The Power of Personalization: Customizing Your ADHD Game Plan with James Ochoa, LPC
This week on the show, we welcome back 10-time guest James Ochoa, author of Focused Forward, to discuss customizing strategies for managing ADHD.
Ochoa emphasizes the importance of recognizing that strategies for managing ADHD are not one-size-fits-all. He encourages listeners to tune into their internal radar to identify strategies that resonate with them personally.
The conversation explores the concept of "resourcing ADHD," which Ochoa defines as utilizing a broad spectrum of support mechanisms, from medication to customized sleep routines, to manage the challenges of ADHD. He highlights the significance of recognizing and addressing what he coined as Emotional Distress Syndrome (EDS), a pattern of mental and emotional disruptions that often accompanies ADHD. Ochoa compares EDS to experiencing micro-traumas that can leave individuals feeling constantly off-kilter.
The conversation turns toward the impact of these strategies on neuroplasticity, emphasizing the brain's ability to rewire itself through consistent practice. They highlight the importance of self-compassion and mindfulness in calming the nervous system and creating a sense of inner resourcefulness. Ochoa suggests that as individuals begin implementing these strategies, they may experience glimpses of a more positive self-image, gradually building a reservoir of resilience and self-acceptance.
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 oh look, it's Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Happy ADHD Awareness Month.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, it is.
Pete Wright:
As we record this, it's not yet, but when this finally goes live, that's where we will be and we're very excited about that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, we are.
Pete Wright:
As always, it is our annual celebration, which...
Nikki Kinzer:
We do all the time.
Pete Wright:
... for us lasts really, all year. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be fine. Anyway, we're really glad to be here and we are super glad to have our fantastic guest who we we'll introduce and frankly, needs no introduction, but we'll do it anyway in just a moment.
Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com and get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list and you'll get an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD, but to really connect with us, join us in the ADHD Discord community. It's super easy to jump into the general community chat channel. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/discord and you will be whisked, whisked I tell you, to the general invitation page. You can log in there, if you don't have an account on Discord, you can create one right there. And that's where all the good stuff is happening.
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News and announcements. Nikki, we want to tell people a thing. What do we want to tell people?
Nikki Kinzer:
We do? What do we want to tell them?
Pete Wright:
I'll tell you. We want to tell people to rate and review Unapologetically ADHD. The reviews are starting to come in and we're so excited to see them. The ratings and reviews really help us to help others continue to share this resource with a wider audience.
So if you've read the book, it's been several weeks now. Has it been several weeks since it came out? Well, by the time you hear this, it's been many weeks. So check it out. If you review it on Barnes & Noble, or amazon.com, or if your platform offers reviews, please do that. That is super, super helpful. And if you find you love the book and you want to sport it on your duds, that's an old term, I think, just go to takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook. Scroll down and you'll see the panel for the merch. You can get the Unapologetically ADHD merch, the I'm Unapologetically ADHD logo. You can put the book stuff on your bod, and now is the time. Look, I mean, it's October as you're hearing this. My goodness people, Christmas is right around the corner. Let's get cracking. Consumerism does not wait. Okay, that's awful, pretend I didn't say that part, but we would really love it if you check it out. Takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook.
Okay, look, here's the thing. We have, it is yet again, a momentous occasion around here at the ADHD Podcast. Nikki, you're muted. Is it because your dog is misbehaving?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Teenage dog.
Pete Wright:
The momentous occasion. This is the first time that we have, another first over here, the first time that we have a guest who has become, I don't even know what to call this anymore. It's not even Hall of Fame anymore. What transcends Hall of Fame? A 10-time guest, James Ochoa is back with us today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yay.
Pete Wright:
James, thank you for being here, friend.
James Ochoa:
So, so happy to be here. It's like old friends and there's going to be a day that we will physically hug each other in this wonderful world of ours. I know it, I know it. I've got a sister in Seattle, so it's just waiting.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's coming, yep.
Pete Wright:
Don't we have a meetup on the calendar already in November in Anaheim?
James Ochoa:
Yeah, yeah, I saw it.
Pete Wright:
I think we just might, I think we just might. So that, absolutely, it's so good having you.
You're here today because, well, for those who don't know, James was incredibly generous to actually write the foreword of our new book on Apologetically ADHD, and it just completely honored us by, one, writing it, two, getting it, really understanding what we were going for. And also joined us at the book launch event last month, where he shared some really interesting things about what he's into right now, and we're really excited to dive deeper into that.
So today we are going to be talking about customizing strategies for ADHD. James, do you want to set us up? What does that mean to you?
