ADHD Task Paralysis: Why You Can’t Start (ft. Brendan Mahan)

Brendan (00:00)
No, it no it doesn’t. Like, especially if you pick that phone up. If you

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (00:03)
just didn’t remember to make the phone call, okay, cool, it’s probably your ADHD. Like that’s working memory. But if you’re going, I should make that phone call, and then not making that phone call, that isn’t ADHD. That’s trauma, that’s anxiety, that’s other stuff.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:16)
Yes.

Brendan (00:17)
I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s other stuff.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:19)
Hey everybody, and welcome back to The Vibe With Ky Podcast, the show where we have honest conversations about mental health and what it actually takes to be a person in the world right now. What’s up, everybody? I’m Ky. And I want to start off today with something that thing that’s on your list. You know what I’m talking about. Not the big one, the the the small thing, the the phone call, the form that’s been sitting on the counter since February. Because at some point,

That thing stopped being a task and it turned into evidence. Every day, every day that you don’t do it, it gets heavier and it starts saying something about you. If I really wanted to do this, I would have done it by now.

That story is what my guest Brendan Mahan has spent his entire career taking apart. He’s an ADHD and executive function coach and consultant, a former teacher and mental health counselor, and the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast, and the man who built The Wall of Awful. This thing right here. this is the model that millions of people now use for that gap.

Between wanting to do something and being able to do it. And his first book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful, is out now. Make sure you go get it. The link is in the description of this podcast. So here’s what we get into in this episode. where The Wall of Awful actually came from, which was a kitchen, a mother, and a kid who would just not start his homework. we talk about why forgetting a phone call is ADHD and knowing that you should make that phone call.

is not ADHD, right? Making it something else completely different. we also talk about what forcing your way through by sheer willpower will how much that will actually cost you. And and of course we talk about the smallest thing that you can do tonight to get things moving.

I’ll be honest with you, I have been at times lying in bed at eleven o’clock at night doing this math about something that probably could have taken me nine minutes to complete. And Brendan gave me the language for what was going on in my head during that time. And I honestly haven’t looked at my to-do list the same way ever since. So with that said, my friends, sit back, relax, and enjoy my chat with Brendan Mahan.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:28)
Let’s get into it. I want to welcome my my friend.

My comrade, I’m sitting here with

Brendan (02:33)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:33)
Brendan Mahan. Yeah, man.

Brendan (02:35)
Yeah, I am honored to be a friend and comrade. That that’s good. That makes me happy.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:40)
Listen, you you did something that almost nobody, I feel like, in this field, in this industry, does. You didn’t borrow a framework. You built one. You built a framework,

Brendan (02:51)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:52)
and then you named it like it actually feels instead of naming it like a like a textbook or anything.

Not the not the initiation deficit, not the activation banner. You called it the wall of awful. And you describe it as the emotional consequence of having ADHD, you know, built out of bricks, and the bricks are the failure and disappointment and rejection and shame. But before there was a model, before there was this book, before anyone else was was using these words, it was just you standing in front of something you could not start. What were you looking at?

Brendan (03:24)
Yeah, it this is like my experience of all kinds of things for my

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:29)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (03:30)
whole life, right? And it it the more the name comes from helping a kid. So I was literally in a kitchen talking to mom, the kid’s sitting there not doing his homework, and it was like one of our first meetings. And she’s like, I don’t understand why he can’t s do his homework. Why can’t he start his homework?

And I said, it’s sort of like there’s this wall of awful between him and his homework. And immediately I knew I just said something that mattered, but I wasn’t really sure what it was yet, right? Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:50)
Bingo. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (03:53)
But that came from me. That was like, yeah, I’ve I was your kid. Like I know what that feels like.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:00)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (04:01)
And so half of my when I was working with kids, and even now that I work with adults more often than not, it’s still the same thing, right?

I understand how you feel. I know what’s going on inside of you. And I maybe I get the wrong emotion, but I get the gist of it, right? And we have to work to figure it out, is this dread or regret or overwhelm? But I understand that that emotional storm that’s going on. And I also know how impeding it is. So poof, like it’s the wall of awful. We’re stuck behind it.

And yeah, it it just comes from me being the kid in fourth grade where my teacher was like, He has so much potential, but he doesn’t do enough. Like he just

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:38)
Yeah.

Brendan (04:38)
is lacking in effort and all that kind of stuff. And it’s like I I don’t know that in hindsight, I’m like, I think I was putting in all the effort. I just didn’t

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (04:48)
one, I had to put in more effort than other kids ’cause ADHD. And two, I didn’t know how to do

put the effort in in a way that was gonna make it useful. You know, like I was

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (04:59)
the kid who would like be trying to do a pull up and I’m just like, I’m pulling as hard as I can. And they’re like someone walks over and is like, Yeah, dude, pull with your back muscles, not your biceps. And then you’re like, really? That’s like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:10)
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (05:14)
no one was there to tell me to be pull with my back muscles. And I was constantly bicepting this thing.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:16)
Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It’s the way I describe it, it’s always it’s like it’s like putting on glasses for the first time. Like you like you

Brendan (05:23)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:24)
go so long without being able to clearly see, and then you put on

Brendan (05:27)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:28)
glasses and you’re like, that’s what you look like.

Brendan (05:30)
I when I first got glasses, I was in, I think I was a freshman, maybe a sophomore in high school. I had a

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:35)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (05:36)
paper route back then because they peop kids still delivered papers. That’s how old I am. yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:38)
remember those? Remember those? I used to have one too back in the day. Yeah.

Brendan (05:43)
I remember I was delivering paper delivering papers the first day of my glasses, and I just glanced up at a tree and stopped for like two minutes because I could see all the leaves. It wasn’t just a big blurry green thing. And I was like, wait, that’s what trees look like? my god.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:57)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I and you people might be laughing that people that have never had to wear glasses may be laughing right now, but like that’s l legitimately how it is. I remember

Brendan (06:06)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:07)
going to school for the first time wearing glasses and I was like, I don’t have to squint at the board. It’s it’s there. I can see it clearly. It’s beautiful. I love it.

Brendan (06:14)
Yeah. Even more recently,

i i this is during COVID. Like it was right after stuff opened back up and I could go to the eye doctor. So for a big a lot of COVID, I was like, man, I can’t. I was trying to read comic books because I’m a big geek. and so I’m reading

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:28)
Mm-hmm. Same.

Brendan (06:29)
all these comics and I was like, I can’t, I can’t focus. And in my head, I was like, yeah, because everything’s really stressful. Like, of course I can’t focus on this. I’m toasted. My ADHD’s gotta be off the rails.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:41)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (06:41)
So

it like when it can finally say enough, it says enough and comic books are there’s too much imagery and stuff. No, I went to the eye doctor after things opened back up and he was like, yeah, you need readers. And I was like, like I literally can’t focus. Like the other version of focus is the problem, not the cognitive part, the eye part.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (07:00)
and so it’s same experience, right? All of a sudden I’m like, it’s so much easier to process

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:04)
Yeah.

