Asher and Dusty explore how ADHD-related experiences—repeated negative feedback, rejection sensitivity, and a focus on weaknesses—undermine self-esteem and self-worth. They explain how people with ADHD often dismiss abilities that come easily, assume others are more capable, and measure themselves by low moments rather than by peaks of high performance. The hosts emphasize the importance of recognizing ADHD patterns (peaks and valleys), valuing strengths that feel “too easy,” and reframing accomplishments so people see their role in their own story instead of attributing successes to luck.
Those with ADHD also connect self-worth to relationships and boundaries: chronic people-pleasing and fear of rejection invite boundary-pushing others and can erode self-respect. Practical approaches offered include perspective work (imagining how you treat friends with flaws), inventorying where life already feels easy, and choosing relationships that match realistic expectations (e.g., not expecting people to be “on demand”). Together these shifts—understanding ADHD, celebrating strengths, setting limits, and changing perspectives—help rebuild healthier self-esteem and sustainable boundaries.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:02:08] Asher: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:03:22] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:04:22] Asher: And this is Transforming ADHD. And listeners, I will be doing a coaching demo for our Patreon subscribers on Tuesday, November 18th at 8:00p.m. ET. Information on how to join will be posted both on Patreon and in the Discord. And just a reminder, if you’re not already a Patreon subscriber, you can join for $5/month, you get access to the podcast, Discord server and access to our live monthly events, including this one.To subscribe, visit the website at www.translatingadhd.com and click on the Patreon tab.
[00:42:11] Dusty: And I have a new coaching group starting in January. So if you want to coach with me, Dusty, in a group coaching format, you can go to www.VancouverADHDcoaching.com or www.ADHDstudio.ca for more information. There are limited spots available. Group coaching runs from January to April. It’s really fun. It’s a great way to try out coaching without a huge commitment.And you get free access to the ADHD studio as well as a lot of camaraderie from your ADHD brethren, so I recommend it.
[01:17:01] Asher: So, Dusty, you want to tell our listeners what it is we’re going to be talking about today. [01:20:26] Dusty: Today we’re talking about ADHD and self-esteem or self-worth. I haven’t decided just yet. [01:27:09] Asher: Yeah, it’s sort of both, right? And this is a pretty universal challenge with ADHD. The statistic I always repeat, that was in an Attitude magazine many years ago, is that by the age of 12, children with ADHD will receive 20,000 more negative messages than their neurotypical peers.And when we don’t know what we don’t know about our own ADHD, we’re receiving these negative messages that we’re not behaving correctly. Why can’t we just be like everyone else? Why can’t we just do this or do that? And we don’t have good answers to that so we start to kind of embody that. Maybe this is just who I am if these are the messages that I’m constantly receiving, maybe this is just who I am.
On top of that, we talk about big signals. Negative messages are a much bigger signal than positive messages. Repetitive negative messages over the course of a lifetime tend to stick with us, whereas we don’t see the positive messages, we don’t necessarily see where we’re showing up well or doing well, or our areas of strength.
[02:35:15] Dusty: I feel like there’s a myriad of factors, as you mentioned. It’s a combination of the feedback that we get from other people, which is probably also amplified by rejection sensitivity. I think we need to acknowledge, I don’t want to hurt everyone’s feelings here, but I think we need to acknowledge that, there’s a thing where maybe someone expresses disapproval of us or disappointment with us, and then it gets refracted through the chamber of the rejection sensitivity in our hearts, and it comes out the other end way louder and harder.So that’s part of it, right? We’ve gotten negative feedback and that negative feedback has been amplified through rejection sensitivity to be like, you are the worst person. But then on top of that, there’s a really interesting piece here around mastery. One of the things that’s so interesting when I’m doing coaching with people not around specifically self esteem, but just about succeeding in whatever they’re trying to do, is that I’ve really noticed that people with ADHD always focus on their areas of weakness and never on their areas of strength, meaning if somebody is good at something, they’ll tend to just dismiss it, especially if it comes easily to them. And I think that one of the sort of positive sides of ADHD is if we’re interested in something, if we find something fun or interesting, it comes quite easily to us. And because it comes quite easily to us, there’s like some part of our brain that goes, okay, well, that doesn’t count because it was easy, because I didn’t have to work at it.
