Brendan Mahan - Parenting with ADHD - Emotional Regulation

Join Marc Almodovar and Shane Thrapp from the Men's ADHD Support Group for another great podcast on Parenting! This episode, they're teaming up with Brendan Mahan, the amazing host of ADHD Essentials. They're getting real about what it's like to be a dad with ADHD, dealing with emotional dysregulation and the unique hurdles of fatherhood.

Get ready to uncover your triggers and learn practical strategies to handle them. This podcast won't shy away from the tough stuff - we're here to talk about the stress and frustration that can come with parenting. But remember, amid all these challenges, there's also the immense joy of being a dad. Join us and let's navigate this journey together.

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Transcript

Marc: [00:00:00] And I just want to start this off by congratulating seven of you here for being on time for this meeting. This is a big accomplishment for those of us with ADHD and a rare occasion in the men's ADHD support group.

So I'm really, really pumped, to have you all here and just get into the gems. For those of you that were in the last session and those of you who listened to the ADHD Essentials podcast, I mean, you know that Brenda Mahan is somebody that just is is this wealth of knowledge for people with ADHD and Brilliant end at what he does and I also, one of my goals within the next year Brendan doesn't know this yet, Neither does Shane, but, but being Brendan's friend is to get him to a place where he's only accepting compliments.

Brendan: Yeah. Let me play with that for a minute, because I, like, before I was like, am I giving you what you want? Like, am I hitting it? Is this working? Most of that does not come from a place of insecurity or imposter syndrome. Mm-hmm. It comes literally from a place where I'm here to serve and I wanna make sure I'm giving you what you want me to be giving you.

And if I'm not, I need to know that so I can make an adjustment. That's 90% of it, right? 

Marc: Hmm. 

Brendan: So yeah, like, and of course that, like, based on my emotional regulation or dysregulation, that varies, right? Like, sometimes I'm like, I think I suck today. And, realistically that's not the case. But sometimes emotionally that's there.

But, I just wanted to split that hair today. Because I didn't last time. Cuz that, that matters too, right? Sometimes we're asking these questions and we're coming across like, in a way that we don't mean to. Hmm. So yeah, there's a few pieces of me that I recognize as existing in that way. Like sometimes I'll talk about how crappy everything is, and in my head I'm like, I'm so resilient.

But that doesn't mean that that's how I'm coming across. It might be coming across like, woe is me. Everything sucks. I hate the world. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So these are things I play with in my head. 

Yeah. I totally get it. 

Marc: But as far as everything I've ever said about you, I stand by and you are amazing.

And we are thankful to work alongside you. 

So today we have a, a really special zoom meeting going on. I'm super thankful to have everyone here tonight. Tonight we are welcoming Brendan Mahan. Brendan Mahan, on top of being a good friend of mine and a fellow tribe called Quest fan, which I'm pumped about.

Brendan Mahan hosts one of the top ADHD podcasts, ADHD Essentials. John Hazelwood has been on there. Shane's been on it. I've been on it. 

Brendan is somebody who gets, who's been around the block in the ADHD community, has such a strong reputation as a coach and on top of being such a reliable resource for people with ADHD.

Brenda Mahan is a dad witADHDhas got a lot to say on that subject. Tonight we're talking about a big one. We're talking about emotional regulation. As a dad with h adhd, 

what does it mean to navigate it? How do we build self-awareness here? How do we communicate? There's so many things that we can get into tonight.

Although this is targeted for dads with ADHD, this is something I genuinely feel everyone will get some value from, and I'm really, really excited to hear Brendan 

spit some knowledge on this subject and rock the house as he always does.

My friend, Brendan, welcome to the Men's ADHD support Group meeting. 

Brendan: Yeah, thank you. Good. I think this is my third or fourth time coming by. 

Marc: That's right. That's right. I, what's going on?

Brendan: You know, it's, things are improving slowly but surely. As you, you know, my personal life has been bananas for really the last three years, but kind of especially of late.

And I'm on three weeks of things being calm and chill and like yay felt like I was, and this is a dad emotional regulation thing, right? Like I've been, I'm part of the sandwich generation. The sandwich generation is a concept that came out up in the eight eighties. I forget who created it and I feel bad cuz it was a woman, and I don't mean to be blowing her off, but if it was a dude, I would also forget the name.

The idea is that like you have kids and you have parents who both need your support because your parents are aging and may be sick and your kids are of the age where they need support. And so you get kind of sandwiched between those two generations. And I've been getting hit with that of late really for several years now.

No sooner did sort of the covid stuff start to eat ease up than all of a sudden. Like my, my sister, who was my dad's primary caretaker, she lives across the street from him. Suddenly she needed more help and like, so I stepped into the breach, right? And I stayed in that breach until my son needed so much help that I couldn't help my dad anymore.

My son and this podcast will be posting soon, so I'm not speaking outta school. Both of my sons have O c d. One of them has it to such a degree that he had to be hospitalized for it. So that really shut our family down. And I'll play with some of how I got [00:05:00] dysregulated while he was dysregulated as we talk through this day.

But yeah, so it's been that amount of pressure and that amount of needing to prioritize other people ahead of me. It's taken a real toll on me over the last three years. And every time I thought I was coming out of it, it it, I did. It didn't happen. Like, like, I was like, oh, cool. Finally I homeschooled my kids during the.

The first school, full school year of Covid. And then the second year when we had vaccines, they went back to school and I was like, yay. And that was when, oh, can you take dad to chemo every Friday? And I was like, Ugh. And then Na o c d got to the point where I had to pick him up at school like it, or at the bowling alley at school, cuz the O c D is school.

And I couldn't, my car wasn't allowed to go onto school grounds at the time. It's complicated. And so I'd pick 'em up at like two 30. So my day ended at two 30 every week, every weekday, which is when I'm working. And then also I had no, Fridays not, that's not a lot of time to get a job done. And when you're, especially when you're an entrepreneur.

And then then we, I eventually, I was kind of full-time navigating Nate even when I wasn't home. I was like handling stuff in my head. He, we finally got him better. He was, like I said, he was hospitalized for three months, came home, things started to get squared away. He comes home in October, we start to figure things out.

Stuff starts to get better. And then my dad's health creators again. All of a sudden I can't even predict when I'm gonna be needed or not needed. Right? So I don't feel like I can commit to anything cuz I'm like, I might have to go take my dad to the doctors or something. And so all of that is finally wrapping up at long last.

It turns out my dad's health had more to do with alcohol than health. We, I did a, I did a I think I mentioned this last week. I did, I did like a intervention with my sisters on my dad three weeks ago now. And he's been sober ever since. So yay. And things are calming down, but no sooner do things start to calm down next week.

Like tomorrow is school vacation week, right? So it's like, oh, I can, I'm finally in a space where I feel like I can do job stuff and like focus on my business for a change, but I can't cuz my kids are home all week. It's just like cha and all of that, all of my woe is me story, which is really resilient is me story right.

Is directly related to this idea of resilience and specifically resilience in the form of emotional regulation and emotional management as a dad, right? So I'm gonna talk a little bit about how I did it personally and just how we do it, broadly speaking. And that's the idea. So, a couple of things I wanna play with.

This is a little tricky. We don't have a ton of time and it's a really complicated concept, so I want you to pay attention to, and I, maybe I come back and do this in some depth later. But if you do not understand anxiety and how it works, Oh my God. Learn about it. Right. And I, I'm gonna play with that today, right?

Anxiety and Emotional Regulation

Brendan: I'm gonna, and I'm happy to come back and go deeper on anxiety, but I'm gonna touch on it a little bit today. And also burnout. Burnout potentially is something else you wanna look at. I don't know for sure. I absolutely am dealing with burnout. A lot of folks are dealing with burnout right now. But those and those things, like they weave together and then they affect the people in our lives and the people who are around us and all that stuff.

So the more we know and understand about how our minds work and our emotions work, the better we're gonna be able to manage our emotions. Talking about anxiety, I'm just gonna, this is like a wicked quick and dirty, right? Like this is not a lot of time, but the image that I'm about to share as soon as I scroll down to it and find it, is gonna do a lot of the work for me.

So I'm gonna, I just wanna share this. Real quick. Scba, you see these hat little smiley faces, right? Yeah. Are you, are you guys seeing smiley faces?

I hope cuz I don't know what you're seeing. Fantastic, mark. Cuz we thumbs up. Yeah. Now this is, I just took the pain scale and turned it into an anxiety scale, right? So like, how anxious are you? And we're gonna play with this a little bit and it's gonna help frame other stuff later. So, down here it's like you got no anxiety, right?

Up here is extreme unbearable anxiety. You have hit fight, flight or freeze. I'm kind of gonna assume most of us have heard of that fight, flight and freeze is the body stress response. It's when our mind, right? It's the amygdala is the part of the brain that's activated in fight, flight and free flight or flee.

The only part of our brain, the only thing our brain is concerned about when we hit fight, flight, and freeze or freeze is safety in the moment. I need to be safe right now, right? So I can make myself safe by yelling at you, by punching you in the face, right? That's kind of, that's the fight part, right? I can make myself by myself safe by running away.

That's flea or flight. I can make myself safe by hauling up and kind of turling and hopefully no one notices cuz I'm not doing much. [00:10:00] That's the freeze part, right? And some of freeze too, is like, I'm so anxious I can't even form good, good, solid thoughts to respond to this in a meaningful way, right?

Because the amygdala is activated and I'm no longer making careful decisions. I'm only making short-term, immediate safety decisions if I'm making decisions at all. And this is important, especially on the dad's side because when our kids get fired off in fight, flight, and freeze, they're gonna do stuff that seems dumb.

It seems like, you know, you're just gonna get in more trouble for doing whatever it is that you did, right? And it can happen at school, it can happen at home, whatever. Like the kid calls you an asshole and runs away or takes a swing at you or just doesn't say anything for however long, and you're like, answer me.

And they don't, right? Like we get, we look at that and we're like, that kid is being disrespectful. That kid knows this is only making things worse for them. But the thing is they don't, they don't know that this is only making things worse for them because the part of their brain that is operating and steering the ship right now does not have the ability to make careful decisions and think long-term.

It can only make decisions around try to get me safe right now, not get me safe now, and also later. Is that, is this, are you with me right now? So the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that makes careful decisions that's down here in the green. Like that's the prefrontal cortex. Now I'm making careful decisions.

Now I'm being thoughtful about what's happening. The red is much more amygdala. The part that does is just trying to make me safe in the moment and in the middle. It's kind of both. It's a little bit of both, right? And that's where we get things like fibbing, right? The kid just lies about what? What happened?

