When ADHD Coaches alk Disney Adult life, ADHD life, Parenting and so much more

Do do do.

Ah, there we are. We are live. Good morning, everyone. This is Danielle and Shay from ND Out Loud. So we are here talking about being Disney adults. Okay, and or talking about just being an adult with ADHD and what that looks like and parenting and our trip upcoming because obviously you guys see a lot of content coming up for us right now because we have our trip coming up in May and people have to make decisions like in the next two weeks in order to get our reservations in and stuff. So we're. Getting down to the line. We have 4 more slots open, mostly because I keep opening more slots.

The more the merrier, right, Danielle?

Yeah, I'm like, well, we could take a couple more. I'm sure. Yeah, we could. My team just keeps going, you said only one more last week and you got 3 more. So I'm like, I'm just opening up 4 more.

That's the flexibility we have with ADHD. We just kind of roll.

It sounds good to me. I could totally got this. Yeah. But part of why is because most everybody that's going is our team. So I have Shay as a coach that's going, and Dr. Jessica is going to be with us, and Tim is going to be with us. Excuse me. And Rebecca Benguela is going to be with us. So a lot of my team is able to go, which is so freaking exciting. So excited that all of us as a team can go, and hopefully a few other partners are going to be going. So This is gonna be so much fun, and I am totally a Disney adult. We are preparing fun things to do and fun places to take pictures and fun games that we're gonna play. We're gonna do a couple scavenger hunts and as many pictures as possible because we have the Memory Maker as part of our packages.

Oh, I love it.

And we can do unlimited pictures, all of the pictures. And I really want another hug from Sully from Monsters, Inc. because I got one when I was there in January and it was the best hug ever.

I bet it would be.

Winnie the Pooh is pretty good too, but Sully was like the best hug. I can see that. Chewbacca was pretty darn good though too.

Was he?

I went back twice to get pictures with Chewbacca.

It's been a very long time since I've been at Disney, like since I was a junior in high school.

Oh my gosh, Disney has changed so much.

I bet, I bet.

And we're gonna go to the 3— we're going to 3 of the 4 parks. Unfortunately, we don't have time to do a 4. But we're doing Hollywood Studios where all the Star Wars stuff is. Anybody that knows me, hello. We're doing Epcot and Magic Kingdom. So it's, it's way more than just about the Disney. It's all the training we're going to be doing. We're going to be doing so much training.

Parenting training. And being in person. Danielle, being in person is like the coolest thing ever.

Doing it in person is like freaking amazing and doing it while playing, learning while playing.

That's how we learn the best. Come on, if we want to do something that's going to be kind of, you know, make it fun, do something to make it a little bit more fun. And we're all in.

Exactly. Well, it will retain the information better too. One will remember, one will be able to apply it a whole lot simpler because we'll have something to relate it back to. And that's part of what we're doing is showing you how to relate learning with play. If you're an ADHD coach or a teacher or a therapist or, or even a manager at corporate level, all of those things will help you bring that information back. And we're giving professional certification, professional development certifications too.

But even better.

But it's, it brings it back and you're able to use it in your daily life without having to like, remember what was Danielle talking about? Because believe me, you'll be like, oh, I know how to apply this. Danielle was talking about this while standing next to Sully and she was, you know, and things will relate so much better that way.

Well, and as a parent too, you know, when you get this information and it registers in your own brain, you're like, oh, now I can handle that better with my child or with my spouse or with my coworker. But parenting all aside is its own little world sometimes and trying to deal with neurodivergence, especially if you have it yourself and you don't even realize you have it.

Well, even if you do realize you have it, I mean, I work with parents who have never learned the skills that they needed to learn to adapt to themselves, let alone— and now they're dealing with having these other miniature versions of themselves and they're like, Sometimes they're not so miniature, you know what I mean?

My son is 6'1 and he—

But you're looking at them going, yeah, I don't like you. You act just like me.

