Neuro-Spicy: Discussing ADHD with Dr. Kristin Carothers

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But this is my ADHD as well.

When I'm in a dirty car, like a car that has everything in it, all I can see and hear is the trash moving while you're driving.

So I don't know if you've ever taken the time to do it.

Don't, because it'll throw you.

Like, depending on what type of car you have, while you're driving around,

the sand is jumping in the mat.

It's like you literally see it like bouncing.

And then you see on the dashboard, it's like a little colony of dirt that's celebrating at every stoplight.

It doesn't bother me like no and then and then and then there's a plastic cup that rattles at every turn and every stop and i'm like how are you living like this i got

this

extra pair of socks in the door

a knife just in case somebody tries to run up on me

i have like one of those things that you can crack the window

like all in this pocket and then in the middle pocket i have lotion and contact lens solution and an inhaler and like oh my god

and then you open this drawer There might be like a greeting card just in case I'm going to a birthday party.

My makeup, like if I don't get a chance to put on makeup in the morning, yeah, there's foundation on my steering wheel.

I shouldn't be proud to say that, but it's just like it's a car.

Like, it's like it's just okay.

This is What Now

with Trevor Noah.

Well, Dr.

Carruthers, thank you for joining us on the podcast.

You're a clinical psychologist.

Yes.

Just to set the scene for the conversation I wanted to have today, help me break down what you do and how it applies to ADHD.

Okay, I'm a clinical psychologist.

And when you work with children and adolescents, one of the predominant disorders or mental health presentations you're going to work with is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Yeah.

And so for me, I diagnose ADHD in its three forms.

I provide intervention and I do consultation or coaching of parents when it comes to kids.

Now,

my practice has taken a bit of a turn and I work a lot with adults who have just learned they had ADHD or they have it.

And I'm teaching them how to manage like parenting and having a relationship and having a career.

while you're trying to also live a life with ADHD.

Does everyone have ADHD?

We all have characteristics, but that does not mean we meet clinical criteria for the diagnosis.

But we meet TikTok criteria.

We definitely meet TikTok criteria.

Everyone has ADHD.

Yes, explain the difference because some people actually dismiss the validity of ADHD as a diagnosis.

They're like, well, everyone has it.

And then some people inflate it the other way and they go like, oh, I definitely have it.

And I'll say, no, you're just disorganized.

So, first of all, what is it that you have?

Because there are three different forms.

Okay.

So, there's hyperactive, impulsive presentation.

Wait, hyperactive, impulsive.

And what does that look like?

That looks like you are always on the go, energizer, bunny.

You keep going and going and going.

You talk non-stop.

You're doing 15 different projects.

You are moving from one topic to the next.

You're running when you should be walking.

If you're a little kid, you're climbing when it's dangerous to climb.

You're just acting before you think.

Can this be presented like, so I know with some people, it's like the persistent persistent tapping?

Is that the hyperactivity?

Okay, so that hyperactivity.

Okay.

Like their knee will be constantly moving or they can't sit still in a chair for a while.

So people can be anxious and do that.

People can do that to self-soothe.

There can be lots of different functions of certain behaviors.

So that's another thing.

Like the tapping doesn't mean you have ADHD, but what you will find is that people with ADHD.

tend to be a little bit louder.

They tend to move their bodies more.

They tend to have difficulty being aware of like

their bodies and that their bodies are moving.

And that's sometimes just restless energy.

But that can, you can also see that for people who have like anxiety.

Then you have the inattentive presentation, which is like space cadets.

You are forgetting things, you're losing things, you're drifting off into space.

You're supposed to be focused on one task and before you know it, like a bunny runs across your path and you're onto the bunny.

Yeah, but I mean, everyone should look at the bunny.

I always worry about people who don't look at the bunny.

If you're living your life and a bunny runs across your path and you don't look at the bunny, who are you?

Who are you?

What life are you living?

I don't know, know, but it's not a good one.

And so, you got hyperactive, impulsive type, you got inattentive presentation, and then the third is the combination of all three.

Oh, the big boss,

the big boss, which is where in some settings you're hyperactive, impulsive, in those same settings, you might be inattentive.

And this is when you see people really start to struggle.

And

you have to have

disruption in social and occupational functioning.

What that means is this has to be negatively impacting your relationships, or it has to be causing trouble on your job occupationally, right?

If you're a kid, you don't have a job, you have school.

So, what you see is difficulty like getting through a test or forgetting to turn the homework in, even though you did the homework, or losing the worksheets.

With my kids that I work with, I'll have them bring the book bag in, and it looks like a war zone.

But for adults,

and I'll talk about myself, the house is organized, but if you open a drawer or you open the closet, it looks like it's chaos.

Chaos.

That's so I was diagnosed with ADHD.

I don't know when this, maybe it was definitely during the pandemic.

Congratulations.

Welcome.

But what happened is one of my best friends,

he was going through the most is the best way to put it.

He, he thought he had depression and then he thought he had something else and he thought and then someone said it was bipolar.

He went through this whole journey

and then came out on the other side of it, a almost completely different person.

And then he told me, he said, hey, man, I was diagnosed with ADHD and this is what it means.

And I was like, okay, I mean, I took it seriously, but also we're friends, so I didn't take it seriously.

And then he said, this changed my life and

I felt so emotional and the world has never looked like, and I feel like I've wasted so many chances in life now.

And I was like, like damn this is getting deep yo you just forget things calm down

and he said no now I take medication and then he explained some of the symptoms to me okay and I was like huh that sounds like me but we're so different personality wise that I could not believe that we had the same thing because in my head he was describing a personality And it's not a personality disorder.

They're personality disorders, mood disorders,

disorders of regulation.

They are not the same thing.

And I also kind of want to move away from the term disorder, right?

Your brain is wired to function differently in different settings.

In some settings, the way that your brain functions is optimal.

In other settings, it's suboptimal.

And so rather than saying like, oh, we're disordered because we can't focus.

Well, when it comes time to solve a problem and we're down to the wire, we don't have a lot of time.

Your brain is willing to think creatively to problem solve.

But it can be depressing for you if you're in a setting where everybody seems to be able to go with the flow and go with the grain.

And you're like, I am dying.

I am miserable going along with this.

This is driving me crazy.

And nobody gets why you're so bothered.

And that's what I find happens when you

finally get validated or you get the diagnosis, you know, that like, okay, I knew I wasn't crazy.

This is actually boring for me.

This is not the way my brain is reinforced.

This is not what I'm meant to do in life.

And

the reason I say congratulations to you is because I think once people know what's going on with their brains, then they can like not just look at it from like a negative point of view, but almost like embrace it.

Like, okay, so this explains it.

And now that I know this, I've got to figure out how I work.

I'm curious because you specialize in children.

And the thing about early childhood is that it's very difficult to articulate your own experience and what's going on in your brain.

Yes.

A lot of the things you describe, you're like, oh, that sounds just like a toddler.

Right.

Or that sounds like a five-six-year-old.

Right.

So, how for parents with young children that are displaying some of this behaviors, how can they know the difference between it being like, okay, this brain is wired differently and this is just emerging childhood?

Okay, so

a couple of different places.

ADHD used to be diagnosed, you had to have the symptoms before age six.

Now we say you have to have them before age 12.

There are why did they make it?

Because the researchers said,

I don't really know, but the researchers said with the new addition of like the manual that we use to diagnose, the diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders.

That's DSM, man.

DSM5,

that it was based on the research that people were presenting with symptoms as late as age 12.

And so they wanted to make sure that they could be, I guess, more inclusive.

Okay, so before what was happening is they said, if you don't show it by six, you don't have it.

You're good.

You're good.

But guess what happens at age six?

Some kids are just entering formal school.

Oh, and now you get exposed.

And then you see it.

Now you see it.

But if you don't send your kids to preschool,

and then you wait until they turn six for kindergarten.

And then at kindergarten, it's like this kid cannot stay in a seat.

This kid is, I've walked into classrooms where I'm coaching and looking for my client, and they're under the table.

And the teacher's like, okay,

that's classic, right?

And like, where is this kid?

Oh, under the table.

Okay, time to go with me, right?

Yeah.

And so,

your original question was: how do parents know if it's like typical behavior or behavior that is different?

First, as a parent, you have to know what your temperament is.

Is there a mismatch between your temperament and your child's temperament?

That doesn't necessarily mean that there's a problem with your child.

That's number one.

I think what you want to look at is how that kid interacts with other kids and what it takes to get that kid through a day.

Because typically, if you have a kid who's really hyperactive, it's going to take a ton of energy and organization and routine and planning and accommodating to get this kid through the day.

Whereas you may have other kids where you can say, Put your shoes on, come back five minutes later, the shoes are on.

With this kid, if you say, Put your shoes on and you come back, they're going to be off to the next thing.

But we want to look at

somebody's shoes, they've thrown shoes,

all these things.

Okay.

My, my, um, my record with my mom, the story that she keeps bringing up is one day I came home from school,

I had no backpack and I had no shoes.

Come on.

And then my mom said to me, and my cousin always tells a story as well because he says that day I got one of the all-time beatings.

And he says he remembers like watching me going, but this could have been avoided.

He was also a child, but he was like, he says he watched me and he thought to himself, but he could have avoided this.

And what had happened was I came home.

And apparently my mom was like, where's all your stuff?

And I said to her, I said, the bag got heavy.

Put it in.

So I put it down.

I literally left it on the side of the road.

Very logical.

To me, logical.

And then she said, and what happened to the shoes?

And I said, the shoes were new and I didn't want to finish them.

So I left them somewhere close to school so that I don't have to wear them out on the way home.

Because you know, like your shoes would get worn out on the sides, right?

Like we couldn't afford new shoes the same way other kids could.

So I noticed kids always had like a flat heel on their shoe.

Look at how observant you are, though.

Exactly.