Cuz the prefrontal cortex is like, no, no, no, we don't need to run away or punch somebody. We can just make up a story and it'll be fine. Right? Or F or flocking where you see kids kind of like, or F and fawning. Flocking is when the kid just tries to get near somebody and like sort of safety in numbers kind of a thing.

And fawning is when they're like, no, you're great. You're so awesome. Right? Like, don't be mad at me. Because I can't handle it, but I haven't quite hit, fight, flight, and freeze. So, flocking fi, fibbing and, and fawning are in this middle range. A lot, a lot of time, especially fawning gets shoved into the, like, full on fight, flight and freeze.

It's not quite the same. It's a little bit earlier than that. So I want you to think of this as like, where I am on the, on the anxiety scale is how far away from a full amygdala hijack am I? How far away am I from the amygdala taking over completely. Here's the thing down here, this stuff, there's like one guy in Tibet. Right? It's not the fact that you have no anxiety. So what you need to do, and this is some internal work, is start wondering about where is my baseline anxiety? Where on this scale is my floor? And your floor is not zero, right?

Like where are you typically, we'll call that your floor. It doesn't mean you can't go into the basement. It just means that like if you're typically at a four, you're typically at a four. And that means you're this far from the amygdala, right? If you're typically at a six, haha, you're that much closer to the amygdala.

Is this making sense? And we are gonna talk about some stuff that will both lower your floor and what to do in the moment so that when you start to escalate, you can either slow the escalation, reduce the escalation, or eliminate the escalation. Or if you find yourself escalated, how do you deescalate?

That's the stuff that we're gonna be playing with you guys with me. Cool. Awesome. Also connected to this, right? So I'm coming across properly. I'm gonna check in a lot. I'm gonna do a lot of like, are you with me? It's not coming from an insecure place. It's coming from I used to be a teacher and I know that if I check in with you, you're gonna think about whether or not you're with me, and I hope that you'll tell me if you are or not.

And if you don't, that's okay. I've still got you thinking about what I just said because I Right. And the attentive ADHD self appreciates that, right? Yeah. Yeah. That like a lot of what you see me doing is I taught sixth grade for years and years and years, guys. I was teach for like 10 years. So my teaching skills happen when I'm doing this stuff.

And, and that's why I'm like, are you with me or I'm checking in? Some of that is me just trying to like, get everybody on the same page. And if you're like, that doesn't make any sense at all, Brendan, just say, and I'll be like, oh, lemme try to say it another way. This is like, I'm, I'm deep in my wheelhouse.

I can re-explain things forever if you need me to. 

Self-Care

Brendan: So let's talk about self-care cuz that's, self-care is how we lower our floor. [00:15:00] Self-care is how we, like, we reduce ourselves from a six or a seven to a two or a three and kind like two or three sort of feels unreasonable. Like you might not get there.

But you can probably get to a three or four without too much difficulty. And because I want you to think about like the stuff that is gonna be there no matter what and is gonna raise your anxiety. Like for me, I got two kids with special needs, right? I got two kids with anxiety stuff at least. I, I don't know about you, but I've lived through a global pandemic and it took a toll on me.

That's something that I can work on, but that's a long-term work with a therapist thing that's not like a. I listened to a dude talk for an hour on YouTube or Facebook and like magically fixed it. You know what I mean? Like that's not, I'm not gonna do that for you. Even with coaching maybe, but like I can do the therapy stuff, but that's not what I do.

So find a therapist. But other stuff is like, maybe you're not eating well, maybe you're not sleeping well. Those are things we can crack and deal with usually and and lower your floor, drop you down from a five to a four and a half or something, right? Maybe you have a lot of work anxiety and maybe you can do something about that and maybe you can't, right?

And maybe you can, but you don't think that you can and you really gotta start asking some questions and bringing some stuff up. Does that make sense? So look, we're gonna look at ways to kind of address all kinds of things. Self-care is our number one. Self-care is our number one way to lower our floor.

This is the stuff we can affect readily. My model for self-care is shred, s h r e D, shred stands for sleep habits, relationships, exercise and diet. What we want to do is shred our anxiety. We're gonna shredder ADHD too cuz what helps with like anxiety, helps with ADHD.

Like these are good mental health self-care strategies. Sleep. Sleep for eight hours, period. The end. Stop arguing with me. I can see it in your eyes. I only need six hours of sleep. Liar, you are wrong. You think you only need six hours of sleep, but you need eight hours of sleep. I'm sorry that you're wrong, but you're wrong.

Sense used to tell me all the time, I can work on six hours of sleep, I'm fine on six hours of sleep. And then, you know what happened? He got a new job and started getting eight hours of sleep and he was like, I am a different person and I don't understand how I was operating on six hours of sleep. 

Marc: Brendan. Yep, we are, we are officially at the point where you are calling me out.

It's gonna happen a lot. 

Shane: Like I gotta, I gotta sit here and, and rag on Mark for just a minute. So he's like, I'm like, I send a, a message at like one 30 in the morning because you know, that's my thing. I don't have to get up until nine 30 though, cause toddlers, yay.

However, I sent it to him and he's like, why are you up at one 30, bro? And I'm like, why are you awake at one 30, bro? Cause I know for a fact he just get up like 7:00 AM to go to work and I'm like, You can't talk shit at me. 

Brendan: Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll say to you guys the same thing I said to Jessica, I loved you, but I'm not responding to your texts at like 1:00 AM now jessica's on the west coast and I'm on the east coast, so it's the most of, that's the three hour time differential where I get like whackadoo texts.

But like, your stuff should be do not disturb. Like turn your texts on, turn your phone on to do not disturb at whatever time you go to bed. Right? Probably. 

Sean: I just wanna say yeah, it's funny. When, when you're like, all right, so we're gonna do we're gonna do, we're gonna do shred.

And I was like, okay, all right, let's see where we're going with this. And then you're going through each letter. And in this order, my brain went, went, dammit, dammit, third one was like, okay, yeah, that's good. Second one was like, oh, kind of damnit. That was like, Damnit. So Damnit. 

Brendan: Yep. Yeah. Thi this is how we take care of ourselves, right?

Sleep and Mind-Wandering

Brendan: Th that's, that's the volume, sleep, habits, relationships, exercise and diet and sleep. Like I guys, I did the math on Shane one 30 to nine 30. He was texting right before he thinks he fell immediately asleep and got eight hours of sleep, cuz no he didn't. It was one 30 to nine 30. That's eight hours. And if you're playing with your phone, you're waking yourself up because phones emit blue light. And blue light triggers the body's alertness response. And that will have you be awake for at least like 20 minutes or so. It's gonna get you back up and it, but it, here's the fun part. It takes about 15 minutes, right, for that alertness response to trigger. So I'm gonna describe a pattern that is probably gonna sound familiar.

You're like, Hey, I'm really tired. Oh, I'm laying down. I'm not quite falling asleep, but I am getting tired. I feel like I need, but like I'm starting to have some thoughts that are not that great, that are not so comfortable that I'm particularly enjoy. So I think what I'm gonna do is look at my phone to distract myself from these thoughts and that will help me fall [00:20:00] asleep, right?

And like 15 or so minutes later, you're more awake than you were, even though you only looked at your phone for like five minutes. That's cuz it triggered that body to learn your body's learner's response. And now you're up more than you were thanks to the phone or the computer or whatever. So like, get rid of those screens and a two hours is best practice, but at least an hour before bedtime.

Just get rid of 'em, put 'em down, set your phone to, to like do not disturb. And you can do, do not disturb, but have certain numbers kind of push through. Like if you have a sick father you can still care f from them if something happens in the middle of the night. But like probably nothing is happening at three in the morning that you need to know about.

You know what I mean? That can't wait until the morning unless you've got a really sick family member and you're the point person on that. If you're the secondary person, then you, it's okay if you find out at six in the morning or not, or seven or whenever you wake up. So play with that. Go to bed at the same time.

Get up at the same time every day. I don't care if it's the weekend, still go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time. Worst case scenario, like sleeping in is kind of the best choice. If you have to not get up at the same time. Sleeping in is fine, but make sure you're going to bed at the same time.

Every, every, every, every, every night is it. Eventually your body will learn how to do it, but if you're going to sleep all over the place, your body's not gonna learn that. Also make some time during the day for mind wandering mode. And this is like a big, big thing, but I'm gonna play with it with in regard to sleep at the moment.

We don't let our minds wander enough. We don't, we're just constantly inputting stuff, right? Like the phone is the input, the TV's, the input, our computer's, the input. We're listening to podcasts, we're watching YouTube videos, we're reading Twitter, we're looking at Facebook, we're doing all this stuff and we're not letting our brain process that information.

You gotta let your brain process that information. Turn on some music if you need the input, cuz you need the auditory fidget. Go for a walk. Do not put on a podcast and go for a walk, even if it's mine. Don't even put on mine unless the purpose right now is to listen to a podcast. If the purpose is to go for a walk and relax, listen to music at the most.

And it should be music that you're like, you're familiar with, you really like, but isn't gonna overwhelm you, like isn't gonna like. Pull you in, right? Like I, I recently picked up, I started listening to Don't Sweat the Technique by Ra, by Rahi, like in the last week or so. And for the first three days, like I couldn't do anything else.

I was just like, I had to listen to it enough to get it back into my memory. Cuz I used to listen to that album when it came out and I would deliver papers and walk and I'm sure I wore that tape out. Tape. That's how old I am guys tape. But like, let your mind wander and what if you've got music that you can wander to cool, like, that's great, but you can also just have it be quiet.

And that will allow you, you to process stuff. If you don't, when you go to bed, your mind is gonna be like, cool. Now I get to wander. But before I wander, I have to think through all the stuff that you've been avoiding all day long. All that stuff that makes you nervous and anxious and feel less than and feel insecure about, like that stuff's still in there.

That's part of what, why sleep is hard for a lot of us is like that's when our insecurities come up. But if you give yourself a break during the day, at least once or twice to let those insecurities come up, it won't come up when you're trying to go to sleep. Cuz you already processed it. You already went, navigated that I was doing that today.

I spent a lot of time processing some insecurities today. Cause everyone's got 'em. And so that's, that's some sleep hack ideas. Right? Also, I used to be so picky about my sleep hacking that I used to brush my teeth with bubblegum toothpaste instead of mint toothpaste. Cuz I realized that mint toothpaste woke me up, like it was just too stimulating and made me feel awake.

So for a while there I was brushing with bubblegum toothpaste instead of mint toothpaste. That's how far down this rabbit hole you can go. Pay attention to. What makes you awake and what makes you sleepy. 