James Ochoa:
Well, yes, customizing strategies just simply means to me, you really cannot look outside of yourself to ultimately have others figure out how things are going to work for you. Okay? Now, that may seem simple or easy when we talk about, "Okay, what's your favorite color, or what's your favorite ice cream?" Because we have personal preferences for those. Well, when it comes to strategies, particularly around the ADHD spectrum, the vast majority of us, of course, I will say I'm pretty biased about the mental and emotional stress of this condition, throws us out of center. And that throwing us out of center, we believe that we don't know how to make our own strategy. We don't know what's best for us. Someone else please tell me. And I would say, unfortunately in the field to some degree, we have so much information out there now because this is an executive functioning issue, that how does someone new with ADHD wade through the amount of information, good information that's out there? It's not bad information, it's good information.
And so if you take a customizing viewpoint that says, "Okay, I'm going to look at this information out there and what resonates with me, what fits for me? What connects for me? What do I like about this information that's out there?" So that you're sifting immediately from a personal point of view, rather than from a, oh my God, who's got the best idea on how to organize or how to do this or how to do that? It's like when I did the declutter challenge with you Nikki, last year. It was like it had a resonance for me. When I saw it, I'm like, "Oh my God, I've got a workshop. I've got an office that need cleaning, I'm going to try." And I followed it and it was phenomenal. Now, I have procrastinated on getting them redone again, right? Here we are year later, they need a reset. And so it's like, if I procrastinate too much longer, I'll be showing back up at Nikki's workshop again.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's okay.
James Ochoa:
And so, it is, because what that's personal to me, it fit for me. And the way that you designed it allow people to have flexibility. So I've said a lot there about customizing. I gave you quite a winding answer so we could jump off of that, but that's what I mean by customizing.
Pete Wright:
Well, I do want to jump off of that because you, I mean, your greatest gift to me was through your emotional storms book, understanding EDS, Emotional Distress Syndrome. That is one of the things that has changed the way I live my life. Right? I become a storm chaser or a storm watcher. I mean, I feel like I'm someone who really tries to recognize when I'm going to become in a compromised state and try to figure out, what are the tools and strategies I have to get to the other side of that?
I want to know how counterbalancing emotional distress with customized approaches works for you. And part of that is because when we think of emotional distress from a therapeutic perspective, there are some interventions that you do when you're in distress. How does that relate to customizing your interventions?
James Ochoa:
So when you're customizing your interventions, and say we're taking the emotional and mental stress. Say I, let's just take my favorite one of current because I'm doing some more business development, here we go. And so imposter syndrome, here it comes. Okay? So how am I going to customize a support system or a strategy on managing the imposter syndrome? And I have changed my strategies for many years from either talking to myself about, I know who I am, so if I believe everyone's going to suddenly stop seeing me, I'm no longer going to be an expert. Someone's got to look behind the curtain. Those feelings start to come up, which they still do. Okay? Being asked to write the forward for your book was a great imposter syndrome storm for me. Now, many other people may not know that. Okay, that's an internal, inside kind of space.
And so with that, I do things like I will talk with others, I will call my best friend. I will say, "Okay, this is happening again." And that's beneficial to me, but getting through this one, there's been a difference in how I see myself from a straight point of view, and it's a little hard to describe because it has more to do on the resourcing spectrum. It's like, how do I fulfill myself or buoy myself up in this case? So if I took the imposter syndrome space, I buoyed myself up by doing things like, oh, I went and read Focus Forward. I went and read about the mayday mayday, the worst storm in the world. Okay, so I helped myself by things I wrote to help myself. I don't know where that layering comes from, Pete, but that's what I talk [inaudible 00:10:15].
Pete Wright:
Well, because when you're in a state of imposter syndrome, reading your own words feels like they were written by somebody else.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right, yeah.
James Ochoa:
Right, and then suddenly I can go, oh, look, who's the author of this book? Oh, wow, it's me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hey.
Pete Wright:
He's pretty clever.
Nikki Kinzer:
I can do this. Yeah.
James Ochoa:
[inaudible 00:10:28]. Now, so that's a customizing strategy for something as emotional or as internal as imposter syndrome. If I took something like, okay, I got to figure out where to put my keys because I keep losing them. And for me, it's near a panic attack when I cannot find my keys when they're in the right place. I just looked up on my desk because I know they're in my hip bag, and it gives me a little bit of comfort. But when I put my keys in that place, and it's a strategy and that first one feels good to me.