I'm gonna tell you something funny. My— he's 22 now, but my second youngest son is about the time when I found out I had ADHD was when he was in 5th grade. Okay. And so it was just a nightmare. All the time. He and I were like this all the time. And everybody's like, oh, it's just because he's just like you. And I'm like, I'm not like him. But I used to take everything he did personally as a mom. Like, he didn't get his chores done, so what am I doing wrong? He didn't take care of that, what am I doing wrong? He didn't get his homework turned in, what am I doing wrong? And I always kept going back to what am I doing wrong? And then it switched to why can't you do this? What's wrong with you? Why can't you figure this out? And And it's because I did not understand ADHD at all. And when I started understanding it, it's like it shifted, everything shifted because it made it so much easier for me to communicate. Like just a simple thing as chores. I realized giving him a list of, you know, 5 things to do while I'm gone for errands and coming back and nothing was done was not the way to work for him. It was one at a time.

And not just Step 1, step 2, step 3.

Yes.

Step 1, here, go do— wash the dishes. That's it. That's all you tell them. That's all you give them on a written list.

And I even went one further. In all of our cabinets, I would have a note card. Step 1, make sure all the dirty dishes are collected together. Step 2, make sure you fill the sink with water and soap. I mean, I literally broke it down so that he didn't get that overwhelm, which I didn't realize he was getting. So he would get the overwhelm of, oh my gosh, there's so much to do when it was only one task. But in my mind, I'm like, it's only one task.

What's your problem?

You know, and it turned out it was a problem because I wasn't going through his process of how he does it. Once I did that, it was like, you know, right after you do the other. Not that I didn't have to keep reminding him on things, but it was the fact that he could do it then and figure it out just by those simple things. And I didn't have to repeat myself 5,000 times on how to do it.

Exactly. Well, and decision fatigue for us increases procrastination, increases overwhelm, increases meltdowns, and increases that shame cycle.

Oh, absolutely. And it was awful. And not knowing that I had ADHD and I have 5 of my own biological children, right? But I'm a blended family of 9. They all have varying degrees. They all do it in their own way. I mean, I've got one that sits there and does this while you're talking to him and he's thinking about something. Now, I can't do that very long because it makes me want to puke. But I mean, the another one paces, another one has to verbalize it all and talk it all out. And so there's different aspects. It's not a one-size-fits-all. And if we can get that, great. And I mean, being able to go down to Disney, get away from the family, get away from all of the day-to-day. And learning this stuff and having fun doing it and connecting with people. That has been huge. Connecting with other people that have ADHD, that are, you know, autistic or have AuDHD, whatever it is in the neurodivergent world. When you come together and connect together, it's almost like you put something in your pocket. Like, I now have an extra tool in my tool belt to be able to reach out to you. I mean, like, I can reach out to you, Danielle, and say, okay, this is what's going on. Give me a perspective. Right, and you're somebody outside of me, so I can get out of that cycle.

And and I live in that cycle myself, but I can't get myself out of it. I need somebody else who understands my brain to get out of the cycle.

Exactly. And so if we're just going to like the neighbor and we're like, "Oh, my kid is la la la," and your neighbor has no understanding of neurodivergence, then how can they help you gain a different perspective? Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Not that they couldn't, but they can't get it to the extent that would help us to that level. That's my thought.

Well, and as a neurodivergent, I can help anybody else at any time if they need help with something, but I can't help myself.

Absolutely.

No, seriously.

