
  Who knows what's going on?
• 26:36
  But just know that that can be part of your adhd and back to being contrary or contradicting people.
• 26:48
  Sometimes you have a hard time of just setting that aside and just letting it sit there because it might build up some energy in you.
• 26:55
  And then you just feel this need to persist and just take care of it and talk to the person about it or reconcile it or something.
• 27:06
  And that can be hard.
• 27:08
  And maybe you just have to do that on your own.
• 27:10
  Maybe you just research it on your own.
• 27:11
  Maybe you just.
• 27:12
  Maybe later in a better setting just say, you know, you know, it might to me right now because I'm like a people pleaser person.
• 27:20
  I'm feeling like, is this honest?
• 27:21
  Is this, you know, with myself?
• 27:23
  Am I just being people pleaser person?
• 27:25
  But there is some value to not causing problems for people.
• 27:30
  And you could just look into it maybe a little bit more, because sometimes you have an impulse of that's not even correct.
• 27:36
  And then later you weren't 100% correct either.
• 27:38
  So maybe research it a bit.
• 27:41
  Maybe talk to the person later on.
• 27:43
  You know, when you were talking about that, I was thinking about that.
• 27:46
  Was.
• 27:46
  Was that two years ago or three years ago?
• 27:48
  I think it was two years ago.
• 27:49
  Well, no, I think, you know, and you can go through it.
• 27:51
  Even though to me right now that sounds kind of Vague, because you already looked into it.
• 27:55
  But.
• 27:56
  But in your mind, you're reconciling that paradox of, like, it's not quite right, and.
• 28:01
  And restoring that to.
• 28:04
  Or just trying to tell yourself it doesn't matter because maybe it doesn't to the other person, right?
• 28:09
  It just matters to you.
• 28:11
  So.
• 28:12
  And that you might resist ideas, and this can even be with ideas that you have.
• 28:17
  I find myself doing this on my podcast sometimes, and we're in conversations, and I don't know if you hear it and relate to it or even notice it or if it drives you crazy.
• 28:27
  But that's to reject the idea of something being a hundred percent like, all the time.
• 28:36
  When somebody says something like this happens all the time, like they're trying to give it either as an absolute truth, or it never happens, or it always happens.
• 28:49
  And you just think, but there's gotta be like, a time that it doesn't happen, right?
• 28:56
  Like, and so you're searching for that one time that doesn't happen.
• 29:01
  When they say that, or if they say it never happened, you think, aha, because it happened one time.
• 29:05
  You know, So I do that sometimes when I talk about something on here that I'll go, but maybe, like, I don't want to say that.
• 29:12
  Never.
• 29:13
  You know, it can show up a lot of times that it's a defensive reaction to analyze, like, to make sure that what you're saying or what you're hearing or agreeing to or what you're taking in actually is true
• 29:32
  or goes along with your belief system, your morality, your moral framework.
• 29:39
  But you might just have that tendency of my intellectual makeup.
• 29:45
  My brain wants to make sure that if I'm going to say all, it means all.
• 29:51
  If I'm going to say always, it means always.
• 29:55
  And some of those personality tests, like the Enneagram.
• 30:00
  Is that what it's called, Enneagram?
• 30:02
  Have you ever taken that test?
• 30:04
  I might be the only person.
• 30:05
  Enneagram test, maybe the only person on the earth that tests like that kind of drive me crazy.
• 30:11
  And that one, for some reason, threw me, like, over the edge.
• 30:14
  Which really doesn't mean over the edge, but in my mind, it was over the edge.
• 30:19
  But, yeah, my daughter really loved it when she heard about that test.
• 30:23
  She sent it to our whole family in our little group chat and said, you guys should take this.
• 30:28
  We were actually at Disneyland.
• 30:30
  Speaking of Disneyland, I was at Disneyland with my second oldest daughter and maybe my youngest son.
• 30:35
  We did a trip with his friends a few times.
• 30:38
  We're at the breakfast at the hotel.
• 30:40
  We like to stay in Marriott hotels.
• 30:42
  I'd love it if Marriott gave me a free hotel for saying that.
• 30:45
  But they won't.
• 30:46
  But I love staying in their hotels and at Disneyland Disney World they, the breakfasts are just amazing.
