In this episode, Ash and Dusty explore the complexities of seeking and receiving accommodations and supports for ADHD. They discuss how well-intentioned efforts can sometimes miss the mark when helpers do not fully understand the specific needs or reasons behind requests. Dusty shares personal experiences and client stories highlighting the frustrations that arise when accommodations are either insufficient, misunderstood, or perceived as burdensome by those providing support. They emphasize the importance of clear communication about what type of help is actually needed—whether it be accountability, body doubling, reminders, or assistance with figuring things out—and why understanding the “why” behind requests is crucial for effective support.
Ash and Dusty also address the emotional impact of past negative experiences with support that can create reluctance to seek help in the future. They highlight the value of finding the right people who not only provide consistent and appropriate support but also genuinely understand and respect individual needs. The hosts encourage listeners to advocate for themselves by clearly expressing what they need and why, and to hold onto those who truly get it. The episode closes with practical tips for both askers and supporters about maintaining boundaries and communication, reinforcing that successful accommodations come from mutual understanding and ongoing dialogue.
Episode links + resources:
For more of the Translating ADHD podcast:
- Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode
- Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD
- Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com
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. Dusty, I wanna tell our listeners what we’re talking about this week. [00:00:12] Dusty: Well, I think that what we’re talking about is being at choice with accommodations and support. Does that sound right to you? [00:00:19] Ash: Sounds right to me. [00:00:21] Dusty: So this is an interesting topic. I hear a lot from clients that they try to ask for help from friends and they try to get accommodations, but those accommodations don’t always work out the way that they think they will.Dr. Russell Barkley said that the efficacy of any accommodation is based on or up to the willingness of the people around us to implement it. I’m sort of bastardizing and paraphrasing something that he said in one of his YouTube videos, but really, what he was talking about is that any intervention is dependent on the willingness of the person to give us the accommodation.
Whether that’s accountability or body doubling or reminders or changing expectations or whatever it is. And sometimes we know what will help us and sometimes we don’t. And sometimes people try to help in a well-meaning way, that is not that helpful. And then sometimes we tell people exactly what we want, but they don’t understand, so they give us the wrong thing anyway.
[00:01:17] Ash: Dusty, do you have some examples of what you’re talking about here? [00:01:20] Dusty: Yeah, absolutely.I’ve heard from a lot of clients that they’ve asked non neurodivergent friends for accountability and those friends, check in on me about this or that, and those friends have kind of been a bit uncomfortable doing so because for them that would feel sort of, like condescending or too direct or something.
Or maybe the friend will check in on you once, but then they sort of don’t keep checking in. Whereas for the person with ADHD, they literally want you to get them on the phone and go, hey, go brush your teeth. Whereas that might make a neurotypical person a bit uncomfortable to be that bossy with somebody.
Or, they themselves don’t necessarily need that and would be like, don’t tell me what to do, I’m not a child or something, right? So they may not understand why that person is asking for exactly that. And they might do something that they think is kind of helpful, but not really.
I’ve heard a lot of that, people asking their friends for accommodations and for accountability and it kind of doesn’t really work. I had an experience recently with someone that was working with me where I thought that what I was asking them for was some basic handholding, like I have a lot of stuff to do.
I need to be checked in on, I need help figuring out how to do things and if I don’t get them done, I need you to kind of prompt me and be like, hey, did you do this? And it ended really poorly, basically that person said I’m not your babysitter, which is hilarious because there are actual services geared at neurodivergent.
VA (virtual assistant) services for example. I just found out about one called WorkSitter. Which I will absolutely be using and we’re not sponsored by them or anything, but I just heard about them and I’ve had a couple people say good things about them. Where it is literally exactly that – a person to babysit you for work.
They get on a call with you and it’s accountability, but it’s also body doubling where you tell them what you need to get done and they sit there with you and make sure that you stay on track and that is what I need. That’s what I needed.