I'm going to be a little vulnerable here. Last week was a really crappy week. It really was. And I don't know why. I kind of think I know why. Maybe it was because all the alignment of the planets or whatever. I don't know. But it was a week of just— I could not get out of that blah.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of us go through that blah. And it's the, I need something more. And it wasn't even that I needed a dopamine hit. I just needed to take a break. I needed to just let my brain rest. I needed to let things go for a minute. Not take up, you know, camping ground inside of it. Not sit there and put my bed out, you know, lay down, sleep in it, and stay there. But I need to realize that there's times where we need to take a minute. But I didn't realize that until I talked to you and to another friend of mine that's neurodivergent, that they are like, what if, what if you just need to take a break for a minute? Because you've been running and running and running and running and running, trying to hurry up and get stuff done. Hurry up and build your business. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. And there's a burnout. And you know what? Sometimes that's just how our process is. We push, push, push, push, push, and then we stop. We gather. We regroup, and then we start over and push, push, push, push, push. That may be our flow, but we've got to recognize it as a flow and not recognize it as oh, I'm just doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. I'm gonna white knuckle, white knuckle. It's not a white knuckle. You're just that's how your process goes. Put everything into it, and then you gotta crash and burn and just rest for a minute.

Or I think one of the biggest things that I had to learn so I don't do that because I did that for years and now I am super, super, super sick because I do pay the price.

We do pay the price.

And for those that don't realize this, if you're hot in high cortisol, fight-flight, always in burnout mode, over— always in overwhelm, you can do damage that looks similar on a brain scan to a full-on TBI. You can also have autoimmune disorders. You can also end up with massive, horrible gut issues that makes the ADHD worse, that makes autoimmune disorders worse. And this has been proven scientifically from from burning yourself up.

And I don't mean. Go and burn yourself out. Don't do that. I'm saying if your flow of work is that you can be very hypervigilant, not hypervigilant, hyperfocused on something, that's okay. But create a space of it and make sure you rest. Create your space of flow of work and then make sure you rest. It's just learning your process and symptom symptoms. I keep saying that process and systems that work for you because when you figure out yours. There's a lot of time that you can see it on other people a lot easier, especially your kids, to teach them how to do their own processes and systems, which then creates a better form for them to be able to go through life handling the stress of school, handling the stress of a job, handling just daily stress, and knowing what is real stress and what really isn't, and letting go of the stuff that isn't.

Yeah, it's learning under— learning what, what your What your tolerance is. Yeah, what your energy level is, all of those things. Like, we have to learn what those things are for ourselves because everybody's is different. Like, oh, absolutely different, right? I can go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go for like 6 months straight before I crash, and that's with major hyperfocus, and which is also why I have so many health issues, people. And, and I'm really open about that. Because it's really important to be more careful of those things. But that's now why I have a 5-minute rule. If I can't figure it out or get it done on my own in 5 minutes or less, I ask for help.

Which is smart. Why wait? Why do you keep perpetuating that stress of, I don't know, I don't understand, I can't get it figured out, I can't do it, instead of, who do I know? Who do I know that I can reach out to To help me figure it out, we have the Google University. I put that in quotes because everything is Googleable, Googleable, however you say that. Or go to YouTube. Everything's on YouTube too. Or pick somebody that you know, like Danielle, who figured it out already. And all we have to do is say, Danielle, these are the steps I've done. Did I miss something? Did I not go far enough? And you can have another person come in and help you with that. And it may not even take that long, honestly. 5 minutes maybe for somebody to explain something. If not, then maybe 15, 20, but not— it doesn't wear your brain out. You're not trying to process something that you can't process because you don't know what you don't know.

Yeah, well, and when you have community and a dedicated small intimate community full of people that get how your brain works, you can ask. Because I guarantee you, some— all of us have our different points that we have become experts in. Every neurodivergent person has their things. Maybe trains, it may be dinosaurs, it may be ChatGPT, which is one of my things. It could be marketing, which is another one of my things. It could be psychology, which is another one. Like, I have— I'm also autistic. I have a lot of them.

Um, Danielle, what don't you know how to do? Exactly.

So here's the thing. Some of us, and this is very much how I operate, I'm gonna figure it out. And it doesn't take me the 10,000 hours to become an expert because I can do that in 40 hours or less. And I've had professors argue with me and assign me something wild to learn about, and I will come back the next week and outdo whatever that professor is a professional in. And they're like, How do you do that? Neurodivergent.

