Translating ADHD

Because our brains are wired differently than the neurotypical majority, those of us with ADHD can often fall into the trap of believing that we are not doing things right. Today, Cam and Shelly use client examples to demonstrate how the "I'm not doing this right" mindset can show up in friendships and work relationships. We then discuss how these clients were able to shift their perspective from a a place of inferiority to one of different, but equal. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Today, Cam and Shelly come back to our conversation on resources to discuss how we can better utilize the supportive people in our lives . We discuss how we as adults with ADHD often resist asking for help because we view it as a sign of weakness. We then ask listeners to consider the perspective that together, we are stronger. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Today, Cam and Shelly discuss a guiding philosophy that Shelly lives by in her own life and uses frequently with clients: Let It Be Easy. We discuss how we as adults with ADHD often get in our own way, over-complicating problems or approaching them from the wrong angle. We then give examples of how we and our clients have used this philosophy to find the "let it be easy" approach and how listeners can apply this philosophy to their own challenges. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As coaches, we use The Big Agenda to help our clients understand the bigger reasons they are working to create change and to link the work they are doing to positive outcomes, and to provide signposts that we are on the right path. In today's episode, we discuss how listeners can begin to consider what defines their own Big Agenda, and how we use our clients Big Agendas to provide signposts on their journey. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

For those of us with ADHD, distractions are a struggle. When we are distracted by a compelling thought or idea, we are often not only taken off task but taken down a rabbit hole. In today's episode, Shelly and Cam discuss a model for managing distractions so that we can reach the completions that matter to us. Episode links + resources: Cam's Blog: The Six Cs Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As we do the work of adjusting to this temporary new normal, we often feel like we are at our mental and emotional limits. This week, Cam and Shelly open up about our own experiences in this unique time, including what we are aware of and what we are working to adjust. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As our world shrink and our access to other people is limited, there is a need for us and the people in quarantine with us to set healthy boundaries so that we don't sacrifice our own well being to meet the needs of those in our households. This week, Cam and Shelly discuss setting boundaries and managing expectations both in the context of quarantine and in general as adults with ADHD. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

This week, Shelly and Cam continue our discussion of ADHD experience in the context of the current coronavirus pandemic. Though the pace of life may be slower for many of us, our bandwidth is being stretched by uncertainty, powerful emotions, and the effort of trying to find our new normal. Using Cam's DAM model, we discuss how to manage the mental and emotional overload brought on by these uncertain times by evaluating and adjusting what we can control: our behavior. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

This week, Cam and Shelly discuss how different clients are experiencing the slow down in the pace of life as they practice social distancing amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. As the number of urgent items that need our attention decreases, our clients are turning our attention to activating on items that are important but not urgent. Using several recent client examples we discuss how our clients are uniquely experiencing reduction in urgency and demands on their attention as adults with ADHD. Using these examples, we then discuss how listeners can adjust in the absence of urgency by looking for the opportunities created by this slower pace. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As coaches, Cam and Shelly are working with clients on managing the many disruptions caused by the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The individual challenges are as unique as our clients, the individual impacts they are experiencing, and their individual ADHD experience. In today's episode, we bring that conversation to our listeners by discussing what we and our clients are working through: lost or reduced income, loss of crucial supports (environments, people, routines, structure), managing time when everything happens all under one roof, and more. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As adults with ADHD, we often do do not see the many resources available to us. However, when we are operating from a place of strength, we can start to identify and access those resources. In today's episode, Cam and Shelly discuss the importance of approaching resources from a place of strength, identify several areas in which to look for and identify resources, and give examples in a few crucial resource areas. Episode links + resources: Essential Structures Model Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

This week we continue the conversation around strengths by looking at Shelly's client Sally and her limiting belief that she had to "pass as neurotypical" to be successful. Cam and Shelly break down how Sally shifted from this limiting belief to a strengths based perspective. We also discuss why this shift is so important and why it is often the place we begin with our clients. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

