00:10 hello everyone welcome back to the
00:12 neurodiverging podcast i'm danielle
00:15 sullivan i'm a certified life coach and
00:17 autistic parent and your host
00:20 i'm so excited you're here with me today
00:22 thank you for joining us
00:24 if you've been a long time listener you
00:26 know that i have a daughter with adhd
00:28 and a co-parent with adhd and many many
00:32 autistics are co-diagnosed with adhd
00:35 it's something like half of all
00:37 autistics are also adhd
00:40 and obviously adhd also occurs by itself
00:43 outside of autism and is very common in
00:47 the united states population but there
00:49 are several types of adhd including
00:54 hyperactive and then combined type which
00:56 is both hyperactive and inattentive and
00:59 inattentive adhd is very under diagnosed
01:02 overall it's the most common type of
01:05 adhd by far in women but is also under
01:09 diagnosed in a lot of men and today's
01:11 guest is an expert on inattentive adhd
01:14 we are talking about his experience with
01:16 late identified in attendance adhd i am
01:19 so excited to welcome coach aaron croft
01:21 to the podcast today
01:23 aaron croft is a late identified
01:25 inattentive adhder turned popular adhd
01:28 coach and he's the founder of hidden add
01:31 he is on a mission to raise awareness
01:33 about inattentive adhd how it goes under
01:36 the radar and how to rebuild your life
01:38 post diagnosis his work has been
01:40 featured by attitude magazine the
01:42 attention deficit disorder association
01:44 and more and you may have seen some of
01:46 his very popular adhd videos on tick
01:49 inattentive adhd is massively under
01:52 diagnosed especially in men so i am
01:54 really grateful to aaron for coming on
01:56 the show to share his experience today
01:58 we're discussing what it was like for
02:00 aaron as a child growing up with
02:02 undiagnosed inattentive adhd
02:04 how lacking the knowledge about his
02:06 neurotype affected aaron's life in
02:08 college and young adulthood and how his
02:11 life has changed since his diagnosis
02:14 before i introduce aaron i'd like to
02:16 thank all of my patrons for supporting
02:17 this episode of neurodiverging i hope
02:20 you are enjoying everything that's
02:21 coming out this month we have lots of
02:24 seminars and lots of new blog posts on
02:27 patrons receive exclusive access to lots
02:29 of goodies including access to my back
02:32 catalog of recorded neurodiversity
02:34 related webinars self-help and coaching
02:36 downloads a 15 discount on my course
02:39 autistic emotions explained and much
02:42 much more if you want to be one of these
02:44 amazing folks and support neurodiverging
02:46 and get all your goodies please check us
02:48 out on patreon at patreon.com
02:50 neurodiverging and now let's get ready
02:53 to learn everything we need to know
02:55 about one of the most underdiagnosed
02:58 neurodivergences let's welcome coach
03:02 hello erin and welcome to neurodiverging
03:05 it's so great to have you here how are
03:07 i am doing so well danielle and thank
03:10 you for having me and thanks to your
03:11 awesome listeners for tuning in and for
03:15 learning about this important topic it
03:17 is such an important topic and i'm so
03:19 honestly so pleased that you reached out
03:21 and to have you here today so you um
03:24 i mean i know you do a lot of different
03:26 things but your focus is inattentive
03:31 you're a pretty late identified 80 dear
03:34 when were you diagnosed
03:37 yeah um so i was diagnosed uh at 34
03:41 years old after i'd
03:44 failed out of seven jobs
03:48 basically ended up broke divorced and
03:49 earning minimum wage so it took it's
03:51 like a fair bit of external
03:54 uh warning signs to finally come around
03:58 i think a lot of us i'm late diagnosed
04:01 autistic which is obviously different
04:03 than add but a lot of us are caught so
04:06 late and have been through so much and
04:08 just to get to get to mid-30s
04:11 it's a an unfortunately common story
04:13 isn't it what did your childhood look
04:15 like knowing that you have a dd now were
04:18 there kind of signs that got missed when
04:24 so many times i was blessed with some
04:26 natural intelligence i was an actually
04:27 good test taker i had like strong social
04:30 support like my friends were all you
04:33 know really smart and motivated and i
04:35 had older sisters so i did well in
04:39 but behind the scenes at home
04:42 it was a disaster so my doing well in
04:44 school was comprised of
04:47 massive amounts of procrastination
04:50 getting through middle school and high
04:51 school with pretty much never reading a
