Rewriting the Rules You Inherited About Worth
There's a rule most of us signed before we could read it. It decides whether we're worth anything, and it tends to set the same terms for everyone who carries an ADHD brain: you're valuable if you perform, if you keep every plate spinning, if you never let anyone down. Live under that contract long enough and it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like a fact — written, as the metaphor goes this week, in permanent ink.
Where did the rule come from? Often from the earliest lessons — the pulled-out-of-class, extra-time, here-are-your-accommodations lessons that were meant to level the field but landed as proof you were different. The gap they leave behind doesn't shrink with age. There's research suggesting it widens. The assumption that everyone else has this figured out turns out to be the lie that keeps the rule in place.
Links & Notes
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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: Hi, Nikki. Welcome to the podcast. You know you're welcome every week.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, thanks.
Pete Wright: I'm so glad that we are podcasting together.
Nikki Kinzer: I'm so glad I'm welcome.
Pete Wright: We're getting close to the end of our season.
Nikki Kinzer: Yes, yeah.
Pete Wright: We're really just burning them down, these episodes.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, yes, we are.
Pete Wright: In no time, we're gonna be on summer break.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah.
Pete Wright: And so we're kind of wrapping up these arcs, these loose narrative threads that we've created this season.
Nikki Kinzer: Yep.
Pete Wright: And today we're wrapping up a spiritual trilogy where we talk about the permission that we give ourselves to live the life that we need to live without feeling so much shame and guilt. I love it. I have really, really enjoyed this set of conversations, and I hope others do too. So we're gonna do that.
But before we dig into the specifics, the minutia of today's conversation, I've got to tell everybody about our Patreon community. Members of our Patreon community at patreon.com/theadhdpodcast get early access to all of our episodes, ad-free access, and most importantly, they get access to the live stream as we record. So if you ever thought it might be fun to hear what happens in the pre- and post-show along the way — I mean, Nikki burps a lot during the episodes. I cut those out.
Nikki Kinzer: I do not.
Pete Wright: She swears, you guys. She swears like a sailor in the main episode.
Nikki Kinzer: You are such a liar.
Pete Wright: So I cut all that out.
Nikki Kinzer: But that's good, because now they're gonna be like, well, does she, or is she lying?
Pete Wright: I know, I know.
Nikki Kinzer: Like, who's lying here?
Pete Wright: This is a great gaslight bit that Pete's doing. I love it. But you can join us, and you can ask us questions during the live stream and engage with others who are watching along live. It is really a fun experience. But honestly, the thing we hear people talk about the most is the community itself. It's this group of real people, all real people living with ADHD, who show up for each other in a pretty special way. So if you've ever wanted to explore what it means to be more than just a listener of the show, this is where it happens. Go to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more and join us.
And if you're not ready for that, that is totally okay too. You can find us at takecontroladhd.com, connect with us on socials, join the Discord, or sign up for the weekly email newsletter. We would love to have you wherever you land.
So this season has been a journey for us, from looking outward — the things we do while we're waiting for permission, or for someone to tell us everything we're doing is okay — to looking inward and taking back our agency in our lives. And today we're gonna try to get to the thing underneath all of it: the rule that makes a person worth anything, that we have written about ourselves. It's a rule that most of us signed so young that we don't even remember doing it. And if you've got an ADHD brain, it is written in permanent ink. It's a tattoo. So today we're gonna try and read some of the fine print. How did we start? How did we agree to this rule in the first place? And how do we make some change in our lives so that we can erase it and start fresh? What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer: I love it. I love that you phrased it that way — this rule that you signed before you could even read, before you could even understand what you were signing.
Pete Wright: It's a funny thing. I'll never forget this. When my parents — you know, married a long time, you eventually find your way into couples therapy at some point. I remember when my parents went into couples therapy, they'd been married for 25, 30 years, and my dad ended up really internalizing this metaphor for his rules, and it was all about VHS tapes. The therapist was like, you have a tape that's been playing and then rewinding and playing again and rewinding and playing again, and that defines the rules in your head. And so his metaphor was, how do you stop the tapes? How do you record new tapes? How do you rewrite those rules? I was thinking about that as I was writing this up this morning, because it feels so familiar.