This week we turn our attention to tapping into our strengths as adults with ADHD. Cam and Shelly break down why we are strengths based coaches and discuss how accessing and leveraging strengths is a powerful way to help our clients create the change they are seeking. We then cap the conversation by discussing how accessing and leveraging strengths helped one of Cam's clients turn a scenario at work from one of challenge to one of opportunity and success. Episode links + resources: Strengths & Challenges Reframe Chart Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As adults with ADHD we often have a black or white view of hyperfocus. On one hand we see it as a powerful elixir or superpower that allows us incredible focus and productivity. On the other, we know that hyperfocus can distract us from what is important by dragging us down Alice in Wonderland style rabbit holes. In today's episode, Shelly and Cam discuss how to create awareness around hyperfocus by distinguishing when we are hyperfocusing on tasks that are timely and relevant from tasks that are not. We bring in examples from our own experience, discuss popular examples of hyperfocus portrayal, and discuss how hyperfocus differs from flow state. Episode links + resources: Tim Urban: Wait but Why Cal Newport: Deep Work Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As adults with ADHD we often view time as the enemy, because many of the effects of ADHD look like poor time management. Today, Shelly discusses her experience working with neurotypical adults and adults with ADHD in the areas of time management and breaks the differences in experiences. Shelly and Cam then distinguish time management challenges from ADHD challenges. We also discuss how effects of our ADHD challenges are often mistakenly believed to have cause in time management issues, both by ourselves and the neurotypicals around us. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Transitions are difficult for those of us with ADHD. Often we can become stuck in one of two gears: the neutral gear of "the planner" or the 5th gear of "the doer" with little access to the gears between the two. This inability to access other gears tends to keep us stuck in either a pre-action or reaction mode. In today's episode Cam and Shelly discuss how to identify which gear you tend to be stuck in, and how those of us with ADHD can begin to access the gears between neutral and 5th. "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. -Japanese Proverb Episode links + resources: The Stages of Change Model (Prochaska and DiClemente) Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Those of us with ADHD experience time differently. To complicate matters, our perception of time can vary based on individual ADHD manifestation and a number of outside factors. Today Cam and Shelly discuss some of the ways in which they and their clients experience time differently. We also discuss how to begin developing awareness of your own experience of time as an adult with ADHD so that you develop strategies to get what matters to you while managing the amount of time that is given to or taken by others. Cam's Seven Factors to Action: Take the item or goal on your list that has not budged and rank each of these areas from 1-10. The areas that fall below a 7 are the ones that speak to why this item is not moving forward. Level of interest Level of ease Level of urgency Level of fun Level of accountability Level of relevance or importance Level of emotional load Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As adults with ADHD we respond well to urgency, but not necessarily to importance. This often leads to us failing to act on the things that are important to us but will never be urgent; items such as career and business goals, self care goals, and self improvement goals. Today, Cam and Shelly discuss why these items are so difficult for us to get to action on as adults with ADHD, and how we can objectively evaluate what has us stuck here. Cam's Six Factors to Action: Take the item or goal on your list that has not budged and rank each of these areas from 1-10. The areas that fall below a 7 are the ones that speak to why this item is not moving forward. Level of interest Level of ease Level of urgency Level of fun Level of accountability Level of relevance or importance Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

This week Cam and Shelly continue the conversation around ADHD and negative self talk by exploring how we have each shifted in this area over time. We each discuss a recent scenario in which ADHD caught us off guard, what the consequences were, and how we were able to manage both the situation at hand and our ADHD tendencies. We then reflect on what might have gone differently prior to having done the understand, own, and translate work we advocate for on the podcast and with our clients. Reflecting Questions for Listeners: As we hit episode #13 (and counting!) Cam also pointed out that now is a great time as a listener to pause and reflect on your experience with the podcast so far. Here are the four questions he posed: What are you aware of? What are you learning? What is resonating? What is your practice? Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

As adults with ADHD we can be our own harshest critics. In today's episode, Cam and Shelly explore negative self talk in the context of our cause and effect metaphor. Using examples from our own experiences, we discuss the causes behind our negative self talk, the impact negative self talk has, and how to start shifting the signal to a more balanced and realistic view of ourselves and our experiences. Mt. Rainier Metaphor Illustration: Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

