Beyond Task Management: Exploring ADHD and Emotions w/Valerie McIntyre

In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Valerie McIntyre, a Licensed Professional Counselor, an ADHD-Certified Clinical Services Provider, and the author of A Journey to a Valiant Mind, a book that dives into navigating ADHD with resilience and self-compassion.

In our conversation, we dive into how ADHD isn’t just about task management, but how, more often than not, it's also about emotional regulation. Valerie talks about the complex emotions that come with ADHD, especially for late-diagnosed individuals, and how those feelings often get tangled up with shame and self-judgment. We also touch on how perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, and even seemingly small tasks can build up into emotional barriers. Valerie’s approach emphasizes compassion, and this episode is filled with tools to help you break free from self-doubt and cultivate a more positive, empowered relationship with your ADHD.

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William Curb: I'm so glad you're here. This is a topic I really like exploring more, which is like the emotional side of ADHD, which in many ways is kind of like overlooked. I mean, I know some of the reasons that it is with like, it's kind of hard to measure your emotions. Like that's not a very concrete thing to like be like, oh yeah, this person's 10 angry and that person's 5 angry.

Valerie McIntyre: Yeah, those skills are, I never know how to answer them myself to be honest with you. Am I a 10? Am I a 5?

William Curb: Or like the pain chart at the doctor where they're like, what face are you making? People with like chronic pain are like, according to that chart, I'm a 1. According to how I feel, I'm an 8.

Valerie McIntyre: Yes, most definitely. Yes, the emotional side of ADHD. And this topic for me is kind of twofold, because there is internalized cognitive schemas, if you will, that have developed over time, which shaped someone's emotional responses and how they view it. So the reason I wrote my book A Journey to a Valiant Mind is because I primarily work with people with ADHD. And most of my sessions are not about like, let's focus on a task. Let's break things down into steps to complete something. Mainly because most of the people in there, and myself including I do have ADHD as well, we're not aware of all the time where our symptoms present itself.

I work with a lot of older people who got late diagnosed or didn't realize that a lot of their emotional struggles were secondary to underlying ADHD. They internalized, I just can't think straight, I never have my shit together, I'm lazy, if I'm just motivated, I just don't care enough. And that shapes how a person sees themselves and how they see the task that they approach. So a person who could be struggling with perfectionism and memory and trying to do really well at something could be the biggest avoider.

And they avoid it because they know how much of a mental struggle that's going to be to a degree. Their fight-flight-or-freeze kicks in. So it's like, I'm not going to even tackle that goal because it takes so much mental effort that I'm going to avoid it and I'm going to self-sabotage by saying, I just don't feel like it, I just don't want to, I don't like to be told what to do. There's a lot of defense mechanisms built around this because of that internalized message, which does shape how we see ourselves and how we interact with any emotion.

William Curb: Yeah, we're already rippin' off the stuff that we were talking about before the podcast with this, like what makes something hard or easy. And oftentimes, we're not thinking about a task being hard because it's physically hard, but because how we activate on it is hard. And that's often attached to the emotions we have with it.

Valerie McIntyre: Definitely. I absolutely love, Brendan Mehan's, the idea of the Wall of Awful, and actually include that in the book because I loved the metaphor that there was this invisible wall that we hit. It can be something as simple as paying a parking ticket or going online and paying a bill, but we hit this wall and for whatever reason, we either freeze or we tried to go around it by doing other things. Like that's the best time if you want to organize a closet, is doing a task that you don't want to do, or we get ourselves so angry, maybe we're getting, late fee messages or something, and then we push our way through it.

I love that example, and I think I have felt that way with a lot of things. And I think the wall also represents the failures that we had in the past, but for me as well, it's not just about going online and paying that bill. It is, well, first I have to remember the website, then I had to remember what my password is, my username, or maybe that email or phone number that I used to register for that stuff is no longer the one that I still use and no longer have access to. What's my account number? Where the heck did I put that statement at?

How much do I have to pay again? It's so many little steps because everything is so disconnected that it makes something so tiny into this huge thing. And I know I would feel embarrassed to talk about that openly, and I think a lot of people with ADHD feel that as well. So we just say, oh yeah, I forgot, or yeah, I'll do that later, or I will, because there's a lot of shame in there. Why are these simple things so difficult?

William Curb: Brendan is fantastic, and I love his stuff. And yeah, that idea that it's not just the task now, it's how we performed on that task in the past and how we perceived how we performed on that task. So it doesn't matter if we can be like, oh yeah, I paid my bills and I did it on time, but it's like maybe in our head, we're like, yeah, but I waited till the last minute. That doesn't count now. I should have been more responsible.