Nikki Kinzer: Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright: This is a thing we as human beings have been doing all our lives, generationally, and no one has really figured out the answer at scale. There's no silver bullet. This is one of those unfortunate things that you just have to wrestle with individually. Figure out your metaphor for those rules that you've been living by, and start chipping away at developing a new one. And one of the things that's most interesting is you often don't even know that you're living under these rules until you start chipping away and asking some hard questions. So I kind of love it, and I'm scared of it. And I'm curious how you see these things showing up in the coaching practice. What are the rules that people come to you with that you can see through maybe before they do?
Nikki Kinzer: That's a really good question. I think the common theme — what I see most often — is that they're not good enough, they're not doing enough, they're not performing to standard, or they're comparing themselves to other people. And they disregard the ADHD — like it doesn't matter that they have ADHD. It almost is like an afterthought that there's a reason why things might take longer, or there's a reason why you need some more time processing things, or that time is hard to understand. Like, it doesn't matter that there's a reason to it. It's more of just, it's my fault, I'm doing something wrong.
Pete Wright: Yeah. It's really important to acknowledge that that is part of the individual rule set that we're living under. And this is old-school psychology, right? Carl Rogers defined this thing called contingent worth. And that says, I'm valuable as a human being if I perform, if I don't let anyone down, if I keep all the plates spinning while I keep all the balls in the air — I become a valuable person. That there is no such thing as being valuable just for the sake of being a valuable entity in the universe. That's what they call Covington self-worth theory. That's another therapeutic foundation. That's non-contingent worth.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of what we learn in coaching around — okay, well, when I make more money, I'll be happy. When I have a house, I'll be happy. When I'm in the right relationship, I'll be happy.
Pete Wright: That's contingent worth.
Nikki Kinzer: Yes. And when I get more organized, my life will be easier. All of those things. And it's like, you think that's gonna happen, and in some way, maybe, but it's not guaranteed. Sometimes, as we know, you could have all the money in the world and you're not a happy person.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: So, yeah.
Pete Wright: And it's largely pointless to live your life that way. But think about how those rules got written. I've talked about this before. The early lessons of ADHD felt punitive. Especially if you were diagnosed as a kid, the early lessons were that you got pulled out of class, unlike all of your peers. You had to maybe carry accessibility devices or typewriters, unlike other kids. You were held back. You were given extra time. And all of those things set you apart from other kids — even in high school and college — set you apart from other people in a way that reinforces the differences. And if you haven't been taught that these things aren't punitive, that they're meant to equalize, to normalize performance across different brains, it feels like those are the activities that you spend the rest of your life trying to exist beyond. If I can get things done without using accommodations, then I become valuable. If I can achieve what my quote-unquote normal peers are achieving, then I become valuable. And that is an incredibly damaging way to live.
Nikki Kinzer: It is. Because also, when you think about your peers and you're comparing yourself to them, we really don't know what other people are doing or what they're struggling with, because people are really good at masking.
Pete Wright: Yes. A hundred percent.
Nikki Kinzer: All people — ADHD and non-ADHD. So we are putting a belief in what we think, but we really don't know.
Pete Wright: We really don't know. And that's why it's so important to acknowledge that this is not just an experience of ADHD kids. This is an experience of witnessing peers across ages — even as adults — who are achieving differently than you and seeing different results than you, and you internalizing that as a rule set that says, if I want a raise, if I want a promotion, if I want to achieve what I need to achieve, I'm going to have to work at a certain level in a certain way. I'm gonna have to stress myself out, level myself up in a certain way, in order to be of equivalent value. And that is the sociological construct, the cultural construct, the professional construct that is extremely challenging for us to live under. So it's not to say — and to your point — it's not just ADHD brains, but it is to say that ADHD brains get a major dose of it. This sort of high-octane version, because we deal with the other symptoms, all of those other conditions. I'm sorry, I interrupted.