There is a period of time in which suddenly I can start to forget that or it doesn't work anymore. Right? We talk about being consistently inconsistent, and I can get really nervous about that. This one changed. Well, I didn't wear a hip bag or carry a hip bag for years. My wife got one, she wanted me to get one. Okay, I got one. At work, sat around for six months, and suddenly I started filling it and I wanted to put my keys in there, but my keys weren't in the same place as they were before. So I go through this little trepidation and nervousness. Is it going to work? Is it going to work? I try it and it works, and it kind of starts to connect. Okay, that's what I mean by personal. I played with it, it feels a little tenuous. I'm not sure if this is... All those things are normal, but now my keys are living in my hip bag, and that's where I know where they live. They might've been lost once in the last year.
Nikki Kinzer:
And you did it on your timeframe too, which I think is really important, is that you were given the idea from your wife like, I think this might be a good idea for you. But it sat for six months and that's okay, right? That's part of your ADHD for it, and that's your pace, that's your timeframe and we have to be okay with that.
James Ochoa:
Well, we do, and it affects others because I'm sure my wife in that six months probably said something to the effect of, "Are you going to use the hip bag you bought? It's just going to hang there?" And not in a negative way, not like that, but the supportive, you really wanted to, and I just wasn't ready. When was I ready? When I was ready. And so that's what we have to go back to be is this, when am I ready? When do I know it fits for me? There's that internal guidance. There's the radar system inside me that I can connect to now that has been there all along, it's just been wiped out with stress. And until we start to deal with that mental and emotional stress, we can't even feel that barometer inside of us.
Pete Wright:
Well, it's been there all along, but also intermittently reinforced with negative responses, because I can go months and have my keys always hanging right there on the wall on the little hook. They're hanging separate from the rest of the family's keys because then I can see them. And when they're not there that one time, it's invariably the one time that I have to leave the house right now. And that's when the panic attack, that's when the emotional storm actually hits, because I'm at a point of readiness and my accessories are not. And that's the challenge.
James Ochoa:
Exactly, and so when those things happen, you can't predict and I mean, you can't predict, how do you resource them? I immediately, when I hear you say that, I'm like, okay, what's my backup plan? Okay, I always think, I know where my wife's extra key is to my car in the bureau. My head goes right through that. So I think personal strategies are super important, and customizing is critical.
But the second layer is important. It's like, okay, what's the contingency plan if something gets missed here? Because that can always help me feel like I'm a little more resourced as well. And for some people, they're like, God, I can barely get one strategy put together. I'm like, you start putting these together over time, and you start really trusting yourself, if you feel good about what they're, you begin to think about, okay, well if this happens, I'm going to make sure this is over here so that those support each other. We all do that naturally.
I mean, think about when you go to get dressed and you like preferences of clothes, and you go, okay, this green looks good on me. I'll put this beautiful little brown hat on. I mean, it's like you're customizing there, so why not customize into your own life? I just really want people on the ADHD spectrum to understand, you have it inside of you. Okay? I needed it, getting in touch with it, sifting for it, all those things are critical.
Pete Wright:
I love that message, because I think it should be diagnostic at the level that we take for granted what we already do naturally, and think we're incapable of doing it. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
I was talking to somebody just this week, and he kept telling me that he didn't feel like he had a lot of self-awareness. And I'm like, actually, you do. You really have... I mean, first of all, you have self-awareness that you don't think you have self-awareness, right?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
And-
Pete Wright:
That is the ultimate own goal.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah, and then I kind of pointed out some different areas where, no, this is you being aware. And so I think yeah, I think it's so easy for the ADHD mind just to assume that, oh, well, this isn't going to work because it's never worked before, or I tried it once and it doesn't work and the strategy doesn't work or something's wrong with me. And so we're trying to break that.
Yeah, yeah, but I do have a question for you because mentioned this a couple of times of resourcing ADHD, and I just want to be really clear what that means.
James Ochoa:
So in resourcing ADHD, I'm talking about support mechanism that will not only support your diagnosis, so we could go to medication that's going to support you in your diagnosis, all the way to the customized way that I set up my bed to sleep at night. That's a resource. So it's a way I support myself-
Nikki Kinzer:
Got it.
James Ochoa:
... to manage the neurological, genetic, developmental condition. Not going away, my hair color, height and weight. Okay, how am I going to take care of who I am in a normal way? So that I like the word resourcing because it has such a wide spectrum-
Nikki Kinzer:
I do too, yeah.