And sometimes what I need is just somebody to figure something out for me. Not even to necessarily do it for me, but just to help me figure something out. And I think when people don’t understand what I’m asking for (or what my clients are asking for), where they think they’re asking for one thing, but because the person doesn’t really understand why they need a thing, they end up getting something different instead.
Does that make sense?
[00:03:47] Ash: That absolutely makes sense. So Dusty, a few things I want to say. First, that language, I don’t wanna be your babysitter is really, really harsh. And for someone in a position where you are, where you’ve done your work, you do this for a living, you are able to not take that personally and kind of step back from that and realize that that person was not the right support for you.And think about what support looks like from here moving forward. But for one of our clients who’s early in this process, who’s still learning about their own ADHD, that can be the kind of thing we carry forward with us and let inform future interactions.
So as a hypothetical example, if this was a client of mine, I could see the reaction to that being, I can’t hire another assistant. I have to do it myself because what I’m asking for from an assistant must be inappropriate if that is their reaction to working with me, which by the way, that’s not inappropriate at all.
My assistant, I’m really fortunate that my assistant is also one of my best friends, so we have that dual relationship where she knows me really well, but one of the ways she supports me is I can just text her something and be like, remind me about this, or tell me about this. And I don’t give her any more parameters for that. I don’t give her a when or a how. It’s just when I’m in a moment where I don’t wanna forget something and I don’t have a better place to park it, or I don’t have a reliable place to park it.
An example of this might be if I’m out and about and I remember an upcoming deadline, but I don’t have a good place to park it at the time – I’ll text her like, will you please remind me a little closer to this deadline that I need to remember that this is a thing, or will you remind me that I need to do X or Y or Z?
And I kind of leave it up to her in terms of where those reminders come back. She’s got her own system on the back end to do this, but on my end it’s literally just sending a text or a Discord message and trusting that I’ve now put it in her camp and it’s gonna come back to me.
So listeners, something to think about is where have you gotten feedback like that in the past that might be preventing you from accessing support now? I just sat down with a small company a few weeks ago, small enough that we were at a very large conference table, but I was sitting with effectively everyone in the company speaking to them at once.
So like 20-something people, so small enough that everyone knows everyone, but some of the complaints from upper level management about their neurodivergent employees are things like hiding behavior, right? Hiding work that’s not done, not communicating, not reaching out for support, this is an environment where top down, they’re very supportive of neurodivergent people. Most of the company is neurodivergent, and so they want people to be honest about where they’re at, about what’s not working, about what work isn’t done, about what they don’t understand.
So the follow up to this is gonna be a conversation about exactly that, this behavior to bring back an old metaphor from another episode, this behavior of facade building, of throwing up the facade, not building the house. What these employees are kind of failing to recognize is that the behavior is even there at all. And if they’re aware of that, they’re not recognizing that this is a different context than wherever they came from before whether that was school, another job, or some other environments that are not as supportive. The conversation kind of has to be twofold, sort of recognizing those behaviors because we don’t always realize that’s what we’re doing.
When we’ve always done what we’ve always done, we may not even realize we’re in that loop. That thing where we can drag past context forward and apply it to our current situation is also very present here, meaning it’s sometimes hard to trust when the accommodation is really there, that we can take advantage of it and not end up in a situation where we get slapped down for it.
[00:07:57] Dusty: Yeah, I think there’s a lot that goes into this. It’s hard enough to ask in the first place for the support that you need and it’s really frustrating to have someone enthusiastically give you the wrong support, ’cause they’re trying, and then it’s still not getting better.I also see this happening in the workplace a lot. One of the biggest conversations I have with clients is what kind of accommodations to ask for and it’s scary because they don’t know what’s actually gonna work. And after going through all that effort with HR and with their boss to get something that backfires is just scary.
I see this a lot too with people’s partners. Like they’ll ask their partner to remind them of something and then they do and then they don’t wanna feel nagged by their partner. So they go, oh, will you remind me to take out the garbage? And then you know, the partner goes, hey, take out the garbage. And they’re like, oh, right.
