You'd swear you sent that email. You can picture yourself writing it. And then you find it, unsent, still marked unread.

This week, Pete and Nikki borrow the literary idea of the unreliable narrator to explore why ADHD makes us shaky witnesses to our own lives. They look at how working memory, time blindness, and mood bend the story we tell ourselves, and at research showing how far self-assessment can drift from the record. Then they turn to practical ways to get a clearer picture: asking the people around you what they see (RSD and all), capturing moments while they're fresh, and letting the data you already generate tell you what you actually accomplished. Along the way, Nikki shares how coaching helps clients notice their own patterns, and why a log should help you see instead of grading you.

Links & Notes

• Accuracy of Self-Evaluation in Adults with ADHD: Evidence from a Driving Study, the 2005 Knouse, Bagwell, Barkley, and Murphy study Pete discusses
• The Fragile Dance of Memory and ADHD with Dr. Daniella Karidi, one of the three episodes referenced
• ADHDtime, Daniella Karidi's coaching practice
• Join our Patreon community
• Join the Discord

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (01:43) - Patreon!
• (03:14) - The Unreliable Narrator
• (11:21) - Moods
• (21:33) - "Just Notice"
• (27:11) - Feedback and RSD
• (36:23) - Feedback and Grading

You say it a dozen times a day. Somebody asks how you're doing, and before you've had a chance to check, you've already said you're … fine.

In this conversation, we pick up a thread from our earlier episode with Dr. Sharon Saline on masking and follow it somewhere much smaller. Not the protective mask you choose in a hard moment, but the everyday one that's been on so long you've lost the off switch. We talk about what the gap between the performance and the truth actually costs you in energy and loneliness, why nobody offers help to someone who looks fine, and what happens when you say it to the people at home who genuinely want to know.

We also get practical about lowering it: how to pick one safe moment, how to resist the urge to reassure everyone that it's all going to be okay, and why your body usually notices you're performing before you do. Plus get the companion worksheet, Where Am I Wearing Fine?, to help you spot your own pattern.

Links & Notes

• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (00:58) - Support the Show on Patreon
• (02:23) - We're All Fine Here
• (13:07) - What does it look like when fine cracks?
• (21:41) - Reflection Questions

Are you doing the thing because of what you'll get, or because of what you're afraid of? Both get the task done. Only one of them is sustainable.

This week, Dr. Ari Tuckman returns to talk about approach and avoidance, and why so many of us have only ever learned to start the second engine. We get into why avoidance works just well enough to become a habit, why "not as bad" is a ceiling rather than a goal, and what actually changes in a life that runs more on what you're moving toward.

Along the way: the difference between shame and embarrassment and why it matters more than it sounds, what to do at 8 a.m. on a Monday when everything on the list feels equally urgent, and the case for disappointing people early instead of late.

Links & Notes

• Get the “3 Reasons” Prioritization Worksheet Right Here!
• ADHD & Marriage: Learn to thrive in your relationship with Ari Tuckman, PsyD, MBA; Rachel Ban, LICSW; and Melissa Orlov!
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (00:56) - About the Show
• (02:25) - Introducing Ari Tuckman
• (14:38) - The question of shame
• (22:00) - Approach Motivation
• (29:04) - Approach versus Avoidance
• (37:28) - Find Ari

Last time Dr. Dodge Rea was here, we set up a conversation in two parts and only got through one of them. This week we finish it, and the half we left hanging turns out to be the trickier one. What happens when the person you're most out of sync with is yourself?

Attunement asks you to stay in touch with another person while staying intact with yourself, both at once. Most of us are better at one than the other. For a lot of us with ADHD, the outward half arrives early and never leaves. We got good at reading other people young, and never got the same practice on ourselves. So we say yes to things before we've checked whether there's anything left to give. And then we swing all the way to the far end, so far inward that a simple request from someone we love feels like an ambush.

There's research behind why that break hits so much harder than it looks from the outside, including a well-known experiment with mothers and infants that is difficult to watch. The share of the time we have to get attunement right is far smaller than you'd guess. What happens in the remaining time is pretty important, turns out.

