Sober Vibes Podcast
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Sober Vibes Podcast
Understanding ADHD and Addiction with Sam Led
Episode 206: Understanding ADHD and Addiction with Sam Led
In episode 206 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen welcomes Sam Led to the show and discusses ADHD and Addiction.
Sam Led is a transformation coach, speaker, powerful group facilitator, and author.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Sam's Story
- ADHD and Addiction
- Understanding the ADHD brain from the inside
- Mindfulness and Thought
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Website
Book
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Hey, welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast. I am your host and Sober Coach, courtney Anderson. You are listening to episode 206. I have a great conversation today and this conversation is about ADHD with my expert guest, who is a transformational coach specifically specializing in ADHD, because he also, too, has ADHD. He's a speaker, he's a group facilitator and, too, he is an author. So some people like to say Sam has the woo-woo soul.
Speaker 1:So my guest today is expert Sam Led, and we had a great conversation and it was just honestly a conversation about ADHD and how the brain works and his philosophy of looking from the brain, from the inside out. I asked him to share some tips on how really to help a person with quote-unquote managing their ADHD right, and the tip he gave will honestly surprise you, because it surprised me and I just really appreciated his insight on this topic, so I hope you do too. You can find all of Sam's information in the show notes below. Also, to make sure to check out his book Beyond ADHD. It's a good one and I hope you enjoy this episode today. As always, keep on trucking and kick ass out there today. Hey, sam, welcome to the Silver Vibes podcast.
Speaker 2:It's an honor to be here again, courtney. I just love what you're doing. I love that you put humor and honesty and intelligence into not only your podcast but in the work you do. So I'm a fan.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Sam.
Speaker 1:I am a fan of yours too, because you specialize in ADHD.
Speaker 2:Some days, some days, for all days, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. Can you tell me when did you learn that you had ADHD?
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, I was misdiagnosed probably 15 times. I was misdiagnosed with like a learning disability, visual motor stuff in 1981, at the tender age of seven, so you can age me, figure out how old I am and then in 2000, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD and it was a blessing. It was the best news I've ever heard because, a now I knew what I needed to work on or not even work on, understand, notice, be aware and, b I stopped beating myself up for having a neurodiverse mind that just worked differently, just had the same neuroanatomy as everybody else just works differently, and that, for me, was especially in my early 20s, mid-20s, coming at it, being in the working world and being great at sales and marketing and also working with people and coaching people was great. It was a great segue to start grad school, because that's when I had my diagnosis. Then I started grad school and it was, it was. It was wonderfully, um, perfect timing, but also getting a handle like okay, now, um, I could be on medication, what's that gonna do? Yeah, how's that?
Speaker 2:gonna affect me. Well, I? How's that going to affect me? I don't want to complicate my life anymore that it has been complicated in the past by having a mind that works differently. But that's okay, because here I am talking to you and being an ADHD-er and being eight minutes late to this conversation because I ran over with my client Okay, working with ADHD clients for many, many years now, it's been the biggest blessing ever, I'm sure. I'm sure.
Speaker 1:And then plus too, going back to like that 2000 when you got that proper diagnosis. I feel like that, probably like because one of my good guy best friends had. Adhd and I didn't know anybody other than that, and so that was in the late 90s, right? So do you feel like around that time it was getting more figured out of exactly what that was, and so then people were properly diagnosed because we had answers?
Speaker 2:around that time I would say I just found a great clinician who really understood neuroanatomy and a lot of times very well-meaning clinicians, psychologists, therapists we use a ADHD kind of inventory for the client, the patient, to complete and it's a very short meeting, just a regular intake, visit or eval, and I didn't want that I might. The psychologists who I've had in the past worked for for many, many years on other stuff. I really asked them hey, I could fill out that inventory. That checklist is the ADHD checklist and you can access it online. I didn't think that was thorough enough for me because I would have moments where I hyper focus and I'm a rock star, getting work done, working with clients, paying bills on time, having a successful experience called life, and all the times it's a disaster.
Speaker 1:Tell us what a disaster would look like.
