Executive Functioning: The "Why" Behind ADHD Struggles

I am excited to have Danny Donovan with me today on the Autism ADHD podcast. She is a multi-faceted internet content creator, public speaker, and ADHD comic artist. Known for her viral comics, she has created so much ADHD awareness and acceptance. And as the author of the anti-planter and the founder of the Anti-Boring Project, she leverages her expansive social media following to make everyday challenges, like productivity and organization, more achievable, and a lot more fun. Take it from me, it's true. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, Forbes, and all kinds of major public agents. She continues to break stigma around ADHD and create real and practical resources for people with executive functioning challenges. All right, let's dive in. Welcome, Danny Donovan to the Autism ADHD podcast. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. We were loving talking before we even hit record. We are going to talk about executive functioning. We hear this all the time. Executive functioning is hard when you have a kid, a teen, and they're procrastinating. They're forgetting their homework. They're leaving their stuff everywhere. Yesterday, I left all the kitchen cabinets, doors open. I didn't remember. You even noticed doing it? Go get in my car and I'll get out of the driveway and realize that I don't have my glasses, right? I didn't take my medicine. These are serious things that impact everything. Let's jump in to that little powerful work because it impacts mental health. What's the magic, Danny? The magic of why? The magic of why. Exactly. Why is why? So important is because if you don't know why something is happening, why something is hard, the child and the teen are broken, they're the problem. That's where the blame goes. Exactly. I think that such a huge thing that people don't realize when they are either working with people with ADHD, raising kids with ADHD is that so much of our experience boils down to being misunderstood. So many of us feel isolated and people aren't trying to take time to see where we're coming from, but we might not even recognize or realize it ourselves for such a long time. I didn't understand myself and so many of us don't know why we're doing what we're doing and we can't stop doing it and it's distressing. It's distressing for the people around us, but it's also distressing for us. Whenever I said, "Oh my gosh, you think you're frustrated with me? I'm frustrated with myself 24/7. I have to live here." Maybe 23/7. But I've learned now as I've navigated my own ADHD journey that I made such huge progress towards self-forgiveness and just hating myself less, but being less angry at myself all of the time when I was able to step back and be more objective instead of feeling a personal defect, being why it does this keep happening and if I can figure out why, if I can figure out the problem, then I can actually work towards finding a solution. Because if you don't understand the problem, you will think you're the problem. The child is the problem. Not how we're approaching it, not how the assignment is set up, not how the environment is set up. We are so much more likely to blame the child instead of getting curious what's happening, what's the barrier there, what's getting in the way? Trying harder is not a strategy. All right, say it again. We need to try harder is not a strategy. Try harder. If I had a dime, I would be rich. It is so powerful to be able to say, I was trying harder than anyone could possibly imagine, yet being told you're not. Did you feel that way? I am trying. The comparison aspect of how easy things look for other people and how much people who don't struggle, even if they don't mean to be condescending or patronizing or if they don't struggle, they can't imagine what it would be like to struggle. Yes, we might be running the same race, but if I show up and I had to run a 5K before I even got to the starting line just to get myself to the race, I'm already tired when I'm there. We might run the same thing, but I'm going to poop out faster. I didn't come with the same level of energy, even go further to say, I don't have shoes. It's painful the whole way. Sometimes getting things like meds might be helpful, but they're still flip flops. They're not the same. Again, not that people who aren't neurodivergent don't struggle with things. I'm not trying to say that at all, but the reality is that they might not understand how exhausting it is for us and how our energy gets depleted and how painful it feels and our brains are wired to avoid that pain. Well, everyone's is. All humans, whether you're neurodivergent or typical, why would you want to you want to get away from pain? You want to get away from suffering? You want to get away from criticism? If we are at the point where we've had bad experiences, I had a bad experience. I got criticized for this or I went into something and I wasn't prepared and I embarrassed myself. Now, I'm going to just avoid, avoid, avoid. The understanding other people and understanding yourself comes from a right asking that why question so much of this stuff is just invisible. You don't think about it unless you stop to think about it and even then introspection takes a lot of work. People are like, you're so talented at this. I'm like, I've had a lot of therapy. It's difficult