A

If you've ever wondered whether you might have adhd, I created a free training for you. Not the kind that's filled with medical jargon, boring slides and a 40 minute introduction. Before anyone gets to the point, I'm talking about a real conversation about what ADHD actually looks like in women. Because here's the problem. Most of what we think we know about ADHD comes from research done on little boys. Meanwhile, millions of bright, capable women are walking around wondering why they're exhausted, overwhelmed, inconsistent, and never quite living up to their potential. We're told we're anxious, depressed. We're told we need to get more organized. But what if that's not the real problem? In this training, I'll show you some of the biggest signs of ADHD in women. One, why traditional productivity advice so often fails us and what actually changes when we start understanding how our brains work. Because ADHD is not what most people think it is, and understanding it might change the way you see yourself forever. Ready to get started? Click the link in the show notes to sign up for the training with me now. On with the show. Richard Branson, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, James Carville. Wait a minute, where are the women? Greta Gerwig, Lisa Ling, Audra McDonald, Simone Biles. That sounds like a list of highly successful titans in a variety of industries. They all have 88, but you don't hear much about that now, do you? You know what else you don't hear about are the 43% of people with ADHD who are in excellent mental health. Why aren't we talking about them and what they're doing, right? I'm your host, Tracy Adsuka, and that's exactly what we do here. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, a lifelong student, and now the author of my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. I'm also a certified ADHD coach and the creator of youf ADHD Brain is a ok. A patented system that helps ADHD women just like you get unstuck and fall in love with their brilliant brains. Here we embrace our too muchness and we focus on our strengths. My guests and I credit our ADHD for some of our greatest gifts. And to those who still think they're too much, too impulsive, too scattered, too disorganized, I say no one ever made a difference by being too little

B

foreign.

A

Tracy Otsuka, thank you so much for being here for another episode of ADHD for Smartass Women. If you've been listening for a while, you know my mission, right? It is to help you Discover who you really are and then give you the courage to become more of that person. Because after meeting thousands of women, ADHD women, over the years, I have become convinced of one thing. I have never met a single one who wasn't truly brilliant at something. Not one. Which is exactly why I am so honored to introduce you to Dr. Shannon Palma. Dr. Shannon Palma has had one of the most interesting career paths I've come across. She started out in academia, earned a PhD in women's gender and Sexual Studies at Emory University. If I went back to school, that's what I would want to study. Became a college professor, and even founded a master's program. But then life threw her a curveball. In midlife, Shannon discovered she was autistic. And not long after that, she realized ADHD had been there too. Today, she proudly identifies as adhd. And instead of simply accepting the diagnosis, she completely redirected her life because of it. Shannon co founded Independence through Interdependence, an autistic led nonprofit, and serves as CEO of ITI Lab, where they are developing AI tools to help neurodivergent people navigate everyday life. Their flagship app, decide, was built to reduce one of the biggest struggles so many of us experience. Decision fatigue and decision paralysis. And if that weren't enough, she's also a foster and soon to be adoptive mom to two neurodivergent kids, one autistic and one with adhd. So she lives this work every single day. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Dr. Shannon Palma. Welcome, Dr. Palma. Did I get all of that right?

B

You did. I'm so impressed. I can't remember what I do half the time.

A

When you hear what you do, are you just like, oh my gosh, I'm pretty impressive?

B

A little bit more like, I could not have predicted this at any point along the way.

A

Or are you a little bit more like many of us with adhd? Oh, gosh, there's still so much more to be done.

B

There really, really is. I'm. I'm like, okay, well, I'm. I'm getting close to 50. I've got like a year and a half, so I've got to get on it if I want to accomplish things before I die.

A

You know the thing about it though, Shannon, is 50 is baby years in ADHD land. Because once we get that diagnosis, I mean, everything just starts to click together. That's where I want to go first. I want to talk about your ADHD diagnoses. Would you mind sharing with our audience and Me, what happened.

B

I had. For many, many. For most of my life, I had known that there was something different about the way I think. I remember telling someone in, like, sixth grade, like, making a diagram and saying, you think like this and I think like this. And then not realizing, like, why they didn't want to be my friend anymore, possibly tone deaf, and how I delivered that. But I also had these conversations with friends in my 20s, and I would say, I think I'm not developing in the timeline that the people around me are like, my peers are. I think that I'm, like, ahead on some things and behind on others. And they said, no, you're not. And I said, okay. Because what I learned really, really young was that if I said something and somebody else told me no, I was supposed to agree and let it go. So even though I had all of these, like. My cousin was diagnosed autistic when we were kids. First he was misdiagnosed ADHD and then diagnosed. It was Asperger's at the time. But I. When I was like, why is he something and I'm not? I'm just gifted. And they were like, well, because you're gifted, you're smart. My grandmother didn't speak until she was five. I was very like my grandmother, so I was odd. But I was a lot like grandma, so it was fine. And it was fine as long as I was in school. I know you talk a lot on the podcast about the experience of school, and for me, school was the thing I knew how to do because it was. It was books and tests and clear expectations.

A

You learned the rules, right?

B

I followed the rules. But for me, the trouble came when I left school. After I finished my bachelor's, I went for a year to a film program. It was. I dropped out.

A

And.

B

And then I couldn't get a job anywhere but Macy's. So I was working at a makeup counter for three and a half years full time, and I could not get an interview for a secretarial position. And I was like, I'm really smart. Like, I was. I was a National Merit Scholar. I have all these awards. Like, why can't I get anyone to talk to me? There was so much about, like, the social aspects.

A

Can I ask you, did you get the interviews really easily, but then you didn't even. Why not if your grades were so strong?

B

I was very literal in how I interpreted. Like, I didn't understand networking. I didn't understand the purpose of, like, going and finding someone or connection, which now that's like 90% of what I do, but I just, I didn't, I thought it was just what you put on paper and that was it. And I was following the rules as they were explicitly stated in the instructions.

A

Well, and I think then, like, I look at my kids and having gone through college, they have had jobs all through college. That's kind of what their college, you know, espoused, versus, I think about when I went to school and maybe when you went to school too. You're younger than I am. We didn't do that. We just went to school. Right. So we didn't have those connections.

B

And I worked, but I worked for money. So like, I just worked for, like to pay my bills. I didn't work for connections.

A

Yeah, yeah. Did you work during the school year or was it summers?

B

I worked during the school year. I worked one to three jobs throughout, throughout college and I lived at home. And that's where the diagnosis piece comes back, is that I had spent my entire life so far overextended, like just running until I fell down, being unable, like being in severe burnout, skill regression, like not being able to do anything and then working myself, like ramping back up, even if it took years. And then all I knew was to just go full force. And it was in part because, like I would say the benefit of hindsight, I could use my ADHD to kind of. I could leverage the tension between the ADHD traits and the autistic traits and I could run right over my own limits until I couldn't.