And so then we're like adding this other brick of like perceived failure, even though by all accounts, we did what we were supposed to do. And I think that that perception part really plays in here because our perception is often really colored by our emotions, like how we know, going through the book, there's like chapters talking about recognizing emotions and other people. And like, it's that perception of like, oh, is that person angry at me or did they have a bad day? And they're just kind of like, I don't want to talk to anyone.

Valerie McIntyre: And it's hard because we can be so hard on ourselves. And whether that comes out as being defensive and being like, what's your problem? But inside we feel like, did I do something? And there's always that doubt because maybe we don't know if we were talking too much or too little. Did we forget something? Did we say something? Because we're not always paying attention or aware. And I think that when I reflect on like just being a child and how much was I aware of why I was getting into trouble, you know, why I was getting disciplines or when I was told, stop that, what are you doing?

And here I'm like, oh, I don't know what am I doing? And I think that's also too like, and there's a lot of this in the book as well, is that with rejection sensitivity, which is just a word or to use to describe symptoms that people feel. It's a great to have word for that rejection sensitivity, even though it's not a diagnostic criteria. But we have experienced that so much that when something happens, whether it's real or perceived, we feel that so much.

And that can even go to the extreme is that we avoid social interactions because not that we fear people, we fear the pain that that rejection causes. So it's, oh, yeah, I can cognitively get that if someone didn't respond to my text message, that they could be busy or maybe they forgot about it. But that emotional reaction is like, you know what, I don't want to deal with it. So I'm not going to even bother to send a message.

William Curb: And that's also something I've found too is not something that is always like, we're very cognitively aware of. We just unconsciously are like, is like, I have this negative feeling towards doing this thing. And so our brain doesn't prioritize doing it. Not like, we're not going A to B to C to D, we're just like, bad feeling, don't do it. Or even like, it's because of our interest based way of doing things, we're not interested in doing things that and so we don't have this internal thought process, like, I'm gonna just not do that. It's like a lot of the things where I'm skipping, I'm like, I didn't even think about it.

Valerie McIntyre: You know, what I find fascinating about adding neuroscience into this is how our brain is designed to filter out information that it doesn't find relevant to our narrative. So your perception could be very different than mine, because your brain is going to pick up on details within your environment that you have registered as important. Mine is very different. So recently, we had a really big storm in Pittsburgh, and it knocked over like a whole bunch of trees.

And I drive the same way to work, you know, my husband sometimes drops me off. And I was like, Oh, I didn't realize that tree fell down. He was like, that's been down for like two weeks. And I'm like, I just noticed it now. Because I don't know, maybe my brain at that point didn't find that relevant to pick up in this situation, I might have been focused on other things. So with ADHDers, we're either hypo or hyper aware of our surroundings. So either we disconnect or disassociate from where we are and go off in our own world, which we're not around here.

It's like we go on this autopilot physically, but like inside, we're like, you know, probably climbing Mount Everest. And there's other times where we just can't shut it off. And everything comes in all at once. You know, I could be sitting across the room, and I'll just suddenly look over and be like, there's an ant crawling on the on the wall over there. And people are like, where? And I'm like, that little dot over there. So I think that that's fascinating with us as well. And we can't control that also. If we could, then maybe that would be a superpower.

William Curb: I mean, I think there are some aspects that we can like we can work on like with some mindfulness techniques, build up some strategies to be a little bit more focused on what we want to focus on. But it's not a just switch that we can do.

Valerie McIntyre: It's not simple as just focused or just do it. It works for Nike. Just do it, but not necessarily for me. And one thing I want to bring up too is a lot of people talk about interest based learning systems or interest based motivation. That is not all what ADHD does as well. And in fact, there is lots of ADHD years that struggle with what they're interested in. Because I don't know about you, but there are times when I can get really into something like hyper fixated on it. And then I end up like burning myself out, which I go through like a period where nothing interests me.

Like, because I can't you can't compare to that what I had before. And so a lot of ADHD years, especially high achievers like type A personalities, they run on cortisol, which is actually chronic stress. So they're the ones that need those deadlines. They're the ones that need to have every like their schedule just jam packed. They do not like unstructured time. Like they cannot relax. They have to go, go, go, go, go. And also they measure things with productivity. And if they're not being as productive, then they don't feel good about the self. So they're definitely the ones that drink a whole butt load of coffee.

And they always have never ending goals and deadlines that they have to meet, which can affect, you know, a lot of those people can have a lot of digestive issue problems, sleep problems, chronic pain issues, because of what cortisol does to the body. So we're not all about I only do what I'm interested in. It's also like sometimes I have to get so stressed out to do the thing that I have to do, or I'm obligated to do. And we can find a painful reward at the end. But I don't know if we necessarily always get that feeling. Like if sometimes we just move on to the next goal or the next task.