even to expect people to be able to be good at that kind of line of thinking right away if they don't have models and examples for what it actually looks like. And also be given permission to even say, this is hard because this is hard. No, it's not. It's not that hard. It's not that hard for you. I always come back to if it was easy, they would just do it. Yeah. And I don't have to hear you. Because you don't want to nag. I get it. I don't want to. It's a parent either. The interesting thing. So right, a lot of us are able to have the sort of like different lines of thinking. I was thinking differently that diversion thinking were either spotting, spotting these people might not, but like having ideas. I am just a fountain of ideas and I and people like, oh, you're so creative. And it would be like telling someone to be more creative. Like just be more creative. It's not a thing that you can just like, oh, okay, let me just like turn on my internal button that makes me more creative. Being creative is different than being artistic art is like a skill. You can sit down and like learn the skill and that might help, you know, you can build some creativity muscles. But that is a thing that I am naturally born with that someone else might not be naturally born with. You can't just tell someone to be different if that's not how they're wired. You're right. It is approach that way. Like somehow it's optional. When you use that example and I love that you did because I think we might be related in some way. Ideas. I could from here, you know, a yard away, I could come up with a thousand easy. Not everyone can do that. Like you said, but that beautiful strength is not the one that people are interested in when you're younger. Because-- Sit down and do your homework. Just do it. When you have all these ideas, your brain is getting constantly hijacked away from something that is usually pretty boring and not nearly as exciting as your ideas are. And I find that especially early on, right, but when you're in school and when you're in work, that's where so many people focus on when ADHD symptoms are impacting them. They're impacting-- they're annoying-- you're annoying me-- but like someone's not living up to external expectations. Recently, we're talking so much more about the internal experience of living with ADHD, the emotions of living with ADHD, the social aspect, the stuff that isn't just how is it impacting work or school? Because those external things of how they impact other people is really where the focus goes. Change this about yourself. You are not living up to expectations. Give four talking mouths. Here's a curriculum that's rolled out in front of you. Do it. Right. And we were talking about this before we hit record and decided we should hit record because we just kept talking and we've got it. We had a separate, we had a little 20 minute podcast pre podcast. It was the free podcast to ADHDers trying to remember to hit record. It's fantastic. This idea where it's the knowing and the doing this separation, you know better. There's no reason you can't do this. Like you said, there's no reason you can't be super creative. Logic brain is so much different than like actual brain in the same way that when I'm having a feeling that I don't want to have. And I can therapy logic. I can know why I shouldn't feel that way. And it doesn't make me stop feeling that way. Knowing that you should be, you know, a, I was the epitome of like perfect therapy knowledge. But being able to know, I could write you a blog post about all of the reasons why this is a, you know, a distorted way of thinking. But it does not make it easier to, to change a feeling that's not something that you totally have like control over again, logic brain emotion brain, logic brain executive dysfunctioning brain are not always aligned. The teachers, the parents, they're growing up with their own expectations. Parents are stressed because school is calling or emailing. The teacher has a bunch of kids in their classroom and they're overwhelmed. They're just trying to get through the curriculum. There's so much on everyone. But it all lands on the child. Do you find that like if they would just do what they're supposed to. Yes, I would add that especially since prior generations were not like it's difficult now. But the, the access and the awareness and the accommodations every generation you go back was less existent and less existent and less existent. And so you've got a lot of people who might have kids who are a neurodivergent who may or may not know that they are neurodivergent themselves since it's super hereditary, right. And they had to suck it up and get through it. They were not given the accommodations. So it's like if I had to do it, then you should be able to do it because they might not realize how many coping skills they have built from not having help that you built. Yes, you built muscles because you were walking around with a 50 pound backpack. And that doesn't mean that that's how everybody else has to be. And I found that now with my parents talking over the years of like how much stuff they just had to brute force their way through and that was painful. But they know it's possible because they eventually kind of like came to that thing. It can be challenging. I think if people are no, there's people who don't know it's hard. And so you are kind of saying