And so there’s this affiliation between something being easy that you don’t have to work for so it doesn’t count. It’s like only the things we have to work at count, and the things we have to work at tend to be the things that we are not good at because they’re boring or hard for us. Because they’re boring and hard, it takes extra effort for us to even engage with them, let alone make progress.
So we set ourselves up for this life where only the things that we suck at count, and we’re working ever and ever harder to make progress on those things. Meanwhile, there’s all this stuff that we’re good at, all these talents and all this stuff that comes easily to us and it just doesn’t count. It just gets washed away.
But when you flip the script and you start saying, okay, what if the things that are easy do count and what if I can give myself credit for being good at things, even if I didn’t have to work hard for them? What if I can build a life around the things that I find easy and pleasant, and that I’m actually good at?
Which guys, let me tell you, it feels like cheating. Okay? It feels like taking candy from a baby. It feels like you must be doing something illegal, honestly. And it’s not just because it’s easy for you. This is one of the faulty assumptions. When something comes easy to us, we think, well, it must be easy for everyone.
Not the case, not the case at all. And when you start to recognize that the things that you are able to do well that are easy for you have value to other people, regardless of how hard or easy it was for you to learn to do them, and you start building a life around those – there’s a big chunk of the puzzle right there.
So there’s this interesting connection between how other people feel about us, but also how we merit our own worthiness through our accomplishments. And this is what I was saying when I say, I don’t know whether I’m talking about self-esteem or self-worth, it is kind of both, because I think of those terms quite interchangeably, but I’ve heard it distinguished that self-esteem is something you derived through, like accomplishments or something. And self-worth is like an inherent value that all people have. But I think it’s both. And I tend to use those terms pretty interchangeably.
And then this is all kind of mixed up in how we relate to other people as well. Because if you are so sure that you’re coming from that ADHD one down perspective and you’re always worried about, you know, pissing people off or losing people, and in addition to that, you’re always focused on your area of weakness.
You’re going to have pretty anxious attachments to people, right? And when that’s the case, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to set boundaries. If you can’t set boundaries, then you are also likely inviting treatment that is maybe not going to do much for your self-worth and self-esteem. Because let me tell you, there are people in this world that are boundary pushers and people with good boundaries don’t put up with those people, right? People who are boundary pushers don’t really want to hang around with people who, you know, have good boundaries. They’re out looking for the people whose boundaries they can push. And I don’t mean that in a nefarious sense. I’ll give a quick example here and then I’ll stop.
I recently made a new friend, or let me say a new acquaintance. I made a new acquaintance recently, and I don’t know this person very well at all, and they have already asked me for many favors, including to borrow money. And they’re, you know, they’re a person in a tough position. They’re going through some stuff. Their power got cut off, they don’t have enough food, like they’re really in a tough position.
I’ve offered to help them with some things even though I don’t know them that well, but it was something right? So I was like, oh, I wouldn’t mind blah blah blah, doing something, you know, for you, you know, it’s like that saying, give them an inch and I’ll take them out.
I offered this person one thing that I felt comfortable giving, and since that time they’ve asked me for several more things. They’re a nice person, so I do feel bad saying no, but I also had to step back and recognize, wow, I don’t know this person at all and they keep asking for things. So I keep having to set really strong boundaries.
And, you know, my friendship with this person is probably not going to progress, probably not going to deepen. They know that they’re not getting anywhere by asking me for more stuff and that I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m only comfortable giving what I have already offered to give. So I’m setting a strong boundary, which means this person’s not going to get very far with me.
And again, I’m not saying that they’re like a nefarious, evil person. They’re just a person in a bad situation who’s a boundary pusher. But let’s say that every time that person asks me for something, I gave it to them. Well, they would keep asking me for more and more and more, and they would keep bringing more and more of their problems to me.
