In this episode, Ash and Dusty open the season by revisiting Ash’s transition and how it has intersected with his work helping people with ADHD. Ash describes transition as a liminal, between-states process that forced reexamination of identity, relationships, and public context. They discuss how coming out shifted social dynamics, revealed hidden “masks” shaped by social expectations, and resurfaced—rather than erased—questions about self that ADHD can complicate: weak identity formation, dissociation, sensory issues, and social coping strategies.
The hosts connect these experiences to coaching practice, explaining how Ash’s personal work sharpened a professional specialty: helping neurodivergent clients clarify who they are so ADHD becomes more manageable in practical ways. Ash shares concrete moments that mark growth (feeling more able to choose how to present and when to be visible) and a culminating story from a concert that illustrated a change in belonging.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:01] Ash: Hi, I am Ash. [00:00:02] Dusty: I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Ash: This is Translating ADHD. Brand new season, and I am really stoked for what we’re gonna be doing this season. So our first three episodes we’re gonna talk about in just a minute, including today’s episode, but for the remainder of the season, we’re gonna be kind of digging back through and revisiting those concepts that really tend to resonate with our listeners.The things that I hear often in coaching sessions, the things that new clients note when they’re filling out my intake form tend to tell me are resonating, things that kind of have naturally become part of the Translating ADHD vernacular both in terms of my own growth as a coach.
The brand new voice we have to bring to those concepts is Dusty. It’s gonna be a really interesting season, breathing new life into these concepts that have landed so well with our audience. So that’s where we’re headed for the rest of the season. But our first three episodes are gonna be a little different than that. And I actually wanna start with a question, Dusty.
[00:01:10] Dusty: Yes. [00:01:12] Ash: You picked the episodes for this year’s summer break, and I wanted you to do that because before you were a co-host of the show, you were a listener of and fan of this show. So I thought that you would have some interesting and different choices than I or Cam might make. And I was surprised to see my coming out episode, which actually has very little to do with ADHD on that list, and I’m a little curious why you chose it. [00:01:39] Dusty: I’m curious why you’re so surprised about that. Why is that surprising? [00:01:45] Ash: You have to answer my question before I will. You can’t answer my question with a question. [00:02:00] Dusty: Because it’s about you and you’re the, well, one of the hosts of this podcast, and it was a very important moment in your life. I was looking for the episodes that really stood out in some way in terms of meaning or content, and I just thought that was a very meaningful episode. [00:02:10] Ash: So that choice actually prompted today’s episode. The reason I wanted to know why you chose that episode is to me, that episode at the time was logistics. I had this thing going on in my personal life that I needed to handle in some way in my professional life, and I’m gonna be really honest – in the two and a half years since that episode, I have never re-listened to it despite the fact that I’ve been on quite the journey since then, which is what we’re gonna talk about today because re-listening to that episode was actually so insightful, in terms of getting a sense of where I was then, but also realizing that while I feel like I’m so different now, I’m not.There was a lot of wisdom in what I said then and my understanding of my journey at the time, but my thinking was, this is logistics. Everyone just needs to know. Let’s move on. So that kind of prompted today’s episode because I realized I haven’t talked about my transition in a meaningful way since then.
So that’s where I’d like to kick off this season – catching you all up a little bit on the journey that I’ve been on, first and foremost.
And then we’re gonna do a couple of episodes that are directly related to transness and ADHD before we move into the rest of the season and revisiting concepts.
[00:03:41] Dusty: Cool. I’m so excited about this. I think it’s gonna be awesome. [00:03:45] Ash: So Dusty, I will start by saying that describing my transition to a cisgender person, I’ve never been able to really adequately convey what it’s like and how challenging it is. But, the closest I’ve come is in the word liminal. [00:04:04] Dusty: I’m surprised that you could even attempt to describe transitioning as a singular concept. I would assume as a cis person, that there’s sort of like all these various different aspects to it. Can it even be described as one thing? [00:04:19] Ash: Ooh, that’s a good question. And actually, no, I don’t think it could be described in one thing, except that I think the concept of it being a liminal moment in your life is the one way to describe it.Liminal being a place between past and present. And in my case, because I am a little bit of a public figure, something that was sharp, like, we’re here and now we’re here – so I wasn’t out, and now I am fully out to everyone with this complete context change.