So sometimes people enthusiastically help you. I had this happen with my sister at one point. I was really struggling to feed myself and I asked her for some help with meal planning. So she went to this big effort to make me this whole meal plan, which was totally inappropriate for me, like it just wouldn’t work for me. I explained to her why it wouldn’t work and she was obviously very frustrated and she’s like, well, I don’t know how to help. And I told her, honestly, kind of what I need is for me to be able to tell you what makes meal planning hard for me and talk through it with you, not having you tell me what I should be eating. I know what I should be eating, but that’s not the problem.
What is even more frustrating is when you ask people for accommodations and they either refuse, they don’t understand or they just don’t follow through. Like maybe they check in on you once, but you wanted ongoing accountability or sometimes I see people try to partner with other neurodivergent folks who aren’t in coaching and they ask a friend who also has a DC and then that friend forgets.
Honestly, I see this happening the most and so I often put clients of mine together who are in coaching. I run a community called The ADHD Studio, and so former clients are in there as well as current clients, and then sometimes people just pay a subscription fee to have access to that space.
That’s the best case scenario for me personally. Why? Because former clients have kind of been through coaching, so they know why accountability is important, but they also kind of know how to give it and receive it. So there’s a higher likelihood I think that those people will actually follow through with each other. And I see that as a huge success.
I had a coaching group several years ago where two women wanted to start walking every morning. And to this day they’re still texting each other, they’re still like accountability buddies, right? Like they get it.
But it’s also frustrating when you ask somebody for something and you would really like help and then you get a response like, yeah, I’m not your babysitter. Right? Okay, well that’s what I need though sometimes. I was telling you about this before too, Ash, but I had a trainer that I was working with, a personal trainer, and I had gone through periods of consistency and inconsistency with working out. After my mom passed away, I really fell off the wagon ’cause we moved to a new community and I didn’t have a workout class to replace the one I had been doing. Eventually I started working with this trainer and it took me quite a while to get what I would think of as consistent. But once I was consistent, it really helped to have that super high level of accountability.
I think I’ve talked about him, my trainer, in previous episodes and unfortunately he’s gone now. But like that super high level of accountability where through this app I was communicating to him what I was eating, when I was working out, and I had like an ear to listen to me every time.
I was like, this is so hard and I don’t have time, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t need him to solve my problems for me, and I had to explain that to him a few times. I was like, honestly, just being able to talk to someone about this who I know is invested in me, like coaching me around fitness. At a point around last Christmas, he wanted to shut down his business or whatever, and he sent me a message and he goes, okay, you know what, you’ve been doing great. I think you’re really consistent and I think you’re gonna do great. And I was like so we are just gonna end things? Do you think I’m gonna be able to keep my consistency? I was so angry, Ash. I was like, have you listened to a word that I told you this whole time that we’re working together?
And honestly, this year has been quite a mess. Like, I’m on and I’m off, but it’s been harder and it’s not been nearly as productive and as consistent as when I had a regular support person providing me with accountability, which I happily paid for because I knew the value of it.
[00:12:13] Ash: Dusty, I wanna come back to that enthusiastic but wrong support. That one is actually sometimes harder to identify than what support we do need because when support is being offered so enthusiastically, like your sister designing this whole meal plan for you and not understanding why that doesn’t work for you, that is where most of our clients are.They’re standing in a place where they know it doesn’t work, but they don’t know why. So it is that frustrating place of, okay, I got this help, somebody else put in all of this effort and it didn’t do anything for me as a person with ADHD.
We are bad at learning from our past experiences. So in a case like this where someone does offer help and it doesn’t work out for you, the opportunity there is to get curious about why it didn’t work. And I’ve got a couple of examples here.
One for me that I have learned over many years is that body doubling doesn’t work. Working alongside someone does work if I’m doing some manual labor project, so organizing my basement or doing yard work. Work is always more fun alongside a friend that can help. If I’m doing something that I don’t know how to do, so I’m tackling something in the garden or in my house that is beyond my skillset, having someone that will show me how it’s done and then let me do it, but be there to put some guardrails up for me if I do it wrong. Those things are really helpful. But traditional body doubling, where you work and I work or I work and you hold space for me does not work for me.
Which by the way, is something I told Dusty very early in our relationship doing this podcast because I was going through a period of time where I was incredibly overwhelmed and you earnestly offered me some body doubling time, which I appreciate, but you just as earnestly heard me when I said, that doesn’t work. And I think your response was, well, if you think of something that does work that I can do for you, you just let me know.
I do wanna give a second example of this, and this was actually in the context of a coaching relationship. So we’re already approaching it in the way of what support looks like for you; but I think it’s a great example because like your meal planning, this could have had a similarly disastrous end. I have a client who wanted to get back into budgeting practice, and I’m very good at the budgeting software that he wanted to use, it’s the software that I already use.
So if we were just friends, this might have been a situation where I’m like, okay, let me sit you down and show you how to set it up and how you use it. But in the context of coaching, we discovered two separate dilemmas that were big barriers for this client and budgeting.
The first was just the sheer complexity of their financial lives, and this is just, you know, accounts that were open before they got married, and some stuff’s over here and some stuff’s over there. And so there’s numerous places, which makes it harder to see what’s what in the software for how this client’s brain works.
So, the first round of coaching we did on the topic of budgeting didn’t even address having a budget. It addressed sort of simplifying the flow of finances for that client, which was multiple, very painful steps of having to go into bank branches and open new accounts and close old accounts and move stuff around and move auto pays and move direct deposits. So, you know, bureaucratic, awful things for people with ADHD.
The second piece, once we got that far and now the software made sense was that this client’s financial situation was currently such that they could budget out for multiple months and still not run out of money to budget.
And this particular software wants you to “give every dollar a job”. So we actually came around to the question of, do you actually need a budget? And that drove a conversation where the client was realizing, yes, I do, because I want to figure out what it actually costs us to live on so that with some upcoming decisions and changes I might make if I want to take a lower paying less stress job or move from full-time to part-time or one of many other avenues I’m considering, I need to know something about how much it costs. So we artificially sort of took the excess chunk of money and dumped it in a “bucket” so that now this client is attempting to live paycheck to paycheck and see how much, if any money is left over, if I only live on my current income.
That was such a huge, important piece for this client to find the positive motivation for budgeting and for the budgeting software to do for the client what they wanted it to do in the first place, which is to understand something that they don’t currently understand about what it actually costs him and his wife to live month to month.
So again, listeners, you can hear if you had a friend that needed a budget and you just sit down and show them your system, that that may not be enough or the way that you budget or what works for you may not be the right support for someone else. And we’ve run into this so often as people with ADHD where someone says, I’ll do it for you, or, I know how to do this, I can teach you how to do this. But the path from here to there is not always linear for us. And there are often barriers in the way that we don’t see.
Again, the opportunity when you have access to support and that support is not working is to get really curious about why not, and what is the thread you can pull on to move this forward in a different way.
Dusty, now I wanna talk about your fitness coach, and in this case it does sound like this person closed their business. So this is a bit of a different situation than the one I’m going to describe. But years ago, a very good friend of mine was working with a health coach and was having a similar, very positive, very different experience than she had ever experienced when it came to health and wellness.
It was going so well and she was really, really ecstatic and overnight, and I do mean overnight from one month to the next, this coach said, well, now my coaching costs this, and it had to be at least twice the price on what was already a pretty expensive coaching package and my friend was devastated. Just devastated. That was an important learning experience for me as a coach because that ripping away of support when it’s working can feel so awful.
So if I’m already working with a client and finances are the only reason that they would stop coaching, I accommodate that whenever and however I can, number one. And number two, since this happened, I have not raised prices on my current coaching clients.
So a client drops off, they come back, they pay the rate that they were paying before, even if I’m charging more now. It’s just one of those things that I consider so important because seeing her devastation, number one. And number two, having had that experience myself or something was going really well and suddenly that support is gone, it’s absent, and I don’t know how to replace it because in some ways it might feel a little irreplaceable to find that same relationship where you can communicate with this person in this way. And even if you can find it, you’re starting from zero. You’re reestablishing the relationship. You’re reestablishing what support looks like for you, and you’re having to do the work of figuring out along the way if the support that you need is support that this person can provide for you or not.
And that’s such an awful place to be.
[00:20:00] Dusty: Totally. I mean, I think to put a bow on all this for me, I hope this doesn’t kind of come across as doom and gloom, like, oh, what’s the point of asking for support ’cause someone’s just gonna get in your face, or they’re gonna try and then they’re gonna get frustrated.That’s not the case. But I think the key thing is when you find someone who can support you the right way, first of all, valuing that and learning how to advocate for not just what you need but why you need it. I often hear this about neurodivergent people, that they need to understand the why.
Well, I think, so do our helpers, right? And even if they don’t really “get it” if you could tell them, look, all I need you to do is sit here with me, or like, all I need you to do is help me figure out how to do this, you don’t have to do it for me.
So one of the issues I was having with the person who was like, I’m not your babysitter, is I realized what I often need help with is figuring something out. I have so many things to do and my brain is moving so fast that anything I know how to do, I can do. It’s faster for me to just do it than it is to explain it to somebody. But for me to figure something out is a huge gear change, like switching gears. I get really easily frustrated when I don’t know how to do something.
I’m very good at being shown how to do something. Unlike a lot of people, I’m a really good classroom-based learner. I was this whiz kid with languages because I learned them in the classroom in a structured setting. And I think it’s because for me, to my brain, it’s like a location change; so, when you’re in a classroom, the information is being presented to you in a structured way.
And people would always say to me, oh, I’ve heard that the best way to learn languages is to just go be in the culture and use the “talk”. No, not for me.
And honestly, I’ve been trying out Duolingo and I kind of hate it because it’s doing that like context based learning. No, I wanna break down all the verbs and the verb conjugations. I wanna understand how they’re conjugated before I try to use them.
So when I learned languages in the classroom, I was really good at it. I’m really good at learning things. I’m terrible at teaching myself anything. I can’t follow a set of instructions, like I don’t know how to figure something out. And so it takes a huge amount of my energy. So I realized early on that like outsourcing, how to do things to people who can take that time to figure it out is one of the best ways for people to help me. But I think there was this miscommunication between this person and I where they didn’t understand that because I think they got really overwhelmed when I would ask them how to do something that I wasn’t able to explain to them how to do, you know?
And so I realized that for me, moving forward, when I ask somebody to say, be my assistant or help me in some way, I need to ask, I am looking for someone who can figure out things for me because it’s not that I’m incapable, like I could do it, but I don’t have that kind of time and I don’t have that kind of energy and it’s very hard for me. Whereas I see that it’s not such an expensive cognitive process for other people. So I can send emails, I can do the laundry, I can mop the floor, I can pay the bills, but I can’t figure out how to reload the string in the string trimmer, or I can’t figure out how to order new filters for my air filter thing, right?
That’s where I get stuck. And so, really, at the end of the day, I think it’s about even if the other person doesn’t understand and you can just say, trust me, ’cause I had to do that with my trainer so many times. I was like, listen, I don’t need you to solve my problems for me. I just need you to keep caring about me and checking in with me. That’s the helpful thing. I will figure this out on my own, whatever I’m getting stuck on.
And he was kind of shutting down his business, but kind of not. So I was a bit frustrated when he kind of pulled the rug out from under me, but he was like, yeah, you know, you’ve been really consistent and I think you’ll be fine. And I really felt like he didn’t understand the first thing about me after all that time. I was like, you being here week after week is what’s helping me. Right? So it was very frustrating not to feel understood, and I think moving forward, you know, I’m learning a lot about how to advocate for why I need what I need, and that’s where I see it make a difference for clients too.