William Curb: So I'm being attacked on my own podcast.

Valerie McIntyre: Oh, no, I didn't mean to come off that way.

William Curb: No, it's just as a joke of like, oh, yeah, I do all of those things that it's not great. Like I've done a lot of like, okay, what means, what it means to like, you know, like celebrate your wins kind of thing. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's just go do the next task that the win is I get to keep working. I'm like, that's, that's probably not healthy. And this also plays in a lot with the perfectionism stuff I saw in the book, something I've definitely been working on. Because I remember one point having this realization that's like, oh, if I judge my worth on what I produce.

Then I can't be a perfectionist because nothing I produce will ever be perfect. And I'll never have self worth. And I'm like, then like, a couple years later, I was like, the lesson I should have taken away from that is, don't judge your self worth on what you produce. Still working on that one. But it's definitely like, yeah, it's it's hard to switch off from being driven by anxiety and being like, oh, this is because, you know, it's a great what it is very effective at like creating that motivation to do the next thing and the next thing, but it's not rewarding.

Valerie McIntyre: No, but it's addictive. Our brain loves cortisol, because that's an activator. I always think of it like, like your kids probably made slime, right? So they got their, you know, their glue and their soap. And then they have like some, you know, contact solution or whatever. And it's the the contact solution that is the activator to make the slime if you just mix glue and soap and have just a mess, right? So like, our cortisol acts and adrenaline acts like an activator. And we can get very dependent on that. And probably the main part of our brain that an amygdala region is probably a lot bigger and a lot more active than our frontal lobe. And so it needs that activation a lot. And the rest of our body hates the cortisol.

That's why the body is like, your stomach is just like, okay, can you knock it off? Like chill? I know like the order you get like I'm in my mid 40s. So it's like, I get out of bed and it's like I was ninja fighting in my sleep or something. I wake up super sore, aches and pains. And it's like, well, that stress is taking a toll on the body. It's not just age related. It's also the stress that we have. But when it goes away, it's sort of like, you know, we go through sort of like a withdrawal from it. And so that's when that restlessness is. And I honestly tell older people that is what driven by a motor is whenever you're an adult. It's that I need to keep doing something the go, go, go.

And I need, I can't let go of this stress. When you're a kid, you're running around and you're bouncing off of things, right? You're just you're into everything. An adult does that, then they look manic, right? Like, I'm not jumping off the sofas, not anymore. But now that driven by the motor is, I have to keep going and doing something and fixing something. There's always something that's stressing me out. And letting go of that is hard. But I think you put something in there a little bit ago where you said like the reward of it, it gets the job done. And maybe that's the reward because it does work out. Like, if we pulled it all nighter, and we got an A on our test, well, we stressed ourselves out.

And now that test is over, we can move on. So it's not necessarily the grade. It's the fact that, oh, I didn't fail, even though I waited until the last minute. And so that habit becomes harder to break. And we also become more dependent on like, Brendon Mehan was saying with that, like, he calls it Hulk smash, like through that wall, like habit that we have formed. So I know a lot of ADHDers that are probably more cortisol addicted, because I'll ask them like, what are your interests? And nobody can answer that. They're like, like, I like listening to podcasts, you know, or their interests just fades in and out from various different things, which I know mine does as well.

William Curb: And there's a strange relation to procrastination too. Because I'm like, oh, deadlines are very motivating, especially when they're close. And so the motivation to like get ahead is really hard to maintain if I'm cortisol driven, because then I'm like, yeah, but I'm not being ahead. That's not that's not doing work through stress. That's just doing work, unless I am trying to get ahead. I'm stressing myself out about how not ahead I am. And then I'm like, this is not a great place to be either.

Valerie McIntyre: Like in test a 22, get stressed out with trying not to be stressed out. Yeah.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's just like, okay, this is this is not the best system I've set out, like, because I know I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm really late to things because I have anxiety about being late works. But like, I need to rework some of my tools to kind of figure out how to like do that. But it's all yeah, it's it's addicting because it's it works in the sense of it gets things done, but it doesn't, you know, yeah, you would feel like, yeah, stomach issues. Oh, yeah. And got digestive issues and chronic pain and have trouble sleeping. And I'm like, yeah, I got that whole list.

Valerie McIntyre: I often hear like a lot of ADHD are like, I'm never late. And I like to correct it to say most the time I'm not late, because you're putting an expectation on yourself when you say I'm never late. So you're telling yourself this is not allowed. But there's circumstances that happen. I'm not sure where you are, but where I am, I can try to go five minutes down the road and it could take me 15, 20 minutes because of traffic. So there are oftentimes these unforeseeable events that happen. So if I say I'm never late, I'm always on time.