Speaker 2:Which one Disaster is forgetting to do things that are life, things that are important. Okay, like paying bills, like doing the dishes, like getting gas in the car, like misplacing keys, getting overstimulated and not being self-aware of where that's coming from. Overreacting to stuff, little stuff, not being time conscious and exhausting myself with work, like not eating, like I'll give you an example the other day and I have reminders, I have alarms that I set on my phone that will go off, say within an hour, and say, okay, go get some fruit or some peanuts or whatever, just some snacks, just get some food in you. And to really be more conscientious of how important it is to eat and to eat more than once a day, those kinds of things. And also impulsivity wise, and that's a big feature for a lot of ADHDers impulsivity and risk-taking behavior very innocent, they get caught up in and then they begin to hyper-focus Because ADHDers, we go all in or we don't do anything. It's going 100 miles an hour or the car's in park.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:You can't go anywhere. We're paralyzed. So for me, it was always going 100 miles an hour. So so for me it was always going 100 miles an hour. Okay, and now I like the windows down. I'm just driving 40 miles an hour and, and, and, and, being more self-aware of where my thinking is going, and and how thought works, how my mind works from the inside out, and, and that's what was with my clients. It's, it's like that for me, was was huge do you have?
Speaker 1:because I wonder this do you have more female clients or male clients?
Speaker 2:I love that question and the answer is that I is recently. Recently I've had more male c-suite clients in there between early 30s to mid 40s Last love I did. If I looked at my client list over the last year and a half previous to that, it's been more female clients.
Speaker 1:Because I wonder about the females because of with hormones come into play and I have to say, after having the little dictator, my brain went fucking kaput. There was days where I was like am I dumb or do I have? Am I starting to have dementia? Like that's how, because of hormones, right, and the impact on how that plays out on brains, and then even to women entering in perimenopause and menopause, right, like the brain changes. So that's why I was wondering about what you see, yeah, I actually it really depends.
Speaker 2:It's not really it has anything to do with just my clients. My client population always is shifting and changing. But what I noticed post COVID, a lot more people have been diagnosed with ADHD because of that feeling of brain fog and paralysis. That's been mislabeled, maybe as something linked to COVID, post-covid, but also you might have had an underlying genetic predisposition or trigger for ADHD or something like ADHD. Again, these are all labels. No two brains are alike. We have the same machinery, but again, I have a Commodore 64 and you might have a MacBook, a brain that's just synapsing differently. But what I noticed is a lot and this is interesting a lot of my male clients that are professionals in corporate America. Their mothers have had all of that ADHD versus their fathers. So I don't know who knows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Let's talk, yeah, okay, all right, let's talk. I'm going to think about that one for a long time. No, then I'm probably going to do some research on my own because I find that interesting I really, truly do of also too, of what can get passed down to these little babies of ours and epigenetics and all of that stuff to these little babies of ours and epigenetics and all of that stuff. So have you seen lately of your expertise in this and with your coaching, because I'm hearing a lot more of it and I have two clients where they do have ADHD, but are you seeing that more linked with ADHD and addiction?
Speaker 2:So, Demi, we've reframed that question Cause I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Have you have?
Speaker 1:you, yeah, have you been noticing more of an increase of of if you've had clients with ADHD, if there's any addiction issues, or have you studied that yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a. There's again. It depends on how, it depends on the person, but I've had recently a host of clients with porn addiction and ADHD. Okay, they're trying to get the dopamine going.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:And they're in short supply. And they've habituated their mind. We all habituate our minds, habituated their mind. When we all habituate our minds, we all they're. Whether we're we're cognizant of it or not, we all are training our brain to do certain things, even though we might not even be aware of it could bother, indifferent, right behaviors, how we're raised, what things we pick up from our family or friends are in our school systems, etc. Et cetera. So a lot of times ADHDers will engage in risky addictive behaviors because they haven't really seen how their mind works. They're not self-aware or have that understanding of self in terms of what's going on on a neurochemical level and also on a neurobehavioral level, because it's not just one thing. What I share with my clients is the understanding of how mind works from the inside out, not just from a neurochemical perspective, but through an understanding called the three principles, which is that we have this space of wisdom and understanding and common sense that is right underneath our thinking system. Right, we have 50,000 thoughts, say 30 to 50,000 thoughts a day. They're all made up, all of it's made up right From old tapes, from old conditioning, from traumas, from wherever it doesn't matter where it's coming from that we take seriously and we think are true, because we have feelings that are attached to those thoughts. What I point my clients to, my ADHD clients, to a lot of them that have ever that have been in rehab for substances or alcohol, whatever, once they see it's a thought, that it's thought-based. You can blame neurochemical, you can blame genetics, you can do all that. That's fine. Okay, that's the ideology or not? We become the manager of our thought factory and we have more agency over what the feelings are telling us that are connected to our thoughts regarding the urge to drink or the urge to watch too much porn or the urge for too much fill in the blanks.
Speaker 2:And this understanding? It looks at mind, thought and consciousness. We're all aware that we're alive. We all know that. We have thought that it's a technology that we use, the greatest technology in the history of humankind thought right, which is something that we innocently misuse and misunderstand. It's just a misunderstanding. Yeah, so when you explain without and again, some of my clients love the 12 steps, some of my clients love the 12 steps, some of my clients whatever works for them.