Right, which makes it a talent for you. That one piece of what you do is your talent to be able to take whatever it is that you need to learn, but you know, you have the process and the skills to know how to run down that road to find what you need to find. Then there's those of us like me who are like, oh my gosh, that's an overwhelming concept or thought to go run down that research road because For my brain, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so many places I could go. Oh, I could start here.

And what about this?

And then what about this? And then what about this? And then I, I'm like clear off the whole path or even roadway of where I started. And so—

Decision fatigue is such a big deal for us.

Yes.

And decision fatigue on top of ADHD, on top of a brain injury, on top of RSD, on top of Um, fear of failure or fear of missing out.

Oh gosh, yeah, yeah, all of the above.

Yeah, all of them woven together is part of being ADHD.

And you know, I find as I'm learning about this more and more and as I am growing and, and coaching and teaching and, and just soaking up that knowledge because I finally realized what the issues were, I am learning so much faster and so much what better ways of dealing with it. Like, okay, so I need to research. Okay, for me, I need to set a time limit to sit down and do that research. And then I need to see where are the pros and cons to go in this direction. And then after that, then maybe I'll set some more time to look into it. Or maybe I've realized that's not really where I want to go. But if I try to do it all, figure it all out, forget it. Just forget it. I just, I hit that, that fatigue so much faster. It's almost like running headlong into a brick wall. As fast as I can.

Repeat it. Repeat it.

And then we wonder why we're so tired. Yeah.

So yeah, really, when it comes— when those things come up, when you're as a parent, so when it comes to parenting and all of that, all because we aren't— there are none of us that have born the perfect parent.

No, we didn't get a manual.

No.

Would have been nice.

I didn't have a manual on myself when I had a kid. I was 21 and hadn't figured out how to be an adult fully yet and definitely didn't know I was autistic yet. And having a child and hormones sent all of that into overdrive. And then I'm figuring out how to deal with a sensory overwhelmed infant.

Yeah, my youngest, um, not that he's been diagnosed— well, he was diagnosed much younger, but we are wondering if it was the true ADHD or if it was his eye issues. So we were still in that, that form. But he was very sensory overloaded as an infant. Like, if I was sitting in the chair and I would be talking to my daughter across the room and be like, hey, can you— at that range, he would jump. So he's very sensitive to sounds. He's also very sensitive to certain kind of clothes, which I get that because I am too. But as a parent, it's really hard to know, are they being difficult? Are they being stubborn? Are they being lazy? Are they just being defiant? There's so many things that we have to look at before we can just, you know, okay, this is really what we need to do. And it is hard as an adult. I mean, shoot, if we don't even know we're dealing with it ourselves, how do we know how to And so many of us have that story of not knowing ourselves.

I mean, the ADHD I knew about, but 20— my son is 27 now. The information about ADHD 27 years ago was that it was still a behavioral problem, not a neurological issue, and girls are just broken if they have it.

Yeah, I know all about that one. Yeah, I wasn't diagnosed till I was in my late 30s, early 40s. My parents wouldn't take me because— not because they were bad parents, not that at all. I think it was the fear that a lot of parents had when we were younger was, if I take my child in and they have ADHD, oh, they're going to be a troublemaker. They're going to be labeled.

Yeah.

They're not going to be treated right. They're going to have all these problems in school. So let's just not, and we'll just tread through it. But what happened was by not doing that, like it's not just me but my siblings, maybe that helped us to or didn't help us to increase the capabilities we had faster. We had to wait a lot longer. Like I'm in my 50s now and I'm finally figuring out the things that I want to do. And it's not just one thing and that's okay because I got told many times don't do more than one thing because that is a defocusing factor. Don't do more than one thing. I'm like, my brain works that way. I get bored if I'm stuck on one thing.

One thing?