And then my shoes had the slant yeah that looked terrible so i was like okay if i can preserve my shoes then i won't get laughed at as much so i'll leave the shoes near school and then walk home barefoot and we went back and everything everything was where it was which means my plan worked technically technically yeah but she she couldn't understand and my brain i remember thinking this made sense and to me to me it makes complete sense yes now I don't have the kids, but I also have ADHD.

So I find myself very comfortable with a child

who has ADHD.

I have a question on top of that.

So I have a bunch of friends who are now, they were high-performing girls in school, super bright, and they're nearly 40, and they're like recently diagnosed, and it came up in postpartum.

Everything fell apart.

And a lot of things that they're therapists and the people they're working with,

we miss it in girls.

We miss it in girls.

We miss it in girls.

Yes.

I don't want to get into the gender binary and the boys and all of that stuff.

But, you know, the girls I see, even in my son's preschool, they behave very differently.

Even when they're energetic, they're energetic in a different way.

How do parents of girls who may not have the same presentation make sure that these girls don't go under the radar for a long time and maybe never get diagnosed?

What are you seeing in girls as children?

So that story that I told you about the kid under the desk was a girl.

And for girls, unless their behaviors are so hyperactive that it is like really problematic, girls tend to fly under the radar.

I think because of confirmation bias, we expect that boys are going to be more likely to struggle with attention and focus, or we'll say like, oh, it's part of being a boy, but then if it goes too far, it's like, okay, well, then we probably need to look at this boy.

I think a lot of girls present as inattentive initially and people miss inattention.

Or the girls that get caught are the girls who are super talkative, super busy, super on the go.

And so for girls, you can meet those six out of nine criteria for hyperactivity.

But if it's not at a level comparatively to like a boy who's hyperactive or another girl who's super hyperactive, you could get missed.

It's like based on like our cultural expectations for girls' behavior, for boys' behaviors, which make it tough.

Yeah, but there are girls, girls who are struggling.

Absolutely.

So what would you look for, I guess?

I think you would look for how the girl is doing in friendships.

In friendships?

Are they making friends?

Are they sustaining friendships?

Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let's break this down.

Yes.

Why is that one of the signifiers of potentially having ADHD?

Because children with ADHD are most likely to struggle in social relationships.

They're going to be the last to be picked to be on teams.

And we've got research for this.

Wow.

What happens is

they stay little and people developmentally move on.

So it's a lot of fun to have a hyperactive friend when you're three or four.

When you're nine, 10, not so much.

Okay.

If we're three or four and you're breaking the rules and you're running, it's like, ha ha, fun.

This is so much fun.

I'm going to follow you.

I'm going to play.

But by the time we get to playing like the video games or we get to like, there's a sport and you got to be really agile physically.

That's another thing that kind of tends to co-occur for people with ADHD is physically when it comes to sports and activities, they don't necessarily excel.

in some of those because coordination yeah right so you may be more likely to be clumsy and so you need a lot of input.

Like if you're playing baseball, you got to stop.

You got to watch.

That can be really boring for a kid.

Soccer, for a kid with ADHD, you out there or you out there.

Yeah, there's moments where they're just watching nothing.

They're picking the flowers out of the dandelions.

A basketball team, we got to get you to be able to look and follow cues.

And so your social functioning is major when you have ADHD.

And so if you have a girl or a boy and you're worried about them and wondering, look look at their social functioning, how are they doing with friends and on sports and activities?

Then academically,

talk to the teacher about what's happening in the classroom.

Is the kid able to sit in a chair or do they stand the whole day?

When you put the kid under timed pressure, Do they do poorer or better finishing an assignment?

Is this kid likely to stay on task, like to do the assignment until it's done, or do you have to give constant reminders?

Think about it home.

How long does it take to wake the kid up?

How long does it take for the kid to get dressed?

Does the kid lose things?

Can they follow a routine without a constant reminder?

And it takes a lot of like external stuff.

to be able to get them to that point where they can.

So it's possible, but you're going to have reminders everywhere.

So like for me,

last two days i've been in new york i've decided not to really set my alarm which is not a good idea but

i like winged it and i made it but i made it down to the wire that's another thing wait till the last minute oh yeah that's classic adhd yeah that's completely i can do this in eight minutes yeah yeah time blindness time blindness completely time you know you know what i'd love to do is break down each part to help us understand the whys behind okay because i think a lot of people will uh uh you know a lot of people will recognize this stuff right they'll go like oh yeah that's me i can't wake up or i'm late or i'm help us understand the why so

why is it hard to wake up if you have adhd and you likely don't have great sleep hygiene you know you should go to bed at eight o'clock but you really want to watch that show and you can fixated on that down that rabbit hole why do you not go to bed then

Because your brain is like, but I could just watch this one episode and it won't be that bad.

And then you get hooked on the episode and you're like, but now I want to to watch another or you're like i want to read this book and my brain isn't tired yet so i'm going to read a few chapters of this book like i need my brain to be exhausted to fall asleep and stay asleep okay but then why is your brain wanting to do another episode your brain is reinforced by dopamine okay what is happening with adhd is your brain functions differently okay and so the dopamine or the reward centers of the brain need a lot of input for reinforcement okay and what's happening with it with a regular regular brain?

With a regular brain, I like to call an office brain.

An office.

Yeah,

I don't call it the disorder.

I call it an office.

I call it a non-office brain.

And I call it a non-brain is like what office brain people do.

Office brain people are reinforced by being in the office and getting their work done.

Okay.

When an office brain person wakes up, task-oriented.

They wake up easily because

they'll probably be more organized and have better sleep hygiene.

Yeah.

They're routine and structured.

So they go to bed.

They have a routine.

Yeah.

They sleep while they're in bed.

And their brain's giving them dopamine for doing that.

Yeah.

I don't know that it's giving them dopamine, but their brains and bodies are reinforced by having that eight hours of sleep.

They know they need it to function.

It really helps them to get through the day.

It makes them feel comfortable and secure.

And so they prioritize it.

For a person with ADHD, sleep isn't necessarily a priority.

Getting stuff done and having fun is a priority.

Like doing as much as you can in a day is a priority.

Like being able to multitask, even though you might not be good at it, that's the priority.

That's what's reinforcing.

Like, usually, I have to get up at 6:10 to wake my son up, but hey, got somebody waking him up because I'm not there.

So, you switch your stuff.

I switched my alarm back 30 minutes.

And before I left Atlanta, one day I decided, like, I'll just take him to school.

Forget getting on the school bus, right?

That's me deciding I'm not going to engage in routine because I just decided I didn't want to.

But I am training my child to respond to an alarm.

And so I was still in the bed and got a knock on my door and my child is like, it is 6.30.

And I was like, oh, I was going to take you to school today.

He's like, I'm dressed.

And I was like, okay, you can get on the bus.

So, yeah, so.

So, okay.

So it sounds like to me, you have ADHD.

Absolutely.

But I was like, good.

Look at me.

I'm making excuses.

So in school, I don't think my teachers would have complained about me.

I just talked.

I just talked and I had to do it.

But did you know when you got into clinical psychology?

Did you know by that time or do you know afterwards?

I'm black.

And when I got into my clinical psychology program, I had never been to therapy.

All of my white colleagues, most of them had been to therapy before.

They had seen psychologists.

So I decided to do this site unseen.

I never went to therapy or nobody in my family went to therapy.

Like, we're on the side.

You just pray.

You pray.

I mean, that's what we did.

And you say, it's nothing wrong with that girl.

Ain't nothing wrong with him.

We just going to pray.

We're going to pray.

Like, get out of here.

You don't have no problems.

We got problems.

Like, you know, like,

that's how it goes.

so like when I went to grad school, I used to take copious notes so that I could focus

and then I would doodle.

And then in undergrad, I remember getting called out by a professor because they knew I was doodling, which is pretty embarrassing at the collegiate level to get called out for doodling.

Like, I'm in college, like, this is not fifth grade, but I got called out, but I've always just figured out how to make it work

because that's like there's like different cultural expectations, right?

Yes, and my grades were high.

Yeah.

I got everything done.

But I just know that there's a, there's a book that talks about ADHD and functioning.

And they talk about like brain glitches.

And

one of the glitches is go ahead and forget it.

Like, go ahead.

You're going to have enough time later.

Go ahead and do what you want.

You're going to be able to crime that.

Oh, yes.

I call that now and not now.

Talk to me about that.

What is that?

So for an ADHD brain, there are only two modes.

There is now

and there is not now.

Okay?

Okay.

So when I meet other people, I'm always really impressed and fascinated by how they are able

to see time laid out in a more gradual fashion.

So somebody says to me, let's say it's now like 5 p.m.

And they go, dinner's at 8.

In my head, what I've heard is dinner is not now.

Okay.

Then at like 6.30, they'll start like dressing.

They'll go, all right, I'm going to go get dressed.

And I'll say to my friend, I'll be like, you're getting dressed.

Why?

They go, so we can go to dinner.

Then I go, wait, what's the time?

They go, it's 6:30.

And they're like, C-Z-Way.

C-Say.

I have C-Zway on the podcast all the time.

He's like the antithesis of ADHD.

He is the like the furthest thing possible.

So he'll start getting dressed at like 6 p.m.

or 6.30.

Dinner's at 8.

Yes.

And then I go, but dinner's at 8.

C-ZWA.

And he's like, yeah.

So I'm going to get dressed now.

And I go, like, oh, but that's not now.

Like, dinner's not now.

You could do so many other things now.

My brain is going, I mean, I could watch a movie.

I could watch a few episodes of a TV show.

I could read something.

This is, this makes no sense.

Because how long does dressing take?

Dressing takes approximately six minutes.

It's like six minutes to get your whole outfit together.

That's what I'm going to say.

That's a minus 30.

It's like six minutes.

You put your things on.

And then I'm like, and then what?