Speaker 2:But we end up overcomplicating ADHD and addiction because we're looking at it from the outside in. We're not looking at it from the inside out like we should. And once we see it, I am the custodian of my thought factory. I'm the manager, I'm not the owner of it. It comes from somewhere we don't know. We don't know why. We know that life is living us, we know that. We're aware I don't know. I don't know they can't open our words, but I especially don't know where my thoughts come from. I know it comes from some kind of prerecorded piece of data up here in my brain, but once we see, like when our thinking settles, we see our common sense. So we just know how to do life if we offer more discernment to our thinking. And that's freaking powerful. And for me, having this label for over 25 years, which I'm very proud of on my t-shirts, for most of my young adult, my teenage and my childhood years, I felt like I was swimming upstream, like salmon swimming upstream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like really hard Because I just I felt misunderstood. I misunderstood how my mind works. I had some really creative stuff going on in my life. I have music and writing and there's some real strengths in my experience growing up, but it got overshadowed overshadowed by the criticism that was by teachers and and and and that built up like a dom, like a snowball, and I could have gotten it hooked on on drugs or substances. There's no difference between to me and another person. There's no difference at all. Like I, I, I just I don't know how I, I, I could have gone to rehab, I could have gotten gone down that way. I just I got lucky Right. A lot of issues just slide by.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, I've last year or this past year, I should say, I didn't know, but I had postpartum OCD. So, and when working with the therapist I worked with, I did understand more with her as she was explaining it to me. Where it's the thoughts? Right Like she's just as you said. It's like we have so many thoughts today, and just because you think them all, it doesn't mean that you are one, a creep or a freak show. Right Like she's, like they just come out of nowhere. Cause, like with the post-crim OCD, there was some like strange fucking thoughts I had with I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah With the dictator, where I'm like oh my God, like oh my God, and so it was one of those things. What I learned from her is that it's okay to think things right, like because we don't have the control over some thoughts that just come in and some thoughts don't mean anything. They don't mean anything, they just come in and you just accept it and you're like okay, like that's it.
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah, and I love how you saw that you had that awareness, because a lot of people because their minds go adhd minds are are like we have ferrari f1 race car, ryan, or you said your husband works for the big three, so I got his shelby gt500 race car. I mean it's going so fast. I mean we break the thought and thinking speed limit every day, like. But we also have a very finely attuned feeling system that once we understand what our feelings are telling us, we're free and clear. It's like it's like Ave Si and Ave Maria. You just it's like holy cow For me when I saw that I'm the manager of my thought factoring and again I want to make t-shirts that say that Thought factory manager.
Speaker 2:Right, we don't get caught up in it much anymore. And I've worked as a coach and we were talking in the last conversation we had. I worked in Malibu for a for a couple of treatment centers working with folks with ADHD and in recovery and and it and it. It's so amazing to watch folks really wake up to the fact that they have this built in diagnostic system in their, in their body that went off a shitty thought that's connected to a shitty feeling. It's not supposed to hurt you, it's just alerting you. Hey, cordy, back off, drop it. Like it's hot, give it a push and back off Right Now. Throw in a GT500 Shelby, mustangby, mustang, fast brain, it's immediate.
Speaker 2:We just like oh my god, this, I feel like shit. Oh my god, what do I do with this? Right, right is it? It always settles? If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't be right now talking to you. None of us. We would all be like in white, god forbid, white white.
Speaker 2:What do you call the padded rooms? The padded rooms, with people in white jackets feeding us jello, like none of us function. So there's the fact that we are beautifully built not to sound all piffy and esoteric, but our machinery is beautifully engineered and designed to handle anything that comes our way and we always settle, always. And that's hard for someone who has ADHD to hear, because a lot of ADHDers have been told so much shit over the years how to do life strategies and tools and techniques that don't work long-term. I'm looking at tests. I've tried everything, but when I just sit with my thoughts and I see the how much they really don't have anything over me, even if they're, even if it's pointing to an outside event. That's pretty terrible. If my outside circumstances suck at the moment, I still don't have to take them on as true or real.
Speaker 1:Right, and I did like what you said, too, about finally accepting you right, like and understanding your brain, because that is something that I learned when I got sober, right, like yeah, I learned that I was like shit. You know, I'm actually more of a. I always thought I was an extrovert, right, but then when I got sober and had to deal with myself, I was like, oh no, I'm like an extrovert introvert, like I need that downtime right and for so long. In my active addiction, I always beat myself up about that where I'm like an extrovert introvert, like I need that downtime Right and for so long. In my active addiction, I always beat myself up about that where I was like why do I need a day to recharge, right. Same thing, too, with anxiety.
