ADHD Duos • Break Free from Shame Spirals with James Ochoa, LPC & Dr. Nachi Felt

ADHD Emotions

Apr 10

Shame is a formidable force—an emotional wildfire that can either illuminate our path to growth or consume us in cycles of self-blame. For individuals with ADHD, this complex emotion is often amplified, lingering far beyond its utility as a corrective signal. But why? And more importantly, how do we break free?

This week on The ADHD Podcast, hosts Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer embark on an exploration of shame spirals with two powerhouse guests: James Ochoa, LPC, renowned ADHD pathfinder and author of Focused Forward: Navigating the Storms of Adult ADHD, and Dr. Nachi Felt, an ADHD specialist and professor at Columbia University where he teaches Psychopathology and helps direct the Cognition and Neuroscience Research Lab.

Together, they dissect the neurobiology of shame, its insidious tendency to hijack our presence of mind, and the ways in which ADHD uniquely intensifies its grip. James and Nachi offer profound insights into the role of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and the often-overlooked power of resourcing—the practice of cultivating internal and external tools to navigate emotional turbulence.

From the interplay of trauma and shame to the game-changing realization that the same agency that allows us to sit in shame also allows us to stand up and move forward, this conversation is both a course in emotional resilience and a rallying cry for self-compassion.

With humor, wisdom, and a touch of Brooklyn-style candor, this episode invites you to challenge your inner narratives, embrace the possibility of rewriting your personal stories, and ultimately, reclaim your incredible sense of self-worth.

Resources & Links:

Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Big day, Nikki Kinzer, big day. We are starting a new series here at the ADHD Podcast and it was actually, it was an idea from a couple of our past guests to do a show or a set of shows where we bring multiple favorite guests to the show to talk about a given topic. And we are starting today, our first duo. And boy, we've got some hall of famers if I've ever seen them. We're talking about shame spirals, I can't wait to get started.
Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to our mailing list right there on the homepage. We'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Bluesky or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, @takecontroladhd. But to really connect with us, join us on our Discord community. Just head over to takecontroladhd.com/discord, and it will whisk you over to the general invitation page and log in.
Now here's the real pitch. If this show has ever made a difference in your life and how you live with ADHD, please visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. For a few bucks a month, your support allows us to continue to develop this show, to support the whole team that puts the show on every single week going on, I don't even remember how many years, 15 years, 16 years, somewhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
15 years.
Pete Wright:
15 years.
Nikki Kinzer:
15.
Pete Wright:
And it is an extraordinary gift for us to be able to do this and to continue to showcase incredible, brilliant minds in ADHD. And it happens thanks to, in large part because of, your support. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more.
Shame is like fire. It can illuminate or consume. It can be a social signal that nudges us toward change or a psychological prison that locks us in cycles of self-blame. Today we explore how shame spirals form, how ADHD makes them particularly pernicious, and what it takes to break free with two of our favorite past guests, James Ochoa, Hall of Famer, ADHD Pathfinder, and author of the Emotional Storms of ADHD. James, welcome.
James Ochoa:
Thank you, Pete. I really appreciate you and Nikki having me on, and I'm super excited and meeting Dr. Felt and talking with him today. It's just like I love camaraderie.
Pete Wright:
Me too.
James Ochoa:
This is a blast.
Pete Wright:
And that brings us to our second guest, Dr. Nachi Felt is back with us, ADHDdoctor.org. And this time he doesn't have a brand newborn in tow. He actually comes with still an infant, but not brand newborn. Welcome back, Nachi. It's good to have you.
Nachi Felt:
Really good to be here. Still tired though, still tired.
Pete Wright:
And how old is your newborn now?
Nachi Felt:
What was it the last time I was on here? She was a few days old.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Nachi Felt:
So she is now six months.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Nice.
Pete Wright:
Six months.
Nikki Kinzer:
Still a little baby.
Pete Wright:
Is she getting into the crawling phase? Oh, yeah, lots to discover. Well, let's discover some things about shame. I'd like to start with a table setting on the nature of shame spirals. How do we get stuck? Let's start, let's see, James, why don't you kick us off? Imagine I'm a fly on the wall in the mind of someone trapped in a shame spiral. What do I see? What do I hear? What's my experience?
James Ochoa:
In that sense, you can't turn in any direction and not feel like something's wrong. Something has disrupted. Something is painfully. Something is horribly disruptive to me at a level with which I can't see my way out. And so, to me, if I'm a fly on the wall on the inside of that, it's a tornado that is going around and I don't see a way out. I just see... I might feel like I'm in the eye of the storm if I don't move, but as soon as I move or become vulnerable or talk to anyone, it's like trying to touch the intensity of a tornado. And it's just I get sucked into it and I can't stop. So I feel powerless, I feel hopeless, I feel helpless. That's what a fly on the wall and that's what I'd see, Pete.
Pete Wright:
I feel like you rightly destroyed my metaphor, because you put my fly in a tornado. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's what I got out of all of that too.