Habits

Brendan: habits. Habits is a big, complicated long one that there's all kinds of stuff from the men's ADHD support group.

My podcast is full of it. Just find ADHD friendly habits, right? Like are you, are you taking care of yourself in a way that lets you work with ADHD? This might look like mindfulness stuff. Mindfulness is gonna be great for emotional regulations, so that's why I'm mentioning it. Now, this might mean kind of giving up on the neurotypical stuff cuz a lot of it's dumb.

Like you can theoretically not have a bureau at all in your, in your bedroom and just have most of your clothes on hangers in the closet or on hooks on the wall, or folded in milk crates cuz they're easier to get to or folded on like a bookshelf or something. And that's okay. Just because most people don't do it that way doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

Like how whatever's gonna work. I've got all kinds of command hooks in my bedroom. That I hang clo, like my key is hanging on one of them. I've got button ups on another one. I've got hoodies on another one. Like, it makes it easier for me to access those clothes and manage myself. [00:25:00] So find out what are the ADHD friendly strategies that you're gonna need.

Relationships

Brendan: R is relationships. Men don't have enough of them and we need them. And that, again, like a lot of these are like, and that's a whole different conversation, right? Like, cuz this is not a small subject, but having relationships especially, and since this is dad's, I'm assuming most of you have at least a significant other or a former significant other, that person can't be your only emotional support.

They can't, I don't care how amazing they are at it. You've gotta have emotional support outside of that person. Not the least of reason because like sometimes you need emotional support about that person. You might be like, yeah, my, my amazing partner kind of sucks right now and I need to talk about how much my amazing partner sucks with someone who I can safely feel like I can talk to about that.

That's, that's not easy. Like if the only person you can talk to is your partner, sure you need to have those conversations with your partner, but you also need to get like the venting part out of the way before you have the problem solving part. I'm learning, I do too, right? Like I've been everyone else's emotional support for three years now and I'm like, oh crap, I need somebody, right? Like that's, I started with a therapist on Friday of last week, but they're not gonna be my emotional support either cuz it's not the same kind of emotional support as a friend, right?

So I need to track down a friend I need and I have them. I just need to like, spend time with 'em. Oh, okay, cool. Polyamorous, rock on. I gotcha. I'm with you. My best friend's polyamorous, so I'm with you. And I, I struggled with that concept until I realized that his relationship was older than mine was.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's cool then cool. Do your thing. So find those relationships and, and often we as men, we find them through activities, right? So, I don't know, join a softball league, like learn how to tap dance. I d and D is one of my go-tos. I've got friends through Keo. Find those things right and make, make it happen.

Exercise

Brendan: Exercise is exercise, right? So this is our e We're at the E of shred exercise. Cardio is king. It's gonna oxygenate your brain, it's gonna clear out your mind. That stuff is really important for d h, ADHD symptoms, and it's gonna help with emotional regulation too. For a lot of us, weights are more useful for emotional regulation.

Because a lot of us need that deep stimulation, that deep pressure, that weights can provide, and it also helps us get that focus that we need, that weights can provide. So, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. David knows what's up. Like get, get to the gym, do the emo, do the weights. It's gonna help you anchor yourself physically, and that's gonna help you regulate your emotions more effectively.

Diet

Brendan: And then the D is diet shop, the supermarket perimeter, right? Like fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy have a nice day, right? Like there's stuff in the middle, that's fine, but most of it's full of simple carbs. I'm not like a, it's gut. Chemicals. Wow. Like, no, it's got simple carbs. Simple carbs, spike your blood sugar, and then you get fog brain and it becomes harder to like use your executive functions and access your prefrontal cortex and it's gonna exhaust you.

And then you're more likely to dysregulate. So eat complex carbs and protein instead of simple carbs. I'm glad you're also not saying that it causes ADHD. No, it just makes it worse. That's all. It's just like, it's just a thing that makes it worse. And it doesn't even always make it worse, which is stupid, but like it is what It's right.

Sometimes we can absorb that, sometimes we can't. And that depends on how tightly we're riding that line. Right? It, it's, I want you to think about a lot of this stuff in terms of how much cushion do I have, how much space do I have before things are gonna be, are gonna go hard and be rough. And a lot of that requires self-awareness.

So you're gonna have to, we have to figure out where we are at any given moment, how do we feel? Do check-ins with ourselves so we can have an idea of how we're doing. So that's anxiety and that's, and that's a piece of self-care. I don't want to only talk about self-care, so I'm gonna jump into some other stuff and then I'll circle back to some self-care later.

Cuz this could be just self-care, like regulate with self-care cuz yeah, that part's true, but I wanna make sure I hit some other stuff. 

Understand Emotional Dysregulation Patterns

Brendan: Another thing I want you to play with is figure out what leads to you being dysregulated. Like what are your patterns? And you might not know what your patterns are.

You might have never thought of this before, ever. You might be like, huh, great. Cuz you're probably gonna figure something out right now. And if you've already thought about this stuff, you might come up with some new ideas. But stuff that is likely to lead to you feeling dysregulated and, and dysregulated.

It's, we're talking about anxiety, right? What leads to anxiety is uncertainty and uncomfortableness. It all boils down to you're either uncertain or you're uncomfortable. By the way, my most recent podcast episode is on anxiety. It's one of the best I've ever [00:30:00] done. Out of 248 episodes, it's top 10. So like, listen to it.

And I'll, I'll, I'll get a link in there later or something. But it boils down to I'm either uncomfortable or I'm uncertain, or both. Okay. This might mean maybe you have chronic pain and that chronic pain leads to a lot of uncomfortableness and that leads to an, to you feeling more anxious. Maybe that chronic pain leads to you feeling less strong and less capable, and that makes you feel uncertain.

That could happen too, right? Like you might be there and that could make you feel more anxious cuz you're in an area where you feel like mildly under threat and ordinarily it wouldn't be a big deal, but with the chronic pain, you feel less capable of like handling a challenging situation physically.

And so now your anxiety is up more than it would otherwise be. So that's one thing that's like big picture, slightly more specific stuff. Open loops, which are like the curse of adhd. It's one of the big ADHD things is we tend to have a lot of unfinished tasks and open loops and stuff we need to finish.

The more of those we have, the more uncertain we're gonna feel and the more anxious we're gonna become, the more likely we are to disregulate. So pay attention to that. 

Tom: What's an open loop? 

Brendan: An open loop is just an unfinished task. It's just a thing I haven't finished yet, right? I got this loop that I haven't, I haven't tied it off yet, and now I'm like, ah, I dunno, know what to do.

Rejection rejection's gonna make us feel anxious, especially if we have that rejection sensitivity that can come with adhd, right? That may or may not be affecting you, but that can play a role here. And if you're, if that's you, you gotta know. You gotta just be aware of it. And you also have to recognize that like sometimes you're not being rejected.

You're just reading rejection when it isn't there. Right? This is part of my emotional regulation I had to do. I was supposed to be running a d and d game with some, another family. One of the kids didn't like it that much. The other family's like we don't wanna play anymore. And cuz he wanted more combats, we played two games.

I'm feeling deeply rejected by that. It's kind of hurting me. Cuz I was excited for this and I don't, maybe it'll turn into something, maybe we won't. Maybe I can just say, okay, cool. More combats and then they'll play. But it doesn't mean we're not gonna hang out with them. It just means we're not gonna play d and d when we hang out.

But my insecure brain is like, but d and d is a way to make sure we hang out all the time cuz it's fun and engaging and it'll bring people back. And if we don't have that stuff is gonna fall apart and we're not gonna see each other as much. And like, I like these people. They're good friends. And also I need the social con connection cuz I spend a lot of my time at home by myself doing stuff on the internet.

And so like, but that's my issue. That's not their issue, right? Like, and they're not rejecting me. They're not even rejecting the game. It's just like their kid doesn't love it. Okay, cool. Good reason, right? Like, I'm not gonna fault that I had to process through that and get o get it, O get over it. And we need to do that as, as adults, we have to think about like, why am I feeling this way?

What's hiding inside of this? Why is this bothering me so much? And that I'm like, why is this bothering me so much that I don't wanna play d and d anymore? What's that about? Right? And it's not about me, even about me feeling rejected solely. It's also me feeling the lack of this social connection. And d and D is for me, a thing that has created a lot of really good, solid social connection, and I'm lacking that right now.

So I'm more feeling the lack of that thing than the loss of that thing, or the potential loss of that thing. And that's what I'm processing. And so when you start to feel dysregulated, feel frustrated or read whatever, poke around and see what's going on and the stuff that is, makes you feel the kind of the most vulnerable and feels the most threatening to look at, that's the stuff you have to look the closest at.

So it's okay. Just know it's there and be like, no one knows that you're feeling vulnerable right now. No one knows that this is upsetting for you unless you talk to someone. In which case, awesome. But if you're not talking to anybody, you can still really dig into this and really play with it and try to figure out like, what's going on and what's the unmet need that's making me feel this way?

Cuz if you're feeling that way, it's an unmet need. It's not frivolous, it's not something stupid that you need to just get over or accept it. There's something deeper going on and figure out what that is. And if you can't meet the need in that way, there's, there's probably 50 or 60 other ways you could meet that need or at least two.

Try to figure out what those other options are. Shane, what's going on? 

Shane: I imagine you're gonna cover this, but it, what you were saying just kinda reminded me of a conversation I had with a client a few days ago, and he was really frustrated and pissed off because he was like, I'm dealing with the same kind of stress and frustration that I did when I was 20 and 25 and 30 and 35, and why is it wearing me down now?

I'm like, yeah, cool. You remember when you were 20 and you could probably throw on a weight vest and sprint a mile? Sure. Okay, cool. Well, not me, [00:35:00] of course, but whatever. But you could do that. You could do something crazy like that and be okay. 25 probably still could 30. Yeah, maybe it was a slower mile.

Right? You know, 35, oh boy. 40. Hey, you may need to go ahead and go to the hospital afterwards, or like at that quarter mile mark. You're gonna need to have ambulance sitting there waiting for you. You know, we get tired and the reason we get tired is because, We build up stress and frustration. We never learn how to process it and deal with it in constructive ways.

And what you were saying, just kind of just like, yeah. Over time, the older we get the worse it's going to get until we start seeing things like dementia starts showing up. 

Brendan: Yeah. And, and not only that, right? I could cut a red redwood down with a steak knife as long as the steak knife was made of like impervious material, right?

Given enough time, I can cut a redwood down with a steak knife. All I have to do is just keep going back and forth in that same spot. So your, your client who was like, this thing that I've been dealing with since 25, how come after 20 years it's bothering me so much because it's been the same thing.