James Ochoa:
... of understanding to me. And little spoiler alerts here, you always get these because I love being on this show, but it's like, okay, I'm writing the second book and we're talking about resourcing a lot because I would say in the last eight years, that's really what I've done, is dive into, how do I support who I am in the most meaningful way possible? And now I just expand it, okay. And I'm expanding it, I think that's an infinite expansion.
And so one of the things which I thought of earlier on the ideas of resourcing, and this is a little bit of the spoiler alert, is in the new book, we're going to have something called an internal barometer. How do you develop your own internal barometer for understanding your ADHD and how you manage it and how you navigate it?
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
James Ochoa:
That's a very different way of thinking about it, and they're very functional terms. We're not talking about, oh, I'm broken and I need a crutch, I need something to prop me up. No, we have an internal way of having a barometer, just like the weather. This goes really well with the storms idea, right? It's like, okay, we know the pressure's dropping. Uh-oh, here comes a storm, or maybe that's reversed because my sequencing issue might've just flipped that, but those are the things we're working about. So does that help you understand resourcing a little bit?
Nikki Kinzer:
It does, absolutely. And I do want to go back and review what EDS is, emotional distress syndrome, because this is so much of what the first book is, and it sounds to me like the second book is going to be also the resourcing of ADHD and how it plays into the counterbalance of EDS. And for people that are either new to the show or haven't listened to some of the past shows, can you just give us a, yeah, viewpoint of what that is?
James Ochoa:
So the emotional distress syndrome was the, I say now, that's the piece of ADHD treatment and working with it, that would not go away. Meaning it wouldn't resolve, we really couldn't find a support system for it that was going to be meaningful. And after 15 or 20 years of being in the field with a lot of abject failure with clients and myself, I began to see, okay, the mental and emotional stress of ADHD is all the mental and emotional disruption, chaos, disorganization, it spins off the neurological mindset of what ADHD is and what happens in the mind and the brain.
And with that spinning off, it's very easy to see it as a storm and it comes in patterns. And so coining that back in 2003 and '04, really helped me begin to help my clients differently because they understood weather from a very simple point of view. It doesn't go away and it changes all the time. It's like, oh, my hair color, height and weight, if I'm too tall for a door frame and I don't duck every time I get under a door frame, I'm going to hit my head.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think of the calm before the storm too, right? You're having this really great day, and then the next day the storm comes, yeah.
James Ochoa:
Yes, yes, and so that internal kind of space of hours of kind of reading our own weather patterns, is critical. And that's what this customizing comes into. That's where it starts, is being able to do that and stay connected to yourself.
Pete Wright:
Can we sidebar just a little bit on how the brain is working in and leveraging resourcing? From the perspective of neuroplasticity, right? We know our brain is constantly rewiring itself based on signal. What is your perspective on how that plays into EDS, counterbalancing EDS with ADHD? What's your brain doing?
James Ochoa:
Well, it's huge in the ideas of neuroplasticity. If you look at post-traumatic stress disorder as a disruption to the body and the mind and the soul and all these other pieces, and we talk about the emotional distress syndrome of ADHD being a microtrauma at the very least, right? That I'm constantly disrupted. So I have these little disruptions going on. So mind is in a state of hypervigilance or awareness or using mental energy, in a way it may not necessarily need to, but it thinks it does.
So when I start becoming aware of my ADHD, I began to educate myself. Those neural nets begin to calm down to some degree because now I know something I didn't know before. So the hypervigilance is like, oh, okay, that's how my putting my keys in this proposition works. So over time, when you continue to do that, you begin to relax the brain in a way, much very much like it's a metaphor only in the muscle idea, but the idea of relaxing a muscle. So as you do that, you're freeing up mental energy, you're freeing up capacity, you're freeing up creativity, you're freeing up a sense of relaxation. Now suddenly, I can wonder about things. I can be curious about that. So curiosity and wonderment and observation, all those things are key, key elements, what you get out of the major storms and understand where they've come from, to begin customizing and building this next step.
And so when you're doing that in the brain, and this is what they show with mindfulness, what they show with ongoing support of compassion and empathy for yourself, the brain starts to rewire itself so that it has it's thing of a reservoir. It's like I feel resourced. I feel like I have backup. I feel like two or three things can happen, and I'm not so thrown off my game that two years later I try to figure out which way I am again. And that happens to us with ADHD all the time. People who are untreated, they're like two or three storms happen in a row. I see it time and time again. Someone who's 40, 45 life is doing well, never been diagnosed, completely get thrown off their game. Career, something happens, something major happens in the family, they can't get themselves back on like they used to. They can't use the same kind of energy.