Speaker 1:After a couple of years, I was like I'm going to stop trying to face this head on Right, like it's like it's driving me crazy, cause anytime I would have anxiety. I would then beat myself up and be like what the fuck is wrong with me? And the simple fact is I just had to learn then to accept it's like okay, and I think this is probably where you came at, too, with ADHD. At some point, you just have to accept that you were a person with this. And how do you manage it? The best you can each day. So, like now, if anxiety comes up in me, I don't sit there. I'm not like, oh my God, I'm going to die, I'm having a pain, like I'm dying, I'm having a heart attack, right Like it's just like this is what I know to do to make myself feel better, or that this will just pass in about 20, 30 minutes and it's all good.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure at that point, at some point you did have to just be like, okay, how do I just learn to live with this and accept it, that it's a part of me?
Speaker 2:I would go one step further than that. It's not like the experience of anxiety overwhelm pick your favorite human shitty feeling that we have. Why do we make any of that bad? Think about the condition to, and especially in Western society, condition to push it away.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, it's the big bad thought, the big bad feeling, and also on top of it, sometimes we just suffer. Mm-hmm, yeah, that's it. We make suffering bad. People told us that that's true, a truth. I mean like you're going to suffer whether your mind's making stuff up that you, that is trying to give into you, is true. Listen, the mind loves us, our brains love us, but our brain's pretty stupid when you think about it. It's brilliant in its machinery, how it's wired, but it's like a Macbook Pro it's useless without the operator behind it. But once you kind of see what the brain is trying to do, what a mind that loves us is trying to do to keep us alive and safe, it doesn't know better, it just doesn't know better. It's like a puppy dog peeing all over the couch. It's just going to do weird shit. And when you can accept the fact that if the last, the only thing in our life that you ever accepted in your life was not to be afraid of our experience, that alone means your life.
Speaker 2:Who kind of discovered this understanding? Who was this very normal Scottish welder. I swear to God he had a ninth grade education, not college educated. He had this kind of epiphany. He's like, oh, I'm not my thoughts, my brain is going to put me down, it's going to make me feel like shit. It's going to blame my wife, my friend, my boss, my dog for why I feel this way. And it feels real, it does. I mean, I got divorced because well, I'm kidding, but that's like a lot of people don't know that because, to no fault of their own, because psychology, modern psychology, for all its good things that it brings to our modern society, it's still an outside-in kind of analysis. Yeah, but it's not how we work. It's inside-out Because you put, like you, me and someone else in the room and some guy came in and made fun of us, made fun of something about us, and went to each one of us.
Speaker 2:We'd all have three different reactions oh yeah so, like you can't trust thought common sense which is freaking gorgeous common sense and wisdom doesn't have an emotional signature. It's just we just know how to do stuff. You knew, like you just started a coaching practice and you're kicking it, you're killing it and your clients love you and you have a podcast. Like you just knew how to do stuff we all do. We trust life. Phders that have issues with addiction have omni-potential. Underneath all that noise, Some of the greatest artists, creators, actors, engineers, inventors have ADHD and addiction issues.
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Speaker 2:I'm not going to Josh Brolin, the actor. He lives two miles away. He lives in the same area I live in. He suffered with addiction issues. He got arrested as a teenager four times. He has adhd, and, and and. What he saw was like I needed all that. I needed that stuff to happen, yeah, but his insight was just like I'm a fucking amazing actor.
Speaker 2:Excuse my friends you're fine, I'm a fucking amazing father. I'm a fucking amazing right. His book just came out. It's's called Under the Truck. It's fantastic. He talks about his. It was just his process. Like my lady, she went to University of Santa Monica. There's a graduate program in spiritual psychology and they talk about your process. I'm not talking about like processing an application or like, yeah, like it's just hard, it's just what has to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The better for worse. Right, it's like that's. That was his process. Courtney, you had your process, I have my process, and so on and so on.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it doesn't lead to good places, but no, but that's why everybody's experience in life is their own and I say that a lot on this podcast. It's to clients and people. It's like your process, you have to go through it. If you go through five slips, you have to go through it to get to the point where you finally have said it like enough, I'm good and tired and that's okay. That's why it should never be shamed upon if someone relapses or something right.
Speaker 2:That's wisdom. That's what I'm pointing to's the insight like when I quit so I love nicotine, adhd, because what does a nicotine do? Calms you down. Yeah, it's a focuser for adhd years where are we talking cigarette?