It's been bothering you this whole time. It's just now it's the steak knife that's starting to cut down the redwood. And when you were 25, it was a steak knife that couldn't get through the bark of that redwood, but it kept going in the same place. And we need to know that as we get older, those wounds are there and they're just emotional wounds and we have to understand it.

Work Stress

Brendan: So other stuff that might cause us to be dysregulated and I'll, like, kind of what Shane was saying, right. Work frustration. That's, that's gonna be there. And a lot of this stuff is like, it's stuff that's been hitting us forever. I've all, I'm all I, I keep getting judged at not being organized enough.

Yeah. Cuz you're not organized enough, so fix it. Right? Like that's, if you keep hearing that, whatever it is, learn how to fix that. Find the people who can teach you how to fix that. And that, that could be a virtual YouTube person. That could be a real person, but whatever that thing is, it's not weakness to ask for help.

And men are often think that we often feel like it's weakness to ask for help. So I'm not gonna ask for help. And it's, it's because it's, it's not weakness, it's vulnerability. When I ask for help, I, I'm putting myself in a vulnerable position. That person might say, no, the help might not work. They might think orally of me because they need help with this.

All of those things are true. All those things are possible, but you're only weak if you don't ask for the help. Cuz then you're not gonna get the help and the the weakness is gonna stay. But if you ask for the help, then the weakness gets to be fixed. And it might not be that person. You might need to find somebody else, right?

Like you might need to find more than one person to help you, but you gotta pursue support in the areas that you need it and shore those weaknesses up just enough so they don't hurt you anymore. And then focus on your strengths. Cuz the strengths are what's gonna take you into the stratosphere. But the weaknesses can like bust your booster rocket before you take off.

Money Stress

Brendan: Other stuff that might get to us. Money, of course money. Sometimes this is valid, sometimes it's not. Right. So money is a thing that plays a lot of different roles and affects a lot of different needs. If I don't have enough money, I can't afford a house. I might not be able to afford to eat. Like that's a big deal, right?

If I don't have enough resources. But I've met people who have millions of dollars and still respond to triggers that own, that existed invalid form when they were poor growing up and don't, are not valid anymore. At least not to the level that they respond to them. I've worked with parents who have plenty of money and their kid like breaks a cup or a glass and they fly off the handle, and that's because them growing up, they couldn't afford a new glass.

That was not a thing they could buy, but now dude's got a million bucks. You can go buy a new glass, you can buy 16 of 'em for like 20 bucks. This is not a big deal, but they react as though it is because of this pattern that's been ingrained. And we have to recognize those patterns and those habits cuz they define who we are and then they are like, why doesn't my kid talk to me?

Why doesn't my kid like interact with me? Well cuz you fly off the handle, but what to them is stupid little shit. And they don't, cuz the kid doesn't understand anyway, the kid doesn't recognize that like, oh this is a resource thing. I would really think about the stuff that throws you off. A lot of the time it's resources and it may or may not be valid.

And if it's valid you still have to be calm when it happens. You can't fly off the hand, but you have to like figure out if that's a thing for you. This is one that gets me. I recognized the resources one early on and was like, oh, I'm just, no wonder about that one. Like I can put that away. But the one that I didn't put away until, I don't know, like [00:40:00] three years ago, four years ago, is time pressure.

Time pressure kills me. If we're running late, if I feel like I don't have enough time to get the thing done there, I'm flying, man. Like my anxiety is off to the races. And I've had to do a lot of work on that. I've had to do a lot of work around, like if I'm late, I'm late. It doesn't matter. And I mean, sometimes it does, but mostly it doesn't.

And but because I always felt like I was inferior because I was late so much, and I've all often felt insecure. If I'm late, they're gonna fire me at my job. Some jobs that's true. Some jobs that's not right. Find out and then figure out how to be on time for the things that are important and worry less about the things that are time doesn't matter as much.

Cultural Stress

Brendan: Another one that that can be tricky to navigate, but I think is really important is changes in culture. Our culture is changing at an insane rate. Norms are like flying out the window and being altered on almost a daily basis it seems Right. I, we already talked about one. Shane and I, right? I was like, there was a time when I was like, polyamory the hell is that?

That's not okay. You can't, like, that's not, you're supposed to be married. What's wrong with you? Right? Like, that was the thing that was in my head. That was a bias I had, even though my best friend was polyamorous. And I knew it. And I was like, yeah, dude. Like that's cool, but there's a part of my brain that was like, yeah, but right.

And now that's gone. Now I'm like, nah, be poly Harris, do your thing. It's cool. Not a big deal. Right? Like, yay, I'm glad you're getting the support you need. I'm glad you have the kinds of relationships that you need in your life. That's awesome. I hope everyone's needs are being met. Have a good day. Right?

And, and the same is true with transgender. Stuff like that for a long time was not okay. And now it's like, no, that's a thing. That's okay. I mean, there's still a segment of the population that's really pushing hard against that. But it's more okay than it was. And marijuana fits into this role. Like growing up when I was a kid, when I imagined most of us were kids.

Marijuana don't do that. Just say no, that's, you're gonna be addicted to heroin. You can't do marijuana, you're gonna die in the gutter. Right? And now it's legal. If your kids are, are walking towards teenager hood, there's a good chance they're just going to smoke marijuana. And you're gonna have all kinds of Nancy Reagan responses happen when you find out about that.

And you're gonna have to deal with it and manage it cuz they're not even doing anything illegal anymore. So you have to, and you have to have those conversations early and often to be able to pr be able to navigate that with your kids. And that means you've gotta stay regulated. Mean addiction, that is a hard topic for me.

Me and substance use at all is a hard topic for me. I'm straight edge. I haven't done anything. For those of you who know what straight edge is, just means you don't drink, do drugs, anything. Right? Like, and like my kids know the risks. They know don't smoke stuff cause you have asthma. And that like is gonna, that's not a good plan.

Like if you wanna try marijuana, eat a gummy, don't, like, don't smoke it, you know, don't vape cuz that'll mess you up more. And please don't do anything that's addictive because oh my god, that runs in our family. Especially alcohol. Like, that's, that's gonna be a hard one for dad to navigate. He'll do his best and he'll do better than he probably thinks you will.

And other parents will be like, how did you handle that so well? And I'll be like, cause I bottled it. But, but like, the sooner you have those conversations with your kids, the better off you're gonna be. And I don't know how any old anyone's kids are, but I imagine some of you have younger kids or maybe no kids at all.

These things that you know are traps for you that you know, might set you off. You gotta navigate them in like before they're a problem so that you're as much for yourself as for the other, as for your kids. Other stuff that might create dysregulation for us. Unmet expectations. Here's the thing, here's the trap of that.

A lot of the time, those expectations are assumed and not voiced. A lot of the time we are running with unknown rules, like invisible norms and invisible expectations that nobody knows about, and then they don't meet that invisible expectation and we get upset because we never voiced it. And if we had voiced it, they would've met it, tried to meet it, or told us they couldn't.

But we don't say it cuz we don't even know it's there. And we have to find out what, what are the invisible expectations that we have that keep coming up and biting us in the butt or damaging our relationships? And then figure out how to either communicate those expectations or accept that they're not gonna be met.

And I mean, accept, I don't mean like I'm gonna be all pissy, but I won't say anything. I mean, like, I'm gonna figure out how to manage this, that my expectation is not gonna be met. It doesn't mean I need to be mad at anybody, whether they know it or [00:45:00] not. Like just, you know what I mean? And that it depends on the expectations.

Some of these expectations are, are values and boundaries for us. You gotta voice that stuff. Some of these are needs. You gotta voice that stuff cuz it's hard to live without, with an unmet need.

These are the sneaky things that lead to dysregulation. And I know I'm throwing a lot of information at you guys. I totally get it. But if any of you decide to join that father's group that I'm, I've been talking about like, you'll get, we'll, we'll go a lot more deep with this stuff and play with it more effectively there.

This is more like, let me try to fast forward people a little bit. I'm starting your orange. We can peel it later, but at least the skin is ripped. 

Kids and Other People's Dysregulation

Brendan: Another thing that is gonna throw you off is the dysregulation of other people, right? Your kid gets dysregulated and then, and you go and match them. And it, that's hard, right?

It's tricky. That's where if you can figure out what typically disregulates your kid, it doesn't mean we avoid that. It doesn't mean we, like, we make sure they never have to be in a situation that's gonna make 'em upset. It means we anchor ourselves so we can help them get regulated, help guide them out of that.

Does that make sense? So that we don't fly off the handle too. Another, another couple of triggers. I have really, really one sort of, we often get triggered cuz we're worried about our kids, right? Like our, our kid is struggling and then we get upset because what if they're gonna fail Algebra? What if they're not gonna have any friends?

What if they're not gonna be strong enough? Like, I don't know, there's lots of stuff that might. Might cause that know what those are. Try to notice them as they happen. Try to get outta your own head. Like it's not, it is not about you. I think I talked about this last time, one of the lenses that helps me as a dad and as a husband and as, and in what I do is, but I'm on the, I'm so far on the other side of this that it's actually damaging to me and I need to work on that.

But, but a lot of folks aren't, don't take this lens. I tend to operate in this world going, yeah, but I'm not the main character, right? Like if I'm working with my kids or a client or my talking to my wife, they're the main character. It's their story. I'm a supporting character in that story. Now, the last three years I've had to be a supporting character for way too long and it, I'm burning out on it cause I haven't been able to be the main character enough and I need to be the main character too.

Like you guys need to be the main character. For men, typically, typically men need to be the supporting character more often and women need to be the main character more often. Usually that's changing, but we're not quite there yet. But try to be the main, try to be the, the supporting character and see what that does.

See how that changes your lens on stuff. For me, it gives me a ton of emotional distance cuz it's not about me, it's about them. So I don't need to get upset that my kid failed a math test or is failing social studies. I don't, it's not my problem, it's their problem. And the way that that becomes my problem is it's my job to support them in fixing the problem and helping them solve the problem.

But if I get upset about it, I'm trying to make their problem, my problem. And that doesn't help them solve their problem because now there's a lot more weight. Right now it's if I don't do a better job in math or science or social studies or whatever, my dad's not gonna like me as much. My dad's not gonna love me as much.

I'm gonna damage my relationship with my dad if I don't fix this grade. That's guys, that's bananas cuz we're the person they wanna turn to for help. But if our love and connection, it feels like it's contingent on them doing well in this, with this problem, they're not gonna turn to us for help cuz it's gonna feel like they only get that relationship repaired if they fix the problem.

