Overcoming The Wall of Awful with Brendan Mahan
This week I got a chance to catch up with my good friend Brendan Mahan and talk with him about his upcoming book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful. Brendan is one of the first people I got to know in the ADHD space and I feel lucky to have done so because for one he’s just an awesome guy, but also because his approach to ADHD has always just felt so real and coming from a place of lived experience. Brendan is the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast, a board member of the Men's ADHD Support Group and the Director of Professional Resources for Calmer Con: Boston - and also one of the few people I know who gets me to sit down and listen because it's always worth hearing what he has to say.
Today on the show we're going to be talking about a book that Brendan spent a decade being asked to write. After finding his co-writer, Alex Hughes Capell, Brendan brought us the book we've been waiting for. So for those of you who are unfamiliar, the Wall of Awful is a concept that Brendan developed to explain the metaphorical emotional barrier that builds up over time and makes starting basic, everyday tasks feel nearly impossible. Or, in simpler terms, the barrier that keeps us from starting what often feels like a simple task, such as doing the dishes or starting our homework.
In our conversation, we discuss the ways that we build up these walls and also ways that we can work on getting past these walls (and what doesn't work). We also dive into the distinction between burnout and the wall and get into the nitty-gritty of the Wall of Awful.
If you'd like to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/308
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: All right. It is so much fun to have you on the podcast to talk about this book, because this is a concept that so many people resonate with. You tell it to people, and they’re immediately like, "Yes, exactly! That is it." It’s amazing how quickly people get it. Can you introduce the concept for us?
Brendan Mahan: Yeah. The Wall of Awful is my model for the emotional impact of repeated failure. Everybody makes mistakes; this is not just an ADHD thing. However, it certainly applies more to ADHD and neurodiverse people because we tend to fail more, so we have more and bigger Walls of Awful.
The idea is that you mess up, you fail, and you get a brick in this wall of negative emotions that builds up between you and the task you typically struggle with. Eventually, this wall builds up until you have to deal with the wall before you can deal with the task itself. One of the things it does is give us permission to have that struggle. Sometimes we’re supposed to do homework or pay taxes, and we just aren't doing it. You feel wiped out even though you haven't done the thing. What's going on there is emotional labor. There’s a lot of emotional work involved in processing that wall of emotions.
This concept lets us see that we’re putting in work even when it feels like we aren't, and it helps others see that, too. It grew out of me working with kids and trying to explain to parents why their kids couldn't seem to start their homework—and then once they finally did, they were too tired to actually do it.
William Curb: Yeah, I think everyone has a wall for something. We all have things that feel bad to do, and that’s a huge source of procrastination, especially for neurodivergent people. We have so many more "corrections" and failures in our lives that a simple task can feel impossible.
Brendan Mahan: Yeah, and even avoidance. We can step away from productivity tasks like dishes or taxes, but it also applies to social things. For example, if you’re single and you just can’t ask anyone out on a date because you’ve been shot down so many times. Trying to get into a new relationship feels intimidating and overwhelming. It’s the same wall; just a different frame for it. The same applies to friendships or trying to get a job.
William Curb: One of the most important pieces here is that the bricks aren't always from real failures. They can be from things you’ve imagined. In high school, there were people I wanted to ask out but never did because I had this built-up idea of what that rejection would be like. Even though I’d never experienced it from them, it was completely made up in my head.
Brendan Mahan: Me too! I can think of a girl in high school where I thought, "She hangs out with the cool kids; she wouldn't want to go out with me." Now I look back and think, "Nah, she probably would have." But I didn’t do anything, so nothing came of it.
You make it up in your head—how intense it will be or what is really happening. Rejection sensitivity steps into that gap as well. Even with my wife, I’ve had to do work not to let bricks come into my wall. For example, if the kids are at camp and I have a complicated week figured out with day trips and activities, and my wife just wants to sit on the couch and relax because the kids are gone. I have to realize she doesn't have the same "puppy dog excitability" that I have. She’s an introvert and wants to chill. I have to not take that as rejection.
William Curb: When I was telling you before we started recording that I’m going to take some time off, there was a huge internal fight for me. I was asking myself, "Can I even ask to do that?" Am I going to be perceived as lazy? I was building up these thoughts about why I needed to keep doing stuff.
Brendan Mahan: "How dare I want to rest," right? Some of that is cultural. We have these scripts around productivity and always having to "go."
William Curb: That puritanical work ethic where if you’re not striving, it’s morally wrong.
Brendan Mahan: I’m working on the workbook that goes along with the book right now, specifically the systems, structures, and habits chapter. One of the things I wrote down this morning was that I need to write about how to systematize rest. I don’t think I leaned into that enough in the book.
William Curb: I think systems and habits are a great place to think about getting through things. I was recently having a hard time defining what a system was as opposed to a habit—it's environmental versus internal.