Pete Wright:
Right. Your fly would not survive.
Nikki Kinzer:
Uh-uh.
Pete Wright:
What is the plus brain?
James Ochoa:
Plus it was in the eye of the storm, not moving.
Pete Wright:
Right. There we go.
Nikki Kinzer:
True.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right. So Nachi, what's your experience with this stuff? I'm really curious from your perspective, why does the brain do this? Like what's happening neurologically when shame hijacks our presence of mind?
Nachi Felt:
It's a funny thing, shame. I really loved your opening quote because it's really describing almost every really intense emotion, that it could be used either to hurt us or to help us. And we are the arbiter of how we use them. And shame, unfortunately, like every other feeling in the world, does come with a tremendous intensity. But the worst part about it is that it's activating. It'll activate parts of us that we may have preferred to pleasantly ignore and be blissfully unaware of until it comes kind of yanked out of the darkness into our here and now and are forced to confront it all over again.
It's almost like each time I screw up, I feel like I'm seeing all the ghosts of screw ups past storming into the room. And now that I'm feeling inadequate that you guys have such great metaphors, I'm going to turn to a Harry Potter one. Like the Dementors, you know? Like coming in with this darkness that just sucks all the life and anything good. That's how I kind of experience it.
And what's really happening neurologically is we're kind of being brought back to that fight, flight, or freeze, that primal response where it's hitting a deep part of us that's now feeling fear and kind of scared like, "What did I do? Who am I? Where am I going? What's my future? What do I have? Who am I? What am I worth?" And that's a really dark place to be sometimes.
Pete Wright:
I feel like what you're describing dances on that line between sort of an antique or ancient really approach to shame and a modern sort of socially corrective approach to shame. Right? There is some utility to shame. There's some utility to being able to say, "Hey, what you're doing or what I'm doing is not appropriate in this situation. Can I learn from my experience of shame?" The challenge that I feel like we get mired in with ADHD is the perseveration on the negative experience.
James Ochoa:
It feeds itself. And that's the challenge. And when a fear feeds itself like this, from an ADHD spectrum, we have so much disruptive issues involved in it from everywhere we turn that if you're not internally resourced, I'm not going to jump ahead to resources yet, I know we're going to talk about that. But if you're not internally resourced and you don't have external support systems around you, you're pretty helpless. That's very true from a trauma perspective and someone who's treated trauma for decades. You are powerless and helpless over the neurochemistry and the survival instinct that I always call the Navy SEAL of the mind. You don't have to train it. It's well-trained. But we're trying to train it and feed it over and over. So it comes at every turn for somebody with ADHD, and so resourcing to me has been my big bit in the last six or seven years of what is necessary in the ADHD spectrum. I'm not sure how Dr. Felt thinks about that regarding kind of the disruptiveness of it. But that's really, it comes from all shapes and sizes and all angles.
Nachi Felt:
Yeah, I love that word you used, the resourcing. What do you mean by resourcing? That sounds so cool.
James Ochoa:
Resourcing is anything that is going to help recenter, rebalance, restore your sense of peace or health. And so, I'm working on a second book about beyond the emotional and mental stress of ADHD, and really now this is a lifelong condition that's not going to go away. And so, one of the key counterbalances, as I would talk about it, is resourcing. How do you build an internal sense of calming, centering world inside myself, which we know the underactive development of the prefrontal cortex in ADHD can alter or under-actively develop the evaluator. So we don't evaluate these things well. And if you don't, build that internal resource. So resourcing is a key element and I'm certain it's part of what you would do Dr. Felt as well in working with clients is how do they feel good about and do things that are going to help them help themselves?
Nachi Felt:
It's funny. When you ask me what I would do, the first thing I thought of is the way I view shame and all of these intense emotions is another one of our stimulation seeking pursuits. As again, part of the ADHD profile is that we're constantly seeking stimulation. And when I was on this show in the past, I spoke about the cycle of ambiguity and how we're kind of always led in this kind of pursuit of avoidance of discomfort. And sometimes one of the types, there are four types of avoidance, one of them, my favorite, is complex avoidance; which is where we avoid the feeling of discomfort with other feelings. And shame, like other intense feelings, is a perfect, beautifully distracting, stimulating avoidance. And oftentimes, like Pete you were mentioning the perseveration, it becomes almost like an addictive drug to just keep tapping that, like that intense stimulation. Wow. Oh, yeah. It's so intense. And yeah, it's a negative feeling, but it's the intensity of the stimulation that we're really-
James Ochoa:
Absolutely. Well, and if you think about it, what you're saying, Dr Felt is so on point and accurate, in that that becomes an identity that I resource myself with in a very negative way. But when we look at stimulation or adrenaline or dopamine kind of focusing agent structures, it does become a focusing agent. It's a negative focusing agent. It's a very horrible one, but it is one nonetheless. And so, from a behavioral point of view, that's one of the cycles that has to really be broken in people with ADHD is that stimulus-seeking space. I will ask many people with ADHD, "Do you have any experience of resting at ease and being at peace with yourself? Have you ever had any life experience?" And you know, Dr Felt, people are just, they shake their head. "What are you talking about?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I don't know. My answer is, "Is that like Monday?" It's like every day is an experience of living in that sort of emotional dysregulation.