these things and there's people who genuinely might have executed function themselves, but they had to kind of push through that pain and they think that that's how you're supposed to do it. That's the only way to do it. Right. And that's what they know at the time. They didn't have. Podcast like that parents weren't learning about, you know, executive function. Right. Nobody talked about it. I love that you brought that up because I think it's this default setting. We go to is what was it like for me and you're right. ADHD is very much linked to genetics and thinking about well, I had ADHD to and I was able to do it. Not everyone with ADHD is the same. Oh my god, the experience difference. I have a hard time keeping a space tidy for long. I love when things are tidy. I will make it a big project. I will organize everything. Everything is great. And then it like slowly just builds back to chaos. And there are people with ADHD who don't struggle with that as much, you know, or like hygiene or like there are certain areas that executive dysfunction isn't as difficult for them. But they might have struggled in school in a way that I did not struggle in school. And so it's very easy when we were like, well, you're I made a I made a tick-tock video of a long time ago about all the like abandoned beverage containers in my house. Because there was this trend going around where people were like things in my eco-friendly home that just makes sense. And then they were like showing off all of their like stuff. And I did things in my ADHD home that just don't make sense. And or that just makes sense. I mean, it was just don't make sense. And so I was showing like there's probably moldy coffee inside and people go, that's not ADHD. That's just lazy. Right. I have ADHD. And there's no way that that would ever happen. I have ADHD. And I don't do that. There's some ADHD on ADHD. Say that crime. Happening. There are people who are neurodivergent who are having such different experiences and can fall in that same line of thinking of it's not hard for me. So it shouldn't be hard for you. Exactly. They have this idea that it should be this way because I had to. But then it's that adult learning what they needed. What did you need that you didn't get? What did you need to say that no one would listen to? What did you wish someone knew about you? Instead of you feeling like you're the worst you should try harder. We talked about this before I hit record two is the word lazy makes me physically ill. I have tried my best now to eliminate it from my vocabulary. I definitely don't say it about anybody else. I very much like reduced by like 99% my tendency to think about myself or like refer to myself as like I'm just being lazy. Stop. And I'm like, nope. And I will like it when I hear it come out of my own mouth, which does not happen very often anymore. But like I was retraining my brain. And anytime I heard myself say it, I would stop. And like think about why I was referring to myself that way. And I would literally make myself pause and go back and be like, what is actually happening, which does tie back to the why factor of the like I feel lazy. What is it that's actually happening? Why is this actually happening and why am I feeling this way? And so it can be like, oh, I'm just lazy because I'm not picking up my my beverage containers. And it's like, why is this happening? And I'm just going to stop and go, okay, I am doing this because there's a many different reasons going on. But one of the main things that I have found is that tidying does not sometimes I forget about it. I just like walk away and forget this stuff existed. Like you were kind of talking about having the cupboards open. I either don't notice it and forget about it. Or I am like, I'll get to that later, you know, just the avoiding, but a lot of the time it's realizing that I get such big, I don't know, it's like dopamine hits, but like I get feel good chemicals from like a big cleaning spree. Because it's now a project. And I have the before and after I have the gratification, tiny little bouts of tidying maintenance does not do that for me. The maintenance always seems like something that can be put off until it reaches that anxiety threshold of like, oh my god, I have to do something. But being able to sort of stop and go, there's a reason this is happening. And it's not that personal defect. It's not that like that lazy factor because I think lazy always typically goes back to I'm not meeting expectations. Even if there's societal expectations, no one's here to see this coffee mug on my desk. This is not a biohazard. I don't have a kid that's coming up and like drinking it, you know, but being able to notice that some of the, it's about judgment. So much of the word lazy is tied up in that judgment. It is why are we criticizing someone who doesn't walk through the world in the same way when you don't process it with why and understanding, you're going to continue to do things that do not work and are not helpful. Like you're not trying hard enough. You're lazy. You don't care. You're never going to be able to live on your own. If you can't do this this way. It just is heavy. I don't think adults think about that as much as they should. Let's do something different because if you continue again to do the same thing and expect the thing that's not going to happen. It's the definition