Moving from What If to What Is: Thriving with ADHD and Other Forms of Neurodiversity (w/ Dr. Matthew Zakreski)
Ben and Jim enjoy a fascinating conversation with the insightful Dr. Matthew Zakreski. Listen in as they delve into the complexities of neurodiversity, focusing on ADHD, academic giftedness, and other neurodivergent conditions. They explore how these differences can shape experiences and offer a unique perspective on thriving in a world that often misunderstands them.
Dr. Matt shares his personal origin story, revealing that he was diagnosed as gifted in second grade and later discovered his ADHD in high school when academic challenges surpassed his innate abilities. He recounts the difficulties he faced, including being bullied and feeling overwhelmed by social-emotional challenges. These experiences fueled his passion for neurodiversity and his desire to help other kids who struggle with similar issues, leading him to become a psychologist and advocate.
Ben and Jim join Dr. Matt in discussing his practical advice on managing ADHD-related anxiety, emphasizing the importance of moving from the uncertainty of "what if" to the actionable "what is." The discussion touches on emotional intensity, the challenges of social media comparison, and the importance of self-care. Dr. Matt provides insights into understanding context as a reason, not an excuse, and how this perspective can foster a more supportive environment for neurodivergent individuals.
They discuss strategies for building supportive systems, proactive outreach, and the value of empathy and understanding from friends and family. The conversation also addresses the role of past trauma in shaping current experiences and the healing power of connection.
Things get about as deep as they ever have as Ben, Jim, and Dr. Matt explore the role of faith in dealing with the challenges of neurodiversity, including finding solace and strength in spiritual practices.
Lastly, they highlight the importance of being a lifeline for others, sharing stories and practical advice on offering support to those navigating the complexities of neurodivergence.
And hey, if you love what you hear, consider supporting the show at buymeacoffee.com/realmenhug. Your contributions keep us going and help us bring you more episodes filled with laughter, insights, and relatable stories. Join us in growing and strengthening our community of real men who aren't afraid to hug it out. Thank you for being a vital part of our journey!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ben (00:03):
Welcome to real man, hug a podcast for men and the women
who love them.
I'm Ben and I'm Jim.
Welcome.
Welcome to the show.
Jim (00:13):
Well, um, welcome.
Come one and all neurotypicalneurodivergent and otherwise
there's a place for you today.
I don't know what would be inbetween neurotypical and
neurodivergent, but if that'syou, welcome, we are so excited
(00:34):
to have Dr.
Matthew Zekreski, a.
k.
a.
Dr.
Matt, joining us today.
He's not just a psychologist,he's also a seasoned speaker and
does a lot with neurodiversity.
He also runs a private practicecalled the neurodiversity
collective.
He's got articles in psychologyjournals, and even recently was
(00:55):
quoted in the New York times, anarticle about us, millennial
parents.
So excited to have on the showtoday, dr.
Matt, thank you so much forjoining us.
Matt (01:07):
Thank you.
I, I have.
The good fortune to be on a lotof podcasts, but this is one I'm
really looking forward to.
This is who I am.
Real man hug.
Like, yes, let's do it.
Let's talk about this.
Jim (01:19):
I'm curious to ask.
How you got into the field thatyou're in, from everything that
I know about you, it sounds likeit's a passion for yours.
So why neurodiversity, why thepublic speaking?
It seems like it's really apassion for you.
And I can't imagine there's notsome specific personal anecdote
(01:39):
behind what drove you to dothat.
Matt (01:41):
we're going to talk origin story then, right?
Let's do it.
I was diagnosed as gifted insecond grade, right?
That's when they identified me.
And a lot of American kids getidentified as gifted in second
grade.
And I was so smart that nobodyrealized I had ADHD until high
school when the work got harderthan I was smart.
Right.
All of a sudden you couldn'tforget about the test and study
(02:03):
for it.
Seven minutes before the classand still get a 93 because that
nobody cares.
Nobody cares that you had badpractice.
If you get an A, they're like,Oh, and all of a sudden I was
just underwater.
And I remember thinking like,there's gotta be a better way,
but you've got to learn studyskills and organization skills
and asking for help.
on the fly in high school whenthe stakes are very high, when
(02:28):
your neurotypical peers spentelementary school, middle school
learning those skills.
So I was like, let me step intothat from a academic
understanding space.
But the more I got into it, themore I realized that the things
that really made my lifechallenging as a kid was the
social emotional.
(02:48):
Sure.
And I realized I was perfectlypositioned as somebody who could
help kids develop those skills.
I think like a lot ofneurodivergent kids, everything
was badly bullied.
You know, eighth grade was justhell on a plate for me.
You know, I remember saying tomy parents, both of whom are
(03:08):
clinical psychologists, if Iever do what you guys do for a
living, I'm going to do my bestto make sure this doesn't happen
to anybody else.
It is a passion, right?
It's personal and professionalfor me.
Jim (03:20):
Since we kind of teased at it a little bit, that article
that you wrote about millennialparents.
In the article, you were quotedtalking about social media,
having some of the answers, butit's also part of the problem.
I won't go and read the wholething, but you're basically
talking about that circle ofcomparison is getting bigger.
(03:40):
We just talked about that in ourlast episode about social media
and how much different it is toparent today.
So let's start there.
I'm kind of curious to hear alittle bit more from you on
that.
Matt (03:53):
It's great that we have as much knowledge as we do, but
sometimes I wonder if it's more.
Bandwidth than our brains canhandle because you've got this
brain that has a finite room ofinformation, but then you're
seeing 97 different parentingaccounts just on bottle feeding
and then 109 parenting accountson how to maintain that spark
(04:17):
with your partner and 2916 aboutthe right kind of preschool for
your kid and it becomes analysisby paralysis, right?
I mean, there's too muchinformation.
Not to mention that comparisoneffect.
I was talking about this with mywife earlier, and there's this
aggregate data that happens insocial media because our brain,
(04:39):
our brains take one chunk ofsocial media time as a single
iteration.
So if you're flipping throughyour Instagram feed, and you see
11 of your friends are onvacation right now, now you
might have 6000 friends onInstagram.
But your brain's going 11different friends are on
vacation right now.
How come I'm not on vacation?
Why are all these people inAruba?
(05:00):
Why am I not there?
Because we have more access tomore information.
Whereas that was the thing that30 years ago, when we were kids,
you would have found out on thefirst day of school, like, dude,
you went to Aruba this summer?
No way.
And then you thought about it,right?
So this sort of real time data,it serves as an aggregate,
(05:21):
right?
We're comparing our lives towhat everybody else is doing.
And it's hard to do that and notfind yourself in a power down
position compared to everybodyelse.
Ben (05:30):
Is the answer then to just turn off social media, or how do
we exist in a world where thatis so prevalent?
Matt (05:39):
We should all throw our phones in the ocean.