04:54 book cover to cover uh my nickname
04:57 became cliff's notes aaron
05:00 you know i would be doing homework
05:02 outside of class like just regularly it
05:05 was always the last minute kind of i
05:07 need this like deadline panic to get my
05:10 brain to kick in gear
05:12 uh which is a thing with adhd and
05:15 you know it was just it was a lot of it
05:16 was a lot of stress and a lot of pain
05:20 you know that was compounded by
05:24 looking at it and the perception from
05:27 the outside is lazy
05:32 you know or just willfully disobedient
05:35 and none of those were the case for me
05:38 but i didn't have a better explanation
05:40 yeah that makes a lot of sense so
05:45 was occurring for you very young even
05:47 that you were dealing with this kind of
05:49 anxiety around meeting obligations or
05:52 meeting expectations
05:54 100 i mean i i got the award from my
05:57 third grade teacher she gave awards out
05:59 and she gave me an award for the best at
06:01 getting around doing work oh my gosh
06:11 you had a really hard time and you
06:12 mentioned a little bit before you were
06:14 finally diagnosed you went through all
06:15 those jobs and businesses not working
06:18 you had trouble at college right
06:23 what was going on there and why why
06:26 why were you failing at those jobs
06:29 yeah well that's a great question
06:31 danielle so the thing the thing that
06:33 i've noticed with inattentive adhd both
06:36 through my research and work um so i
06:39 have a master's degree in coaching
06:40 psychology and you know i coach adhd
06:43 years but a lot of them tend to
06:46 have this inattentive presentation
06:48 which you know if you ask if you ask 50
06:50 people on the street what's the first
06:52 thing you think of when you think of
06:53 adhd you know they're gonna picture like
06:56 five-year-old boys you know painting on
06:58 the walls jumping around hyper on sugar
07:02 or they're in a picture like that dog
07:03 from up going squirrel squirrel
07:06 with those of us with the inattentive
07:08 presentation our experience is is very
07:13 so one of the things is that
07:15 there's a gap and i see this with a lot
07:17 of my clients uh that i coach
07:20 that wanting to do something and being
07:23 able to get your brain to focus on what
07:26 you want to do like the connection there
07:32 i i've explained it sometimes people
07:35 like you know a uh a lamp that's plugged
07:38 into the wall and you know you might
07:41 flip the switch but if there's a if
07:43 there's a gap in the wiring between the
07:46 lamp and the outlet and the wall
07:49 it might not turn on even though you
07:50 flip the switch and so
07:52 you know for neurotypical people when
07:54 you want to work on something that's
07:56 important to you because you genuinely
07:58 care and you want to and you're
07:59 motivated too but like you can flip the
08:01 switch and get yourself to focus on it
08:05 adhd and specifically an attentive adhd
08:08 you don't have that and so so here's
08:11 what happens all that backstory is just
08:14 why i fail why i failed so much and what
08:17 the real cause was so here's what does
08:20 work what does work is panic
08:25 all the energy you get from that last
08:28 yeah that urgency and panic of something
08:32 really bad is gonna happen and there's a
08:34 really tight deadline and all that and
08:37 all of a sudden like you flip the switch
08:39 and the light turns on and you can focus
08:42 here's the problem daniel
08:44 that gets really tiring
08:49 both physically but also mentally and
08:55 i was able to pull off
08:57 amazing feats in high school
09:00 uh through doing this
09:03 and you know that's how i got into
09:04 harvard with my test taking skills and
09:07 with just a lot of these last minute
09:11 you know it wasn't sustainable and so
09:13 when i got to harvard i said i'm i'm
09:17 done like i don't want to
09:20 drag myself through the pain of
09:23 needing to have the fear of god put in
09:25 me to get work done and to be so
09:27 stressed out that my brain turns on
09:39 there's a problem with that strategy was
09:43 then my life still sucked it just didn't
09:45 sucked in a different way as an
09:49 do you have a sense as to what the
09:51 difference is i know you don't have the
09:54 type but like you said it's the kind of
09:58 that is what people think of do you have
10:00 a sense of what the difference is in
10:03 kind of an interior life in in how you
10:06 think about the world and how you
10:07 approach the world and what's going on
10:08 for you compared to
10:10 folks with the kind of hyperactive
10:12 presentation of adhd does that question
10:14 make any sense yeah no that question the