[00:24:12] Ash: Lemme speak to that second part first, which is, you know what you need and you know the value even if the other person doesn’t see the value, and it sounds like that was the case of this coach, right?“You don’t need me anymore” – I am really careful to never tell a client they don’t need me anymore because I did that once and the client got really, really upset. That was a huge learning moment for me that just because we’re being really successful now, that doesn’t necessarily mean we are done. It usually means that the coaching relationship is coming to a close, but it does not always mean that.
And so now, I approach that conversation as a co-created conversation. Let’s notice together that you’re in a new place, and let’s talk about what is the role of coaching now, if any. So you see, rather than directing a client in a certain way, I’m opening up a curious conversation and I’m finding something out from them about what is supportive about the coaching space and whether or not they still feel that they need or want that support, and I’m right there with you when sometimes just holding the space and accountability is enough.
I have been really inconsistent with kickboxing for the last calendar year, and I have paid for unlimited access to kickboxing for the last calendar year. And the reason that I happily keep paying that monthly fee, even when I’m not showing up well, is because my coach will check in with me when I haven’t been around in a while and he will gently encourage me to come back and he’s holding that space for me.
So even when I wasn’t going and I wasn’t able to make the time I wanted to make, it was still there as an intention. And that encouragement and nudging along the way is really, really helpful alongside the, he’ll just over overdo it when I actually show up like, yeah, you’re here. Like you’re killing it.
Right? Just make it a little extra, which feels really good. It makes it easier to then show up the next time. And if I don’t show up the next time, I know he’s gonna stay after me, but he’s not gonna browbeat me about it, and that alone is worth what I pay him. How often I do or don’t actually show up to class, because I’ve known this whole time that getting back to consistency isn’t an if – it’s a when and that’s okay. It’s there for me when I’m ready for it.
And now I wanna talk about looking for people to teach you things because I am almost the same way. I’m not a great classroom learner, but I’m a great on the job learner, always have been.
So if you can show me how the thing is done and you are there for me to ask questions or to clarify and you’re good at answering, you’re good at talking about the how and the why of why you do something, then you are somebody that I want to do something alongside, that is who I want help from.
A little different than you, but really, really similar and I have learned to actively seek out people like this. Just yesterday, I was talking with my neighbor in the backyard and she said, hey, that tree, I’ve got this weeping cherry tree that’s an absolute disaster because when I moved into my house, it looked like it was gonna die. This is a tree that was grafted onto another tree’s stump. I don’t really understand how it works, but at the time I bought the house, the graft definitely looked like it was failing. The tree was not very healthy. It looked like a repair had been attempted and didn’t take, and so I just assumed the tree was gonna die, and I kind of left it alone.
And I left it alone for the next four plus years. Well, now that same tree is really, really healthy, but in order to get the weeping canopy effect on those trees, you have to trim the branches that aren’t growing in the correct direction. I have not trimmed a single branch off of this tree in five years, and I’m not really sure how to look at this tree despite having watched videos of how to approach it.
I’m terrified that I’m gonna do it wrong. I just don’t know what I don’t know. So I’m out talking with my neighbor and she says, so that tree in your front yard, my mom was saying that if you do this and you do that, and later in the conversation she mentioned that her mom is retired and she loves to garden, but she can’t really physically garden anymore.
And I’m like, hey, I’m just gonna toss this out there. But if your mom wanted to come over and pull up a chair and just boss me around, like I’ve got braun to do my yard, what I don’t have is the knowledge. I don’t know how to trim the bushes. I don’t know when to trim the bushes. I don’t know how much I can trim the bushes. So everything is too big and too overgrown and I don’t know how to bring it back into balance and it feels like an impossible task for me to learn those things on my own and get them done with intention.