Brendan Mahan: The idea of systems brings me to the system of the book itself. I designed it intentionally. The beginning of the book lays a foundation: the basics of the Wall of Awful, followed by chapters on anxiety, resources, and skills.
I think of anxiety as the mortar that holds the bricks—rejection, guilt, anger, frustration, and overwhelm—together. The middle of the book is about getting past the wall: the two strategies that don't work, the one that works but is damaging, and the two that do work.
The end of the book provides building blocks. I have a chapter about change and how it works, because it drives me crazy when people write books but don't talk about the process of change. Then we have systems, structures, and finally planning. Planning is where we put it all together, because a plan is both climbing the wall and putting a door in it.
William Curb: Reading a book like this brings up a lot of emotions because it mirrors my own experience. I highlighted a line: "That's why people who use anxiety to activate tend to have more walls than others and why their walls grow bigger over the years." I thought, "Oh, that’s me."
Brendan Mahan: Anxiety is the only thing you can burn for fuel and wind up with more of it when you're done. It leads straight to burnout. The strategy that gets you past the wall but does damage is "smashing." That’s when you use anxiety, anger, or frustration to push through. It works, but if all you do is smash, you’re heading for burnout.
William Curb: It’s one of those things where we think, "This works; I have to use it." Like deadlines—we need them for everything, but then if something doesn't have a deadline, we have no way of doing it.
Brendan Mahan: I went through a pretty significant level of burnout a few years ago. My identical twins are juniors now, but this was around middle school. When COVID hit, we found out both boys had OCD. It ended up shutting our family down for about a year and a half. One of my sons was hospitalized for three months to get it under control. Then my other son had a trauma response once things stabilized because he didn't need to hold it together anymore. At the same time, my dad got really sick. It was a lot.
I burned out hard. My layman's definition for burnout is when you've existed in anxiety for so long that you just can't burn it for fuel anymore. I couldn't run away from anything anymore. I was just tired. I had to start going towards things instead of away from them. I figured that out when my wife told me we needed an infusion of income. I ran a parent group, and it wasn't an anxiety response; it was a value-based response. Family is a value. Writing this book was the same way; heading towards it felt like healing.
William Curb: In neurodivergent burnout, you’re often just not aligned with what you want to be doing, and you're being forced to use that anxiety. Eventually, instead of getting things done a day ahead of time, it’s an hour ahead of time.
Brendan Mahan: Exactly. It’s not great when you see that happening. You realize it's not just the normal "ADHD time blindness"—it’s that you just didn't do it.
William Curb: While I was reading, I was trying to tease out the difference between burnout and the Wall of Awful. They feel different.
Brendan Mahan: They are. The Wall of Awful is a barrier. It’s in your way, but once you’re past it, you’re past it. Burnout is like mud. You have to slog and slog. And when you get out of the mud, you’re still covered in it and weighed down. Eventually, the mud crusts over and you don't want to do anything because you're in a hard shell.
William Curb: Yeah, the Wall of Awful is usually about an individual task. If I feel that way about every task, that’s burnout.
Brendan Mahan: Right. And sometimes it's not even a wall; it's a boundary. You mentioned earlier that there are some ads you just don't want to run on your podcast because they conflict with your values. That’s a boundary, not a wall. You're not struggling to do it; you're choosing not to.
William Curb: Or if I don't want to pick up dog poop because it’s gross. That’s not an emotional sense of "I can't do this"; it's just "I don't want to."
Brendan Mahan: Actually, that could be a sensory Wall of Awful. If the "squish" or the smell overwhelms you, that’s a barrier. This is where resources come in. If you get a shovel to pick it up so you don't have to feel it, the task becomes manageable.
William Curb: With ADHD, we often think, "If I just do this one thing, it will solve it." But if we think laterally, we can often just bypass the problem.
Brendan Mahan: We have to give up on trying to be neurotypical. The more we try to do things the "typical" way, the more walls we build. If we find ways to do it that are friendly to our brains, it gets easier. If you have a wall for spreadsheets, use a graph paper notebook instead.
William Curb: For me, a wall of text is a nightmare because of my dyslexia. But if I can get it into bullet points or use text-to-speech, the problem is solved.
Brendan Mahan: I worked really hard to make this book not feel like a big wall of text. I wanted it to be as dyslexia-friendly as possible. Did it feel accessible to you?
William Curb: It did. I listened to most of it with text-to-speech so I could walk, but the parts I read weren't visually overwhelming.
Brendan Mahan: That’s good. And for the listeners, I recorded the actual audiobook myself. It should be out right around now.
I also wanted to mention that we shouldn't vilify anger. All emotions are valid. There are times when we are justifiably angry, and we shouldn't double down on ourselves for feeling that.
William Curb: Right. Anger can be a tool for activation, but it’s a tricky one.