Speaker 1:cigarettes. Did you chew tobacco like what?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, cigarette.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm 50, so in the 90s you know listen, if the world ever goes down, I will go grab my pack myself, a pack of parliament light I love parliament. Light the recent filter yes, at like yes, and I will chain smoke and then, of course, take the dictator into my arms after I change talk. But I that I I still to this day, and it's been 12 years since I smoked like I love it yeah, I got this.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's still, it's, it's a disgusting, delicious experience. Um, truly, truly, it's. It's like popka-esque, grotesque, because it's so bad for you, right, but see, like for me you could show me and this is how interesting, how, like our intellect is not in charge. Because I remember when I was in high school, because we used to smoke behind the for me it was Marble Reds in parliaments when we had a buddy who would buy them for us We'd go behind the school, behind the stadium, and smoke cigarettes during lunch. We got caught and my parents I was 16. This is the early late 80s, early 90s, it wasn't today and my parents, they took, they told me my father was, was a doctor, showed me photographs of a disease lung, and then we went to the cancer of the ucla cancer. I mean literally I went on the tour, everything, but it's just.
Speaker 2:And then one day I woke up and I had an insight, like I knew that intellectually you can't, that smoking is not good for you, like abusing drugs is not good for you right but then I woke up one morning and I say I just don't want to smoke anymore and it was like that's what I'm, that's where there was my wisdom, there, unfortunately, it took a while, but yeah, that's what we, that's my, that was my process and you had yours and your clients and you got to honor it, because you can't force an insight. Like you know, these are keys, at least my key size. I mean. Like I had this thing called the tile, and funny thing was is the other day I lost my keys. The tile, would you find the keys? And the battery died on the tile. Oh no, I can. I can't find my fucking keys, right, intellect this is a metaphor for the intellect, right. But then I found them when I wasn't thinking about them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I dropped into that space, that quiet space of what. I just knew how to do things. Like, courtney, if you get on the freeway or where you are, the interstate I know it's called 94, I think where you are and you're driving, you're thinking at the same time, you get into an accident Because you can't think and drive at the same time. Also, you can't think and listen at the same time. So when you're speaking and I'm listening, I'm present with you. When someone with ADHD is present to what is in this moment, they're in recovery. They don't have, they're not an addict and they're not, they don't have ADHD. It's that easy. But we come over complicated Right, because we're back up in our heads and we're trying to figure it out with our intellect and it just turns into verbal diarrhea and otherwise.
Speaker 1:Right. So what are a couple tips, then, that you would share to help people manage ADHD and that you've used yourself, because I'm sure you've used your practices and shared that with people?
Speaker 2:These are not practices or techniques or tools, because, remember, when we use our intellect to try to fix our thinking, we just got more thinking on top of it, okay, complicated. That's why, like CBT and these other therapies are great short term and I'm not poo-pooing it. If it works for you, then great. I never Do your own research, ladies and gentlemen. I don't want to. I'm not going to say don't do that or do this, yeah, what works for you. I don't want to. I'm not going to say don't do that or do this, yeah, what works for you. But for me, what I saw myself and what I share with my clients, when you add a technique and you're trying to fix something that's not broken, it's kind of like think about like every piano has a different sonic signature. If you play a Steinway or you play a Yamaha, they're going to sound different. Just the same thing with human beings and brains right Same. Just the same thing with human beings and brains right Same. Brain sounds different, works a little differently.
Speaker 2:What I always tell my clients is notice the moments when you fall out of your thinking and you're just present and you're just doing stuff Because you're not an addict and you don't have adhd. When you're driving, when you go up in your head and you start getting anxious, you're back up into the house of horror.
Speaker 2:I call it the adhd house of horrors, right yeah yeah, we go into our netflix movie all the time and our intellect is a wonderful place to be for google search. The intellect say google search, yeah, but it's still not. You still have to figure out how to do life. Google has its limitations. So does our brain. So I always was, especially with clients, with with impulse issues. Right Now, an impulse issue like impulsivity and and and and, whether it's blurting out stuff or addiction, yeah, being hyper-focused on an addictive activity, blank pick your poison. Notice how it feels right before you're about to engage in that kind of negative behavior or unhealthy behavior.