There's also shame, and why it works so well as armor that some part of us would rather keep it than find out who we'd be without it. And there's a mantra Pete grabbed onto in the middle of the conversation and hasn't put down since.

Links & Notes

• Learn more about Dr. Dodge Rea
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (01:11) - Support the show -- Become a Patron!
• (03:57) - Attunement

Rest, relaxation, recuperation. Three words we reach for when we're empty, and all three have collapsed into the same meaning: stop doing something. The older meanings point somewhere far more interesting, toward getting strength back rather than simply halting some energetic drain.

This week, Pete walks Nikki through research from occupational psychology that helps explain a frustrating experience most ADHDers likely know well: taking the time off and still coming back exhausted. There are four distinct kinds of recovery, they don't substitute for each other, and picking the wrong one is why a whole weekend of rest can leave you no better than you started.

Along the way: why sitting still can make mental noise louder, why your hobby might be the most restorative thing on your calendar, why the scroll fails every test, and how to match the kind of rest you choose to the kind of tired you are.

Links & Notes

• The Recovery Experience Questionnaire
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (01:32) - Support the Show on Patreon!
• (02:54) - On Rest and Recuperation
• (13:56) - The Big Four
• (26:42) - Fake Rest
• (29:20) - Match the Drain to the Recovery

You look at the list. You look at the calendar. You already know there isn't enough day for what's on there, and somehow the first thing out of your mouth is still "but I have to."

In this conversation, Nikki and Pete follow last week's capacity conversation down to the reflex underneath it. Where does the have-to feeling come from, what is it trying to protect, and what changes when you stop treating every task as though it weighs the same? They get into the five D's from Casey Dixon, why Pete has fallen hard for the one called disappoint, and the difference between deferring something and quietly hoping everyone forgets you agreed to it.

Also: what to do when the list actually is too long and no mindset shift is going to fix it.

Links & Notes

• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (03:20) - The I Have To Trap
• (19:26) - The Raw Power of Disappoint

There's the version of you that exists right now, and the version you're pretty sure you should have become by this point. In this conversation, we get into the space between them, what Nikki calls the gap trap, and why that space fills up with shame so fast for ADHD brains.

We talk about freeze as a nervous system response rather than a character problem, and about what it costs a fully grown adult to say "I don't know how to do this." Then Nikki offers the smallest possible way back in, along with three questions worth keeping close for the next time you're stuck.

Nikki's new download, When You Feel Frozen: A Guide to Restarting Without Shame, is available now.

Links & Notes

• Get the “When You Feel Frozen” Guide
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (03:05) - The Gap Trap
• (21:07) - Restarting with no Shame

We're on summer break, so this week is a Revisit: a favorite conversation pulled back out of the archive. In this one, Pete and Nikki put on their detective hats to break down an ADHD challenge.

The idea is simple. "I can't focus" or "I can't follow through" is too big and vague to solve, so the episode is about investigating what's actually getting in your way and finding the specific roadblock underneath. There's a memorable South Park metaphor involved, plus a practical, low-pressure approach to trying one strategy at a time and keeping track of what works. An encouraging, useful listen, whether it's your first time or a return trip.

Links & Notes

• Dr. Dodge Rea's podcast, The Change Paradox, on TruStory FM — and Nikki's guest appearance, Nikki Kinzer and The ADHD Paradox.
• How to ADHD with Jessica McCabe — the channel behind the motivation video that sparked this conversation (YouTube).
• Come join the ADHD Discord community.
• Support the show on Patreon.
• Tools mentioned in the episode: OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, MindNode, Todoist, and Day One.
• South Park's "Gnomes" — the origin of the underpants gnomes.

• (00:00) - Welcome to The ADHD Podcast
• (02:20) - Check out Nikki on The Change Paradox
• (03:48) - Skunkface
• (08:19) - Listener Question: Striking out as an Entrepreneur?
• (15:28) - Breaking Down an ADHD Challenge
• (23:38) - Underpants Gnomes
• (28:36) - Discerning the "Why"