Uh, no, that's not possible,right?
You know, and as primarily achild psychologist, right, one
of the things I talk to parentsa lot is screen time limits.
It's a whole thing because youcannot be a student in 2024
without a laptop, right?
Whether it's a Chromebook orfamily computer, right?
(06:01):
You need the internets to dohomework.
The problem is, is the internetalso has Minecraft and Overwatch
and.
The chat rooms and Reddit anddiscord and a gazillion other
things, right?
So the solution is also theproblem.
And the harder we work asparents to try and keep that
(06:22):
stuff away, the more our kidsare inspired to find them.
How do you coexist?
it's kind of about learning toaccept an uncomfortable date
time.
I use my phone for social media.
Yeah.
For things that enhance mypractice, enhance my speaking
options.
It's like, oh, that's a prettycool conference.
I should apply to that one.
And sometimes it's like, oh,that inspires me or motivates
(06:44):
me.
I'm feeling it.
But over time I've gotten muchmore aggressive about curating
my feed.
And it's like, listen, I don'tneed to see, you know, the doom
and gloom.
I don't need to see theseheartbreaking accounts or people
who don't align with mepolitically, socially, morally,
(07:05):
whatever that might be.
You know, so if there's abenefit to the feed, it's that
we get choice in there.
It's about being intentionalabout what you consume and when.
I've set up a little rule formyself.
During the first Trumpadministration, I found myself
doom scrolling a lot.
(07:25):
Just there's gotta be good news.
There's gotta be good news inhere somewhere.
There's gotta be good news inhere somewhere that I set myself
up a rule that I was like, I canbe on this site for as many
minutes as there are letters inthe thing.
So for cnn.
com three minutes.
If I can't find it on CNN inthree minutes, it's not worth
knowing right now, it willabsolutely come up, right?
(07:48):
Instagram, eight minutes.
Facebook, eight minutes,?
And thank God they changedTwitter to X.
I'm like, Oh, I owe you oneminute.
Like Chris Evans said today, Oh,that's very clever.
Okay.
And I'm out of time.
Right?
That may not work for you, butjust having a metric in your
head builds a framework abouthow we engage with the content
(08:11):
with intention.
And the intention is the biggestthing I think that drives,
Maintaining sane limits aroundthe content where we're sort of
fire hosing.
Cause otherwise I think it'sgoing to swallow us whole.
Ben (08:25):
Comparison is the thief of joy.
And Dr.
Matt, what you were saying aboutsocial media, I would take it a
step further and say, socialmedia is the thief of joy,
because honestly, that's so muchof what it is, is comparison.
You're comparing perspectives onnews, on different media
outlets, like Jim talked abouton the previous episode,
(08:47):
frankly, it's exhausting.
Jim (08:50):
For sure.
Really, that was the heart ofthis podcast, not specifically
social media, but just how Benand I are talking as friends and
trying to figure out how do wefit in this world where it seems
like everybody else is tellingus we should be something else
or doing something else andfalling short on some of those
(09:12):
comparisons.
So what do you do with kids?
This is speaking from personalexperience with me.
And now I've got two gifted kidsand in some ways they are very
mature for their age and then.
In other ways, as they're tryingto develop from a social
standpoint, there's a little bitmore refining, obviously that
(09:35):
can happen, but something that Iactually have talked to them a
lot about is adults don't treatkids like adults.
And I know that sounds like afunny thing to say, but I, I
mean, to extend that beyondalmost like, They don't treat
them human or like they havethoughts or rights or whatever.
(09:56):
And so my kids sometimes getpushed aside because they're
treating them like someone who'sdevelopmentally at that age and
they get so frustrated becausethey're not given the time or
respect or dignity that theyfeel like they deserve.
You have that grandma that, thatwants to hug you or someone who
(10:18):
says, Hey, now we don't.
Speak that way, but then theyturn around and do it.
There's a hundred different waysthat adults are really
hypocritical with kids.
How do you help some of these,whether it's gifted or
neurodivergent kids that justfeel like, not only do I not fit
in, but now I have to play bythese hypocritical rules that
these adults are throwing at me.
Matt (10:40):
You're not to be pedantic here, but because I'm gifted,
it's very easy for me to bepedantic.
Giftedness is a neurodivergence.
That's a relatively recentfinding.
And we know the gifted brain isdifferent, right?
And one of the ways it'sdifferent speaks to exactly what
you're talking about.
So a neurotypical persondevelops synchronously.
(11:03):
So if they're 10 years old,they're 10 years old,
academically, intellectually,socially, emotionally, and
physically, they sort of hangtogether, right?
The more neurodivergent you are,your brain develops differently.
And since there's only so muchenergy to go around, what you
see is some parts of the brainare hyper advanced.
Some parts are age typical andsome parts are below, but if you
(11:26):
are 10 years old and you'reintellectually 15, being
socially 10 is going to feellike a deficit.
Because even though it's whereyou're right, where you're
supposed to be, you are so farafield in something else, it
feels that much worse.
You know, the example I oftenuse is the basketball player,
Shaquille O'Neal, Hall of Fame,basketball player, won an MVP,
(11:49):
won multiple championships,right?
The guy couldn't shoot freethrows.
And it was the sort of thinglike his career stats and in
free throws are actually not asbad as you'd think.
The narrative writers were like,oh my gosh, he can't make them
at all.
He had about 60 percent for hiscareer, which is a little bit
sub average, but notcatastrophic.
But because he was so good ateverything else, it felt like a
(12:13):
deficit.
So the trick here when you'reparenting a neurodivergent kid
or working with a neurodivergentemployee or dating a
neurodivergent person is youhave to meet them where they are
in all the places where theyare.
In gifted education we usuallycall this the rule of five.
Every gifted kid is five kidsbecause that's the asynchrony
(12:36):
levels, right?
So that 10 year old is going tobe intellectually 17,
academically 15, socially 10,physically nine, and emotionally
six.
Wow.
I figure out how to intervenewith that kid in all of those
levels.
And when I do workshops on this,I do the birthday party test.
I'm like, if your kid gotinvited to three birthday
(12:58):
parties and they all havestrengths and weaknesses.
What birthday party would yousend that kid to based on which
parts of your kid you're tryingto emphasize?
Right.
And that's parenting reallyfreaking hard when it comes to
racing.
Jim (13:12):
Wow.
No, you, you just blew my mindbecause you probably were
already thinking ahead when Isaid, I feel like my kid is, you
know, really mature in someareas, but not so much in
others.
I already was kind of cluinginto that.
But when you said that there aredifferent ages and levels,
emotional, academic, physical, Ilove how you put that that way
(13:34):
that, wow, that's, I'm going torun home and tell my wife about
that one.
Listen to this episode, Melissa,because it's going to help you
understand
Matt (13:43):
all your episodes, but you're like, no, but really
listen to this one.
