Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

We're on summer break, so this week is a Revisit: a favorite conversation pulled back out of the archive. The idea takes after Dr. Kurosh Dini's concept of the visit, showing up to something with curiosity rather than judgment.
In this one, we talk with coach Jane Massengill about the negative self-talk that so many people with ADHD carry, why it can run louder for us, and a simple practice she calls word watching for catching it in the moment. It's a warm, useful conversation about learning to be kinder to yourself. Whether it's your first listen or a return trip, it's worth your time.
Links & Notes
JaneMassengill.com
The Gremlin-Taming Institute
Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way — by Rick Carlson

(00:00) - Welcome to The ADHD Podcast!

(03:28) - Introducing Jane Massengill of the Gremlin-Taming Institute

(08:37) - Why do some people struggle when others don't?

(16:01) - About the Book and Jane's History

(19:55) - The ADHD Internal Dialog

(24:23) - Word-Watching

(31:51) - Word-Watching Exercise

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At the end of the day, when your brain starts tallying everything you didn't finish, where's the credit for everything you did? In the Season 32 finale, we close out the season on the quiet skill that gets buried under all that mental accounting — noticing your progress instead of measuring it.
The unfinished stuff is loud: the laundry pile, the twenty-item list, the messages still waiting. The progress is silent, and a lifetime of report cards and performance reviews has trained us to see only what's left. We get into why that happens — with a detour through a 1927 psychology experiment that explains a lot about the ADHD shame loop — what self-compassion actually looks like in a real day, and why the answer isn't a shinier scorecard. Plus a family-dinner ritual worth stealing, an optical illusion that makes the whole point, and one of the more memorable cold opens of the season.
It's our send-off into summer break, and a reminder that sometimes the entire practice fits into one word.
Links & Notes
Support the Show on Patreon
Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

(01:33) - Join the Community! https://patreon.com/theadhdpodcast

(03:04) - Progress Without Measurement

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You can lose six hours to the thing that lights you up, then completely stall on a task that takes three minutes. Same brain, different room. In this conversation, Pete and Nikki get into why ADHD shows up hard in one setting and nearly disappears in another, why "broken" is the wrong word for any of it, and what changes when you stop asking how to fix yourself and start paying attention to the rooms where you do your best work. It's the capper on a season-long conversation about living with ADHD instead of fighting it, and a grounded look at the context, fuel, and environment that make hard things doable.
Links & Notes
Support the Show on Patreon
Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

(01:41) - Check us out on Patreon

(02:44) - You're Not Broken. You're Contextual

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You can have the perfect planner, the right system, and the best intentions, and still not follow through. It isn't a caring problem. After enough broken promises to yourself, some quiet part of you simply stops believing the plan. That's where this conversation with Dr. Tamara Rosier begins, and it reframes self-trust as something closer to a nervous system skill than a mindset you can think your way into.
Dr. Tamara Rosier has written the books and built the center and stood on the stages, and she still wakes some mornings and reminds herself, deliberately, that she is a trustworthy person. The belief underneath — the one she's carried since she was small — is that she's a person who screws things up. ADHD feeds a belief like that. It chips away at your sense of who you are, one forgotten thing at a time, until distrusting yourself stops feeling like a wound and starts feeling like good judgment.
So much of that, it turns out, is happening in the body. An ADHD nervous system can spend its whole life braced — fight, flight, freeze, appease — switched on and calling it normal because it has never known the alternative. For years Tamara sat frozen on the couch, melting into the cushions, sure she was resting, when she was really stuck somewhere below the place where rest actually lives. There's a narrow band where you're calm and awake at once, and a lot of us have never spent much time there. Hearing her describe it, you may quietly start to wonder whether you ever have.
The way back looks like catching yourself mid-loop — Tamara tells it through the week she lost one of her chickens, and the refrain that trailed her around the house, I failed her, I failed her, I failed her — and then learning to talk back to it, to move your body, to put on the Motown, to do the next small thing that nudges you up out of the freeze. It looks like noticing the clever ways we avoid all of that, too: the new app, the next fix, the dopamine that keeps us busy on the surface so we never have to turn toward the thing underneath.
And the hope here is almost disappointingly ordinary. No system is going to fix you by Thursday. What there is, instead, is the small correction, made again and again, the way a sailor nudges the tiller rather than wrenching the whole boat around and tipping it over. There's learning to read your own weather, hour by hour. There's accepting that you may always need the timer, the Post-it, the reminder, and letting that be fine rather than shameful. Self-trust grows in that soil — in the quiet, stubborn belief that whatever goes sideways today, you'll know how to repair it.
Links & Notes
Dr. Tamara Rosier — our guest's author site, where you can find her work and stay connected.
ADHD Center of West Michigan — the coaching and support practice Tamara founded in Grand Rapids.
Your Brain's Not Broken — Tamara's book on navigating your emotions and life with ADHD. A new edition for teens and young adults is on the way.
You, Me & Our ADHD Family — her book on cultivating healthy relationships when ADHD is in the house.
ADHD Coaches Organization (ACO) — the professional body for ADHD coaches; their directory is a solid place to start if you're looking for one.
HeartMath — the heart-rhythm coherence and breathing tool Tamara leans on to drop into a calmer, parasympathetic state.
Vagal nerve resets — Tamara's advice is to find the one that fits you; she points listeners to the many free walk-throughs on YouTube rather than any single "right" technique. Clicking that link saves you a search in YouTube.
Join us on Patreon — early, ad-free episodes, extended editions, the post-show Q&A, the Discord community, and a seat in the Wednesday morning live stream.
Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

(02:57) - Introducing Dr. Tamara Rosier

(04:25) - Self-Trust and the Nervous System

(12:32) - What are our beliefs doing in our bodies?

(32:55) - Learn Your State

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There's a rule most of us signed before we could read it. It decides whether we're worth anything, and it tends to set the same terms for everyone who carries an ADHD brain: you're valuable if you perform, if you keep every plate spinning, if you never let anyone down. Live under that contract long enough and it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like a fact — written, as the metaphor goes this week, in permanent ink.
Where did the rule come from? Often from the earliest lessons — the pulled-out-of-class, extra-time, here-are-your-accommodations lessons that were meant to level the field but landed as proof you were different. The gap they leave behind doesn't shrink with age. There's research suggesting it widens. The assumption that everyone else has this figured out turns out to be the lie that keeps the rule in place.
Links & Notes
Support the Show on Patreon
Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast

(01:17) - Join the Patreon!

(03:13) - Rewriting Rules

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★