Speaker 2:There's a feeling of you can feel. I usually feel like when I have a feeling that's warning me that I'm caught up in my head, caught up in my thinking, I'm in my ADHD house, there's a feeling in my solar plexus I can feel it that feels yucky, icky, it's a contracted thought. Be aware of those moments when it feels contracted, when your experience feels contracted, whatever you're doing, whether you're at work or you're. You're going out to a restaurant and then you have a, a beer thought, or, yeah, it's connected to something that you need, that the brain is very innocently attaching to an outside stimulus ie beer, ie drink that you need to satisfy. Now you have, in that split second, agency over that. Like you can be aware of the feeling. The feeling is the giveaway. The feeling is like the check engine, like going I'd say no, no, no, no, no, no, right. Or or the, the, the urgency feeling, right?
Speaker 2:Folks that are in that, in recovery, have those experiences all the time, that feeling of urgency, I gotta do this, I need this, I need this, I need this. When you develop that self-awareness muscle, you're golden. Because what happens is that once you start noticing that yucky feeling or that urgency feeling, or that anxious feeling attached to something that you need to do on the outside. That's not healthy. You begin to pivot to presence quicker you begin to pivot to presence, quicker that thought dissolves away into nothingness and you begin to see the illusion. You begin to see the illusory nature of the made-up Netflix movie going on in your head that's constantly informing you of the outside world.
Speaker 2:But it's not perfect. There are plenty of things on Netflix that suck. I'm sure you've watched really bad Netflix movies and they're good ones. Listen, our imagination is great because it creates great writers, great actors, great producers, screenwriters, but it also has a tendency to behave like Vladimir Putin, chiang Kai-shek and Jeffrey Dahmer. Because we've all had murderous thoughts. We've all had infidelity thoughts. We've all had I want to do lots of cocaine thoughts, I want to smoke that car and a cigarette small thoughts, but it's attached to a feeling. But we see, we've been conditioned to believe that it's the other way. But the clues are right there. If it feels like shit, then it must be shit. So stop doing the shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it sounds so like vulgar and colloquial. But that's it, is that easy? And when my clients see that, it's like oh, shit, that easy. And when my clients see that it's like oh, shit.
Speaker 1:Sometimes people need to hear it. I mean a lot recently I've been telling a lot of my clients. I was like you need to tell yourself to just shut the fuck up because you have to turn. You got to turn the thought off at some point, especially too, when you said it.
Speaker 2:And speak to the hand.
Speaker 1:I'm like sometimes you just have to say it out loud and shake your head and like shake that thought away, cause it's going back to the 30,000 thoughts that come to our brains every day. And then also you said and I want to know how you do it it is so easy nowadays to be overstimulated, right?
Speaker 2:So I'm already a doctorate in that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So like, how, how do you help, help yourself on the the bad day when you're, when you're overstimulated?
Speaker 2:right and and that's a great question it's the same thing, because feeling of overstimulation is attached to a feeling yeah there's a whole bunch of thoughts.
Speaker 2:it's like have you ever? Have you ever driven an old carbureted car? You flood the engine. You're going anywhere. Yeah, the car's like you're not going anywhere. Yeah, the car's like you're not going to be able to start it. The same thing with our thought and thinking system. When I'm overstimulated Sam before he understood how mind worked when I would get overstimulated, I would do two things I would seek something external or outside of me to quell or to calm the outside overstimulation. Okay, whether it was a cigarette a lot of the time, which really was counter, which was paradoxical, because it didn't, it would just make me more.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Or or was reacting, or I call it vomiting kind of like mentally vomiting on my loved one. You know I'm in a bad mood so I want them to hear it. Yeah, when I realized, like, if I have a cold and, courtney, you're in the room with me, I'm not going to sneeze on you because I don't want to get you sick. Right, we also have these psychological viruses, right, true, right, very true, yes, so we have a psychological immune system that's built into, like when I talk about, we are built to settle. Our mind's operating system settles on its own, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we have a freaking hissy fit or not. So the awareness of the beautiful design of our system, knowing that an overstimulated thought or a whole bunch of overstimulated thoughts, an overstimulated thought or a whole bunch of overstimulated thoughts, if I don't take them seriously, if I don't take them on as truth and I don't see them as real, I can be fuming, wanting to just like the motor's running inside, but within a couple of minutes they go away, because the less I take them as truth or something about me, the less of an effect they're going to have on my state of mind and also my behavior and when you hear that coming out of my mouth, if you're listening with your heart and listening in a space of presence, your intellect doesn't take what I just said and try to analyze it or be critical about it, because I have a lot of clients that say Sam, it's not that easy.