James Ochoa:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Which it feels like again, the ADHD amplifier of shame is that I can focus on it like nobody's business. Right? I have a lesser ability to be able to just say things to myself like, "Come on, let go and move on. Let go and move on. Let go and move on." I am constantly in that state of just sort of disgust with my past performance that is the dementor that is resonating around me in the underpass.
So if ADHD is already amplifying my shame, right, that it's lasting longer than it would for others, let's say. Right? How do we move through it? And I think there's a second question buried in here, which is, I am the engine of my own shame. I'm wondering what sort of patterns you see? Is shame formed more from external judgment or internal judgment? Does that have anything to do with the ADHD experience?
James Ochoa:
Wow. Okay.
Pete Wright:
Sorry.
James Ochoa:
Go ahead, Dr. Felt. I'll let you start.
Nachi Felt:
Age before beauty. You have way more experience than me. I want to hear what you have to say first.
James Ochoa:
Okay. So there's a reason, certainly Pete and Nikki know this. I grew up in a family of eight children. The first seven were in eight years, I was number seven, so I grew up in chaos. And so, there was a reason I turned toward family systems therapy as a vast majority of my therapeutic work, because this is a systems related issue. So you may, again, you're going to think I'm a little crazy here, Pete, but I've always taken us out on the edge a little bit.
I encourage people relationally to start looking at shame as a relational aspect with themselves. Talk to shame, interact with shame. And this is normalizing not from an, "Okay that I'm broken" point of view, but that, "Hey, it's there. It's so much of my life all the time. I'd better get to know it."
And so, from an internal family systems point of view, from a relational, but that help gets structure, routine, and consistency for us with ADD. It's a sub.plant on that prefrontal cortex to be able to use a relational model now with myself, but I'm looking at something as dark as shame is, okay, well that's really a tough thing to do. It's hard to tell people to stare into the face of life and death, really is what you're asking them to do. That's no small feat.
But the reality is their intensity with which they've built resilience to manage their life from, these people are coming in with shoes and socks on and jobs and marriages and relationships. So they've got resilience to it. They just don't recognize the strength behind that. And so, I use a relational model, is where I start with in discussing what shame is or is not. Because I want to give people some sense of empowerment about, "What can I do with this in a way that's meaningful?"
Pete Wright:
The internal voice I have is one of, "I deserve this shame." Right? I'm taking ownership, I deserve it. And that's the maladaptive relationship I have with shame when it's not a sort of corrective agent.
Nachi Felt:
I love it. I really am so happy I insisted on James going first. That was so good. That was like a big picture, what I call zooming out to zoom in. Like when you look at it in the big picture, that allows you to kind of get a lot more clarity in the here and now. I love that. I love the idea of being relational.
And as you were talking about feeling like you deserve it, Pete, it reminded me of me feeling like I deserve it. And then, the self-talk I employ when I'm kind of talking back to myself, which is, for me the shame is a gift in a way because it's a uniquely human property of metacognition. It means that I'm thinking about what I'm thinking about, or more accurately here, I'm feeling about what I'm feeling about, which is so cool. Can you believe that? We can do that? That's insane.
And I love that it's such a wisdom-giving property, almost like what in DBT they would call the wise mind. Right? There's so much there that just, if we could zoom out and see how we're seeing ourselves, there's so much insight there and there's so much space to kind of be there for ourselves as someone who could comfort us but also hold us accountable. Someone who could accept us but also believe in us and to push us forward. And shame allows us to kind of look at ourselves in a very real way, almost the way that grief kind of sobers us up. It could really let us kind of stare at our failures, which I think is much scarier than looking at life and death. Because I think if I'm dead, I don't have to feel like a loser.
James Ochoa:
That's accurate. This is absolutely true. Yes.
Pete Wright:
Oh, my God. Yes. There we go. Pray for the sweet release of death because of this cursed shame spiral. I do know it's a joke and I also totally relate to that experience. I get that feeling. So it seems like what we've transitioned into is this intersection of past trauma and shame. And I'm wondering how when you're like... How do these traumatic experiences, why do they leave behind such disgusting residue of self-blame?
James Ochoa:
In this case, shame and the patterning of shame and the trauma patterning kind of space that feeds on itself, I always talk about trauma that's untreated will multiply. You can use dissociative experiences and your defense mechanisms, and probably by the time you're 40 or 50, if you have significant trauma or history of shame or distress, you're going to implode. Something's happened. You're going to start to break down physiologically. You can't handle it.
And so, why does that happen, Pete? Because early on in the neurological mindset, right? In raising children, particularly on the ADHD spectrum, what's the feedback they get? "You're off base. You're wrong. Something's off here. Stop that. Stop that. Stop." What is it? 10X is the negative response that children get with ADHD with other children who don't?