Jim (13:46):
Wow.
That's awesome.
Thank you for that insight.
Matt (13:52):
There's something amazing about telling a kid, the things
that make you different are notreflective of some fundamental
flaw in who you are.
It's literally your brain worksdifferently.
Yeah.
And, and we can point to that ona brain scan.
We can say, here's what thatlooks like.
One of my favorite quotes.
(14:14):
in this diagnostic space, is totell someone you're a zebra, not
a weird horse, right?
There's a lot of people outthere walking around thinking
they're weird horses.
Cause horses kind of look likezebras and they kind of eat the
similar things.
And you wouldn't think they needdifferent things, but zebras
need a different environment.
They eat different food.
They have different predator.
(14:36):
Horses require differentenvironments, different foods as
well.
Being able to understand thedifferentiation.
allows you to adapt yourenvironments to set you up for
success rather than trying tocontinue to jam that square peg
through a round hole.
Ben (14:51):
That's good.
what advice do you have forthose individuals who may be the
zebras, but they're married to ahorse?
I was diagnosed in adulthoodwith ADHD and it's made so much
sense.
But I'm married to a woman whois not.
And there are times where I feellike I just cannot relate to
(15:13):
her.
And she has the hardest timeunderstanding where I'm coming
from in certain things.
Matt (15:21):
Neurodivergence Is always context, but it's never an
excuse.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean,honestly, I should print bumper
stickers.
Uh, it was like, if you're anADHD adult married to someone
who's not ADHD, your ADHD isalways going to be a context for
(15:41):
how you communicate as a couple,how you guys co parent, how you
shop for groceries, how you doyard work, everything.
Cause our brains controleverything we do.
And your wife might be sittingthere like, why are you putting
away the pots and pans when youneed to mow the lawn?
You're like, well, here's howit's going to work.
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
Now your wife might say, that'sbonkers.
(16:02):
Why would you put away the potsand pans if you need to mow the
lawn?
But if she can understand howyour brain works, then it allows
you guys to have a conversation.
Within the same parameters,Because a non neurodivergent
person doesn't have what I liketo call galaxy brain.
Let's go forward with theexample, I'm putting away the
pots and pans because if I putaway the pots and pans, then I
(16:25):
can clear the counter space.
When the counter space iscleared, I'll know what things I
need to buy at the grocerystore.
And the things I buy at thegrocery store, one of those
things is grass seed.
Because I know there was somepatches in the grass that need
to be done.
And once I mow the lawn, thenI'll put down the grass seed.
So it's like a logical thing,but most neurotypical people
(16:47):
look at things in a microscope,not a telescope.
So we're looking at it like agalaxy brain, whereas our poor
partners are like, just mow thefreaking lawn, dude.
I would all interconnect.
So.
So it's the sort of thing, ifyou can explain that kind of
thinking through the lens ofthis is how my brain works, I'm
(17:10):
not saying your partner is goingto love that, understand it,
throw you a ticker tape parade,but at least they know what's
going on and you can have areasonable conversation about
it.
Ben (17:21):
One of the things I try to stress for my daughter, who's
also neurodivergent, is that.
The world isn't always going tobe,, coming at you with kid
boxing gloves.
They're gonna have their realworld boxing gloves on and you
need to know how to exist in theworld.
how do you raise a child tothrive in that kind of a world?
Matt (17:44):
fundamentally, every good relationship, whether it's work
or, or romantic or sexual orparenting, whatever it is, it's
about communication,specifically what I like to call
meta communication, talkingabout talking.
What we can do is to codeswitch, right?
I can speak fluent neurotypicalif right?
(18:07):
When we got the mortgage for ourhome, I was like, hello, I am a
person who runs a business andmakes money.
And I will sign thesepaperworks, even though I'm
screaming on the inside, becausethis is boring as hell, but I
can do, I can do the thing.
This is why I wrote my book,right?
It's like, it's actually, it'sall about this idea.
(18:29):
of cracking the code, Ifneurodivergent people can crack
the code of what neurotypicalpeople are saying, thinking,
doing, then we've got a fightingchance not to sell ourselves out
and become neurotypical becausewe can't do that.
That's not possible.
When you name the thing that'sabout to happen, you give both
(18:50):
people a fighting chance toacclimate to what's about to
happen.
I'm sure you guys at some pointin your life have gotten a text
from your boss or your partnerwe need to talk, trigger the
rejection sensitivity dysphoriaimmediately.
Like what did I do?
But if you got a follow up text,not a big deal.
I'm just wondering about the X,Y, Z.
(19:10):
When you do that, everybody doesbetter.
You're putting the words incontext, right?
Everybody wins when we do itthat way.
That's good.
Jim (19:21):
It's interesting the way you put that.
If you are neurodivergent inthat way, you always have that
sort of feeling of panic,whereas someone who's not, it
can be a trauma response where,because I got fired.
Out of left field.
Now, anytime a boss texts me,I'm worried that it's the start
(19:45):
of that conversation again, butyou're indicating there that,,
for folks with that galaxybrain, that's every time they
get a text,
Matt (19:56):
the majority of them one of the sort of soft rules about
this is.
Neurodivergent people tend to bereally good at things that are
hard for people and really badat things that are easy for
people.
My autistic client, they'relike, just go make a friend.
(20:16):
Just go on a date.
They're like, how?
How do I do that?
But it's like, Oh my gosh, thisis a 5, 000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
I have it done by lunch.
Yeah.
And it's the sort of thing likethere's nobody better in a
crisis than an ADHD kid becausethey're like instant dopamine
burst.
I'm locked in.
(20:37):
I don't know if you guys watchFuturama, but it's like the
episode where fried drinks 300cups of coffee and he's moving
at lightning speed and puts outthe fire and saves everybody.
That's what being an ADHD or ina moment of crisis feels like.
God forbid my kid fell down thestairs.
I'd be like, I know what to do.
But if my daughter can't findher shoe, I'm like, ah, ah, ah,
(20:58):
ah, ah, ah.
It's so hard because it triggersour brain's function if it opens
the file folder of every singletime we've screwed up like that
in the past.
Which means all those feelingstidal wave us and it's, It can
be completely debilitating.
Ben (21:13):
As a neurodivergent person, I've noticed in myself the
tendency to interpret any andalmost all input and feedback as
being critical.
I mean, I can look atconversations that I have with
my boss, Hey, can we chat realquick?
Immediately my brain goes into,what did I do wrong?
(21:37):
And nine times out of ten, it'ssomething that I did right.
Or it's just a, hey, could youquick adjust this?
And with my wife as well lately,we've been moving, which is
insanely stressful.
There's boxes everywhere, andI'm having a hard time with
(21:58):
executive functioning.
When I'm stressed, anything fromher comes across as feeling
critical.