Brendan (07:05)
this comic book.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:05)
Yeah. It in t in twenty nineteen, your your model showed up on on my friend Jessica Jessica McCabe’s How to ADHD channel. I I I love Jess. she she’s amazing.

Brendan (07:16)
I was just in Seattle with her last weekend recording stuff.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:19)
Yeah, her and I were in Austin, Texas for NeuroDiversion earlier this year. had a great dinner. It was like she’s the way that she is

On like online. That’s who she is in real life. Like, that’s there’s no

Brendan (07:31)
Yep. Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:32)
BS there. That’s just who she is. So shout out to Jess. your model showed up on Jess’s How to ADHD channel, and and I feel like that is the moment it it stopped being just yours and it became everybody’s. And you have said

Brendan (07:45)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:46)
you were honored to be included, and she ended up writing the foreword to your book. But I I wanna I want the other half of that because now.

the the wall of awful is is on whiteboards in therapy offices and and in group chats and in the comment sections and and people use it about themselves with no idea that this random

Brendan (08:06)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:06)
guy in Massachusetts you know made

Brendan (08:08)
Ha ha.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:09)
it up. What what was it like the first time you heard a total stranger use your own words back at you like they had always existed.

Brendan (08:18)
Yeah, it’s it’s been interesting, right? Like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:20)
Yeah.

Brendan (08:21)
Jess did a great job of going, I didn’t make this up, Brendan made it up. Cause she’s my friend too, right? and

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:26)
She has, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (08:28)
we’re friends because of that video. Like she I met her at the International Conference on ADHD. She came to my workshop on the Wall of Awful and was like, Can we do a video together? ‘Cause that’s amazing.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:38)
Yeah.

Brendan (08:39)
and so and sort of off the races from there.

But yeah, it’s weird to like go online and see that people are using it and doing things with it. And I I recently did a search on Facebook for like the Wall of Awful just to see what’s going on. And

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:53)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (08:53)
there were a bunch of people who were like the Wall of Awful the Wall of Awful that. And so I sort of like read it, I kind of tuned in and I like, All right, is this person like taking it like they made it up or is this person just using it as a as a thing, right?

If I felt like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:07)
Yeah.

Brendan (09:07)
they were taking it like they made it up, I push back harder than if they didn’t.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:10)
Yeah.

Brendan (09:11)
But regardless, I was like, hey, I wrote a book, right? The the book is coming out in September, just to let you know. I was using it as an excuse to get some people who already know about it, already care about it going. but I’ve I’ve had to contact the New York Times. I’ve had to contact Verywell Mind and be like, Hey, I literally own the trademark on that. Like that’s my stuff.

and you need to cite me. And it it’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:30)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (09:32)
just the nature of

the society we live in is ideas spread

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:36)
Yes.

Brendan (09:36)
and that’s great. The wall of awful is bigger than I am. That video I did with Jess, the first one, has over two million views, which is insane. That’s banana pants. yeah, so it

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:43)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. It is insane. Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (09:49)
like I get it, of course. And it’s it’s weird to know that it’s bigger than me.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:55)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (09:56)
and I I’m kind of writing the book to write its coattails in a way. Like that’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:01)
We’re

writing the the coattails that you create that you made

Brendan (10:01)
W that I made. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:04)
which is insane. You know, it’s it’s funny as we sit here and talk about this. One, it’s it’s it’s it’s interesting how s like how vast the ADHD world is, but it’s also very small. Like we all know

Brendan (10:14)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:15)
we all pretty much like know each other, which is

Brendan (10:17)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:17)
which is well like are we’re some we’re connected in in in in some way. and the other side of it and that I find interesting is that it this is the beauty of social media.

And also like the annoying part of social media is that I know a lot of people give social media a lot of crap for legitimate, understandable, valid reasons. but one of the beautiful things about social media is the fact that this kind of information gets spread so fast in in a good way. So like there’s people

That may not have ever heard of of this, or you know, they maybe they’ve gotten their feelings validated because of the work that you have done, whether it’s attributed to you or not. But like they’re

Brendan (10:54)
Yeah. Right.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:56)
getting they’re getting their their feelings and their experiences validated in a way that it was we could never, I can’t. I mean, I’m thinking back to like MySpace days when like that’s this is not what social media was used for or anything like that, you know. And

it it’s it’s it’s kind of it’s kind of surreal to think of, you know, something that you created just kind of spreading around. But it must feel good, right? Yeah.

Brendan (11:17)
Yeah. it feels great. Yeah. And it it’s

it’s amazing to know that I that this idea I came up with has been so helpful for so many people. Like that’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:26)
Yeah.

Brendan (11:27)
that’s humbling, right? and it’s also it w it was it made the book a little daunting in some ways. It on the on the one hand, like I’m I’m a guy who always wants to over produce and over provide and give more value than you’re expecting and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:41)
Story of my life, man. Yeah.

Brendan (11:43)
So the book is very much me trying to do that. But it’s also like,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brendan (11:48)
I don’t know what people have all thought in the on their own, right? Like, like you said, there’s therapists with this on a whiteboard somewhere. That therapist might come

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:55)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (11:57)
to my book and be like, I did a better thing with this than this guy. This yutz, you know? Like that could happen. I don’t know. I’m hoping that they find the way I’m the way I used it, the wall and what I’m doing with it useful. I hope

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:10)
Yeah.

Brendan (12:10)
they find it informative. I hope they

everyone who buys this book goes, Wow, that really expanded on my knowledge of the Wall of Awful. Cause like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Brendan (12:19)
the intro and chapter one are the videos. Not like there’s a lot more than just the videos in the intro and chapter one. But we literally

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (12:28)
say, like, look, if you watch the YouTube videos, just jump to chapter two. Don’t read chapter one. You don’t need to. Like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:33)
Sure.

Brendan (12:33)
you’re probably fine. Read chapter one anyway. There’s other stuff in it. But but we I also want to honor

The fact that some people are gonna not want to do that because they have ADHD. and the book is written very much with that in mind, right? Like you’ve I’m

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:41)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Brendan (12:48)
sure you’ve read a ton of books and interviewed a bunch of authors. You know which books are ADHD friendly and which books aren’t. Yeah. I’ve also interviewed a lot of authors and read a bunch of books

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:54)
yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (12:59)
as a result. And I was an English teacher.

So I understand not just which books are ADHD friendly, but why and what’s happening in those books with text structures and images and those kinds of things to make them useful and more ADHD friendly. So this book is designed very much with that in mind.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:14)
So yeah.