In this continuation of last week's episode, Cam and Shelly use examples from their own experiences as adults with ADHD to further illustrate both the difficulty and the importance of getting to cause with ADHD. We also offer alternatives to the metaphor we've been using to illustrate the relationship between cause and effect and the impact of ADHD, and we expand on our existing metaphor to set up for next week's episode where we bring the metaphor together. Mt. Rainier Metaphor Illustration: Cam's illustration of our cause + effect metaphor. Episode links + resources: The Brown Model of ADD/ADHD Strengths and Challenges Reframe Chart Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Why do I not do what I know I ought to do? This is the universal ADHD question and the question that Cam and Shelly hope to help you answer throughout this podcast. In today's episode, Shelly and Cam use metaphor to discuss the first barrier to answering this question: getting to effect. As adults with ADHD we are often acutely aware of the symptoms of our ADHD, however, we mistake these symptoms as cause when they really live at effect. Mt. Rainier Metaphor Illustration: Cam's illustration of our cause + effect metaphor. Episode links + resources: The Brown Model of ADD/ADHD Strengths and Challenges Reframe Chart Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Those of us with ADHD are often prone to problem based thinking, believing that if we could just solve the problem then everything would fall into place. In today's episode, Cam and Shelly offer an alternative approach of journey based thinking. Based on their work with clients and their own experiences, Cam and Shelly discuss two major components of journey based thinking. The first is defining your big agenda as an adult with ADHD which allows you to connect the work you are doing to manage your ADHD to the positive impact you are trying to create. The second is learning to go narrow before you go wide, which allows us as adults with ADHD to take the first step without letting the potential outcomes of the bigger agenda prevent us from taking action at all. Episode links + resources: Book: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Moving through the world with ADHD means learning how to cope and manage ADHD to survive in a world that isn't designed for us; however, Cam and Shelly believe there is a better approach. Embracing your unique brain wiring means not just understanding the differences in your experience, but owning and leveraging those differences to ultimately work with the way that your brain works instead of trying to work against it. In today's episode Cam and Shelly share stories about how embracing and working with their unique brain wiring ultimately lead to less stress, better outcomes, and greater success. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

To have ADHD is to have both positive and negative impact. The challenge that we face as adults with ADHD is that ADHD impairs our ability to be aware of all of our impact. Using examples from client experiences and our own experiences Cam and Shelly discuss being aware of our impact as adults with ADHD in the areas of beliefs, behavior, task initiation, and more. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

In this episode, Cam and Shelly introduce the Essential Structures model, a model we use with our clients. This model is one tool to create awareness around your own ADHD experiences and to distinguish; both subjects we've discussed in previous episodes. You can also use this model to identify both the challenges and supports that may not be immediately apparent to you as you embark on the process of change as an adult with ADHD. To demonstrate the model in action, we discuss it in the context of sleep which is a common challenge among our adult ADHD clients. Episode links + resources: The Essential Structures Model Coach Approach for Organizers Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

How do you know if you are ready for change as an adult with ADHD? If you aren't currently ready for change, how do you prepare to be ready for change? In this episode of Translating ADHD, Cam and Shelly explain what we mean by readiness for change with ADHD. In this episode, we discuss Cam's early experiences as an entrepreneur and his own process of being ready for change to demonstrate why the readiness steps we discuss in are crucial to our ability to create and sustain positive change as adults with ADHD. Episode links + resources: 8 Questions to Determine if You're Coachable Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Awareness of our ADHD experience is not just about being aware of what works, it's also about developing awareness about the habits and behaviors that are getting in the way. In this episode of Translating ADHD, Cam and Shelly look at a common ADHD behavior that often gets in the way of change; that of delaying action until urgency forces our hand. Using Cam's Adrenaline Response Cycle model, we look at how those of us with ADHD often rely on urgency or anxiety as a motivator while discounting the effects of the crash and recovery part of cycle. Using examples from our own experiences, we discuss creating awareness around the impact of living on the ARC roller coaster which is the crucial first step to finding other motivation elixirs. ARC Model: Episode links + resources: More on ARC: Cam's Blog Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Change is really difficult with ADHD. Individuals with ADHD tend to delay and try everything they can before they are able to embark on real and significant change. We also tend to try to create a clean slate, restarting and reinventing over and over again. In this episode Cam + Shelly share their own experiences and failures with try everything and clean slate thinking. We then discuss how ultimately how the process of understand, own, and translate allowed each of us to create the real and sustainable change we were seeking. Episode links + resources: The Eisenhower Matrix Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