Nikki Kinzer: No, I just love your title. In the show notes, Pete has written, "Why the ADHD Brain Got the Worst Version." And I think that's so true. So let's talk about that a little bit, because we have to put that in the spotlight for sure.
Pete Wright: Well, we do. When we refer to the worst version, it's not that you witness something happening in the world around you and you perform in a way that makes you say, oh, I did that thing poorly or late, I did that one thing in a way that was subpar. It becomes, I'm bad. I'm a bad person. I did a bad thing. I exist in a negative state compared to everyone else. That's the worst version — us internalizing it. Every time we internalize those things, we rewrite over that tattoo, that rule that is hard to break.
So I did find a couple of peer-reviewed studies that I think are really interesting. There was a systematic review of ADHD studies that actually found 57% of studies show people with untreated ADHD carrying a lower self-esteem than their peers, and that is widest in the adult studies. It gets worse as we age, this feeling of being less than, of self-esteem being challenged. It is worse and compounds as we age. That surprised me.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. Really?
Pete Wright: Yes, it did surprise me.
Nikki Kinzer: Why? Because it doesn't surprise me at all. So what surprised you about that?
Pete Wright: Well, Nikki, I'm so glad you asked. I don't know if you've heard this — I am an adult.
Nikki Kinzer: You are?
Pete Wright: And I'm a living — see, now you're leaning in — I'm a living example of this study.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah.
Pete Wright: My self-esteem is generally lower, because I tend to feel like I need to perform at a certain level in order to keep up and have clients and all this stuff. But my assumption is that other people don't live that way, even ADHD folks. So I see myself —
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, you are so wrong.
Pete Wright: Right? My head knows I'm wrong. I am absolutely wrong.
Nikki Kinzer: And maybe that's because I talk to ADHD people all day long, and I know how common it is. That's why I'm surprised it's not a higher number than that.
Pete Wright: Yeah. My heart. And that's exactly it. So tell me about that experience. Tell me why I'm not alone.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, I think that as you get older, you have more experiences, and you have more opportunities to have things work and to have things not work. And what's unfortunate is the brain hangs on to the things that aren't working, the things that they feel like they're failing at. That's what they hold on to. And the more experiences you have, the more that's going to affect how you feel about yourself, and what you're able to think about yourself. Because we're always talking about, what's that internal conversation? What are you saying? Are you being as compassionate to yourself as you would be to somebody you love? And almost everyone will say, no, I would never talk to somebody that I love the way that I talk about myself. So I just think that as we get older, we have more experiences, more situations where our emotions can get dysregulated. Things are more complicated. Adulting — we've talked about that. It's hard.
I've got two young adults, one especially that is now done with college. He was upset about something that cost a lot of money, and I'm like, dude, that's life. You're gonna pay for stuff that you don't want to pay for, but you have to. So I just think there's more experience, more time to think about things, more rejection in different ways.
Pete Wright: Yeah, for sure.
Nikki Kinzer: So you're not alone.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: And what I think, as a coach, that I always come back to is, again, that self-compassion. Are you caring for yourself the same way that you would care for someone else? And what makes you feel like you don't deserve it? Let's dig into that. I always cup my hands, because it's like — carry yourself, carry your heart, carry yourself with love and compassion, because we are humans, we do make mistakes. We're not perfect.
Pete Wright: It's an interesting physical metaphor to watch you cup your hands like that. Because when we are at our worst, we might see that move and think, yes — those are all the data points building the prosecution's case against me. Those are all the late deliverables, all the missed deadlines, all the late appointments. And what we need to do is reposition our visual experience of that to: what is being carried is what's left. Everything else gets to drop away. And that's where we're finally able to let go of the rejection, the anger, the sadness, the grief, and reframe the way we look at our own worth. Not, I'm someone who made a mistake — I'm the mistake.
Nikki Kinzer: Right.