Is that a neurodivergent thing,or is that just a stress thing?
Matt (22:12):
It's probably both.
But if there's one thing thatunites all pieces of
neurodivergence, it's intensity.
We are intense of thought,intense of feeling, intense of
relationship, intense of speech.
We are just intense humans.
Whereas somebody else might golike, Oh, I wonder if my wife is
mad at me, your brain's going togo.
(22:33):
My wife's going to leave me,,And that's tough, right?
Because what we're doing in iswe're spending emotional energy
fighting battles that eitherhaven't happened.
Or don't exist.
Yeah, absolutely.
One thing I can say is one ADHDor to another focus on what is
not what if.
So you're walking through thehouse, you're like, I didn't put
(22:54):
those boxes away.
My wife's going to be so mad atme.
Another time I screwed up, lookat me being such an a hole, all
this awful stuff, that's allwhat ifs.
That's all you're creating afight that hasn't happened yet.
Stop.
And then you'd say, honey, Ididn't put the boxes away.
Now she might say, Yeah, I askedyou for the buses away.
(23:15):
Much more likely she's gonnapivot into a Okay, well, it's
fine.
Get it done as soon as you can.
Then you're moving to what isnot what if And the thing that
are our anxiety centers of ourbrains try to do is they try to
protect us by mentally Okay.
Rehearsing and refreshing allthese different outcomes are
(23:36):
brains like you're gonna be sosafe.
You're gonna be so preparedbecause our brains can't tell
the difference betweentheoretical scenarios and things
that are actually happening.
It costs us real emotionalenergy to deal with those
things.
So if you can step into thatspace with communication, be
like, Hey, I screwed this up.
I didn't get it done.
(23:56):
Or, you know, I know there wassomething I was supposed to do
and I don't remember what it is,right?
Then you are stepping into thatspace, you'll get the answer,
and you're moving from what ifto what is.
And then you'll be able tomarshal your energy to solve the
problem, rather than solutionsthat may not actually ever come
to pass.
Sure.
And you're like, Oh, great.
Well, I just repainted the denand brought us new begonias.
(24:20):
But my wife wanted me to go buysalt at the grocery store
because you're spending all thatmental energy solving problems
that you don't know what theactual target is.
The technical term for this isrejection sensitivity dysphoria.
Know what RSD is.
Name it.
Well, in psychology, we say wename it to tame it.
(24:41):
You start to ramp that up andyou're like, Oh, that's my RSD.
There it is.
It's like a bad penny.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben (24:50):
I'm writing that down as we speak.
Jim (24:55):
When we were talking about this beforehand, I was kind of
joking, this might be a great, agreat opportunity for a therapy
session for you, Ben, like withthe ADHD.
But again, in our last episode,we mentioned the kind of
emotional permanence thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Facebook reel or something likethat, where someone compared it
to object permanence, but thatis different than rejection
(25:18):
sensitivity disorder.
One is those feelings go away.
If not immediately presented,you're talking about something
different here.
Now, are those two thingsrelated?
Are they always present in thesame individual or kind of
distinguished those two for meand our listeners?
Matt (25:36):
It's an old exercise that I do when I'm working with
younger kids.
Take a piece of paper and youwrite your name on it.
And then for every negativeoutcome that happened to you
that day, you get yelled at byyour mom, the bus driver was
mean to you, you got bullied inthe hallway, crumble the paper a
little bit.
You're gonna end up with a ballof paper.
(25:57):
Squeeze it really tight.
And then think about all thenice things that happened to
you.
And for every nice thing, yousmooth the paper out a little
bit, you unball it.
Now, the reality of thissituation is that you're never
going to get the paper flat andstraight again, right?
It's always going to have thosecreases.
(26:17):
Now, if you're 97 percent asgood as you used to be, that's
still pretty good.
But the more neurodivergent youare, the more you feel those
creases, the more you feel thosecrinkles, those tears, because
of our emotional intensity,because of this sort of inherent
Since we're walking around withwhere I don't fit into the
world, we, we get cut deeper andit's one of the toughest parts
(26:44):
of being neurodivergent becauseif our emotions are aligned with
the people we want to be, thenthere's nothing better than
experiencing those emotions.
I always joke, like you want tobring an ADHD person to a
wedding as your guest, right?
Because they're going to be at a13.
It's going to be the best DJ,the best open bar, the best
(27:05):
desserts, the best dresses.
My suit is fantastic.
Everything is wonderful.
That's when our emotions arealigned in a positive direction.
But unfortunately, the otherside of that sword does cut you.
Where neurodivergent peopledon't get sad, they get
despondent.
They don't get angry, they getfurious.
They don't get anxious, theyhave panic attacks, right?
(27:27):
It's just, we're feeling thosefeelings a lot deeper.
any feedback is going to on itsown cost a little bit more, but
because they cost more, theytend to stack up it's never just
one thing that gets you.
It's the 11th thing, right?
But for a typical personprobably can put those 11 things
(27:49):
in 11 different boxes.
neurodivergent person isprobably putting those maybe
eight in one box.
By the time you get to the thirdone or the other box, you're
already in trouble.
Ben (27:59):
Right.
In times of stress, in my case,that's moving, for the
neurodivergent person, they hearmessages of, Well just practice
mindfulness and that'll calmyour anxiety.
Sometimes it works, sometimesit's that simple, sometimes it
(28:20):
doesn't.
Sometimes it makes it worse.
What are some of yourrecommendations for those who
are neurodivergent?
What's the best way to handleand hopefully eliminate stress
to some degree.
Matt (28:34):
Don't set your expectations on elimination.
In in mental health, we alwaystalk about things through the
lens of what we call the bigthree frequency, intensity and
duration.
It is impossible to have zerostress.
True.
What you want to do is havestress less often for shorter
periods of time, especially whenthe context is something
stressful, like moving.
(28:56):
You know, one of my clients isin the process of getting
divorced right now, and she'slike, I am so stressed.
Why am I so stressed?
I'm like, you are gettingdivorced.
Doctor, it hurts when I punchmyself in the head, but our
brains tend to skip those steps,So we're going to stop reset,
I'm going to answer yourquestion about mindfulness with
(29:17):
a great quote.
Everybody should meditate 10minutes a day unless you're
really busy.
And then you should meditate anhour a day.
Now, I think it's a great quotebecause when we get busy and
stressed, our self care thingsare the first thing to go out
the window.
My college kids right now,they're like, Oh man, it's like.
(29:38):
finals, man.
Like I can't shower.
I've got finals.
Like you need to shower more.
Cause it's fine.
I promise you it's a thing.
And it's the sort of thing, likethe more stressed out we get,
the more we're going to skipthose steps.
So those things have to becomesacred.
They have to become, I'm goingto shower.
(29:58):
I'm going to eat three meals aday.