And so for those individuals, this whole idea of neuroplasticity is, you get into a space of customizing on how you look at your life. You can relax into some degree. It changes the neural patterns in your brain. I am so less reactive, not completely unreactive as my wife would help to remind me, but it's much better. And it has, and my meditation practice is at an all-time, strange high. I'm doing some meditative practices right now that are just really deepening my sense of resource in some really fun ways.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think what's so beautiful about that is that it happens, I think the rewiring happens, it starts happening pretty quickly. Right? And I guess where I'm going with that is, is especially when you're dealing with microtraumas, right? The lowercase T traumas that we all live with, right? How long does it take to use these resourcing tools to find that place of positive self-image again, right? Where we actually can like ourselves again?
James Ochoa:
Well, I think you start having the whisp of that positive self-image come through. You feel good for a little while. You can almost compliment yourself. You can hear someone's compliment from someone else and that says, "Wow, that was a great strategy you came up on where to put your keys," and you don't immediately dismiss it, okay, or discount it. And so it happens in small ways, Pete, but it's like you start feeling a cool breeze come through every now and then. It's like, oh, I almost felt happy today. Oh wow, I did feel happy last week, for a little while. And you'll notice, and those things grow on themselves, but remembering that when we're talking about rewiring the brain, we're also talking about moving the Titanic. We're moving something that's got a huge ship to it. Maybe the Titanic's not the best metaphor.
Pete Wright:
That's a pretty dark metaphor, James. Thanks for taking us there.
James Ochoa:
That's where my brain is at because let's go to a luxury [inaudible 00:25:31].
Pete Wright:
Utopia of the seas, that's my brain.
Nikki Kinzer:
A really nice yacht.
Pete Wright:
Exactly.
James Ochoa:
I have a nice yacht that's got a four-bedroom [inaudible 00:25:40]. Like the yacht I could send you the picture of, my wife took, Nikki. And I told my kids, "We're going to sell our home and just buy this yacht."
Nikki Kinzer:
Buy this.
James Ochoa:
"This is what we're going to live on."
Pete Wright:
Did you know we were in yachters now?
James Ochoa:
That's how much [inaudible 00:25:56]. What it's going to cost, I'll be living on this pier here outside of Seattle.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
James Ochoa:
So, but what we did just right here was flip a little bit of a possible storm. Here I am an expert, oh my God, I throw up a dark metaphor. What do I do? I'm able to with good friends, feel safe, laugh about it, and run the other way with it and go somewhere. Now, that's neuroplasticity. Okay? Being able to run those highways and feel really good about this, and maybe I'll have a little imposter or reflection 24 hours from now about, oh my God, I can't believe what I said, but I don't think so. I don't think so. I feel safe, and that's another key element to this when you're looking at ADHD treatment. You've got to feel safe, you've got to feel heard, you've got to feel validated and witnessed. All those things to me are, by the way, on the resource as well. All those things are critical.
Pete Wright:
That's why I love the term neuroplasticity. It's in the name, like it's rubber. The entire metaphor for me is look, when I'm confronted with something that's causing me to go down one path, I have to bounce. I have to go in a new direction.
James Ochoa:
All right, so here's a fun space to think about, because this will reference the show we did I think a year ago when I, when Nikki so graciously set you up in the most beautiful way. So when we were going to look at your life history around your video.
Pete Wright:
Great, great, yes, I remember it.
James Ochoa:
[inaudible 00:27:27].
Pete Wright:
I remember it. Yeah.
James Ochoa:
Yes, I'd be interested, how's that feel now? But it's like thinking about back at that day, okay, that's neuroplasticity in its best accord because you can go back and mine things and get things from your life history you didn't know were there.
I have such an incredible one, that I grew up in such a loving, chaotic, immersed, disorganized family. It was, and I'd say loving first because I know that that was there with my parents, thankfully. But there were three bedrooms, one bath, 10 people living in the house, eight kids, three dogs. It's just a prescription for insanity. Well, at eight years old, I used to go lock the door in the bathroom and put a towel underneath it so no one could hear, and I'd raise, I'd fill the bathtub up to where it went over the overflow valve with a wash cloth, and I would soak under the water where I could still breathe certainly, until the water got cold. I didn't remember that until day one, until I started really dealing with the stress and the trauma in my life, and suddenly it came back. That is a brilliant thing to do as an 8-year-old. Oh my God, what a great way to resource yourself.
