Receiving Help Without Losing Yourself with James and Jules Ochoa

We’ve talked plenty about asking for help. This week, James Ochoa and his son Jules join us to take on the other half: what happens when someone actually helps you, and why that can feel so much harder.Jules has spent the past year rebuilding James’s practice from the inside, which means James has been on the receiving end of a lot of help he didn’t ask for. In this conversation, we explore why unrequested help can feel like an accusation, where the imposter voice comes from, and how to tell the difference between gratitude and the debt ledger so many of us carry. Jules shares what he’s learned about how to help someone with ADHD without triggering the walls, and James is remarkably open about how much of this still gets him, 30 years into the work.Plus, Jules calls his dad out live on air, and it goes about how you’d expect.Links & Notes11Q Your ADHD, the free yearly reflection tool from James and The Life Empowerment CenterThe Complex, the audio drama Jules wrote and produced with JamesSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (00:54) - Become a Patron! (02:50) - Receiving Help with James and Jules Ochoa (07:07) - What Happens to the ADHD Brain on Receiving Help? (13:26) - "If I ask for help... it means I can't do it." (28:34) - The Ledger (41:18) - How do you open up to help? (49:47) - Learn More ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Most of us have a stack of self-help books we fully intend to get to. Our friend Misty Stinnett, co-host of Go Help Yourself, has read hundreds of them for her show, and she joins us to talk about reading when your attention has its own plans. Misty is quick to say she isn’t an ADHD expert, but she has years of practice getting through a book she’ll have to explain on a microphone a week later, and plenty of what she’s learned carries over for the rest of us.Her favorite permission slip is that the book works for you. You aren’t on the clock for it. If one idea sticks and changes how you see something, the book did its job, even at 500 pages. Knowing what’s at stake for you before you open a book helps. So does putting it down without guilt when it stops connecting. There’s room for the slow road too: visiting a hard book a paragraph at a time on the days that’s all your brain will give.The members version includes the pre-show, with a face-blindness mystery thriller recommendation and the origin story of “bless the baby.” The after-show is packed with listener questions: whether to reread, how to remember what you heard in the car, why a single paragraph can wear you out, and the old guilt some of us carry about reading for fun. It ends with a book recommendation that brings us full circle. Join us patreon.com/theadhdpodcast and see what you’re missing! Plus get the companion guide, Let the Book Work for You, with reflection questions and reframes for the thoughts that keep a book stuck on the nightstand. Grab the guide right here.Links & NotesGo Help YourselfThe Visit with Kourosh Dini, MDFour Thousand Weeks by Oliver BurkemanReading Without Eye Movements (Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2025)Support the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (02:26) - Introducing Misty Stinnett (07:20) - Learning to Read Self-Help (10:00) - Chunking (14:22) - The Visit (25:56) - Audiobooks (33:34) - How do you know the book is GREAT ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Last season, Dr. Kathleen Nadeau described a lot of ADHD struggle as a planting problem, and we've been thinking about it a bunch. This episode is about environment, and how much of what gets blamed on ADHD comes down to where you are and who you're with. We break it into what we're calling the three gardens: the right job, the right room and the right people.A lot of the classic willpower research is shakier than its reputation. The marshmallow test turned out to say more about kids' home lives than anyone expected. The idea that sugar refuels your self-control ran into trouble when people who only rinsed with sugar water did just as well as people who drank it. If you've been telling yourself you need to try harder, we’ve got you.There's a coffee shop where a book got written, and a college move-in where getting a few pictures on the wall was what finally eased the overwhelm. If you're wondering whether your job still fits, there's a useful question in here: is this still working for me? Asking it that way leaves room for the job to have changed, so you don't have to start from the assumption that you failed.The members version includes the pre-show, where we catch up on our kids' new college apartments and John Green's new novel. The after-show has the story of how Pete's mom's rose garden ended up in the Smithsonian, plus headphone advice for anyone stuck in an open-plan office. It also has a live demo of FocusFlight, an app that turns a work session into a pretend flight.Links & NotesSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (01:13) - Support the Show on Patreon! (02:55) - Environment as Strategy (21:15) - The Three Gardens ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You'd swear you sent that email. You can picture yourself writing it. And then you find it, unsent, still marked unread.This week, Pete and Nikki borrow the literary idea of the unreliable narrator to explore why ADHD makes us shaky witnesses to our own lives. They look at how working memory, time blindness, and mood bend the story we tell ourselves, and at research showing how far self-assessment can drift from the record. Then they turn to practical ways to get a clearer picture: asking the people around you what they see (RSD and all), capturing moments while they're fresh, and letting the data you already generate tell you what you actually accomplished. Along the way, Nikki shares how coaching helps clients notice their own patterns, and why a log should help you see instead of grading you.Links & NotesAccuracy of Self-Evaluation in Adults with ADHD: Evidence from a Driving Study, the 2005 Knouse, Bagwell, Barkley, and Murphy study Pete discussesThe Fragile Dance of Memory and ADHD with Dr. Daniella Karidi, one of the three episodes referencedADHDtime, Daniella Karidi's coaching practiceJoin our Patreon communityJoin the Discord (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (01:43) - Patreon! (03:14) - The Unreliable Narrator (11:21) - Moods (21:33) - "Just Notice" (27:11) - Feedback and RSD (36:23) - Feedback and Grading ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You say it a dozen times a day. Somebody asks how you're doing, and before you've had a chance to check, you've already said you're … fine.In this conversation, we pick up a thread from our earlier episode with Dr. Sharon Saline on masking