I'm going to do whatever my selfcare thing is.
One of my long term clients, hecame to me once.
He was like, everyone tells me Igot to do yoga.
I got to do freaking yoga.
I got to do yoga because yoga isgoing to calm me down.
I was like, that's cool.
Do you want to do yoga?
He's like, no, I hate yoga then.
(30:19):
And here's the crazy thoughtdon't do yoga.
It's not the yoga.
It's the, I've set aside a spacewhere I'm doing a thing that is
calming my brain down, right?
For me, it's going for a walk.
I put on the music, usually apodcast.
Last time it was you guys.
So that's great.
Awesome.
Play a little Pokemon go.
I have a great, you know, abouta mile loop in my neighborhood.
(30:42):
I can do two of those loops in ahalf hour, come back to my
house, have a drink of water,see my next therapy client.
Bing, bang, boom.
My tank is much more filled forgoing on that mile walk.
And it would be doing 30 minutesof yoga because I hate yoga.
Now for the people for whom yogais great, keep doing it.
Just give yourself permission.
(31:03):
If it's Tai Chi, let it be TaiChi.
If it's martial arts, if it'spainting, if it's.
If it's going to a rage room,one of my clients and they're
very financially well off, theygo to a rage room every Friday
at one o'clock and, if you'vegot the money and the
wherewithal, do it, right?
And that's the thing.
That's more therapeutic thanyoga would ever be for that
(31:27):
person.
Any good intervention startswith the intersection of
interest.
What are you interested in, andwhat is available to you?
You might be like, Ah, yes, I'minterested in rock climbing.
I'm going to go climb a rockwall.
If there's not a rock wallwithin 40 miles of you, probably
not the best intervention.
(31:49):
What could we do instead?
How do we supplement that,right?
That's where we start beingcreative and clever.
That's how we solve the problem.
Jim (31:58):
You said a couple of things that triggered in me, the
disparity between neurotypicaland neurodiverse, because I find
a lot of times.
The difference in response fromneurotypical is just what is
socially normal and acceptableat the time.
A lot of people, if you toldthem every Friday, I go to a
(32:21):
rage room, they would think,wow, you're crazy.
Like, right.
What kind of rage do you have inyou?
Or as a great example, you justtalked about Pokemon go, you
stinking nerd.
I can't believe that you wouldwaste your time going out and
catching Pokemon.
And yet the person who said thatis the same guy who has all the
(32:45):
stats of his favorite footballplayers memorized down to the T
and, uh, It watches every singletime it's on and is reading all
these different articles, waymore nerdy and immersed in
football than you are inPokemon.
And yet you're the nerd and theyare celebrated as a man.
(33:08):
There's that hypocrisy insociety that I actually came
back at somebody like that onetime.
I'm like, how is what I do anydifferent than you?
Painting your chest and go anddo a Vikings game.
And he's like, why are you sosensitive, dude?
Matt (33:22):
In high school, I did high level soccer and I did musical
theater, you know?
So I was Finn Hudson before FinnHudson was Finn Hudson.
And that's right.
I just get a glee reference.
Hot topical pop culture guys.
Um, yeah, you're on it.
And I'm telling you, like.
I wish my small town growing upto have the arts.
(33:43):
It wasn't until I got to highschool where I was able to do
this and people would be like,dude, so you're gay.
I'm like, ah, yes, because I'm aguy who does theater.
Therefore I'm gay.
I was like, first off theatergirls are very pretty and
they're very flexible becausethey're all dancers.
And they're also like justwildly aroused all the time.
But no, no, no, please go takethe field hockey girls.
(34:06):
Like you're stupid.
Right.
But it was the nineties and gaywas a slur, right?
It was like, Oh, you're gay,very clever.
But it was like, you couldn'tfit in that space.
I used to sit on the bus.
With my disc man, Cause it wasthe 90s.
(34:27):
Of course my mix is right.
Um, but they were like Broadwaymega mixes and I was terrified
that people would hear them.
And then I would be mocked orthrown in a river or whatever.
You didn't realize like, yo,man, you catch that new Lincoln
park.
I'm like, first off, I loveLincoln park.
I think the park's awesome.
(34:48):
And sometimes I was listening toLinkin Park or Jay Z or
whatever.
But most of the time, the thingthat was getting me the most
hype was the Joseph and theAmazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Megamix.
And screw you if you're not downwith that.
Now that's 40 year old me.
Well, my nerdiness, 16 year oldme crawled in a hole, Oh,
(35:10):
absolutely.
And, and so we say this to themen out there who are secretly
listening to showtunes.
Or won't admit that they LARP onweekends, or, you know, have
nine unfinished Harry Potterfanfics in their hard drive.
Those communities will welcomeyou in a more authentic,
(35:32):
meaningful way than being inyour company's fantasy football
league ever will.
And you don't have to choose.
No one's asking you to pick aside, but give yourself
permission to do the things thatmake your soul happy, because
that's going to pay for itself athousand times over.
(35:54):
In a way that going along togetting along never will.
Jim (36:00):
We said it on an earlier episode.
Everybody needs to go to a Renfair at some point or another,
Matt (36:05):
Why would you go to Ren fair?
It only has sharp weapons,wagons of mead and corsets.
You're right.
That's not for anybody.
You should definitely not gosave more Ren fair for me.
Right.
That's right.
Right.
My goodness.
Jim (36:20):
Turkey legs.
You forgot the turkey legs.
Matt (36:22):
I forgot about the turkey.
Sorry, usually I just go deepinto the flagons of mead.
And you, you'll get used to theword flagon enough.
It's a very good word.
You're right.
The more we let masculinity bedefined by the monoculture.
The more we lose the diversityof thought, feeling and
experience that makes the worldmore interesting and more
(36:46):
meaningful.
And frankly, if you're listeningto this from a business
perspective, more productive.
Yeah.
Do you want every man in youroffice to be like, you got it
boss.
We should put a clock radio init boss.
You know, let's get an app forthis boss.
It's going to be the atypicalguys who are like, listen, the
gay community is never going tobuy this because of this reason
(37:07):
that I know, cause I'm gay.
Or, you know, Hey, if you madethis small tweak, you would tap
into the nerd market and nerdshave money to burn.
That's the diversity of thought?
That's why neurodivergence isevolution, We are moving in a
direction of, of not just onlyeating vanilla ice cream.
(37:29):
But somebody who's putting baconand maple and bourbon and ice
cream.
And I want to put that guy onthe express lane to heaven.
Right.
Cause it's like, yes, why did wenot do that earlier?
And those are all really good.
Right.
So that's the thing.
That's what makes a more robustand interesting and productive
world.
Ben (37:50):
You were talking about the different kinds of ice cream and
mixing the bourbon and thedifferent flavors.
So when you go to the gasstations.