And if I ever did want to set a boundary and say no, that would probably be kind of tough for them because they’re used to getting what they want from me, right? So in the same way, I think we invite people into our lives who maybe don’t make us feel great about ourselves, but they know that they can do that because we never stand up for ourselves.
How can we stand up for ourselves when we don’t believe that we’re worth standing up for? So it becomes this whole kind of complex cycle of various points in a constellation that all make up good self-esteem, a good self-worth, and, I don’t know, Ash. Maybe you can speak to this. I don’t know that you can separate any one piece off and just deal with that.
I think they kind of all have to be worked on at the same time in a way, like boundaries, how you view your accomplishments, how you view yourself through the eyes of others. But you do sort of have to work on all of them if you want to feel better about yourself. Would you agree?
[09:18:22] Asher: Dusty, like most things with ADHD, we have to work on all of these things, and it’s not necessarily always a linear process. I have a client who has been really struggling to see her value at work. I’ve talked about this client before. She works in a corporate environment. She chose to move to corporate because she thought it had something to offer her in terms of furthering her career, but she also knew that it would be a tremendous challenge with ADHD.And she’s coming in with this one down with this belief that everyone else is more productive than her. And it’s been a process of kind of breaking that down over many months to tear apart all of the different self-esteem things that are going on in this mix. We actually had a really interesting conversation yesterday where for the first time she was talking about her productivity at work differently.
She talked about how she had a low productivity day on Friday, but kind of dismissed it like, “I’m usually not very productive on Fridays” and just let it go there. I noticed that because previously that’s something she would have really harped on herself about, would have really felt bad about. And so rather than stepping over it, I was like, “you’re talking about productivity at work differently, what’s going on there?”
Part of what she’s coming to realize is, number one, she’s starting to realize her strengths. She works in cybersecurity and she has independent interest in that field and in technology in general. So part of her independent practice has been going to meetups, going to meet new people which serves her sense of adventure and some other things that really fill her cup.
She loves meeting new people, and she loves learning about these things. And she’s recognizing that most of her colleagues don’t do this type of stuff. Most of her colleagues don’t think about the bigger picture. And so she’s starting to see what her role at the company or at another company could be. She’s really starting to see what she’s good at.
Number two, she’s recognizing that she has this perception of other people’s productivity that isn’t based in reality at all. And when she thinks about her own productivity, she’s only ever thinking about the low productivity moments. She’s not ever acknowledging that when she does lock into something, she’s fast. She’s really fast. Like once she actually locks in, she can knock something out so quick, or learn something really quick, and she picks stuff up fast.
And so for her, perhaps what the reality is, is that her peaks and valleys, if you leveled those out, aren’t so different from someone else who is able to be a little more consistent. And so in that conversation, a couple of things are happening, right? She’s putting herself in the picture. She’s seeing her own strengths and appreciating those.
Number two, she’s not fighting her own brain anymore. Recognizing that she has peaks and valleys, but she does have peaks. And those peaks are high productivity moments. And so if she only measures her productivity by her worst moments, of course she’s always going to feel like she’s not doing enough, like she’s behind or worse than everyone else.
But if she looks at the whole picture and considers her peaks as well as her valleys, maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s good enough. Nobody is telling her that it’s not good enough. She’s not being admonished for her output. And so perhaps, even though her path is a little different than somebody who’s more of a straight line, who is able to to work with consistent and sustained effort, perhaps it is okay that she has peaks and valleys.
[13:10:04] Dusty: Yeah, that’s so interesting, because I’ve actually had several clients who have said exactly that – nobody at work is telling me that I’m not doing enough, but I still feel like I’m not doing enough. And it’s so interesting because there’s so many layers. And part of this is understanding ADHD.So yesterday I was actually filling out a form with my doctor about ADHD. We were talking about some ADHD stuff and one of the parts of the form asked, “does your patient take an inordinate amount of time to complete a mental task that (at least three times as long as other people) it wouldn’t take other people this long. Something about how long it takes us mentally to do something.