Pete Wright: Or, it was your mistake to count on me, because I'm impossible to count on. Instead, it's: look, I am as complicated a human as every other one of you — 57% or higher — and we're all making our way, and it's okay. We're just living our lives.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, absolutely.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: So how do we rewrite this rule? How do we write a different document?
Pete Wright: Yeah. I think that starts — it gives you a nice platform to understand how you coach through the ADHD wiring difference. That ADHD isn't a character defect. How do you retrain your brain to believe that? Not seeing ADHD as a personal indictment actually allows you to start rewriting those tattoos.
Nikki Kinzer: When I'm in a coaching session and somebody comes to me — and I'm asking, how did last week go, what are your insights, updates? — I always kind of start with that first. And if someone can tell me that they were a little kinder to themselves, or they let something go, they were able to reprioritize something without feeling guilty, they're actually willing to disappoint because they know that it's in their best interest, because they're protecting something for themselves — that's such a huge win. It's not that I have my task manager and calendar in perfect order. It's them being accepting and kind to themselves, and being able to coach themselves through that moment — that this too shall pass. This is okay. I'm gonna get through this.
I had a client yesterday who said she's sometimes panicked, and then sometimes she's like, I can get through this. And that is the back and forth. Panic, but I can get through it. Panic, but I can get through it. To me, she's learned something. She's actually reframed that conversation that she probably had years ago, which would have just been her blaming everything on herself and staying in panic. But she's able to move away from it, and know it's gonna come back, and that's okay too. We're realistic here. It is gonna come back. We're humans with feelings.
So I think it takes practice. I think it takes attention. I think it helps to have community. I think it helps to have people around you that are that other 57% who would be like, oh my God, Pete, you are not alone, I totally get you. Because when you know you're in community and you know that you're not alone, there's just something that softens the harshness of it all. So, yeah. What else? What do you think?
Pete Wright: Well, two things have come up in my recent experience that I think are fascinating. The first one — remember the show, we've talked about it before, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, where he goes around and does crazy things to his body to try to learn how to live longer and be smarter and fight off Alzheimer's?
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. Doesn't he take a pill or something? I don't remember.
Pete Wright: No, that's a movie.
Nikki Kinzer: Is that a different one?
Pete Wright: That's a fictitious movie.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, that's a movie.
Pete Wright: This is a series where he actually works with practitioners — doctors and nutritionists — and he puts himself through crazy stuff.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, okay.
Pete Wright: And season two, episode two is about pain. He works with a pain expert who's actually a triple amputee who has been through some horrible things in his life, and he's also now a physician and specializes in pain therapy. And they put Chris Hemsworth through some crazy experiences of pain, including training with the Korean special forces, electrocuting him and doing horrible things. And one of the things that came out of that for me is that we often feel increased sensitivity — in this case, to physical pain — because we've never experienced it before, and it feels like it's going to hurt probably more than it does. We're terrified of it. So we get wound up in the experience of what could potentially be painful. But it's only painful because we don't know.
Nikki Kinzer: Interesting.
Pete Wright: It is interesting. And I think about that in response to rejection sensitivity. The thing that I'm afraid of is the pain response — the emotional pain response that comes from letting someone else down, or missing a deadline, and reputational insult, and all of those things. But what came out of that episode was, this doctor said, you have to remember that you can start to discern when pain is damaging and when it's not, when it's just a sensory response. If you actually get cut and your flesh is rent apart, that's damaging — that pain is damage. But often we experience pain that isn't damage. And I have found myself saying, over and over, after we watched this episode: this pain, this feeling, isn't damage. This pain isn't damage. Whatever I'm feeling right now, it's not damage. I can get up, I can walk to the mailbox, I can clear my head. This is not damage. Before that, I would write that story over and over again — that this thing that I'm experiencing is permanent. But it's not permanent. It's never permanent.