I was gonna I was gonna ask. So like for anybody that’s listening right now, that’s like, wait, what makes a book ADHD friendly? Can you explain what what what does make a book ADHD friendly?

Brendan (13:25)
So my mission, my like art my sort of mission statement for the book was middle school textbook. And I don’t mean that derogatorily at all. I’m not saying like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:33)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (13:33)
ADHD people can only read in at a middle school level. Like that’s not what I’m saying. It but a middle school textbook, like you flip it open and there’s pictures and headings

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:41)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (13:41)
and subheadings and sidebars and all kinds of stuff to make you wanna read it. Like it looks interesting,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:47)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (13:47)
it looks compelling. And that’s what we have. This book is full of

headings and subheadings and bullet points and sidebars and there’s pictures. We do use a few acronyms. So we have one that’s like ERPU and Kaka.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:59)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (13:59)
ERPU means uncertainty, rejection, powerlessness, and uncomfortableness. Kaka is the opposite. So it’s certainty, connection, agency, and well being.

Early in early reviews on the book, we’re like, there’s these acronyms like I’m losing track of what they are. Cool, we made mascots. So URPO is a little slime monster, cacao is a crow. And anytime those ideas come up, just about there’s a few times when it doesn’t because things got crazy. But there’s the those guys show up again to say, hey, this is our we’re doing URPO stuff right now. We’re doing cacaw stuff right now. Or Shred, which is sleep habits, relationships,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:30)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (14:31)
exercise, diet. We got a little badgery looking Wolverine animal guy for him, for that.

So we’ve just got these visual cues on top of graphic, like sort of textual cues. My my other model was I mentioned I’m a bit of a geek. I play Dungeons and Dragons.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:49)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (14:49)
One of the things that I really appreciate about Dungeons and Dragons books is that there’s enough pictures and graphic things happening that I can kind of open up to a D&D book and know roughly where I am and whether the thing I’m looking for is before or after that.

And sort of narrow it

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:05)
Right.

Brendan (15:05)
down and find what I want. That was part of my mission with the book too, was like, not only do I want it to be easy to read, I want it to be easy to get back to. So if you six months after having read it are like, there was that idea. Let me go back and look at that book. Hopefully you can pop

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:18)
Right.

Brendan (15:19)
it open and find where that was fairly easily if you didn’t mark it.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:24)
Yeah, yeah. I wanna I wanna talk about your your twins for a second. In in in in January two thousand nine, your twin sons are born and and

Brendan (15:27)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:32)
you set yourself two goals. write a book and earn a black belt, right? By the time that they turn five.

Brendan (15:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:40)
December twenty twenty five comes around, they’re sixteen, and you turn in the final draft. Three days later, with bronchitis, you pass your black belt test.

You gave yourself five years and it took almost seventeen. And what you wrote is the whole model, the version you had only ever taught inside your own coaching, which means people can finally sit with the actual thing instead of a phrase that they saw in a video. But I I don’t want the two I don’t want two thousand nine and I don’t want twenty twenty five. I want twenty tw I want twenty fourteen when they turned

Brendan (16:11)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:11)
five and neither one of those things were done. What were you carrying in those years?

Brendan (16:16)
I would have to look at my CV to find out what was going on in 2021, 2014. I think

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:20)
Sure.

Brendan (16:21)
probably, I think my I might my career as a teacher was probably ending at the time. I can I can my CV’s right here. Look at that. Dope. I clicked Word and it popped right up. So because I’ve been using it a lot lately. Yeah. Yeah, no.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:30)
There we go. Boom. It just knew. It just knew.

Brendan (16:35)
So 2014, I was a school guidance counseling intern.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:40)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (16:40)
so I was finishing up grad school for because I had completely changed my career. When my boys were born I was a teacher. My career as a teacher by now had ended. I had gone back to grad school to get a second master’s in counseling in the with the goal of being a guidance counselor.

And I was finishing up that second master’s degree and rebuilding myself. So I was kind of on the road to this because my

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (17:02)
whole when I left teaching, I was like, I’ll either be an ADHD coach or a guidance counselor. Thinking

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:06)
Sure.

Brendan (17:07)
the ADHD stuff would help get a guidance counseling job. It didn’t, because schools were like, That’s special education. That’s not guidance counseling, which

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:15)
Yeah.

Brendan (17:15)
is disappointing because it’s totally a guidance counseling skill.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:18)
Sure, sure.

Brendan (17:19)
and knowledge

base. but yeah, that’s so that’s where I was. I was in the process of rebuilding myself. I I had a year 2012 where in the span of a year, my mom got sick, my mom my no, my mom got sick, my career as a teacher ended, my mom died. I or maybe my

mom got sick,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:33)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (17:33)
my mom died, and then my career as a teacher ended. I’m not totally positive what the order was. and then my car burned down.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:37)
Yeah. Still a lot to carry.

Brendan (17:39)
Yeah, and then my car burned down. So yeah,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:40)
wow. Jeez.

Brendan (17:42)
it was it it best thing that ever happened to me, to be honest. Well one of the best things that ever happened was was that car burning down. Because

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (17:48)
I think if I had been in a horrible car wreck that totaled the car, I would have fallen into a really deep depression.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:54)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (17:55)
But watching a fifty foot pyre of flame come off the front of your car while it’s on the side of the road

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:01)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (18:01)
and you’re standing behind it trying to get away from the fumes, is a it’s like a different moment. Like it was

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:06)
Yeah.

Brendan (18:06)
I remember going, I it really feels like the universe hates me, but I don’t think the universe hates

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:11)
Yeah.

Brendan (18:11)
me. So what what’s the lesson? What’s the takeaway in this brutal stuff? Yeah. And what

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:13)
Right, what can I take from this? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (18:16)
ended up happening, this is kind of the inverse of The Wall of Awful. For years and years and years, I would post today’s awesome on Facebook. And it’s just today’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:25)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (18:25)
awesome, colon, whatever it is. And the

the English nerd in me is like, it could be either. It could be today’s possessive or it could be today is awesome. It can kind of do both of those. and then what what is it about today that was awesome? And sometimes it was like pancakes. And other times

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (18:40)
it was I got my like my book showed up in the mail, you know?

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:43)
Right.

Brendan (18:44)
and I got really good at finding the awesome and the awful. And that I think that and I hope that that infuses the wall overcoming the wall of awful. That it’s very,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:52)
Yeah.

Brendan (18:53)
we

The other mission for the book was it’s gotta have hope. It’s gotta be full of hope because we’re talking about a really hard thing. We don’t want people to just feel overwhelmed by the fact that it’s hard. We want them to feel like they can do it, right? The overcoming is the most important word in the title. Cause that’s that’s what this is about.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (19:07)
So, yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:09)
Did you did you ever

feel like when when you gave yourself those five years and you hit that

Brendan (19:13)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:14)
five five year mark and you have all of this going on and and so much more, did you ever feel any sort of ADHD guilt within yourself? Were you at any point were you beating yourself up, being like, I gave myself five years, I did not reach this goal and you know, in the five years that I

Brendan (19:28)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:29)
had allotted for myself? Did you ever beat yourself up over that or no?