Nachi Felt:
20.
Nikki Kinzer:
20.
Pete Wright:
20. Geez.
James Ochoa:
Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Felt. Great. Great. It's worse than I thought it was.
Pete Wright:
It's worse than you thought, yeah. You're underselling it.
James Ochoa:
But I always reference to one gentleman I mentor now, he's in the film industry in California and my oldest son, Gabe, who I wrote about in my book, who has the hyperactive, impulsive types of ADHD. And they were raised in reasonably healthy environments. I say reasonably meaning that no environment has ever stopped the distress. And they both still have emotional stress issues within ADHD. They both can have minimal shame cycles that, "Something's really wrong with me." They don't stay in it. They don't stay in it. They don't get stuck. They don't perseverate.
Why? Because I think their raising early on had enough safety in it that allows them to have a sense of self to move beyond it. They both have storms on the ADHD spectrum, but they get out of it. So why do most people with ADHD not get out of it? They weren't raised in those kinds of environments. They were raised in an environment that, "There's something wrong with you. You're doing something off." And so, that just feeds shame. Because the shame is the whole sense you're broken. Right? There's something wrong. There's something core wrong with you.
Pete Wright:
I guess there's a question for me, because I was also raised in what I would consider a healthy environment, and yet I was undiagnosed as a kid. And what I observed with the kids who were diagnosed was all the accommodations felt punitive to me; like that poor kid was taken out of class, was made to use devices. And when my grades suffered, what I now recognize they suffered because of ADHD, there was no other explanation for why my grades and performance suffered. And so, it was blamed on the other things that I already felt bad that I couldn't do. I couldn't focus, I didn't spend enough time on my homework. When I looked at my homework, I just literally looked at my homework and didn't actually engage with it. All of those things that are hallmarks of ADHD we know now, but I never had the benefit. So even to be "raised in a healthy sort of stable environment," those sort of avatars define the lowercase t trauma of my undiagnosed ADHD youth. And I think that's the legacy of generational shame that I'm trying to unravel.
Nachi Felt:
Which is also cool. As you think about it and you look at this experience you had as a kid, that means that you're always trying to be better. It's like you were kind of holding yourself to a higher standard and always constantly feeling inadequate and never good enough. And in a way, again, what we've been saying throughout the whole recording is that it could be used for good and for bad. This could be something that we kind of push ourselves even deeper into that pit of despair and failure, or it could raise us to keep improving and getting better and potentiating, really allowing ourselves to reach and maximize our potential.
James Ochoa:
Yeah. And what I love about what you're saying, Dr. Felt, and this is why I can absolutely see, Nikki and Pete, why you had us both on together, is that we really empower individuals from an objectivity point of view of, "What can I do with this? How am I evolving and developing?" Because that's happening all the time. Pete, when I took you back in '23 on a podcast through the mining the gem of your life history of the video, the first video you did. That's how you resolve some of these issues. You have to be able to look at your life history and look at it. And you're right. Failure is harder to look at in-depth because it's an ongoing space. And so, how do you unlock that space, Pete, those little micro-ts? You keep looking back at your history and finding the resource and the resilience. And that's part of what I hear Dr. Felt's saying.
Nachi Felt:
It's a great thing, resilience. My colleague George Bonanno has a resilience lab at Columbia, infamously says that the research is conclusive that most people can handle most things most of the time. And it's just conclusive through almost every study, in every area, and every culture. Most people can handle most things most of the time. We, as human beings, as a species are super adaptive. We're the top of the food chain. We always have been, and always will be because we could adapt, we could change. We're constantly striving to be better.
James Ochoa:
Yeah. Do we believe we can do that?
Pete Wright:
Right.
James Ochoa:
You know? No. That's where the challenge comes in.
Pete Wright:
That was going to be my comment. Like what everything that you're saying implies, the reason we get stuck is because we keep telling ourselves we're stuck and we have to be stuck. And that's the behavior we need to sort of target for change.
James Ochoa:
True. But the reality is look, what Dr Felt, what Nachi just said, okay, teaching somebody with ADHD this degree of resilience is there. How do you find it? How do you customize a strategy? How do you personalize things in your life to know that resilience is there? I guarantee you that's how I've become an expert within ADHD after crazy over three decades, whatever, is I've stayed in front of the failures. I just haven't left. And I've continued to develop a model that says, "You can do this. Hang in there. Okay? And start building around it." Running from it doesn't help.
Nachi Felt:
And that's actually, if you don't mind to drag in AI, that's a great way to use AI. Meaning it's to use it as a way to outsource your own resourcing, to steal your term, James.
James Ochoa:
Absolutely.
Nachi Felt:
I love it. Great, great.
James Ochoa:
Yes. Yeah.