• 30:53
  You know, like you get Mickey shaped waffle makers and waffle irons and you look out and there's a Mickey shaped pool.
• 30:59
  And it's, it's just so fun.
• 31:00
  It's just super fun if you're a Disney fan.
• 31:03
  And so I'm in line in the happiest place on earth at the hotel near the happiest place on earth.
• 31:08
  And my daughter says you should take this test.
• 31:12
  And, and then other people had taken it and I thought I don't want to take that test.
• 31:15
  But then I thought okay, I'll take the test.
• 31:17
  So I, I remember starting it while I'm in line, what was I doing waiting for a waffle?
• 31:21
  I don't know.
• 31:22
  But all of a sudden I was going crazy inside like nuh, nuh.
• 31:29
  And I can't even remember how the questions were asked because a lot of times a test might say never, sometimes, most of the time, always or something, you know, like.
• 31:41
  Or I'll have five things, there's one in the middle.
• 31:43
  I don't know what they are, but for some reason, and maybe you don't pick apart words as much as I do, but in the question, like the first part, the precedent of the question and then that there was
• 31:57
  something in the first part that's just like you can't ask it like that because then you're actually like not representing what the answer is.
• 32:05
  And every, almost every question I'm like, there's no way I can answer this clearly.
• 32:11
  Did I have to answer it?
• 32:12
  No.
• 32:12
  But I was trying to go along, you know, like helped my daughter feel happy that I was doing this enneagram test and see what my, my result was.
• 32:22
  I emotionally and brain wise like I could not accept it that, that the answer that I gave was going to be right.
• 32:31
  It wasn't going to represent because the way that they wrote it made it impossible for me to represent a true answer.
• 32:36
  And I'd love to hear from anybody else on the whole earth that had a problem with that test, but I had a hard time with it.
• 32:43
  And then it made me mad that it became really.
• 32:46
  And they were enneagram coaches and stuff.
• 32:49
  And I taught yoga for the firefighters.
• 32:51
  Back then it was called Fireflex yoga.
• 32:53
  And we would have little retreats or little gatherings and I loved them.
• 32:57
  I love anything that's social, and I get to meet other yoga teachers and stuff across the Bay Area when we lived in California.
• 33:02
  And she said, I'm going to have an Enneagram coach come and talk to us and do our tests and we'll have that kind of as an activity.
• 33:10
  And then afterwards we'll talk a little bit about the yoga and go out for dinner and stuff.
• 33:14
  And I'm like, oh, you know, like in the planning, and I really didn't have a choice but like, oh, can we just, you know, like, visit instead and, like, not have the Enneagram coach?
• 33:25
  But no, she wanted to.
• 33:26
  And I actually just arrived late.
• 33:28
  That's how I.
• 33:30
  I think I did have another class I was teaching I could have gotten out of.
• 33:33
  But I'm just like, oh, well, I actually won't get there on time for it once she planned it out.
• 33:37
  But I just knew it would fire me up.
• 33:38
  I knew it would fire me up.
• 33:40
  Because even that when you put into this group of, like, you are this personality.
• 33:43
  And like, yeah, but I'm also like that.
• 33:45
  And then it's like you have a hard time being in a box and committing to that box because you just can't accept it.
• 33:53
  You just can't accept it.
• 33:55
  And it's not like you're rebelling or anything.
• 33:58
  It's just a defensive mode that you need to analyze something and feel a hundred percent good about it to proclaim that that's you or that's what you agree with.
• 34:09
  Not everybody's like that.
• 34:10
  A lot of people can just go, yeah, yeah.
• 34:12
  And then.
• 34:13
  And I'm like, but what about this?
• 34:15
  And it's not even that I'm trying to prove a point.
• 34:19
  I'm just trying to.
• 34:21
  I would love it if people agree with the logic or the why the test isn't good.
• 34:26
  So I don't even have to have them agree, like, what my thing is.
• 34:29
  But it is common in neurodivergent people.
• 34:34
  And if you have ADHD or a child with autism or you might find that they can be really rigid and have a hard time with different things like change, but also have a hard time accepting an idea that
• 34:49
  they don't see as being right or.
• 34:52
  You didn't understand what I said.
• 34:53
  You didn't understand what I said.
• 34:54
  That's not what I said.
• 34:55
  You know, and you want.