And I just spent a bunch of time telling my doctor about how it takes up a lot of my time to sit and do my meal planning. For me, ADHD wise, one of the hardest things that I have to do is feed myself and figure out the logistics around that.
Money, I have to really sit down and go over my budget and go over things or like inevitably, you know, I forget to pay something that’s coming up. And then I’m like, oh my God, I didn’t budget right or I overspent. And there’s lots of shame about that. And then time as well. Right? Money, time, food, those are my areas where I really have to…It’s like that meme of Charlie Day pointing to the wall with all the strings. Right?
I’ve had so many clients where they do take a really long time to respond to an email because they want to choose their words very carefully. And then you get this idea in your head like, oh, I’m slower than everyone, or I’m worse than everyone. And for that, just understanding and managing your ADHD better is going to go a long way.
Back to what I was saying earlier, when we start to be able to shift clients to focusing on their strengths and maybe being like, you know what, it’s okay that I’m not that good at this part and I don’t focus on it that much. Maybe I don’t have to be good at it. I think that once we’ve nailed that, we can kind of start to loop back around to the “how do people think of me” piece, because that’s the big one, right? We always see ourselves through the eyes of others, and it’s not enough to acknowledge that you’re good at something.
I don’t know about you, but when I had the worst self-esteem, I feel like I still kind of acknowledge that I’m really, really good at certain things. Like, if you ask me, “Dusty, what are you better at”, I would have said I was a straight A student and I could have told you, but it would not have had any impact on how I felt about myself, because I how I felt about myself was always relative to my relationship to other people.
That’s where I have a really interesting little hack that it’s kind of what worked for me. And I’ve tried it with some clients when I see the opportunity and I find that it is really helpful for them. Would you like me to tell you what it is?
[15:41:27] Asher: Yes, please do so. [15:43:24] Dusty: And for people listening out there, if you’ve ever found yourself thinking that everyone must think I suck or had this mindset that a particular person or group of people probably think that you’re just so embarrassing or so terrible or just the worst, and you’re living in fear that these people are going to reject you and they’re your friends – this is for you.Here’s how I help clients with that, and it’s how I helped myself. So I’ll say to a client, okay, so I want you to think of 3 or 4 people that you love, really good friends, people you love dearly. Maybe they are siblings, cousins, whatever. I’ll get them to picture these people and I’ll go, are those people perfect? Do they have any shortcomings? Is there anything they’re bad at? Have they ever pissed you off? Have they ever let you down? Had they ever maybe acted in a way that you didn’t love, or maybe made some bad judgment calls, screwed something up, anything like that, and they’ll be like, well, yeah, sometimes I’ll be like, no, this person’s perfect.
And I’m like, okay, pick another person. So eventually they’ll see what I’m doing and say yes. So then I’ll ask, so how come you haven’t quit that relationship yet? Do you hate that person? Are you judging them? When they say, no, then I ask them why. Because even though they have some bad qualities, that’s not all of them. You love them for the things that you love about them. And you love them even though they have these negative qualities. Right? And they go, yeah, but then I’ll flip it and I’ll go, well, so how come you don’t think your friends are like that? Like, what are you really saying about the people in your life that you think they’re the kind of people that expect and demand perfection out of you? Are the people that are in your life, your friends, really terrible, judgmental people that are perfectionistic and holding you to this high, all or nothing standard? Is that what you’re saying? Is that really the kind of friends you have? Because I don’t think that it is.
And then I get them to acknowledge that no, they aren’t. And I’m like, think about what you’re saying about others. How would you feel if your friends thought that about you? How would you feel if your friends lived in fear that you were going to quit the relationship all because they didn’t do everything exactly right all the time?
What would you say to them? And I don’t know about you, Asher, but I actually do have a friend who struggles quite a bit with this. I know that because she posts on social media kind of about her feelings, and she’s always living in fear that her friends are going to “cancel her”. She’s got quite poor self-esteem.