A

Okay, but then what happened? For three and a half years, you're at the Macy's counter at Macy's and then all of a sudden everything blew up.

B

I. In a good way. Oh, well, that was actually like 20 years ago. But I, I went back to grad school.

A

Okay.

B

And I was in the same environment for eight years. And there were some things that happened during that time and I had a massive burnout. But I did finish because I did know how to do school no matter what else was happening. And then I continued working as staff at the university for another. I'm not going to try and math it, but a while. And then I got recruited into a faculty position, and it was a kind of non traditional faculty position where I was both faculty and administrator, founding a master's program. And that's when I knew there was a problem, is I took this job and I was really good at the job, but I bombed the people. I did not understand the unspoken social politics of a liberal arts college. And even though I had only moved three miles from my old institution. I had spent 14 years at my previous institution. So I knew all the rules, even the unspoken ones over that time. And I had a reputation and so things were fine. People trusted me in this new space. I hadn't had to build a reputation for 14 years and I didn't actually know how to do it.

A

What were you like? I mean, you seem perfectly normal and lovely.

B

Direct. I was overly direct. And I jumped into things before I fully understood them. So if someone told me they were being. It's that strong sense of justice. If someone told me they were being wronged, I would leap to their defense and then find out much later like that that had not helped anyone and that they had not been in. They had not been wronged, like. So I just jumped in there to defend somebody who was throwing somebody else under the bus. And somebody will throw somebody else under the bus, will throw you under the bus. So once I started to figure out that I had completely misjudged the situation, I was already on this person's kind of target list. And then with students, they would say, they would say I had really good intentions, which is not what you want.

A

So you didn't quite get there.

B

I didn't quite get there. They knew I had really good intentions. And I think it was, part of it was. It was so much change happening so fast and I was again running it 10,000 miles an hour. And part of it was, I did not know, like I was really experiencing my adhd, sensory needs and executive function differences, but without a name for them. So I was asking for support. I was, I was saying no. I cannot guarantee you a 48 hour response to email. I would love to. I know that is ideal, but I am advising 50 students and I also have all of these other responsibilities and I have to read each email 20 times, have three people I know read it and make sure that I'm saying that I've got enough emojis that indicate I'm a nice person in it before I send it. Because if I don't, then people will get mad at me. And so it was just this, like over compensating all the time. And then my being honest about the fact that no, I can't do it was seen as like blowing off the responsibility. Even though no one did it. No one did it.

A

So they just wanted you to say, we're gonna die. Yes, of course I will. And they didn't really care if you did or didn't, but you cared.

B

I cared. I was like, I can't. So I'm not going to say I can.

A

Yeah, makes sense to me.

B

But that is what that was. The thing that directly preceded getting, or one of the things that directly preceded getting diagnosed. During the pandemic, I went to. I moved from Georgia to Ohio. And a large part of that was to be closer to my nieces, both of whom had ADHD diagnoses. And I had a roommate who also had just gotten adult ADHD diagnosis. And she was constantly telling me, well, you know that dopamine hit that you get out of X, Y, Z. I don't get it. And I had no idea what she was talking about. I was like, do you mean it's not satisfying to check off lists? Because I love to check off lists. I'll write something on my list just to check it off.

A

Yeah, that's smart.

B

Yeah. So, I mean, that doesn't mean I'm satisfied. I'm already thinking about the next 20 things I have to do. But I didn't. I did not understand, like, why my nieces were diagnosable, why my friend was diagnosable in this way. What they were trying to tell me was the difference. And I kept asking my therapist of several years. I was like, are you sure? And she was like, you're absolutely just typical. You're fine. Everybody's like this.

A

Oh, my heavens. So in the back of your mind, you were thinking, maybe autism, maybe adhd, maybe both of them.

B

Yep. And then I got. I read a book by an autistic woman about an autistic character, Helen Huang, but it was the kissing quotient. And I went, holy crap, that's me. And I wrote a. I think it was like 37 page document mapping my life to the DSM 5 characteristics, in this case for autism. And I read everything I could, and then I went back to my therapist and let's just say she got diagnosed straight after I did with what both autism and adhd.

A

Oh, my gosh. So of course she didn't see it because

B

we actually broke up as, as therapists and patients so that we could collaborate on professional projects. I mean, it was a couple years after that, but. But she's amazing and she's changed her whole practice to better under, like, better support neurodivergent clients and to be able to do assessment and things like that. But I was officially, like, I was assessed for autism. I was diagnosed with autism. It was a gigantic disaster of an assessment.

A

How so? Did you have to go to more than one person? They.

B

No, it Wasn't that it was the person that diagnosed me that did the assessment. Like I'd already, at that point, I have a PhD, I have training in psychology and I, I'd also like talked with my therapist who has a PsyD at you know, like I knew what the answer was before I went in. I went in and I did not mask. And you know, especially I think for those of us with ADHD or autism, we have very spiky cognitive profiles. So we're really good at some things and we're really bad at other things and they don't like it's not in a sensible way. It's just very idiosyncratic, which those things are. And my understanding of other humans is very intellectual. As long as I'm kind of like supplementing with, with that part of my brain, then I am fine in interacting with others. But when I don't like I, I know other people experience me as naive or younger than my chronicle chronological age. Like I know that I come across differently. And he got very excited about my brain because I was very self aware and because I could speak very articulately about what was happening because I had all of this other expertise and I'd been studying in my PhD research general to specific neural processing or processing biases versus specific to general processing bias, which is specific to general would be autism and ADHD like us. And then I was studying the crazy people like I thought they were all nuts and I, I was like, is this where cults come from? I thought I was on to something. Turns out it was neurotypicals.

A

I love it.

B

But yes, I was very self aware with regards to like how I fit the criteria, how I didn't. And he experienced transference. He started crying and telling me that I should be dead by now. I mean he was hopping all over the place and then he just like he had a meltdown and apparently what in the moment, it seems like what triggered him was that I said that, you know, I don't lie and I don't think people should lie. I know people lie. I'm not stupid. But I said something about like I just, I, I don't think it's a, it's not a strategy that makes sense for me. I cannot keep that straight. Yeah, I had said something about like my distaste for lying. I don't think it's an effective strategy for me. And he apparently remembered a family member's assault and was very triggered. And so he kept telling me I needed to protect myself for the sake of the people that loved me. And I mean, it was just.

A

Wow.

B

It was bad.

A

Yeah.