of insanity, right? Of like doing the same thing and expecting something to change over and over and over again has berating your child or berating yourself. Fix the problem. Has it ever fixed the problem if it's not it's time to try something else. Yeah, you are not a bad parent. You're just doing the best you can. Here's a kid who's doing the best they can. Let's figure out how we can do this in a way that is actually helpful. And that's the why being open to it. Right. Being open to the why that also helps interactions. Not only the child's mental health, but really the parents mental health too. It's not easy to be constantly overwhelmed because this is messy or this isn't done. That's not good for parents either. When we think about the why that's hard because we're questioning everything. What we've been taught. How things are supposed to be going. What does that look like? Any time we step away in question. Sometimes people don't like when you question. Oh my god, I feel that in my bones. That's what I got in trouble with the most when I was a kid, right? Was just like asking, asking questions all the way back to in kindergarten. We had like a police officer come with like a canine, like dog, and the ask if anybody had questions. And I asked, why do dogs smell each other's butts, right? And which I got in trouble. And they told my mom and I was being like inappropriate because all the kids laughed. And I wasn't doing it to get a laugh. They said, do you have any questions? You have a dog. This is a question I have. I don't know the answer to this. My mom goes, they probably didn't know. I thought she said that. Yeah. 'Cause sometimes we do that, right? We get in trouble. I remember, I think it was, maybe it was fourth grade. And our science teacher kept talking about how important to you soap. It's all killed, germ. You need to use soap. And my cousin, big time ADHD, asked, well don't the germ stay on the soap. She did not like it. She was like, don't ask me that question. I thought, okay, because she didn't know. The same thing when you get into, as an adult, you get into the workplace. And it's like, why are we doing it this way? There's a better way. I have figured out the better way. I had a moment like where I had found a software for my old job that cost like 15 bucks a month. And it would take, we were spending probably like eight or nine hours doing things by hand that we could have a program do. I like made a little presentation. And, because I don't want to do work if I don't have to. And this is a more efficient way. And it didn't get approved because that's not how we've always done it. And I'm like, you know, you're like wasting company money by paying people like this amount. And it doesn't, it angers me. Like physically hurts me to know there's a better way to do something. But that's not how things have always been done. It's like, well, why have things always been done that way? Prior to that, you hadn't been doing it that way. Everything has to happen a first time. If you question things to a certain extent, you know, and people, you're right. Like people don't have an answer to it. People don't like feeling unsure in that moment, especially if they're in a position of authority. The why is so beautiful because here are these kids that have these amazing ideas where there are questioning. And I think that's the disruptors, they say disruptive. But really, the disruptors are the ones that have the ideas that kind of move things forward. And a lot of ways, like this doesn't make sense. This is kind of inefficient, especially when you're younger, because you're surrounded by these adults, this big power differential. And you're just supposed to do what they say. And when you don't do what they say, they get upset. And they feel like you're being disrespectful if you question. It gets really, really complicated. So I love the idea of why. Things like procrastination. Things like starting something but not finishing it. There's all these parts of executive functioning. And we don't think about those parts. We just say go do this thing. But when we break it down, there's so many steps. There's so many parts of it. Some kids might get started. But then their brain is hijacked. And they are two steps into this activity and they're gone again. You probably heard this too. You could have been done by now. Oh my god. You've been complaining longer than you've been doing it. And I have to say, I am embarrassed to say, Danny, that I have said that to my kid before when I was frustrated, and I knew better. And I still said it. That's the thing to remember is like nobody's going to be perfect. Like there's nobody that it's the trying to be better than trying to be aware. That awareness makes all the difference. And because I'm a stepmom. And so we kind of have the same thing where there's how do I motivate you without shaming you? Because shame is such a powerful motivator for a lot of people, especially if you were, you know, raised that way. And so you've got the stick. How do you do the carrot without training them that there has to be a carrot there in order for you to ever do this? Because eventually you're going to be an adult. And if there's no carrot, nobody providing you a carrot, are you going to be able to do this on your own? It's fear. You know, if your room looks like this, it must be a you problem. Like