In April of 2019, Shelly presented at the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals conference on the topic of time management for ADHD clients. The challenge she ran into was how to translate the unique ADHD experience to a room full of neurotypical professional organizers and productivity consultants. The presentation was not only successful, but Shelly noticed that the strongest reactions came from the few participants in the room who also have ADHD. Shelly heard over and over again from these colleagues that her presentation helped them understand their own ADHD experiences in a new way and that they felt understood in a way they never have before. Thus was born the concept of Translating ADHD. Cause + Effect The experience of having ADHD inhibits our ability to get to cause. It's like being in the wake of your motorboat: we feel the effects of the experience but we are not in the experience itself. Having ADHD puts a veil between the the wake and the boat itself. Cam and Shelly are fascinated with how those waves are made and the ADHD connections. Translating ADHD is being able to get into the boat, to understand how it does what it does, and to make real connections between cause and effect. When we put consistent focus in an area, we can make gains around understanding, owning, and translating ADHD. Understanding ADHD: Awareness + Distinguishing Having ADHD is a paradoxical experience, because having ADHD inhibits our ability to understand our ADHD experiences. We lump the negative effects in our lives under the umbrella of ADHD without differentiating what is really going on. ADHD has us default into a binary approach to things, it's black or white or all or nothing. Either everything is right and we're killing it, or everything is wrong and we're getting killed. The big idea today is that it's not all or nothing. Distinguish by asking: What is and what is not ADHD? How is ADHD coming into the mix? What is not useful awareness? The 4 States of Awareness You are listening to this podcast because you want to create positive change, and you suspect that ADHD is inhibiting your ability to change. The place to begin is to understand the power of awareness and the different types of awareness. Unhelpful Awareness: Self doubt, negativity, lack of self confidence, self blame, victim-hood. This is a side track that keeps us in pre-contemplative awareness because we are not in a place to contemplate our options, our choices, or how to move forward. Pre-Contemplative Awareness: The state of not knowing what you know, not knowing that there is an opportunity for change. We don't yet know there is help that we can find. Acute Awareness: Painful, but necessary. The place where life is now painful enough that we know we cannot keep going the way we are going. Contemplative Awareness: The place where we know that we need to make a change. Practicing Awareness with Curiosity As coaches, Cam and Shelly don't just help people make plans. We are curious about motivation and how we can diversify motivators so that urgency is no longer the primary way our clients with ADHD are able to get to action. The Pause: Practice pausing for awareness in your day. What state of awareness are you in? What are you noticing? Curiosity: To move from unhelpful awareness to contemplative awareness, try practicing curiosity. It is not possible to have fear, self doubt, or negative self talk if you practicing curiosity because they exist in different parts of the brain. Journey Thinking: Your ADHD wants a solution right now. Part of understanding ADHD is recognizing that you are on a path of development and that real, sustained change happens slowly over time. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD

Translating ADHD Hosts Cameron Gott and Shelly Collins are not only ADHD coaches, we also both are adults with ADHD finding our way. We believe that you can be more successful with ADHD and this is the work that we both do as ADHD coaches with clients every day. Why Translating ADHD? Only 20% of adults with ADHD are actively managing their ADHD. To further complicate things, many adults with ADHD believe that they must first solve their ADHD before they can be successful. We believe there is a better way, an integrated approach that allows us to to embrace our authentic selves as adults with ADHD as we learn to better navigate our individual ADHD related challenges. We started this podcast with the belief that success and ADHD can go hand in hand, and with the hope that more adults with ADHD will see the value in managing their ADHD in a way that allows them to live authentically as an adult with ADHD while creating sustained change over time. Our process of understanding, owning, and translating ADHD is intended to help our listeners do the work that we do with clients every day: to better understand the impact and influence of ADHD, to own and distinguish our ADHD experiences, and to translate by giving language and meaning to our ADHD experiences. Episode links + resources: Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Cam and Shelly For more Translating ADHD: Visit our website: TranslatingADHD.com Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD