Why ND Hive

I really wish that it, the countdown for this didn't happen after it's live so that I knew that something was actually live.

Maybe we should email them and ask that.

It's up there.

We are live.

Good morning, everyone. This is Danielle and Shay with ND Out Loud, ND Hive, ND Visionary Partners of ND So we are here talking about why IndieHive. And obviously this is my brainchild and this is something I've been doing for over 25 years, but this is something that recently turned into IndieHive and actually naming it. And we are creating a custom app and it's looking awesome. And we, we have been doing this as the current format for almost 2 years now. Well, actually, yep, over 2 years now. And it's just really cool to start bringing in others and bringing others into everything that I have been working on for so long, for so long. And then to see sort of the spark that happened at Disney World.

Oh, yeah.

Getting neurodivergent adults together in one And yes, we did it at Disney World, and that's cool and awesome and amazing and all of that. But we absolutely— spark is the only thing I could think of to describe what happened. Yeah.

Well, you know, the thing is, is we wanted to carry that spark and that joy that we found there. realizations that we made for ourselves and for other people, we, we want to carry that on and continue it. We don't want it to just be like, oh, it only happens at Disney. Because that— I mean, not that that's not great, that's great, but that's like the climax, you know? Like, that's the, the up here. But we want to keep carrying that along throughout the rest of the year until we get to the next one. So it's a way of kind of like Here's your food for today. You know, here's your drink for today. It's just those little bits to be able to carry it on so that when we get to Disney next year, it's not like, oh my gosh, I don't know any of you. I'm so afraid to come. And some won't even come because they're so nervous about meeting somebody that they don't know. So having this community carrying on throughout the year allows us to kind of get to know each other. And then when we have that moment to get together, whether it's Disney or something else, because I mean, come on, Danielle, there might be some other things we can do too.

Well, I've already been asked to do a couple other things, so there are— and Shay and I have been kind of planning in the background for some other things back here. But it's, it's just so cool to see, like, there were so many of us that have been working together, like Rebecca Bengal and I, who is an ADHD travel planner and an ADHD coach. Her and I have been working together, I think, 3+ years, almost 4 years, something like that. And we finally got to see each other outside of a Zoom screen. No longer in the box. Just being able to give her a hug and see her face to face was huge. And then you and I have been working together like 9, 10 months. And then my brother, who, believe it or not, I have haven't seen in many, many years face to face in person. Him and I got together for this. And then Jessica, who I've seen Jessica quite a few times. Oh heck, I was with her in April. It's still so cool to, to not just have that Zoom screen in between us and get together.

Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of it too is that we got so conditioned to be in the box. I mean, you're watching us now, like you and I are talking now in the box. And so conditioned, and that's how we have relationships, and that's how we're talking to people, and not that face-to-face, especially when COVID hit. And that was—I mean—that was mandatory. It wasn't like it was something we chose to do, but that's how it worked out at that time. And I think for those of us that are neurodivergent, that was really impactful, and it was really hard, really hard too because we lost that physical connection with people. Whereas some of us are struggling with that anyway, and being able to build that. And so when we built it and had it, and then it's taken away, it's really hard to step back into that.

Right.

And having the Enneagram 5 is a way of us to be able to continue that, not necessarily physical contact, but we're continuing that contact to be able to know the person and then be able to create that physical connection. Outside of it, when we can go to retreats, when we can go to meetings or, you know, trainings.

Yeah, we get to network.

Yeah.

Yeah. All of these things are things that are so transformative for us. Absolutely. It's sad that we can't make these things happen more often. And that's something that's, as we grow, is definitely on my list because I used to be in tech and we had this forum And we had local meetups based on geographical locations. But someday— and mind you, that forum had millions of people on it. So this is my goal, is to have millions of people. We had local meetups all over the country. Well, actually, all over the world. I would love to get to a spot in ND Hive World that we have that so people can regularly get together, even if it's only once a quarter. But to get together, create those connections with one another.

And looking forward to that. I mean, out here, and you and I've talked about this before, but out here where I live, I'm in Utah, we don't seem to have those resources for that connection. And in fact, I was talking to my daughter about this yesterday. When my, my younger son, one of my younger sons was diagnosed, as a parent, I didn't know what to do about it because I wasn't diagnosed at the time. I didn't know what to do to help him. Where do parents go to get that help? Where do parents go for the resources? I have no idea. They're supposed to be there and in the schools, and we know that they're struggling too in the school districts and things to have those resources, let alone even know where to guide a parent to go to.