Brendan (19:32)
Two two pieces to this. One, my crappy working memory means that I’m often like a lot of ADHD people, I’m living in the now and not paying as much attention to the past and the future. So right, yeah. And in particular,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:41)
Yep. Yep. It’s either now or not now. Yeah.

Brendan (19:47)
I my anxiety helps me look into the future, right? So I’m like, what’s going

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:50)
Sure.

Brendan (19:50)
on? What am I gonna do? What are my goals? I don’t look backwards that well.

And I’m bad at at it enough that like I have to make an effort to look backwards and I recognize

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:58)
Yeah.

Brendan (19:59)
the value of it, but I don’t do it a lot. So I d I wasn’t really. I think I just forgot that I set that goal, right? Like I was just like, I it stuck with me for Kempo. It stuck with me for getting the black belt and Kempo. The book part didn’t stick as well. ‘Cause I was in the dojo every day. There was a time when I was spending

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brendan (20:15)
I think I was spending like sixteen hours a week in the dojo. Like I was there a lot. Yeah. I was there

Every Monday night, Tuesday in the afternoon, and then again at night, every Thursday night, and then every Saturday for like three hours again. So I was there a lot. and then I had to leave to rebuild my career. So I stopped going. and I like sort of wasn’t really planning on going back. And then a kid who used to go to the dojo passed away. He was like in his y early twenties, was a car a motorcycle accident, he died.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:44)
Well

Brendan (20:44)
yeah. So that that ended up bringing me back into the dojo, right? So I kinda come back in. I had gone all the way to brown belt before I stopped going.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:51)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (20:52)
and I ranked up to first degree in our style, it goes third degree, second degree, first degree, brown belt, and then black belt goes first, second, third, fourth. So counting down for brown. So I got to first degree brown, which is like black belt common. and then COVID hit.

And like the dojo shut down and it eventually we kind of opened up and we’re doing stuff in the parking lot, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t real martial arts training. It couldn’t be

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:12)
Sure.

Brendan (21:13)
because of the distancing. but then everything gets back to normal and we’re going and cruising, and my sensei is like, you’re testing in December. And I was like, Cool. And at the same time, Nate, my son, and this is stuff we talked about on my podcast. I’m not talking out of school, had developed obsessive compulsive disorder.

And it got to the point where he had to be hospitalized for it for three months. It was really bad. It got really, really bad. shut our whole family down. It’s why my podcast went from posting every week to sort of randomly.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:41)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (21:42)
and he’s better now. But but I I only time I ever cried in front of my sensei, but I was like, I can’t I’m not gonna be ready. Like I can’t test

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:49)
Yeah.

Brendan (21:50)
because I just I can’t do the things I need to do to be able to be ready.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:54)
Yeah.

Brendan (21:55)
so yeah, and then I think it was like a probably more than a year after that I finally tested and did it.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:01)
Yeah.

Brendan (22:02)
but that that was the hard that’s the part that was hard. ‘Cause I was actually

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:06)
Sure.

Brendan (22:06)
working on that goal the whole time. And

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (22:09)
the there’s a picture of me, like all the black belts, all the people who just passed their black belt test were all kneeling and doing the picture.

And everyone is smiling except for me. I have this like far away stare in my f on my face because I’m just like it was a royal of emotions, right? Like I felt

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:21)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (22:26)
I felt inadequate. I felt like I should have done this eleven years ago. Eleven years ago. You know, like

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:30)
Sure. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (22:32)
there was a and also but also I did it and I did it with bronchitis. Like I survived. I didn’t really start to

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:38)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (22:38)
totally be done, done, done until

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:40)
Yeah.

Brendan (22:41)
the very end.

And so

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:42)
And this is like

an amalgamation of like everything that you had gone through, like even like the years prior and and all like there’s there’s this all was like a I guess does it feel like a culmination of just like that era of your life, you know, finally like Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (22:56)
It’s no. I wish it felt like a culmination. I really do. It felt like

it like ’cause a lot it’s like your career ends, you have to rebuild. A worldwide

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:05)
Hm yes.

Brendan (23:07)
pandemic hits, your kid develops this unbelievably hard mental illness to the point where he has to be hospitalized for three months. and he’s an identical twin. So his identical twin is also suffering from this, but you can only help him so much because you have to have

Help the one that’s really getting hit hard and then

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:22)
Yeah.

Brendan (23:23)
support the identical twin where you can. until he Nate’s in the hospital, and then me and Gavin hung out that all that summer. But like the

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:28)
Yeah.

Brendan (23:29)
stuff that slowed me down were real significant traumatic events in a person’s life, right? Like,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:34)
Yeah.

Brendan (23:34)
so that stuff is all in there, and I’m being reminded of all that in the moment too. It was there were a lot of mixed emotions and uncomfortableness for

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:42)
Yeah.

Brendan (23:42)
me in that moment. Like I kind of didn’t

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:44)
Yeah.

Brendan (23:44)
want anyone to be proud of me.

Cause I was disappointed that I didn’t do it sooner. And also

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:50)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (23:50)
because I didn’t feel like I needed people to be proud of me for having gotten through all the stuff I got through. Cause like, of course, I did. That’s what you’re supposed to do. none of which is true. Like, that’s not necessarily a healthy lens to be taking. but that was what was in there. So yeah, I wish it felt like a culmination and I was like, do, but I totally wasn’t. And I was exhausted from a nine hour belt test. Like that was there too. Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:05)
Yeah. Yeah. You you Well, yeah, I I would I mean I would imagine that is that part is not

easy in the slight in the slightest

Brendan (24:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:15)
you you wrote something publicly that I I haven’t been able to shake and and you said you said no one is lazy, that lazy does not exist and that what people are actually looking at is learned helplessness that comes from a consistent lack of skills, support or resources.

And

somewhere else you said that a a lot of what gets called an ADHD trait is not the disorder at all. It is, you know, what what grew on on top of the disorder, coping mechanisms, trauma responses. Nobody ever offers people that line. So so draw it up for me. What part is the brain and what part is the scar tissue?

Brendan (24:56)
brain is on the scar tissue so it’s all the brain, right? Like it’s all there. the lazy one i is heavily from me. I train teachers, right?

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:04)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (25:04)
So like that’s that’s an eight an education lens. It’s not necessarily a popular one. Like it’s not like most teachers have that lens, but it is the thought that comes around in teaching. I came to it by myself, but other people have come to it by themselves and I see other people talk about it that way.

the piece that I add into it is resources. A lot

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:25)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (25:25)
there Ross Greene talks about it stuff very similar, where like it’s what’s the skill set that’s missing? What is it that’s keeping this kid from being able to succeed? I don’t like the word lazy because it’s a it’s an answer without a solution.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:37)
Mm.