And I will reach out to her and often be like, hey, I just want you to know that I’m your friend and I love you and you don’t have to be perfect. But I’ll be honest every now and again, I get a little frustrated and I’m like, dude, who do you think I am? You know what I mean? Why do you think that I’m this judgmental jerk that’s just going to quit you, right?
Sometimes, it even becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, not with me and my friend, but like, I’ve had friends who’ve just gotten sick of my constant neediness and just insecurity. And it’s kind of what’s created distance in the relationship. Ironically, it wasn’t my imperfection. It was my obsession about my imperfection.
So when I get clients to flip it and to see that if they have the capability of valuing others as whole, as human beings imperfections and all, is it that too much of a stretch to believe that your friends might feel the same way about you?
And if we can arrive there, we can start to open up a conversation around maybe you don’t need to be perfect to be worthy of love and to have value right? And I think this is where we start getting into self-worth. You don’t actually have a fallacious belief that you have to be the best and you have to meet some standard.
Nobody put that standard there except for you, right? You’re allowed to be a person who has shortcomings, who is bad at some things because you’re also good at some things. And if you’re worried about the negative impact you’re having in your relationship, sure, I think it’s always great to ask, how can I be a better friend? How can I be a better partner? How can I be a better sibling?
But if you can start to recognize that other people have worth and value to you, even if they’re not perfect, perhaps the reverse is true. And I think that’s where we start to get away from that need to see ourselves from that one down perspective. When we couple that with building a life around our ADHD strengths, understanding how our ADHD is getting our way, managing it better we start to see some progress and start to be able to acknowledge all the accomplishments we’ve had. Then we’re really on the pathway to creating healthier self-esteem and self-worth, which then in turn leads to an ability to actually set some standards for how we want to be treated.
I think we talked about this last time, this idea that you’re always at fault, if you can get to a place where it’s okay for you to make a mistake or to mess up, and you can take accountability, you can be like, oh, dang, I screwed that up. I’m so sorry. At the same time, I do have worth. I don’t deserve terrible treatment just because I made a mistake.
Now we can start to effectively set boundaries, and it’s only when we reach that point, because to set an effective boundary on how other people treat you, you have to be willing to lose people. Like that example I gave earlier, that person that I just met, I don’t know very well. I thought they were quite sweet. And so there was a risk that by me saying no to this person several times that they might say, well, screw you, you’re mean or something, and I don’t want to know you. And I had to be okay with that. And I was because I have a great group of friends.
I know my worth and my value. And if that person, and they didn’t by the way, but if they tried to make me feel bad and say, you’re very stingy and a mean person who doesn’t care about others, if they tried to make me feel that way, it wouldn’t work, because I’d say, well, that’s your perception of me. But I don’t agree because I have the data. I know that I have done really good things even though I’m not perfect. And then and now we’re shaking, now we’re cooking with gas, you guys. Now we’re cooking with gas.
[21:15:01] Asher: I love that question of “are your friends really that judgmental”? And listeners, if the answer to that is yes, by the way, that itself is a red flag that may mean that those people are not the people for you. Something I often say to my friends is I don’t expect people to be on demand.So when people apologize to me because they don’t answer a text message for 2 or 3 days or a week or a couple of weeks, the thing that I usually respond with is, it’s okay. I don’t expect people to be on demand, particularly if it wasn’t something timely or something that I needed to hear back about. I consider communication to be an ongoing, fluid thing and not something that I require you to answer at your first availability. And that’s how I live my own life.
So by stating that to my friends, that I don’t expect people to be on demand, I am also modeling that I myself am not going to be on demand. If I’m being honest right now, I have a couple of really old text messages from friends who have reached out that just fell down below the first screen before I got around to answering them. And so at this point, it really is just a pure ADHD thing that I have not remembered to circle back to those at a time and place when I had time to attend to them.