and follow it somewhere much smaller. Not the protective mask you choose in a hard moment, but the everyday one that's been on so long you've lost the off switch. We talk about what the gap between the performance and the truth actually costs you in energy and loneliness, why nobody offers help to someone who looks fine, and what happens when you say it to the people at home who genuinely want to know.We also get practical about lowering it: how to pick one safe moment, how to resist the urge to reassure everyone that it's all going to be okay, and why your body usually notices you're performing before you do. Plus get the companion worksheet, Where Am I Wearing Fine?, to help you spot your own pattern.Links & NotesSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (00:58) - Support the Show on Patreon (02:23) - We're All Fine Here (13:07) - What does it look like when fine cracks? (21:41) - Reflection Questions ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Are you doing the thing because of what you'll get, or because of what you're afraid of? Both get the task done. Only one of them is sustainable.This week, Dr. Ari Tuckman returns to talk about approach and avoidance, and why so many of us have only ever learned to start the second engine. We get into why avoidance works just well enough to become a habit, why "not as bad" is a ceiling rather than a goal, and what actually changes in a life that runs more on what you're moving toward.Along the way: the difference between shame and embarrassment and why it matters more than it sounds, what to do at 8 a.m. on a Monday when everything on the list feels equally urgent, and the case for disappointing people early instead of late.Links & NotesGet the “3 Reasons” Prioritization Worksheet Right Here!ADHD & Marriage: Learn to thrive in your relationship with Ari Tuckman, PsyD, MBA; Rachel Ban, LICSW; and Melissa Orlov!Support the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (00:56) - About the Show (02:25) - Introducing Ari Tuckman (14:38) - The question of shame (22:00) - Approach Motivation (29:04) - Approach versus Avoidance (37:28) - Find Ari ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Last time Dr. Dodge Rea was here, we set up a conversation in two parts and only got through one of them. This week we finish it, and the half we left hanging turns out to be the trickier one. What happens when the person you're most out of sync with is yourself?Attunement asks you to stay in touch with another person while staying intact with yourself, both at once. Most of us are better at one than the other. For a lot of us with ADHD, the outward half arrives early and never leaves. We got good at reading other people young, and never got the same practice on ourselves. So we say yes to things before we've checked whether there's anything left to give. And then we swing all the way to the far end, so far inward that a simple request from someone we love feels like an ambush.There's research behind why that break hits so much harder than it looks from the outside, including a well-known experiment with mothers and infants that is difficult to watch. The share of the time we have to get attunement right is far smaller than you'd guess. What happens in the remaining time is pretty important, turns out.There's also shame, and why it works so well as armor that some part of us would rather keep it than find out who we'd be without it. And there's a mantra Pete grabbed onto in the middle of the conversation and hasn't put down since.Links & NotesLearn more about Dr. Dodge ReaSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (01:11) - Support the show -- Become a Patron! (03:57) - Attunement ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Rest, relaxation, recuperation. Three words we reach for when we're empty, and all three have collapsed into the same meaning: stop doing something. The older meanings point somewhere far more interesting, toward getting strength back rather than simply halting some energetic drain.This week, Pete walks Nikki through research from occupational psychology that helps explain a frustrating experience most ADHDers likely know well: taking the time off and still coming back exhausted. There are four distinct kinds of recovery, they don't substitute for each other, and picking the wrong one is why a whole weekend of rest can leave you no better than you started.Along the way: why sitting still can make mental noise louder, why your hobby might be the most restorative thing on your calendar, why the scroll fails every test, and how to match the kind of rest you choose to the kind of tired you are.Links & NotesThe Recovery Experience QuestionnaireSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (01:32) - Support the Show on Patreon! (02:54) - On Rest and Recuperation (13:56) - The Big Four (26:42) - Fake Rest (29:20) - Match the Drain to the Recovery ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You look at the list. You look at the calendar. You already know there isn't enough day for what's on there, and somehow the first thing out of your mouth is still "but I have to."In this conversation, Nikki and Pete follow last week's capacity conversation down to the reflex underneath it. Where does the have-to feeling come from, what is it trying to protect, and what changes when you stop treating every task as though it weighs the same? They get into the five D's from Casey Dixon, why Pete has fallen hard for the one called disappoint, and the difference between deferring something and quietly hoping everyone forgets you agreed to it.Also: what to do when the list actually is too long and no mindset shift is going to fix it.Links & NotesSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (03:20) - The I Have To Trap (19:26) - The Raw Power of Disappoint ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

There's the version of you that exists right now, and the version you're pretty sure you should have become by this point. In this conversation, we get into the space between them, what Nikki calls the gap trap, and why that space fills up with shame so fast for ADHD brains.We talk about freeze as a nervous system response rather than a character problem, and about what it costs a fully grown adult to say "I don't know how to do this." Then Nikki offers the smallest possible way back in, along with three questions worth keeping close for the next time you're stuck.Nikki's new download, When You Feel Frozen: A Guide to Restarting Without Shame, is available now.Links & NotesGet the “When You Feel Frozen” GuideSupport the Show on PatreonDig into the podcast Shownotes Database (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast (03:05) - The Gap Trap (21:07) - Restarting with no Shame ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★