B

So then after that, I called my therapist or I, like, I texted my therapist and I was like, you need to check on him. He is not okay. And in the moment with him, I was just like, okay, don't worry. Like, I'm not dead yet. But I was totally freaked out. And after I, I called her or I. I reached out to her, she reached out to him. I was like. And I told my friends, I was like, is that normal? Like, I don't think that's normal. That's not normal, right? Like, that's a big deal. And that's. They were. Who suggested that he was having a nervous breakdown. So I was like, oh, I'll get him help. That makes sense. So when she reached out to him, he basically said I misinterpreted what happened and that he wasn't having a breakdown. And then when he wrote my diagnostic report, my initial diagnostic report, he said that I couldn't care about anything other than my own happiness, that I had reacted vigilantly to the assessor, like, expressing emotion.

A

Wow.

B

And that I had the. According to a family. Family assessment, I had the like, emotional, intelligent, social intelligence of a six year old. And that there's something wrong and levels and level two support needs. And I was like, okay, I know myself and I know that I can be direct in all of these. Like, I know my flaws. This is bs. So I worked with my therapist and thankfully, as I said, we. We stopped that relationship a couple years later and just decided to work together because we like each other so much. But she was amazing and agreed to advocate with me and to come to the session with me and basically lend her professional credentials and backing so that it wasn't just the crazy autistic woman saying, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm not so bad with people. He apologized, he rewrote the report with our feedback and it included adhd. But we did not do a separate ADHD assessment at that point because I did not ever want to be alone with him ever again. What was interesting to me in that experience was that he normally worked with people in the justice system or with children, so he was used to people who couldn't fight back. And so when I challenged him, he just asserted his authority and he admitted it. He admitted what he'd done when we met with him. And he basically just apologized and was like, yeah, I can't believe I actually did that. Oh, my bad.

A

And he's still Practicing.

B

He's still practicing. The last I heard, he was on a. He joined the, like, board of a state organization.

A

Lovely.

B

And I, I made YouTube videos about it, like, when it all happened, because I wanted there to be a record because I'm like, I'm sure he'll do it to, like, he's gonna do stuff like this to other people or he has already.

A

And someone who doesn't have your knowledge. Right. That. That is upsetting.

B

It was very upsetting. But I was advised not to pursue it formally by many people. And I mean, my own experience tells me as well, no one, they're not going to censor him for something when I'm the one with the communication disorder.

A

So hopefully you found someone a lot better.

B

Yes. So I now actually, at that point I was like, okay, well, I've got the piece of paper and I already knew all of this. I'm just going to move on with my life. And what was really fabulous about doing that is now I work with lots of people who assess others and all of that. So it's, it's given me a lot of insight into, like, what to listen for, for somebody to be good, trustworthy assessor. And it's, it really motivated me to change my life. I changed my whole life and found it.

A

That's what I want to know. Like, yeah. What changed?

B

Everything. Everything changed. All of a sudden I knew why people were misunderstanding me and I knew where my misunderstanding lay. I was like, oh, I'm believing them, literally, and. Or I'm believing what they say and they mean other things. So then I could start checking for other things. Like, so is this what you mean? Or is it because I was telling people for decades, please be direct with me? I would say, could you talk to me like, I'm autistic?

A

Oh, wow.

B

Oh, my God. Direct. Yeah, that would be helpful. Like, I said that on multiple occasions. So it turns out, because I am. And the Audi HD piece, because that has only been possible as a dual diagnosis for a much shorter period of time, it took a while for that patient presentation to filter out into the world. So then I could be like, oh, that's why neither one by itself seemed quite right. Right. It was both. And they are different when they're together. I'm sure at some point they're gonna rewrite the DSM again and classify Audi HD in some way. But it was so, so empowering. It was so wonderful. I, I could look back at all the places where I had achieved, like, right up to here, and then, like, Dropped it all. And I could. I could see why. Like, then I could recognize, oh, I was overdoing it. I didn't know how to sustain my momentum because I was following advice for neurotypical people.

A

Yep, you didn't understand. And that understanding, it just opens up everything. Because how. How can we change anything to serve ourselves if we don't understand what we need to change or why we need to change it. Right. Rather than all of this masking, which is just. I can't even imagine how overwhelming it must be. So you often describe yourself as a recovering academic. What were you recovering from? And did your diagnosis suddenly make you realize that, oh, maybe this wasn't the place for me for these various reasons? Or are you thinking, no, now if I went back into it, I would know what to do. Can I ask you a question? What if the reason you've never been able to make productivity systems work isn't because you're lazy, undisciplined, or inconsistent? What if you are using systems that were never designed for your brain in the first place? Most ADHD women, well, we spend years trying to force ourselves to do things the way everyone else does them and tells us we should do them. We buy the planner, we download the app, we create the system. And sometimes it works until it doesn't, because even the best solution can't solve the wrong problem. In the training I've put together show you what ADHD actually looks like in women, why traditional productivity advice often fails us, and what changes when you start working with your brain instead of against it. If that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes and come join me.

B

I think now if I went back into it, I would know what to do, but I also would never go back into it. I found a way to do all the things I loved about it on my own.

A

And

B

I don't have to try and get accommodations because we just built the infrastructure from the beginning. I can take a nap in the middle of the day. I do. I've taken so far today. One nap. I will probably take another later because every time I do it resets my nervous system. I just. I mean, it's not like fully falling asleep, but if I can reset my nervous system, I can do a lot more. And I can task switch, which I can't just move from one task into another. I have to calm everything down and then do the next thing. But I can't, like, quit. I can't quit and do, like, nothing. Because if I quit and do nothing, I'll lose Momentum, you know, like things like. Like figuring out coping strategies that work for me. Doing the easiest thing first instead of the hardest thing first. Because I'm not gonna. If I try and do the hardest thing first, I will do nothing all day. If I do the easiest thing first, if I do something that doesn't even count, odds are good, I'm gonna keep going and I'm gonna build up and I'll get there. One of the things that really drove me crazy in the university that I've always struggled with was there were these very high ideals, but there was no accountability to them. And so they would say one thing and do do another all the time. And I could not. I could not handle that. And would you call them out on it?

A

Would you actually say that?

B

Sometimes? Yes.

A

Okay. So that's why you weren't popular, because you weren't phony.

B

Yeah, I did say at one point. The master's program. They create master's programs at liberal arts colleges in large part as a revenue generating initiative. They want to leverage the expertise of the faculty, and then undergraduates will receive lots of financial aid. The paper tuition is really different from what people are actually paying. Okay, Okay. A lot of that is just kind of forgiven or, you know, like, very few people are paying full tuition, but what would. But master's students do? They take loans and they pay. Most of them pay full tuition. So. And you can get as many master's degrees as you want. And if you're concerned about the job market or you want to build expertise and things like that, a lot of people get multiple masters and kids who are afraid to leave college will get multiple masters. It's a market that's ripe for exploitation. And I was fine with people. I mean, I had a PhD. I was. I was ecstatic for people to get master's degrees until I realized that, like, what was like, really driving everything, because I knew it was a revenue generating thing. But, like, when I saw students going straight from this master's program to another,

A

and it wasn't helping their job prospects, right?