And then if the circumstances jeopardize that, that's why the anxiety goes up. And we get this paralyzing effect, well, we can't do anything else because we have that one thing to do. So we have to be mindful of that expectation that we put on ourselves. And like, I always admit this, since becoming a therapist, I have come to terms with being late. It's a two-way street. I have to be flexible in my thinking and also time management in sessions. Sometimes a person's going to need an extra five minutes or so or 10 minutes or so, because it's of course just at the end of session. And they finally like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I wanted to tell you, but it took me a whole 50 minutes to get here.

I don't feel that I have that right to be like, well, you're going to have to wait till next week. So the way I word it to anybody that I work with is be gracious with your time. So for both ways, be gracious if somebody needs an extra minute and be gracious if you have to wait, you know, it's fine because we all work out in the end. We all get our needs met in the end. We can't cling to something so, so hard because I know if I needed an extra 10 minutes, I would hope the doctor would do that, right?

Not just, she'll be wakes and I wouldn't feel good about it. So because I used to be like that with time, I would be so stressed about it, but that is a step I took towards letting go and not being careless with time, but saying that it is, I can look at it like an absolute or I can be flexible. So I can be like an oak tree in a storm or I can be a palm tree in a storm. So I'm going to try to be a little bit more flexible on that within reason. I'm not saying it's okay to be an hour or two late, like I'm not saying that, but it's within reason. So we're not giving ourselves an ulcer.

William Curb: Yeah. And then situationally as well, like there's certain things I'm like, oh yeah, can't be late to the bus. The bus will leave without me.

Valerie McIntyre: And the plane.

William Curb: Yeah. Yeah. But there's, you know, like meeting up with friends or something like, yeah, or, you know, when I'm jumping on for any of the meetings that I'm setting, I'm like, oh my gosh. So like, I don't know how their clocks work. They use it. You're using like a watch or just something on their wall. I don't know what they're doing. They might, for them, they might be on time or I might be late. So I don't know.

Valerie McIntyre: So that is actually a really good thing to consider is everybody's clocks because I know if I walk around my house, no clocks are the same either. So I do rely on my phone.

William Curb: As much as I try.

Valerie McIntyre: I know. I know. I rely on my phone heavily. Like it's like the absolute truth is like, okay, this says 137. That has to be exactly right. Everybody has to have that for me. But yeah, around the house, the digital clocks are all somewhat different.

William Curb: Yeah. So one of the things that I saw here that I wanted to hear a little bit more about is this concept of identity confusion.

Valerie McIntyre: The way that I see identity confusion with ADHDers is that it's like, you know, those questions that you get, and they could be simple, your kids probably get it too. Like, what is your favorite? That's like those "about me things". I always find it so odd to answer that like the concept of favors, like favorites, like favorite food, favorite book, favorite movie, favorite memory. And I know that I would think, do people think that way? Do they think this is my favorite memory? Or is it the first thing that pops into your head when you get asked that question? Also, I think like questions like in assessments that I absolutely hate is like, compared to other women of your age, do you, like do this more or less?

And I'm like, I'm even a therapist and I'm like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I don't know if I'm thinking differently than somebody else. So with identity, I figure that we all are so unique in our own mental space. And I think in the outside world, we try to label that. And we try to figure out, oh, this is what it is. This is exactly how I identify. But I think that it is like parts of us, not an absolute. Like there's parts of us that we can identify with something. I can only feel like me. I don't know what it's like to feel any other way other than me. I can relate to some things, but I'm just me. I identify as Val.

And I don't know what it's like to be Steve. And I think that's what's really confusing. And I think that when people are looking for community, like especially like on Reddit or something like that, where I feel people are looking for that community, and you find a group of people that you can really bond with and relate with. And then all of a sudden, you have those mean people out there. And then we go back, then we just feel ripped. And now we're back to being confused. Like, is this wrong? Should I not feel this way? Is this just a me thing? Am I just lazy? Am I just being sensitive?

William Curb: Yeah, I think there's a lot of aspects with our identity where we're masking or trying to fit in where it can be really hard to, we only have our perception of who we are, but then that can be kind of something where we're not as aware as we want to be or think we should be.