10:16 question makes perfect sense yeah and i
10:18 tracked it fully so
10:20 the the primary difference that i've
10:23 i've seen you know a few differences the
10:25 primary difference i've seen comes
10:30 really the energy levels so at the
10:32 hyperactive side you know one of the
10:34 diagnostic criteria basically you know
10:37 says like axes if driven by a motor
10:39 and well that's interesting
10:41 and so what you end up with
10:44 the hyperactive impulsive side is that
10:46 you'll get this surplus of energy and
10:50 that translates to things that you know
10:53 sometimes can be super helpful right
10:55 like yes the person might not be able to
10:57 stay focused on one thing for very long
10:59 because they're just you know going so
11:03 if you can sustain i mean i had a client
11:06 who you know i literally i mean i said
11:10 and she agreed like that she gets work
11:12 done at an olympic level i mean i've
11:14 never seen somebody who does as many
11:16 things in a day as she does
11:20 you know i've even seen researcher
11:21 reports about entrepreneurship and adhd
11:24 and they really say the hyperactive
11:27 is kind of the core of you know when
11:29 people say that adhd really lends itself
11:34 uh entrepreneurship you know they have
11:36 this high energy which you know is great
11:38 leadership because it's passionate and
11:40 they can just flip between a bunch of
11:42 different projects and then the second
11:44 part of you know the second main
11:46 difference between the
11:48 hyperactive impulsive experience and the
11:50 inattentive experience is really the
11:55 uh a lot of the inattentive adhd ears
11:57 tend to be a little bit more reserved a
12:00 little quieter uh maybe even a little
12:03 more passive or passive aggressive
12:06 and whereas you know the the other
12:09 experience on the adhd
12:11 is you know someone that just over
12:13 shares and can't stop talking and will
12:16 interrupt you know before you even
12:17 finish your question because they just
12:19 can't wait to talk and you know but that
12:22 translates to entrepreneurship and other
12:23 things as like risk taking and like
12:26 willingness to take risks where others
12:29 so that's some of the differences okay
12:34 what society would see as the positive
12:36 aspects of adhd like that risk-taking
12:39 like that positive risk-taking of an
12:41 entrepreneur are not always present in
12:43 inattentive adhd so you get the
12:45 unfortunate like lazy unmotivated sort
12:48 of adjectives as opposed to the
12:50 kind of positive like highly energetic
12:54 tries new things sort of adjectives it
12:57 was really weird danielle so i mean so
12:59 so i only you know formally
13:02 went full time on my
13:04 hidden adhd business in july so i don't
13:07 know you know call that at the time that
13:09 we're recording this you know four or
13:17 you know i left a multiple six-figure
13:19 corporate job and this whole thing but
13:21 here is the funny part so i started
13:24 i started making myself available for
13:26 coaching with clients and i'm not doing
13:30 very much one-on-one coaching anymore
13:31 because i've transitioned to a lot of
13:32 group programs uh one because
13:35 i can do it more affordably for people
13:37 too because it's actually better from a
13:39 group standpoint to have more than just
13:43 success teams and peers and such but
13:46 i i digress so what
13:50 uh what i noticed it was so weird
13:54 i noticed that almost like 90 of the
13:57 clients that came to me
13:59 it was literally for the exact same
14:02 it would i mean it was it was i mean i
14:06 i could summarize their story in
14:09 probably one sentence and it was it
14:11 struck me as very odd because i figured
14:13 i was going to get this whole range of
14:14 different goals and problems and it all
14:17 came down in almost every case like 90
14:20 plus of cases to the same one
14:25 i have this thing i want to do
14:28 i can't freaking get myself to do it
14:33 and what's going on there for them
14:35 uh what i've really found with myself
14:39 and then you know talk to hundreds of
14:42 people now but is that uh it's
14:46 most adhders especially inattentive
14:50 everything becomes uh a you problem
14:55 and what i've often taught them and and
14:58 they they discover for themselves is
15:00 that it's actually not a a you problem
15:03 it's a system or a strategy problem so
15:06 what do i mean by that well if we go
15:10 example right so you flip the switch
15:15 it should translate to the ability to
15:19 but in the adhd brain there's
15:21 impairments in the motivation pathways
15:25 you know and the the neuroscience
15:26 differs by individual and and such but