So we need to make sure that we're good, man. Like we are buds. I'm your dad. I love you. I like you as a person. Say that to your kid at some point. Watch what that does. That's a, that's a bananas powerful thing. I don't know that. I know, I tell you I love you all the time, but if I told you that like, I like you as a person, I like hanging out with you, and I just think you're cool and great, like mm-hmm.

And gen, but gen genuine, right? So make sure that like when they're having a problem, you're not making it about you and you're not making it feel like your relationship with them is being affected by them having a problem. Espe. If, if it is, if they're like banging into a value of yours, that's different.

But if it's just like they're bombing a math test or something like they lost their job, or their girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with 'em, like, it's not our problem. It's their problem. And we should help them with the problem. Them having a problem that can be our problem, but their actual problem is not our problem.[00:50:00] 

Am I splitting this hair in a way that's useful? Tom shakes his head. Oh, okay. And then you get your thumbs up. All right. Because a lot we feel like we need to be in charge and control of everything. And it's not our job to be in charge, in control of everything. Especially for our kids.

They have to be in charge, in control of their stuff. We just have to guide them. Shane, what's up? 

Shane: So two things you're actually touching on. The one thing I was gonna bring up. You know, children need agency, right? From as young as they understand it. Mm-hmm. 

And if they don't have it, they're going to start lashing out. Right. So make them make decisions, make them fail, make them make mistakes, then teach them how to fix it. Mm-hmm. And figure out how to joke, keep going forward. That was the one thing. The other thing is in, I, you know, I see this every now and then.

Don't try to live out your fantasies of what you wanted to have when you were a kid. Coming next. 

Yeah. Don't live out your fantasies of what you wanted to be doing as a kid through your kids. Don't have that expectation of them because they're different people than you.

Yeah. 

Brendan: Where I was going with that is the inverse. A lot of the time, a thing that can be a trigger for us is when we see our challenges reflected in the challenges of our kids. It's this, it's the same idea. It's like the same thing kind of just from the other side.

So if you had trouble making friends growing up and then your kids are having trouble making friends, that's gonna be extra painful for you because them not having friends is gonna remind you of you not having friends. If you had trouble getting, getting projects done in school and now your kid is having trouble getting projects done at school, that might be extra painful for you because you're like, oh my God.

Right. And sometimes we can reframe this effectively. It depends on where we are in life and how things are going for us. If I'm 56 years old and still don't have any friends, it's gonna be hard for me to be like, oh my God, my kid doesn't have any friends. And I don't either. And that's a nightmare, right?

But if I've got friends and relationships and things are going okay, I can use that as data for my kids. I can say, yeah, my kid is in fifth grade and doesn't have any friends, but I, and that was true of me too. But now I'm a grownup and I have plenty of friends, and so my kids are probably gonna be okay.

Does that make sense? But, but regardless, we have to know that trigger exists and be ready for it and ready to manage it. Mark what's up? 

Marc: I absolutely love the, the concept of don't make the problems about you. Make it about them. That's a life thing in general. It's not just for kids. Yeah. I, I, I see that.

I'm curious if you would be willing to provide an example of taking that concept and actually delivering it within a conversation. So you're a parent and you just get a progress report and you see your kid is failing mm-hmm. In math class and English class. With that mindset in place, what does a conversation look like?

Brendan: I just did this with my kid. My kid got two ones that's an F guys, two ones in social studies for like different pieces of it. And he saw 'em, and I was like, my wife and I saw it too. And we were like, all right, cool. So like obviously that's not cool, but we also knew that this was coming, right? Like we had already managed this, why this has happened.

We already dealt with that problem. So it, it wasn't a shock. So that helped. But like, we were just like, okay, cool. So I, what do you like, what do you wanna do about this? Like, how, how, how do you wanna solve this? I can help and like I'm uniquely suited to that as a former teacher, executive functioning coach, former principal, mental health clinician, guidance counselor.

Like my, my skillset in this area is very strong, but I can also hire people, right? And I've got another kid that's bombing outta Spanish. We got 'em a tutor, right? Like that's the solution. That's how we try to solve this. Me getting mad doesn't help solve anything. So it becomes how do you wanna solve this?

What, what would you like to do? Because what happens a lot of the time is a kid messes up and we get this diluted idea that they don't understand that they messed up. So we have to be mad at them and like be, yell at them and make it, make sure they understand what a big deal this is. Nah, don't operate under the assumption that your kid knows that this is a big deal and that they want to do well.

Like my, my, here's my three core assumptions. I need to say this better. I'm working on it. I need to retrain myself. I'm gonna do it the bad way first. Everybody wants to do well. Your kid wants to do well, right? Your kid is trying their best and your kid wants to please you. Those are my three assumptions.

They're, and put more broadly, everybody wants to be included in their [00:55:00] society, culture, group, whatever, right? Family, school, group, whatever. Everybody wants to feel like they're a contributing member of that group. That's the success part. And everybody is trying their best to be a successful, contributing member of that group that they wanna be a part of.

What this does is it changes our questions because if we don't have those assumptions, it's easy to say, my kid is defiant, my kid is oppositional, my kid doesn't care. My kid is lazy, like my whatever. Right? We can say those things. It's easy to say those things and those things don't lead to solutions.

There's no solution Hiding inside my kid is lazy. That's why parents start beating their kids cuz the only way to make my kid not lazy is to beat him till he stops. There's no problem to solve there because I ga I have the wrong answer cuz I'm asking the wrong questions. Right. But if my kid wants to do well, my kid is trying their best and my kid wants to please me, well then why is my kid failing?

Huh? Huh? That's, how the hell do we answer that? It's easy. It's wicked easy. My kid is lacking a skill. Maybe a few skills or a resource or resources. That's what's missing. We just have to figure out what is the skill and or resource or skills and or resources that are, that's missing here. Right? My kid might like Nate.

Nate is a monster with math. Monster. But when you put him on a time to math test, his anxiety goes bananas and he fails it. It's not a matter of lacking math skills, it's a matter of lacking emotional regulation skills and anxiety management skills. Right. That's not the same. And so, and also he's so good at math, he doesn't write stuff out.

Like he just looks at a problem, wicked, complicated, hard problems and solves 'em. And then he gets marked down for not having written it down because the skill he needs most is to figure out how to slow his thinking down enough that he can figure out what he's doing. Not even where he went wrong, he just needs to figure out what he's doing.

Cuz he typically doesn't go wrong even with math and letters. Even with algebra, he's, unless he's got a lot of variables to keep track of, he's a monster. So like standard array stuff he co gets, he encounters trouble with. And that makes him slow down. And it's even harder cuz that gets the emotional stuff going right?

Like the slower something something is, the harder it is for him. It's a different strategy, it's a different skill, it's a different kind of resource that you need. So that's the stuff that we want to be thinking about with our kids. 

My wife gets chronic migraines. She used to get 'em a lot more. It's so much, so much, far better that I'm hesitant to say gets. There was a time when she was getting 20 migraines a month and was debilitated at least once a week. Now it's not as much. I could have been a really pissed off husband cuz I was a single dad at least once a week.

And my wife was cranky a lot of the time cuz she's in pain. And I went, no matter how bad this is for me, no matter how hard this is for me, this is, I'm not the main character. No matter how hard this is for me, no matter how difficult this is for me, it's worse for her. It's harder for her. And taking that lens, let me bring compassion to the equation right now.

Admittedly, my wife and I have a very solid, loving relationship. It's not toxic. There's no abuse. Like it's easier to do this when I'm not burning myself by saying it. So with that caveat, but thinking about it that way helps. Right? My kid fails a math test or fails social studies like he did. He feels bad about that.

He feels worse about that than I'm going to. I don't need to add to it. Cuz the more up, the more upset I get him. And that's what we do. We try to make the kid more upset so they understand how important this is. Right? But, but like, guys, ready, ready, ready.

The more upset I get my kid, the closer they get to the amygdala. And the less good decisions they're gonna make, the hardware, it's gonna be for them to bring their executive functions to bear so they can make careful decisions and do the things they need to do to solve the problem. And if their dad has ADHD, there's a good chance they do too.

And they're executive functions are already vulnerable. Why make it worse? Right? Like, just be chill. Does that mean you're never gonna lose your temper at your kid? No. You're gonna, it's okay. Does that mean you'll never yell at your kid? Probably not. I've yelled at my kids, but I yell at my kids tactically.

I know when I'm yelling at my kids. Even one time when I lost it and it was, I was amygdala, I still did it tactically. The only time that didn't happen, this is my second story, is when Nate was in a full-blown O c D mode when he was bananas and had no control over himself. We fought a lot. I yelled at him more than I've ever yelled at anybody.

I still feel bad about it. And one day I yelled at my wife too. [01:00:00] Because she was trying to help and it's contamination. O c D. So like if I touch this thing and that touches this thing and then that touches me, I'm contaminated. It's really calm, it's really hard to grasp sometimes. But she did the thing where she touched a thing from school that was gonna make things worse for him.

And I was trying to get him outta the shower. I couldn't get him outta the shower, like Ah. Right. And I yelled at my wife and I was like, I'd never yelled at my wife. I had never yelled at my wife before cuz it's just not me. It's just not who I am. And I was like, oh, I'm doing this. It was good cuz it broke me out of what was not a good cycle.

Good, good pattern. That was, I was with Nate, I sat down on the bed and I went, Brendan, you teach parents how to do this, how to, how to stop this, how to get better at this. Like, you know, the solution, you're just not accessing it. And the reason I wasn't accessing it was because I was scared for my kid. My kid was taking two hour long showers.

My kid was washing his hands in the kitchen, sinks for 25 minutes and crying the whole time cuz he wanted to wash his hands. My kid had chemical burns all over his body from soap. Like it was not a fun experience, guys, lot of trauma. But I sat in the bed and I went, you know what? You know the answer, you just gotta find it.

I literally went through the slides of my parent groups in my head, cause I've done 'em a lot. I went title, slide, covid slide, sort of norms slide. Hey, you know what, everyone's doing the best they can. Everybody wants to succeed and your kids wanna please you. And I was like, that's what I'm doing wrong. I am not.

I'm so used to making those assumptions all the time. I stopped making them and didn't even notice. And I went back to my kid and I was like, Nate, here's where I'm messing up. I have not been assuming that you were doing the best that you can. And I'm sorry cuz I know that you are. And what threw me off was that your best used to be better than this.

What I'm asking of you is stuff you used to be able to do and now you can't anymore. That's not your fault, that's OC D's fault. You are so anxious that you're losing skills. And I understand that cuz I've lost skills too. And this is me getting some of those skills back. And I'm, I'm sorry. And by the way, apologize to your kids.