• 34:56
  You want every conclusion to come as a result of correct information.
• 35:04
  I think that's my.
• 35:05
  What I need, but I need.
• 35:07
  It needs to be based on the right thing.
• 35:10
  So let's go to another Reason I mentioned before that impulse control can be a part of it, and that can be a big part of it.
• 35:17
  Neurotypical brains, if they don't struggle with impulse control, they might in some things, you know, like maybe they have a hard time not spending money or something, but as far as like blurting out answers in class or interrupting
• 35:32
  conversations or whatever, running before thinking, bolting into a room, standing up quickly and hitting your head on a cupboard, like, there's a lot of ways that that can show up, but it can also show up in being able
• 35:48
  to suppress the impulse.
• 35:49
  There might be other people besides us who have an impulse to question an idea, but they may think, I can hold this till later, or I can hold it like this doesn't even matter.
• 36:02
  I don't even know this person.
• 36:03
  They can talk about this, they can talk about it on Reddit, I don' need to get involved or, or whatever you, and you can get that way on social media, like you may have fatigued from that long ago.
• 36:12
  I'm not going to get in any of those conversations and about who's the best baseball team or anything political or whatever.
• 36:19
  You can come to that conclusion on your own.
• 36:22
  I'm not.
• 36:22
  And maybe you're able to control that impulse, but in the moment of like being in a conversation or something, then you might have a lower threshold to filter this out and just tell yourself it's okay if something's illogical.
• 36:38
  It's okay if they get the dates wrong.
• 36:40
  It's okay if they thought that was, you know, in the 1970s, but that song was actually in the 1980s.
• 36:46
  Hello?
• 36:47
  You know, it's okay.
• 36:49
  Let them think that.
• 36:49
  And I don't need to correct it.
• 36:50
  Is this my class?
• 36:51
  Do I need it?
• 36:52
  No.
• 36:52
  But if a logical flaw, some counter idea, like something pops up, the impulse to just like talk about it can, can be really hard to fight.
• 37:05
  And it's really interesting because there are some scientists, some psychiatrists who talk about some of these things, of why we might do these things besides just the impulse.
• 37:16
  One is Dr.
• 37:17
  William Dodson.
• 37:19
  Dodson with a DOD as in dad and dad.
• 37:24
  But he talks about the ADHD brain as being an interest based nervous system rather than motivation based.
• 37:34
  And if you've seen that if you have kids with ADHD and try to get them to do something like, come on, it's important to have your room clean, or come on, let's get your homework done.
• 37:43
  You know, like, it's important to get good grades and that doesn't motivate them.
• 37:49
  There Are a lot of teachers that say, in fact, with one of my sons, my older son, that she could motivate the rest of the kids to sit still, to participate in class or whatever by giving them a
• 38:03
  chocolate or a candy at the end of class.
• 38:05
  And my son just told her, I actually don't even like that candy.
• 38:08
  I hardly like any candy.
• 38:10
  And then she said, what kind of candy do you like?
• 38:12
  And he liked Hershey kisses.
• 38:13
  So she started bringing Hershey kisses.
• 38:15
  But he wasn't motivated by most of what motivated other kids.
• 38:18
  But 100%, he's interested in.
• 38:22
  He's motivated or has the ability to be engaged because he's interested in it.
• 38:28
  I don't know if you have any children like this, but this is really common with little boys, at least in my family, and I've seen them in other families, too, who are super smart.
• 38:39
  They love to learn.
• 38:41
  But they get into a classroom and they learned all that.
• 38:45
  Like, they've grasped all that information, and now they're bored.
• 38:47
  It's common.
• 38:48
  You know, you're like, oh, they're just bored in class.
• 38:50
  So then they get up and they walk around.
• 38:52
  My youngest son would get out of his seat and go check out what was on the teacher's desk.
• 38:56
  He was curious.
• 38:57
  He wanted to learn whether it was how something worked, what that looked like.
• 39:00
  I wonder how if I open that up, he's not going to, you know, he shouldn't open that up.
• 39:03
  But he's fixing iPhones for people when he was 11 or 12 or something, had a little side business.
• 39:09
  He liked to do what he was interested in, and he liked to learn more about it.
• 39:13
  It could be the same for us.
• 39:14
  We might not be in a school situation, but we might.
