In this episode, Ash and Dusty explore the complex relationship between honesty, communication, and neurodivergence, especially within the ADHD community. They discuss how people with ADHD often struggle with communication due to impulsivity and a strong sense of justice, which can manifest as bluntness or oversharing. Through personal examples and coaching experiences, they highlight how honesty can sometimes cause misunderstandings or hurt feelings but also recognize its value as a strength when applied with empathy and context. The concept of “radical candor” is introduced as a balanced approach to providing direct feedback grounded in care and respect, which can be particularly helpful in professional and personal settings.
The hosts also touch on the emotional challenges faced by those with ADHD, including rejection sensitivity and difficulty masking emotions, which affect how honesty is received and expressed. They emphasize the importance of positive feedback and praise for people with ADHD to provide necessary context for growth and self-understanding. Ash and Dusty encourage listeners to identify where they prefer directness in their relationships and advocate for honest communication that respects emotional boundaries. The episode closes with a promise to continue this deep dive into communication in future episodes, recognizing its critical role in navigating neurodivergent experiences.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I am Ash. [00:00:02] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:03] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Listeners, before we get started, I am still taking new clients, so if you’ve been thinking about coaching and in particular about coaching with me, now is a great time to get started. For more information and to fill out my intake form, visit my website, www.coachasher.com.So Dusty, you wanna tell our listeners what we’re talking about today?
[00:00:27] Dusty: Yeah, we’re talking about honesty and communication. [00:00:31] Ash: Ooh, that’s a tough one on so many levels for those of us with ADHD. You wanna say more about that? [00:00:36] Dusty: Yeah, so I’ve just been thinking about communication styles and some of the social struggles that we have as neurodivergent people, because I think the ADHDers or the autistic folks, we get this feedback that we’re too honest or maybe too blunt, but I think this is applicable to a ADHD as well, because there’s that impulsivity, right?The thought to action pipeline – it’s so quick. Sometimes we don’t have a filter because by the time we think of it we’re blurting it out. Then because of justice sensitivity, we know that it is right and it is good to speak the truth. We want to be authentic and sometimes holding back some information makes us feel inauthentic and we know that telling the truth is the right thing to do. So I think it all kind of gets jumbled up into this outcome where we are too honest or we give too much information, you know, and it gets us in trouble.
[00:01:33] Ash: Ooh, Dusty, gimme some examples of that. [00:01:36] Dusty: So like overexplaining, right? Giving too much information about why you didn’t do a thing or don’t wanna do a thing or couldn’t do a thing, right? Sometimes adding too much context makes the situation worse. Or say going through a breakup, you’re trying to let someone down and it’s a painful situation, but because you feel bad about it, you’re going on and on and giving way too much information and it might end up making the person feel worse, than just sort of keeping it brief.Or maybe overexplaining, why you called in sick to work, something like that. And I also wanna say that I think where I started thinking about this was the ways that being honest is actually a benefit and a skill/strength that we have.
So I want to go there as well, but I don’t know, when we just started talking about it now, I started off with the negative of it, but there is some more positive I want to go with this as well.
Then also I think bluntness as well. Maybe saying a thing to somebody about themselves in a way that is direct, but not taking into consideration the impact it could have on them, might hurt their feelings. I’ll give you an example. I was having a tense moment with my dad a couple months ago and my dad has a tendency to have a really hard time stopping himself from talking.
So when he’s talking, he goes on and on and on and on and on. I was trying to help him with a problem and he wasn’t giving me the information that I needed to help him with the problem. So I interrupted him a couple times to ask a direct question to kind of get him back on track, ’cause he was going on tangents and he just blurted out at me, “I can’t believe people pay you money to listen to them because you’re not very good at listening”.
And I was like – damn dude, that’s cold. And the thing is he was just frustrated because he was trying to organize his thoughts and every time I interrupted him it got him off track. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk, but the way he said it, I was like, ouch.
[00:03:39] Ash: Is your dad neurodivergent by the way? [00:03:41] Dusty: Oh super neuro divergent. [00:03:43] Ash: Yeah. So, actually let’s kind of break that down to neurodivergents having a conversation, because when we first talked about doing this episode, we talked about communication with neurotypicals, but we can struggle just as much to communicate with other neurodivergents because in that case it sounded like what your dad really needed was to kind of talk it out or “talk at you”.That’s a term that I use often when I need to kind of hear my thoughts out loud and organize them like, I want to talk “at you” more than talk to you.
But in the meantime, the way that he’s talking at you isn’t helping you catch up to what the situation actually is so you can be helpful and give advice. So, there’s kind of frustration mounting on both sides and your clarifying questions disrupted his process.
[00:04:33] Dusty: In that situation, he didn’t give me a chance to explain that I was on my way somewhere, so I didn’t have time. I was thinking about the time crunch. I was like, I only have so much time to help you with this. But I didn’t get a chance to tell him because he forgot to leave space in the conversation. You know? He just like launched into it. [00:04:49] Ash: Sure. So like, so, so many neurodivergent pitfalls happening all at once, that kind of culminates into an emotional response from both of you and that’s kinda the opposite of honesty actually with ADHD.The source of so much unwanted behavior is when we are in a situation where our emotions lead first. Sometimes our first response isn’t very honest or accurate. That’s that ADHD phenomenon of we have the emotion and there’s definitely storytelling going on behind that emotion, maybe there’s some RSD or some stuff from your past, whatever. It is kind of flooding into this present moment, but you’re not pausing to be aware that your emotion is connected to something that has nothing to do with this moment. You’re just reacting to what’s happening in the here and now.
The rare times that I have flown off the handle at somebody and been yelling in a public place is a moment that doesn’t happen very often at all, and it certainly doesn’t happen very often these days, but it still can and does happen, and that fly off the handle moment is almost 100% of the time something I am going to regret saying.
I am going to pause later and think about whatever it is that came outta my mouth and realize that I was not really viewing the situation accurately. Instead, I was responding from an emotional place and not a place that was really taking the whole context into consideration.
So, when we’re in that emotional brain, honesty kind of disappears, right? We get this tunnel vision and we’re only reacting to that emotion and whatever might be behind it. On the other side, where honesty is a challenge for myself and so many of my clients, is that I am incapable of fixing my face. Completely incapable of fixing my face. Meaning, if I have strong feelings about something towards someone, if there’s something yucky and unresolved, I’m very not good at hiding that. And on top of that, I don’t like to have to try to hide it. It feels like this really uncomfortable form of masking and almost feels dishonest.
Like Dusty, if I was feeling frustrated or some kind of way about you that we honestly probably needed to talk about and I’m showing up to record our podcast and just putting on a friendly face like nothing is wrong…That I find incredibly difficult, almost impossible to do, and it’s such a common thing in neurotypical land. This is why office politics are so challenging for my clients with ADHD, because other people kind of develop these ways of being in certain spaces naturally and can do that without it being so very painful. But for me it’s torture. If I can even pull it off at all, it is so effortful to do so that I would rather just rip the bandaid off and have the conversation with you and get to whatever place we’re going to get to instead of trying to sit on it and squash it.
[00:08:03] Dusty: I wanna respond to a couple of things you said there. It’s interesting what you’re saying about whether it’s honesty or it isn’t when you’re really emotional ’cause I think when I thought about this in a negative context, I was also not necessarily thinking only about the super emotionally charged moments, but also just like where you’re too blunt.Like someone says, does this look bad on me and you’re like, yes. And I don’t know how that skews among the ADHDers ’cause I’ve heard that it can be more of a direct communication like thing with autism. But I do think that it is a thing with DCD too, because we don’t always stop to think of context and to think of filters.It’s like we just blurt out what we’re thinking.
But when you talk about the emotional moments, that’s interesting. ’cause on the one hand I feel like it is very honest. It’s the honest emotional truth, but of that moment and you’re not necessarily feeling that way all the time. So it’s honesty without nuance, because it’s honestly how you feel in that second, but again, you don’t have that greater context. You can’t access all that other information that you would wanna bring in later and say maybe something a little bit kinder or softer. So those are two things I wanted to say.
It’s interesting what you’re saying about not being able to fix your face. Because certainly, I have some very neurodivergent friends who have that problem. But Ash, don’t you find that hard as a coach? Because part of our coach training is to have a neutral tone, neutral face so that we’re creating space for our clients to have their own emotional experience without us impacting them.
I mean, there are things that are like “good coaching” or like “right coaching” on paper and then working with clients, you know, you go off script or you learn kind of what actually works, but how is that for you? Do you do neutral face with your clients?
[00:09:49] Ash: That’s a really good question, Dusty, and one I would’ve never thought about. I love this. So a couple of thoughts on that is number one, yes I do neutral face, but coaching is a bit of a different space, right? If you and I as friends are having some disagreement or there’s something I need to talk to you about or be honest about, that’s one.But if you are my client and I’m coaching you, I am necessarily not attached to anything that’s happening in that space. Detaching from outcome is such an important coaching tenant that it is just a different head space to be in.
Number two, I will say that being a coach and doing this as long as I have, has made me better at being able to pause and be more objective. Get up above situations like this when they do happen.
And number three and this is something I tell new coaches all the time, when I do, on the rare occasion, notice that I’m feeling some kind of way about a client – like I am maybe kind of dreading that client session or feeling frustrated in some way – I’ve learned as a coach that part of my job is to check in with that because if something’s not working for me in the coaching relationship, then that’s an opportunity for me first as a coach to get curious and figure out what’s not working for me, what’s bringing up these feelings, and then to bring that to my clients as an opportunity to co-create around that topic.
And a commonplace where that happens in coaching relationships is if a client’s in a place where maybe there’s just not quite that opening for change or we’re struggling to kind of find our footing. That can be a place where a frank conversation about whether or not coaching is the right fit for them right now is a good conversation to have.
[00:11:39] Dusty: I was thinking more about if they said something. Because for me, same as you, mostly I’m fine. But I find for me the hardest is when, ’cause I am very invested in all my clients, like personally, like I’m really stoked on all of them. So, it’s usually when they tell me that their boss or their partner, like they’ll have a story where they’re trying really hard and I’m like, yep, yeah, I’m appreciating the effort. And then someone in their life will be like, ah, you suck. And then it’s hard for me to be like, that sounds like it was really challenging, ’cause my face wants to go, oh no they didn’t. You were trying so hard.So I find that for me it’s more like someone’s telling me a story about something and or they’re putting themselves down or something. They’re not giving themselves any credit. It’s hard for me to be neutral-faced, because I wanna be like, ah, excuse me, what I’m hearing is you tried so hard and you’re…
Anyway, that’s my point. That’s more what I was thinking when I was thinking about the face that happens in coaching or doesn’t happen, but yeah.
[00:12:40] Ash: Well, and Dusty, here’s where I’ll say that you know things like normalizing matter in coaching too. So if a client does say something that is emotionally heavy and I can kind of feel how that would hit me if I was in that situation, I don’t think it’s wrong to kind of hold that space with the client and to recognize that, yes, this is painful and I empathize with that. I know what it feels like to feel what you are feeling right now.Two, as a coach, part of our opportunity in a situation like that, where it might sound very black and white on the surface, as a coach, maybe the first instinct is to jump to the defense of your client. The real opportunity there is to get curious and distinguish what really happened in this situation. Like what was the ADHD and your stuff in this room, but also what wasn’t, what had nothing to do with you? What was outside of your control? And that helps our clients get a more accurate perspective on A, what the situation is and B, what’s their stuff to work on, to control, to be a choice about and what’s not their stuff.
[00:13:52] Dusty: I feel like we’re getting a bit off topic about the honesty thing though, but that was just, I just wanted to hear from you ’cause I was like, oh yeah, face…nobody’s ever told me that feedback that I can’t fix my face. I feel like I have like Jim Carrey face though. I have very big expressions.So can I move us on to the thing I wanted to say about honesty and the sort of the strength part of it.
[00:14:20] Ash: Yeah. [00:14:21] Dusty: So we had started this off ’cause I was talking to you about a client that I had who had a workplace management issue. They had staff under them that they had to manage and they were struggling to give appropriate feedback to this staff person ’cause they were over empathizing with them. So the staff person was struggling and also had ADHD. The manager was like oh my gosh, I know what that feels like, and I wasn’t supported by my managers when I was struggling.So I really wanna do right by this person and give them lots of empathy and support. But the problem was that person had a manager that was telling them that they needed to be getting this person’s performance up basically. So we explored some management literature, one of which was a book called Radical Candor. And it has a concept in the book that was really interesting for the client, which was called ruinous empathy.
Ruinous empathy is where you overly empathize with someone because you wanna be kind to them and because you can really feel their pain. It’s too hard for you to say the hard thing, which in the workplace can be disastrous, obviously. Because if we have management responsibilities, it’s part of our job to make sure that people are getting the critiques and the feedback that they need.
This led you and I to this discussion about how we like to receive honesty and receive critique and feedback as well. And I think there’s a really interesting juxtaposition there. By the way, for anyone listening, the idea of radical candor is that you’re in sort of this pocket, like this goldilock zone of having enough empathy and enough rapport with a person that you can be fairly direct with them. But it’s like you’re being direct with them because you care about them. And so you’re saying the hard thing, right? You’re not blowing sugar up their butt. You’re not cutting corners. You’re telling them because you know they can handle it and because you know that it’s important and you care about them. Sometimes caring looks like saying a really harsh thing, right? But if you don’t have that relationship or you don’t know how to be empathetic, it’s gonna also come across way too harsh and way too blunt.
Anyway, so far I haven’t finished the book, but it seems like it has some good concepts for anybody who maybe is in management and struggling with the best way to communicate. So, Ash and I were talking about this interesting juxtaposition where we both agreed we would rather hear the harsh thing, like we would rather know the truth. But then I said, you know, on the other hand, I can see how people in our lives wouldn’t want to be direct with us because I don’t know about you, but people have described me as very sensitive to the slightest amount of critique.
Sometimes I can be really sensitive because rejection sensitivity is for me, one of the big aspects of ADHD. And so the people in my life sometimes have felt that I can’t handle almost any criticism. But on the other hand, I feel like when I have heard something really harsh about myself, it’s very helpful actually. I’m glad, like thank you for just telling me the honest thing.
I actually feel like these two things go together, right? I’m really super duper sensitive to the slightest amount of criticism because I don’t trust that people will be honest with me. Maybe they’re holding back? So when they are really honest with me, yeah, it stings, but I’m also like, thank goodness. It’s a big relief. What do you think?
[00:17:29] Ash: I agree with you that it can be a relief. I think so much of the ADHD experience is people holding back, people not telling us, right?There’s that opposing experience of why can’t you just write it down, get a planner. I put it on the calendar, whatever. But so many of my clients, particularly the ones that were diagnosed late in life didn’t know because nobody ever observed that for them in a useful way.
I had a client that talked about a grad school experience where she was partnered with another grad student, and in her mind up to this point, everything’s going well. She’s pursuing a career field that she’s really stoked about and as far as she knows, her program is going great and she is well liked within it.
And then this colleague dressed her down in a really mean and cruel way. And she described it as the fantasy bubble bursting, right? Like all of the sudden, she’s coming to this very harsh awareness that how she sees herself and how other people see her in this context are two very different things.
When she used that language of the fantasy bubble, I could relate to that because I’ve had times in my own life where I genuinely thought things were one way and then found out too little, too late that things were in fact a completely different way because nobody was communicating honestly with me along the way, and that too little, too late feels awful right now because now it feels like not only have you been carrying these feelings or this opinion, or there’s been this problem with my performance or whatever, but…Now I’m finding out too, what feels like too late to even do anything about it. Like I think that’s the moment where we can often get into that clean slate thinking like, oh gosh, well if this is where everyone else is at and I was wholly unaware maybe I just need to wipe the slate clean here.
[00:19:33] Dusty: Yeah. What got me thinking about it was the ways in which I’m really good at being honest with other people and how I’ve kind of been “tagged in” to tell a person the hard thing.An example way back a long time ago when I was in my early twenties, I was gonna be a social worker and I was one of like 20 people accepted to the school of social work, which was very prestigious at my university. And, to get into it, we had to do these two classes. So, I made a friend in this class and at the end of the two classes we had to do this exam or this kind of interview type of live workshop thing where the people from the school of social work would be observing us and they would make their choices based on how we worked in these, small groups figuring out some problem. It was really weird.
Anyway the thing is, through these two classes, I had noticed that my friend who was really smart, had a tendency to present quite dumb, I would say. She had this way of asking questions and being like, oh what? I don’t know. She just had this way of communicating that made her seem like an airhead, but she wasn’t, she was really smart and so I was kind of nervous, but I pulled her aside and I was like, hey, I just wanna tell you something, I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but sometimes the way that you’re communicating, you ask things and you say you didn’t know something, and I don’t know if you understand what it is that you’re communicating to others, but when I talk to you and you talk to me like that, it makes me think that you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I just want you to be aware of that going in because I, I don’t want you to give the wrong message to these people ’cause I know you really want to get in and you know what you’re doing and you can get in.
I think she was a little off but she was like, thank you for telling me. And then she did get in and later she messaged me to be like, thank you for letting me know that. I had no idea and I’m really glad you told me. So it was a big chance to take but it ultimately ended up helping her. And she did go on to become a social worker.
Similarly, I lived in a big roommate situation when I was younger. One of my roommates had a friend who would come over and we all really liked this person but then they started hanging around too much, not going home, always sitting on our couch and eating our food. All the roommates kind of started to complain about this person but I really liked them. I didn’t mind at all. I said, I think this person’s cool, but everybody kind of started getting a negative vibe about this person ’cause they just didn’t like how much they hung around, but nobody wanted to tell them.
So we had this whole house meeting about it and I remember I was like 21 and I was like well, why don’t you guys just tell the person to go home? They probably don’t know. And they were like, oh, well, he should know. And I’m like, okay. Finally it was decided that I would talk to this person. So I remember I took them out, we sat on a hill in the sunshine and I said, listen, everybody really likes you, but you need to understand that you’re starting to wear out your welcome because you don’t go home and you need to leave more often and not eat our food as much.
And the person had no idea, right? In their circles that they traveled in, that was just normal. And they were like, oh, thank you for telling me – nobody wanted to tell them.
Personally, I wish I could be a fashionable person. I don’t put a lot of effort into how I dress. Maybe I just never had mirrors in my bedroom growing up or something, but I just don’t have a habit of looking at my outfit before I leave the house. So sometimes I leave the house in the most ridiculous clothing. And the last two relationships I’ve had, I would say that the people that I’ve dated have been much more fashion conscious than me, which was by choice ’cause I admire that in a person ’cause I don’t have it. And a couple of times in both those relationships, the person actually said to me like, are you gonna leave the house in that, or I’d ask them like, how do you think my outfit looks, is it bad? And they’d be like, yeah, kind of.
And I’m like, yo, thank you for telling me ’cause I literally don’t know. If I am gonna leave the house in really clashing patterns, will you please tell me, because that’s really helpful. I don’t wanna walk outta the house looking like I’m about to go to the circus, but I might not notice. I appreciate it, I wanna hear it.
But they probably thought, oh, I don’t wanna hurt her feelings. No, I would rather you tell me than walk around looking totally ridiculous in mismatched socks and striped pants and a floral shirt or whatever.
[00:23:36] Ash: So Dusty, we’ve talked about how this can be a challenge and even your roommate’s story kind of speaks to how those of us with ADHD can often end up being the ones saying the hard thing because we’re the ones that see that’s what needs to happen.It’s hard for us to fix our face and sit on it from that point. We can bring empathy to those conversations, but even then there’s a little bit of challenge in that, right? To be the person that finds ourselves in those challenging situations so often, just by virtue of who we are and how our brains work.
But one way I wanna point out that it can also be a massive strength is pointing out and noticing the positive things. This is something you learn how to do in coaching, but it’s something that I have naturally done long before that. I have had people from 20 years ago tell me that something that I said to them or noticed about them still sits with them today. It still has an impact on who and what I’m thinking about right now.
You were just talking about clothes, and I thought about at the Chad Conference a couple of years ago when you had me try on your leather jacket. And at the time I could not envision myself as somebody who was cool enough to wear leather. I was newly out, kind of relearning fashion. I think that’s actually what we were talking about ’cause you wanted to take me to some death metal show and I was like, I don’t know if I have any clothes to wear. I don’t know if I brought any clothes on this trip that I could wear to that. And you had me try on your leather jacket and you were being honest with me when you said you thought it looked really good and I should get one.
I still don’t have a leather jacket. I do own a ton of other leather though, and we’re working on the jacket, and moments like that are really special because they help us see something in ourselves that maybe we didn’t see before, or maybe we didn’t notice as unique or special when you’re noticing other people’s strengths, other people’s gifts.
Those of us with ADHD have a unique ability to see and appreciate those things. So what do we love most about the people we love? Like the things that uniquely make them, the things that shine through in that way and we are uniquely good at spotting those things and appreciating ’em.
[00:25:47] Dusty: Yeah. That’s interesting. And I’m glad that was a helpful moment for you because I love it when people are effusively positive and give me compliments or notice those small things. They comment on things that other people don’t and I really appreciate those things.And you know, we know that people with ADHD respond better to praise than criticism, which can be hard. I just gave a talk for the ADHD Men Support group and the talk was about how men can take more equal sharing of the household responsibilities. Specifically where I see a lot of my male clients struggling is when they start to step up, they don’t necessarily get positive feedback from their female partners. Or it doesn’t necessarily make the difference that they hoped it was gonna make. So the hard thing I think, maybe for these men, understandably, is that partners who have maybe had to put up with a lot of unmitigated ADHD behaviors might not be thrilled about giving a bunch of praise.
But unfortunately, what we know about people with ADHD is they need more praise than criticism. And so, ironically, when I was thinking about when I have this challenge with my male clients, I think, oh man, I wish I could let their partners know it kind of is hard, but the more praise you can give, we respond better to that.
And it’s the same for kids with ADHD too, right? We know that kids with ADHD especially need this and we need to actually train ourselves to start noticing when they’re doing things right and compliment them and saying things like, oh, you brushed your teeth without me asking, oh, I noticed you cleaned up all your toys. And that, sometimes doesn’t come naturally as a parent either. If our kids are doing something good, we don’t say anything. But when they’re doing something bad, we say, don’t do that.
We need to kind of train ourselves to be like, hey, you’re doing that, that’s great. So as people with ADHD, my point is just that we really thrive with that more positive feedback. So I’ve definitely noticed whenever someone in my life has been like, you know what I like about you, Dusty, you always XYZ. I’m like, oh, thank you, that is good. I don’t think that I had as much of a natural propensity to do that, which more I think relates to the type of upbringing I had than my ADHD.
I really had to teach myself to do that. And I taught myself to do it because I liked that attribute in other people. When I met people who took the time to verbalize the nice things that they noticed, I was like I wanna be that person.
But I will say related to what you’re talking about, Ash, I think where that shows up for me is actually, interestingly enough, looping all the way back to the thing we talked about at the beginning with emotionality because I’m such an emotional person and I shoot from the heart. I find that for me, I feel like I’m often giving people very heartfelt honesty more so than other people. I’m more willing to have a very emotionally vulnerable moment with somebody who’s just a friend and say what you said meant so much to me or I just want you to know that the way that you do this or that is…
I’m more willing to go there and kind of open up about something that would almost honestly bring tears to my eyes that I just love and appreciate about someone. But the way I get there is through that emotionality, like when I get emotionally moved by someone or by something, I really want to share that with people. And I think that a lot of people don’t get that experience. I think that’s a bit unusual, you know? So for me it’s kind of also through that honesty comes that emotion.
[00:29:03] Ash: Interestingly enough, Dusty, I have the same way. The running joke amongst my friends, like when I’ve had a couple of drinks too many, is I am the opposite of a problematic drunk. I start telling you how much I love you and all of the cool things about you.So we always know when Asher’s a little drunk because the “I love you man” starts.
[00:29:26] Dusty: Oh my god, that’s so funny.I’m exactly the same. People are like, oh, you’re never sloppy or mean when you’re drunk. They’re like, you just start telling everyone how much you love them.
[00:29:35] Ash: Yep, yep. That’s really funny that we share that trait. [00:29:38] Dusty: Finally, something in common, woo. [00:29:39] Ash: Finding something in common. We found it. [00:29:41] Dusty: If we get drunk together….oh my god.We just start a side podcast where we just get drunk and then talk about things that we love.
[00:29:47] Ash: That would be hilarious actually. I am down to try that. Okay.Dusty, when it comes to your concept of radical candor, that book you brought up, I realized that’s kind of how I live my life already these days. If you are my friend, we have radical candor between us.
I feel like I can say the thing that needs to be said, and I trust that you feel you can say the thing that needs to be said and be it positive, negative, or otherwise.
I did wanna come back to the idea that people with ADHD need more praise than other people because I want to distinguish what that’s about and what it’s not about.
When we are in a healthy place, it is not about validation. What it is about is context, right? Knowing something about how my work is being perceived by others, how I’m being perceived by others, what others naturally notice in me in a given setting, that’s all really helpful context for me. Even something as simple as dressing yourself.
I struggle with fashion like you do, and part of it is because I can’t always tell what looks good on me. I could be standing in the mirror, a full length mirror looking at myself and just not really have a read on whether or not this looks good, whether or not this is a good outfit. Part of that is because I have no visual brain, so it’s just a hard thing for me to conceptualize.
And so getting feedback from others in that realm, somebody compliments my outfit when I’m out and about, which by the way, I had a stranger do for like the first time ever since coming out and that felt really good. That’s all context.
[00:31:39] Dusty: What was the compliment? [00:31:41] Ash: Oh, okay. So I was sitting with two of my friends, so three queers, and we were sitting not at a queer bar, but we were at a punk bar.Both of them are so cool and so fashionable, and this guy walks up to the three of us and he’s like, I just have to tell you that I love all three of your styles and I was like, ah, I was included in that. Whoa, what a moment. Right?
And I got to that moment as I’m learning how to redress myself, I got to that moment by getting context along the way. Paying attention when people spontaneously compliment something that I wear, asking those same fashionable friends to help me figure out outfits and trusting them to tell me the truth.
Meaning they’re not gonna put me in something that they think looks ridiculous or bad on me. They’re as invested in my feeling good and what I’m wearing as I am. And so, yes, when we’re in an unhealthy place, when we’re operating from that one down, honesty and feedback from others can very much be about validation and a need for validation.
But when we’re in a healthy place, that need doesn’t go away. And it doesn’t go away because our brains are wired for context. And so the more we can understand the context, how we’re seen, how we’re appreciated, how we’re struggling in a broader setting, the better off we are. It just helps us orient ourselves to who we are in this space, in this place, in this context, and I, for one, can’t operate without it.
Again. That’s why so many of my relationships are built on this idea of radical candor. I know that I can ask any one of my friends an honest question for feedback and get an honest answer.
[00:33:31] Dusty: Yeah. And as a coach, there’s certain clients I’ve had where I’ve had a long enough relationship with them and they might be telling me a story, usually about a work context or in a social context where I’m seeing that they have a blind spot and they’re not understanding what they did wrong or why they didn’t get the outcome they were looking for.And sometimes I’ve had to be that person with a client and of course I don’t know everything. So I say look, I could be wrong, but sometimes I’ve had to have that radical honesty with the client and be like, hey, you know why you were being rude.