Valerie McIntyre: Oh gosh, no. No. And how can we be like, I'm very open about this, that I have ADHD, I did not get diagnosed until I was in my mid 30s. And that was during the time that my oldest, he's now 17, but whenever he was younger, he got diagnosed. And I worked in a pediatric neuropsych office at this point. And I'm going through the assessments and I go to my colleagues and I'm like, I do all of this stuff. Do you think I have ADHD? And they all started laughing and they were like, you didn't know? And I looked at them, I'm like, because in my head, I did pay attention. And I'm like, I got straight A's on school. So obviously, I could focus, but that's That's when I started to realize about our perception of focus, our perception of a lot of things.

Like, I did well in school, and I went to a Catholic school as well, so it was very structured, very like every day was the same. Like I think I thrived on that structure and also probably a bit fear-based with turning it in homework. But when I had to manage my own schedule, my own time, my own kids, everything, I was juggling. I was like a walking tornado. And I was, during the best that I could, in the capacity that I could, but wasn't aware of how that was being perceived by other people. And so then I started to do a lot of reflecting on, I wasn't as focused or aware as I thought. How many times did people have to go to my face and be like, are you listening?

And I could have been daydreaming for two minutes or two seconds that I couldn't tell you. So, and I still see that with clients today is that when I do have some of them that are so resistant to identifying with their symptoms as ADHD, because they still have a negative perception about what that is. And in my generation growing up, it really wasn't talked about, didn't really exist. And then when it did, it was a childhood disorder, typically in boys, then it was a behavioral issue. So, I mean, so even in my career, it has changed in perception and is only now being really recognized as neurological.

And so, if there's even still physicians and doctors and therapists that don't have a good understanding about what ADHD is and what it looks like. So I do think that it still has a negative schema around that. But on the topic of the identity stuff, I think that sometimes when people identify symptoms as characteristics of personality, it's when those trolls like those, you know, people, mean people on the internet will start to be fairly insensitive. Like everybody does that. Like nobody wants to go to work or everybody, you know, forgets things. It often makes me think about when a while ago, like TVs or television dramas used to correlate when somebody was really clean, like I am so OCD.

It has nothing to do with that diagnosis whatsoever. But it starts becoming this common language. And then that's the language that most people are exposed to. And that also gets internalized. And so I think ADHD sadly has fallen into that because I mean, you probably experience this where if you talk about it with certain people, they have this eye roll. I even heard people say that's a fake diagnosis or everybody gets ADHD. These days. And it's a very frustrating thing that happens. And I think that for individuals who do significantly struggle with this, it is just heartening because once again, we feel like we're failing at life. We feel like there's something wrong with us. And that's what's, I think, very difficult.

William Curb: When I see it, it's like, yeah, there's everyone does those things, but that doesn't make everyone a little ADHD. With ADHD people, we chronically do these things. It's something that impacts our daily like everyone forgets their keys. That happens. If I don't have a system set up to make sure that I don't do that. In college, I lost my keys for three months and I just left my door unlocked and waited by the entrance to the dorm to make sure I could get in or walked with other people.

And the reason that I didn't just get like new keys made right away is like, I'm like, I know they're just in my room somewhere and I can't find them. No matter how hard I look. And I did eventually find them in my room. And it was like one of the things I'm like, this is not something I want to do over and over again. So I'm just going to have this little work around so I don't have to admit that I lost my keys again.

Valerie McIntyre: You know, the thing I love nowadays is like, I know like my door, it uses your fingerprint to get in the door. So I'm like, I wonder if an ADHD or invented this because they kept losing their keys. But you know, you can't lose your fingers. I mean, yes, you can. But I mean, you know...

William Curb: You had other problems then.

Valerie McIntyre: Yes, right. But because, you know, cars are like that now, like everything is becoming digitized. And so, you know, it is like this might have been a person that lost their keys a way too many times to be like, you know what, you know, we can we use our fingerprint to get it on our phone. We might as well do it for our doors too.

William Curb: It's also one of those things where like you have people that are go, but nobody needs that. And it's like, you know, there are people that need it because it reminds me of the some online discourse I saw years ago about someone talking about this bagel slicer they bought and people being like, why do you need an object to slice your bagels? You can just do that. They're like, I have one. It's called a knife. And I just use my other hand and hold it.

And that's like, as people are like, yeah, the bagel slicer was for people that can't do that, that have mobility issues that needed this extra help so that they didn't have to ask someone to cut their bagels for them. And it's like, maybe if you don't see the use for a product, it means it's not for you. And that's kind of with like a lot of the ADHD stuff is like, yeah, it seems like we don't need the help because the person that's judging us doesn't need it. But it's like, no, I need these things. It is a problem when I don't have these accommodations.