• 39:22
  We might be driven by interest in a conversation.
• 39:26
  We might have a hard time following the conversation just to hear and learn new things.
• 39:33
  But if something pops out at us that does pique our interest, like, is that true?
• 39:38
  And we love to debate and we love to analyze, or we know that it's true or it's not true, or we see somebody spell something up on the whiteboard and they spelled it wrong.
• 39:46
  I spelled it wrong.
• 39:47
  Hello.
• 39:48
  You know, and you just want to correct it, and it's just, you know, it's just in.
• 39:52
  In you and it's piqued your interest.
• 39:55
  It's finally motivated you to be engaged.
• 39:58
  And I don't know if motivating is a good word, because the other people are motivated, because they just want to be there and, you know, expand their knowledge or whatever.
• 40:05
  The situation is or just be there to enjoy the person or their story.
• 40:10
  But for you, it might spark.
• 40:13
  Like you get the spark for this dopamine and you know, release and all of a sudden you're just like, oh good.
• 40:22
  And now you're fired up.
• 40:24
  The spark gets a flame and then you want to run with it and run with it.
• 40:27
  Might be sharing, looking into it more, discussing sharing's conversation, saying hello actually, you know, and that I think is a big reason for me that I had a hard time being still and quiet in a classroom.
• 40:41
  Well, still is probably different but.
• 40:43
  But I wanted to share.
• 40:45
  I was sparked in my mind usually then of, oh, I get this, I understand this.
• 40:50
  And you know what else I have, you know, like a story to back that up or that happened last week or oh, this is exciting or whatever.
• 40:58
  And you, and you're connecting, you're.
• 40:59
  You have curiosity and then you find validation and then you talk to the teacher and you have a question and it's just all interest based.
• 41:06
  And your brain might work that way and so you actually kind of like taking some information and doing something with it.
• 41:16
  Not just to correct it, but just to expound on it and understand it more.
• 41:20
  But it's not always seen as appropriate in society or it's not important.
• 41:24
  It's not something we have to do right now.
• 41:26
  Another doctor, Dr.
• 41:27
  Edward Hallowell and Dr.
• 41:29
  John Rady in a book called ADHD 2.0, they talk about when our brain is actively engaged in a task and that we default to hyper analytical internal processing.
• 41:46
  Think about school.
• 41:46
  Are you engaged in an external task?
• 41:49
  Not all the time.
• 41:50
  You're not always doing an art project or standing up and walking around or doing something that's external.
• 41:55
  So you might default to being hyper analytical.
• 42:00
  Interesting, huh?
• 42:02
  And they talk about our brains as our minds as having a Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes.
• 42:08
  Like, how are you supposed to stop that?
• 42:10
  How are you supposed to stop that?
• 42:11
  It's beyond impulse control, right?
• 42:12
  It's.
• 42:13
  We don't have the brains, we don't have the equipment to stop it.
• 42:18
  So we can't just ponder an idea.
• 42:20
  Although I love to do that on here, right, Ponder an idea.
• 42:23
  But we go into exploring it more and more and more and more and we get excited.
• 42:27
  And when I look into these things and I learn about it, it sparks me so much and I'm like, I'm excited to share it with you.
• 42:32
  And then I come on here and who knows if I'm able to explain it correctly, but that excitement gets me here and then another doctor, Dr.
• 42:40
  Russell Barkley, he's written different books on ADHD.
• 42:44
  He talks about different challenges that we have for executive function.
• 42:47
  He's actually one that I've had some, like, argumentative nuh when he says stuff, but I like a lot of things he says too.
• 42:55
  So Dr.
• 42:55
  Russell Barkley talks about our low inhibition.
• 42:59
  So that might be the inability to stop yourself from saying something, but it's not just stopping.
• 43:06
  He says it's not just stopping a physical action, which would be saying something out loud or, or, you know, getting up and walking around.
• 43:14
  Whatever that inhibition may be, it also stops your ability to.
• 43:19
  To change your.
• 43:21
  Your mental focus.
• 43:23
  Like I mentioned in the restaurant, Can I.
• 43:24
  Can I stop thinking about this?
• 43:26
  Can I just enjoy the time?
• 43:30
  Can I just stop whatever thoughts are going in my mind?