And again, at the time, my thinking was, this is logistical. We’re just gonna keep going. I myself was not prepared for what transition actually looked like. So what is this liminal space like? Well, you have been through puberty, right? And you know what it’s like to try on different identities, to try and figure out who you are, to be alongside your peers who are messily, doing the same – dealing with big emotions, dealing with uncertainty about who you are and your place in the world.
Well, it’s doing that all over again, but under much more difficult circumstances. It’s kind of like the cocoon stage of being a butterfly, except I didn’t get to hide away, right? I’m out living my life day to day while grappling with brand new questions about who I am and who I want to be. And there’s this really sobering reality when you come out that every relationship that you have is conditional. Every single one.
That is a difficult reality to deal with when you realize that every relationship that you’ve ever had might not be strong enough to withstand this or might not be something that you want to stay in this new place. People who have professed to love you and care about you unconditionally actually might have some conditions that you are unaware of.
And by the way, I don’t wanna make this sound like a sob story, like my friends and chosen family and the people that matter most to me, all flew through this with flying colors, but even your great relationships get thrown into this brand new weird place because your context is different and you kind of have to relearn how to be with each other while I myself, am relearning how to be me and unlearning so many things that weren’t serving me.
[00:07:11] Dusty: I don’t think you need to apologize or say, oh, I’m not trying to make it a sob story. I think that what you’re saying is super heavy and super profound, but also somebody who is listening to this podcast right now just heard you say that and that was huge for them to hear you say that. It’s really true and it’s really important for people to hear. [00:07:32] Ash: True and real, and thank you for that, Dusty. This is one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about our relationship, both on and off mic, is the way that we will just call each other when we’re making ourselves small in some way and we don’t necessarily need to. So, the reason I wanted to talk about this today to open up this season is because I want to talk about this frustrating place I’ve been in creatively.Dusty as a coach, you understand that to become an excellent coach, to move from brand new coach to good coach, to excellent coach, you are walking this parallel path where the work you are doing with your clients is informing what your own work is which is informing the work that you do with your clients. It’s this reciprocal relationship and it’s that way by necessity.
Coaching at its core says you are a naturally creative, resourceful, and whole person who has your own answers. And if you can’t embody that as a coach, it is really difficult to do excellent coaching, but you also need practice to do excellent coaching. So there’s this story arc of moving from fear when faced with an uncertain client situation – I don’t know if I can help this person, or this person is upset at me for a certain thing or a way that I showed up or wants something from me that I’m not sure that I can provide, or whatever the intimidation factor is. Something is off with a client and it’s natural for that response, in that place where you’re still developing confidence to be fearful. I don’t know what to do with that, but over time you kind of learn to lean back into the coaching process, right? Detaching from your client’s outcome, putting yourself in that picture, evaluating with curiosity these days.
If I am dreading seeing a client, I’m the opposite of fearful. I immediately go into, okay, let me check in with that. What’s going on in this client relationship that needs some attention? That’s actually a skill and value I bring to my clients because rather than making the mistake that new coaches often make of not addressing a coaching relationship that isn’t going well, that doesn’t seem fulfilling to the client until the client either brings it up themselves or just kind of drops off, it becomes an opportunity to head that off at the pass.
And when you’re bringing that to the client, completely detached from the outcome, even if the outcome is – coaching is not working for me in this time and place, or with you, or for whatever reason, and not being able to take that personally, that’s just embodying excellent coaching.
However, I lost the ability to do that for quite some time, which has been really frustrating. I have been pulling on the thread for the last couple of years of what uniquely makes the work that I am doing in certain realms, particularly realms of identity and purpose, that people with ADHD can struggle to have a strong sense of.
That’s not everyone’s journey, but it’s certainly something that ADHD can have a really strong impact on, especially if our context, the circumstances that we are born into, are so far removed from who we actually are. ADHD impedes our ability to put two and two together. See also why it took 38 years for my brain to say, hey, maybe you’re just a dude. I didn’t have the context I needed to have, right?
So I’m doing this really powerful work yet, everything I know about myself and my own challenge and my identity and my purpose are called into question and are put into this big mushy blender where, I don’t know, I don’t even know what is and isn’t ADHD anymore despite being an ADHD “expert” because I’m discovering brand new masks that have absolutely nothing to do with having ADHD.
Disassociation was a big one, sort of just being out of my body, which my ADHD inattentive type enabled. It’s very easy for me to go into an internal place and be entertained there and be completely out of my body.