Nachi Felt:
You could use AI to help you resource. That's great, because what you're doing is you're basically admitting that, "Hey, I have power and ability within me. And it's just right now, very hard for me to access." But I could use this AI tool to kind of help me, whether through the guise of a pseudo-relationship or as even calling it what it is, an AI companion, right? If I can use this to help enhance my own internal self-dialogue, I've now outsourced something that is harder for me to internally access.
James Ochoa:
Yes. Yes. And now it's a bridge. You don't have to live on that bridge. It doesn't have to become everything, but it does become something that I can use. And if we're not using AI as a resource, yeah, I'm using it all day, all the time now.
Pete Wright:
I feel like we're talking about something that comes only after we're able to grant ourselves a bit of self-awareness. And I don't want to skip that too hastily because-
Nachi Felt:
Oh, don't skip it. Don't skip it. And I would add to that.
Pete Wright:
Yes, please.
Nachi Felt:
Cutting you right off, to say that I would add to what you just said, Pete, it's more than that self-awareness. It's self-acceptance.
James Ochoa:
Yes. And self-compassion, care.
Nachi Felt:
With a healthy dose of accountability or even a small dose of accountability. Because even the tiniest dose that allows you to activate yourself to just reach out to AI and be like, "Hey, AI, help me get out of this shame spiral. I'm feeling like crap. Could you help pull me out? What do I need to do?" Even that, it's a drop, a tiny drop of accountability. One small drop of accountability could be a giant leap for your self-efficacy.
James Ochoa:
Right. Right. Well, because you're taking a demonstrated step forward out of your sense of self, which is what breaks these cycles that I feel like I have some power to do something different.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that gets to like here I am, let's just thought experiment. I'm stuck in a shame spiral right now. Right? Not yesterday, not tomorrow. I'm not planning my next shame spiral, I'm in it right now. What is the thing that's going to jar me out of the shame spiral? Now we've talked about AI, but again, if I haven't yet connected the success of having that dash of accountability, I'm not sure what that next step is. And I don't want to leave this whole conversation as one of sort of, well it's only hopeful if you are already well-resourced.
James Ochoa:
But you don't have to be well-resourced at all. Okay? So you're moving into more of the ideas of what do I do in the moment? And I go back to breathing, drinking water, food, very sustenance type of things. And what you can do with breath immediately is take control of your physiology in a second.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
James Ochoa:
So doing three straw breaths, which I watch a lot of Dr. Huberman out of Stanford, and his podcasts and those types of things talks about straw breathing, right? That the breath out has to be much longer than the breath in to start to calm the physiology of the body. And so, straw breathing is just taking a full breath in, taking another sip, and then letting it out as slow as you can through purged lips. Do that three times, and you're getting your brain back on board in a more balanced way to think about things. Okay? Dr. Felt's probably got millions, this is what I immediately do with clients.
Pete Wright:
Take control of the physiology.
James Ochoa:
Immediately.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
James Ochoa:
Because you can.
Nachi Felt:
.t reminds me of what I often tell folk, which is that there are two basic ways to self-regulate, right? There's one that I call tops-down and the other one bottoms-up. So top-down is when you use your cognition, your thoughts to kind of calm your body. And bottom-up is when you use your body, like James was just spelling out using breathing and breath work, to calm your brain, to kind of reduce the neurophysiological arousal.
So I often say that the best combo, the best way to maximize self-regulation is to do the combo move. You remember in those old arcade games when you can do a combo move if you touch all the buttons at the same time. Right? If you could do both top-down and bottom-up at the same time, you get like triple power. And so, oftentimes I'll invite people to kind of utilize a drop of mindfulness, even just stating, "Wow, I'm feeling really shameful. I'm in a shame spiral. I feel really ashamed right now." Just that, even just that is already beginning this process of self-regulation through a top-down. And if you want to breathe it out and say that a little bit slower or think of it as you're blowing out, right, that's allowing for this combo power of a top-down and bottom-up self-regulation.
James Ochoa:
And if you add to that space relating to the shame, I wonder how this shame spiral is going to release in a way I haven't thought about before. I'm putting my mind in an open-ended exploratory mode. You can move it toward appreciation, gratitude, what the shame made, the resilience it's given to me throughout my life. You can flip that pretty quickly.
And I love this top-down, bottom-up kind of a space and using both of those pieces together. And those are simple tools. Now you'll need eight or 10 of those around you to be able to grab any one of them when your prefrontal cortex, when you've gone into a shame spiral, and what do you grab that's going to sustain you? And that takes practice over time, with what works for you and when it works. And that's why I talk about having a resource around you all the time. You hear me talk about it, I've got 20 things within, out of sight of the camera in here.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Reach. Right?
James Ochoa:
In a second. Observation.
Nikki Kinzer:
I have this image of that little fly on the wall taking a little leg and just like grabbing as hard as it can, like on a little bump on the wall, like "I'm just going to hold on."
James Ochoa:
A little toe hold. That's all I need.
Pete Wright:
That's right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it can be one little ledge.