Yeah, school districts— I mean, school districts, their goal is to support the child. And well, right, I feel so bad because I've gone in as an advocate For parents doing IEP meetings and 504 plans and all of that. Schools are understaffed, under-resourced, don't have the skills or resources to help the parents, let alone the kids. And the kid— they're— I mean, school districts, unfortunately, very few school districts aren't failing our kids.

Right. And, and it's not a blame or a shame.

Oh, that is not on the school district. Or any of that. It's just a There's—

the resources just aren't there because they don't know. So how can they give any information to a parent to be able to help their child? And that is something that, as I've watched my 2 younger boys go through school and watching one of them who was diagnosed with the ADHD, the other one who was not but had other issues to deal with, and dealing with the IEPs, it was difficult.

Right.

It was hard to know what I could stand up for as an advocate But if I would have had a community that I could go to and say, hey, these are my issues, hey, do you have any suggestions? If I would have known you, Danielle, back when my kids were in school, I would have loved that because I could have gone to you and said, these are what I'm dealing with. Where is my rights? Where is it okay to ask for help? Where am I outside the boundaries? All that kind of stuff. What would that have done to help with not only them getting through the school district or the school system, But where would they be emotionally when they graduated and ready for that next step?

And it's— and again, I am not blaming school districts. Right, neither am I. God bless any teachers who are doing what they can with what they have, because—

Absolutely.

I mean, I get it. And I've been there and I talked to the teachers, and we have teachers that are part of our community and we listen to them. And they're frustrated by the lack of things that they have for resources, and, and their administration is frustrated by the lack of resources, and it just, it's got this triple effect.

Yeah.

But it's not just for the parents, it's for us, because you want to know what? If you have a neurodivergent child, one or both of their parents are also. It is hereditary. We can prove it. Like, it's scientifically proven over and over and over again. Anything you hear about it not being proven, Is wrong.

We'll just leave it at that.

Yeah, I'll leave it there. Uh, but, but this is why we created ND Hive though, is to give parents, give neurodivergent adults who may or may not have children, right? And if you are a parent of a neurodivergent child, to help you. And, and maybe you are a spouse married to a neurodivergent person and you don't know how to deal with that relationship because relationships with us, we're not the easiest people all the time.

No. And if you don't understand why, why somebody's doing something the way they're doing it, then it, it can come across as like, you're doing that on purpose. You're hurting my feelings on purpose. You're not doing those things on purpose. And it comes across in a way that is more impactful and hard for the relationship than it really is. And if they had the moment to be able to say, can you please share it this way? Or please understand that if you want me to do these tasks, I need you to give it to me in this aspect, or write it down, or one at a time. How much would that help in a relationship? But if you don't know, then you don't know. And it just makes it 10 times harder.

Well, and it causes— and something that maybe a neurotypical person might know, not know of their neurodivergent spouse is there's so much shame and frustration and anxiety about some of those things that we do that we're trying not to, but we don't have the support or the skills that we need. And I'm not saying that you may not be a supportive spouse. I'm saying that a neurodivergent person needs very unique types of support. And, and we do. We really do. Oh, I just lost Shay. Hopefully she'll be back. But it's being that you know that there's something that is needed. You might not know what is needed, but making sure that there is a system and a process to figure that out because we don't know what we don't know. And yes, we don't know what we don't know, but there are places for you to find out what you don't know. And this is what NDA Hive is for. It's for those that are neurotypical living with or having neurodivergent children, spouses, parents, whatever. Um, it's not 100% guaranteed that if you're neurodivergent, you have a neurodivergent parent, that you're going to have a neurodivergent child.

Right.

I think the rate is 94% or something last time I saw. So it's really, really high, but it doesn't always mean that. But There is support out there, but it's hard to find that support because people look at traditional things like therapy. Therapy is fantastic, but less than— and I was talking with Tara, our staff therapist, and less than, I think, a quarter from what we can find, and there are no actual stats on this, less than a quarter of therapists, less than a quarter of therapists are trained to help those with neurodivergence. They have— there's a chapter in school where they learn a chapter, and— but the being neurodivergent, being a neurodivergent expert in the therapy space is a very different thing. And that takes a lot of work outside of any education because it's not given in the education space. Unfortunately, this— as somebody who is an ex-therapist, you want to know what my education was in that?

And, you know, I found that in our— when I was going through school too for the psychology degree, it was kind of like, uh, can we update this? This is talking from like the '40s, '50s, '60s, you know, and I was going through in 2010, '15 in that, that frame.

Mm-hmm.

But it's still, even now, some of the stuff that my daughter talks to me about because she's going through the, um, psychology department Through therapy as far as becoming a therapist. And some of the stuff she talks about, I'm like, uh, yeah, I learned that 20 years ago, you know.