Valerie McIntyre: Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely. That's even in terms of accommodations, because I know sometimes for a while a system will work and then it just doesn't. And it's like, we have to go back to that drawing board of when it stops being effective. And I think that's because like, we need to keep things in our mind space, like where we can see it, and it has to be new and fresh. But when it becomes stagnant, it just kind of goes off and we can't observe it. It's like, then the peripheral vision. So when I have clients that say, well, yeah, it works for a while and then I just stop doing it.

I try to normalize that, that yes, these accommodations will work for a while. And then when they stop, then we have to think about, OK, well, what can we do differently now that could help maintain that? And I do think that a lot of people, regardless of ADHD, can struggle with that as well. I think it just happens a bit more frequently for us where we say that never works. I'll never follow through with that. Do you have a favorite accommodation that you do for yourself to keep yourself on track?

William Curb: Currently, I mean, yeah, like having a system of sticky notes to make sure that the things I need to remember at the time, although that has become this pile of notes and like that was a good system. And now it's just, I don't know, it's in there anymore. I think really the accommodation that's like just really using my calendar for everything, like being like, I don't put tasks in there yet because I don't, I feel like that's not great for how I get tasks done.

But appointments, everything like it like if I'm going need to be someplace, it needs to be in my calendar. To the point for now, I like think back, what did I do before I use my calendar? I must have missed a lot of stuff because that's how that would have worked. But like having this like shared Google Calendar with my wife, I'm like, yeah, everything that the kids do, everything that I do and like need to be a place that it needs to be in there or else it's not real.

Valerie McIntyre: Most definitely when I was in grade school, Catholic school, they were so big on using an agenda. In fact, that writing in your agenda was mandatory. So they had everything on the board, what your homework assignment was, because there was no, you know, computers back then where you can check your dashboard. Wasn't that and the sisters would come around and they would see if you wrote the assignments down and then they would sign it at the bottom. And then you would go home and do your homework and then come back.

And but your parents had to sign that that they also observed that they saw the homework and they got it done. Another thing too, that in this thing is that they had these block times of how long it should take to do something. Now, I think just being young, I just accepted it. But now as an adult, I could see, you know what, as much as I hated it, then it actually taught me the importance of how to structure time to get tasks done and how to make it a routine. Back then, I didn't really challenge it because, you know, when you start from kindergarten and you move all the way up through high school, that's just the way that they did it.

So that was just the way it was. So when it comes to my calendar, that's exactly how it is with my appointments. And I even have block times in my calendar. It's always the color red where these are certain tasks that I need to get done during that time. So it's like, oh, this is a great time that I could, you know, work on the website. Or this is a good time where I can file this tax documents or this is a good time where I can do responding to all the emails that I get. And I have to tell myself what to do in that time. If not, then I can be kind of lost.

William Curb: I've done so much work on like understanding executive functions and I feel still feel like there's a lot more I could understand about executive functions.

Valerie McIntyre: Oh, yeah.

William Curb: Like I've done presentations on executive functions and then I'm like, yeah, I talked about them for like 20 minutes here and episodes about executive function. I'm like, I have a good understanding of executive function. And then I also go, do I? Like I feel like I'm still there's still a little piece there that I'm like, I need to work on getting my head around.

Valerie McIntyre: I'm wondering if what you mean is that you have the knowledge of executive functions and the definitions, the understanding, but it's the application and the generalization of those things in your life. Russ Barkley, one of my favorite quotes from him is that ADHD is not a knowing problem, it's a doing problem. We don't always do what we know. And it's that application of it. So you could have a good understanding about how to drive a car. But if you've never done it, that's a bit different than like reading it up driver's manual, you know.

And I think that's also where the metacognition comes in with that self awareness, because I don't know about you when it when I'm working on a piece of executive function with myself, it always feels that there's another side of it that seems to go down because my focus is on one area. Like if I'm working on just even planning and organizing, because that could be a challenge with like, and I actually did really well this year, I actually planned in advance of vacation rather than at the last minute. So I'm giving myself praise here. If I'm doing that, then another thing fall short because the attention is just split.

William Curb: I mean, I think that's definitely fitting in there. And I think, yeah, this is important to remember that this is not an infinite resource that I'm talking about with attention. It's not like I can just be like, well, I'm going to split my attention in two ways, and they're both going to be at 100%. If I split my attention, I don't get 50-50 either. I get like 20-20, maybe at best. All right. How about we start with, can you tell me what executive functions are?

Valerie McIntyre: It is how we break things down into our brain with specific tasks. So we could have like planning, organizing, time management, self-monitoring, shifting between tasks. A lot of people forget about shifting. And that's when like, say you have like your kids and they're playing a video game and you're like, okay, it's, you know, we have to stop that go to dinner and they just keep playing. Well, with us having an ADHD, there was a delay in that shift focus. Especially whenever we're locked into something.