But other than ADHD being an enabler, ADHD is not a cause there. Gender was a cause there. Discomfort with my body was a cause there. One that really killed me, and previously led me to believe that I might in fact be ADHD, was huge sensory issues with clothing. Now don’t get me wrong, I am still a comfortable pants, comfy outfit at home person.
I do love a comfy clothes moment, but I am much more willing to be uncomfortable for a fit that feels right and looks right on me than I was before. And I think that that has something to do with body awareness, right? Feeling clothing on myself in a way makes me aware of my body in a way that I was previously uncomfortable with and in a way that I am much more okay with now.
Even stuff like gendered behaviors, stuff that I have been socialized to, like ways that I have realized that I naturally fail to conform to femininity or womanhood so I built up masks to cover that up. I was pretty darn feminine. You saw me at industry conferences prior to my transition. I wore dresses, I wore jewelry, I wore makeup, I wore heels.
And not because any of those things felt innate to me, but because they felt like they were the correct thing to do in that circumstance, and I didn’t have better information. So. All these brand new masks that have nothing to do with ADHD, and then here I am specializing in and helping people come to massive conclusions about identity that have caused job changes, career changes, relationships, status changes.
I have coached people through tremendous life transitions where they are putting deep trust in the sense of identity that they’ve cultivated for themselves in our work together to make these bold, life changing decisions. And I’m sitting here feeling farther away, not today, but then, feeling farther away than ever from understanding myself.
Anyway, I actually said something in that episode that made me laugh in the original coming out episode, which was, I’ve learned to never get too confident in the fact that I’m done or settled. And that’s kind of been the story arc of the last couple of years
[00:14:46] Dusty: Okay. So Ash, if you were gonna sort of give us an update in terms of what’s changed since then, how have you evolved? In your transness or your understanding of your own trans identity since that episode was released? [00:15:00] Ash: Dusty. I love that question and I think you brought me right to the point that I’ve been trying to make, which is the very process that I’ve been taking clients through rooted in journey thinking. Detaching from outcome rooted in self-knowledge and cultivating this deep understanding of what I call the who, who you are at the core and what matters to you.That has been the journey that I’ve been on in the last couple of years, a journey that I couldn’t fully be on until I had all of the information. So, interestingly enough, what’s different if you knew me before, and you know me now, is not that much. I mean, my context looks a lot different.
My friend groups are a lot queerer. My chosen family is very queer. But that’s just my context. My “who” is largely the same as I was before, but the process to get from here to there is so brutal, right? When you first come out and you start recognizing all of these weird gendered behaviors that you never noticed before, and then you maybe try to flip too far the other direction, you’d have questions like, what does it mean to be a man? How do I embody that?
You live this weird dual life where the people that know you call you Asher, and he/him, but the grocery store clerk is still saying, thank you ma’am. And by the way, that is still somewhat true today. I have a goatee and I do pass most of the time, but my voice completely clocks me.
If somebody hears me before they see me, I’m gonna get a ma’am 100% of the time. But I’m being at choice about not voice training, right? Which I think is a valid choice for any trans person who chooses to do it. My thinking for myself is that I’ve developed this voice over 38 years and I don’t want to change it. And more than that, it’s okay if it clocks me and for those of you who’ve never used that term before, to be clocked in this context means I am a trans person who passes most of the time, but somebody who knows something about how to spot trans people, usually other queer people might notice you or traits about yourself might out you, like my voice, and that’s usually when I’m clocked by cis people. Or actually in that case, they don’t usually even clock me. They’ll then look at my face and ashamedly be like, oh my God, I’m so sorry, sir, which is something that I used to dread and now I find kind of entertaining.
[00:17:37] Dusty: And on that note, we’ll kind of get into allyship and talk about different things later. An interesting sort of intersection here, you talking about you being okay with your voice being clocked, is we’re here talking about you and your journey, and so if anyone here is listening and is a trans woman and has been subjected to trans misogyny, right? Like, sometimes, you know, having your voice clocked, can for some people be really upsetting and even dangerous, right?And so I think coming from the cisgender lens, that that is more so true for trans women than it is for trans men. So if any trans women are listening, they’re like, ah, but it’s not okay for me when my voice is clocked. We’re just talking about Ash, right? We’re talking about you and your journey.