To get out of the door, that doesn't even take time.

That's like 70 seconds at best.

And then when you're in the car, what does Google say?

Oh, 11 minutes.

Okay, so it's going to take 11 minutes to get to the place.

So if we combine all of this time,

27 minutes is what I need.

And I'll be, this is what my brain says.

Sit on the couch, sit on the couch, sit on the couch, sit on the couch sit on the couch sitting on the then at some point I even get anxious or I get I get annoyed that the time is not happening so I'll look down and go what's the time now 715 oh now I have to wait 15 minutes before I can start doing stuff and I'll sit with that I'll sit with that and look at it and look at it and look at it and then finally At 730, I'll wait for that three minutes because I know I need 27 minutes.

I wait for the three minutes.

I'll be like, all right, time to go.

And then like my phone will ring.

And then that now has thrown off everything because someone phoned me for like four minutes.

Now you bet.

You've just killed my 27-minute clan.

And then now I'm not running it.

But then you're going to be like.

Because it's not now.

That's the thing.

And like, I think that's why I say like with kids,

part of it is because I don't take things that seriously.

But when I talk to people's kids who have this, I articulate it to their parents with them because I go, no, I know you're making it serious.

And a lot of parents of ADHD children feel like their kids really undermine them yeah yes that's like the biggest thing defiance it feels like defiance but it also feels like prank defiance because think about it

you send a child into another room just just think of it from a parent's perspective please go into your room yes and put on your jacket and put on your shoes we're leaving we're leaving in 10 minutes the kid goes into the room 15 minutes later you're like where's the kid you go to the room

they do not have the jacket on they don't have the shoes on.

They have books on the bed that they've opened up.

They've started reading something.

They've started building Lego.

And you're going, what are you doing?

And the child looks at you and goes, what?

And you're like, your jacket.

And they're like, what?

And you're like, what do you, I just need you.

And I see how many parents, because it feels like you're being undermined.

It feels like somebody, please go and grab something for me.

They never come back.

You know, and so I like, I love that you're saying that thing of like the brain, the brain glitching, because I think people take that that for granted.

And I also understand a lot of people are just like, this is, this is bullshit.

Come on.

There's no way your brain works like that.

It's absolutely not bullshit.

If you've got a kid with ADHD or you have ADHD, you've got to do one thing at a time.

You give one command in the room where you want it to occur.

You wait for the person to start.

So then you can reinforce the fact that they're starting.

Thank you for listening.

Because you're trying to get them to listen to you.

Oh, I love this.

Wait.

So let's, let's play this scenario out.

Yes.

You want the best results for your kid and from your kid.

Yes.

Or from your partner right who might have ADHD okay oh I like we'll get to that actually we're gonna get to that

so we start with the kids so you're in the room yes so or you want something to happen you want your kid to make their bed absolutely okay you don't tell them to make their bed from the living room you're saying you go with them you're supposed to go with them and nobody has time for that that's our issue right we don't have time to go i need you to go to your bedroom and make your bed actually you go to the setting where you want the behavior to occur okay in order to increase the chances that the behavior will occur so abc antecedent behavior consequence, antecedent.

We're going to go to the kid's room.

We're going to say, if you're going to get some information, you give it now.

I need you to make your bed.

The room's a mess.

You don't have to throw in the room's a mess, but I need you to make your bed.

The room's a mess.

I need you to make your bed.

Please make your bed.

And you can say please because it models a social skill.

being polite when you make a command.

And it's not a question.

It's not like, are we ready to clean up the room?

It's like a question.

No, it's a command.

So this is not gentle parenting where it's like, oh, I'm being nice to the kid for the the sake of being nice okay got it there's a difference so please make the bed you wait you say nothing the kid starts to make the bed great job listening i'll be back in two minutes you think you could get this done in two minutes like make it a little game kid's like yeah i got this in two minutes you go

make it a game gamifying tasks that are non-desirable yeah or non-reinforcing is a big thing for people with adhd you set that timer you see if you can beat it so back to the kid we want something done we have to do the command in the setting where we want it done.

If you do it from afar with multiple parts, they're going to lose it.

They're just going to lose the task because their brain is not wired to keep up with multiple tasks at a time.

I'm really curious because you said I'm black.

Yes, sorry.

You said I'm black.

I'm not sorry I'm black.

Yes.

Your focus is children.

Yes.

And we know that.

Black children, minority children in this country tend to be really underdiagnosed.

Yes.

And And as a result, they're often expelled.

It's like that's a bad kid.

And we know about the school to prison pipeline.

And there's something, I can't remember the statistic about how many people in the prison system actually have ADHD.

I think it's 60 to 70%.

It's like a huge, huge swath of like black men in this country who were once black boys with ADHD who were never diagnosed and because of historical and social factors.

So you're a bad.

You're a bad kid.

Systemic racism.

Systemic racism.

So we're in this kind of very negative loop that becomes multi-generational because I think culturally, sometimes we don't have the words.

Someone's anxious.

They may say, my nerves is bad.

They're not going to say that, like, I have anxiety.

So there's none of the cultural language.

So I'm wondering, like, what can we do for those children around us where they actually have internalized the idea that they are bad?

The school is saying that they're a bad kid and they're on that expulsion track.

How do we get them out of that?

Because it seems that once you're on that track,

it's hard to get off.

I think the first thing, and this is like what I've learned as a behavioral psychologist, is we don't discuss like children's traits, characteristics.

We talk about the behavior, right?

So we're externalizing a behavior from a kid.

So it's not that you're bad because you won't sit down and listen.

It's because it's hard for you to sit still.

You have difficulty sitting still for long periods of time.

That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.

It's just better for you to be able to move around.

So getting parents to see behaviors as behaviors and not as children's personality or what they're going to be when they grow up.

The other thing that we've got to be really aware of is like

messages that get passed down through generations and through families that can be really kind of negative.

trying to like compare kids to people around them who we think that they're like.

And we have all this anxiety and this angst and this worry about whether or not our boys are going to be okay or what the future is going to hold.

And so we want them to like conform to all of these like

behaviors that are going to to ensure that they're successful.

And now we're learning that there's no perfect recipe.

I mean, look at him.

Come on.

There is no recipe for this.

But for black people, it's like, well, if there's no recipe, if you can't just be good and go to college and get a good job, what do we do now?

And we're learning that that's not necessarily the recipe.

Yeah.

You know, but that's the recipe that's kind of been pushed, which is why I think a lot.

And if systems around you, I hate to go here, but whatever.

If systems around you are built so that you don't succeed, then you got to wonder if people are going to be more likely to blow you off and dismiss you for any difference rather than looking at it as like a positive or saying, this is my kid who likes to talk in the classroom.

So I'm going to have him stand up and explain.

to the class what I just said.

And his

terminology.

If this is my kid who likes to beat on the table, then I'm going to say, if you all get through this assignment, I'm going to let you come up with a beat on the table and the rest of you all dance.

If this is my kid who likes to challenge and question, then let's have a debate about this subject, but you got to care.

And you got to believe that this type of behavior is functional.

Right?

You've got to believe that there's functionality to being busy.

There's functionality to thinking outside of the box.

There's functionality to like

thinking.

And many systems aren't set up for that.

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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I'll often say to my friend, I say it half joking, but I do believe it.

I go, ADHD isn't necessarily a problem.

ADHD is just like the enemy of capitalism.

I truly believe this.

And what I mean by that is, if you think of

how ADHD presents, most of the things that ADHD presents are they're like sort of bad for a factory worker absolutely I joke and I call people office thinkers but I know some of my friends love organizing and being quiet and reading and looking at lists and putting numbers together good for you good for you but you have to admit that the world has also been designed that way absolutely right so the world is great for people who wake up early the world is great for people who wish to sit in a cubicle but what does the world do for you if you do want to talk or if you do want to run or if you want to jump or if you want to...

Now, luckily, there's some outlets.

Like, for instance, in the same way that prison, athletes over-index for ADHD.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, a lot.

How do they train?

No, but that's.

No, no, that's what reinforced.

That's what their hyper focus is.

Their hyper-focus is their sport.

So I'm intrinsically, internally motivated to do this activity that I love, this athletic.

And so I can do it for hours.

I can train for hours.

I'm around my people who also love it.

I'm so reinforced by it that I just want to be in this setting.

Interesting.

And I can perform and I can excel.

It does two things that I've seen firsthand.

It's like, number one,

it's routine and it's rhythm.

Yes.

Right.

But it's also not boring routine and rhythm.

Yeah, that's true.

So it's high intensity.

Someone's throwing a ball at your face.

This is not like, like, if you read a textbook and you misalign, you're not walking out with a black eye.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Trevor, normally I agree with you when you say stuff about like capitalism and office workers

and the ADHD brain.

I'm with you on that.

But I think that ADHD brain can make you a bad partner in a relationship.

Definitely.

You know what I mean?

Imagine you didn't even have a job and you have all the money in the world.

Oh, that's what I'm saying.

Your wife is saying to you, I need you to pick up the dry cleaning.

But you know what's interesting about the athletes, you know, before we move on to relationships, is

a lot of athletes don't know that they have ADHD.

That's what I've realized as well, because

especially in America, like sports started at such a young age.

Yeah,

they just know that they excel.

Yeah.

Right.

A lot of them don't even realize that it's their ADHD brain that makes them excel.

So they're able to think of multiple plays at the same time on the court.

They're noticing something.

It's a level of genius.

It is a level of genius.

But they never get diagnosed and they never present it.

But maybe in their personal lives, though, that's why I mentioned the partner thing, Tom Brady.

I'm not saying he has ADHD, but like

his life kind of fell apart when he retired, right?

Yeah.

And then he has to go back to the thing and then, you know.

Yeah, no, look, you never know.

You never know with anyone.

But that's what I mean.