Speaker 2:I've had ADHD all my life. I've been recovering for da-da-da-da-da, but we're all just one thought away from that space of calm, presence and groundedness. And if I followed my client around around, like if you followed yourself around a, followed your, follow your child around. There's so many during the day when colin is grounded, present and he's just present with the world. In fact, kids are great examples of presence looks like. Yes, there's before they develop and we gen x or I I am. I have this like 50-year-old mixtape in my hard drive in my brain up here, yeah, like, and got like hundreds of hours of old recordings and stuff that I didn't want on there Traumas, whatever, something I'm not aware of. Kids are a great example of what presence looks like.
Speaker 2:They really are, and we can be, just like that kid, present, grounded and centered, because we are. If I follow you around during the day, courtney, I point out every time Courtney, you're present, courtney, you're with me, you're in this moment, with me right now, and that's what's on offer here. Like you can't find that in a tool I remember there was like this, was it the sedona method? You?
Speaker 1:ever heard of the sedona method? I have not. No, what is it?
Speaker 2:the repetitive mantra you say. It's like could I let this go? Would I let this go? And then when? And I would say that to myself, and then I, I saw myself over time. I just started getting more anxious because it would bring me back up into my head. Now I have to think about my thinking that I'm really anxious. Then I'm more anxious. So like if you see how this beautiful machinery works, it opens our eyes to what's possible when we stop trying to technique it or control it. You don't need to be, you don't have to meditate three hours a day or recite a mantra and listen, if that's what you like, and great. There's so much that our system does that we don't even need to do anything anything about if you let the thinking move through you and not fight it, not, and that's the whole thing, not resistant.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I was trying to spit out about, like living with anxiety, like I used to just like try to like resist it and fight it off, and that made it worse yeah, I mean it, it's.
Speaker 2:It's the reason why what people want people get stuck or get or fall off the wagon or they go, they relapse is because of the fact, like we all do sometimes we all take the bait and we think our thinking is real in the moment, and then we used use that thinking to create or to to relapse right like that's all, it's just thinking.
Speaker 2:Appeared that we, that we think it appears real and we make, make an impulsive and then we impulsively engage in that behavior. But then we make ourselves wrong. We beat ourselves up when we engage in an unhealthy behavior. But why?
Speaker 1:Like I love french fries.
Speaker 2:If I ate them every day, I'd probably develop atherosclerosis and be overweight, but I'm not going to beat myself up for having a french fry Now. Obviously, folks in recovery, it's not a good idea to go back on substances, but go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, it's not a good idea to go back on substances but go ahead. No, it's not. But there has to be a point where again that's where I was saying with how relapsed is looked upon as it's almost shameful, and that's where that has to stop. Even, let's just say, you quit drinking, or you quit drinking or doing drugs, and then it's been a year, and then you have a slip and then it's like okay, and you get back on the quad wagon, white, and move forward, and then in two years it happens again. Like you, you can't neglect the time that you had sober and it's just a fact of that. Was your process Right? Or if, even if you just want to accept it like okay, I drink once in an entire year, like I used to drink every day.
Speaker 1:I have come a far way, so I wish people would reframe their thinking of look how far you came and instead of focusing, focusing on that one drink, right, right, and instead of focusing on that one drink right, the story that we wake up.
Speaker 2:we innocently wake up, while relapse is more toxic than the actual relapse itself sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And when you see, like I'll give you an example like how we create our different reality In one day, you can create a thousand fictitious realities in this moment. Like you know, when you, when this came on, when we came on the screen, the reality I created when I went over with my client just give you an example, what the reality all of a sudden, the reality came up fucking cordy's gonna be pissed and she's got you know all the things. She's gonna be a client and be a little bit of a client and she's going to happen. I wanted it. Oh, this is a reality that I'm I'm not creating, is just making, being made up for me.
Speaker 2:I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. I don't marry a reality. I date a reality first before I choose that reality, right? So then, when Courtney, when your face came on the screen, I'm like, oh, there's Courtney, she's amazing, she's a nice person and I have great and blah, blah, blah. So that's a reality that's created. There's the same thing when it comes to the realities we create around addiction and relapse. You can create a reality like, oh, I missed up, okay, this is my process.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean that I'm doomed forever and doesn't mean that I can't tomorrow wake up and not drink or whatever, right, right, and that's a lot of people, especially ADHDers, because I spend a lot of my life criticizing myself to the point where it's like you develop calluses on your feet. Yeah, they're mental, these are mental calluses that really can do a number on us if we don't see where that's coming from. Because each years are so hard, we're so hard the the practice of perfection, perfectionism in an adhd or in recovery especially because I do work with adhd's and recovery is so it's. It's it's frightening to to experience that sometimes. What I mean by that is like when, when you spend a lot of your life and in the story of perfectionism and then self-criticism, and then you're in recovery, so it's like and you don't see where that story is coming from. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before we end this call, I did want to or this interview. I did want to ask you do you have a lot of clients or have you seen because going back with the impulse, with ADHDers, shopping issues?