So if you can think about it, if you're really, really into something and then somebody talks to you and pulls your attention away, that there's like a resistance there we don't want to do. They're like, don't break my concentration. We can get kind of snappy and irritable. So that's shifting our attention back and forth that there's a delayed response there. There's inhibition. So that's like, you know, not acting on our impulses.

William Curb: Not being incredibly snappy when someone interrupts, when we're focusing.

Valerie McIntyre: Yeah. Initiation, prioritization, working memory, emotional control. That is another huge one. And I want to like just point out that this is all controlled within the front part of the brain, the frontal lobe. And if we look at how the brain develops since we were a new, like a newborn baby, it goes from back to front, you know, because you think about it whenever you're a baby, you know, you're, you know, you're pooing, you're learning around your eyes start to focus and you start your motor coordination, your language development.

This is the last part to develop is our frontal lobe. This is where our decision making powerhouse is. This is where the brakes are formed. So we're not just acting on our impulses. Our ones or drives. It's also where I'll recall, like how we can recall certain memories that can apply to the here and now. So what I see in my belief that ADHD is executive dysfunction, that we have issues with that, and it's neurological. So yes, we can learn things to help manage our symptoms. It doesn't cure the symptoms because there is a neurological and genetic component into why the brain has not developed in this particular way.

Now, the other areas of the brain have compensated, you know, because everything finds balance, neurologically speaking. So I think that's when people tell me like it doesn't work, like that executive function tool doesn't work like planners. We talked about like the agenda. If I start talking to that, you talk to a teenager about that and they have so many tools and resources these days. Their first thing will be that don't work. And what I hear is I don't know how to apply it. I don't know how I can stick to it.

I don't know if I'm going to have the recall to know to check that or if I have to initiate even pulling that out of my binder and to look at it. There's because if we talk about that wall of awful, right? All of it is a wall of awful. Every single thing of it. Sometimes I think about our cognitive awareness is like swiss cheese. Like there's holes where like I could be planning something, but then be completely disorganized about it. It's like in my mind, it's like organized cast. Is there like an executive function, a strength or weakness that you have that you find that you try to work on?

William Curb: Going back to Russ Barkley and his view of it being kind of like this self-regulation issue, I find that it really depends where in the day and specific tasks, you know, like, and then also like if I'm, if it's self-regulation, there's only like so much self-regulation I can do before I run out of self-regulation. So it's trying to be proactively not making it.

So I have to self-regulate about things. One of the best examples I can think of is like the messy desk and being like, if I don't have a messy desk, it is easier to get work done because I'm not self-regulating, ignoring the mess. And so I think, but then that is the struggle is being preemptive on knowing what I should be doing to help with my executive functions. Not trying to do it in the moment.

Valerie McIntyre: Well, and that's the struggle, right? Because we typically can only see things that are right in front of our face because hindsight and foresight, they're all a part of our executive function. So I can want all I want to be able to see how I'm going to handle a task later on today, but it's blurry. I can't figure out what are going to be those obstacles. I can recall on my past, but that's also a weakness too. I always say, like, collect the data, carry a notebook with you or have like your notes app on your phone up and take those notes because what were the obstacles that you faced? What did you struggle with? What is something that could prepare you better the next time? Because guess what? When that next time happens, you're not going to remember that.

It's going to be fuzzy. And if I want to prepare for something, then I need to know what I've been through already. And if I have access to something, that's going to be my my toll is to have that data with me. And that's how I learn is by keeping it in right here in the front. So connecting this to like climbing our wall. So sometimes we have really odd ways of managing our executive function. It's getting a task done that on the outside observer, it doesn't look like the most effective way. It doesn't make sense to them because, you know, for them, they go from A to B, they go straight line. For us, we could go A maybe down to E, F, D, and now we're at B.

It's like twists and turns. An example of that is there's a woman that I work with. She's PhD, has a really great job. And she had these reports that she needed to get done for work. And there was a deadline by the next day. And she said, Val, I spent two hours organizing my closet. And before I could do my work, it's like I couldn't just get down and busy. I had to do something. I had to do that. And I said, well, were you able to focus after you did it? And she said, well, yeah, but I wasted that two hours.

And I said, or were you climbing your wall? And she stopped. And she was like, let me think about that. And she's like, actually, while I was organizing that closet, I was thinking about what I wanted to do with those reports, what I was worried about, what I wasn't worried about. And I'm like, so you were climbing your wall and it was frustrating because it took two hours to do. And on the positive side, you got your work done and now you have a nice clean closet. And so sometimes it's not always going to make sense. But we have to also think about like when we are anxious to and then we have our dysregulation that we start to get busy and restless.