Brendan (25:37)
Right? Like, how come that person isn’t doing that thing? Cause they’re lazy. Okay, cool. Like it it’s a thought stopper. I don’t have to keep trying to figure it out.

But if you go, nope, lazy’s not a choice. Why isn’t that person doing the thing that they’re supposed to be doing? I have to look deeper. I have to figure out what’s not there that that person needs to be able to do the thing. Skills come

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:55)
Yeah.

Brendan (25:56)
up a lot because it comes from education. And that’s what educators do is teach skills. But I’ve also Well, I’ve

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:01)
Yeah. I I w I w No, please go ahead, you know, go ahead.

Brendan (26:04)
just I’ve also done a enough work in like systems and like comp corporate systems, governmental systems.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:11)
Sure.

Brendan (26:11)
our society

to know that there’s lots and and I understand poverty and I understand racism and I like there’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:16)
Yeah.

Brendan (26:17)
a lot of people out there who don’t have the resources that they need to be able to do the thing. So I’ve I’ve brought

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:23)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (26:24)
resources into that mix.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:27)
Yeah.

Brendan (26:27)
and that that’s chapter three of the book is all about skills and resources. And I’m I’m

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:31)
Yeah.

Brendan (26:31)
firmly of the opinion that every problem can be solved with the right combination of skills and resources. Doesn’t mean we’ll get the right combination. Doesn’t mean that problem will be solved.

But it theoretically every problem could be solved with the right combination of skills and resources.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:44)
Yeah. I w I wanna I want to take that, the the the bricks in the in the scar tissue here and go straight at the thing that I think a lot of the people listening are are living inside right now and and have never probably said out loud. Like I I want I want to name the belief out loud because I think a huge number of people listening are living inside that. The belief is if I actually wanted this, I would have done it by now. So the fact that

It

is still sitting there is proof that I don’t want it badly enough, or that I’m not serious, or or I’m really just lazy, like you said, after all. That belief is doing enormous damage, and nobody says it in a normal voice. So say it plainly for me. Is it true? And then tell me what it costs somebody to keep believing it in years in relationships.

In the things that they never even tried.

Brendan (27:38)
No, I th that’s nonsense. It’s not true that you don’t want that thing enough because you haven’t done the thing or taken the steps or whatever. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of other things that are necessary to be able to do that thing that you want to do. Let’s just look at GLP one medication. Right? Like for s decades and centuries, we’ve had people who are overweight that don’t want to be overweight. Turns out pretty significant hormonal stuff going on in the brain. And when they

Are provided with GOP1 drugs, medication, all of a sudden it’s easier, that weight loss becomes easier. There’s still plenty of stuff to figure out about GOP1. I’m not necessarily advocating them here, but it but it’s showing us that like, yeah, sometimes you can’t get past your brain chemistry. And people with ADHD have known that their whole lives. There’s plenty of my brain chemistry I can’t get past. It I’m a guy who needs to lose weight. My ADHD does not help me with losing weight.

I was down fifteen pounds and then I got really busy ’cause of the book and I didn’t have time to exercise. And the more like frenetic my life gets, the harder it is for me to pay attention to what I’m eating and not eating. So like I’m up again, I’m back up five. I I that’s the nature of the beast. Like I’m gonna have to go get buckled down again. But it for me,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (28:47)
Yeah.

Brendan (28:47)
that’s what trying to lose weight looks like. It’s a lot of cognitive effort.

And if I have cognitive effort that has to get spent somewhere else, like on a book and then marketing a book, I’m probably gonna eat a cookie because I want like my brain is like, I need some dopamine and chocolate chip cookies are full of that. So why don’t you go have a cookie? It’s easier

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:04)
Yeah.

Brendan (29:04)
than like weightlifting for an hour or whatever. and yeah, I I I don’t want people to say, I clear clearly don’t want that enough. So that’s why it’s it’s all my fault. I’m the problem.

You know, especially

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:16)
Yeah.

Brendan (29:17)
because one of the things that does help us to change is pain. Like if it hurts enough,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:21)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (29:22)
we’re we’re more likely to take action. But if if we’re taking the hurt and putting it on the thing that we’re trying to change, it can depersonalize it enough and make us want to avoid that thing. Now if I think about trying to lose weight, I feel guilty ’cause I’ve guilted myself about it.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:37)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (29:38)
I’m

sticking with that because it’s my story, right? So I’m not I don’t want to be

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:40)
Right.

Brendan (29:41)
making any and if anyone out there has like eating disorders and stuff, this is Brendan saying Brendan thoughts. I’m not putting saying anyone else’s thoughts. Cause I’ve done it, right? So when I’m like, man, if I really wanted to lose weight, I would take the action and bitter blah blah blah. But now when I think about the steps I need to take to lose weight, that makes me feel guilty because I haven’t taken those actions. That adds bricks to my wall of awful.

Now there’s a wall of awful between me and whatever that step is. And it’s harder for me to go to the gym. It’s harder for me to go walk in the woods. It’s harder for me to eat a salad instead of a cookie. Also, because there’s like viruses and things making people sick when you eat salad, which doesn’t help either. yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:19)
Yes. Took me a while to get back to salads. It took me it took me a minute. I love a good salad and

it took me a s I look at it now, I’m like, please don’t hurt me as I’m eating this.

Brendan (30:27)
Yeah. But but that’s

all of that stuff is in there, right? Like it I

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:31)
Yeah.

Brendan (30:32)
have to know if I’m beating myself up for not doing that thing, I’m putting bricks in my wall and making it harder for me to do that thing. When I I could be like w the moments when I’m like, man, it feels bad that I’m not as fast as I would like to be, or I or like running is more difficult, or or I’m winded walking upstairs, that’s using my asthma.

but when I have those moments where I don’t feel as strong as I would like, that’s different. That’s a different kind of pain. And that kind of pain is gonna get me in the gym. That kind of pain is gonna get me eating better. But the pain that is I feel bad that I didn’t or that I did do something just builds my wall and makes it harder for me to take action or avoid actions that would otherwise benefit me.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:13)
Yeah. I wanna I wanna hand you something with some numbers behind it because I think it it changes what people believe is is happening to them. I I I was reading this meta-analysis from twenty twenty that pulled thirteen studies and about twenty five hundred adults comparing adults with ADHD to adults without it on emotional regulation. And the gap was pretty large. So the the researchers concluded that emotional dysregulation is obviously a core feature of ADHD.

Not a personality problem that’s sitting on top of it. So for the person who’s who is, let’s just say 45 years old, got diagnosed fairly recently, late diagnosis, and has a phone call that they have not been able to make in a couple months that they need to make.