15:29 that's it that's a common characteristic
15:33 basically they don't have the activation
15:34 energy to move on tasks that they want
15:36 to move on and so a lot of the work i do
15:39 with them is really teaching them
15:42 strategies and helping them implement
15:46 take a different path to light the light
15:48 bulb of motivation and action in their
15:52 and when i say that it's a system or a
15:54 strategy problem like think about it
15:57 the the neurotypical or the the majority
16:00 approach that you'll read in self-help
16:02 or in productivity or you study these
16:04 things online or you listen to popular
16:05 bloggers or youtubers or anything
16:08 they're gonna say that like you just
16:11 you know put more electricity you know
16:14 effort and desire through the wire
16:18 you just need to do all you just need to
16:20 have a better plan you know or a better
16:23 defined goal but like the connection the
16:26 normal connection pathway
16:29 just has impairments and so a lot of it
16:32 comes down to strategies to
16:34 to build a alternate pathway to get the
16:37 same action and result
16:40 that makes a lot of sense so
16:42 learning to bypass the faulty wire and
16:45 finding the other wires that can work
16:48 100 percent right and like you you
16:50 really you really commented on it before
16:52 like kind of that self-shaming part of
16:54 the problem with the self-shaming is
16:57 we try to put more electricity through
16:59 the wire and the light bulb still
17:01 doesn't turn on and like we tried it we
17:03 kind of keep using this and it doesn't
17:05 work and then we're like oh
17:08 you know i just i'm a failure i do this
17:11 i do that and you know i hear that from
17:13 all my clients too and it's so it's so
17:15 demoralizing you know to see that so
17:17 many people are suffering in silence
17:20 when it's not that hard uh to get around
17:23 it once you have the tools for sure yeah
17:28 i i assume this is the case for a lot of
17:31 autistics a lot of us um who slid who
17:34 weren't identified in childhood are then
17:36 not identified till we're well into our
17:38 adulthood uh in our 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s
17:42 and up and i assume that for inattentive
17:47 that is a similar issue that you've had
17:49 so much time to build up the cycle of
17:52 things not working and failing and
17:53 failing similar to what you went through
17:55 that by the time you are finally taught
17:58 that there are strategies for just
18:00 bypassing the faulty wire completely
18:04 that you've you've just been struggling
18:06 for such a long time that it's almost
18:08 it just must be so hard to
18:10 change your perception of yourself that
18:13 quickly as someone who could do things
18:14 if you had the right strategy
18:16 yeah it's um it's it's one of the
18:18 biggest challenges and also one of the
18:21 biggest opportunities
18:24 and you know there it kind of it also
18:27 parks to another misconception in our
18:29 society which is that
18:33 confidence leads to
18:37 and in fact the reverse is actually the
18:40 case that action leads to confidence
18:43 and so we look and we're like i just i'm
18:45 not i'm not confident therefore i don't
18:48 feel like it and i can't do it whereas
18:50 you know one of the things that i work
18:52 with people on is we just we build small
18:54 wins every day but it's consistency uh
18:57 near iowa has a quote that he that he
19:00 taught me the author of indistractible
19:02 and hooked and others which is
19:03 consistency over intensity yeah uh
19:07 so many people try to sprint and then
19:08 they just fall down whereas if you can
19:11 just win a little bit every single day
19:13 you start to change that self-image
19:18 you you you start to rewrite the
19:21 i'm a failure i can't do anything stuff
19:24 that you so well mentioned yeah for sure
19:28 um i wanted to go back a little bit to
19:31 because i know that you had a lot of
19:33 difficulty before you were identified
19:36 it seemed to me that when you were in
19:39 your bachelor's degree program that you
19:41 had a lot of trouble you fell out a
19:43 couple times you re-enrolled um but then
19:46 later you went back and you did a
19:47 master's which is challenging and and
19:51 talking talking about how i could have
19:53 dropped out of college twice before
19:56 barely graduating um
19:58 and then how i could go from that and
20:00 then complete a master's in my 30s
20:04 here's here's a little bit about what
20:10 and this is it's a challenging one so i
20:12 don't want to i don't want to portray
20:13 this as a silver bullet because there
20:15 are a lot of nuance here but