If, apologize to your kids, you will stop fucking up if you apologize to your kids. Cuz that's not an easy thing to do. And so I was like, I'm sorry bud, it won't happen again. I have not yelled at him since that conversation. We have not banged heads since that conversation. It ended then. Some of that is my like violent level of integrity and some of that is I had the aha moment that I needed and I fixed it, fixed the problem.

So that's the power of some of the stuff I'm talking about here. Like my dys, I got dysregulated too a lot on maybe not quite a daily basis, but at least a like three or four times a week basis. Weekends are easier. So yeah. Shane, go ahead.

Q&A

Shane: So, okay. I was hoping if we could do a q and a. Cause I've got a number of questions that I've kind of got from the comment section on Facebook and in here, one of them that just popped up.

So when we have kids who are neuro divergent or neurotypical, it doesn't really matter, but especially neuro divergent where they may not have that social awareness or that self-awareness. How do we help them understand that if kids don't want to play with them, like what, what's the next steps?

Like how do we help them kind of not get crushed eventually when they figure it out? Or how do we help them kind of process the emotions if they are really highly sensitive and they're dealing with kids not wanting to play with them? Yep. 

Brendan: First we get our own house in order. Like first we figure out how we're feeling about this and we navigate that and we figure out if, how we feel about this is even valid.

Like, I'm a wicked extrovert. I would love to have 50 people in my backyard having a barbecue. That is not my family. They are not extroverts. Nate is a little bit, but the OCD makes that hard. Gavin, my other son, is a wicked introvert. He's happy to be just him and his brother. He's happy to be himself. Him not having a friend to hang out with every day besides his brother.

Like if his brother didn't exist, him not having a friend to hang out with every day is fine with him. So one wonder, does your kid even wanna have a bunch of friends, right? Like that's, that's a question to just think about and, and honestly ask about like ask your kid, like when are you full of people?

Kind of like cake, right? Like some of us, like me, I could eat a whole cake. Others of us, my wife only wants a piece of cake that's like a sliver. She probably won't even finish that, right? Social stuff is the same way. Do I want to eat the whole cake of people or do I just want a sliver of a slice of a cake of people?

So there's that part. When they're getting rejected. Autism, I don't wanna be a jerk here, but sometimes the autistic kid doesn't even know they're being rejected and like, that's okay. That's, that's kind of protecting them a little bit. So we don't need to [01:05:00] say to them like, but those kids rejected you and now your kid's upset for something they didn't even have to realize.

Right? So you can protect 'em by not letting 'em know. Potentially. But also be careful with that cuz sometimes they do know but they're not saying anything cuz they don't wanna upset you. Like, this is some hard stuff to read and figure out. Does, am I making sense here? I'm not trying to be glib at all.

Like, it's also, you gotta navigate it. And all we can really do as parents is be there, be a safe place for them to be and talk to and feel supported by. And a, and a sup, like a social person, support person. And, and then we can look around for like, what are the resources in my community that can help me, help my kid meet more kids and find more friends.

And they're, cuz there's specifically autistic, autism groups that are going to, can do that. That's what they're designed for. A lot of 'em play d and d cuz that's being found to be a pretty powerful tool in this area. But not all of 'em. And like, is your kid playing video games with other kids All the time and it's great.

I don't know. Like, and I, and I know I'm not, I'm not strictly answering Robert's question. I'm expanding a little bit cuz people watching at home or whatever, everyone's at home. But, but that, like, those are things to wonder about too. And if your kid is happy to play video games with his friends and that's a social interaction and you're like, but they should be together in person.

Right. I get that. Maybe that can happen. Maybe you can come up with a way for them to all bring their video games over and like they're playing on laptops or everyone brings a TV and a console, I don't care. And they're able to play in your living room. And you, now it's a party, right? The land parties used to be a thing, right?

We no reason you can't bring it back. It depends on the situation and what's going on. So I hope that, that I'm heading in a good direction. I'm gonna start with Robert and then I'll jump over to Mark, cuz this is a Robert question. Hey, 

Robert: thanks Brendan. And, and that's, that's all really helpful.

That's some, some really good things to think through. And, and I, I do, it does occur to me sometimes that he's not always aware and things like that. I, I think what was catching, what was what, what that also brought to mind is when he's in the middle of these interactions, I could take to the playground and stuff and he goes to, to play with a group of kids.

And you know, sometimes, you know, you could see the dissonance that he's in there. He is, oh, he's getting in there kind of redirecting the, the gains or whatever's going on and, and I see him struggling. I, I think for me, I need to understand, and, and maybe, and I'm just wondering if you have any tips on this in particular?

To catch myself in the moment, to not react. Like when I see him, like pushing a kid's boundary, like I feel like I need to let him fail there somewhat. Mm-hmm. But there's a part of me that really clenches up immediately and I'm reacting and I'm like, no, no, you gotta stop that now. So some maybe something to, to some, some way to, to catch it in the moment and so that I'm not overreacting to him.

Brendan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, yeah. One way to catch that in the moment is you're driving to the place and you're parking the car and like, just think about it. Like, just think about like, I'm not gonna over respond, right? Like, I'm gonna let my kid, how old is your kid? He's seven. Okay, I got it. I got it. That gives me more choices cuz like a seven year old, you don't have to pay that much attention to him.

Right. Like, odds are you're going there and watching for something to go wrong so you can fix it. Stop. Like you don't even have to pump the brakes in the moment if you just stop paying attention as much. Cuz then you're gonna miss things and he's gonna have to handle it. Right? And and another thing to think about is when we as parents are over responding to like this stuff, situations that our kids are in, we're communicating our anxiety to them, right?

And we're like, here have a little anxiety present. I want you to carry this with you whenever you get into a social situation and now they're more anxious in social situations than they would've been otherwise. And it's not because they're being rejected by their peers, it's because we are overreacting to the slightest potential of rejection.

And we are sending anxiety to them cuz we're saying, I don't think you can handle this. We gotta let 'em handle it. You gotta let 'em fall in their face and struggle and it's gotta suck and then debrief. Like you can do that. That's a choice. But, but managing it is important. And, and also like as he get, he's probably not there yet, but as he gets older, like some of this you can manage by inviting people to your house and hang in your backyard and have something of high interest that will draw kids, right?

Assuming you've got the funds for that, like if you've got two trees and enough money, you can get a slack line. Kids can come over and play in the slack line and like that's a thing that's interesting enough that you're gonna get a couple of kids over. Cuz what's that? I made a whole friend group by watching movies in my backyard cuz I speak professionally and we used to do that in person.

I don't know if you guys remember that back in like, the olden days of 2019. So I have like an L c D projector and a [01:10:00] screen and a speaker that, that's a theater. So I drew people to our family by inviting them over to watch a movie in the backyard. Cuz who does that? Like, that's cool, right? And that helped us make a friend group.

And that led to board game parties and d and d and cookouts with no movie and other stuff too. So that's, that's a choice. But you don't wanna always be in control. You want your kids to wander far a field and have to figure it out on their own like we did. And, and that is especially hard thanks to Covid like a lot of our kids.

And as adults, we lost social connections and like I, I used to invite 50 people over to my house and it wasn't that hard. I would be hard pressed to feel comfortable inviting that many people over, not because of Covid O V I D, but because I would, I wouldn't be sure if those people would wanna come over, cuz that relationship is sort of atrophied and I'm probably wrong.

They'd probably be like, oh we haven't done this since 2019. Right. But I still feel uncertain and that leads to anxiety like I said. So sometimes draw people to you and other times try to get your kid to go somewhere else, which is hard cuz you can't be like, invite my child over to your house. But. Yeah, mark.

All right, so we got a few questions from our Facebook group or livestreaming this tube. 

Marc: Mm-hmm. Seems like we got a little bit of imposter syndrome going on here. All right. Larry Holmes is asking, how do you have the confidence to raise kids in the K to 12 system if you didn't do well in the K to 12 system?

I grudge having to go through that again. Please help.

Brendan: A bunch of different ways. One, your kid is not you

two, even if they have the same like thing as you, they've got the same letters after their name and it's not a master's degree. It's like ADHD o d D something, right? Like it's those diagnoses. They're still not you. Their stuff is still different. And remember what I talked about, how cultural norms are changing.

Oh my God. Have schooled norms changed now? Not everywhere. I, I freely admit my privilege here, I live in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is not Nebraska. Like, our norms in our schools are very different from the norms in some other states, and I wanna own that, but teachers get it in a way that they didn't get it when we were growing up.

And the authoritarianism in schools is not the same as it used to be. It's not like, go do this thing, blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna stand in front of, in front of the class and just recite the textbook at you and you're gonna have to take notes and learn. Like, that's not how it works anymore. There's a lot of group work, there's a lot of interactivity, there's a lot of projects and, and like it's a different animal now for executive function and neurodiverse kids, that means it's different challenges, right?

It's. The challenges are different now, but there's a lot more allowance for neurodiversity in most schools. I can't, I wish I could say all of 'em, but I can't. But there's a lot more allowances and, and I feel fairly comfortable saying this. I don't, I don't think your parents owe person who was worried about this.

I don't rem remember their name. I don't think your parents were going. I know they weren't hanging out in Facebook trying to learn how to do this better as a parent because Facebook didn't exist yet. My, I'm willing to bet you are much better informed about what's going on with your kid than your parents were.

And that means when you meet with school staff about the challenges your kid is facing, you are better armed and better prepared to support your kid in that meeting. So that's there too. And one last thing that I don't have to tell everybody all the time. When you go into a school, you become the kid that you were when you were in school, don't.

You are a grown ass man. Don't walk in there and feel like you're 12 and you're in trouble cuz you're in the principal's office. That's not why you're in the principal's office. You're in the principal's office cuz you are meeting his colleagues and you are having a conversation about your kid who both of you care about and both of you want to see succeed and you have information and they have information you need to be able to share that information.

I have walked into schools with like vice presidents of billion dollar companies and watched them become not a titan among men, but a scared little kid as we walked into school and I was like, cut that out. Like that's not a thing, right? So just recognize that that happens and, and be ready and stay the adult that you are instead of the kid that you were.

Marc: One of our moderators and team members in our group is a, is a teacher as well. His name is Jonathan Greer. Highly, highly suggest, by the way, Brendan 

Brendan: Mahan, you would, you would would make a great podcast guest. Yes. Jonathan [01:15:00] Greer message me on Facebook. Yeah, he also, he also figure it out something and we'll figure it out.

Marc: He also has the best laugh I've ever heard anyways, off subject. But he says that he's a teacher and he wholeheartedly agrees with everything that you said regarding the education system and how it's not what it once was. 

