Why ADHD and Autistic Adults Need Community to Succeed

Hello there. I'm Danielle Ralston. I am the founder and head coach here at ND Out Loud. What is ND Out Loud? ND Out Loud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us. TBIs, PTSD, ADHD, autism, AudiHD, and so much more. Bipolar disorder, all of the things. We also have a passion for supporting others like us so you don't have to struggle like we did in our past. We have All taken trainings and certifications and all of that so that we can support you in living a better life and upgrading all of the things that are frustrating about your life. What is this session going to give you? This session is going to give you actionable tips. So yes, we're gonna talk about our programs and all of the things that we offer, but I want you to walk away with something actionable for something that is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now in your life. Or if you're a parent or a spouse of someone with neurodivergence, To help them as well. I want you to walk away with something today, so please sign up today for a free call. We can learn more about each other. Okay, good morning. I hope you're having an awesome day today. This is Danielle with ND Out Loud and ND Hive. We are looking to just go live every day. Remember I said I'm gonna challenge myself to Do this every single day for the next 60 days, and I am sharing links everywhere and trying to let everybody know that I am live all the places. I hope you're having an awesome day today. So today we're talking about community and why community really is so important when you are ADHD, autistic, or otherwise neurodivergent. And I'm calling them separately because Most of our community is ADHD. I'm going to say 75% of our community is ADHD, 25% is autistic, and then we have a lot of other neurodivergence as well. And no, I didn't do the math right in my head. Whatever. So we are talking about most of those things as a whole. So why is community so, so, so, so, so important? So important when you are neurodivergent. Did you know that ADHD adults are 60% more likely to be fired and 3 times more likely to quit impulsively than their neurotypical coworkers? That's a really big deal. So 60% more likely to be fired. That's terrible. And those are things that we really need to be paying attention to so that we can help each other. Be more employable and stay long-term employable. 85% of autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed, even when they're highly educated and highly capable. So why is that? Because we tend to live in a void, and that's a big problem for us. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs are 72% more likely to experience severe burnout, and almost 90% of that 72% Isolation and burnout because of why they get so burned out. And 82% of us that are neurodivergent also have chronic illnesses, which leads to burnout, addiction, unemployable, underemployed, things like that. And productivity tools just don't freaking work for us. We know that. We know that productivity tools— are not the best thing for us. Why aren't they the best for us? They just don't work. I mean— We have so many reasons why productivity tools don't work. We have audiovisual spatial learning disabilities. We have executive dysfunction. We have learning disability, dyslexia, things like that. We also have things like not understanding how to work with our own brains. A lot of us really, really struggle to learn how our own brain works. So, how can we help each other? So, I always talk about, and you're going to hear me say this over and over and over and over again, I always talk about my keys to success. My keys to success are body doubling. And when I say body doubling, I'm body doubling right now to make sure that I show up and do these lives for the next 60 days. I body double in my business. I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for 20-something years. All of those things are super important to me. If I don't body double, I don't find success. My first 10+ years as an entrepreneur, I didn't body double. I didn't know what that was. I wasn't doing it. I went back to corporate world. And in the corporate world, in my corporate job, I constantly had team around me. I was constantly— my team was struggling because They were 90% neurodivergent and they weren't struggling to get tasks done. So I learned if we got on Skype calls, yes, that shows my age. If we got on a Skype video call together or just an audio call together, that we were 95% more likely to complete tasks throughout the day. Why did we complete tasks? Because we were body doubling. We had accountability and it was co-regulated accountability, not like, if you don't get this done, you're going to lose your job type accountability. It was, Oh, what you working on? Oh, I'm gonna work on— Oh yeah, I need to work on that thing too. Let's dive in and get it done together. And there is emotional regulation, body regulation, and mental regulation when you body double together. And when you are in a neurodivergent-led environment and are in a safe space, you're much more likely to get things done. You're less overwhelmed. You're less burnt out, and there was a study in the Journal of Attention Disorders in 2023. I think it was 2023 that showed peer-based community engagement led to measurable improvements in emotional regulation, task completion, and overall well-being in less than a couple months. In our community, in ND Hive, we actually see. Less than 14 days, we see clients and people start talking about, oh my gosh, I have gotten so much more done this week than I ever have in my business or I ever have at my day job. And it's a measurable goal that you can see when you're in a community with other people who get it. And that body doubling is a big part of it and the co-regulation and co-accountability. We don't need another planner. We don't need another freaking organization or task management app. We need community. Community really is a huge key to success for us. And it's always sad to me that ADHDers just get so frustrated and are angry with themselves and just overwhelmed all of the time. And you don't need to be. Just by being in the right environment, not isolating, not being stuck in your own head, not getting stuck in our shame spirals, not getting stuck in executive dysfunction, not getting stuck in procrastination, not getting stuck. We have so many things that we can get stuck in as neurodivergents that when we find people who can help us not be stuck, and it's not necessarily doing the job for us, doing the paperwork for us, doing, making that doctor's appointment for us. It's somebody saying, oh my gosh, I got it. I struggle with that too. Hey, I got to make a doctor's appointment too. Let's both do it at the same time. Hey, my closet is a mess. I need to clean it. You want to do that together? Hey, I have my case study notes and I need to get my notes into the ERM. Can you— what are you working on? And just being in a space where everybody, one, gets why we struggle to do things without judgment. 2 is also struggling to get things done, and 3 is there to support us in finishing up and getting things done. So come join us in a community today. We are less than $5 a week, slightly less, it's $19.99 a month, and we have 4 group coaching calls. In those group coaching calls, you get one-on-one coaching. We're going to answer your questions the way you need for For your brain, absolutely what we do in those group coaching calls. So you're not getting trained; you're not listening to training in these group coaching calls. We are there as coaches to help you. It's not just me; it's Shay and Tara and Rebecca. We're all there to help you, and our community members help each other. They'll answer the questions that they may ask us a coach because oh, they were just dealing with that yesterday, and this is what worked for them. So you're gonna hear not just the tools that I know of, but tools that everybody knows of. And then we have body doubling all day long, every single day. And again, it's just $19.99 a month. And then we have all kinds of training that you can listen to and look at too. We have workbooks and training. And if you need a resource and I don't already have it, I'll create it for you because I love resources and I love creating workbooks and checklists and things like that. Come join us. You absolutely can find success in every single day when you have the support that you need. I hope you have an awesome day today.