But I think also even in those situations,

like you listen to some of the top performing athletes, the ones who have, I would say, like the most rigid routines are generally the ones who do the best because even in their personal lives, their meals are the time with the family.

They have this.

So the family has to also fit into the schedule because the schedule is so intense.

So then that to me goes to the conversation about partners, right?

So the athlete is hyper-focused in doing what they have to do to maximize what their bodies can do, maximize their amount of time.

But then that is one part of your life.

Yeah.

And you miss out on the other parts of your life that are kind of orbiting around that.

That's not your life.

It's your livelihood.

But for many of them, it's their life.

Yeah, it is their life.

It's where they've been their life.

It's been their life.

It's finally where they feel secure and productive.

And they may not have, and it is a way out of poverty.

It's a way out.

It's a way to help family.

It serves so many functions.

But when it comes time to being a partner of a person, you've got to be able to be empathic and to understand what it is you need and what it is your partner needs.

And so can you give me an example about what might make it hard to be in partnership with somebody with ADHD?

I don't want to look at it strictly through a heterosexual lens, but I think domestic labor is something most couples, whatever you are, struggle with.

Yes.

Who does the the washing up?

Yeah.

Who gets the laundry?

Who's cooking today?

Who's cleaning?

Like the house needs to be in a certain way.

And when you have children, that's even compact, right?

For the most part, women take on a lot of domestic labor.

We talk about the mental load all the time.

It's women doing that.

And I speak to a lot of friends whose husbands have ADHD.

And they're like, we're really dealing with the gender differences that come up where I'm doing a lot of the domestic labor.

But this man is also forgetful.

And but he's not being an asshole.

Do you know what I mean?

Because sometimes there's this idea that, like, you know, the lazy man is like, he's struggling.

He, he genuinely forgot to take out the trash, even though I can smell it.

Right.

Right.

It sticks.

He forgot to take out the trash.

He didn't make the bed.

He didn't pick up the dry cleaning.

I organized the cleaner.

You forgot to get the cash to pay the cleaner.

Do you know what I mean?

And like that can cause a lot of tension in relationships.

And then you think that that person dislikes you.

Because I think when you're in love with somebody, it's like, if you love me, you'll do this thing for me.

But they're incapable of doing it.

But love is not transactional.

Well, for some people, it is.

Okay, so that's one thing.

So if love is transactional, then you need to know what the currency is.

Yeah.

My currency and your currency is going to be different.

Your currency is going to be organization.

Yeah.

You are going to be able to like make sure the kids have the schedule, make sure that the cleaner is scheduled, make sure that we know what day the trash goes out.

We know how much money is in the bank account.

The other person's currency may be like

fun stuff.

And it can be hard when you are the person of the currency of responsibility and the other person seems like to do the gets to do the fun stuff.

But it's like making sure that you all are having family outings.

The person who has relationships with everybody in the neighborhood, that might be the person who's able to make sure that they check in with the family to make sure that you all are going to have a family vacation.

So it may seem like one person is like day to day, like what's happening right here.

on the ground.

The other person may be bird's eye view.

And I think you've got to know what your strengths and weaknesses are in the couple.

So if you are the partner of a person with ADHD and you know that money management is not their thing, then we don't want to put all money responsibilities on them.

We want to make sure that they're knowledgeable, but we may say, hey, so we have a system and there's a budget.

Your budget is this.

We have a credit card that is set to this amount.

And once that amount is over, we're done.

There's going to be some tension there, but you are helping that person to structure, but then you're also reinforcing them by saying, like, look, since we were able to stay within our budget, we have this much more to take that vacation.

You wanted, you wanted to plan this great vacation.

It can go either way because there's a lot of wives who have the ADHD.

Yeah.

It can go either way, but I think really you've got to be honest about who you are.

You know, this is something that I know, like, I've struggled with, you know.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, I then went back and I was like, oh, wow.

Half of the issues I had in my relationships were from ADHD.

And then then 90% of the issues I had with my mom was just ADHD.

Just me realizing, oh, oh, I was never, I was never quote-unquote naughty.

My brain was just trying to be stimulated.

I wanted to see what would happen if I threw rocks at all the windows at the houses in the neighborhood.

And I know now, as an adult, it's now the logic has caught up to it, but I still think it's an exciting endeavor, right?

But how do you find

the difference between

being incompatible slash an asshole and oh no this is the person's ADHD because I can understand in in anyone's defense who's with someone who has ADHD

to your point they might just be ignoring your requests and they might not be but then there's a person with ADHD who's going like damn I really really really didn't want to forget that and I really didn't want to be late for dinner and I really didn't want to be overpromising and under delivering which I think is another ADHD thing that could come up in relationships yeah yeah like I you know the biggest thing that helped me genuinely

is now, and I give this advice to anyone who has ADHD, is I go, start with no.

Change my whole life.

Start with no.

Yeah.

Let me think about it.

Everything people ask you, start with no.

And you'll be shocked at how it like changes, because that's what I realize happens to ADHD people.

Our brains are moving so quickly.

Someone says something, we love being stimulated.

And so Christiana goes, hey, can you babysit my kid this week?

Yeah, I'd love to.

See?

I said immediately.

And then I leave the conversation.

I pull out my phone and I go, oh, this weekend I have a, oh, I've got a, I've got an

I've got a gig that I have to do and I forgot about this thing.

But now, and then you send me a text going, thank you so much for agreeing to babysit.

And I'm like, oh, damn, what do I do now?

You think you're letting everybody down?

Yeah, and now I'm like, okay, wait, wait, wait.

I think I can do this.

So wait, what time is the actual babysitting?

Okay, from four to six.

My gig is at 6:30.

So I couldn't make it.

It's a 20, 27-minute drive.

I think I can.

And now I'm back in that loop i'm back in the 27 minutes right and then what happens is i disappoint you yeah on the day yeah because i get overwhelmed because the day comes my times aren't lining up i can't get to you on time and and then what what happens to a lot of people with adhd i know is there's the shame that comes with it yes because you were because you were trying to do the thing for everybody

What happens is you fail everybody.

And because rightfully so on their side, they don't know what you were going through.

And so they just go, why didn't you just tell me?

Then why did you agree to do this?

And why is it?

It's so flaky.

Why do you put so much on your plate?

Is this part of why people with ADHD have higher levels of depression and suicide?

Let's talk about it.

Absolutely.

Is it that experience?

I think so.

Yeah, you internalize it.

And I think already the research, we don't, technically, I don't think we have a ton of it just yet, but anecdotally, I believe that many people who struggle with ADHD often have underlying anxiety and depression.

For kids, anxiety and depression tend to kind of co-occur.

It's hard for us to tease them apart.

But what happens a lot of times is kids who, once they're medicated, or once a person is medicated for ADHD with a stimulant medication, which actually slows your brain down, then we start to see all of these anxious thoughts come up.

And it's not that the medication is causing those thoughts.

It's that we can hear them now.

The person was so busy or so distracted that all we were focused on was their behaviors.

And we didn't know what was happening in their mind.

Damn.

So, on the partner side, what advice would you give someone?

Like, how does, because I think, like, if I'm just being fair to everyone here, I would hate for some people to use ADHD or their diagnosis

as an excuse.

I would, like, I use pregnancy not to do stuff.

No, no, but you should be able to use pregnancy to get out of the stuff.

No, I'd be like,

I can't, I can't breathe.

He's like, Can you switch on the light?

I'm pregnant.

The light's like brain.

I'm like, I'm pregnant.

I can use it as an excuse for everything.

Pregnancy should be used as an excuse for everything.

If you were talking to the partner who doesn't have ADHD, how would you counsel them and say, okay, this is where I think your boundary should be, or this is what I think you should look for?

And then we'll move on to the partner with ADHD.

Okay, so anecdotally, what I tend to notice is that we attract opposites.

A person with ADHD is typically going to attract somebody who's more structured routine, right?

It helps them.

A person who's...

Foxes could pack bags very well.

Uh-huh.

You expected them to, right?

Yeah.

No, No, I didn't.

I didn't.

They were just like, you said it, not me.

They were just like, no,

you didn't pack my bag.

I didn't at all.

But if they did, you were happy.

No, can I tell you something?

It's the opposite.

I have hate someone packing my bag.

Sorry to attack you.

No, I hate someone.

I don't feel attacked.

I hate someone packing my bag because then I don't know if the thing I want is in the bag.

And you don't know what stuff is.

Do not pack my bag for me.

Like that, you don't want to talk about that.

That's called control.

And that's what I was going to say.

A lot of times, people who are with someone with ADHD start to get engaged in over-controlling behaviors because you are so worried about what happens when the person with ADHD forgets something.

Oh,

so you over-correct.

And then the person with ADHD becomes resentful because they think you're trying to control them.

And really, what you are trying to do is manage your anxiety about something being forgotten.

Because they forget everything.

Because they do forget everything, but they're not forgetting everything to get at you or to be annoying.

It's just something that happens.

But what then you may do is list out a schedule make sure that everything is just so and when that person doesn't comply you lose it when they do comply you're happy but what you're teaching them is not to engage in the behaviors on their own

so if i am scheduling all of your appointments packing all of your bags when do you have to think and when do you learn to do it yourself

Okay, so what you have to watch for if you're the partner of a person with ADHD and you don't have ADHD is that you could start to do too much.

And then you start getting into this control dynamic.

and then the person starts to resent you because they think you're trying to control them, and then you resent them.

Yes, and do you know what something you said there?

Because I feel very ignorant to ADHD because I think my brain is probably wired the opposite way.

When you said that piece about the control and you're doing it for them, you're saying that people with ADHD are capable of doing these things.

They just need to do that.

Absolutely, you just need a system.

Okay, because in my mind, I'm like,

oh, you just can't do it.

But they are capable.

You're capable, but it's that your system may not look like the person who's over control system.