B

No. And there were some who. Who did, like, they did the program. They went on, but there were people who. And for those people, those are the people that should have been there, but there were other people who were taking classes and, like, failing them multiple times and not.

A

And.

B

And at first I was making exceptions and trying to help people stay in because they were saying it was really important to them. And I was like, okay, you can, you know, pull this back. But like, after a certain point, it Becomes clear they're, they're not like if they're not. And then it's just taking their money because they're going to have to pay that back. And I had six figures in student loans I was not all about. I didn't want them to have that. Yeah, there were a lot of things that made me unpopular. I wasn't unpopular with everyone, but I was definitely unpopular with people that could make my life better or worse. Now we're able to call each other in. Like we, we run the business. So if we start doing something and it's not what we value. We had a situation recently where we, we made some mistakes and we were nicer than we should have been, which unfortunately did not lead us, lead to us being able to be as kind as we should have been. We didn't set clear expectations. We thought we did, but we didn't. And then when we had to hold people accountable to those expectations, it was very shocking for them. Like we made mistakes. When we did our kind of debrief internally around it, we did a like AI analysis of what we could have done better and we said these are our values. And here is what happened in terms of our own values. Tell us where we could have done better. It was good because we did see, yes, we actually understood where we'd made the mistake and we were clear on that. It was the same thing, but it was also humbling.

A

So one of the things that I found really interesting about you is that you studied applied positive psychology in Martin Seligman's program at the University of Pennsylvania. I am a huge fan of his and I'm not really interested in going back to school. But that program I have actually thought about. So for people that don't know, positive psychology is all about what helps people flourish rather than just treating what's wrong. How has positive psychology influenced the way you think about ADHD and autism? And it sounds like you went through the program before you were diagnosed or am I wrong? No, you're right.

B

You're right. We didn't finish the program because it was a four class thing program. So we did the first two classes. The second two basically would have been redundant with my doctoral training.

A

For, for me there you are being super honest.

B

Like we didn't actually. So, so we didn't get the certificate but, but I didn't really need a methods class. So. Yeah. Oh God. One of the things that it keeps coming up because at the time I was doing it because I was teaching computer science for designed around the needs and interests of girls K through 12. And we wanted to build in the science of character strengths and resilience and really a lot of social, emotional learning into that. And since then, since diagnosis and all of that, now my focus is on building it into our programming because we have the nonprofit and the for profit and on the nonprofit side, some of the things we have coming up include a program to support entrepreneurs with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We are able then to take the bolster and build theory of emotion. You aren't going to be able to learn when you're in fight or flight. People in. People like us are in fight or flight most of the time. So how do like, we're going to have to be very careful about how we create the environment. We're going to have to take that into account. We're going to have to do exercises that help with that. We just. And incorporate practices for getting to that space into the entrepreneurs workflow. Like you're not going to be able to sustain it if you can't sustain your piece. So it, I valued those classes. I mean it was the timing of that was during the pandemic. So it was like we weren't going anywhere anyway. I would not be able to do it now. And there was definitely like a lot of homework which, you know, you just get to a certain point you don't want to do homework anymore. But it was so valuable and I learned so much like who the, the people in that field are, how to create the conditions for learning how to think about autism and ADHD and all of the kind of representations of that in culture as being a result of fight or flight, of being constantly dysregulated. And it also then helped me see, you know, I spend all my time in now in neurodivergent spaces and I see what people are like when they're relaxed and when they're comfortable. And we're completely different, absolutely different.

A

Well, your brain's actually online instead of all this stuff in the background, you know, and you're so, you're kind of doing the best you can, but it's not your best. And yet in so many of these neurodivergent spaces, there's still this attitude is, hey, if you can survive, congratulations. I'm just like, that makes no sense. And I love that your strategy is more, forget the coping. Let's talk about building lives that actually feel good every single day. So do you think that Martin Seligman's program is what kind of were you always like that or did he did his program really open your eyes? And you were like, no, this is what. This is where we need to start

B

a little of both. I think where I really started that kind of mental shift is my father had a heart attack when he was 58, and he died. I was 30. And that was like, I was in burnout for a couple years after that. And, like, full with skill regression, like, the whole thing, you know, like, somebody has to come get me, take me to eat, you know, like, I got lost in ikea, had to call for help. You know, things like that. It's funny, but, like, at the time, like, when I was trying to drive myself to the vet and I pulled over and let's. Some guy on the side of the street in the car because he told me to, like, he just waved at me, like, to come over, so I came over. I was very compliant. So I. I know that my experiences of. Of burnout and the times when I'm not able to access my intellect or when I can't leverage my ADHD and my autism because they're both over capacity. I know that when. When I have been over capacity, when I have not been able to leverage my intellect or my. The tension between my autism and adhd, that I'm very, very, very vulnerable. And which is part of why, when I was getting assessed, I was like, no, like, yeah, like, I know I'm vulnerable. I also take steps, like, thanks for telling me I should be dead. Shouldn't you be saying, like, congratulations, you're doing great, you're alive. The recovery process from that was very much like. I read a lot of Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, and I spent a lot of. I read a lot of Adam Grant, and I was reading other people, Rene Brown, you know, over. Over the years. And I didn't have a coherent, like, framework. I had kind of like. I was like, it's kind of Buddhist ish, but not, like, not quite that. I didn't have a good framework for how to think about it until I took the positive psychology classes and understood the field. And then I was able to put it within a framework and understand. Adam Grant's not working in a bubble. He's working with.

A

None of us are, though, right?

B

Yes, we're all working together. And it was also interesting from my academic background is very critical of anything that would be universal, anything that would be like, let's apply this broadly. But there was a good amount of space in the character strengths research. They did a global approach to basically identifying what character strengths were valued within, like, every culture surveyed. And that has been very. I like that. I like that. I also find it works really, really well when you're with ADHD and autistic youth as well as adults, because instead of trying to. And I think you talk a lot about, like, what has been your. Your. Like, how has your ADHD helped you? It's a lot easier to bolster a strength than to, like, bring a weakness up, even to just, like, neutral. So if you focus on your strengths, you have so much more capacity. And, like, I don't like people. I. I don't like them. I like dogs and cats. I like individual humans. But I'm very curious. So when I have to go out and I have to people, I leverage my curiosity. And it works because I'm genuinely interested. I want to know. How about other people? I want to know what they're thinking. I want to know things. And that helps me. That it doesn't if I'm, you know, scatterbrained and, like, it won't help me, like, know if I've said something that was actually quite rude and didn't process it because my brain was already thinking about something else. Won't help me there, but it will help me notice that their face changed after I said that thing. And then I can kind of think, okay, maybe I can feel them out about what this means, that their face changed. Is that a good change, a bad change from that place of curiosity? And it has been once. I think the combination of having done that training right before my diagnosis was super duper helpful because then I knew how to bolster myself. I knew how to, like, identify my strengths, and I knew why, like, I had done those. It's one of the assessments, you know, like, they have all of the, like, personality assessments and things they do at

A

work, the Baya or something.

