the ADHD philosopher

Show Notes: Letters Under the Floorboard

Episode Summary

Why do people with ADHD feel such a strong need to share everything they find important? In this episode, I talk about the exhausting cycle of seeking external validation, the loneliness of feeling like "too much," and how I accidentally discovered a different way to relate to myself through journaling. Spoiler: it involves writing letters to future me and hiding them under a m...

The word “superpower” has become controversial in ADHD spaces. People hear it and think you’re dismissing the struggle. Like you’re saying it’s all sunshine and hyperfocus and “aren’t we so quirky?”

I get the frustration. I do.

But superpowers in stories come from being different. From having something in you that sets you apart. That’s the whole genre. The power and the pain come from the same place.

Fifty people shared their late ADHD diagnosis stories with me. Different ages, different paths, but the same devastating pattern.

They spent years thinking they were broken. Not ADHD broken, though. They knew what ADHD looked like: hyperactive boys, kids who couldn’t sit still, people who disrupted class. That wasn’t them. They got good grades. They held jobs. They weren’t bouncing off walls.

So when everything felt impossibly hard, ...

For years, my therapist kept talking about emotional regulation. Emotional dysregulation. She’d mention issues I had with it, over and over.

I remember thinking: you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I was a theater kid. Not a dramatic kid (though I was that too), but an actual drama kid. I could cry on cue. I could perform rage, heartbreak, joy, whatever the script called for. I had control over emotions when they were someone e...

I had spent about a week sleeping on dirty sheets with no pillowcases. My husband has been sleeping on the couch because he’d been sick, and I hadn’t changed the bedding yet so he could come back to bed. Every time I thought about doing it, something in me recoiled. Not just “ugh, I don’t feel like it.” More like my body physically wouldn’t cooperate. The idea of wrestling a fitted sheet onto the mattress made me want to scream and...

My therapist once told me I leave no stone unturned.

That line stuck with me. I think about it whenever I’m lying on a massage table, trying to relax, while my brain won’t shut up. What kind of tension do people carry the most? Does it show up the same way in everyone? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever noticed here? Even when silence is expected, my curiosity shows up, and god, is it loud.

It happens in the smallest moments. I wa...

Over the past few days, I've been having this gnawing headache. It's one of those headaches you can feel when you wake up from a really good nap and now you hate the world, but it's never-ending, there at all times. Advil just shrugs at it. I keep trying to drink more water, but even if it does something for it, it doesn't seem to be enough. The dull unending ache is still right there.

At a certain point, when an ache is this unceas...

I walk into the gym and this remix is playing. I don't know what it is, but it's giving early 2000s drama in the best way. As I scan in, I ask the girl at the desk, "Is that a Britney remix? I've never heard this one!"

She shrugs. "It's just the playlist they put on, I don't know." She doesn't even look up to catch my eye. It's not like I asked for her autograph. I was just a little curious about the damn song.

Cool cool cool.

Just li...

I was 10 or 11, walking home from McDonald’s, holding my takeout bag, in my own world. Echolalia in full force. Singing to myself, talking to myself. I was replaying the exchange I had with the McDonald’s cashier in my head. Wondering if I sounded weird. If I said the right thing.

Then a car slowed down. A grown man leaned out the window. Two boys in the backseat. He yelled, “Is the burger answering?” They all laughed like it’s the ...

Your Brain Is Different. Not Broken.

When you get diagnosed with ADHD, it’s not just a label. It’s a reckoning. In this episode, I talk about what it really means to find out your brain works differently and what the world doesn’t tell you about that moment.

This isn’t about calling ADHD a superpower. And it’s definitely not about treating it like a flaw. It’s about learning how to work with your brain instead of against it.

I cover h...

Let’s get that straight from the start. The lie of professionalism is not about standards. It is about control. It is about making you smaller, quieter, less visible, less real. Professionalism, as it’s sold to us, is composure, neutrality, self-control. Being palatable to the greatest number of people.

In practice, it’s a weapon. It punishes emotion, vulnerability, and individuality. It rewards performative detachment and punishes ...