Your system may be, okay, when it comes to packing a bag for me, I'm going to set that bag out three days in advance.

But guess what?

An hour before it's time for me to go to the airport, I'm still rifling through that bag

because there's something I've forgotten, or I decided like I had two blazers, and then I'm like, I don't like these blazers, throw the blazers out.

And then I'm like, well, maybe I'm going to need the blazers, put the blazers back in.

So I start to question myself.

My brain is getting busy.

I'm getting distracted.

I'm overwhelmed.

So even though I had the goal of being prepared, I still find myself struggling an hour before I'm supposed to go.

So because it's not now.

But when it's now, I'm like, well, got to go with what's in this bag.

Exactly.

So yesterday I had to go with Lye Blazer.

So it requires

me.

So I'm going to be real with you.

I'm not going to point fingers.

Yeah.

Do you know what?

That I think that means for the person who is not neurospicy and is widely wide in a very typical way, it requires a lot of acceptance because part of me is judging.

I'm like, what's wrong with you?

But guess what?

When you want to have fun, who do you call?

Exactly.

Trevor.

See?

Trevor Burrus.

Because, and if he doesn't come, you're sad because you're like, I'm not going to be able to push myself to have fun the way I have fun.

Yeah, it's true.

It's true.

Have you ever thought about all the crazy, specific jobs out there?

And I mean like crazy and I I mean specific.

For example, did you know a company is currently hiring for a psychic in California?

This is a real thing.

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Christiana, I always wonder what jobs do you think you would be good at?

Like, do you think you'd be a good life coach?

No.

A good...

No.

Wow.

I wouldn't be a good life coach.

No, because I will probably tell you that it's not going to go well for you.

And you need someone like inspiring.

You know, I think I'm just too cynical and real to be a life coach.

I'm going to go the opposite way.

And I say, I think we need a few more life coaches who tell people, hey, man, this is not working.

Just go for it.

This rap thing,

it's not working out for you.

Yeah, this rap thing.

I actually think if we had more life coaches like you, people would be in better careers and the world would be a better place.

And not everyone would try to go viral on TikTok.

I would like to say that.

I just be like,

medicine, accounting, engineering.

We need more plumbers, electricians.

I'm just going to tell you to do regular jobs and make some money, but

the rest of the stuff, no, not for me.

I can't believe believe that people are hiring psychics.

Like,

yeah, if you're going to get your witch, that's word of mouth.

A witch is not something you should go.

What do you even ask in that interview?

I would just sit there and I'd be like, well, you know what my questions are, aren't they?

Yeah, that's true.

You know the questions.

Maybe I'm a little too close-minded, but if I was working at a company and they said, hey guys, I know things have been going bad for the past few quarters, but the good news is we've hired a psychic.

I'd be like, huh, okay.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on Zip Recruiter and see if there are any other companies out there who are hiring for my position.

Well, I do want to work somewhere that's open to the spirit realm, but that's a bit too open.

You know what I mean?

I actually do like that.

I would love to work in a company that had a psychic on staff just for the vibes.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Just like lunchtime vibes, just go check in with the psychic, see how things are.

I like that actually.

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It's also difficult to try and explain to people how many fights in their relationship aren't necessarily fights, but they're a manifestation of ADHD meeting up with non-ADHD.

So I didn't, until I like delved into all of this, I didn't know that for an ADHD brain, for the most part, not all brains, but for most ADHD brains,

arguments are fun.

Yes.

Coercive cycle of interaction.

There's a term for it.

Coercive cycle of interaction.

You are reinforced by your coercive behaviors.

And this is what we teach in behavioral parent management training, another plug for an evidence-based intervention for ADHD.

So, and behavioral parent management training, the first step is teaching parents about the coercive cycle of interaction and how their kids are reinforced to continue arguing because they eventually get what they want.

And parents are reinforced to be more punitive because they eventually get what they want.

So, when you get, when you've done that as a child with your parent, and then you get into a relationship and you're like, I can prove that I'm right.

I can get you to see that the way I'm thinking is the way you should be thinking.

And you just continue to engage in this spiral until you win and the other person is pissed or they gave up because they're exhausted.

They're exhausted.

They're exhausted.

They're exhausted.

Because the ADHD person can keep going.

They can keep going a lot of times.

And you'll be like, can you just stop?

And they're like, no.

So instead of telling them to stop, you give them the positive opposite behavior, the to-do behavior.

So instead of, would you stop talking?

It's, can we take a quiet moment?

Can you be quiet?

What do I want you to do?

Okay.

So instead of stop arguing, can we change the subject?

Or sometimes you got to kind of just turn away and like wait for to catch them being good and then turn back.

Like if you're taking me down that spiral where you're trying to argue with me, I'm going to like turn away, pretend to do something else.

And then the minute you get quiet, even if it's by accident, thanks, Trevor, for being quiet.

But I think sometimes people take for granted, and I'm saying this from experience, is like ADHD people,

we are not arguing.

And you're not an ADHD person.

You are a person with a neurodivergent brain.

Okay.

I think all I feel like you did there was like, it's like going, you're not homeless.

You're unhoused.

That's what you just said.

You said the poetic.

You really did.

You really did.

You're like, no, Trevor.

You are not a homeless person.

You are a person who does not have a home to live in.

You are.

No, seriously, it makes a difference.

Okay, okay, fine.

You're Trevor who happens to have a brain that is neurodivergent.

Okay, okay, I'll take that.

All right.

So sorry.

I go.

No, no, this is fine.

So I think what people take for granted is this.

And sometimes it's because we don't know to articulate it as people.

Sometimes we don't even know what's happening.

Some people think of it as an argument, but it's not an argument.

Do you get what I'm saying?

So the ADHD brain is just having fun and it's going.

It's attention.

Let's discuss the merits of.

And you just go.

It's just attention seeking behavior.

Exactly.

And you're spinning and you're spinning and you're spinning and you're spinning and you're spinning.

But you're just having fun trying to figure this puzzle out.

Now, a non-ADHD person goes like, no, but

why are you?

No, just let it go.

They can't be very good.

They're getting emotional.

And then at the end of it, and I've seen this happen like in my group of friends, all the ADHD friends will like hang out together.

All the friends who have a neurodivergent brain.

Yeah.

They'll be energized at the end of a group argument and they'll go like, that was fun.

And then all the friends who don't have a neurodivergent brain.

They're pissed.

They are pissed.

They're worn out.

They're carrying it.

I can't believe you said, why did we fight?

You know what?

I'm tired.

And the rest of us are going, wait, what?

This was fantastic.

This was fantastic.

We argued the merits of Mesopotamian laws.

And from that, we understood why we shouldn't be eating fried chicken tonight.

Just the understanding of it helps.

Because to your point,

if you understand that I'm not doing something to you,

then you don't think of it that way.

Like, so,

you know, some divergences, we'll call them, whatever they may be, physical or mental, are more apparent than others.

If somebody's blind, we normally can see that they're blind.

If that person bumps into you, most rational human beings will never go, yo, right?

Watch where you're going.

You bumped into me.

You'll be like, oh man, the person's blind.

oh person's blind you know what i mean if somebody rolls up in a wheelchair and they can't go up the stairs no one goes like get up the stairs you go like oh they let's get the ramp or can we help someone because we there's a signifier that tells us that this person is divergent physically mentally there's almost no signifiers for this so you meet someone with adhd you don't realize that you started speaking

Their brain hadn't even started pressing the record button.

You started a whole conversation.

You got home.

You started talking to your partner.

Oh, hey, honey, you know, I was just thinking we got to do, and don't forget the thing.

And you know, I can't believe it.

And then the person goes like, what?

What just happened?

And they're like, oh, my God, did you listen to anything I just said?

And that's so annoying.

Yes.

And it's not that they're not listening to you.

If there was a way for you to be sick, you know, if they could signify it, you'd realize, oh, the record button wasn't on.

You hadn't paused for a moment.

The same way I've seen people pull out their phones, stand at a concert and record a moment.

And then I look at their phone and I realize they never pressed the record button.

But then they blame themselves.

They go, ah, I didn't press record.

I'm an idiot.

Yes.

And I sometimes say to people, I know it's a bit of a burden, but think of it that way when you have an ADHD partner.

Ask yourself if you've pressed record.

Like one of my best friends taught me this, and he has ADHD, but he literally will be talking and he'll notice that my brain is, I'm finishing an email.

He'll say like, oh man, I got to tell you this thing that happened.

So

I was at the office and then he'll pause and he'll go, like, I'll wait for you to finish.

Yes.

And I go, no, no, I'm here.

He's like, no, no, no.

Finish the email.

Do you know, the funny thing is,

hearing you both speak today, I think there's something about if you're the non-ADHD parent or partner, whoever you are in relation to someone with ADHD,

I think it can really increase your empathy.

and your sense of patience if you really sit with the diagnosis.

Because what you're saying right now, whether somebody has ADHD or not, to say to your partner, let me just finish what you're doing and we'll talk when you can give me your full attention would change so many.

Or even dealing with your child, because sometimes I like, you just say things to a kid, but maybe the kid is like with their Legos or with their dolls or whatever.

Have you pressed record?

Yeah, have you pressed record?

You haven't pressed record?

Okay, we'll come back to it.

Yes.

It'll kind of just transform.

Oh, I need you to press record right now.

That also helps me as well.

Someone goes like, hey, no, no, can you put that down?

Yeah.

No, no, I need you.

Then I'm like, oh, okay.

You even, even, even signaling urgency helps an ADHD brain.

Absolutely.

So if you say to me, like, if you, as Christiana, go like, oh, friend, I need your help.

Immediately my brain goes like, yo, what's happening?

I love that.

What's happening?

And then I focus.

I won't look at my phone.

I won't.

But if you just...

tell a story and it's like the music of it doesn't signal urgency

and my brain just goes like oh she doesn't need me and i don't realize my brain's doing this i'm thinking of four things at the same time how you communicate to an ADHD.