And I’ve had people in my life get upset with me for this, get upset with my inconsistency with communication. And here’s the thing is, if that’s the hill you’re going to die on, if you’re going to expect me to be on demand, then chances are a relationship between us is not going to work out because I am never going to be perfectly consistent in my communication.
When it’s important, I am going to try my best. If it’s something timely, if I need to let you know information, I am going to try to make sure that I am communicating in a timely fashion. But if we’re just dialoging, if we’re just texting in service of keeping in touch and a few weeks go by because I have ADHD and because I don’t see your text on my first screen, and that is something that offends you and makes you feel like I don’t care about you, then perhaps a friendship between us just isn’t going to work out, and that is okay.
And I think that’s the thing that, you know, \with ADHD, we have this all or nothing thinking. So we lose people. We assume that it’s our fault. We talked a few weeks ago about yours, mine and ours. This is another opportunity when it comes to other people to bring that into the picture. Right. What’s your stuff? What’s not your stuff? Someone else’s expectation that I be on demand for them is not my stuff. And I don’t have to make it my stuff, and it doesn’t have to be a value judgment against me, that is something that I am never going to be good at.
[24:04:01] Dusty: That’s very apt, very wise of you to say. [24:07:22] Asher: And Dusty, you talk about reflecting on accomplishments. So something I like to do with my clients so often, particularly for my clients who are still kind of searching for the answers to what is a life that fits, what do I want to do career wise, who really feel like they don’t have a good sense of what they want out of life, or where they’re heading, they tend to tell me this story where their life has happened to them more than they’ve happened to it, right?Anything good that’s happened to them has happened out of luck or chance. Not because they had any role in it, but everything bad is of course, their fault. And by the way, this is something I used to do when I was a brand new baby ADHD coach. I would kind of joke that I happened into this career, right?
It was the right place, right time. I happened into it. I don’t really know how I got here, I just got here. And something I like to do with clients in that instance is have them retell that story and put themself in the picture. So for example, I had a client who was looking at a career change and she made good money doing what she was doing.
But she kind of said, well, I only got this job because I had a connection to where you visited that story and, and broke it down a little bit more like, yes, you knew somebody, but on top of that, you must have made a positive impression on this person for this person to bring you into this field.
You’ve also been doing this now for a very long time, and you’re doing well at it. Now, you may not like it anymore. You may want to leave, but you’re doing well enough that you’ve been with this same company for a number of years, and you’ve been promoted in that time. So is it really just because you knew someone that you’ve had this job at all?
And by the way, the “just because I knew someone” that was kind of the limiting belief of and this is why I can’t make a career change. I don’t know how to make a career change because I didn’t even choose my first career, I just knew someone.
So breaking that down a little bit more and seeing where she was at choice, what she was thinking at the time when she decided to take this job, and her accomplishments along the way in this field that she may not care about anymore, but that still are accomplishments and things that she has excelled at really kind of helped her see that she’s had a hand in her own story thus far and she’s also seeing a greater opportunity to be a choice in the next chapter.
[26:40:01] Dusty: Yeah, that absolutely made sense. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the role of capitalism in all this. I don’t think I talk enough about capitalism, you guys on this show: but, we do define our self-esteem and our self-worth very often by our career, by our job, right? It’s one of the metrics as an adult, of our success, of our value – how are we as a wage earner and also how productive we are.And that all comes to us through capitalism, right? But we live under late stage capitalism, which means that it’s getting harder and harder just to rub two nickels together. Even if you’re a productive person, you can do all the right things and end up in a situation where you’re still not sort of ahead or as comfortable as maybe your parents were, or that you think you should be.
And I think that that pervades even how we feel about ourselves in relationships. Right? If we’re not productive people, if we don’t see ourselves in this way, it can come to impact just the value that we think we have, even relationally. And this is a little bit different than what you were saying, Ash. But I want to say it before I forget to say it.
Many years ago, I had this total moment where I was in an argument with a person. There was this person that I had known for many years, and we were acquaintances, and I always really looked up to and respected this person because I thought that they were really intelligent. I thought that they were really cool. They had said some nice things to me in the past.