That's going to make it really hard to concentrate. And I don't know about you, but I know to regulate myself, I can get fidgety and I could start pacing around. And that's another way we might be climbing our wall when we're trying to face even just a simple task of sitting still for a while. Not all of our executive function goals or methods are going to be this textbook picture perfect. So if you need to have a clean desk before you start a task, that's maybe a part of your process is I have to put this in order.

And now I feel like I have my zen and now I start the task. It could be just like an association that you have built. The way it's a problem, if it's like where you can't move past it and it interferes with you getting your work done and you don't get your work done because you're still focused on, I don't know, maybe it's like assembling a new desk or something like that rather than, you know, when it gets a little bit too carried away. Because some people ask me, then how do I know if it's avoidance?

At first you won't, but I think you figure it out because then you don't get the job done. And that just keeps perpetuating. But if we're climbing our wall, we're gearing up to do the thing that we want to do. And sometimes it's weird and sometimes it takes time and sometimes it doesn't make sense. So we're still doing the thing. And I think, I honestly, that's why a lot of little kids get in trouble, because as parents, we don't see that that's what they're doing.

William Curb: Yeah, we're like, just do the thing. And they're like, no, I have to do all those other stuff first. And you're like, no, really just do the thing. All right. I was wondering if you had any final thoughts you wanted to leave the audience with.

Valerie McIntyre: So I wrote A Journey To A Valiant Mind. It's navigating ADHD with resilience, self-compassion and empowerment. And this has been a journey through time that I have worked on this book, because each one of the chapters are actual sessions. Now, of course, everything has been omitted to avoid any conflicts of confidentiality, but the first part of each chapter starts as like a story of what a typical session looks like, what's talked about, what are some of the concerns that are brought up. And then I go into a step-by-step approach on how we apply skills into what that person is dealing with, like what tools could they use?

Because the one important thing I want to say is that we struggle with generalizing tools. So like one person might be dealing with perfectionism in a certain way, another person might be dealing with it in a completely different way. And our minds might have trouble connecting that. So I think telling versions of a story and how I might express my symptoms on you might express your symptoms with ADHD is really important. So more people can relate to those stories in some ways. And at the end of each chapter, I give my reflection just as a therapist with ADHD as well, what I can relate to, what I thought was really important with the session, and then also the discussion questions at the end.

So you can actually take the time and think about how you relate to some of the things that I talked about within each chapter. I tried to make it as interactive as possible because I don't know about you. I can buy a lot of books, a manuals, and then they sit on the shelf and then collect dust. So I know I need engagement and I need something that's interactive and I also need something that is personal. So I'd really tried to uncover all of that. And at the back of the book, I also have worksheets for more continued learning. And they're also downloadable too.

William Curb: Awesome. And if people want to find out more about you, the book, or any of that stuff, where should they go?

Valerie McIntyre: You can find my book on Amazon. And if they want to learn more about me, they can go to my website at valiantmindcounseling.com.

William Curb: Awesome. Well, I think people are going to get a lot of this conversation. It was a lot of fun for me. The running on quarters all circled on my page. And I'm like, oh, that's probably something to work on more.

Valerie McIntyre: We all need to work on something.

William Curb: Yeah.

Valerie McIntyre: I need to work on it too. I'm a busy body. I really am. And so I have to be mindful of that as well. I'm like at a nighttime busy body. So like, you know, when nine o'clock p.m. hits because I'm like, I'm like bebopping around like all of a sudden, it's like, I got like all this stuff that I have to do before the day is over. My husband also has ADHD and he's like the opposite of that. Like he's like ready to shut down at time at night. He's like, oh, just sit.

So I think we all have things that we have to become more self aware of. And we have to think about what are the pros and cons with them? How do they affect us and others? And is there what's the secondary gain with each one of these symptoms? Because I know I don't mind bebopping around at nine o'clock a night because then the morning is also pretty easy for me. And I hate mornings. For me, it works out. But at the same time, I am waiting until nine o'clock. I like to get my stuff done.

This Episode's Top Tips

1. It’s important to recognize that emotional struggles are often rooted in our internalized beliefs about our ADHD symptoms. These beliefs shape how we perceive ourselves and what we’re able to accomplish, and our emotional responses.

2. Often, there can be a struggle when shifting from one task to another. If we can acknowledge that there may be a delay in how your brain transitions between tasks and give ourselves time to adapt, we can make those transitions easier.

3. We can use reflective exercises, like journaling or discussion questions, to gain insight into our emotional triggers. This can help us identify better coping mechanisms that actually address the underlying issues we’re trying to overcome.