It's ADHD.

Completely make sure record has been pressed.

Then you can like fight with them if they're not doing the thing you hope them to do.

But I promise you, the difference it makes is insane.

You say, I need you to listen to me right now.

Or you say, let me know when you're done.

And all of a sudden, it just changes the dynamic that you have with somebody.

And that's the antecedent intervention.

That's setting up the environment for success.

You saying, press record, or let me know when you're ready to press record signals to his brain that I've got to to do something, I've got to behave differently.

And then he's able to follow through, and then you reinforce him because then you continue to talk to him once you know that he's ready to listen.

Okay.

Consequence is you all are connected.

So, like, right, what you all just did right now, there was connection there.

You gave feedback about when you're able to really hear her.

And then you were like, Thank you for giving me that feedback because now I know how to cue you in when I need to talk to you.

And that's what doesn't happen in partnerships and relationships.

Whether it's parent to child,

parent to child, spouse to spouse, family to family, that's what we don't, that's like a process thing.

We don't take time to process things because we're so focused on moving forward and getting to the next thing.

And so to have the opportunity to say, especially to your significant other, I need you to press record or I need you to say, hey, can you put your phone down?

Because like with kids, we're accustomed to like snatching a tablet, turning off a screen to get them focused.

As adults, we're just as guilty of being preoccupied with Instagram, instagram with our screens with our phones and sometimes we need help to get away from those things so we can actually attend to each other you know and like one of the things i say to little kids that i'm working with in interventions give me your eyes thank you for looking at me now that i know that you're looking i think you can listen please pass me that and then we continue to maintain eye contact it really helps them to know that i'm engaged and so in a relationship if you have adhd or you don't have adhd i think that's a skill that we could all learn because many of us think we have ADHD because we are so wired to screens right now.

We're so reinforced with screens.

We're so reinforced by multitasking.

We are hearing a lot of noise and we don't take a lot of time to be fully present and aware in this moment.

I have a question

about setting up for success that I've seen a lot of parents grapple with, and it's the question of medication.

Yes.

Now, I'm a millennial and I.

Yeah, me too.

And I think we're like the Ritterlin generation as well.

And there's a lot of millennials who felt that they were over-medicated, that they look back at their childhood and they're like, I felt like a zombie.

They're trying to figure out who they are without the presence of some sort of medication.

And I think a consequence of that is that a lot of millennial people who are becoming parents now who are medicated as kids are maybe reluctant to medicate their children, do not know when they should introduce that modality.

What are the ethics of it?

Can you even, you know, I struggle with giving my kids Tylenol.

I'm like, is this a gateway drug to some other shit?

Okay, so let me talk to you about that gateway drug thing.

In my opinion, that is a cultural belief that comes out of the crack pandemic, right?

We know that there were specific plans and things that were done to make sure that a certain group of people were destroyed by a drug.

And over time, we have become very wary and suspicious.

And it is healthy cultural paranoia about the use of medications and drugs.

How can we get hooked?

How could this ruin life for us?

Because we had a whole generation that this impacted.

What I want you to know when it comes to stimulant medication, any of the psychotropic medications is consider the ways that you are self-medicating.

Are you using gummies and weed just to get out of the bed and have a good time?

How much alcohol are you drinking?

How much are you indulging in overeating?

Is this a symptom of some difficulty that you are having in your life?

The medication you take for depression is not the same class of medication that we take to address ADHD.

And so what you need to know is for stimulants, stimulants can be abused.

And they're the same class like their amphetamines.

Those things, amphetamines are similar to what's in cocaine, right?

It's an amphetamine as well.

The difference is it's highly regulated.

It's been studied.

It's been studied in children.

And we can pretty much tell that there have been, there's at least 30 years worth of data about people being successfully treated.

One thing about stimulant medication is once it's in your system, eight hours typically is out of your system, unlike other classes of medication that that take weeks to build up in your system, that's like antidepressants.

It takes about two weeks.

You can't go off of them instantly.

So I'll tell you, like one of the craziest, craziest things I learned actually made me really, really sad because then I had to go back and think about how it affected my relationships.

I have had this crippling feeling whenever I travel,

day one of any trip,

I'll fly somewhere, I I land there, vacation, and immediately I go, I need to go home.

Oh, anxiety, immediately.

And my brain is like, I need to go home, I need to go home.

What am I, what am I doing here?

I need to go home, I need to go home, I need to go home, I need to go home, I need to go home.

So, what would happen is sometimes I'd be on a trip, I would be with my partner, we're somewhere, they couldn't get me to leave the hotel room,

they couldn't get me, and they would be like, What is going on?

I was like, I think, I think I need to go home, and I can't imagine what they were going through.

But for me, I was, and I was, I was trapped, and until I understood how dependent an adhd brain is on routine

did i then understand what was happening was like oh because it's new place time zones have screwed me over i also have nothing to do which is the most crippling thing funny enough for an adhd brain what are we doing

what do you want to do right what do you mean what do i want to do i don't know my brain jams my brain i know how to give me a schedule that's from you know 8 a.m until midnight i'm fine Give me space.

The brain panics because ADHD is, you know, too many choices.

And then now, literally, what I'll do is I'll only medicate most of the time when I'm traveling first day, because I just know for that first day, it just brings my brain down.

Wow.

I don't think about what's tomorrow, what's the next day, what's the next day, what am I doing on the trip?

Because I would rush to the conclusion of the trip.

And I know a lot of people will do that with ADHD in the now and not now.

Your brain has the ability, but I mean, infinitely.

So, do you know how many ADHD people I'll speak to as like kids or parents or just people?

And I have such empathy for them because I go, you don't understand what you're experiencing.

So, you might think, for instance,

you have depression.

But I go, no, no, your depression is from ADHD.

It's not just like a depression, which it could be on its own.

But sometimes this is what my brain will do.

And I've spoken to a lot of people who experience this.

I'll wake up in the morning.

I go, what time is it?

Oh, it's 30 minutes before I need to get up.

Okay, should I sleep?

No, maybe I'll wake up.

Okay, I'll wake up.

Then what I do?

I've got to go brush my teeth.

Then I've got to shower.

Then I've got to get dressed.

Then I've got to leave the house.

Then I've got to go to the office.

Then I've got to have that meeting.

Then I've got to have that next meeting.

Then I've got to have that other meeting.

Then I've got to do that thing.

Then I've got to go to the dinner that those people have planned.

Then I got to come.

Oh, then I've got to find time to work out.

Then I got to, oh, then I've got to plan my outfit for the next.

Wait, then you do it the next day.

You do the same thing.

You brush your teeth again.

Oh, you got to get clothes again.

Wait, how many years does this happen for?

Wait, like, so we're just going to do this for like 80 years, 90 years.

We're just going to keep on doing this.

And then, what, the next generation does it?

And then it's, why am I waking up?

Wait, I'm going to come back to bed anyway.

What's the point of leaving the bed?

Why am I leaving?

Why am I waking up?

What are we all doing?

Why are we building these things?

Why are we?

No, and you will be shocked at how ADHD brains can do this for everything for people.

So even in a relationship,

you'll have a fight,

and then your brain goes, oh, fight.

This is, and this is how, and this is how it, and what's the point of relationships,

ends.

Yes.

Everything ends with ends.

And there's typically a time of day, there's a place.

Everybody's got one.

Yes, you're not wrong.

There's a time of day.

Oh, the rumination is, and that's an anxiety thing too, but that rumination that's part of ADHD is made.

It really is.

And if it's a certain time of day, I'm a nighttime person.

I can lose my mind.

Can I tell you?

So if there's one thing I've learned for my brain, the mornings is where I have the biggest feelings of what is the point of this whole thing we're doing, right?

The evenings is where I have the, I mean, anything can happen.

So it's like

existential mornings,

crazy evening.

Yo, the morning, the morning, no, the mornings.

Let me tell you something.

In the morning,

can I tell you something?

The worst thing you can do to me in the morning, the worst thing you can do to me in the morning and i've experienced this i remember someone turned to me in the morning and said hey do you love me

in the morning

well do you love me did you love them and my i did no but i did but i did but my brain went what

How does anyone define love?

What is love?

Oh, and that pissed that, oh, you, oh, that poor person.

And what is it about my words that'll make you feel like your day got better or worse?

And then my brain was like, and my brain did that and for in my brain maybe this was two seconds but it lasted a lifetime

so the person they went oh what was that pause what was that pause and then i go no no no yeah of course i love you then they go like no what was that pause and now we're in fight land the day just started

right but we're in fight land because the person goes i can't believe you pull why did you pull now if i explain it it's it's terrible well but why would you even think that what kind of person would think you're saying okay wait so message for the person or the person with a person with adhd is not always about you that's hard to learn that's hard because it always should be about me.

But it's not like that pause or that like reticence is not necessarily about you.

It's about something that's going on in that person's head that you don't even know about.

You don't even know about it.

And then the nighttime version is, and I know this with like a lot of my ADHD friends, that's like, we call that sugar time.

Sugar time.

Oh my God.

Literally, it came from.

Start zooming.

No, it came from the direct thing, which was sugar.

So we all start craving sugar.

I can't eat sweet things in the morning.

pancakes or i don't know how people do that i'm like no

sugar cereal i can't i i'm i night time

let me tell you something if there is sugar hidden in your house i will find it okay

if you think there's sugar in your house and you're not sure where it is call me over at night and i will find that sugar for you and then my brain then goes like but for and we call it sugar time because it's like the It's sort of the manifestation of sugar as a concept.

Is it like sugar time for everything?

Then it's like, what's happening?