20:17 one of the pathways to light up the
20:21 through a different pathway
20:23 is just through intrinsic interests
20:28 you know where those come from who knows
20:32 but i have always always just been
20:36 just obsessed just so interested and
20:45 development goals motivation the process
20:50 when i went to university
20:53 i told my mom my parents that i wanted
20:56 to major in psychology and my mom bless
20:59 her heart you know grew up and she went
21:01 to college in the you know
21:04 70s yeah late 60s early 70s and she said
21:08 you know people with psychology degrees
21:10 just blame their parents and they don't
21:12 they don't get jobs unless they go on to
21:14 do a doctorate so she said you know you
21:17 gotta like do a real major
21:20 you know being a little bit passive
21:22 which again a lot inattentive adhd years
21:24 can be a little bit more passive
21:26 i just said okay i'll just go along with
21:31 and then so so but my my intrinsic
21:33 desire to understand what makes people
21:38 you know probably if we're if we're
21:40 being honest what makes me tick right
21:42 it's sort of i'm trying to figure out
21:44 this puzzle that is aaron how like that
21:47 makes no sense danielle how can how can
21:49 i want desperately to do something and
21:51 be unable to get myself to do it how
21:53 many errands are there in this equation
21:56 i always wanted to understand it so so
22:01 one way that i could engage but i hadn't
22:04 been diagnosed at that point
22:06 yeah it was really just it was just pure
22:09 interest and desire yeah where i could
22:12 tap into more of that uh
22:18 just because it was a topic that i
22:19 really wanted to understand yeah so the
22:22 energy was there because of because of
22:24 your interest in it
22:26 i didn't so undergraduate i ended up
22:27 doing computer science because my mom
22:29 said don't do psychology so the masters
22:32 the one where i was able to focus
22:34 because that was what i cared about so
22:36 it was a master's degree in coaching
22:37 psychology it was about the science of
22:39 motivation and goals and change
22:41 and peak performance i was super
22:43 interested for sure so yes i used that
22:46 for my masters but i didn't have that
22:48 excitement for my undergraduate okay
22:52 would it be okay can we talk about
22:56 um i know a lot of folks or i talk to a
22:58 lot of folks anyway who are worried
23:02 who think oh okay if i go and get
23:04 diagnosed with add myself or if i go i
23:06 think i have it if i go get the
23:08 diagnosis or if i bring my child to go
23:10 get the diagnosis they're just going to
23:14 some people are medication resistant and
23:17 i wondered um if we could talk about
23:18 your experience about it especially as
23:21 somebody who's worked with a lot of
23:23 other adhd years um i know there are
23:25 treatments besides medication what do
23:30 the treatments for adhd you've tried and
23:33 what has been most helpful for you
23:35 personally i mean i i didn't know until
23:40 and so i feel like i feel like the
23:42 answer definitely would differ between
23:44 parents and kids oh yes if you had a
23:46 five year old sorry between adults and
23:49 look the the here's here's three things
23:52 that i'll say about the decision around
24:00 your neuroplasticity
24:03 highest your brain's ability to grow and
24:05 change is highest pretty you know and it
24:08 tapers off by the time you hit 25 years
24:12 you know but certainly at a younger age
24:14 the ability for the brain to grow and
24:16 change is very high yes for sure so i do
24:19 think there's i think there's an
24:20 opportunity there and whatever the
24:22 mechanisms are you know that parents are
24:31 there there's not a ton of and there
24:33 there's there's not there's not really
24:35 solid scientific evidentiary support for
24:39 a lot of interventions um
24:42 but the the salt the most solid science
24:44 is around the medication and the effect
24:47 sizes and you know dr russell barkley
24:49 says adhd is the most treatable disorder
24:52 in psychiatry because
24:54 you know 70 plus percent of people
24:55 respond well to medication it has really
24:57 high effect sizes yeah sorry what were
24:59 you gonna say oh and just that we've had
25:01 most of those medic i mean some of them
25:03 are newer but the stimulant medications
25:04 we've had for such a long time that
25:06 there's so much good research on them
25:08 there's so much good research and you
25:10 know if you think about all the
25:11 medications in our lifetime you know
25:15 recalled and pulled off shelves whether
25:17 it's vioxx or rather you know like these