What kind of slurpee are yougetting?
Matt (38:00):
Well, as a proud New Jerseyan, I let somebody else
pump my gas and then I go in andget the thing.
Um, I've never shared thispublicly.
You do 80 percent coke, a splashof Sprite, and then the rest
cherry.
Absolutely.
The lime in the Sprite picks upthe cherry, and then you get the
best cherry Coke.
(38:20):
You may take that with you,share it with your friends,
paying a small royalty fee of99.
99.
Jim (38:26):
You've, you've said a lot of valuable things here today,
but that one may be the mostimportant.
Ben (38:31):
I'm telling you.
It's true.
I figured you were a mixologistwhen it came to that gas station
machine.
So I'm glad to see I was provencorrect.
Matt (38:41):
And I, and I was a bartender for many years and I
was very good at it.
And it's the sort of thing wherepart of being neurodivergent,
right, is putting yourself insituations that play to your
strengths.
So as a gifted ADHD or who'svery social, bartending is like
the perfect job for me.
No kidding.
Cause I'm small talk.
(39:03):
I'm talking to people.
I'm throwing drinks.
I'm great at it.
And then one summer, I was 20.
everybody else quit or gotfired.
And the owner came up to me,he's like, you're managing the
bar.
And I was like, I'm what now I'm20.
I, I couldn't sign for theliquor deliveries, right?
Like, because I was old enough.
We talked about something thatdoesn't play into my strengths,
(39:23):
organization, scheduling,ordering.
It was terrible.
And thank God they foundsomebody pretty quickly.
Maybe the bar would have goneunder.
I would have been like, okay,new policy.
Everything is free.
I'm very scared.
So if you're out there andyou're like, I hate my job.
This is not making my soulhappy.
It's probably because it's notthe right fit for you.
(39:45):
Neurotypical people can sort ofdo more stuff.
They have a wider band oftolerance.
Our bands of tolerance arenarrower, but they're deeper.
So if there's the thing youlove, you can do any version of
that thing.
Give me an ADHD or who's inoutside sales, right?
They're just like, I'll go tothat conference.
(40:06):
I'll go, I'll go to a networkingevent.
I'll go talk to that strangerand they're going to get you
business.
But if you have that personworking in the freaking mail
room, then they're going to be aless happy employee.
They're going to make you lessmoney and you're probably gonna
have to replace them sooner.
So it's like, wow, why would wenot do this?
Ben (40:27):
Are there certain career fields that.
Neurodivergent people typicallyexcel in.
Is that a thing?
What are your thoughts on thatpiece?
Matt (40:36):
Once again, it starts with interest and availability.
What I find is that if you movealong the pathway Of the things
that interest you, theopportunities that become
available are much more alignedwith the person and professional
you need to be.
In my twenties, I thought I wasgoing to be a standup comic, I
did improv exercises.
(40:56):
I did a lot of standup inBoston.
Thank God YouTube didn't existthen.
That's all I'm going to sayabout that.
Oh man.
Being around theater people hasalways made me happy and it made
me a better public speaker.
And, you know, a decade laterI'm opening rooms where I'm
talking to 1800 professionalsfall all over Europe and
thinking to myself, like, thankGod I did all that standup.
(41:20):
Cause you know how to use amicrophone, you know, how to use
silence, you know, how to use astage, you know, you may never
make it as a professionalcosplayer.
Though I would argue the barrierto entry to that has never been
lower.
Thank God for the internet, butmaybe Star Trek isn't the thing
that pays your mortgage, butmaybe your interest in Star Trek
(41:41):
makes you the best scienceteacher ever, or maybe you keep
your job as an accountant, butyou volunteer at the sci fi
museum on weekends.
You don't have to center yourinterest in your life, though.
It's obviously great if you can,but there's room on the table
for all the different dishes.
And I think that's the thingthat a lot of people forget,
(42:03):
like starting a podcast justjust to pick an example out of
the sky.
Jim (42:08):
That's right.
It's filling a need for both ofus for sure.
Ben (42:11):
It has, yeah, in ways I didn't necessarily expect.
It's been really good.
Over emotional ness.
Talk to me about that becauseit's something that I experience
pretty often.
You mentioned the intensityearlier.
That's very much what it is.
It's like I feel the emotion,but then I feel it reverberate
(42:35):
and it ripples into absolutelyevery aspect of my life.
I just feel things very deeply.
And sometimes the amount oftime, it's almost as if I, I
feel things for too long,according to how others may feel
and interpret experiences.
(42:56):
So what's the.
the cause for that overemotional ness and, what are
some suggestions on how toharness that and, keep it from
spilling over too much intoone's life?
Matt (43:12):
Great questions.
Let me ask you this.
You know anybody who's lactoseintolerant?
Uh, yes.
So would you say that they can'teat the right amount of milk or
dairy?
Sure.
Right?
I mean, I mean if they did, itwould just cause unpleasant
experiences.
(43:32):
Absolutely.
So you wouldn't come up tosomeone who's lactose intolerant
and say like, dude, you don'tneed enough ice cream.
It's kind of silly, don't youthink?
Sure.
Can you tell I've used thisexample before?
So when people say you'reoverreacting or you're over
emotional you're layering injudgment into an emotional
(43:54):
experience.
If you take one thing away fromtonight, guys, I want you to
think about this.
Get rid of the word should.
Get rid of the word should fromyour vocabulary because should
is all the possibility of couldplus shame.
Say things like overreact orover emotional.
What you're saying is myemotions are wrong.
No emotion is good or bad.
(44:16):
Emotions are comfortable oruncomfortable and that comfort
is based into their fit to theenvironment.
Now you might You might bewalking down the street and see
a squirrel get hit by a car,right?
And you might be like, oh man,that sucks when that happens.
But then Jim might be like, boohoo! I found a dead squireel! It
(44:39):
would be out of sync to yourreaction.
But the best thing aboutfeelings is they can't be wrong.
You can say, I wish my feelingsweren't so big.
I don't understand why myfeelings are so big.
But your reaction is yourreaction, and it begins and ends
that sort of self compassion,and you can start there, then
(45:01):
you're in great shape.
That's a sort of, the broad,that's the psychologist in me
talking.
Sure, yeah.
The brain nerd in me goes, okay,so we have a limbic system in
our brain, it's our emotionalcircuitry.
And then a prefrontal cortex inthe front part of our head,
that's essentially the brakesystem on the engine that is our
brain.
The one of the things thatalmost all neurodivergences have
(45:24):
in common is a weaker prefrontalcortex.
And prefrontal cortex, among itsmany jobs, it's all about
behavior inhibition.
So it's stopping before youstart.
You know, the ADHD brain isn'tready.
Aim.
Fire.
It's ready.
Fire.
Aim.
Yep.
Right.
That's your not doing its job.
(45:44):
So when you've got aneurodivergent brain, and this
applies to gifted kids too, isyou have these giant feelings
and these giant feelings lead tothoughts and those giant
thoughts lead to behaviors.
And the part of your brainthat's supposed to say, hold on,
is that a good idea?
You've already run past it.
You bang your head against a,against a doorframe, go and
(46:05):
punch a wall as hard as you can.
And somebody goes, why'd you dothat?
And you're like, I don't evenknow, because big feelings lead
to big behaviors without thatthought check in there.
The coolest thing is that theprefrontal cortex is like a
muscle.
the more we work it, thestronger it gets, the stronger
it gets.
More inhibition skills will getback and you can regulate
(46:26):
yourself a little bit more andbe more successful in managing
that stuff.
Jim (46:33):
Some of the conversation you were having over masculinity
in our society and how youreally want to see this more
neuro diverse world be somethingthat's accepted.
Now you're talking about thisanalogy of lactose intolerance
there, where there's even givingourselves grace for just being
different than other people.
(46:53):
I know kind of your main statedgoal is just making.
The world more friendly towardsneurodivergent people.
So outside of starting a podcastto help talk through some of
these issues, what are some waysthat you can do that with the
society that in a lot of waysreally is resistant to accepting
(47:15):
that power?
Everyone isn't neurotypical.
Matt (47:20):
The best thing I can say there is you can't make other
people get it, but you canconsistently present them with
that information, right?
So if at that point, like ifthey don't read the PowerPoint,
if they don't read my book, ifthey don't listen to the
podcast.
That's on them, but you havepointed them in the direction of
(47:42):
the information they need.
I tell every parent I work withand every adult I work with in
the workplace, make a little onepager about your kid or
yourself.
Here's my strengths.
Here's my weaknesses.
Here's where I do well.
Here's how I don't do well.
These are the things thatmotivate me.
These are the things that makeme shut down.
And if you can hand that to yourboss, HR manager, teacher,
(48:03):
principal, whatever, you'resaying I don't know how much
you're going to follow this.
But this is the cheat sheet forme.
This is the way to work smarter.
Not harder with me.
Early on when I was dating mywife, my best friend was like,
Matt doesn't get angry often,but you can tell he's angry when
he gets really, really quiet.
That's true.
(48:24):
If I go quiet, you know, I'mangry.
And there was a couple of weeksafter that, I was like, stomping
around angry about something.
My wife is like, This is whatMitchell is talking about.
You're mad.
I was like, I am mad.
Oh no.
I've been spotted.
Damn it.
All we can do is educate andthen you find the environments
that are the most affirming theycan be.
(48:45):
And that might be changing jobs.
It might be.
advocating with HR or your childstudy team at school.
It might be going to work foryourself.
It might be you white knuckle itthrough the week, but on Friday
night.
You guys get together and youplay Settlers of Catan for six
hours and then all that angstmelts away because you found a
(49:09):
way to be back with your people.
One of my colleagues, shedescribes it as the take off
your bra moment.
She's like, no woman wants towear a bra.
We have to, for reasons, but youget home and you reach in, you
yank it off and you thring itacross the apartment.
And that's when you know, you'reback amongst your people.
But for me, it's, it's the takeoff my tie moment.
(49:30):
And it's like, I'm back to beingme.
I've taken off my costume.
Yeah.
Then taking that energy andplugging it into people who also
don't want to wear ties or bras.
Yeah, you get to benefit fromall that social grace without
having to play as much of the,of the game driving society.
Jim (49:52):
I think we've got an episode title there, Ben fling
off your bra with Dr.
Matt,
Ben (49:56):
there you go.
There it is.
Matt (49:58):
That was my dating profile.
Jim (49:59):
Uh, we want to give you some time to plug your book or
if you have an ask of ourlisteners or if you have just an
insight that you want to shareas a ending thought for our
podcast listeners,
Matt (50:14):
I will say this, the thing that gives me the most hope for
the future is that thisgeneration has normalized more
ways to be more things than Ithink existed when we were kids.
There are more ways to bemasculine, there are more ways
to be feminine, there's moreways to be a person.
(50:36):
And that's awesome.
But if you're sitting therewatching this new generation
thinking it's left me behind, ithasn't.
We can ride in that slipstream,right?
Be the person you want to be.
The best time to start somethingwas 10 years ago, the second
best time is right now.
So if you've been putting offlearning Klingon or playing the
(50:59):
theremin or learning how thetheremin goes, then today is the
day,?
The old ways are broken and youdon't need to play those games
anymore,?
And that's, that's the way thatyou're going to be the best
version of yourself.
Whatever that thing is going tolook like.
And if that message and theother stuff we've talked about
(51:21):
today resonates with you, thenplease do buy my book.
That would make me and mypublisher very happy, but really
my favorite thing is to go outand give talks in the community.
I mean, I've spoken to schoolsand companies and conferences
all over the world, and there'sjust nothing better than getting
in a big room full of people andsaying, here's a story.
We're going to laugh.
(51:41):
We're going to cry.
You're going to leave with sometechniques and strategies.
If I can make your life a littlebit better, then that's what
gets me out of bed in themorning.
There's lots of ways tointerface with me, whether it's
for therapy or buying my bookor, having me come out to your
organization, but please feelfree to reach out and we'll find
out what's the best fit for you.
Ben (52:01):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here.
Thank you for reaching out.
Just on a personal note ofcuriosity, I know you and Jim
spoke towards the beginning ofputting all of this together,
but how did you hear of Real MenHug?
Was it just an internet search,or how did we get here today?
(52:22):
I was on another, I think, Ithink I was on the Men's Therapy
podcast.
And, and he shared out that hewas a big fan of you guys.
And I was like, Oh man, well, ify'all are good enough for him,
then I should reach out.
And it's since I reached out,you know, a lot of people I like
(52:44):
and respect personally andprofessionally have been like,
they're up to something reallygood here.
So it kind of makes me feel likeI got it on the ground floor.
You know, it's like when you seethe local band.
And you're like, oh man, theysigned to a label.
You're like, I called it.
Right.
So don't forget me in threeyears when you're, you know,
leading Spotify chart.
(53:06):
You can have me back.
Jim (53:07):
If we're leading charts, we'll have you back on for sure.
Ben (53:12):
It's just so crazy to hear you say that because I feel like
we should be saying that to you.
You've got all of this exposureand connections and whatnot.
So to hear you speak of us ashighly esteemed, it, it's.
It goes a long way.
Yeah.
So thank you.
Appreciate it.
Matt (53:29):
As I'm fond of saying, it's easy to say when it's true
and, uh, As a guy who's tryingto navigate in a world that
feels increasingly hostile toguys like us, I want to amplify
this, whatever platform andstrength I have, because more
people need to hear the stuffyou guys are talking about.