Pete Wright:
Right, right. And the observation that hits me is that none of these resources, none of these tools, top-down, bottom-up, all of the things that are just out of camera ask you to face your generational trauma that probably triggered this thing in the first place. Right? All it's asking you to do is say, "How do I show up and be present right now in my skin to stop this spiral? How do I show up and be present right now?"
James Ochoa:
Right, right. As Dr. Felt is saying, acknowledge it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
James Ochoa:
Just acknowledge what's happening, because that acknowledgement pops the bubble. That pops the first bubble of disassociation and lack of awareness. And that's what the body needs. It needs to hear it. And as I talk about when we say things, we're hearing them, we're using the aura motor of our mouth. We're doing things that physiologically is shifting it.
Pete Wright:
Nikki, how does this hit you from a coaching perspective? Because one of the things that strikes me is that this somatic experience of trying to be present, acknowledge, and understand what's going on in my body at a moment is an opportunity to experience a tiny success. I feel like that's something we've talked about before, the chain of tiny successes that allow us to begin to rebuild our spirit of optimism. When you hear all this, what are you thinking?
Nikki Kinzer:
Shame comes up in my clients' conversations every single time. There's always shame around something. And it's so important to talk about and to get into the different layers of where it's coming from, but also what to do in the moment. But I love the empowerment that both of our guests are sharing, of that you don't have to stay stuck. Because I think that so many people feel just like they're just stuck and they can't do anything. That whole thing that we had talked about with the fly, it's just it can't go anywhere without making a bad choice.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. There's sort of that meta conversation about like what ADHD, but everybody experiences shame, I think. I'll speak grandly. Everyone has some level of shame. Where ADHD people excel is they have metashame, right? They have shame about feeling shame.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And that's the thing we have to break through.
James Ochoa:
And they have grandchildren about that.
Pete Wright:
Right.
James Ochoa:
It goes on and on. There's different layers.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
James Ochoa:
So I want to bring us back to this metaphor of the fly in the tornado, because I have to at least course correct that to some degree. Okay? If you stay in the eye of a tornado or a hurricane for long enough, it dissipates, it goes away, it goes somewhere. And I don't know if y'all saw this incredible picture a while back on one of the hurricanes on the East Coast, but there was a whole group of flock of birds in the center of the eye of a hurricane that was coming in. And those birds stayed there and flew with that eye of the hurricane until the hurricane dissipates and they fly on. Okay? But they know not to move.
Pete Wright:
Well, that's about the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
James Ochoa:
Okay? But it was fascinating to watch this. And they say this happens. This is not an unusual thing that happens in the weather patterns. So how do you stay in a shame spiral when you know it's happening and not implode on yourself and take care of who you are? The acknowledgement, "Okay, it's happening. It's happening. Okay." And I talk about that idea of resourcing in the storms of ADD all the time. And it's like, "Okay, sometimes just don't eat some of the chocolate. Don't eat all the chocolate." You're going to feel the upset and disrupted. That's going to be okay. And if you look at emotional feeling states, right? They're moving out like a sound wave. They're going to dissipate if you don't lock them down and keep feeding them. We lock them down too often. I don't know what you think about that, Dr. Felt, but I do want to give us a difference of the metaphor that you can get out of that.
Nachi Felt:
Yeah. The fly survives.
James Ochoa:
You're going to be okay. Yes. The fly survives. Exactly.
Nachi Felt:
I love your... You brought up that point of the birds and the fly. And I was just thinking, because birds fly as a flock. And that reminds me of what you were saying about resourcing, having each other and just imagining the dialogue going, "Hang in there, Jerry. Jerry, fly back. No. Oh, no, we're losing Cynthia. Get in there, grab her." Yeah, I'm just imagining that and thinking like how important it is, like you were saying, James, about resourcing and you were focusing a lot on the relational aspect here.
And I think that you could really benefit. And I love your approach because it means that if we could create a relationship with ourself, we can be our own resource. And that means that even being there with ourself when we're acknowledging just being like that mindful moment of like, "Wow, I'm really feeling super shameful right now." Even that, the beauty of it is that this is a choice. I'm here, and I can choose to stay wallowing in it. And that's also okay. That's my choice. I'm choosing that.
It reminds me of a big fight my wife and I have. Ooh, this is going to get dirty. We argue about the idea of laziness. She feels, I think, like the common understanding, which is sometimes I'm just a lazy bum, and I'm just not interested in doing the laundry or I just don't want to get out of bed. And my approach is like the super like, "Yeah, accountability. We can be awesome." Is that laziness is a choice. It means at this point I'm not feeling resourced enough. I don't feel either enough activation or I'm feeling too much resistance, and that's what's really going on.
So laziness is just like the cheap term we slap on any time that we're not kind of being productive. It's kind of what we were told throughout our childhoods, like, "Oh, if you're not doing well in school it's because you're lazy. You didn't study because you're lazy. You didn't do that because you're lazy." But in reality it just means I'm not, to use your term James because I love it, I'm just not feeling resourced enough, adequately enough in this space right now. And that's kind of what's going on with the shame. If I'm still choosing to wallow in my shame, it could be that just right now I'm just not feeling resourced enough to kind of get out of it yet. And that's also okay. That's okay.