Yeah. And I'm looking at the data in even the diagnostic criteria in the DSM is still not correct. It is not updated, especially when it comes to women with neurodivergence and women with autism and all of those things. It is still sadly So even though psychiatrists and psychologists are operating on very old data because that's what they have.

Right.

Um, which is again why therapists have to do so much outside of their education base to get the neurodivergent clue. Um, and it is really hard. So even if you do find a therapist who's fantastic, hold on to them and let the rest of us know because it's so hard to find those therapists.

Absolutely. I mean, I know when I was going through therapy, they were just kind of like, I don't understand why you can't see it that way.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking, because my brain's not working that way. I don't understand your, your process, your steps, and telling me to change this or change that. And granted, that was before I knew that I was ADHD, and even after. And even some of the clients that I've coached, I've gotten responses of they've been told, well, if you weren't diagnosed when you were a child, then you don't have it as an adult. Or, you don't seem to have any in your family because I don't see anybody in your family diagnosed with ADHD. That doesn't mean anything.

That means nothing because again, the data is old. I think one of the more disturbing things I have found in the last year is I have a client, it's taken us 6 therapists and 9 psychiatrists before we finally found somebody that understood how to deal with their neurodivergence.

9 psychiatrists. And that's so sad to me because every single one of them that we did find—

we use Psychology Today and some of those things— had ADHD or neurodivergence in their, in their bios. But like, they can work with that. Yeah, but we still went through that many before we finally found one.

Well, and I think it also is we need to start listening to our instinct in here. If we are going and seeing somebody and it's not working That's okay. Move on. Find someone else. Find a different direction that is going to work for you, or get into something like ND Hive and say, hey, I need some help. I can't find one in my area. Anybody have any suggestions? Because we know now that you can even do this type of counseling or therapy on Zoom. It's not, you know, necessarily the best, but it's better than none at all. So make sure that you step into something like that. And you know what, the price of NDI Hive is so much less expensive than a lot of apps out there that are doing the same thing.

Well, I actually, I had a discussion and I mentioned it to you guys is I was in a discussion about how ChatGPT can be your ADHD coach or your therapist. And I'm like, oh my gosh, don't use it as a therapist, please. Can you use it as an ADHD coach? Yes. But then there's confirmation bias. So ChatGPT learns how you think. I mean, that is the model of what it's built on and, and starts to cater to what you already think instead of pushing you to get better and be better. So one, that's not good. 2, ChatGPT is $21-something a month. We're less than ChatGPT with actual live coaches and live body doubling and so many resources.

Like human interaction.

Human interaction.

But human interaction, emotions that you can address with a person that can give you feedback. That's my thoughts. I like ChatGPT, but—

Oh, I use it a ton, and I use it to check my own confirmation bias as a human who happens to be a coach, is make sure I'm not being biased to something or for something. Um, and it's so important to have those things. So important for those things. But, and yes, ChatGPT is fantastic, and I teach all of my clients how to use it, but use the free because what I teach the clients to use, use that free and pay for it in DeHive because we do give more and we're all experts. So something that we, I talk about, and we're very different than, um, other apps that are out there, like there are a ton of ADHD apps where you never engage with a human and all of that, and, or habit tracking type apps, you know, where Planning apps.

Yeah.

Planning apps and task management apps and habit tracking apps are the next, just buy a planner. It'll fix everything for you. That's, that's all that is.

That's why I created my own Danielle.

Well, exactly. But, but even so, all of those apps are just the therapist's next version of saying buy a planner because that's going to solve everything for you and it's not going to.

How many planners have you gone through? I just found in my garage this last weekend a full bucket and box of planners. I didn't even look to count because I was like, this is embarrassing.

Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and $200,000— $200,000+ in education and trying this and coaching resources and like all kinds of stuff. And all it took is human interaction for me to borrow somebody else's motivation to have somebody to chat with. So yesterday, Tara, Tara reached out to our coaching group, the group of Adjust Us coaches, and said, I got to declutter my, my dresser. Who's— who wants to body double with me? And I was like, I was sitting on my couch instead of doing the thing, which was Going through my dresser and decluttering and getting rid of stuff. And I'm like, hell yes, I'll get on with you. So we did a Zoom, and we Zoomed for about two hours yesterday, and both of us finished our tasks.

I I have to admit I had a little bit of FOMO.

I'm sorry. That's okay though, because you were taking care of your body because your body needed to be taken care of yesterday.