B

It. Strengths Quest. It was Strengths Quest.

A

Oh, okay.

B

I had done Strengths Strengths Quest. I had done Strengths Quest two times, about three to five years apart, and gotten completely different answers. Like, completely different

A

from. And do you think the difference was that program?

B

The difference wasn't the program, but the difference was whether I was in, like, the capacity. My capacity for fight, like, where I was with regard to fight, or, wow, okay, when I was regulated versus when I was not.

A

And I guess it makes perfect sense then.

B

And I could understand that once I had done that program and gotten the diagnosis, because then I could be like, okay, what was going on in my life. Yes, that is how that impacts my capacity, and that is why these strengths were apparent. But these other things seemed like. It seemed like I'd lost skills and peopleing and all of this. The first time, it had seemed like I was a really great mentor. I was like, oh, that's so nice. I'm glad that I'm caring. Yay. And then the second time, I was like, just isolated, ivory tower, like, arrogant jerk. And I was like, oh, well, that's disappointing. What happened, like, and it wasn't. It was just like, what are my base strengths? Because those showed up in both versus what are the things that I can do when I'm regulated and able to bring my full self to the table?

A

Right. Right. Okay. Shannon, can you talk a little bit? Because you've mentioned this a couple times, the tension between your ADHD and your autism.

B

One of the things that you'll hear a lot of ADHD people say is that it's like being pulled in two directions. Because the parts of you that resonate with the autism diagnosis, the parts of you that are. Because it's not. You're one person. Like, it's not. They're not extricable. It's. It's a completely different thing than either one on its own. But the parts of you that would resonate with the autism diagnosis crave routine, calm, stability. The parts of you that resonate more with the ADHD diagnosis may crave more novelty and needing to be interested. I've done the thing where I've hyper focused on a new hobby and learned everything in the world about it and then moved on to a different hobby. Right. But then I. I circle back a lot, and I do finish things. It just takes me a lot longer. So the. I can take that kind of steadiness that comes from my more autistic kind of impulse. I can take those traits and I can use them to do things I wouldn't be able to do if I was just adhd. And I can take some of my ADHD traits and I can use them to do things I wouldn't be able to do if I were just autistic, I think a lot of it is knowing that I'm never just one, accounting for the fact that I'm never just one. So as much as I would love, and it's interesting also as I get older, because I've hit perimenopause and, wow, that has just put everything on steroids. I used to travel all the time, and now I'm just like, I don't want to leave my cats. I don't want to leave my cats. I'm gonna do this. I resent it. I love new places. I love, you know, I don't want to make any decisions if I have to do this. So, like, the compromise so my kids can go and do stuff is my friend who loves planning plans are trips. Like, plans trips. And I just have to show up.

A

Love it.

B

And the part of me that's autistic and does not want to go is. Is like, okay, well, as long as I don't have to make any decisions, that's fine. And the part of me that's ADHD and that wants to do everything is like, well, it'll be unpredictable. It'll be fun. It'll be great. So she also gives us, like, a full itinerary with, like, where we're eating every day and, like, oh, my heaven.

A

So that at least satisfies your autistic brain. Right. You know what to expect.

B

So then there's constant stimulation because we're doing lots of things. But I know it in advance and can make plans. And again, diagnosis for the win. Like, I can tap out so I can try and do as much as I can because my support system knows that I'm trying as hard as I can to do all of it. And then when I have to tap out myself and my autistic child can just go back to the hotel, my ADHD child can stay with our friends and continue to have adventures, and everybody ends up happy instead of, like, having meltdowns.

A

Right. I love that. I have often found that some of the most successful women that I meet are adhd because, you know, they have the ideas, they have the fearlessness, they have the impulsivity. They jump at chances, but then they also are able to build the structures and the systems and, you know, which is really important, you know, if you were trying to build something new. Okay, so that's the perfect segue, building something new. So decision fatigue. I don't think it's something that people talk enough about. Why do you think making even small decisions is so exhausting for so many ADHD and autistic adults?

B

Well, you got to think about it in terms of cognitive load and how our brains work. Our brains. When I talk about specific to general processing bias, what I am saying is that, like, a typical brain is the opposite. A typical brain kind of develops in a way where I'm gonna get a little nerdy here. Babies are born with too many, like, more active synapses, like connections than they actually need. And a typical baby brain kind of self prunes, like topiaries. Itself to fit its culture, to fit its nurturing environment. All of those things, right? It's both nature and nurture. So it hardwires itself to fit its environment. It says its brain learns to ignore the air conditioner and to pay attention to mom's voice. Brains like ours do not self prune. We're wild. Like, we are born with more active synapses to begin with and then we retain more active synapses over our lifetime. So at the base level, everything is requiring more work for our brains. They do the exact same thing. We're not just. It's like the difference between, like, finding the bathroom. It's like the difference between, like, having to try and find the bathroom at a library versus trying to find the bathroom at a rave.

A

Oh, gosh.

B

Yeah, right. Like, it's still the same simple task, but one of them is going to take a lot longer and involve a lot more effort and probably more wrong turns as well. So we are living our whole lives like that. Everything is. We're at the rave all the time, 24 7. And when you wake up in the morning, you're like, our brains are specific to general, so we're taking each situation and evaluating that situation. So the air conditioner changed. The sound of the air conditioner changed. We're not going to just ignore it. There's a part of our brain that's going to be like, is it the end times? Like, are the aliens here? Did somebody just break into my house? Like, is there an earthquake? Like, what is happening? And it's going to run the possibilities and then it's going to decide, okay, we can ignore it, it's fine. But when you factor in doing that for the sound of the air conditioner changed, somebody just flushed the toilet. Like, my dog just barked. Which pants should I wear? Like, when you get to a point where or you get to a point where you're standing in the kitchen and like you get up and you have the same thing for breakfast every morning. Or you have like a group of things and you pick from them, right? Like you have your favorite cereal and that's what you're gonna have. And you get into the kitchen and you're out of your favorite cereal and then you just stand there and you stare at at the counter because you could have anything. Now all the choices are, are there. How are you going to make a decision on this? You have to factor in, do I want eggs, Do I want Starbucks? Do I want toast, Do I want nothing? Maybe I'm not hungry.