25:20 things that cause these health issues
25:22 that came out you know if there were
25:24 these really bad long-term effects from
25:27 these these drugs you know they the fda
25:29 these these things would get addressed
25:31 and pulled off table there's not a
25:32 massive profit incentive they're you
25:34 know they're out of uh
25:36 you know they're in their engineering
25:38 phases exactly so you know if there was
25:40 something to really get on these drugs
25:42 like a lot of it would have come out it
25:44 doesn't mean they're perfect doesn't
25:45 mean there aren't issues so uh so that
25:48 would be number two is that is that
25:50 medication is at least if you're just
25:52 looking for evidence-based uh there's
25:55 plenty of studies that just show
25:59 that is the best and that the other
26:01 interventions don't have nearly the
26:03 evidence base but again back to point
26:06 one around the neuroplasticity i don't
26:08 have anything against experimenting
26:10 right i mean what if what if
26:12 neurofeedback really works for your kid
26:15 or what if an executive functioning
26:18 you know certain setups uh really help
26:22 so then the the third thing i would say
26:26 kids so let me say four things the third
26:28 thing i would say is that i've i've
26:30 encountered so back to the interest
26:33 thing and a related thing to interest is
26:36 just a sense of autonomy and ownership
26:42 interacted with a lot of people who
26:45 were given medication as kids but they
26:47 didn't feel a part of the decision they
26:50 didn't they didn't own it they weren't
26:52 they weren't like oh i really want to do
26:56 i really want to get these good grades
26:58 so that i can get into this space camp
27:00 or i really want to
27:04 whatever i want to practice the violin
27:06 so i can play this awesome thing and i
27:08 know that i can't focus enough to
27:10 practice like if they have a motivation
27:12 they're like mom dad i want i want some
27:14 help doing this i can't do it it's
27:16 frustrating and they feel like they've
27:18 been involved in the decision great and
27:21 they have the ability to make changes
27:23 when it's not working
27:24 um but i've talked to a lot of adults
27:27 who were felt that they were just kind
27:28 of forced to take the medication yeah
27:32 that's a big problem like almost like
27:35 you know let's let's medicate this kid
27:37 to make to make them
27:39 just do what we want them to do and make
27:41 them more compliant and
27:43 and then you end up with sort of this
27:45 this kickback effect where they say oh
27:48 it didn't feel good and i didn't like it
27:50 and like how it made me feel
27:51 and then they'll issue medication
27:56 they end up with problems in their 20s
27:59 or 30s when they're when they're having
28:01 career failures or relationship failures
28:04 and they're like huh i guess all those
28:06 things i can't follow through on maybe
28:08 those are that adhd thing that i kind of
28:13 you know threw off and said i don't want
28:15 to deal with this and so the fourth
28:17 thing i want to say
28:21 the decision on medicating
28:24 is is challenging uh and so
28:28 and so i'm all i'm all for at the at the
28:32 adolescent child level
28:35 experimenting if it works you know try
28:38 other things what's the harm and then
28:41 you know going to medications a fallback
28:43 except here's the one
28:45 uh case that i want to offer
28:47 where i wouldn't offer that approach is
28:50 sometimes if the ability to even follow
28:53 through on the alternative approaches
28:57 you know the ability to just you know
28:59 keep up remotely in school or keep up
29:02 with neurofeedback or keep up with these
29:04 things you're doing
29:05 like if you can't fall through on that
29:07 that sometimes medication can be a
29:10 that enables one to do things that can
29:13 then make the medication less needed yes
29:16 um and so and so there there can be kind
29:23 approach there so sometimes you will
29:27 consider accepting medication as a
29:30 treatment for a period of time but that
29:32 doesn't mean you're committing to it for
29:33 the rest of your adult life
29:36 well i mean at this point i'm talking
29:38 about kids and especially when you have
29:39 the neuroplasticity right it doesn't
29:41 mean i mean you know at the break that
29:44 your brain can grow and change and i
29:46 mean adults still have neuroplasticity
29:48 just the rate of it declines yeah um but
29:50 you know at that level you know the
29:53 kid and teenager maybe they just develop
29:56 the neural pathways to really
29:58 short-circuit the kind of broken wire to
30:01 the motivation light bulb and uh
30:03 yeah cool i don't need that medication