Where's it happening who's it happening with where are we going

what do we do oh yeah

no this is sleep is terrible nothing good has ever happened during sleep no tell me one great story that involves sleep none what about a what about a good dream history is there's no i mean okay mlk had a dream when he was awake

no but he first had the dream he had the dream so maybe

that's the one that the only great thing that's happened in sleep was his dream the rest of history happened while people were awake i love that you said that because

it's learning yourself, being honest with yourself.

And if there's one piece of advice I would give people, think of the ADHD as this little gremlin passenger in my life who I have a fun relationship with, by the way.

I don't resent it.

I don't hate it.

But what I will, I'll do is I'll call it out.

Like I'll actively say at times, you'll find, if you leave a microphone in my home, randomly you'll hear me going, ah, hello, ADHD.

I just say this every now and again.

I'll I'll just be like, ah,

there you are.

My mom's going to be like, yeah, your mom.

Yeah, my mom.

It's a spirit.

My mom, actually.

I love it.

Yes, spirits, but I promise you.

I promise you, I do that all the time.

Yes.

Because I've also learned for people with ADHD, it's nice to

remove the shame.

Yeah, for sure.

Because people will tell you the thing you're experiencing is bullshit.

They'll tell you that it's not real.

You need to get over it.

You just need to work properly.

Just the function, function, function.

People just say this to you, but it's like, no, just trust me.

Take it out of yourself and say, huh, hello, old friend.

Yeah, you're just like, ah, look at you.

You want some ice cream?

Do you?

No ice cream for you.

You know?

And then I'll even play the game.

I'll be like, okay, how about this?

If you have very cold water and you still want ice cream 30 minutes later, you can do it.

And then I'll go and drink like a cold glass of water and see what happens in 30 minutes.

90% of the time, I don't want the ice cream on you.

You've moved on to the corner.

Yeah, but it's also because I've started to learn.

I've started to learn that sometimes the thing that you look, look, this is for everyone.

The thing that you're craving is oftentimes a manifestation of lacking something else.

So what I've tried to learn to do is go, ah, what is happening right now?

I'm craving ice cream.

But what is ice cream?

It's a cold thing.

It's a sweet thing.

Let me try, break it down.

Start with the cold.

You're a thinker.

Yeah, I am an overthinker.

Yeah.

So I start with the cold.

And then I go, and also what does it it do?

Okay, it also does hydrate me.

So I'll go with something cold and hydrating that has no sugar, see how I feel.

And most of the time, I find those small things, but I gamify everything in my life.

I'm not going to solve it too, right?

So that's the ADH brain again, the superpower.

You're a thinker.

You think very deeply.

And then you are willing to try different interventions to solve your problem.

So you don't just give up and give into the ice cream.

And a brain that's like maybe depressed might just say, well, forget it.

It's hopeless.

It's worthless.

I'm just going to give into the ice cream.

You're like, no, this is serving a function.

I need to try to figure out what the function of this craving is.

How can I come up with a plan so that I don't engage in this behavior?

Like there's multiple levels.

And that can be exhausting if you have to deal with every decision you make, which some people get into like analysis paralysis when it comes to that ADHD because they're overthinking whether or not, and it's not necessarily anxiety, but it's like trying to plan out the consequences.

Yes.

Because you're a problem solver.

Yes.

And problem solvers are very tied to consequences of behavior.

So it's like, well, if I did it this way, this might happen if I did it this way.

This might happen if I did it this way.

And then you've lost track of time while you're doing all of that.

So I think it's good, though, to be a thinker.

Yeah.

Which is also why the capitalistic society is hard.

Hard to bring it back.

Yeah.

Why this has been so useful for me, I just think.

for people that are in community with people in with HDHD, whether you're a parent, a partner, a friend, it's like our job is to like understand the superpower, like understand how you, how it works, understand if you're drinking some water late at night, oh, they probably wanted ice cream, they're having the water, leave them, don't be like, why are you drinking water, a cold glass of water at 1230 in the morning, just be like, this is their way of coping.

And you just said a word, community.

Yeah.

We need to be in community with people.

and other people who have similar and dissimilar experiences because it can get very lonely.

Yeah.

It sounds like a lonely experience.

it can be very lonely you've got to be in community like you got to find your tribe and this is a big thing for me right now with the young adults i'm working with who have adhd it's like they have not found their tribe yeah and then they internalize it and then they feel super depressed like what is wrong with me why does it never work and so when i want to tell young adults with adhd and teens with the adhd you will find your tribe but you have got to seek them out and that tribe may not be the people who like look like you or who have the same interests, but the superpower of having ADHD is you're willing to put yourself out there and take a risk.

And so you may have to take a risk with different people.

You have a tribe, you haven't found it yet.

Because you haven't found your tribe doesn't mean you'll never find your tribe.

Because I also get worried about those people in terms of suicidality because there's the loneliness.

There's the like, does anybody care about me?

I can't get anything right.

What's my relationships in?

What's wrong with me?

And so just like having some hope and knowing there is, you got a tribe, and then parents leave them alone if the tribe is online, like they have a tribe.

I just want you to have some social connections, safe social connections.

I don't want you playing with like adults if you're a kid, but we need to have that's why we have kids in sports and doing activities.

We want them to build relationships with different groups of people, but as adults, once we get into our careers, we can become isolated.

And so, you've got to have community, you got to have a tribe, you got to have community.

Yeah, you guys are a tribe, yeah, reluctantly.

I love it.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

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You know, there's an idea that I have.

I'll often say to Christiana, I go, there's moments where I dream of being a dictator of just like a small, like a small island.

You said this enough times.

I'm not concerned.

I would love to be a dictator of a small island, though.

Like just a small place where, because I think the small number helps you be a little more nimble.

You know, like

Sweden, for instance.

I would love you as an advisor.

You know, Sweden, four million people or whatever.

It's like, it's easy to, it's easier to do things and see how they work.

300 million people is chaos.

And one of the experiments I would love to conduct,

because I...

I'm sure there will be second system effects, don't get me wrong.

But I wonder what would happen.

Two things.

One, I wonder what would happen

if we treated almost everybody who we think is an outlier in society just for ADHD.

And I know this is a gross malpracticing of science and medicine.

So don't co-sign this at all.

I'm just telling you about my crazy world.

I would love to see what would happen.

No joke.

If everyone who is homeless gets ADHD medication.

Like people in the street, like we always, people like, that person's crazy.

I genuinely would love to see what would happen.

I just want to see what would happen.

You give all of them ADHD medication, you give everyone in prison ADHD medication, or every kid who's been expelled, ADHD, everyone.

I'm willing to bet money.

Yes, there will be, please, terms and conditions apply.

There's obviously gonna be something.

You don't want them to be manic.

If they're manic and they have ADHD medication, it'll go very bad.

There you go.

So that's why I'm saying that.

No, but they have a heart problem.

Terms and conditions apply.

Right, those are terms and conditions.

Terms and conditions apply.

I'm not saying, but I'm willing to bet you will see a massive amount of that population no longer have the problem.

And I can't help but think to myself, how many people in our society are one intervention away, and not a massive one, by the way.

Right.

One intervention away from being fully back in society, fully part of a community,

and fully being back to who they wish to be as a human being.

Do you know what I mean?

So I'm from Chicago originally.

And Cook County Jail at one time, there, the person who was in charge of the director was a clinical psychologist.

I think this was a few years back.

And she did a program where she had, when people came in and they were repeat offenders, they got psyche vows.

As part of the psyche vows, they were able to determine that many of the people who were coming through this system, through this program, actually had met criteria for diagnoses.

And then they were able to get them medicated.

Right.

They were able to get them, or even if it wasn't medication, they were able to get them some psychotherapeutic intervention and the types of gains that can be made from doing that type of intervention, intervention, right?

So even if you don't have an island, what would happen in terms of reform in the justice system if people had access to high quality mental health care before they got there, right?

I'm in private practice.

People will ask, why don't you accept insurance?

Insurance companies don't value mental health right now.

So they're starting to understand that if we can treat depression, you're more likely to follow through on your medication regimen when it comes to the hypertension,

when it comes to like the diabetes, right?

If you're not depressed, if I've treated your depression, you're going to be more likely to change your lifestyle factors, exercise, diet, et cetera.

So if we address mental health first, we could actually do medicine, physiological medicine, a big service because people would be engaged and invested in taking care of their bodies and making different choices about the way they ate, et cetera, et cetera.

But it's almost like mental health care is an afterthought.

And so I think there are many different avenues to actually make what you want to see happen happen.

It could be school systems.

It could be like

juvenile justice systems.

It could, I just think there's ways.

I don't think that's a far-fetched idea.

It may not be an island.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think it's a far-fetched idea.

In South Africa with our foundation, the thing we did was we brought in psychiatric help to the schools because they didn't have it.

And we found the results were insane.

It was exponential.

And here's one of the most interesting ones we learned.

We learned at our foundation,

just having someone to talk to improved kids' scores.

You literally didn't have to fix the problem.

There were kids who were coming from homes where they were neglected, they were abused, they were beaten, they were whatever it was.

And we were like, what do we do?

How do we fix this?

And then we were humbled to realize that most of the kids weren't looking for someone to fix it.

They just needed somebody to speak to.

And all of a sudden, their grades would improve.

They just needed somebody to say, you're not crazy.

Your parents aren't treating you well.

Your community isn't looking after you.

And yes, you're validated.

And the kids' scores would go up.

And you're like, this is, come on, this is beyond basic.

The other thing I think of, and, you know, we've said it multiple times in this conversation, and I love how you've tied in.

There was a beautiful conversation that I had on the daily show

with a woman who is one of the foremost disability

advocates in the US.

So she was part of the team that was behind the Disability Rights Act in America.

So people take for granted there was a time when places didn't have ramps.

Places didn't have any accessibility features at all.

It was like, oh, you can't come upstairs?

Tough luck.

And she said something really fantastic to me.

She said, you know, the biggest arrogance and mistake people make is one, they always assume that they will never be disabled.

Right.

she's like no you just it it can happen to you through age through accident through whatever it is in life it can always it's it's it's an opt-in service surprisingly

and she said

you also take for granted how

the idea that seems like a burden today

because you're doing it for others is actually the thing that's going to help you

So they designed ramps at supermarkets for people with disabilities.

Do you know who uses ramps more than anyone now?

It's people who are fully able-bodied and have found it's an easier way to roll things up and down into a supermarket.

I'm always with my

stroller.

Ramps are game changes for me.

I can take all three kids into a supermarket because there's a

ramp.

And then you go, thank you, disability advocates.

Do you get what I'm saying?

All the things, and it's like, it seems, and I think of it,

let's go through everything we discussed today.

We start with the kids.

Yeah.

Right?

You go,

everything you're talking about for an ADHD kid, if we learn how to implement those systems for ADHD kids, other kids benefit.

Right.

How do you make a classroom more engaging?

Yeah.

How do you talk to your child?

How do you engage with your child?

How do you empathize with them?

You apply that to a non-ADHD brain.

It's still going to be rewarded.

It's still going to reward you.

The things that you said about athletes and finding purpose on the other side of life and the pivot.

yeah, that's great for ADHD, but you know who's also great for everyone else.

People are going to switch careers, people are going to change what they're doing in life, people are going to find themselves a little unmoored, and this is the same thing.

All of a sudden, you found a path.

You go to relationships.

Yes, your partner might have ADHD, and so it helps to say, Hey, are you listening to me?

Or I need you to listen right now, or actually, hey, I noticed you're in your trigger right now.

Go relax, go sleep.

Let's not do this now because you're going to spy.

You know who that also helps?

People in normal relationships.

It's just ADHD is the most acute example I find, and it's also the most obvious at times.

But I think like if we solve the world for ADHD people,

it solves the world for everyone.

We're almost like the canaries in the cold mine, I think, where

I genuinely think we are.

You're showing like the sickness.

Let me tell you something now.

I'll tell you now.

If a kid thinks it's boring, they're right.

Absolutely.

Do you know who they are?

Because people be like, kids don't, kids can't pay attention.

Yo, kids can play 18 hours a Fortnite.

They can definitely pay.

I was in, I took my son to a dinner and we were like 45 minutes through.

And he said, how do you guys listen so long?

Like 10 more minutes and we out.

He was right.

Like it was just going on and on and on.

And it was like, yes, we don't have to do all of this.

Yes.

Do you know where I was never born as a kid?

Where?

You know where I was never born?

Black church.

Yes.

Never.

So much happy.

Because someone would be like, no, it's about listening.

Yo, when we would go to white church,

it was just, all right, here we go.

John 3, verse 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever loves him should not perish, but have eternal life.

I was like, oh,

black church, I don't care if you were four years old or 40 years old, that pastor made that sermon come alive.

Call and response.

Exactly.

You're engaging.

You're engaged.

You're standing up.

You're standing.

And even as a child, I was like, yes.

In Jesus' name,

I was like, wow, what right right i might not understand all these concepts but i'm you and my kid says what is happening like

i'm like hey and the pastor will like repeat something yeah but you know i don't think you heard me

i'm gonna say it again right i'm gonna say it again because he knows we have an adh we have you see what i mean but no that works for the whole congregation and so i i feel like like in these things sometimes people i can understand if you don't have adhd you're going like ah this silly sounding because it really sounds like a little quirky little you know disorder that people have.

Everyone has ADHD.

That's the results.

Everybody does not.

I also struggle to get out of bed.

Get over it.

You think I like the office?

Get over it.

Oh, please, you can't pack your suit.

Get over it.

I understand where you're coming from, but mark my words.

If you listen to ADHD people and you quote unquote fix the world for them, you will live in a better world.

I grew up someplace that was not quite as loud at night, but our brains can exist.

I think they can.

And I think sometimes if you take that, so I'll challenge my friends who are parents of ADHD kids and I'll say this to them.

I'll go, and I go, please, I say this with all the compassion in my heart, because I know you're busy.

I know you're tired.

I know, I know all of, I'm not saying you're not.

And even a person who's in a relationship with someone with ADHD, I know it's, I know it's annoying.

I know how much you hate repeating yourself.

I know how much you feel like you're, you know, going through the same cycle of, I say all of those caveats, but you'll be shocked at how much fun you can have and how much it can benefit you to take it as a fun challenge.

So for instance, I say to parents of ADHD kids, sometimes your child with ADHD, who's like climbing on the couch and then like standing on a thing and then doing some assaults in the living, you know what they might actually expose for you, if you're willing to listen to it, they might show you how little you move.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Because you're living a sedentary lifestyle.

You barely move.

You sit at the office, you sit in in your car, and then you sit at home.

Now, another child is able to mold themselves to match what you're doing.

An ADHD kid cannot.

They need to get the thing out of their body.

It's got

pent-up energy.

But now they're exposing it.

Like

you go like, this kid can never sit still.

But sometimes you should ask yourself, go like, huh.

I've noticed that we sit still quite a lot.

Like, look at that as a challenge and go like, okay, every time they do that, do 20 squats with them.

Do jumping jacks with them for a minute.

Do

yes, exactly.

But this is not.

You're already in good shape, but you'll be able to do that.

This is my point.

This is exactly my point, is that sometimes you can find things that you've taken for granted that can actually help you as well.

And that, like, the gamification can go both ways is what I'm saying.

But it's like, yeah, solve the world for others and solve the world for yourself.

I love it.

That's a beautiful refrain.

Yeah.

This has been so much fun.

It was so much fun.

Thank you all.

I hope we have you back again.

And by the way, thank you for being a bridge as well.

You know, I think, as you said, you know, like I'm black.

People just take for granted how culturally certain cultures are going to catch up to certain ideas in different ways.

Right.

And

I remember when I was diagnosed, my first time actually was when I was diagnosed with ADD.

Back then they just called it.

Attention deficit disorder when it was just ADD.

In fact, no, back then they called it hyperactivity.

That's all they called it.

Okay, so that was like this was, I was like six or five.

So you know what it probably was was the ICD-10, which is the international system

was calling it one thing.

And then the United States system was calling it ADD.

Right.

And so now they try to be on the same page.

So they said to me, your title, your, they said to my mom, so the school said to my mom, I guess they did a good job.

They said, hey, you need to take this kid for evaluation.

He's very smart, but he's chaos.

But not, he's not rude.

He's not anything.

He's just chaos, though.

And she took me in and they told her that.

And when we came came out, my mom stayed, I said, what did they say?

And my mom said, I suggest these people, they, they said, you, you, you, you are hyperactive.

I said, yes, he's a child.

And they said, no, but he's very hyperactive.

And I said, so what do we do?

And she said, honey, we pray.

We pray, honey.

Let's move on.

And I said, but we've been praying.

And she said,

I said, but we've been praying and it hasn't worked.

And she said, yes, sweetie.

And that's then once the praying doesn't work, then that's what the beatings are for.

She said, we'll beat it out of you, my child.

And your room my favorite thing is she made it seem like it was going to be a team effort.

My mom didn't make it seem like I was going to get

that.

She was like, honey, not even a threat.

She made it like, honey, you know what, baby, we're going to beat this thing.

We will take a stick and we will beat this thing out of you, baby.

We're not going to let it win.

And I'm there, like, this sounds like a team talk.

But I'm the one who's going to be beaten in this team talk.

But no, the reason I say thank you for bridging the gap is because it doesn't matter, black, Latino, you know,

you name it.

Do you know how many of my Asian friends have told me in a different way?

They've had like a, it's not the spiritual one.

Their one is like a, no, no, suck it up, keep moving vibe.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, but my brain.

No, no, no.

What do you mean, your brain?

Hey, you're making it work.

And I can act right.

I think it would be great for us to find those bridges because somebody sees a doctor who looks like them, sounds like them.

So you don't roll your eyes when someone says, that's the, that's a spirit.

That's a, that's a demon.

You don't go like, they bring up a spirit yeah i'm totally i'm gonna be like okay you did it first

but you see i think yeah i think so you see culturally that's what i was gonna say yes that's what i was gonna say we take for granted that most of the ideas of professionalism that we've adopted in society yeah are a homogenous idea of professionalism right so we go that's not professional what we mean is that's not stock standard white man like waspy white man as well because southern white man i my southern friends they have a different vibe of what professionalism is they'll say thing hey, darling.

It's like, hey, hey, that's not professional.

You don't call people darling.

Yes.

But there you do.

And then you go all around the world.

Italians have different professionalism.

French people have different professionalism.

And I think that's something we take for granted.

When we're treating people, helping people, discussing things with people.

We forget that, guys, an African doctor will joke with you.

In a setting where no joke would be told.

You know what I mean?

Like a white person would go, I cannot believe that.

Because an African doctor can come come in and just be like, so you're dying.

And you're like, what?

Yeah, you're dying.

You're dead this week.

No, I'm joking.

I'm joking.

No, I'm joking.

No, the blood test came back.

You're looking glue.

They'd be like, that is unprofessional.

There's an element of like, ah, you, come on.

You can't be serious all the time.

And I think those things are beautiful to examine.

It's like, it's fun to be in a space with somebody.

who knows you even though they've never met you because then i think they can help you get to the place where they're helping you fix the problem but they're not seeing who you are as part of the problem.

They're not seeing your culture as part of the problem.

They're able to split it and go, oh, no, no, no.

That's not a problem.

That's just black.

This is the thing we're actually trying to solve.

So it's been really wonderful meeting you.

Thank you.

You're doing that.

You're doing the good work.

What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions.

The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jodi Avigan.

Our senior producer is Jess Hackle.

Claire Slaughter is our producer.

Music, Mixing, and Mastering by Hannes Brown.

Thank you so much for listening.

Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?

Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick.

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