• 43:34
  Can I get my body to calm down?
• 43:35
  Can I just shift?
• 43:37
  And, you know, maybe you need the Aerosmith song.
• 43:41
  But if your brain detects something that's a contradiction or it's unverified claim, people with a really high inhibition that are, like, able to control that might say, you know, I don't need to think about this anymore.
• 43:55
  And.
• 43:56
  And they not only physically don't do it, but they emotionally, they don't care.
• 44:01
  Wouldn't that be nice, huh?
• 44:02
  But for us, it's like an itch.
• 44:03
  It just keeps coming up and keeps coming up.
• 44:05
  And for me, it's like my brain wants to, you know, my whole body wants to explode, which is.
• 44:13
  I don't know, you might have your own way of describing it, but to me, there's just all this energy building up and.
• 44:19
  And what do you do with it?
• 44:20
  You know, change of scenery is a really good thing to do, talking to somebody, but sometimes talking to somebody about what happened, you know, venting can be good, but sometimes I feel like not everybody wants to hear all
• 44:36
  of it.
• 44:36
  And you might have a best friend who does want to hear all of it, but I don't know if you've used Marco Polo.
• 44:41
  You can make videos for people.
• 44:42
  You know, it's like video conversations.
• 44:44
  Like a.
• 44:45
  I could text.
• 44:46
  And sometimes I've made some for my daughter and she has four kids, she's busy and stuff.
• 44:53
  And after doing the venting mode, then I'll delete it and then I'll do the.
• 44:58
  Okay, the cleared my thought.
• 44:59
  I'll either won't talk about it because I've just gotten it out, but nobody else had to hear it, but I said it out loud, or I'll just give a very shortened version, like, oh, that didn't go well this
• 45:08
  morning.
• 45:09
  But now I've got this car, you know, I got the rental car.
• 45:11
  Whatever the story is that you're trying to move past.
• 45:15
  But anyway, if you kind of feel like your brain has a hard time accepting things, not always a bad thing, but it can disrupt your life.
• 45:23
  And understanding why you might have that resistance, why you might be skeptical, why you might need things to be all proven first, or you're happy to accept it if you can analyze it first, or you want to point
• 45:39
  out why.
• 45:41
  I could accept this, but the premise is wrong.
• 45:43
  The premise is wrong.
• 45:44
  You know, like it's making it too hard.
• 45:46
  I've got to find that test just to kind of show you to analyze it some more.
• 45:49
  It's been years.
• 45:50
  It's been a lot of years.
• 45:52
  But I hope you don't feel like you're defiant.
• 45:55
  Sometimes I feel like I'm defiant.
• 45:58
  But honestly, it's actually helpful because it helps me understand my son, long ago that he wasn't defiant.
• 46:04
  And I actually didn't think he was.
• 46:05
  I just thought he liked to argue.
• 46:07
  Maybe that's the same thing.
• 46:09
  And his teachers and coaches said he'd make a great attorney someday.
• 46:12
  They'd say stuff like that.
• 46:13
  And he's not going to do that, but he would be a really good attorney.
• 46:16
  And he's actually.
• 46:17
  I mean, I don't know.
• 46:18
  I've never gone to law school, so I don't know what it takes to be a good attorney.
• 46:22
  But he's smart and good with people and logical, for sure.
• 46:28
  Anyway, I gotta go.
• 46:29
  I got a class.
• 46:30
  And you've got things to do, too.
• 46:32
  This is a shorter one, but I'm.
• 46:34
  I was gonna say I'm getting married this weekend.
• 46:36
  I'm not.
• 46:36
  My daughter's getting married this weekend.
• 46:38
  So this episode, I'm debating if I can make one more.
• 46:42
  This one will show up this week and I'll make another one show up next week.
• 46:47
  Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make one till next Wednesday.
• 46:49
  So we'll see.
• 46:49
  I've got a lot of packing to do, a lot of packing to do.
• 46:53
  So I will let you go.
• 46:55
  Thanks for being here.
• 46:56
  Bye.
• 46:59
  Help other women find the show Rate Review Share with someone you know Help other women find my show Rate Review Share with someone you know Hurry before you forget Open windows Broken shadow Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
• 47:30
  without.
• 47:51
  Rewind I run out of time to sing Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short the silence of sound has yet been found but not by me.