Yeah. Like, for me, I need coaching. I love the coaching, but I need to be able to create with my hands. I got to do something, right? And that's not uncommon. That's actually encouraged. And, you know, it was something that even my husband and I have had to talk about. And I'm like, honey, I love coaching, but I need something more. It's not a defocusing factor. It actually builds my bucket, fills it up.

So yeah. And we're all different on that because I, I love to create and build businesses. That, like, that's my thing. Don't ask me to crochet or any of that. Can't. That's not happening.

Crochet.

But I love to cook. I really love to cook. And I could spend hours in the kitchen cooking. So that's a thing for me. But you have to know these things. You've got to learn about these. And, and a lot of times as parents, we don't know these things about ourselves because we, especially those of us over the age of like 40-ish, maybe 35, we were never encouraged to get to know ourselves. And self-care was not a thing. And not being productive 24/7 was not allowed. And you were lazy and horrible and all of these things if you weren't productive always. So we have a lot of like emotional trauma to overcome before we can learn to parent our kids.

Yeah. Unfortunately for them, you know, we're not at that point when we start having kids. I was pretty young when I had my first one. I was just barely, I was going to turn 20 or yeah, I was going to turn 20 when I barely had my first one. She was, she was a month old when I had my birthday. And I didn't know much. I mean, I thought I did because I was the oldest daughter in a family of 6 kids and I helped take care of a lot of kids and I babysat a ton of kids. But, uh, y'all, it's different when it's your own. And at 2 o'clock in the morning, they're screaming because they don't want to sleep. And you're thinking, if you don't go to sleep, for heaven's sake, I'm just gonna have to put you in a basket and just go in the other room and shut the door. And you think you're a horrible parent because you can't get your child to stop crying. But the reality is maybe they have colic, maybe they have an upset stomach, maybe their diaper's dirty, maybe they're hungry.

Maybe their clothes are itchy or there's a tag, or maybe it's too hot, or maybe it's too cold, or maybe there's not enough noise, or maybe there's too much noise, right?

Or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or. Yep.

And I learned my son had one sleeper that he would wear, one material, and he would only wear that one material until he was like 4.

Yeah, we had, um, 2 of my kids, one had a binky and 2 of my kids had stuffed animals. And if they didn't have their stuffed animal, forget it. It wasn't happening. They were not going to go to sleep. So I always had 2 or 3 of them and we'd rotate one in the wash, one with them, and one ready. Because it was the same thing, is that was that sensory. Another one had a blanket that we'd have to put that— do you remember the soft silky ribbons around blankets?

We—

I'd have to sew blankets and he would sit there and do this. He would sleep with his binky in his mouth and he'd rub the blanket and the blanket would move around his bed because he was rubbing it so much that it would rotate. I love that. So it's, you know, there's all these kinds of things that we didn't even realize back then. Those were sensory. Those were self-soothing, or they were things to help them feel comfortable that we know now. But I mean, they're now in their 30s. Yeah. So there's a lot of things in parenting that we, we tend to not realize until later. And guess what? It's okay. You're still—

it's okay. And I joke to my son a lot that we were growing up together, dude. I mean, you got to learn when I learned. And no, I didn't do everything right. I definitely did some things majorly wrong. Did I give you your own emotional baggage to carry on? Yes, I did.

Probably.

It's okay. Yes, but it's okay. And acknowledging it even as an adult, my son and I can have some really great conversations about that now because now I know, I know better now.

And well, now you know how to handle it, and now you can teach him how to handle it. Like, my kids have come back to me now, Mom, I don't know what this is and why is it going on like this? And so I have now the tools and the understanding to be able to say, okay, let's walk through that. No, I'm not your coach, I'm being your mom right now. But the coaching stuff adds to the mom stuff.

Yeah.

It gives me that tool that I don't have to talk to them like a coach to help them get the answer.

So I'm mom when I'm being mom, but I'm mama coach the other times when I'm being coach mom.

Well, and sometimes they just need it and they don't realize it.