Shane: My wife is a special needs teacher and one of the biggest things that teachers are desperate for in today's age. Is for parents to be involved and to be a part of the solution. Mm-hmm. And be informed and be willing to listen and be willing to be a part of it and be willing to do the work at home to help the child get the support that they need so that the teachers and the parents aren't working at cross purpose.

Mm-hmm. And when you, when you have that partnership, the kids do significantly better. This has been proven in science all over the world. Yep. 

Brendan: And rate your kids' IEP in 5 0 4, but not about school. Like, yes, about school, but also not about school. An IP and a 5 0 4 is the how the teachers are supposed to teach your kid.

Right. That's the idea behind them all teaching is, is communication. That's it. So that i e p and 5 0 4 is a tool to help you understand how to better communicate with your kid. Read it and wonder about like, how does this apply to my kid and does it, is it accurate or not? Cuz sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's just they've looked up stuff up on the internet and they're like, well these five things work for every kid with ADHD. Maybe, maybe not. But if it says break large tasks into small manageables chunks, which is on most ADHD IEPs, and you're like, why can't I get my kid to clean the room, clean their room?

Cuz you didn't break that task down into small, manageable chunks like the I, it'll help you parent your kid more effectively. And as you start to use it, you'll start to figure out stuff that doesn't work that great and you can communicate that to the school. But if you don't ever interact with the i p or 5 0 4, you don't have that advantage that you would otherwise have.

Marc: Goes back to what you said too about the kids. They're lacking the resources right, that they need. They want to do well for themselves. They don't know how to, right. 

Brendan: And the idea behind a 5 0 4 and i e p is what are the resources that are lacking and what are the skills that are lacking? And how is this teacher, the school, gonna give those resources and or skills to this kid?

Marc: Love it. Love it. All right, so we've got Robert Roberts asking a question about offering resources, like tutoring for kids when needed, what to do when you can't afford to do something like that. 

Brendan: As a parent I would talk to the school because probably there's a high school kid who needs to get community service hours cuz that's a requirement for graduation.

That that might be a way that that kid can get some community. Community service hours is by. Working with your kid and tutoring them on stuff. Is it gonna be phenomenal? No. There's like, it's a high school kid, you're only gonna get so much mileage out of a high school kid, but it's free. Right? Don't underestimate the power of YouTube.

Like I as a tutor, when I, I used to tutor and we went to YouTube for a lot of stuff cuz the videos are there and it's gonna teach you this thing and you can find it on the internet. Khan Academy, at least. I think there's a p piece of Khan Academy that's free still. It's been a little while since I played over there, but Khan Academy's got stuff the school might also know of.

Like just resources beyond a high school kid that where you can get some free support or there might, for all I know there's like a scholarship in your, in your town that exists for free tutoring. Like the scholarship pays the tutor. That could be a thing, right? If you don't ask, you're not gonna know.

So I would start by talking to the school and critically pot. Maybe go to the education department in the town hall too. Don't just find out from the school that, that there's nothing, the person you talk to might not know. The secretary might be like, ah, guidance counselors are gonna be guidance counselors and principals are gonna be the most likely to know stuff, but there might even be stuff that's coming up that they don't know about yet that the Board of Ed would know about.

So don't be hesitate to go to the board of Ed for your town, too, for the education department. 

Marc: Love it. Love it. Jonathan Greer did, this is slightly on, on a different subject on the education system. I use in my class, this mantra, "Everyone is different and that's," and he has the students say, "That's OK!" 

Mm-hmm. I freaking love that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all about 

embracing who we are. Yep. Anybody else here got any questions that you would like to ask?[01:20:00] Use the raise hand feature and I'll make sure you get called on. I wanna make sure that you all have the opportunity to share what's on your mind or anything you'd like to pick Brendan's brain on when he's, while he's still here.

I just wanna be clear. I think that this is one of my absolute favorite events that we've ever done, and I almost feel that every single parent witADHDshould watch 

Brendan: this. I, I haven't even gotten to half of the stuff I came with.

That was amazing. 

Marc: Oh man. Robert, 

Brendan: what's, what's on your mind buddy? 

Rick: Again, thank you so much for answering my question before. One of the things I'm working on and I, I'm literally working with, with my, I have a coach that I work with and I, I recently brought this to or attended, like I want to help with this for my son.

But I'm wondering if you had any, any ideas here too. We're trying so when he has too much screen time he becomes much more disregulated. Yeah, so we, we really, we really limit the screen time, especially his interactive screen time. In his passive screen time. He gets a specific amount. But when he doesn't have it, it's, I can see, and there are days that like his dopamines just, it's just not there.

Like he's just, he's a slug. He won't move. He, he, and all he does is ask for Can I watch, can I watch, can I watch? I'm trying to figure out or identify activities or things that like, that could get him going. And I dunno if there's, I've heard like the concept of a DOPA menu suggested Fords. I always thought that was a great idea.

I'm really struggling to find those things and I was just wondering if you had any tips for, especially ki like kids or, or whatever, any activities to bring them away from the screen time. Something that can help, ways to help them get them engaged. You know, if I can help find them. Yeah. Help them find the, a better habit there.

Brendan: Yeah. Like a kid is gonna go to a screen if the most interesting option is the screen and if there are other more interesting options, they'll go somewhere else. Right. So sometimes we have to teach 'em about an interesting option. Like for my kids, Frisbee is not an interesting option cuz I didn't make them play Frisbee a lot.

Right. Like, but I, I'm probably gonna soon, now that they're a little older and like the more activities we can engage them in actively they get, they have to learn how to do it. So like, I suck at baseball until I don't suck at baseball anymore. Right. Baseball's a hard ADHD skill unless the kid loves it.

Like it's baseball's boring, let's be honest. But basketball or soccer, those are much more exciting. Sports hockey cuz they're faster moving basketball literally bounces. That's always helpful for people who have ADHD. Like those, there's other stuff that they could do. My guys rock climb, they do martial arts, take 'em outside, bring for a walk, like he's seven.

So a lot of the stuff that's gonna be away from a screen you're gonna have to help him with at least initially. And also look at like Lego, like leg. I, I know all kinds of kids that get a lot of mileage outta Lego. Take him to classes that'll teach him how to draw so he can become like skilled in that.

Really what I want you to think about is the, the, the push pull of creating versus consuming. That's the frame I want you to put on this, right? You gotta help your kid create. And that means he's gotta learn how to create, which is make, put some at, at that age, put some requirement on you as a dad.

Whether it's finding a class that's gonna teach him to create or being with him there while he makes a grilled cheese sandwich. Cuz oh my god, the fire thing that could go wrong with a seven year old making a grilled cheese sandwich. But that doesn't mean a grilled cheese sandwich can't be made by a seven year old.

It just means you gotta teach 'em first. Chain's got a video on this. Like look at that and, and also with the screens, think about it from that lens. Like, is my kid creating or consuming when they're on this screen? If they're playing Minecraft and building all kinds of banana stuff, that's his virtual Legos, that's not a big deal.

But if he's watching YouTube Minecraft videos and not doing anything other than watching Third Life or something, that's a YouTube Minecraft video. Because I'm cool as a dad. My kids taught me about it. 

Robert: Thank you that, that actually brings a really good thought to like, one of the things that we limit is this Minecraft time, but that actually makes me think, think maybe we should be flipping the script. Maybe he should be allowed to play more Minecraft and maybe less 

of the passive. 

Brendan: And as he gets older, because you're drawing these delineations, right? He'll be able to draw these delineations too. And I do that with my guys. That's gonna happen for next week, next week's vacation week. I'm gonna be like, you guys get two hours of consumption time, which is me being generous.

But you can also create stuff. I came home last week I think, or the week before they had a half day. I came home. They were on the roof cuz there's a roof right out their bedroom window. So they're on the roof writing a book. 14 year old kids writing a book, right? Like cool, like you're on your iPad but you're writing a book.

Like it's, it's not gonna be a great book cuz you're 14. But you know that going in and you're doing, you're [01:25:00] learning how to write a book by writing this like that. Are you creating? Are you consuming? And then as they get older, they're gonna figure that out, right? And another thing to do is if they're wa, if they're on their iPad, this is a training I've done with my kids.

Just go, how much more time do you need? Instead of saying, get off the iPad, ask 'em how much more time they need that's gonna give them transition time to process what's going on. And that they have to stop. And it also makes them look at what they're doing and estimate time, which matters. Sometimes that's easy cuz it's a YouTube video and they're like 10 minutes or whatever.

But it gives them some transition time, transitions, a whole other thing we'll have to talk about at some point. And it also shows them that you respect them, right? Like, I respect you, I respect your time on this iPad. I'm not gonna come up to you after two hours and go two hours is up, you're done. I'm gonna go, Hey guys, two hours is up.

How much more time do you need? Right? And my kids are trained at this point and they're like, 10 minutes, five minutes. They know if it's more than 15, I'm gonna be like too bad. And sometimes if it's more than 10, I'm gonna say Too bad. And they just go, oh, okay, cool. Right? Like these are all, we gotta learn how to like treat our kids with dignity.

And some of us have to learn that cuz our parents didn't treat us with dignity. And so we don't have that as a model. But the more we treat our kids with dignity, the better every, the easier everything gets. Cuz it's to it like we don't have the tools in our toolbox that our parents and grandparents had.

Right? My grandparents could beat the bag outta my parents and no one's gonna bat an eye to go for the extreme example. Some of your parents could do that nowadays. That's not a tool in your toolbox. And that's fine, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing because it forces parents to get more skilled and more with communication, with social, with social emotional awareness and it.

Means we have to treat our kids with dignity to get the same stuff that our parents got with a belt. And that means our kids are gonna wanna see us again when we're old and busted. They're gonna wanna hang out with us. And some of us might not, right? Like I, my parents thankfully treated me with dignity.

I want to, I'm probably gonna go see my dad tomorrow. I have to call him after this and see he's round. But like that, not if you can't use corporal punishment, you've gotta have more skills cuz you can't parent through fear anymore.

I have a lot of thoughts about this stuff in case you guys can't, 

Marc: I, I'm learning a ton over here, man. This has been incredible. 

Brendan: We talked about managing emotions when, like how to lower the floor, but I didn't really talk about deescalation. So I want to talk about deescalation. I'll be a little bit quick on this, but I wanna talk about it.

When you are escalating you wanna f recognize what that feels like in your body. Like how, where are my emotions in my body? How's that feeling so that when I start to get escalated, I can feel that change in my body and maybe recognize that I'm escalating. Like it's a little bit of a long-term strategy.

