Latest / ADHDtime On Air / ADHDtime On Air with Brooke Schnittman
Transcript
- Daniella Karidi, PhD: Many adults with ADHD feel stuck between the cast and the potential. As an ADHD coach, I hear this question again and again. ⁓ How do you stop fighting your own brain and start working with it? So welcome to ADHD Time on Air. I'm Daniella Caridi. And I am going to speak with someone that can answer some of those questions. It's an author, creator, amazing coach. And she's been helping hundreds of people with ADHD. We're going to talk with Brooke about her book, How to Activate ADHD Potential. And we're going to talk about the journey from being stuck and moving from a mess and chaos into a better place. And my first question is, what inspired you to write the book? Brooke: Great question. So when I, first of all, thank you for having me, Daniela. And ⁓ when I started my coaching practice in 2018, I was working one-on-one with adults with ADHD and a client asked me a simple question that pretty much ended up changing everything. She said she wished she had a community of other ADHD adults who understood what she was going through. Like she really liked the one I'm on coaching, but she wanted a community. So what I did was I brought all of my one-on-one clients together and created a group program. It was a beta group. And what I noticed very quickly was that the same themes kept coming up again throughout all of their lives. So people started struggling with like starting tasks, emotional overwhelm, consistency, confidence. And so I took all those themes, created lessons on it, and then built a program called 3C Activation that is our signature process and we use them one-on-one and group coaching to help ADHD adults move from chaos to clarity. Now, fast forward over time, that program grew and now I train coaches to use that framework with their own clients. And then writing activate your ADHD potential was a way to take those strategies, tools, lessons that came out of the work and make them more accessible to far more Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mmm. Brooke: ADHD adults than I could ever reach through coaching alone. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Wow, that's amazing. So I'm going to show the book. ⁓ So this is the book and mine is a little kind of out of shape because I used it to write in it because after every episode and in between there's places to kind of write. I left this open on purpose to show you guys. There's places to write kind of and to actively do the exercises. So what led you to make this book a combo of a workbook and an educational material and a teaching book? Brooke: I am very much a teacher at heart. My background is special education. I was a special ed teacher, assistant director of special education for 15 years. So even though I'm a coach, I love to educate. So authentically for me, when I started writing this book, even though originally I was only going to make it a book, not a workbook, it just wasn't... It wasn't really like suiting my soul. So halfway through the book, I was like, okay, I need to make this a workbook. ⁓ I need to give people actionable tools that they can use because we know with ADHD, very often we know what we need to do, but we don't implement it. So I wanted again to give the lessons that are in my 3C activation program to people in worksheets so they can do it on their own and use their own external accountability system. to go through the lessons. And if they can't have their own external accountability system, then I allow them to come into my community if they just sign up on the website, show their receipt of purchase, and they can go into our body doubling and peer-to-peer support community so they can go through the worksheets because we have to do the work with ADHD. It's not just knowing what we need to do. Daniella Karidi, PhD: which will lead me to the next question. You talk about motivation and you talk about doing the work. What would be the biggest tip you would give to a reader or someone considering getting the book ⁓ about doing the work in addition to what you said a second ago about like you could use some of these tools? What else would you say to keep us on track to complete the book? Brooke: Yeah, there's no right or wrong way of doing the book and you probably see it in the beginning of it. Like you can start at chapter three. You don't have to read chapter two. So come back to it whenever you feel like it. There are 12 steps in it and I have people who want to bang through it in 12 weeks, all or nothing mentality, but it is not meant to necessarily do one lesson a week. You could do one lesson a month. You can say, you know what, I'm six lessons in. And I thought of this other thing that I was going to do, so I stopped the book. I put it down. ⁓ But it's okay. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. You can come back on Lesson 7. So come back at your own pace, your own time. But I highly do recommend you have accountability while you're going through it. Daniella Karidi, PhD: love that. What did you use to get yourself to write the book? that is a challenge. Completing a project is a challenge for us with ADHD. So what got you to this stage? Brooke: Ha ha When I ever tell this story, people laugh. So I tricked myself into saying, I'm going to write this book in three days. I saw on YouTube, someone was like, how to write a book overnight. So I was like, yup, I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to hyper-focus and I'm going to bang out this book. So activation we know is so hard with ADHD. That is what helped me get started. I tricked my brain into saying, I am going to get this done. Now, I don't always recommend people do that because then you get discouraged very often if you aren't done after those three days and you're like, see, now I'm a failure and I'm going through the disruption shame spiral again. However, I was so motivated to your point once I started that I said to myself, okay, I know this isn't going to take a weekend and that's okay. I'm going to enlist in my business coach and I am going to get the first half done by May 31st. I'm pretty sure I had that in my graphic organizer in the book. And I need to get the first half done by that. So every week, I with my business coach. She was like, okay, how far are you? How far are you? How far are you in writing? How far are you in writing? How far are you in writing? And there were times where I wasn't writing. And then I remember that there were actually like a good couple of months that I had writer's block and I didn't know what to do. So I actually just stopped writing. And then once I felt that motivation again and the purpose and I felt connected to what was possible for the remainder of the book, I said, okay, now I'm going to keep going. And I was able to finish the book, started I think in February and I finished right before October. So I was able to get it out right before October because I self-published. So... That is what happened. I didn't push through on the times that it felt like I had writer's block. I just let it sit for a while. And when I had that creative spark, I went back to the book. Daniella Karidi, PhD: you basically wrote the book the way you recommend using the book. Accountability, flexibility, motivation, and just start. So you wrote the book how you want the book to be used. And that's amazing. That's really cool. Brooke: Correct. Amen. Amen. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And I had that strong motivation too to get it out by ADHD Awareness Month. And I told my designer and my editor, said, I have to get this by October. So wherever it is, it's going to be done. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be done. to be honest with you, when they first came out, This is the great thing about self-publishing. ⁓ When it first came out, there were some mistakes, even though I had edited a million times, I had read it a million times and there were a million eyes on it. ⁓ But I was able to go in and make those changes. So I feel really confident in where it is right now. Daniella Karidi, PhD: That is a good point about self-publishing, because I've been talking with a bunch of authors and people were talking about self-publishing versus a traditional publishing. And for people in the audience that might not know, in self-publishing, you have a lot more control. And it's also easier to create changes and versions because you have control. ⁓ I did a lot of the exercises in the book. ⁓ and one of the things that I, did find is that there's some level of repetition that created structure and helped my brain. So tell me a bit about the structures in the book. know there's 12 steps and I know there's forms. ⁓ tell me what, how, how you designed those specifically and what motivated you to create these structures. Brooke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's all based off of the ADHD disruption spiral. pretty much multiple times a day or multiple times a week, us ADHDers can be in any of these steps. So it starts with underwhelm, right? And then from there, we hate being bored and understimulated and underwhelmed. So then we move into, okay, I need an exciting new idea. I need to read, I need to do whatever it is that excites me so I can enhance my dopamine. Then You get hyper-focused on that idea because now you have the dopamine, you're excited, and then all of a sudden you are burned out again. And then when you're burned out, you have low dopamine, and when you have low dopamine, then you go into comparison mode. have rejection sensitivity, emotional dysregulation, and then you shut down. And you can be shut down for weeks, months, days, hours. And then because we're shut down, we eventually are like... I can't be shut down anymore. I need to get out of this. I need to keep doing." And then you come back into the spiral. So the whole book is meant to help you get out of that survival mode that so many of us ADHDers are in multiple times a day. And we start with just taking action. So not understanding why we're starting, but just taking action. So you could see in step one of chapter three, which is the workbook, piece, we just do a mind map, do