James Ochoa:
When you begin to learn about ADHD, and my model really is super psychoeducational to begin with, you've got to learn what this is developmentally, genetically, neurologically. Because so many adults who come to me have either never been diagnosed or never diagnosed well as I would say and understood what was happening, that's the first marker of being able to get out of this and move toward it.
And the simplicity of mindfulness, of personalizing strategies around shame, that I can be awake between 1:00 and 5:00 AM last night, true story, because I've got a couple of clinical reports that need to get out that I know it's going to be on my... I can't get them off my mind. I'm sleepless. I got to the eight layers of resourcing: tea, massage chair, essential oil, you name it, none of it was helping. And eventually, it kind of wore itself out and I got back to sleep. And I'm okay, I got six and a half hours of sleep last night total. That was fine. I went to bed at 9:00. So I'm here. And this is what Nachi and I are talking about, you live within it, Pete. You live within it in a way that's powerful. You can.
Pete Wright:
One of the things I think, James, you've talked about with us before on the show, and that's why I'm not going to start with you on this particular question, is the power of rewriting our own stories, rewriting our narratives. Right? And I'm curious, Nachi, when you look at the sort of neurological basis of storytelling, right? We're wired for story as human organisms. Talk a little bit about the power of changing the way we narrate our own experiences with regard to change. What is happening in our brain that can actually help us heal by way of rewriting our own narrative?
Nachi Felt:
What's super cool about it is ownership is ownership. I feel a little bit like, what's his name? Who's that Yankee player who would always say these profoundly simple lines?
Pete Wright:
Oh, Yogi.
Nachi Felt:
Yogi, yeah. I feel like this is a Yogi Berra line. Ownership is ownership. But ownership really is ownership. When we own ourselves, when we own our story, it's ownership. It's ownership of us. And like I was saying before, like sitting in the shame, I'm choosing to sit in the shame. Now, whether it's a good thing, a bad thing, forget judgment. Right? But who's in charge here? I am, and I'm choosing to sit in it. That idea of owning ourselves, owning our feelings, owning our behavior, owning our thoughts is so powerful because it's in a way kind of tapping into the uniquely human aspect of being able to direct the trajectory of our life.
Pete Wright:
I am having an awakening right now, just right now. And I have to share it, because if James says it, then I don't get credit for it. And credit is important. If I choose to sit in shame, I suddenly realize that that same agency that allows me to choose to sit in shame also allows me to get up.
James Ochoa:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Holy shit, you guys.
James Ochoa:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And that's like...
James Ochoa:
No. And that's...
Pete Wright:
That's it.
James Ochoa:
That's the dual nature of the human being.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Yeah.
James Ochoa:
We're on, off, yes, no, black, white.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
James Ochoa:
That's how we were built. But the space is, Pete, y'all have heard me say this before on other podcasts, I have what I call bumper stickers of life that I live by. And one of the bumper stickers is you are the greatest common denominator of your entire life. Stop looking for someone else to blame. Look at yourself first. And so, within this shame piece, that's not saying that you're broken or wrong, but it has happened to you. Get into acceptance and forgiveness and compassion and what am I going to do with it? Because as Nachi was saying earlier, it becomes something that I'll stay stuck in forever. And I've seen people stuck in it forever. They live from it, horribly.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
James Ochoa:
How many people around the world live from it horribly at being disenfranchised because of being victimized? It's not good for mental health long-term. It's not good for mental health.
Nachi Felt:
James, when you said that thing about it just happened, it reminded me of something I wrote in the notes. So in a characteristically non-ADHD way, I printed up your questions that you guys sent me, and I kind of went through them and wrote down answers. I actually prepared, like did what I was supposed to do.
Pete Wright:
What do you think about how I just came and didn't ask any of those specific questions? How's that hit you?
Nachi Felt:
No, I'm going to pull them out.
James Ochoa:
But you're flipping through them. You're getting through them. I can feel it.
Nachi Felt:
Which is, you ask, "How is shame different from guilt? And is this an important distinction?"
James Ochoa:
Yeah. Oh, that's good.
Nachi Felt:
And so, I wrote here that shame is where we tell ourselves that, "Something is wrong with me." Guilt is where I say, "Something is wrong with what I did." And regret is, "Something wrong happened." And when we're able to kind of shift through that and kind of pull ourselves out of the super stimulating intense negativity of, "Something's wrong with me," we can move on to this like healthier level that, "Something wrong that I did." And then, be able to kind of even zoom out of that and realize, "Something bad happened. Something wrong happened. This was just a confluence of again, who I am, nature, nurture, just light. If I had known better, obviously I would have done different." Right? So clearly, this just happened, especially if it literally just happened. I'm saying if it was yesterday or a minute ago or a week ago, it's over. It happened. And then, we could kind of upcycle ourselves out of the shame through guilt to regret. And regret is a great place, because regret is an amazing teacher.