Or I’ve even had clients show me text message conversations that I’ve been like, here’s why this person might have responded this way. It seems like you were being really, you know, off-putting when you said this and that and they didn’t feel like they needed to explain that to you. And sometimes, you know, my clients are really in a tunnel vision. They’re like, oh, but blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, okay, but here’s the thing you have to remember.
And sometimes I have to be that person for a client. And of course it’s not my place to say that I definitively know. So I always give them that disclaimer. But sometimes that radical candor comes into coaching where I have to be the person to tell a client, here’s what I think you’re not picking up on in this situation.
But sometimes you don’t have that person in your life and sometimes with ADHD, we do need someone to tell that to us. And, it’s easier to hear it more with honesty. I don’t like it when people are kind of hinting at something, or, you know, like in the example I gave earlier with all the roommates, nobody wanted to tell this person, right? Everybody just wanted to let the discomfort of the situation ride on and what would’ve happened eventually, all those people would’ve just kept slowly building up a dislike of the poor guest of ours who had no idea they were doing anything wrong until they all were talking about the person behind their back.
And so on another level as a person with ADHD, my justice sensitivity, I find I am often the person saying the hard things because for me, I’m like, hey, it’s not fair that we all know this and nobody’s telling this person this. Right? Someone needs to say the hard thing and nobody wants to, so I guess it’ll be me.
[00:35:33] Ash: That’s exactly right, Dusty. And because we’ve been on the other side of that equation ourselves so many times in life we have a particular empathy for that. In particular, we can see the value of honesty in a situation like that. Not that you could control the other person’s behavior if that person flew off the handle or if it went a different way than the very lovely way it sounded like it went. That’s no longer on you, but for us to be an integrity, right? It starts with starting from an honest place and having an honest conversation.We are low on time, so is there anything else you wanna say?
[00:36:10] Dusty: I mean, I could go off about this all day, but I think we’ve made our point. I think that if you have ADHD, maybe you’re having a different experience with honesty and maybe it’s good to know because again, like honesty at the wrong time or in the wrong way can also be really hurtful for us.Or like partial honesty, right? Again, I’m very sensitive, but I think if you can get a sense of where you appreciate directness and bluntness, you can start to advocate for that. That’s the thing I work with my clients on all the time is helping them learn to tell the person, please be direct with me. Tell me what you actually need. Don’t hint at it. Don’t assume I’m gonna understand your context.
So for me it’s clothing. No one’s ever gonna hurt my feelings. If someone were to maybe criticize my parenting, that would probably really hurt my feelings because I work really hard on my parenting and I’m, you know, racked with mom guilt just like everybody else. So I might take that the wrong way, right? Maybe that’s an area where somebody needs to be a bit gentle with my heart.
Or when I’m having a social gathering I would like to know, did I do or say anything super awkward so that I can understand, because sometimes I get caught up in the moment. So if you, dear listener, if you can start to learn where you would like people to be more directly honest with you, you can start advocating for that. And if you struggle with some of the negative aspects of honesty, like you’ve gotten bad feedback because you’re not practicing radical candor, instead you’re being too blunt without the relational context, if that’s a problem for you or you’re the oversharer, you can work on some of those soft skills, like learning how much information to give and how much to hold back, but also learning why you hold it back so that you’re not just feeling inauthentic or like you’re a liar, but understanding the context of when it’s better to withhold some information and why.
And if you are too blunt, learn how to leverage that bluntness, like a tool rather than like a cyclops with laser beam eyes, you know, they just go everywhere if you don’t put the glasses on. But yeah, I think it’s a thing.
[00:38:22] Ash: Dusty, I think we could keep going on this, and in fact, I think we might stay on communication for our next episode and continue pulling on this thread a little differently. But we are outta time for today. So listeners, until next week, I’m Ash. [00:38:36] Dusty: I’m Dusty. [00:38:36] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