Brendan (31:57)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:58)
What is actually happening inside of that person in those 90 seconds where they pick up the phone?

And they put it back down, not doing the thing that they said they were gonna do. What is actually happening?

Brendan (32:09)
Yeah, I think that this circles back to the second half of the question that I didn’t answer earlier. That’s that I rope in, like, yes, some of the stuff is ADHD, but there’s also trauma layered on top of that, right? And there’s cultural expectations layered on top of that. There’s other things than just it’s my ADHD. So when I don’t make that phone call, and that that drives me nuts. Like drives me bananas that people are just it’s my ADHD that means I’m not making that phone call.

No, it no it doesn’t. Like, especially if you pick that phone up. If you

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:37)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (32:38)
just didn’t remember to make the phone call, okay, cool, it’s probably your ADHD. Like that’s working memory. But if you’re going, I should make that phone call, and then not making that phone call, that isn’t ADHD. That’s trauma, that’s anxiety, that’s other stuff.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:50)
Yes.

Brendan (32:51)
I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s other stuff. and so that’s what’s playing out in the 90 seconds of picking up the phone and then putting it back down. And

The way that I kind of counter that, the stuff that I recommend, because I have clients with the same problems with that stuff, right? Body doubling is a great way to make that phone call when you’re having

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (33:08)
trouble doing it. and also depending on the kind of phone call, right? Like I I often think about sort of calling the doctor and calling a job you’ve applied to, because that comes up a lot with my clients for whatever reason.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:17)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah.

Brendan (33:21)
and the answer is the answer.

Right. So like I don’t want to call

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:24)
Yeah.

Brendan (33:24)
the doctor because I don’t want to find out that I’m sick. I don’t want to call the job place that I applied to because I don’t want to find out that I didn’t get it. You got or didn’t get that job and are or are not sick, regardless of whether you make that phone call.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:36)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (33:37)
So you may as well call and get the information so you’re not living in a world of uncertainty. And you

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:43)
Yeah.

Brendan (33:43)
can take action and do the right next step instead of the wrong next step.

So, like that, those phone calls are kind of that’s probably what’s going on is there’s some answer on the other side

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:52)
Yeah.

Brendan (33:52)
of this phone call that makes me anxious that I’m trying to avoid. But there’s also an answer on the other side of that phone call that makes you feel better that you should want to go after, right? We have our brains and minds are negative biased. So we’re more likely to see this the negative side. But you can

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:07)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (34:07)
tell yourself whatever story you want when you don’t know what the story is, and the story may as well serve you.

The other option

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:12)
Yeah.

Brendan (34:13)
is that the phone call is tedious in some way.

Right. I’m I have to call and pay a cable bill ’cause the internet is down or I’m for whatever reason I can’t just pay it on the internet to make do it over the phone. Or my like I’m having issues with my Wi Fi or issues with my printer or something. I have to call a support line and be on hold forever and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, it’s c it’s just gonna suck. And those are tedious and I agree. I schedule those calls as much as I can. Like I

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (34:39)
I

Clear like a half an hour to an hour, depending on how awful the phone call is likely to be. And I’m just like, cool. I know that from one o’clock to two o’clock I’m making this phone call. And I try to have something to do while I’m on hold. Cause that half

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:53)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (34:54)
of the tediousness is like, I’m I’m just on hold and not talking to anybody and I’m bored out of my mind and I don’t know what to do with it. And I like, what can I do that I won’t get sucked into and

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (35:04)
miss that they came back or something? And

But what is also entertaining enough to keep me going. So th those are

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:10)
Yeah.

Brendan (35:10)
typically the two challenges, or it’s a bad news or it’s tedious. And they’re different there’s different pieces, right? The bad news is probably a trauma

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:16)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (35:17)
response. The tedious one is two, but it’s different. It’s like the ADHD

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:21)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (35:21)
trauma of not being able to be bored.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you’ve you’ve laid out five things that people do when when they hit a wall. Two that do not work,

Brendan (35:29)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:31)
staring at it and and going around it, two that do, climbing it and and putting a door in it. And then there’s one in the middle, Hulk smashing.

Brendan (35:39)
Yep. Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:41)
quite relevant given given Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which just came out, which I loved. It’s such a good movie.

Brendan (35:44)
was so good. It was such a good movie.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:47)
It was so my god, so good. But anyway.

You have that thing in the middle, Hulk smashing, where you get through it by just sheer force and it works. And and it wrecks something on the way. And I think that one belongs to a very specific person that listens to this show. They’re in their forties, again, late diagnosed, forties, fifties, sixties. And force is the only way that they have ever gotten through anything.

Everything on their list gets done. Everything, everybody around that person thinks that they’re that that person is fine. What is it actually costing that person to just hulk smash their way through?

Brendan (36:24)
It so after writing the book, Caroline Maguire, I did an interview with Caroline Maguire a little while ago. She wrote the neurodivergent friendship skills for neurodivergent adults. she’s a friend of mine. And she gave me an yet another distinction for smashing. So I’m gonna play I’ll play with that in a second. I just want to make sure that I note it. So the smashing, what it typically costs us is either our relationships with other other people or our relationship with ourselves.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:48)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (36:49)
If

I’m yelling at the other person in order to activate, right? I’m trying to get the dopamine going by getting in an argument or or fighting or arguing or or battling with someone. Now that d relationship is damaged. That person may or may not have had anything to do with me having to do this task. Right? I might be, get out of my way, I have to mow the lawn to my wife who’s got nothing to do with me mowing the lawn, doesn’t care if I mow the lawn today or not. I could also say

Fine, I’m all the lawn. Shut up. Stop asking me. And now I’m yelling. She actually did ask me, right? That happens with kids and their teachers. That happens with employees and bosses. That happens with bosses at their employees because their boss yelled at them and they yelled down. so that’s one option. The other option is I’m damaging my relationship with myself. That’s when I’m instead of using anger to activate, I’m using anxiety to activate. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do this? I really have to, da da da da, right?

Building up more and more anxiety, anxiety either propels us forward or propels us away, right? It’s but it’s moving us regardless. We can use anxiety to to activate and go through the and smash through the wall. Anxiety is the only thing we can burn for fuel and wind up with more of it when we’re done. That’s part of the problem, right? If I burn it to get through the wall, I’m gonna have more anxiety on the other side, either when I finish the task or as I do the task or something.

I might not do the task as well as I could because there’s too much anxiety. So we’ve got that those two moti motivators, anxiety and ang and anger. And we’re just damaging social relationships or our own relationship with ourselves. What Caroline asked me about was, well, I sometimes smash. Am I just smashing through life all the time? Cause like Olive she was her example was when someone seems to think she can’t do something.

She gets very like, I’ll show you, I’m gonna do it, right?