We’d had some different interactions, so we were kind of friends. But I really wanted to be closer to that person because I really respected them. That person was also really like mentally ill. I don’t know what they had going on, but they had some serious stuff going on. That was not my stuff, speaking of “yours, mine and ours”, and they kind of attacked me out of nowhere and just saw me in a really negative light that caught me off guard and it was really upsetting.
I had this moment of really wanting to defend myself to that person and explain basically that I had been trying to make friends with them and be kind to them. And they saw it through this really strange lens where, you know, maybe that person had a lot of people in their life that hurt and betrayed them, but they took it all wrong.
And so I had a moment where I wanted to be like, no, no, you got me all wrong. You know, I’m just trying to do this. I’m just trying to do that. And I was all upset about it. And then I had another moment where I was like, wait a minute. I’ve been pursuing this person for however long now in terms of friendship, and they’re making me feel really bad about myself, and they’re making me see myself in a way that I don’t like.
But I have other friends, and I thought about it for a second, who make me feel good, who make me feel the way that I want to feel. And I could immediately think of these two friends of mine who are a couple, and they’ve always been so kind to me, so warm to me. They’ve always been so non-judgmental. The friendship has been easy over the years. And actually, the guy from this couple I used to date in high school, he’s like a really old ex-boyfriend and now I’m like, really good friends with him and his wife and our kids, like, we’re all family, friends.
I tell myself this story all the time that people don’t like me. I don’t have any friends yet. Here’s a person that I literally have been friends with since high school, and it’s like, pretty impressive that that’s also an ex, right? That doesn’t always happen when you break up with someone and to this day, that person has my back.
At one point I even said this to my friend, the guy, maybe about a year or so ago. They were really, really busy and so they weren’t getting back to me a lot when I would message them. So I messaged him and I said, hey, like I said, did I do anything? Is anything wrong? I just feel like you guys have been a bit cold lately. Are you guys mad at me? And he said, no, no, no, Dusty, we’re just busy. He said if anything was ever wrong, I would tell you. And I can’t tell you what that meant to me. That guy has just been like a solid friend to me all these years.
And here I am getting my knickers all in a knot over some other guy who wants to see the worst in me and clearly doesn’t want to be my friend. I just had this moment where I said when something’s easy, we don’t value it. It has to be hard, right? Because this person was not kind of responding to my bids for friendship, I kept working harder and harder to earn his approval.
It’s exactly the same dynamic. I have lots of friends. I have lots of people who love me. I have lots of relationships that are easy. And so I think if you are someone who’s struggling with feeling that way, whether it’s feeling productive with work or anything about yourself, the question to ask yourself is where in my life is it already easy?
Where do I have friends who already love me that I trust that they love me? Where are the skills that I already have? Where are my strengths? And whenever you’re feeling bad about yourself, I think you really need to turn to those and just allow yourself to take a bath in all your strengths and all your love and all the things that are easy for you because so often we’re already doing it right.
[31:28:21] Dusty: And, you know, it’s kind of ironic. It sounds like a bit of a cliche, but I think that very often with the people that I coach, at least, and for myself, it’s true but we already have everything we need. We just kind of have to shift our mindset to realize it. [31:41:22] Asher: I will say that the last thing you said is so true. Coaching is perspective work more than anything else, and so often the most powerful shifts for clients are not necessarily in behavior, but in perspectives. I think that that is a good place for us to wrap for today, Dusty. But before we do, listeners, I haven’t made this ask in quite a long time, but if you’re enjoying the show, please consider leaving a review wherever you listen.This really helps us out as a show, helps us show up in searches, helps other people know that this show is a great resource for other folks with ADHD. So if you have a few moments to drop a review wherever you listen to the podcast, we would appreciate that so much. And until next week, I’m Ash.
[32:24:14] Dusty: And I’m Dusty.
[32:25:18] Asher: And this is the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