But, if somebody just sat here and told me what to do and why, like she doesn’t even have to help. She can just sit and vibe and boss me around if that’s something she would be open to. I am all for it. And that conversation actually ended with, yeah, I think she’d really enjoy that because she misses being able to garden. So that would be a way to access gardening. So listeners, not only hear what I’m looking for, and I’ve been looking for a while for somebody to help me with gardening, but my house also is not getting attention because I know that in order for it to be a good experience for me, there needs to be somebody that wants to be there and is going to enjoy that time in one way or another. Because if it’s somebody that I feel like I’ve browed into it or is gonna get frustrated with me or it’s an imposition to take this time out of their calendar that doesn’t look like support to me.
So the way I asked the question to my neighbor was very unattached, just throwing out a feeler like, hey, if this could be a mutually beneficial thing, if your mom needs something to do in her retirement and she wants to come to sit in my yard and boss me around while I do yard work, I would love that.
So, I tossed it out to her and we’ll see what she says. And I haven’t yet gotten an answer ’cause this was just yesterday, but I do know what I’m looking for when it comes to yard work. I don’t wanna hire somebody to do it for me. I want somebody who can teach me how to maintain my own yard because I actually really enjoy the physical aspects of it.
I enjoy being out in the sunshine. I’ve got a beautiful little spot in the world to spend time in. I just need somebody who can help me know what to do and how often, and the best way for me to get there is somebody right there with me who can watch me do it and help me learn in real time as I go.
[00:30:43] Dusty: That’s a really good point. And honestly, for everyone listening, just so you know, you, you probably have some skill. There’s so mMany people out there who know how to do something.I once saw a person offering plant consultations, like consultations on how to care for your houseplant. I saw that also for gardening, like vegetable gardening, which I really need. There’s nothing more frustrating than digging through a bunch of YouTube videos to try to figure out just the one you need to answer one question.
I was recently having a problem with one of my bird’s behaviors, and I found this YouTube video site about bird training, but they were talking about all kinds of parrots. And very few of the videos were about cockatiel, which is the kind of bird I have. I was digging through these videos and I just got so frustrated that I finally went to their website and I emailed them and I’m like, look, I just need help with this one specific thing.
And they were like, oh, we do consultations, you can pay us for that. I am not kidding you guys, when I said I spent $85 USD to book a 30-minute consultation with a bird specialist, it was worth every fricking penny! I got exactly the information I needed and I got a plan. She was like, you know, follow up with me if you need to. And just to, like you were talking about, you know, being able to ask someone, being able to just ask someone my question… ’cause I get it, YouTube, it’s a wonderful world these days, but sometimes you just need to know a specific thing and it’s so nice to be able to just pay someone for that too, right?
So again, there’s just all these help methods out there that are maybe not the most helpful. And just knowing what you need, I think, is so, so powerful. And having somebody who understands how to give you what you need, just to kind of like end my point, I remember once I was hosting a boot camp, which I’ve talked about doing, but they are like really big multi-day organizing events where I’m basically just keeping people working.
I’m not telling them what to do, but if they get stuck, I have kind of developed a repository of resources to help them figure out what might help them with their organizing issues specifically. And at one point, I had this person who had all these half empty personal care products in their bathtub, like bottles of shampoo and conditioner.
And they had, you know, already been dumping them and combining them but they were at this point where they had like two or three bottles that were two thirds of the way empty. And they were like, do I get rid of it? Do I just throw these away or do I try to use the rest of the product in them?
And I was like, well, you could go this way or you could go this way. I’m like, you could either combine them or, you know, if that seems like too much work, you could totally just chuck them away. And they were like, I’ll never forget this ever, ’cause it was kind of intimidating for me and it kind of freaked me, but they were like, NO, they almost sounded angry. They just wanted me to tell them what to do. I was like, okay, do you have other shampoo and conditioner? They were like, yes. I was like, throw it away.