it's a kid problem. What I love about this conversation is it's giving adults the permission to question why. Why does it have to be this way? That's kind of healing with Collins room. It's like it gets disorganized. And there is this like cleaning room, like impulse. I remember as a kid where they're like, we're having people over cleaning room. I'm like, why are they going to be going in my room? Why does it matter what my room looks like? Because they're worried about judgment. If somebody does happen to go see it. Right. Right. I understand this. I'm not blaming parents here because I've definitely had these feelings to where they're going to think I'm a bad parent. The homework's not done. What's wrong with me? Why can't I make them do this? Or they're walking around the classroom? Well, why can't you know, that that means I'm not a good parent because they're not doing what they're supposed to. And like you said, the room. I would say that is absolutely one of the most painful. I don't know about you, Danny, but it would worry me constantly. What is wrong with me? I would say that to myself. I heard that all the time. What is wrong with you, Holly? What is wrong with you? So that means something's wrong with me. I mean, it's me. It's me. I love the idea when parents can look at this differently and say, why am I willing to damage my relationship with my child over this? You can step back and say, what's important here? My bed's not made. Yes, I feel like such a hypocrite. That's one of the other things is like, I have a difficult time getting on him about things that we also have a hard time with. If our room is it clean, telling him to clean his room does not feel great. I'm like very sensitive to hypocrisy. And so I think that there's some elements there that make it extra extra super empathetic and understanding to the plate of our 12 year old being able to get in the headspace of asking, why does this stuff kind of like pile up over here? Oh, I don't know. It's like, okay, well, that's not an answer. We're going to sit here until we think of something. So we can work a little, I don't know. I'm like, I feel you. It's hard to think about it. Like, what would make it easier instead of being like, why isn't this happening? Going to what could we do to make it easier? Some of it was he didn't have enough storage and his room stuff ends up on the floor because if you get slowly get things over time and you don't expand any kind of place to put those things if they don't have a home, then where are they going to go? I feel that. So then we got some shelves and that did make it easier, but it took trouble shooting together to be able to kind of find that respect. Also, your openness to the why instead of just being stuck. So we talk about kids being stuck, but don't get stuck too. I am over on the other direction. I don't care. It was so painful about my room to the point where that is absolutely not a priority for me for my kid. I don't want to minimize that for other people. At the same time, that's not more important than my relationship with him. And I am not going to fight with him about it. I'm just not going to do it. So making it more doable is more important than go do it. You didn't do it. Yes. The same, the biggest one of the, if there's recurring challenges, so I do have in my book, The Hattie Playwright. I have a thing called design your environment. And so like so much of the time, it's like if this behavior continues to happen, what if we assumed that this behavior was going to continue to happen? What would need to change in order to help with it? And so for him, you know, if it's, you can tell him a million times, hey, when you go shower, bring your clothes back to your room and put them in the hamper. Don't put them on the floor of the bathroom. But they always end up in the same spot on the floor in the bathroom. The answer was just get another hamper and put it at that spot in the bathroom. You're going there always in the hamper. Like you said, environment, I totally agree. You're going to come back and talk to me about the how when you and I come back together. We talked about the why, which has to happen before the how. If you want differences in executive functioning, if you want to meet a child, whether you're a therapist or a parent, where they are, we need to step back and understand the why first. if we don't, it's not going to be a good deal. going to get better and that child is going to carry the shame in guilt that they are wrong, they are bad, they are lazy, all those things that are so incredibly damaging. You have taken the idea of the planner, which most of us know is kind of funny in the ADHD space. I've spent more money, I'm going to design the front of it if it's pretty enough. Mm-hmm. You're spending enough money on it. I will carry it, I will take it wherever I go, it doesn't mean it's going to be open. So tell us why is this completely different than anything else that has ever existed? Because I am a tryhard and I can't help myself. I was putting all this energy into, like how can I get more stuff done? Because I'm tired of being angry at myself all the time. I'm tired of getting in trouble at work. I'm tired of staying up late because I was not able to spend my time in the most efficient way. And I kept spending money on self-help books, on coaching stuff, on workbooks and on planners