A

Like yeah, Do I even want to eat at this point?

B

Like, why is the universe trying to hurt me? So when you're it, when it comes down to it, when you're that overwhelmed before you even leave the house. I had this conversation with multiple people. And when we were kind of realizing, when we got the data in and we realized this actually edged out all of those productivity apps that are focused on to do lists and getting things done, when we surveyed people, because we Talked to, like, 100 something people with ADHD or an autism diagnosis, and it overwhelmingly, like, getting things done was high on the list, but decision fatigue and paralysis was higher because what was happening was a big decision was coming along, and our brains are treating every decision like it's life or death. And then an actual big decision comes along and we don't have the bandwidth to do it. So we make an impulsive decision or we don't do anything.

A

Yeah, we just keep kicking it down the road.

B

Right.

A

Because it's too hard.

B

Yes. It's one or the other. Neither of which serves us.

A

Okay, so, Shannon, what made you decide that AI might actually be part of the solution for all this decision fatigue?

B

Well, it goes back to teaching computer science. I was at a networking event, and they had really great food, which was why I was there. I will come to your networking event if you feed me, send me the menu, and I'm more likely to attend. But they did a, like, one of those exercises where they made you all stand in a circle and you had to, like, say, an idea for how AI could impact your field. And I was like, I teach computer science. Like, we're going to have to teach AI, like, this is okay. Like, this is boring. But we had founded the nonprofit at that point.

A

Was that after your diagnosis?

B

Yes.

A

Okay. Okay, makes sense.

B

So after the diagnosis, after founding the nonprofit to serve autistic adults, we realized we've got to build the economic base. Like, our people do not have the collective economic power to get the changes that we need in order to thrive. Some of our people do. So if we could circulate money within our community, that can make a big difference. We were looking for ways to both provide help and find ways for people in our community who have jobs and who work and all of that to support people who don't have jobs who can't work in kind of getting in rising. So we were looking for kind of a business model as well, beyond just asking people to donate because people want value for their money. And we got this. We, like. I kept hearing people Talk about AI doing all of these things to make people rich and all that. I was like, I don't care about that. But what I heard was like, as people were talking about the uses of AI, I was like, you know, a lot of the stuff we have problems with could be like the technology already exists to help. Like we're just trying to run a decision tree and not get distracted. That's it. We just want to make sure that we're giving proportional weight to the different factors and that we know we considered the most important things and we're just not able to in the moment, in real time tell what the most important things are. And getting overwhelmed by that. We could make apps. We could do something to make apps that would actually help people. And we could do it with a business model that was instead of being focused on profit, that was focused on like community building and on lifting each other up. So we did a survey, we had these app ideas and we took the idea to give back Hack, which is a social enterprise pre accelerator. So they want ideas to help people or the businesses that would help people. And they let you pitch your idea to a group of couple hundred people and then folks can sign up to work on the ideas, they vote the top ideas and then they can join different teams and it's like a two day thing and you pitch at the end and you can win some prize money. We very quickly had a team of all autistic and ADHD people, including developers and UX designers and business development folks who all were like, yeah, we do need apps that could be totally great. Then we surveyed a whole bunch of people again. And then we had actually said we're going to probably work on the to do list app. When we talked to people, we found out what they wanted more was something for decision fatigue, a better way to just decide what to have for breakfast without getting overwhelmed. And so we pivoted, worked on that instead won first prize, did another pitch thingy event. Like most of the team decided to stay together. We did another thing and did really well in that. And we basically built a minimum viable product. So just something that would do it, that we could test with people. People loved it. We submitted a funding application to the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities and they gave us a little over or no, about $400,000 to build it, to conduct research into the power of AI to support neurodivergent people. And with that they funded the research. But we were able to then leverage being able to do this full time to build the gap and the research really bore out how big of an issue this is. It was also really eye opening because we realized how bad things are for our community because our community has so many other different demographics that we're like, we're not identified as a community. And also autism is split off from adhd and then there's ADHD and all of this. But at least when it comes to autism, there's billion. Yeah, I think a couple billion dollars that have gone into autism research. 4% of autism funding goes towards anything over the age of 18. There are over 5 million autistic adults in the US alone. 4%. There's not stats on research on ADHD because they're not actually like checking that. Right.

A

If you're a woman, forget it.

B

On both counts, there's massive under diagnosis for women and people of color. And the suicide rates for both autistic and ADHD people are so disproportionately high. The average, I don't know the average adult lifespan for an ADHD person, but the average adult lifespan for an autistic person is 36 to 54 years old. Yeah. And it's, I mean autism is just has nothing to do with being alive. But the, the suicide rates for ADHD are also really, really, really high. Yes. So we were able to use building the app and being able to really work full time on that to also build the nonprofit and to just start doing work on autism and suicide prevention and on mobility autonomy for people with idd. ADHD and autism are both considered developmental disabilities. We've been really well supported by our state department of developmental disabilities in creating apps and assistive technology that's by us for us. They've been really supportive of that. And what's been interesting for me about when we created Decide, Decide helps you. It has two ways that it helps you with decisions. There's guided and there's random. So the random doesn't use any AI at all. It's just you can pre enter a list and you can associate each list item with the energy it takes to do it. And then if you need to. So taking that example of breakfast, like eggs is different from a build bar. Then when you need to make it like you need to choose from something familiar, you can just go in there and select your energy level and then pick and it will give you something that is random but is from your pre created list and that suits your current energy level. So you don't have to make like you can put in your drinks at Starbucks, you can put in restaurants which let me tell you, that's great with kids.

A

Yeah.

B

They actually will be like, they don't want me to make the decision. They're like, ask, decide.

A

That is so funny. But that's usually what we're doing. Right. My husband will say, where do you want to go for dinner? I don't know. Where do you want to go? I don't know.

B

It's back and forth. Not every decision is. It needs like large language models to come like break it down and analyze it. But it does need some help. Like somebody to just like say or even just you previous you to have said these are the parameters for when this is a good idea. And then the other thing that decide does is a guided decision. And we did. This is where that state funding came in. We were able to do so much research before we, before we were built. Built it and while we built it. So one of the things we found is our PDA ers do not want to be told what to do. So you can't have a decision making app for neurodivergent people that tells you what to do because they're going to just be like, well, I'm not doing that now. I can't. We also learned that questions very quickly lead to overwhelm. Open ended questions or even yes, no questions very quickly lead to overwhelm. So instead of like telling you what you should do, decide makes a recommendation with a percent confidence. Instead of asking you yes or no questions, it gives a ser. It generates a series of affirmative statements that you can agree or disagree with or just say I'm not sure. So you can enter in your question and it's an open field so you can enter in like you can add additional context and then you ask and it generates a list or a succession of I statements and you agree or disagree. And then at the end it says based on what this is what you said. Based on what you said. This decision. We recommend this decision with this percent confidence. And then you can choose whether you add more context or whether you ask it to ask more questions or you just accept it. And what's really what. Most people tell us that before it gets to the recommendation, they know what to do.