So you will find those little hidden gems as I'm talking about, and you found some that day when we were on the podcast. That's what's waiting for you. They're all back there. Your imagination, the coloring books you colored in, the imaginary friends you had as a kid in your head that were near and dear to you, those are the things that get pushed out to me under trauma, because it's a survival instinct response, and so all that other stuff gets pushed out. But it can push back in, they're still there. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really special. Does that change, have you seen any or experienced any change in how practitioners are helping others with ADHD sort of writ large, not just in your own practice? Are there any trends we're noticing that embrace some of this capacity?
James Ochoa:
I do, and I think the biggest trend we have over the last five to 10 years is a neuro divergent language, okay, that we're on a spectrum of understanding.
God, I was looking back, I'd stumbled upon this back in the mid '90s of neurodevelopmental learning theory, which is, how does your mind develop along the lines of learning? For attention and memory and organizational and strategies, and all these other things. Everyone does it different, okay, and people with ADHD are outside those norms many times, and that's why we get... So the idea of divergency is critical. I think that's probably the biggest movement, and the idea that there is a way that we see the world that is meaningful and functional. It may be a rare or an unusual piece that you see out there, but I see more and more of the courage and the confidence of, this is who I am, this is how I work. I see so much of that going on, and that's where I think a lot of the work is coming from is. And I even hesitate to say normalizing, because it's already normal. Okay? It's just how we've done it.
I've been actually working personally with an autism specialist. I don't have autism, but he's just a very good neuro divergent counselor. Even looking back to my life history in the last year and a half, I found some fascinating things at this point, but working with a counselor who was trained in a completely different school of therapy than I was 30 years ago. He was trained 12 years ago, and he was trained in that normalizing divergent model, and he has high functioning autism himself, and he's an incredible therapist. And I'm just like, that's the kind of thing we're looking for, Pete. Where people are embracing you for who you are, not how you're supposed to be or what I can diagnose you as. I still want to just get away from it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and I love how you're talking about resourcing your ADHD, because it's also why we named the book, Unapologetically ADHD, is that it is embracing that this is how you think, this is how you process, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing that you need to apologize for, and when you're resourcing your ADHD, you are supporting yourself and advocating for yourself. And I think that's such an important message, that we're not here to fix it, we're not here to give you step one, two, three, and four, and this is going to make everything okay. It doesn't work that way, yeah.
James Ochoa:
Right, and because we now know it's not a fix thing. There may be a healing that needs to happen. There may be a reorientation to understanding who I am or going back to who I always was, and I think those things are critical. And you're exactly right, both in your new brilliant book about ADHD, the unapologetically, I love the word because it's almost difficult to say, but not really, and it grabs you.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's hard to spell.
James Ochoa:
But when you say it, you go, wait a minute, I don't have to apologize for anything. I can be who I am and what I am, and so it's got such a great content, but that whole book is about customizing. That's exactly why I loved it. That's why I was so thrilled to be able to write the forward for it.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I think, I mean, when you talk about neuro divergent language, the fact that we are starting to see and hear people who come on the show, who talk to us about how ADHD is less effective to think of it as a single spectrum, but more like an abacus. Like a 30 row abacus, because everybody is weighted with ADHD in different areas differently, right? And it's not just attentive and hyperactive, right? There are many different sensory experiences that go into ADHD, and I think that language is something that's so satisfying and it plays straight into this resourcing conversation. And I guess, if I'm a listener of this conversation, I'm thinking, okay, let's just say I take Pete's abacus metaphor. What is our 8:00 AM day one strategy for figuring out how to start resourcing my most impacted experiences with ADHD? How do I get to know myself at a way that I can start resourcing?
James Ochoa:
In that space to begin with, gives you a completely different framework because suddenly I'm looking at it not as something that is wrong with me, but okay, this is where my challenge is. And so I know that between 10:00 and 12:00 every day, I get distracted or my medication starts to wear off, or my boss is always going to come in and do X,Y, or Z. Huh, if I looked at my abacus, I could start, and here comes another critical thought for me. This is a piece of strategy that I learned in 2009 when I did a neuroscience executive coaching program, which is a critical change factor for me on the ADHD spectrum because it started looking at the science of the mind and how it develops insight and action. Okay?
And one of the simplest things you can do on that, if you took this, it's like, what on my abacus in a way I could have never thought would help me resource that challenge? I wonder what I could use? So you start doing this kind of curious observation, but you use what's called open-ended question. How could I see it in a way I haven't before? One of my resources could work me in a way I might not have ever used. I wonder what is a good friend who could help me think this out for me? Now I'm kind of walking around the outside of it.