and on little to do things. Like every single thing was like, "Oh, a new thing, this will be the thing that will help me get my life together." And it never stuck or I didn't try it at all. Like a lot of those things, you know, when you're standing in line at the check out of a Barnes and Noble and there's like a funny little to-do list. And I'm like, "I'll totally use this." No. I kept falling into this trap of every time I felt like I failed at something. All it did was add more shame, add more baggage. And I was really tired of kind of like feeling that way. Initially, I was actually going to make like an ADHD planner and say, "What is it that would actually make a planner work for someone like me?" And I started using these weird ways to get myself to work on it, on the plan-on, the ADHD planner. And I looked at this pile of weird coping strategies and was like, "Wait a minute, this is what I'm actually doing. This is what's actually working is me rolling dice like I'm a D&D character and circling what number came up and what task that is. I'm doing these other coping strategies and sort of went, "All right, well, there's something there because what if the system isn't having one system, it's having a hundred systems?" That actually would make sense because that's how I kind of function as it is. So what if I just leaned into that existing tendency? What ended up happening was I brainstormed all of these activities and strategies and games, challenges, ways to get things done when I didn't feel like it. And then I looked at it and I had this giant pile with like over a hundred things. And I went, "I can't give this to anyone because if someone gave this to me, I would be so overwhelmed, so intimidated. I would spend too much time looking for what to do and I wouldn't do the thing because I would get like trapped by spending all this time figuring out which activity I wanted to do." And so it's like, "There's got to be a way to organize this." And the first instinct is to be like, "Oh, I'll put all the activities in one section, all the strategies in one section, all the games in one section." And then I went, "How are people going to know what they need?" Being able to step back and go, "All right, well, what is it that's causing the procrastination?" And I brain dumped onto note cards. Every single thing I could think of that was a reason why, that was different, why. So some of them were like, "I feel hopeless or I feel like I'm lacking accountability. I feel like I'm distracted." And so I had all these note cards and kind of like pushed them together into like, "Well, what means vaguely the same thing?" and I found that there were very distinct categories of specific like resistances that were the why. And they kind of fell into these umbrella categories. So I ended up making the book as a navigation, the navigation system for the book to be these five different tabs that are like the stuck overwhelm, unmotivated, disorganized, and discouraged. Each of those tabs has sub-emotions and the way that the feelings wheel has like happy sad, angry, but then they have more nuanced emotions that are inside. There's betrayed is different than just angry in the same way that intimidated is a different flavor of overwhelm than decided it might be best to organize these strategies into how am I feeling, what is actually making it hard in the moment to get this thing done? And so I have to figure out how I'm feeling and find the why, the why am I procrastinating in order to find the, how do I do something about it? Yeah, what I really like about it too is visuals. We need visuals. It's not just tons of text, where we're getting lost in it like you mentioned earlier. Yeah, it is so beautiful how you take us through this journey. It is incredibly important for our mental health and the psychologist. Maybe it's not me that's bad. Maybe it's not me that's wrong or me trying to make everyone miserable. And thinking of how a child even would look at this, you have different versions for parents who are listening right now. I think it's a beautiful way for parents to work through with not only themselves, but their kids too. I talk to so many parents who, so there's like the cussing version and there's not cussing version. And there are so many parents who tell me they had to buy another copy because their kids stole theirs. Right. I can't get mine back from my preteen. It feels like a big sister or like a friend talking to you instead of a like either like cold, distant, like a planner doesn't have a personality. But even some workbooks that might kind of have that, they feel like an authority figure talking to you. And who's like in the trenches with you, I've been there, man, I know this is hard. That's what's so lovely about it. It's relatable. It's not shaming. It's engaging and just accepting. I'm going to make sure that I have the link to both the cussing and the non cussing. It's called the anti planner, by the way. I don't remember if I said that. It is the anti planner. I love it so much. It's right next to me right now. And I can't wait to talk to you next time. Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. Can't wait to chat. Thanks, Danny. Bye bye. [MUSIC] If you found this podcast helpful, I greatly appreciate it. If you could take a second to give it a five star review. 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