30:05 anymore yeah awesome thank you that's
30:10 do you have any advice that you would
30:13 young adult young adhd years
30:16 having gone through what you've gone
30:19 yeah i mean i would i think
30:21 i i do have advice i think of course the
30:24 challenge at that age that we've all
30:25 experienced from having been that age is
30:27 that we're not necessarily open to
30:29 advice but i'll share i'll share the
30:33 part of this goes into the fact that you
30:36 still have that high levels of
30:37 neuroplasticity until you're 25 and i
30:41 think there's a lot of value in taking
30:44 you can you can make changes in your
30:46 life much more easily so what i would
30:49 recommend is if you can find
30:53 programs that are dedicated to
30:56 helping adhders with your types of
30:58 symptoms and again i can't really
31:00 comment on the hyperactive impulsive
31:01 side because i don't pretend to know
31:04 something where i don't have
31:05 experience that i've really worked with
31:08 with the with the inattentive people
31:11 that i've worked with
31:13 and in the group programs when they
31:15 discover that there's
31:18 adhd specific ways to kind of short
31:20 circuit and get the the light bulb to
31:24 and they discover that they can be
31:27 consistently productive like day in day
31:31 if you could do that as a teenager or a
31:35 college kid or a young adult starting in
31:38 one build a habit while your brain is
31:40 still super plastic and two
31:43 not build the baggage that you talked
31:45 about danielle of you know years of
31:48 and self-shaming it would open up your
31:51 life it would change so many things and
31:54 you would you would really avoid a lot
31:56 of the baggage because it really does
31:58 come down to a system and a strategy
32:01 not not a personal problem because so
32:03 many adhders have so much potential it's
32:08 uh it's just trapped inside of them
32:10 because they don't know how to get the
32:11 light bulb to turn on
32:15 to wrap up could you tell us a little
32:17 bit about where folks can find and learn
32:19 more about you and your courses and your
32:23 sure um i would just google hidden adhd
32:27 you know the the name of the business
32:29 just comes to the fact that with
32:31 inattentive adhd it often remains hidden
32:33 it goes under the wire kind of like you
32:35 talked about danielle sure uh with with
32:38 you know late diagnosis autism
32:42 that that's really it um i've got over a
32:45 hundred thousand tick tock followers so
32:47 if you just kind of want some funny
32:48 videos on there some of them are really
32:51 good forty four thank you see a 40 year
32:53 old bald dude dancing and doing weird
32:56 stuff uh you can check that out i've got
32:59 some you know more detailed full-length
33:01 youtube videos where i break down a lot
33:02 of the strategies for success and of
33:05 course if you google hidden adhd you'll
33:07 come across website and i've got
33:11 a 45-day challenge to crush
33:14 procrastination and overwhelm through
33:17 uh basically developing a productivity
33:20 and so we've got lots of things check it
33:22 out we got some free guides on adhd101
33:25 if you're just getting started uh so
33:28 lots of lots of cool stuff there's some
33:30 really great resources there so i'm
33:32 gonna put some links in the show notes
33:33 below so please go check them out thanks
33:36 so much for being here today aaron
33:38 thank you dale it was an absolute
33:40 pleasure and thanks for the work that
33:42 you're doing with this community i just
33:44 i think it's so important and um and
33:47 again thanks to the listeners for
33:49 you know there's a lot of things that
33:50 they could be doing other than learning
33:52 about this important topic true
33:55 trying to better their kids lives their
33:57 own lives so just hats off to them as
33:59 well yeah yeah we all appreciate you
34:04 thank you so much for joining me on the
34:06 neurodiverging podcast today if you've
34:08 enjoyed the podcast please consider
34:10 leaving a rating on apple podcasts
34:12 podchaser or anywhere else you review
34:14 podcasts it really helps us out
34:17 more information about aaron croft and
34:19 hidden adhd is in our show notes and
34:22 also at neurodiverging.com so please
34:25 check those out aaron has a lot of great
34:27 free resources for adhders that are
34:29 really helpful thank you again so much
34:32 to my patrons for supporting this
34:33 podcast and everything we do at
34:35 neurodiverging you are all amazing and i
34:38 really appreciate it please join us for
34:42 patreon.com i hope to see you there
34:44 please remember we are all in this