The mind works in such a beautiful way for insight and action, that when you ask it open-ended questions like that, it can pop out insights and actions that create enthusiasm and natural motivation, and this is that I'm excited about it. Okay? It's not a linear process in the brain that says, "One plus one equals two." Sometimes I can have those insights immediately that we would call epiphanies, or insightful thinking, or I get it now. We all do this naturally, but you can practice this element of resourcing by just using open-ended questions in where your challenges are in life. I mean, that's something I learned 14 years ago, and it's just such a critical insight to the brain that if you don't know that, we use it because you go, okay, I brainstorm and a come up with an idea. What if I used open-ended questioning all the time to resource my ADHD? Which by the way is what I've been doing for the last 14 years. And if you'll excuse the term, pretty damn successful in managing this, and I feel proud of it.
It was, we were in some serious failure back in '04 and '05. I had some serious consideration that I don't know if I can keep doing it, if it's this painful and full of suffering. This is not something I feel like I signed up for. So, I went out on a little diatribe there, but it's just like... you know?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that the open-ended questions, and it goes back to curiosity too. Just being curious, not judgmental, just being curious.
Pete Wright:
I think so much of what you have gone through and the story that you just told is, it's such a success story for those who are in the middle. And I'll even take your metaphor of the storm another level. There is an eye in the middle of the storm where things are calm and you trick yourself into thinking that it's over and it's not over. And I think that's the space where you can trick yourself and get caught up in focusing on how others are looking at you.
As we get toward wrapping up, can you give us some thoughts on how you deal with how others perceive you and your ADHD EDS experience?
James Ochoa:
Yeah, so we will just pick that imposter syndrome right back up again. That's still my critical one, and it just drives me insane. How do I deal with that? But I love the metaphor of the eye of the storm, but the reality is us with ADHD, anyone with any neurology in today's planet, technology, information and stress going on, none of us truly get out of storms on an ongoing basis. You learn to manage within them. You learn to resource yourself and put on the right gear.
What do I do when others are looking at me and looking at, you're a success story, but you still have all this stress and has all these things going on? I'm like, look, folks, I'm becoming more real as they go. Okay? [inaudible 00:39:02]. Who knows what will happen when I use this metaphor? I feel a little bit like the Velveteen Rabbit to myself. Okay? I'm becoming more and more loved and and more tattered in some ways, not in bad ways, but just that I love who I am and I love what I do, and I've really worked on that in the last couple of years. And people are like, "Well, you were already working on it." I'm like, "I don't know that there's an end to it."
So, what do I do when others look at me? I'd say, "Look, this is who I am. This is normal. Who are you?" This is the other thing that I do, is I will flip it on others, not in a bad way, but say, "Okay, tell me your story. Tell me something that's odd or unusual?" So I have the confidence and the courage. I couldn't have told that 8-year-old bathtub story, even five years ago.
Pete Wright:
Well, that was kind of a follow on question. How does that snapshot of today look when you compare it to the snapshot you would've given yourself when you turned 30?
James Ochoa:
I feel like a different person. I feel like when I was 30, I, boy, when I was 30, I was still in graduate school. I barely knew anything about myself, but I was still surviving and actually thriving well, if I look back at it, in ways that were unusual and strange, but I sure couldn't tell anyone about them. I can tell people now, okay? Okay, I can go ahead and confidently say on a national podcast, I think I can [inaudible 00:40:38].
So in my graduate school in the late '80s, early '90s, it required a lot of reading. I have some serious problems with language, along with ADHD. I have dysgraphia, very messy handwriting. I don't read textbooks. I just don't. I can't read them well, and I don't read them pretty much at all. Okay? I read probably 10, maybe 20% of the textbooks that were required in my graduate school. I came out with a 3.67. Okay? I know what I know. How did I learn it? I asked questions of the professor. I set up a study group from the very beginning. I stood up in the introduction class of my graduate psychology program and took my hyperactivity and impulsivity to bear and just say, "I'm looking for people to study with and to drive to and from the graduate school to." I found four people that I became dear friends with all the way through graduate school. Okay?
So I can tell that story now courageously, that I don't learn the same way. There's a reason I don't have a PhD or an MD behind my name, academic stress. I could go do it, it's not where I want to spend my mental and emotional stress. I learn in ways that work really well for me.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's a great story.
Pete Wright:
That is the perfect story for this kind of a thing. And the fact, if I'm going to center in on one thing, it's, I am a different person, right? A different person, and I think with each decade I would reflect the same thing. With each decade I age, I am more confident about talking about the things I'm scared of because of the way my brain works. And I was not that guy. Like you said, I couldn't tell anybody about how I was doing it, but I did it. I figured it out.