A

Yeah, well, you're processing with it. Yeah, sorry.

B

No, no, you got it, you got it. You just need help with the process. Like we don't really need to be told what to do. We need help just staying focused on the process.

A

Right, right.

B

Finishing it. Yeah.

A

And staying quiet enough that we're actually going through it versus ah, too Much noise, running away.

B

Well, and it also, like, one of the things I find is it makes it so much easier to tell if there is another key factor that I need to consider.

A

Yeah.

B

Because it'll ask me the like, X questions and I'll be like, well, but. And I'll add more contacts. I'll be like, what you don't know is, you know, and I give it a little bit more and it changes the recommendation. And I'm like, okay, now I get like, I can still add things to it. There's no. We didn't want to set anything up where people offloaded their autonomy. We wanted it to still be very much. You make the decision. We wanted to teach people how to make better decisions when they don't have the app. We didn't want to, we wanted it to be very, very transparent so that they could walk through it and see like, okay, okay, this, this is what's important. Or this is not actually what's important to me. And we did not want to have a chatbot format because those can lead to, they're, they're too easy to interact with. We. A chat, A chatbot you can just start talking to and you can just keep going and it can keep asking you questions. And there's not a defined process. And we needed a very defined short process that had an ending so you couldn't come back and second guess yourself and add more context over and over and over again that there was an endpoint. You can add more context, but it's, you're, it's like reenlisting in the army, like you're starting something again. So it's a different kind of cognitive cue if you're like, well, actually like this first time I went through the process, didn't take something concrete into account. Let me give that information then if you're having a conversation. Also, I mean, there's been some preliminary work. Two things. One is that AI and like, there have been some, some problems with neurodivergent people's use of AI leading to psychosis because it seems so real and it's programmed to be very sycophantic, so it'll suck up to you and tell you how brilliant you are. Even when you get. Ask it for harsh critique because I'm always like, like, make me cry, like, make it bad. But it, it, it's not going to, it's going to try its best not to hurt your feelings and it's going to build you up even when it maybe shouldn't. It's also programmed. I tell my kids they're not allowed to have chats with LLMs. They can ask questions, but they need to treat it like a query, but they cannot treat it like a friend. And that is because it is programmed with everything that was ever, like, on the Internet. It's every rom com line, every, like, it can predict the right answer. That doesn't mean it's thinking about, like, you or. Or context or the impact of any of this. It's very I. Large language models are good for formatting, analyzing, and summarizing. That's what I think they really thrive at. So we have them format the question, like analyze and format the question and process and then summarize what you've said. We really focus on what it's good at. And we try very hard not to create dependency because so much of our technology now is meant to be addictive.

A

Who's using this app?

B

It's so funny because, like, we'll see, like, in the data, we'll see most of the people that use it are using the free version. There's a paid version for like 4.99amonth. If you do the annual, it's like 3.99amonth. We wanted to keep it as cheap as possible, but right now we've got it primarily for adults. It has to be used by an adult. It's within the US and Canada. We're probably going to open that to 13. Because what I find is my kids are the ones who want to all the time, and it's really, really helpful. What I'm finding is the younger people are, the more willing they are to, like, use a tool. Like, those of us who are Generation X and above are all like, my day. Like, I remember my first computer, you know.

A

Yeah, too bad.

B

Like. Like, we'll use it, but, like, it takes a while to think of it. Like, it just doesn't even come to mind. But the kids, they asked me for it in the grocery store when they're trying to pick dinner. They ask me for it when they're trying to, like, pick out what they're going to order in a restaurant. They ask me for it all the time. And a good portion of that is, like, I've got neurodivergent kids who also have ptsd. Yeah, yeah. And they constantly have. Their level of anxiety just as a baseline is so high. And that's the same for a lot of kids, even that don't have PTSD because of the world we live in.

A

Exactly.

B

Yeah. So just high anxiety. People and then folks who are just trying to do a lot of. So I use it the most to figure out where we're going to have dinner or what's going to be for dinner. Because I, I, you know, I've only had kids for three years and I, prior to that had no one who judged me. If I just ate pretzels for dinner, I didn't have to make dinner ever.

A

Yeah.

B

And now they ask me every single day what every meal is going to be. And that might be what kills me.

A

So tell us, Shannon, what's the difference between the free and the paid? Like what, what do you get more,

B

what you get more of with the paid is unlimited decisions, like guided decisions. You get 10 free. With the, with the, with the free Tier, you get 10 guided and you can have your random. With the paid, you can set up more custom lists. You can use AI to generate a custom list if you'd like. So you could say like recipes with chicken, like, and have it generate a list. And then you could be able to choose what you're going to do from the, from that. It also keeps more of a log of your decisions. So we're working on the ability to kind of review your decision making history. That's one of the things we would love to do to add on in there. We've got so many things we want to add into it. But just for now, I would say the main, we wanted to make as much available in the free tier as possible. And we're focusing on like, we focused really hard on building this and now this year we're focusing really hard on the nonprofit and building that up. And then we'll be able to kind of go back and forth between them. We're letting most of our technology be development be driven by what we find as needs in the community.

A

So

B

we'll have, we'll probably circle back and do like a big user assessment in the next year or so and then develop new features based on that. But I think it's, it's fairly robust at the free level. It's just if you're going to be somebody that uses it all the time, you're going to want the peg. Okay.

A

So when you look at life before the assessment and you look at life today, would you say that you feel like you fit in, like you're around your people, life is easier?