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:30)
Mm.

Brendan (38:30)
And I’m like, yeah, I think you’re kicking the door open. Like, I think that’s the lens

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:35)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (38:36)
for that one. You’re using that anger, that aggression to activate. But you’re not staying in that anger the whole time, right? You’re pivot, she’s pivoting to more of a competitive vibe, self-confident vibe, like I can do it, I’ll show you. But

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:51)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (38:51)
maybe she wouldn’t have done that thing if somebody hadn’t said,

You can’t raise a thousand dollars for charity or whatever. And now all of a sudden she’s like, I can too. so I like that the idea of that is sort of I’m kicking the door open. I’m using an anger to change my emotional state, but then I’m going to a different kind of motivated emotional state in order to continue forward.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (39:09)
Yeah. There there’s a very specific thing, something something specific to a huge part of my audience. A lot of them did not build their bricks in a classroom. They built them in doctors’ offices, right? Told for twenty, thirty years that it was anxiety or hormones or that they were being sensitive or tired or or just doing too much. So the wall got built out of being told nothing was wrong over and over.

while something was very clearly wrong. In what ways does a wall built out of being dismissed behave differently from a wall built out of failing?

Brendan (39:47)
I think that they work v pretty similarly. I the difference being

my ability to interact with the wall, right? The wall is still in the way. If the if sort of the the lesson I keep hearing is if you just tried harder, right, now I’m gonna smash eventually

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:01)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (40:02)
because I’m gonna have to keep trying harder, right? And

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:04)
Yeah.

Brendan (40:05)
I and I would argue that all of our walls start at school and start when we’re young, which doesn’t mean

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:09)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (40:09)
that they’re not getting added on to by doctors and and being dismissed.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (40:14)
when I’m constantly being dismissed, I

question my the validity of my own concerns. Right. So that might mean I’m gonna freeze more often and just be like, nope, that thing that I thought I had to care about that I thought was important. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I shouldn’t try to do that thing because it doesn’t really matter because I keep getting dismissed and over and over and I’m and I now I start dismissing my own wants and needs.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:37)
Yeah.

Brendan (40:38)
so I’m more likely to freeze. I’m more likely to maybe try to go around it, right?

Smashing, go around the wall and staring at the wall or fight, flight, and freeze. It’s just the stress response that we all have. so I’m inclined to say that being dismissed repeatedly is just gonna change how we re interact with that wall. The wall is still there. The emotions of

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:55)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (40:55)
the wall will be different. Right. If I if I go into a wall because someone keeps telling me I just will you just try harder, try harder, try harder, there’s gonna be a lot of like inadequacy in there.

That if I’m being

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:06)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (41:07)
dismissed, it’s gonna be more along the lines of like confusion or uncertainty. Cause I’m like, I don’t maybe I’m just wrong. I don’t necessarily feel inadequate

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:14)
Yeah.

Brendan (41:15)
because that doesn’t jive with the message I’m receiving. But regardless,

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:18)
Right, right.

Brendan (41:19)
the guilt and shame is gonna be there, right? I am I

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:21)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (41:22)
what’s wrong with me? How come I keep thinking there’s something wrong with me, but no one seems to tell believe me? I don’t like I I’ve worked with a number of women who started off with a bipolar diagnosis and then

Turns out it’s ADHD way later. And so now they’ve got all kinds of medical stuff, right? They’ve got trauma from being on the wrong medication, potentially. which that’s bricks, right? That’s part of the wall of awful. That’s adding to the wall. and now

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:45)
Yeah.

Brendan (41:46)
it builds different walls. Those clients have walls of awful for doctors and are like, I don’t trust the medical establishment because they can’t figure out what I’m doing.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (41:55)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (41:56)
so

Yeah, I think that the the wall kinda is the wall is the wall. What we end up getting walls for is gonna change and vary. and how I interact with the wall will change. But the the the emotions are still there, although the emotions inside might be different. So I I think I answered your question. And that was a that was

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:10)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Brendan (42:12)
an awesome question. but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. I’ve I haven’t been asked that before. I I’ve got a client who like kind of doesn’t trust men in general.

‘Cause she’s had so many doctors go wrong for her. And she’s just

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:22)
Mm. Sure. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (42:25)
like like the doctor sort of became a symbol for institutional man. And she’s like, Nope, don’t like you man, person, man, white man guy who’s in charge of everything. Like, she

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:35)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (42:36)
doesn’t like that guy.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s a lot to process. That’s a lot

Brendan (42:39)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:41)
for for someone to process and to have to deal with on top of the things that they’re already dealing with. And and so like let’s let’s let’s talk to those people right now. Let’s make

Brendan (42:49)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (42:49)
some so give them some use some usable things that they can use. So not necessarily like a system or a program, nothing that costs money or needs a referral or a two-year wait list, but

Like

you, we’ve talked a couple of times today about, you know, you talk about putting a door in a wall, you know, changing your emotional state so you can actually get through it, things like that. So for the person listening who is listening to this episode, finishes the episode in in their car or whatever they’re doing, they walk inside and they see the exact same pile of things that that they saw this morning. What is one thing that they can do in the next five minutes by themselves before they talk themselves out?

out of taking care of that pile of things.

Brendan (43:27)
You only have pick up one of them. Right? You don’t have to pick up the whole pile. You just pick up one thing off that pile and do something with it. Maybe it has to get thrown out. Maybe it has to go in a drawer. I don’t know. But that’s that’s the step, right? The step is what’s the smallest thing I can do that will do do something, right? Like what’s

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (43:45)
Yeah.

Brendan (43:45)
it it has to be small enough to do, but big enough to matter. That’s sort of the lens. And small is the

Operative word. It’s there, you’d be surprised how small something can be and still matter. it could be there’s a pile of stuff, and one of the things on that pile is a pen. And the smallest thing on that pile is that pen. You might find that if

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (44:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brendan (44:05)
you pick that pen up and put it in the cup or whatever where you keep your pens, now all of a sudden you’re walking back over to that pile and you picked up the spatula and put it in the sink. Maybe you didn’t wash it, but it went to the sink.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (44:15)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (44:15)
And then

you take that book and put it back on the shelf, you know, like you’re kinda all of a sudden I’m getting all these things put away because I started with the pen, instead of seeing it as a the pile as a whole, as one big piece. It’s all small stuff.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (44:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan (44:31)
and sometimes when we find all the small stuff, we then have to group the small things together and say, What goes out to my bedroom, what goes into the kitchen sink, what goes into the living room?

That might be the

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (44:40)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (44:41)
next step, or it might be to just start picking stuff up and moving them. And

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (44:44)
Yeah.