a brain dump of everything that's on our brain. And we want to get it all out and we want to go far out to the extremities of a mind map and say, okay, these things that are in your mind are things that you just need to do, right? They've been weighing on you. You've been thinking about it. So let's take 1 % action, which are the far out tasks. and create momentum of those actions week after week. Each of the 12 steps has a different lesson associated with it, as you know, but each week you're going back to lesson one and you're doing one action from your mind's map to build momentum because we know that the formula for momentum is small action repeated. builds momentum and momentum builds confidence. So those are the repetitiveness that you will see going back to lesson one, building 1 % action. Let's say you do this over three months, you do 1 % a day, that's 100%, right? And so I want to break the myth for ADHDers that it has to be all or nothing. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And that's what brings us back to that overwhelmed disruption spiral. So in the first four lessons, I talked about the mind map in lesson one, but we're building awareness of our ADHD brain, our strengths, our weaknesses, our values, our intrinsic motivation, how to make decisions. Once we're doing that and understanding that while building that 1 % action, then we're slowing down the chaos. Again, we don't understand why we're doing the thing that we're doing, but we're just doing it, right? We're building some action so we can slow down the chaos. After those first four weeks, we have some room to breathe again and say, okay, I understand why I'm doing things, why I'm making these decisions, why I'm creating these goals. Now I can think a little bit more clearly and say, okay, I am doing this because of X. So at that point, you might shift your goals because now you have a strong why behind why you're doing it and you aren't as chaotic. And then from there, if you change your goals or even keep the goal from lesson one, now you're moving into the consistency phase, which is consistency in your persistency. So you just keep showing up even if it's at 40 % operation one day and 60 % operation one day, you're still being persistent in your actions. So we're learning time management hacks. We're learning scheduling, prioritization, organization in ways that work for them. It's not a one size fits all approach. And then the last four lessons are all about empowerment and taking you to a place you didn't know you be. So that's uncomfortable conversations that you've been avoiding for a while. Bold requests, delegation. building your ADHD toolbox, ⁓ really stretching outside of your comfort zone in a way that many of us ADHDers wouldn't have done in the beginning because we have been people pleasers and perfectionists ⁓ our whole lives. that is the 12 steps. And ⁓ in addition, we are doing a lot of reflection each time you show up. What are your wins? What are your lessons learned? Just to build our metacognitive skills. Daniella Karidi, PhD: So having tools that are not always enough if you're the only one that has them, did bring, I like literally brought stuff to the dinner table to talk with my kids and my spouse ⁓ that we can have a common language about some of these things. Brooke: I love that. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Everyone that experiences ADHD experienced some of this stuff differently. But I find this very common among my clients and among every woman I met with ADHD is saying that half of the tips and tools and ideas that work for neurotypical or non ADHDers do not work for them. And I love the idea that in here you're saying like, okay, instead of trying to adapt the world to you, let's see what you can use to, excuse me. Brooke: Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: to make your brain work in this kind of world, kind of. So from these 12 steps and from these tools and from these adaptations, if you could give us one that you think you're using a lot, what would it be? Brooke: correct. Good question. So the top two from the book, okay. It's really hard to ask an ADHDer one thing. That's exactly what I had. That's exactly what I had. Okay. So mind mapping, brain dumping, I do that all the time. And honestly, I built my business off of it. ⁓ That is the way that I think. I don't think linearly nor do most ADHDers. So what I love about a mind mapping Daniella Karidi, PhD: Okay, give me three. Okay, I'll give you some lig-wait. Brooke: is it doesn't confine me to one way of doing something. It just unlocks me being unstuck because I also have difficulty visioning because of future myopia and time blindness. So I love that because it just helps me be more creative in my business. So that's one. ⁓ The other thing that I use a lot and my clients do too is the Y funnel. because if you can go back to your intrinsic motivation for something in anything that you do, decisions, goals, whatever, and we know that decision making is so tough for ADHD, everything is of equal importance, that can ground you onto why you're gravitating