B

Oh, yes, Yes. I really, I mean, I went from like when I was having my experience when I was a professor, when I was doing that, I had gotten to a point where I didn't leave the house hardly ever. Like, I went to work and I came home and I didn't hang out with my friends. I didn't go do things. I was concerned about my own mental health. It was bad. It was interesting because I. Right after assessment, I had that kind of like skim over burnout kind of thing because I was dealing with all the assessment insanity and changing jobs again and kind of change figuring out reprocessing my entire life the way you do. So they're definitely like right after I couldn't do things that I could do before. And there was some inward pulling inward. But then as I rebuilt this time, this is the first time I rebuilt after burnout where I rebuilt based on what I actually. What works for me. And I'm not on trying to fit somebody else's model. And it was amazing. I now I have two businesses. I also became a foster parent. I was gonna foster teens that were transitioning out of the system. And the first kids I was asked to foster or take were just like for an overnight at the time. 9 and 11 year old or. No, they were 9 and 10. Yeah, they were 9 and 10. And I was like, oh, okay, well, they're not babies, so it's okay. Like, I was nine, was the youngest I was willing to go. And they moved in with me and are still here. And now we're headed towards adoption, which was again, not the plan. I was. I was gonna like, parent in like chunks for kids that needed it. I was, I. There may have been some delusion involved, but. But like, I wasn't planning on becoming a full time parent, especially of elementary schoolers, but I was able to. And a good portion of that was also as I had my kind of revelation. The people around me were also. Because I did have a lot of neurodivergent friends, but we were all not diagnosed. So my friend of 30 years is my business partner. Her daughter were both diagnosed when they were kids. She had never even considered herself because she was so focused on advocating for her kids. And then when I got diagnosed, she was like, oh, oh, that explains me and my husband. Whoa, now I get it. And then my other friends, like in a similar group were just like, okay, well, tell us what you need. Okay. It also made it easier for the kids, like, not just mine, but the adult children of my friends, because they all had diagnoses and their parents had, you know, like, our generation just wasn't diagnosed. So their parents were kind of like, okay, well, my kid has ADHD and They have the like kind of textbook definition and we're advocating for their kid. But then when they realized that they had adhd, they were like, oh my God. Okay. That's why I'm so confused by all of this. Like, that's why I'm like, well, why aren't you just like dealing with. We had a very, like, I, I do think it was easier when we were growing up because there wasn't so much technology, there was a lot more outside time. There weren't these expectations over every moment of your time being monitored. Like, it was like we developed coping skills.

A

Yeah, it was much simpler.

B

Yeah. We weren't thriving, but we developed coping

A

skills, which is why we needed the coping skills.

B

Yes, yes.

A

So, Shannon, what is your number one ADHD workaround? And it cannot be decide that's fine.

B

I think my number one ADHD workaround is having figured out how to sustain, maintain momentum. So I realized that for me, I can't. If I crash, like if I just take a full stop, then I have fully stopped, I'm going to have to ramp up again and it's going to take a long time and be really hard. What I can do that's a lot easier is to kind of switch tasks and switch whatever I'm immersed in and hyper focused on so that it engages different. Like, like when you train at the gym and you do like leg day and arm day. Like don't over train one area. Like if I just switched and I kept a good rotation, then I could maintain momentum for quite a long time and not feel burnt out. I do need like solid breaks, but that like a catnap, like a 30 minute, just like full rest and just like pull back from everything. I could kind of generate the momentum that comes when I first wake up in spurts throughout the day. So when I switch tasks, if they're like work tasks, I take a brief nap in between or I take a brief, like just sit outside in my garden, drink a cup of water and, and breathe and then come back and do the next thing. But that just not taking any of the major, like the, the typical advice, like as I think I said earlier, like don't do the hardest thing first, do the easiest thing first and don't be like, okay, well I've been going really hard. So now on my day off I have to make sure that I rest really hard and I don't do anything. And actually what's good for me is to spend all day like in the garden and it might be back breaking physical Labor. But it's like I'm not having to think. So just working different kind of metaphorical muscle groups helps me not have to ramp back up because I don't lose momentum. I just shift it into something else. So I rest the part of me that's overworked, but I keep the momentum going.

A

So how do you know that you're heading for burnout and so you need to switch? Because, you know, some of us can get so into the hyper focus that we don't even realize no interoception, you know?

B

Yes, yes, I do. Well, I can tell you right now that me going to Chicago this week and doing a whole bunch of things, I am right there. And I know because I haven't watered my plants.

A

Oh my gosh.

B

I'm like, oh, yeah, you're not looking so good. That's kind of wilty. I very much. It's the external things. Like, I don't know. I've. I'm just going. But I can look and I can say, okay, I haven't watered my plants. I've looked at them and thought I should water my plants probably ten times.

A

Oh, okay. And you're not paying attention. So that's a signal that, okay, we need to start paying attention to.

B

I'm not. I'm just. I'm noticing there's a need for something and I'm not doing it.

A

Okay.

B

And it's a life or death need for my.

A

Yeah, for the plant.

B

Plant. You know, like, I don't have to feel tremendous guilt. I've murdered a lot of plants. Like, it's. It happens. But. But I can look at them and know. Okay, no, but like, seriously, like, something is. I have got to stop.

A

Okay.

B

Yeah. So that's external cues that give you that. Okay.

A

Yeah.

B

And it took a while, but once I figured out what those are, it doesn't mean that I can always act on them in a good time. That's a totally different skill. But I can gain the awareness that, okay, I actually am gonna need to. I need to make sure that somewhere in there I put a. Like a gear switch, a change. I have to cancel my social plans for this weekend. I have to, like, I. I will not be able. And it's also thinking, like, long term. So, like, I don't plan for, like, what I'm gonna do. Like, whatever I'm thinking about is usually the next five minutes and the next two weeks. It's not like tomorrow and it's not an hour from now. That's too far away. I can't think that far ahead, but I can think, okay, if I go really hard today, then if I and I know I have to go really hard in like a week, somewhere in between, I need to redirect and make sure there's rest in there because I won't be able to sustain it that long.

A

Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, Shannon, so where can people find you if they want to know more about you and what you do? And where can we find this Decide Apple.

B

So Decide is available on the App Store and Google Play. And you can find our tech company work and the research behind Decide on itilab IO. You can find our nonprofit work and all of the other cool things we're doing, like a novel AAC device, transit autonomy. Like there's some cool, cool stuff that's@weriti.org and then you can also find me on LinkedIn. That's where I am the most. I've pretty much forsaken all of my other social media platforms, but it's my profile is Shannon Palma.

A

I want to say, Dr. Shannon Palmer, thank you so much for spending time with us here today. This was a really interesting conversation and I think a lot of our listeners are going to get a lot out of it. And I am running to go get the Decide app.

B

I'm so glad. Please let me know what you think of it.

A

Absolutely. Okay, so that's what I have for you for this week. If you like this episode with Dr. Shannon Palma, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal is to change the conversation around adhd, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you here next week. You've been listening to the ADHD for Smartass Women podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Outsuka. Join us at ADHD for smartwomen.com where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. And my patented you'd ADHD brain is a okay system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. Before you go. If today's episode resonated with you and you've ever wondered whether ADHD might be part of your story, I put together a training on what ADHD actually looks like in women. You can find the link in the show notes. I'll see you there.