You're gonna have to learn how anger feels, how frustration feels first, or even how sadness feels or whatever the emotion is. How do I feel? What does my body feel like when I'm experiencing this emotion so that I can recognize when it's happening? Cuz often it, the emotion happens and we don't know what's happening and then we're off to the races, especially with anger, right?

Also, Recognize, wonder about and change the story that you are telling yourself about the situation, right? Like, what I like and I'm, if Robert, is it okay if I play with this pa the playground thing, by all means, the story you're telling yourself, probably like, I'm doing a little mind reading here, but I have enough information to, and I'm pretty good at this.

The story you're telling yourself probably is those kids don't like my kid and don't wanna hang out with my kid. And they're, he's gonna get upset because he is, they're gonna reject him. And then I'm gonna have to deal with him being upset and it's gonna be really hard and I don't want my kid to be rejected and he's never gonna have any friends and he's gonna grow up homeless and alone.

And even the cats won't hang out with him. Right? Like, like that's what happens. That's the like, we just catastrophize and you don't know that that's true, right? Like, and we, so we have to pause with the story and go, wait, is this true? Is this not true? Am I just making stuff up? Because you don't know. I mean, if it's the same kids that are there every single time and they always reject your kid, then yeah, the story is true.

You've got a safe bet that that's what's gonna happen. But also why do you keep going back there if that's what's going on, right? Like that's, that's a different question. But if it's just a bunch of different kids and they may or may not reject your kid, then know that the story you're telling yourself is that these kids are gonna reject my kid and I need to be hypervigilant so I can keep, help 'em avoid pain.

But like that doesn't have to be true. Maybe, maybe what's gonna happen is your kid's gonna go over there and like there's another awkward kid that's just gonna be glad that your kid is there and they're gonna parallel play, which is a thing that happens with autistic kids where they don't engage. Like they [01:30:00] both play with a GI Joe figure.

If I can date myself and their GI Joe figures aren't engaging and having the same adventure, but they're both playing next to each other, and that's a pretty typical. Level of social engagement for kids on the autism spectrum. And it's totally valid and they're happy and content and that's fine. They like come over and like two kids with autism play next to each other and they're kind of connected but not really.

That's okay. That's a level of that's okay for social connection for autistic kids and we just teach them up from there. But that requires coaching skill like a coach and someone who knows how. Probably not necessarily, you can watch enough YouTube videos to learn it yourself, but it also, it's easier in a controlled environment of someone at, at my house than like, I'm just gonna jump in the sandbox with all the other seven year olds and teach my seven year old how to like do this better.

Like, that's not a plan. So pay attention to the story you're telling yourself and wonder about it. And not just in on the playground, but in general, right? Like, this person clearly doesn't like me cuz they walked past me in the hallway, maybe. Or maybe they have to go somewhere and they didn't notice you cuz they're moving so fast and so focus on what they have to do.

Right? So think about the story you're telling yourself. There's also the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique for deescalation of anxiety and stress. We just, you're using your five senses, five of one, four of another. It doesn't matter too much what scent you pick, except that like some of 'em are harder than others.

So it's hard to find five things you can taste cuz then you're like licking walls and stuff and that's not a good plan. So I usually go five things. I can see four things, I can hear three things I can feel, two things I can smell, one thing I can taste, and half the time the thing I'm tasting is like my teeth or something.

Like I'm not going two bananas, right? And I'll be like, I can smell smoke from the camp, the fire my neighbors have going. And also My sleeve, I guess I can smell the sleeve on my coat, right? Like I, you're, you're looking for stuff. It's not necessarily automatic. You can also do this with colors. You can be like, I, I'm, I'm gonna name five blue things that are in my immediate vicinity.

The idea is to like ground yourself in the environment where you are. Push the emotional response away and, and focus on where you are right now and force your executive functions to start firing in the prefrontal cortex to get you out of the amygdala. Does this make sense? That's a, it's a solid strategy.

And then another, a thing that gets talked about in mindfulness a lot, and maybe you guys have heard this, is the idea of that you wanna be able to use the gap between responding and reacting, right? So a react is, I just react emotionally responding is I'm able to have a cognitive thought about this thing and I respond with some logic and, and cognition instead of emotion.

And it always gets talked about, like something happens and I have an emotional response to it, and then there's a gap, and then I respond, right? Like that's the idea, but that's not how it works. And it's okay. The gap moves, guys. Sometimes a thing happens and I react to it and it's bad. It's a bad emotional reaction.

And then the situation resolves itself and I move away and I'm in a different room, different house in my cars, another state I don't know, and then I'm like, oh, I did a really bad job. Like that was not what I should have done in that situation. That's the gap. Like the gap just happened after three days later.

Sometimes you find the gap, right? That's okay. We wanna get the gap in front, but. If we don't play with mindfulness stuff all that often, the gap is gonna happen after at first, right? This make sense? And eventually we want to get to, to the point where like a thing happens and we are able to find the gap right away and respond instead of reacting.

Sometimes you're responding and reacting at the same time that happens. There's times when you're like emoting like crazy, but you're like biting your tongue and trying to be cons, like cognitive about it. And you just gotta tell people that, like, I'm just, I had a conversation with my dad and he tried to push me.

He, I was pissed at him on the phone cuz he checked himself outta the hospital and I was like, jk, whatever. I said, and then I, I was like, I said to him, I'm like, no, I'm, I gotta like, I need you to listen to me dad. And he went, okay. And then I didn't say anything cuz I needed to regulate, right? It was not gonna, I didn't wanna be yelling at my dad and that was where I was.

And he goes, Well, you said I need to listen to you and you're not talking. How can you, you say something And I just said, yeah dad, I'm not saying anything cuz I am trying to regulate my emotions because I want to treat you with the dignity that you deserve cuz you're my dad so I need you to gimme a minute.

And he [01:35:00] was like, okay. He wanted to fight, he wanted to have it out with me, but I was like, nah. Like I'm, I have the moral high ground here, pops like I live on the moral high ground. Almost all of my decisions are made in my life about being on the moral high ground. Integrity is a huge value for me. So like that, I just found the gap, right where it's hard, this is the hardest part is when the gap happens in the middle.

Cuz then our ego gets in the way. Like we pop off and then we're like, oh shit, I'm popping off. And this person does not deserve what I'm doing right now. They don't deserve me. Be yelling or swearing or whatever, whatever's going on, right? I'm not like, I looked at it this way and then someone, sometimes somebody says something and you're like, oh, like that's what that was.

And everything deescalates. But sometimes it's hard to deescalate and let the gap breathe because then we have to admit that we are wrong and then we have to own our mistake right away. And we're already escalated. We're already like up in the, up in the rafters, right? And dysregulated. But that's the gap.

And if you can get comfortable, I'm telling you as a guy who's done it, if you can get comfortable owning your shit, mid pop sky is the limit for navigating this gap. Cuz if you can just own your mistake even when you're dysregulated and be like, Nope. Yep, you're right. And you can make owning your mistake.

A a, a virtue for you. A thing that is like giving you dopamine, making you feel good, filling your buckets, adding to your spoons, however you wanna say it. If you can make owning your mistakes that powerful for yourself, you can find the gap in the middle and still and back up and like, apologize. Try to make things better.

Try to make it okay. And I'm telling you, the other person at first, they like, depending on the person, they might try to like dig in, right? Like especially narcissists might try to do that kind of thing, or if it's a really toxic relationship. But if you've got a reasonably healthy relationship with this person, maybe the first time they try to bite and like try to keep the fight going.

But if you can stay in that integrity pocket and be like, nah, I told you I messed up, I'm sorry. Like I'm trying to own my stuff and treat you with the kind of dignity that I know you deserve. Cuz I know I didn't just now and I'm sorry about that. And I wanna, I'm trying to be better in this moment as well as in general like, And you can lean into that and make 'em feel a little guilty too.

If you want, if you wanna fight a little dirty or you need to do that to get 'em to like deescalate. Cuz that's a thing too. Like that. But that's there. The gap moves. It's not, it usually gets talked about like stimulus gap, respond and don't react or, or, yeah, respond. Don't react. And like the gap is always in the front.

It's not, it moves it, depending on where we are that day, depending on the situation, how highly stimulating it is. Like there's lots of reasons. So play with that. So yeah, so that's deescalation stuff and emotions always want to be validated. If you've got, like, if your kid is spiking, validate their emotion before anything else cuz that emotion wants to get validated.

It's not even your kid, right? Like your kid is not trying to make you mad. Your kid is mad and if they don't know that you get it, that they're mad, they're gonna stay mad cuz you haven't validated their anger. Right? But as soon as you validate their anger, they're gonna start to be able to deescalate And they might go up a little cuz like, you're mad.

Yeah, they're mad. Like that happens. But they'll come down further than they went up. So validate emotions too. That's that stuff. 

Shane: All right. Brendan Mahan, thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate it. That being said, Brendan, where can everybody find you? 

Brendan: ADHDEssentials.com. Everything is ADHD Essentials. So the podcast is ADHDEssentials. The website is ADHDEssentials. Twitter, Instagram is ADHDEssentials. LinkedIn is Brendan Mahan and Faith. There's a Facebook group called ADHD Essentials, it's all ADHD essentials, so, yep.

And you can email me at brendan ADHDessentials.com if you need more like directions, I guess. Thank you for listening. Thank you for having me. I know I mentioned that dad group thing. I haven't quite nailed down my details on that yet, but I will tell you that my intention is and I'll let Shane and, and, and Mark know about this when I finally get my head together.

My intention is that for anybody who signs up through the Men's ADHD Support Group, the Men's ADHD Support Group is gonna get a kickback. From that in inside. I don't know what I'm charging or what, I don't have the model nailed down yet. But once I have that nailed down, the Men's ADHD Support Group gets, gets it like a.

Finder's fee kickback kind of thing. In, as a, as a thank [01:40:00] you, cuz that's how things should work. Not sure kickback's the right word. Yeah. Kickback. I don't know. I don't know. Find, is that better? 

Shane: The new term is, the new term is affiliate marketing. 

Brendan: Oh, is it? They're gonna get an affiliate marketing thing.

Yeah. It's gonna, I'm just gonna make sure they get money from me. I would already be throwing money at them, but I don't have enough money to throw at them, so I need you to pay me for a service and then I can give money to them. 

Marc: Well, listen, th this has been amazing. I appreciate every single one of you that came.

I hope everyone got some value from this. Brendan, thank you for being such an amazing leader in the ADHD community. I really, really appreciate every single one of you. I hope everyone has a great rest of your day, and we'll see you all soon.