So that's the first one. The second one is a paper I found by Lora Park, Jennifer Crocker, and Kathleen Vohs, and it's called "Contingencies of Self-Worth and Self-Validation." And the nut of this paper is that chasing self-esteem — chasing the feelings of good in an attempt to rewrite the fake rules we've written for ourselves — often becomes its own trap. The chase is a trap. The research shows that pursuing that chase crowds out the things we actually need. We need presence and connection with other people, and growth, and stuff that makes a life. We need to be willing to learn new things and try new things and be brave, because that helps everything. It helps our emotional experience in the world. It helps our connectivity with others who are going through the same thing. It helps us develop and make truly muscular our muscle of empathy. And just chasing the good feelings that are antithetical to feeling bad all the time is actually not going to make you feel much better. You have to actually put the chase aside and just go out to lunch with someone. Just join a community. Join a ukulele club. I don't care what you do — do something. And I think that's the piece. That's the thing that sticks with me.
Nikki Kinzer: Absolutely. And what it reminds me of is, if you're single and you're looking for your life partner — as soon as you stop looking, you find them.
Pete Wright: Oh, of course. It's the same thing.
Nikki Kinzer: It's always like — when you stop looking, it's there.
Pete Wright: There was a relationship coach on some podcast I listened to a long time ago who said that the number one strategy that you can use to find your partner is to delete all of the apps that help you find your partner from your phone. Just go to work and be aware of all the people who are in your life already.
Nikki Kinzer: That's so interesting. Yeah.
Pete Wright: Because they're there.
Nikki Kinzer: That's so funny.
Pete Wright: They're right there. And that's it. The search is the problem. The search is the problem.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. You can find it in yourself, inside.
Pete Wright: Yeah. It's little moments, not one big light-bulb explosive moment.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. Little moments.
Pete Wright: You don't rewrite the rule in one fell swoop. Like everything we've been talking about, this is a practice. It's a practice that is defined by how you live your life, slowly. It's the same way the rule got written in the first place. Repeated attention to the negative signal wrote the rule in the first place. And now your job is to give repeated attention to the positive signals. That's the trick. That's the whole trick.
Nikki Kinzer: So I did this — I was on social media, and I ended up watching this little video. The video showed a picture of these blue items on a white desk, and it said, I want you to remember three blue items. So in the next three seconds, it flashes the picture, and of course I notice the three blue items. And then it comes back and says, where was the yellow one? What was the yellow item? And I have no idea, because I was focused on the blue ones. I don't know if there was even yellow there.
Pete Wright: That's a mean trick.
Nikki Kinzer: And then I go back, and it is a big, huge yellow vase that is practically in the middle of all of the blue things. But you don't see it, because you're only looking at the blue. So the whole lesson was that when you focus on something, when you're looking for something, that's all you're seeing.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: You don't see anything else. So the lesson was, broaden that and you'll see the other things that are also there. Instead of always seeing the negative, look for the positive and you'll see the positive. So when you were talking about that, it was really mind-blowing to me — how big the vase was, too.
Pete Wright: Yeah, it's like the whole thing is a vase.
Nikki Kinzer: Like, how did I miss that?
Pete Wright: Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah.
Pete Wright: Well, that's the lesson for me — to make that change where I try to catch the if-then statements in my experience. If I don't do X, then I'm worthless. And to stop and say it out loud, because when I say things like that out loud, I hear how ridiculous they are. When I let them live in my head voice, they're much more internalized and more likely to be written into my fabric. But when I say, if I miss this deadline, then I'm worthless — that is ridiculous. I hear it as ridiculous, and it completely changes gears. And that's the lesson. It's collecting counter-evidence to all of my perceived failures, just one at a time, teeny-tiny, rewriting the rule of self-worth. That's it.
Nikki Kinzer: I love it.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: Woo!
Pete Wright: It's good stuff.
Nikki Kinzer: We did a podcast.
Pete Wright: We made a podcast. And I hope that this episode was a good piece of this little trilogy that we've had running. We have a couple more episodes before we hang it up for summer. We've got a guest, we've got some — I don't know. It's gonna be great. I'm very excited about it. Thank you, everybody, for hanging out, for tuning in, for your time, of course, 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 our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level or better — patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
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