Brendan (44:45)
if you are a person who’s like, I don’t even see the piles, Brendan, I don’t know how to even get to that step of seeing the pile. Take out your phone, turn on your camera, and just look at your space around you through the lens of your phone, through that camera. It frames the environment in a way that will help you see the stuff that you might need to deal with.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna lighten it up on you. ’cause I’ve been asking I’ve been drilling you with some questions. So the

Brendan (45:11)
Mm-hmm.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:11)
this next part, it’s it’s not deep. There’s no wrong answers. I

Brendan (45:14)
Okay.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:14)
just want to know how your brain works. So this is a segment that we call this or that. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you two choices. You can choose one or the other, or both or neither. Yeah. There’s there’s

Brendan (45:23)
I choose black sheep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:26)
no wrong answer here. You can choose whatever you want. and I’m just I’m just picking at your brain, okay? Whatever first comes to mind. All right, you ready? All right, here we go.

Brendan (45:31)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:33)
First one, dungeon master or player at the table. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Brendan (45:36)
Dungeon Master. I’m a forever DM. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:40)
that’s fair. deadline three months out or deadline on Friday.

Brendan (45:45)
Deadline on Friday.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:46)
The same way. Yes. number three, the comic you read 40 times or a first issue you have never once taken out of the bag.

Brendan (45:53)
I l literally don’t own any first issues that I haven’t taken out of the bag. but probably the one I’ve read

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:58)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (45:58)
forty times.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (45:59)
Yeah. Yeah. number four, a natural one at the worst possible moments, or a natural twenty when it does not matter at all.

Brendan (46:07)
I’m the natural twenty guy. Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (46:09)
Yeah. Only

certain people will understand that, by the way. I know that’s a very that’s a very niche. That’s a very niche question.

Brendan (46:15)
Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (46:16)
That some people are listening, like my my audience is not has no idea what we’re talking about.

Brendan (46:21)
Ha ha.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (46:22)
that’s okay. That’s okay. This that that one was for me. That

Brendan (46:25)
Yeah.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (46:25)
one was was for me.

I I I have one more question for you. I I asked this of of all of my guests. If there’s one thing that you want the audience to take away from our conversation today, what should that one thing be?

Brendan (46:37)
Earlier you mentioned that like the ADHD people, we all kind of know each other. I think that’s what I want people to take away from this conversation. Not not that we all know each other, but that the ADHD community is a pretty welcoming community and we’re pretty down

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (46:51)
It is.

Brendan (46:51)
to connect with people and accept them as they are.

And maybe we want to support them to be better if their ADHD is winning all the time. We want to help them win more than their ADHD does. But by and large, like we’re just happy that you’re part of the tribe and that you kind of joined into the neurodiversity group. And what like welcome home, sort of. I want I want to people I hope people feel that con sense of connection and that there is a community out there that exists. You mentioned meeting Jessica at NeuroDiversion. I met her at the

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (47:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan (47:18)
International Conference on ADHD.

Those are two events that are pretty community focused and they’re places to find your people. and then there’s social media and there’s like discords and Zoom meetings and things that happen on top of that. So I hope that people listening to this find a sense of community.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (47:34)
Yeah. And like if anybody ever gets a chance to go to either of those events, definitely go check it out. They they I I’ve met some in it’s a very validating experience going to those going

Brendan (47:44)
Yep.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (47:46)
to those events and and I was I was a keynote at NeuroDiversion and it was such a beautiful experience. So one day I’ll get to meet you in person, my friend, and it’s gonna it’s gonna happen.

Brendan (47:53)
I’ll be at NeuroDiversion this year.

I’m doing something there. I was talking to them a couple months ago. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I we just haven’t figured out what it is yet. He’s got they’ve got the book, so we’ll we’ll see what happens.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (47:59)
Nice. Yes. Make make that happen. Make make it happen, my friend. yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I love it. Brendan, thank you. Honestly, thank you so much, really. You you

Brendan (48:10)
Yeah. Thank you.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (48:11)
you gave like a a whole lot of people language for something that that they had been carrying with no name on it.

And that’s not a small thing to do with with a life.

Brendan (48:21)
Thank you.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott (48:22)
Okay, let me tell you what I’m taking out of that conversation today. First and foremost, big thank you to Brendan Mahan for that time that he spent with me today and how honest he was in it. He honestly didn’t have to go all the way back to that time when he was in the kitchen and he first said the words Wall of Awful out loud in front of his mom, and and and a kid who just wouldn’t start his homework. But he he did it anyway. He took us back, and I’m really appreciative for that, for having him here. So thank you so much, Brendan, for being here.

let’s talk about what he laid out because this is important. The wall, right? The Wall of Awful, the wall is actually built out of emotion, out of bricks like failure and disappointment and shame. And it’s real. He said, if you forget to make a phone call, that’s ADHD. That’s working memory. But if you know that you should make a call and you pick the phone up and then you put it back down, that is not ADHD. That is trauma. That is anxiety. That’s

The other stuff sitting on top of it. And forcing your way through, it costs you either your relationships or your relationship with yourself. Because anxiety is the only thing that we can burn for fuel and wind up with more of when we’re done. Deep words there. I love it. So if you take one thing from this episode today, let it be this: how long something has been sitting there, waiting for you to do it, that is not a measurement of how much you want it.

I asked him straight up whether or not doing it proves that you don’t want it badly enough. And he said, and I quote, that’s nonsense. Love this guy. Here’s what you can do this week. One, go to that pile of stuff that you’ve been meaning to do. Go to that pile and pick up one thing. Not the whole pile, pick up one thing. Brendan’s rule is that it has to be small enough to do, but big enough to matter. Two.

If you can’t even see the pile anymore, take out your phone, put and turn the camera on and look at the room through the screen. The stuff it it comes back into view. Love that. love that breakdown. and number three, the call that you’ve been carrying, put it that you the one that you’ve been waiting to to do that you haven’t done yet, put it on the calendar like it’s an appointment, and then line up something to do while you’re on hold. You know what I’m talking about?

Anyway, if you’re listening, and and you’re like, I like this Brendan guy. If you’re listening to Brendan today and you want more about him, if you want if you want to learn more about him and then the work that he does, make sure you go check out BrendanMahan.com and listen to his ADHD Essentials Podcast wherever you get your shows. And his first book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful, is now available. So make sure you get it. The link for this is in the description of this podcast. It’s great book.

listen, if this episode hit close to home for you, especially the part about being told that nothing was wrong with you, I have plenty more free resources for you. Just go to my website and you’ll find the Mental Health Resources Hub. There’s tons of stuff there just for you. If you want more from me, my friends, visit my website, TheVibeWithKy.com and make sure you’re following me at @TheVibeWithKy on all major social media platforms. Everything that we talked about is in the show notes, all the links, all of that stuff. It’s all there. So just make sure you go and click.

With that said, my friends, thank you so much for watching and for listening. As always, much love, good vibes. I’ll catch you next time. Bye.