[00:18:29] Ash: Well, more so than that, I think the moral of the story here when it comes to transition in general is it being a choice, right? So much of this process is getting far enough through the liminal space to reorient to who you are so that you can meaningfully be at choice about what matters to you or doesn’t matter to you, what you need in your transition to be okay. And that is different for everyone.Two and a half years ago, I couldn’t have told you what my transition was gonna look like, what might be important to me or what might not. For example, I thought that I would get on the name change thing like white on rice. I thought that would be the first thing I got done, ADHD be damned. That’s so important to me. But the longer time went on and the more that I made peace with myself, I don’t mind people seeing me as trans, I’ve become very comfortable with that.
Because part of my experience too, as a public figure, doing work that isn’t directly related to transness, has been those messages from trans listeners. And my understanding of what it means to model things, right? That’s a coaching skill – modeling. So realizing that living my life, doing my good work is not just modeling for trans people, but is also modeling for anyone listening, that I’m just a person, I’m just another guy doing my thing. And it’s okay that you know that I’m trans.
And by the way, that does not have to be true trans folks. You do not owe anyone else visibility or advocacy. If part of your transition story is the ability to be stealth, I completely understand and respect that because it’s exhausting.
We’re gonna talk about that in the allyship episode, but it can be exhausting to be so visibly trans and to have that be the thing that other people center your identity on. And it’s something that I struggled a lot with before I got to this place that was right for me.
[00:20:44] Dusty: Yeah, and I think that speaks a lot to what we often say about people with ADHD. If you’ve met one person with ADHD, you’ve met one person with ADHD – not all. I think that is something that I’ve noticed that is really hard for cisgender people to recognize about trans folk. If you’ve met one trans person – you’ve met just that – one trans person.And there sort of aren’t any rules. In particular, I have some friends who aren’t super fussed if someone uses their dead name or someone knows their dead name or they may in some context use their dead name.
Listeners, dead name being the name that you used before you transitioned whereas other people I know, I would never use it and it would be really wrong for me or anyone to ask them. And then same thing like you’re saying about stuff like voice training or you know, what parts of your physical identity you’re changing.
I think everybody is really different in their journey, that’s what I’m getting at. You know, like in their trans journey and the choices they’re making for themselves. And it’s a lot like ADHD, right? You can’t make assumptions.
[00:21:49] Ash: You know, Dusty, I think that’s actually, like what you just said is exactly what I’m trying to get to. I cannot tell you how often in my coaching practice right now that I draw meaningful parallels between my trans experience and what ADHD folks experience because it’s a lot of the same stuff.ADHD people struggle to have a strong sense of identity, to know who they are too. To know our place in the world that is also a hallmark of transness, right?
We struggle with being misunderstood, marginalized and othered in society. There’s more similarity there than not. And so what I’m realizing now is how much my own search for identity has informed and created this specialty that I have of helping neurodivergent people, people with ADHD, trans or not trans queer or not queer, that part doesn’t matter. Helping them understand who they are, because once we know who we are and what we stand for, then ADHD becomes a problem of dealing with just the routine, ADHD stuff of it all. It’s easier to shortcut the stories and the expectations that other people have.
It’s easier to let go of the things that aren’t true for us. It’s easier to accept that we are different and we are going to struggle in ways that other people do not understand and will be frustrated by. And that our experiences are always gonna be different, but that doesn’t make us less valuable.
[00:23:33] Dusty: So what has changed for you since then? [00:23:35] Ash: There was a pause between that question and my answer because I did not immediately have one. But I think I do. I love a good, curious question and I think, I think the answer is I can finally see myself.Dusty and I were talking off mic about the Translating ADHD process, and something I’ve realized about my creative process is I’ve always needed other people to hold a mirror up to me. Whether it be speaking in front of an audience and seeing audience reactions, what’s resonating or what’s not resonating, Cam had a huge role in that. He was the one that first really noticed my pulling on concepts like journey thinking and detaching from outcome that have become such a part of the fabric of my coaching. And, he was the one that first noticed my particular interest in questions of identity and purpose, and encouraged me to pull on those in coaching and seek out clients who were asking themselves questions in that vein and something that became increasingly frustrating was seeing clients step more into a clearer picture of themselves, being able to see themselves the way that I saw them, and still not having that for myself.
And now I do. Now when I get dressed, I think about what I want to wear for this thing, this occasion, what I feel good in. What I want to show to the world or not because I am a queer, transgender person in the year 2025. So there are times when coding myself in certain ways is in my best interest, but I’m also recognizing that I get to make a choice about that.