towards a certain thing. And what I do is I put that why funnel in front of me and refer back to it because of object permanence. So that's the second thing. And the third thing is the stop activity, which I believe was 10 in step 10 in the book. And that is really figuring, it's a matrix of figuring out how to see how you're using your time. So I ask everyone who's doing that to write down what they're doing during the day, which... No one likes to do, but you can always go back to what you're doing after the day, just like a ⁓ brief overview, and write the task down and then separate it into the quadrant of ⁓ the appropriate quadrant. So what's stressing you out? What's time consuming? What's ordinary? What is powerful? So those are the STOP. And what I find is if I am overloaded, I'm running around with a chicken without my head, right? Because even though I know how to say no to things, ⁓ things creep in. I have ADHD, right? ⁓ I don't know how this happened, but all of a sudden I'm like double booking and canceling. I'm like, no, no, no. That's how I know it's too much. So I'll go back to the stop activity and I'll write down what's stressful, what's time consuming, what's ordinary, what's powerful. and I try to take the stressful or ordinary or even time consuming things and delegate them, push them off for three months if they're not aligned with the goals that I've set for the quarter, ⁓ break them down into smaller tasks and stay focused on more of the powerful energizing tasks, especially as an entrepreneur having more flexibility to do that with a team. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Great. So ⁓ I know that you came to this book with professional experience of a lot of clients and coaching and teaching others, but you also came with a little bit of the personal lens of having ADHD. ⁓ So tell me how did that come to life in your book? How did you balance those two lens? Brooke: Mm-hmm. Okay, so I don't know if this is going to answer the question, ⁓ how you're asking it, and hopefully it will, so stop me if it doesn't. Please. So as a late diagnosed ADHDer who got diagnosed after being a special ed teacher, getting my master's in students with disabilities, and ⁓ being an assistant director, education and being an ADHD coach after being an ADHD coach and being certified in it. I realized that I need structure. I hate it, but I thrive on it at the same time. So you asked me before like how, know, why this, but the book is structure and it's a 12 step structure to help you with goals and decisions and actions. So I felt like if I need this and my clients need this, so do many ADHDers. Even though we might resist it, we might fight it, we know that we're less overwhelmed with structure, creative structure. So that is how my personal experience came to life in there. ⁓ I didn't talk too much about... my personal history in there where I probably should have. But ⁓ what I can say is as almost 42-year-old woman who's late diagnosed with two step-sons with ADHD, a four-year-old toddler with ADHD symptoms, a husband with ADHD, and me having ADHD, my ADHD looks different all the time. I thought I had it all together when I was single. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. Brooke: That was the biggest lie I told myself. And then I thought I still had it together when I was married. And then I had a kid and now she's a toddler. So, and there's hormones as well that are adjusting in my life. So I think that is the personal experience there that if I can go back to what I know works. And as you know, from the book, there's not one size fits all solution in each step. So like pick a different micro action or strategy that seems exciting. ⁓ That is how I use it in my personal life. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Love it. You said something a few minutes ago and took my brain a bit to process it ⁓ about the why. When I teach about prospective memory, which is like how we remember the future, I tell a lot of times that when we can say, pick up milk on the way home, if we just give that instruction for a person with ADHD, there's a higher likelihood that milk will not be picked up on the way home. But if we say, pick up milk on the way home for my morning coffee or for your kid's cereal, if we just add that, Brooke: Association. Daniella Karidi, PhD: two words about the why, why we need that milk, who is it for, what it's going to be used for. That little bit that we add to that one instruction, we have an increase of 25 to 50 % chance of remembering it by just adding the why to the instruction. Brooke: That is so good. That is so good. It's association. Daniella Karidi, PhD: It's, it's association and it's giving also something that's boring and not like important, a reason to be up and to hop in our priorities. It gives it a personal connection. Um, so I, uh, whenever I needed my husband to stop and get milk, I would always say like, if you want me to function in the morning, you need to pick up that milk. Um, suddenly you didn't forget milk. Um, but right. Brooke: I love that. Right, right, right. That's a huge