Kind of. My daughter showed up, and we talked for hours and hours. But the reality is is that when you have somebody there, and I you know I believed in body doubling and stuff. But I was like, I'll use it here and there. But I will tell you right now, in the last 2 or 3 weeks since we've gotten back from Disney, I've been pretty consistent with using it a couple times a week, and I've gotten more stuff done than I have in the last 2 months. So do I think it's effective? Absolutely. Am I going to keep doing it? Uh-huh. And you know, it's, it almost like it tunnel visions, even though we are on usually the chatting one where we can talk. It's almost like being able to chat just downloads something out of your brain because we have all that chatter going on instead of trying to quiet it to do the work.

Because we don't have to quiet it to do the work. And part of it is learning how your brain works. And that's a lot of what a coach can help you with is learn how, how your, your, your, your brain, because Shay's brain looks completely different than mine. How whose brain?

Your brain personally. That's what we forget is your brain is not the same as their brain and you're trying to put your brain in their box. It doesn't work.

Don't put your brain in any box, not even your own box, because we need flexibility. We need structure. So ADHDers, autistics, all neurodivergent, the whole entire head of neurodivergence, we all need extreme structure. You want to know what we absolutely hate and aren't good at? Structure. But what I've learned is my structure is body doubling. That is the only structure I have in place because with body doubling, it enables me to take action and do all of the things that I couldn't otherwise do.

Well, and it all— it also sets a tone, I think, when we're like, okay, we're going to do body doubling. And it's not like we have to do only body doubling sitting Like you said, you were doing it with decluttering your dresser. Okay, so it doesn't have to be that you're sitting on the computer doing stuff on the computer to do body doubling. You could be doing the cleaning in your house, you can be decluttering a room.

We— I used to have somebody and she's, she's graduated from the program mostly because I helped her get structure in her life and stuff so she could get a full-time job. So she's at a full-time job now. But she used to do yoga every morning because that's what helped her be able to focus and think is to exercise in the morning. And that's what she used body doubling for, which was the most hilarious thing ever, because she would set the phone up on a stand at floor level with her. And we'd be watching her do the craziest poses. And I think there were a few days that we all found each other going like this and like this to watch her doing things that we weren't doing anything at all. But sometimes you need that.

Oh, absolutely. Because if you, if you have one area where you can You know, this is done and every day. So like everybody asks me, Shay, how do you exercise every day? How do you how do you get up at that time of morning and go and do it? And you know, at first I was like, I just do. But then it dawned on me that I realized that that is the beginning of my structure for my day. It also takes down a lot of that extra restlessness that we tend to have. We got to have a lot of movement. The reason I don't fidget as much is because I burn a lot of that off. In the morning when I do my exercise. So it allows that kind of that calmness to come in. But it is the beginning of my structure that sets my day every day. Get up, do my, you know, me time, and then I go and do the exercise, and then I shower and I'm ready to go. Mm-hmm. But that has been a structure that I've been doing for 14 years. So it can happen. It's just that's the way my brain works. So how does it work for you and how can we do that for you?

Yeah, and everybody's brain works differently. Like, everybody works differently. Some of us are medicated, some of us are not. Some of us can do this, some of us handwrite, and some of us like digital planning. All of those things. Um, but we— I think that's where we're a little bit unique in everything else is we don't have a set structure to you, to how we coach each individual person or the resources that we give. I have so many resources. I've— I counted one day. No, I did not count. My VA counted one day. I have 132 resources just for planning, and they're all completely different from each other because—

That's awesome.

There are probably more than 132 ways to plan a day, and I've— we've got those all. If you're looking for a space that is So for you. And so you just need to find your tribe, to find your hive, to find the space where you can buzz around and be you and create the chaos that you need but still accomplish things. This is why we created IndieHive.

Yes, absolutely. Guys, it's so worth it. I have been able to start creating another business because I've been able to do this. I've been able to have fun while I'm doing it too. It's not a drudgery. It's just figuring out how it works for your brain.

Exactly.

That's what we're here for.

Exactly. Come join us. If you have any questions, message us below. We're happy to answer them. You can go to ndoutloud.com, neurodivergentoutloud.com, and look for ND Hive in the top. It is $19.99 a month through the end of this year because it will be increasing in price because I can't keep that up for paying for for my amazing coaches. And we have coaching, 4 group coaching sessions a week. We have a community and we have unlimited body doubling during normal business hours and 2 nights a week, as well as decluttering. And I think Sunday afternoons may become a fairly regular decluttering session just because we need that. So I hope you have an amazing day. If you have any questions, just let Shayer and I, I know you can tag us anywhere. Have an amazing day, everyone.