I get to choose what I show to people and what I don’t, and now I know something about who I am and what I’m showing in a way that I didn’t before. And I actually, to take us out, I have a relevant story that’s kind of like a culminating moment for me in terms of transition.
So a few months ago, Billy Strings was in town, and for those of you who don’t know who Billy Strings is, he is a bluegrass artist who came up in the jam band world. He’s huge. He plays arenas, so he played the same arena that Phish had played a couple of years before when I was brand new reentering the jam scene.
As a baby queer and my decisions at the time, I was earlier in transition, so I had the option to sort of code myself a little femme. And I chose to do that more because I didn’t wanna deal with other people’s stuff more than anything else. And that was a comfortable choice at the time, but this time I kind of did the opposite. This time, I went in with the intention of people seeing both maleness and queerness. I was wearing short cutoff shorts with my Doc Martens and a tank top that says Gay for Trey. Trey Anastasia is the lead guitarist for Phish. So it’s both jam coated and queer coated. I went in with the intention to have a ball.
I was really stoked to go to these shows. I was going by myself. I was perfectly comfortable with that. I was perfectly comfortable wearing my queerness loudly in this space. But what I didn’t expect was how strange it was to just pass, because two years prior at Phish, I did not pass and I didn’t wanna deal with the not passing.
So I decided to code to not that but here I am navigating a scene. I’ve navigated a thousand times, but people are receiving me differently.
[00:27:30] Dusty: Ooh, I’ve never considered that. Wow. That must be quite a moment. [00:27:35] Ash: It was honestly a little uncomfortable because so much of my life is so queer now, especially Billy Strings in particular, because he draws from the jam band world, which has become increasingly more queer, and we’ve always been there. There were so many, so many of us at the Phish tour were queers who either didn’t know it or were repressing it, which is really funny because Phish used to be really problematic. Not Phish themselves, but the scene used to be really problematic when it came to things like homophobia or transphobia a couple of decades ago.But Billy Strings in particular, because he’s bluegrass draws in a completely different set of people. Like the guy next to me in my seat was from the middle of nowhere, Missouri, and he’s just some old bluegrass picker that’s been playing for a million years and he knew Billy before Billy came up and we were just worlds apart. And so, there was something uncomfortable about being accepted as one of this primarily white, cis heterosexual crowd that had my attention, and still has my attention.
I don’t think I will ever forget that moment and actually what I ended up doing, ’cause my seatmates were fine, but, it was a very sold out show. So if I’m feeling a little weird at a show, my usual M.O. is to go find some space. There was no space to be found, but they didn’t sell the seats behind the stage.
So I snuck into those and watched both sets from behind the stage by myself and watched the crowd.
[00:29:15] Dusty: Behind the stage like that? [00:29:16] Ash: Yep. I sure did. It was actually… [00:29:20] Dusty: Flexing that male privilege straight? [00:29:22] Ash: Right. No, I hadn’t thought like that. I’m like, to anybody else’s knowledge, I am a white man, and I’m also not gonna cause a problem if somebody comes in here and tells me I’m not allowed to be here.So I know how to diffuse this situation and use this to my advantage. So yeah, I snuck backstage and got a bird’s eye view of the show and the entire crowd, and it was at this moment where I realized that while this was my community, and I’ll always love the music, it isn’t my community anymore.
And it wasn’t a sad moment. It was almost like the end of a grief cycle. Like I’ve known for a while that this isn’t for me in the ways that it was before, but that kind of put two and two together and that’s because I’ve stepped into a more actualized version of myself, right?
I’m so many more steps down the road in terms of understanding myself and what a life that fits for me is that the things that I got from the scene in the community, aspects of Phish and related entities are things that I’m getting in other places now, and things that I’m getting in ways that are better serving me because I better understand who I am and what I need from my community and the people around me.
So does that answer your question? In terms of what’s different.
[00:30:53] Dusty: Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. [00:30:56] Ash: Thank you. All right, listeners, I think this is a great place for us to wrap for today. Really stoked to dive into this next season with renewed creative energy. I’ve got some other creative projects cooking that I will inform you about as they come along, but I’m really looking forward to what is in store for us for the rest of this season.And until next week, I’m Ash.
[00:31:22] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:31:23] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