And they were like, okay, thank you. And literally, I’m sure that other episodes we’ve done, we’ve talked about like analysis paralysis and decision fatigue. They were like not asking what their options were, they were literally asking me, should I throw this away or not? I don’t care either way, just make the decision for me.
So I just said, throw it away. And they were like, thank you. I’ll never forget that because I realized sometimes, especially with neurodivergent people, these things are so arbitrary. They just need the actual support they’re asking for. Like, just listen to me while I talk through this, or just help me make a decision about something arbitrary or just pick this for me.
And I think giving someone exactly what they’re asking for is like just babysit me. Just ask, just follow up with me about the things that you need and I will give them to you. That’s all I need you to do. Just babysit me. It’s so easy.
[00:34:38] Ash: Well said Dusty, and this made me think of, this will be a good little anecdote for us to wrap up on. Why my current tattoo artist is my tattoo artist. I went in to get a piece from her, and she’s got so many tattoos, including neck tattoos, a number of piercings, and I love her aesthetic. She just really has a great eye for laying stuff out.So we knew what piece I was getting. It was actually a piece of flash, so not a huge tattoo. And I looked at her and I said, where should I put this? And she started to say, well, it’s your body, it’s your decision. I’m like, no, Heather, let me ask you that question again, I think you do a really good job at laying out tattoos. I like the way your tattoos are arranged. You have a great eye. If you were me and you were getting this tattoo, where on your body would you put this tattoo? And she picked the placement for it, and it looks absolutely fantastic there. It’s actually my most complimented tattoo, despite the fact that I have a bigger, more intricate piece just below it on the same arm.
I love it. It’s the perfect spot. And I would’ve never even thought to put that tattoo in that spot had I not asked her explicitly. Listen, I know it’s ultimately my decision. I hear you on that, but you tell me what you think is going to look good because you are the professional here. You are the artist here. And now that we have that established, and because I trust her artistic integrity, she’s such an incredible artist, now she can just do whatever she wants. I just want tattoos. Just do cool stuff on me. I like it so long as I approve the drawing, just do cool stuff on me and now you know that you can put it wherever you wanna put it and if it’s cool, I’m in. And that’s that.
It can be hard to know what we need and it can be hard to find people that will give us what we need, even if we know what we need. And so when you find the intersection of those people, those people are so, so valuable, hold onto those people, value those relationships and make sure you are valuing those relationships.
[00:36:45] Dusty: . If you are being asked for this kind of support and it makes you nervous, again, sometimes as neurodivergent people, we might ask people to nag us. We might ask people to bug us. One of the things I always ask people for is like, if you don’t hear from me, keep following up.If that makes you nervous and you’re not sure how to do it in your words, let me just give you a magical phrase, which is, hey, I’m just asking, I’m just saying this ’cause you asked me for it, right? Like, hey I’m just bugging you, you wanted me to bug you about this. I’m just bugging you about it. Hey, you had asked me to follow up with you, so I’m just following up with you, right?
You can keep reminding that person and if you feel worried that that person’s gonna be like, oh, stop bugging me, just keep reminding them that they asked for it because I guarantee you, the majority of the time, like they’ll be like, oh my gosh, yes, thank you.
[00:37:27] Ash: Sure. I have a friend that I have been bugging for over a month now who has expressed interest in going to my kickboxing gym with me. And one of our more recent conversations was he couldn’t make it at a time that we thought he could. And I said, that’s fine.I will keep bugging you until you either show up or tell me to stop bugging you. So right there, that’s just putting an explicit agreement out there that I don’t mind to keep bugging you. I happen to think of it anytime I go to the gym anyway, so it’s no skin off my nose. It’s not a problem for me. But if we get to a point where you decide that you’re not gonna do it and/or you don’t want the nagging about it, just let me know and I’ll stop.
It’s as easy as that. Dusty, I think that’s a good place to wrap for today.
[00:38:10] Dusty: I agree. [00:38:12] Ash: So listeners, until next week, I’m Ash. [00:38:14] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:38:15] Ash: This was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