Brendan Mahan: Anger is complicated. For men especially, it often papers over vulnerability. Anger makes us feel powerful when we actually feel scared or rejected. Another piece is that anger is often "right"—it’s telling us a boundary has been violated. But it burns hot and fast. You can't maintain it. If you use anger to start cleaning your office, you can't stay angry for the three hours it takes to finish.
William Curb: Most people with ADHD have that "zero to 100" anger. You want to be in control of the anger, not have the anger in control of you.
Brendan Mahan: Folks who fly off the handle often don't recognize their own escalation. They aren't going from zero to 100; they're going from 95 to 100, but they didn't notice the climb. Part of "climbing the wall" is recognizing how loud and intense your emotions are.
William Curb: You included an emotion wheel in the book. We think we understand ourselves, but sometimes we just don't have the words for how we feel.
Brendan Mahan: The wheel in the book is redesigned. It’s broken up to indicate if emotions are comfortable or uncomfortable, and if they are activating or slowing. If you’re feeling activating and uncomfortable (like anger), you’re likely to "smash." If you’re activating and comfortable, you’re "putting a door in the wall." Putting a door in the wall is about changing your emotional state to something engaged and positive so you can do the thing.
William Curb: This makes me think of "calming up"—raising your state without getting angry.
Brendan Mahan: Exactly. Earlier today, right before this interview, my email died. I was overwhelmed. But I had to help my kid with a college essay later, and that matters more than anything else. I couldn't let my day crash into that. I did some Tai Chi. It was movement-based and centering. I didn't want to just lay on the bed and have a panic attack. I needed to be "active" but "centered."
William Curb: We feel like we either need to be amped up or totally calm, but there are other ways to get where we want to be.
Brendan Mahan: Confidence is an emotion. You don't need to go to aggression; you can go to confidence—a quiet "I am capable." We have to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
In the book, I talk about a model called URPU (Uncertainty, Rejection, Powerlessness, Uncomfortableness) and CCAW (Certainty, Connection, Agency, Wellbeing). Certainty helps. If you can name the emotion—"I feel anxious"—you have a layer of certainty. If you say, "I’m going to do this while feeling anxious," that’s another layer. You give yourself permission to suck at it, and off you go.
William Curb: Naming it helps you step back from it.
Brendan Mahan: It shifts how the brain functions. Anxiety lives in the limbic system and amygdala. The act of trying to figure out how you feel engages the prefrontal cortex because it’s a logical process. You’re shifting yourself away from the "panic" part of the brain.
William Curb: You mentioned in your final thoughts that you believe in the reader. That feels like the basis of the Wall—we don't believe we can do it, and we need that shift.
Brendan Mahan: I genuinely mean it. As someone who has struggled and failed, I am endlessly hopeful. Everything connected to me in my marketing—even my tie in my headshot—is yellow. It’s a nod toward hope. This is a hard book because the Wall of Awful is hard. But hope is infused into it because you can get past it. It just requires work and hope.
William Curb: And it’s not linear. The "change" chapter explains that some days you’ll take steps back.
Brendan Mahan: We use the word "relapse" a lot. It’s a charged word, but it applies to everything. You’re going to mess up. You’re going to fall into old patterns before the new ones stick. Just be ready for it. The wall is lying to you when it says you can't. Anxiety lies.
William Curb: Or at least it exaggerates.
Brendan Mahan: It exaggerates so much that it becomes a lie. It tells you it's keeping you safe, but often it's just making your world smaller and smaller. Healthy anxiety tells the truth but exaggerates; toxic anxiety just lies.
William Curb: Brendan, we’re at time. Any final thoughts?
Brendan Mahan: The book is available everywhere—Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores. The Wall of Awful is a really useful language model. The more people who understand it—your family, your coworkers—the easier it is to talk about struggles without judgment. Instead of "Why aren't you doing this?", someone can say, "It seems like you have a Wall of Awful for this." It feels safer. It dodges the anger response and lets you look at things through a problem-solving lens.
William Curb: Awesome. I really enjoyed the book. Thank you for finally getting this out there; it’s going to help a lot of people.
Brendan Mahan: Thank you. It’s been a decade in the making!
This Episode's Top Tips
Worth restating here, the Wall of Awful is a metaphorical emotional barrier that builds up over time and makes starting basic, everyday tasks feel nearly impossible. And it's important to acknowledge that we can build this wall from both real and perceived failure.
While smashing through our walls by activating through anger or anxiety often works, it's not always enough to get us completely through the wall. So while it may get us started it doesn't always get us to the finish line. As well, smashing often comes with a cost in terms of relationships, both to ourselves and to others who are hurt in the process of smashing through the wall.
It's important that we're able to distinguish our walls from preferences and boundaries. While our walls are built out of the emotional response to failure, preferences aren't built out of failure. It may be something we don't like doing but we can get past it without reaching for our wall tools. And boundaries are choices that we make not out of our sense of failure but instead our sense of who we are.