So, and that's fine. And that's fine. And that's why we need to learn as parents. So this is some of the things that we're actually doing on our Disney trip. Is we're going to teach parents how to communicate better with their kids, how to communicate their own neurodivergence to themselves, and then be able to help their kids with it, how to overcome their own emotional baggage and overwhelm and frustration and executive function and all of those things so that they can be a better parent or a better boss, a better therapist, a better teacher, a better whatever. And it, it crossed the same process.

Yeah.

It's the same for everybody, whether you're a parent, a teacher, a therapist, a manager, whatever. Those same things work whether you have a 5-year-old you're talking to or a 45-year-old you're talking to.

Yes. And, you know, along the lines of learning how to talk to our kids, it also allows us to learn how to talk to our spouses. Oh yeah, to be able to communicate to them what we're dealing with. I was just talking to a couple recently, and she, she's just newly diagnosed ADHD, and she's like, yeah, me and my husband definitely need to have some some therapy. And I said, what if you don't need therapy? What if you need to just start with communicating with him what it's like being inside your head, helping him understand, like, why do you bounce from thing to thing, helping him understand why you have projects all over the house?

And if you can't explain it, let me tell you, ask an ADHD coach to give you TikToks or YouTube channel resources to explain the thing. There are so many resources out there that are absolutely free to explain to your spouse Your teenager, your adult child, whatever. Your parents. Oh yes, even your parents. About all of these things now.

It is so helpful. And they're still learning from me things.

My my dad is in his seventies, and we send him TikToks.

Uh huh. I I think I am so excited about this thing, and if you have any any way possible to get down there, go. Go! Not only are you going to learn the things that you're going to learn to be able to work with others, but it's going to help you figure things out for yourself if you haven't already. But when we're in a community like this, even when we're going to a training like this, having us there together— like, Danielle can share her experiences with you, I can share my experiences with you, all of us can share our experiences that you may not even realize are coming up Or that you're struggling with and you don't even realize how to verbalize it to get it figured out. So come, come join us.

The cost, it is expensive for a trip. Like, I am well aware that this is a privilege to be able to do something like this. The cost is $2,500, covers your room, and it is double occupancy. So if you want single occupancy, it is a little more expensive. Reach out to me if you want single occupancy, because there are some introverts who are like, no, I don't want to room with somebody I don't know. That's fine. Just let me know. That is possible. I think it's— I can't remember how much more it was. I think it was like $250 to $500 more if you want a single occupancy room. It is possible. All of your meals are covered while there. 2 meals and a snack a day. And believe me, in Disney World, there's plenty of food. Take my word for it. Don't panic. You can have snacks in your room. All of the training that we're going to do, as well as group things that we're going to do, group things while we're in the parks together. We're also memory maker photos. So get all your photos with all of your favorite characters and get signatures from all your favorite characters. Like I've got back there in the pink mug, I got— had them sign a mug while I was just there in January.

Oh.

And just come, one, enjoy, 2, be with a community of people that you're not going to have to explain yourself to even once, and 3, come learn because learn to be a better parent, manager, therapist, whatever, because it is so important to our own growth as a neurodivergent. And if you are not neurodivergent and still want to come with us, please, the more neurotypicals the better, because we want to get the word out of how to communicate with us and how you can make our lives better and make your lives better. Because believe me, we're pretty cool people and very smart. And if you get to know us, you'll never get rid of us because we never will go away again. That may be a warning, but— But seriously, come join us. Reach out, DM me, whatever you have. If you have any questions, please, I've got all of the things. And if you have HSA or FSA, this trip can be covered part of that because we are going to be talking about mental— a lot of mental health stuff. I mean, the whole entire trip is, um, you can use funds for that. And if you need a letter for your boss to try to get them to pay for, I have letters for you to— for you to share with your bosses. So if you have questions or need anything at all, please let us know. We hope you come and join us. Have a good day.