James Ochoa:
Yeah. Much more palatable.
Pete Wright:
That's beautiful.
James Ochoa:
And the bottom line is I will also bring clients back to, and Nachi, you likely see this in your beautiful new baby. I'll take people back to babies and I'm like, "Was this baby born with shame? Was there something wrong with this baby? It's like, "No." We weren't born with this. It's an element that gets layered in and developed over our experience and time. And if that's the case then, it can be unwound.
Pete Wright:
I love that.
Nachi Felt:
That's a great way to look at it. If you look at it developmentally, it highlights this point we were saying before, which is that shame is a uniquely human aspect.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Yes.
Nachi Felt:
And a baby won't have that because they don't have a consciousness yet. It's only after we get smarter that we get more shame, which means again, ownership is ownership. When I feel shame, that means I'm smart enough to notice this, to be able to be self-reflective. "Holy cow, I am so powerful. There's so much ability here. If I was stupid, I wouldn't feel this bad."
James Ochoa:
Oh, my god, that's beautiful. I'm putting that on a shirt. "If I was stupid, I wouldn't feel this bad."
Nachi Felt:
Great. Send me one also, I want one.
James Ochoa:
That's a great one.
Nachi Felt:
"If I was stupid, I wouldn't feel this bad." Oh, that's great. I'm writing it down.
Pete Wright:
Wow, you guys. Well, look, obviously we could continue.
James Ochoa:
For days.
Pete Wright:
I feel like I've heard you. I just want to say in terms of wrapping up, that last message, stories written can be rewritten is really powerful for me. And that's going to be something I think about for a while. You both again are some of our very favorite people and guests and friends. And I recognize it is an exercise in professional vulnerability to come on here not knowing one another and share the stage like you have, and you acquitted yourselves beautifully. Our deepest, deepest thanks for this experience. Wonderful.
Nachi Felt:
You hear that, James? We actually behaved.
Pete Wright:
You did.
James Ochoa:
We did. And we had a little bit of Brooklyn style conversation, not completely, a little bit. There's a little bit in there.
Pete Wright:
A little bit. Some might say not quite enough, but yeah. Hey.
James Ochoa:
It didn't get contentious enough. That's okay.
Nachi Felt:
That'll be next time.
Pete Wright:
Okay, Nachi, tell the world where you can be found and what you're working on.
Nachi Felt:
Adhddoctor.org, that's me. I'm really excited about my book that I hope to be calling Self-Empowerment, still looking for an agent to help me push it through. But hopefully over the summer we'll knock it out and people can read all about the cycles of agency, the cycle of ambiguity, and how to kind of see that clarity and calm and confidence.
Pete Wright:
Nice. I cannot wait for that. James.
James Ochoa:
Boy, I'm super excited about that, super excited. I can't wait to read those kind of pieces. Of course me, I've got six or seven angles running. As a single person, I keep myself overwhelmed in the most wonderful of ways. So a second book on When the Shiny Wears Off: Navigating the Lifetime Storms of Adult ADD. How do you deal with this when it doesn't go away and you know everything you need to know? There is going to be a season three of the podcast of The Complex. I don't know when it's going to be, Pete, but it's going to happen.
Pete Wright:
Oh, okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's going to happen.
James Ochoa:
AI is going to be involved at some level, you can guarantee, you can guarantee.
Pete Wright:
Right now, James, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how many episodes? We need to go back and see how many episodes you've been on this show telling me there's a season three. You are firmly in the "I'll believe it when I see it."
James Ochoa:
Probably two years, probably two or three. I know you are. That's fine. That's fine.
Nachi Felt:
This time, he has AI. He might find true love.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. That's right.
James Ochoa:
I might find true love this time.
Pete Wright:
I cannot wait for that. That's one of my favorite.
James Ochoa:
I'm sure you cannot.
Pete Wright:
Expressions of ADHD.
James Ochoa:
But probably one of my biggest professional pieces right now is I'm getting out in developing and training therapists in what I know. So I'm doing what's called ADHD Navigator training to become an ADHD Pathfinder to help people find paths through their ADHD. So I'm doing more national trainings, and I want to do international speaking on the model of emotional and mental stress being the key aspect of ADHD. That's really got to be addressed early on in treatment with ADHD. I have an intern in the practice now, Jennifer, which I haven't had in about 15 years, so I'm really taking someone on with me. I have a constant marketer now. That's different for me. So I'm super excited about what's going on. It's a lot of fun.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's great.
Pete Wright:
Links in the notes to all of these resources, gents. Thank you.
James Ochoa:
Absolutely.
Nachi Felt:
Thank you so much.
James Ochoa:
This was so much fun.
Pete Wright:
Fantastic. Thank you, everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in the Discord server. And you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer and Dr. Natchi Felt and James Ochoa, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.