priority of his. Daniella Karidi, PhD: It becomes a priority. So the why makes it important. Now we can't abuse that because then people will start ignoring it. But putting the why in our everyday life and even in things that we don't kind of like, we can see that with the kids. I remember when my kids would fight brushing their teeth ⁓ and their why wouldn't work. who cares if future teeth, like it's not like a... Brooke: Rod and get cavities. No, they don't see the future. Yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Right. So if you brush your teeth, you get to choose the music. ⁓ That for a four-year-old or a five-year-old was a big, like, okay, I get to choose the song we're playing. That control, that motivation made sense. ⁓ My teenager still will like music when he's brushing their teeth, so that's my fault now. But ⁓ the idea of switching the why and making it relevant, also, you said that somewhere here. I can't remember. ⁓ It was somewhere there and I really liked that because I use that a lot, both myself and with my clients. ⁓ Brooke: Hmm. Yeah, I love that. And I think also, you know, there's a lot of talk of, if the kids aren't intrinsically motivated, then they're not going to carry out a goal forever or an action forever, right? So what you did, I mean, it was extrinsic motivation, right? You get to pick the song or whatever, but we know how hard it is to brush your teeth with ADHD. they have it. ⁓ so it did create some sort of habit ⁓ intrinsic motivation afterwards because they enjoyed the music. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And it's in, and I think that when we talk about external motivations versus internal motivations, I think we find many times that for us ADHD, it's also need to add an equation, but relevant to me motivation. Because it could be like, I want to eat. get hungry. We all want to eat, right? But still I forget, I skip. If I'm hyper-focused, I will still skip, you know, so. Brooke: Yes. Yes. Emil. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah, or at least eat a snack instead of a healthy meal, even though I know and I'm motivated internally to be, you know, to eat a healthy meal, but making it ⁓ motivating for me becomes like really interesting. Talking about motivation, you talk about in chapter five, you talk about building momentum and keeping the momentum. And I wanted to. Brooke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: ask about like, okay, the book was here, I did it, I left it, now like a few months passed. Like, how do I go back to it? How do I keep that momentum and all that good work going? Brooke: Now what? That's a really good question. right. It's like, okay, now what? So you really do need accountability for continuing to maintain momentum. So not promoting here, for my coaching, I have a group called Maintaining Momentum. And literally, like for someone who read the book and wants to just be accountable, they can do that or did they create their own groups? The person who kept them accountable in the book, they can continue to be accountable with them after the book. Or if they feel like they're out of touch and they have that like, okay, I've slipped a little bit or I went on vacation and I'm not able to do the thing that I, you know, or something happened in my life, go back to your trusted source, whoever it is, friend, mentor, coach, group, and start building that momentum again. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Love that. I'd add, put a activate your ADHD potential day in your calendar. Like, ⁓ just mark your calendar. I don't know, January 6th, I'm going to do my activate your ADHD potential day and put a few of those in your calendar to remind you that it exists, that it's there. Even if you end up not going back to the book, just having that like refresher in your calendar, reminding you that you have that basket of tools you created could Brooke: Hmmmm 100%. Daniella Karidi, PhD: could keep you on that motivation track. Because we're good at creating a bunch of tools and a bunch of stuff, and then kind of out of mind. So just bringing it back to site could help. I would ask now about how are you thinking about the next step? What are you motivating yourself to do next? What's the next thing happening in Brooke's world? Brooke: I love that. Yes. Can I go back to what you were just saying and then answer that if you don't mind? One thing I tell people all the time is like, if you fall off, which it's human nature, I want you to go back to chapter one or step one, should say, chapter three, and literally think of your 1 % and your hierarchy of needs. Okay. What do you need for yourself? And also what is 1 % action that you'll take that Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yes, definitely. Yes. No, of course. Brooke: your end of your day self will thank yourself for. So this way you can start building that momentum again if you fall off. So don't go back to that all or nothing mentality. Just go back to the 1 % and you don't have to start over all the steps, but you could do step one and you could then jump to step five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 after that. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mmm. Love it, love it. So what's next? Brooke: So what's next? Well, you and I before we got on here. Okay. So there's a lot going on and okay. What is next? Well, first of all, this 3C activation has evolved a lot since I wrote the book in 2023. So there's a lot of neuroscience that's not in the book. There's a lot of emotional regulation tools that is not in the book. So my goal is to create a part two and add the neuroscience, the more extensive neuroscience and the emotional regulation tools that I utilize with my coaches. So that's one thing on the radar. Another thing is that I conducted the first ever adult ADHD bullying survey. So it's called the CWB adult ADHD bullying survey. It's very much a... part of who I am. I've been bullied my whole life and it made the biggest impact between ages 8 and 35. And I noticed that a lot of my clients were being bullied, but they didn't name it. They were talking about symptoms of it, but not naming it, right? So I was like, is this just me and my clients or is this more systemic and global? So I did this survey and I found out that 90 % of the adults who took it Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm. That's interesting. Brooke: were bullied as adults, 82 % were bullied as children and 70 % overlap between childhood and adulthood, which means that for ADHDers, bullying continues over a lifespan, whereas the general population, it doesn't, it decreases significantly. So that's the work that I'm really just to help bring awareness to this topic. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mmm, wow. Brooke: ⁓ I'm doing a lot of work on that, public speaking on that, articles on that, and trying to expand the survey more. I also have created a 3C activation for students. So for student coaches, for administrators, professionals, parents, so people who want to work with under 16, really any student, but the book. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. Brooke: that we're talking about today is really for adults or 16 and up. created another curriculum for students. So have that coach training. ⁓ Let's stop there. Let's stop there. Yeah. No, no, no. No, no, no. Yep. So that's what I'm up to. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah, don't put more stuff on your plate. Yeah, you're good. So thank you for sharing about the bullying information. It is really interesting and good to know that someone is talking about the topic because it is a very important topic. And it definitely does not get enough of your time and enough conversations. So thank you for doing that. And if you had a chance to share with past you some knowledge about ADHD or something you wish like someone told you. What will that be? What that one nugget that you'd like. Why didn't I say that to myself or hear that before? Brooke: Well, first of all, I wish I knew I had it before YoungMe. I was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, anxiety, reading delays. So I think, especially with the bullying piece, if I had known that I had ADHD and was able to be accountable with tools, actionable tools, that my self-esteem would have been a lot better, less trauma, less bullying. So I wish that Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm. Brooke: back then I knew what I knew now, but I can't go back. ⁓ So the thing that I would say to young Brooke is you're going to be okay. There's something that you don't know yet. And you're going to discover that when you get older and you are a survivor and you are going to figure this out and be able to live with it and be able to be stronger in the end. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Perfect. I love that. ⁓ I love that. ⁓ I'm going to add something that you should tell to future Brooke, that she's not alone. She's out there in a community of other ADHDers and other successful entrepreneurs that are there and that she can reach out and always approach ⁓ others and not try to do everything by herself. Brooke: Yes. Yes, thank you. Yes. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And I will tell that to our listeners too. You are not alone. ⁓ And if you, there's resources out there and people out there and you're not alone. Brooke: Thank you so much for saying that. I mean, I tell this to my clients all the time, right? And I do believe it. There's an amazing group of ADHDers out there, professionals, ADHDers. And I forget sometimes until someone like you, Daniela, says, hey, we're here. We can help. No. Yes. Thank you. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Well, I'm looking forward to a part two and I'm looking forward to meeting you again in our future conferences ⁓ and our future common spaces. And I will put links to where people can find the book and where people can find your website. And ⁓ I look forward to future interactions. Brooke: same here. Thank you, same here. I really appreciate the space that you're giving me and all of the audience. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Thank you.