Speaker 2:Yes, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, is that one of the top, top struggles?
Speaker 1:of five impulse buying because now, because like porn okay, because porn you can get, it's just at your fingertips now, like and so a same thing with shopping, I mean all of this stuff. It's almost like we were at the mall the other day and I was telling my husband I was was like man, I hope these never go away, like I truly just hope that malls don't ever go away. But it's like all of these stores are just making it easier and easier to just you pay online, go pick it up. Place is now just putting it in your car. So that's online shopping is real.
Speaker 2:It's real. In fact, it's sometimes eclipses in terms of like. If I look at like this year versus last year in terms of like addiction issues, sometimes it even eclipses substance addiction, but again, it's the same thing. They say it's the same thing. It's. Just back in the day it was like home shopping club, never like our parents. You know my grandmother, she home shopping network. Now it's amazon, it's, but it's the same thing, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:And um, I think once, once, a client really understands how the system works. At the end of the day doesn't matter what their addict, what their addiction issue is or what where they are in their recovery. It's a game changer. And that's where I point my clients to. I point them back to their own wisdom that they've known a lot and you do too that underneath the noise of what's being made up in the moment is our wisdom, our common sense, and it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing, it's pretty beautiful to watch People. Oh yeah, I've known this all along and I do this every day. I just don't pay attention enough to it because ADHDers love to hyper-focus on negative stuff a lot of the times.
Speaker 2:Why Stimulation? Why doom scrolling is huge forhd years and that becomes an addiction. Why tiktok is so big? Because most of it's doom scrolling and we in in adhd years, especially late at night, will sit and scroll on their phones, not realizing that that it's the same thing as a. They're addicted to. That. I mean so. So like the awareness of how mind works is just it's the same thing as a substance they're addicted to. That I mean so, like the awareness of how mind works is just it's so profound. There are a lot of other. There's not a lot, but there are other coaches like myself, like there's Lily Sace. She's online. I don't know if you've seen her. She's an amazing coach. She works with anxiety and shares this understanding. There's a whole bunch out there. They're walking society and it shares this understanding. There's a whole bunch out there that are walking the walk and talking the talk, but, more importantly, they're allowing their clients to see like, oh, I know how to do this, I know how to do life and it's going to suck sometimes.
Speaker 1:That's life, you're a human experience.
Speaker 1:You're not when you're born, you're not like you're going to have this perfect human experience, right. And and that's where a lot of people have to get comfortable to, in the uncomfortable, and that was one thing that I learned in my sobriety. It was like, oh, especially of just living, like where alcohol, where there's alcohols everywhere. Now, right, where I was like, oh, I'm going to have to get really uncomfortable here to be comfortable to live in this life. Right when I was like, oh, I'm going to have to get really uncomfortable here to be comfortable to live in this life, right. So, and in feeling uncomfortable isn't a bad thing because there's a lot of growth that happens in that and that that feeling and pushing through. And then at the end of the day, you're like, fuck, I got through that really uncomfortable moment. I am a strong ass motherfucker. Uncomfortable moment, I am a strong ass motherfucker. Like you got to, almost you got to celebrate that of getting through uncomfortable moments and not turning to drugs, alcohol, online shopping and just getting through, getting through that hard feeling.
Speaker 2:And then you just said it there it's a feeling, it's, it's, it's's. No, there, there it's. It's like it's like a muddy dog and the dog, the mud dries, or it dries and it just flakes off. That's what thought it's, off, it's. And then, and then we're on to new thought, and then we're on to more thought and think about thought.
Speaker 1:Right, and you're gonna wake up tomorrow and have 30 000 more thoughts and think of that thought Right, and you're going to wake up tomorrow and have 30,000 more thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like that's it. The great part about the great news for your clients and for your listeners is that you get to choose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you do, you do, so where can people find you? Yeah, I didn't even get to discuss your book because we were in this great conversation.
Speaker 2:Great, Always great conversation with you, Courtney. My book is Beyond ADHD. It's on Amazon. We've had some great success with it. It's selling well. Thank God you can get that on Amazon. If you want to learn more about my work and what I do with my clients, go to samled1111 on Instagram. My website is samledconsultingcom. You can find me on LinkedIn, samled, and let's sit and have a chat.
Speaker 1:I will link everything in the show notes below. Thank you so much for being on the show, taking the time and sharing your expertise with the. I like to call my audience the good people of the world. All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Bye.