James Ochoa:
And it's what you did Pete, when we did that podcast way back about your life history. Really, seriously. I mean, you marched through that, you learn some things, you'll continue to learn from it, and you're not the same person. And that's what, that neuroplasticity, right? That's change, that's all these things happen.
So I do feel like I'm 63 and I'm a little coming out of the final shell into the backend of my life that... By the way, my current goal is living to 111 because I like one, so.
Nikki Kinzer:
Me too.
James Ochoa:
Triple one sounds good to me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
James Ochoa:
Right? So I turned 60 and someone said three years ago, "Well, how old are you going to live to?" And I said, "111 sounds good to me." Well, here's the strangest thing on the ADD spectrum, it has provided the most fascinating toehold of self-care, both physically, mentally, strength wise. I'm in better shape than I have been, ever, just I think from this little bitty pieces that I threw out there hyperactively and impulsively that made sense to me. Okay, well, yeah at 111, I want to be at my birthday party waving at everybody. [inaudible 00:43:39].
Nikki Kinzer:
With your hat on.
James Ochoa:
With my hat on, I'll take the hat. 40, 50 years from now, I'm like, that's not long way. My wife's like, "Are you sure you want to live [inaudible 00:43:50]?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that's a whole life.
James Ochoa:
Like, what?
Pete Wright:
You got a lot of choices.
James Ochoa:
[inaudible 00:43:53].
Pete Wright:
That's fantastic.
James Ochoa:
I really love being on here because it just, I really get a chance not only to be who I am, but to help others help themselves, and that's what we're after.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
James Ochoa:
It's really what we're after. Y'all's book is going to do that to give people a planning space to really step into themselves and say, "Okay, what is my work? What are the things that work for me?" It's great.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you, James, so much for being here.
James Ochoa:
[inaudible 00:44:20].
Pete Wright:
And I like twos, so I'm going to go all the way to 222. Let's just see what science can do.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, wow. Hey.
James Ochoa:
Oh, I like that.
Pete Wright:
There you go. James, you are doing so much awesome stuff right now in addition to sneaking out this second book that's coming, but tell us what do you want to tell people about what you're working on? What can we get people to attend with you?
James Ochoa:
Several pieces I'm doing. So the new book has got a title, I love that it's already got its title, which is, When the Shiny Wears Off: Navigating the Lifetime Storms of Adult ADD. The ones that don't go away, and what do we do about them then? I am doing it, if you're in and around Texas or close to here on October 19th, I'm doing an all day live training here called Living Well With ADHD. I'll offer all your listeners an additional 20% off the fee, and I'll give you'll codes for that.
Pete Wright:
Great, great.
James Ochoa:
So that's the first time I've done in eight years, a live training. So I've got an enormous amount of new information in the resourcing spectrum. I'm just so thrilled about this eight hour day I'm going to be playing in, and certainly I still have ADHD Town Hall going. We were in season six, six week webinar to really use as a touchstone to come back and evaluate where you are on your ADHD spectrum [inaudible 00:45:37].
Nikki Kinzer:
Which is fantastic because I participated last year and it was great. Yes, very supportive community.
James Ochoa:
We're all different. They're all different, and they're all fun, and so it starts in late October. And I've got some other things behind the scenes around course development and those things are going on. It's a little too early to talk about those, but I'll give you'll a little spoiler alert, that, how much do I know in 35 years about ADHD? I don't even recognize how much I know anymore, and I'm hoping, I'm looking at working to develop courses on ADHD spectrum across the spectrum. Children, adolescents, parents, adults. They get the best way for me to get information out there that can stay out there and continue to resource people long term, long after I'm gone. Well, maybe 111, I've still got a while to go.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, that's fantastic.
Pete Wright:
Well, it's beautiful. James, thank you as always for hanging out with us. It is an honor to be in your orbit.
James Ochoa:
Yeah, so much, so much fun. So much fun.
Pete Wright:
Thank you for the gift. And for everybody else, we'll put the links to Jame's resources, Jamesochoa.com, in the show notes, and we'll include whatever codes James sends us for you. We'd love to give you a shot at hearing directly from James. Thank you so much, and I think that that's all we have to talk about today. My goodness, it feels like it's been so long since I've done a non-book related outro. I don't even know how to close the show anymore.
We sure appreciate you downloading and listening to our show. Thanks for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to this 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. We're going to be hanging out for a little bit longer, we've got people who've been chatting and asking questions. And for members, you get the bonus extended edition of this episode where you hear James answer all those questions in just a moment.
So on behalf of the wonderful James Ochoa and Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