(53:49):
Cause there's a lot of men outthere who are just thinking the
way the world is, isn't for me,but what other way is there,
right?
I mean, why do we think thesuicide rates are so high for
middle aged men?
Yeah.
Is you realize.
I'm not the high school footballstar or wrestler or whatever
(54:09):
that I was.
I don't want to be that guyanymore, but what else is there
for me?
That's why this stuff is soimportant.
I'm always going to be a childpsychologist first.
But men's mental health is ahuge concern.
It's a rapidly increasingproblem and we're not throwing
resources at it because there'sstill this idea that we should
rub some dirt on it or buck up.
(54:32):
And if men out there are hearingthree men being vulnerable and
open, then, we might not just bechanging hearts and minds.
We might be saving lives.
Ben (54:42):
Yeah, that's powerful.
Jim (54:44):
Dr.
Matt, we are definitely going tostay in touch and I'm excited to
see more out of you and shareand listen to some more of what
you have to say.
I am not just saying this.
I am excited to purchase yourbook as well.
I don't know if that's I don'tknow if that's already out yet
or not, or the, it saidSeptember on your web page.
So I'm not sure if that's stillthe case.
Matt (55:05):
So pre orders are going to start in about a month and then
physical copies in September.
And I'm going on a bit of a booktour this fall.
I'll be doing state giftedconferences in Alabama,
Tennessee, Indiana, andIllinois.
and maybe Texas and we'll seewhat, you know, where, where
else my travels take me.
Jim (55:26):
Awesome, I think we're gonna wrap up.
Matt (55:29):
Let's do this again sometime.
Seriously, you guys are so easyto talk to.
Ben (55:32):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
Jim (55:34):
For sure.
Thanks so much.
Ben (55:36):
All right.
We'll see you, Dr.
Matt.
Jim (55:40):
Wow.
I honestly was blown away.
Actually being able to sit downand chat with him.
That's the first time where Ihave hopped onto my phone and
written something down.
Cause I wanted to remember itfor later.
I'm like, I got to talk to mywife about this.
Ben (55:56):
It was so good.
Jim (55:57):
So good.
Ben (55:58):
There were so many things that I wrote down and Jim wrote
down.
So Dr.
Matt, thank you for joining us.
That was just an incredibleconversation.
Real men hug and they alsoapparently drink coke because
even Dr.
Matt was drinking a coke
Jim (56:15):
was he
Ben (56:15):
he was see this is my neuro divergence.
I don't miss a beat I remembereverything
Jim (56:24):
real men hug, but they also move from what if what is That
was phenomenal.
Oh my gosh.
Mind blowing.
Dr.
Matt, you get to listen to someof these comments at the end
that we don't edit out and justhear us fangirling over all of
(56:45):
your knowledge.
So thanks so much again.
Welcome to real man, hug a podcast for men and the women
who love them.
I'm Ben and I'm Jim.
Welcome.
Welcome to the show.
Jim (00:13):
Well, um, welcome.
Come one and all neurotypicalneurodivergent and otherwise
there's a place for you today.
I don't know what would be inbetween neurotypical and
neurodivergent, but if that'syou, welcome, we are so excited
(00:34):
to have Dr.
Matthew Zekreski, a.
k.
a.
Dr.
Matt, joining us today.
He's not just a psychologist,he's also a seasoned speaker and
does a lot with neurodiversity.
He also runs a private practicecalled the neurodiversity
collective.
He's got articles in psychologyjournals, and even recently was
(00:55):
quoted in the New York times, anarticle about us, millennial
parents.
So excited to have on the showtoday, dr.
Matt, thank you so much forjoining us.
Matt (01:07):
Thank you.
I, I have.
The good fortune to be on a lotof podcasts, but this is one I'm
really looking forward to.
This is who I am.
Real man hug.
Like, yes, let's do it.
Let's talk about this.
Jim (01:19):
I'm curious to ask.
How you got into the field thatyou're in, from everything that
I know about you, it sounds likeit's a passion for yours.
So why neurodiversity, why thepublic speaking?
It seems like it's really apassion for you.
And I can't imagine there's notsome specific personal anecdote
(01:39):
behind what drove you to dothat.
Matt (01:41):
we're going to talk origin story then, right?
Let's do it.
I was diagnosed as gifted insecond grade, right?
That's when they identified me.
And a lot of American kids getidentified as gifted in second
grade.
And I was so smart that nobodyrealized I had ADHD until high
school when the work got harderthan I was smart.
Right.
All of a sudden you couldn'tforget about the test and study
(02:03):
for it.
Seven minutes before the classand still get a 93 because that
nobody cares.
Nobody cares that you had badpractice.
If you get an A, they're like,Oh, and all of a sudden I was
just underwater.
And I remember thinking like,there's gotta be a better way,
but you've got to learn studyskills and organization skills
and asking for help.
on the fly in high school whenthe stakes are very high, when
(02:28):
your neurotypical peers spentelementary school, middle school
learning those skills.
So I was like, let me step intothat from a academic
understanding space.
But the more I got into it, themore I realized that the things
that really made my lifechallenging as a kid was the
social emotional.
(02:48):
Sure.
And I realized I was perfectlypositioned as somebody who could
help kids develop those skills.
I think like a lot ofneurodivergent kids, everything
was badly bullied.
You know, eighth grade was justhell on a plate for me.
You know, I remember saying tomy parents, both of whom are
(03:08):
clinical psychologists, if Iever do what you guys do for a
living, I'm going to do my bestto make sure this doesn't happen
to anybody else.
It is a passion, right?
It's personal and professionalfor me.
Jim (03:20):
Since we kind of teased at it a little bit, that article
that you wrote about millennialparents.
In the article, you were quotedtalking about social media,
having some of the answers, butit's also part of the problem.
I won't go and read the wholething, but you're basically
talking about that circle ofcomparison is getting bigger.
(03:40):
We just talked about that in ourlast episode about social media
and how much different it is toparent today.
So let's start there.
I'm kind of curious to hear alittle bit more from you on
that.
Matt (03:53):
It's great that we have as much knowledge as we do, but
sometimes I wonder if it's more.
Bandwidth than our brains canhandle because you've got this
brain that has a finite room ofinformation, but then you're
seeing 97 different parentingaccounts just on bottle feeding
and then 109 parenting accountson how to maintain that spark
(04:17):
with your partner and 2916 aboutthe right kind of preschool for
your kid and it becomes analysisby paralysis, right?
I mean, there's too muchinformation.
Not to mention that comparisoneffect.
I was talking about this with mywife earlier, and there's this
aggregate data that happens insocial media because our brain,
(04:39):
our brains take one chunk ofsocial media time as a single
iteration.
So if you're flipping throughyour Instagram feed, and you see
11 of your friends are onvacation right now, now you
might have 6000 friends onInstagram.
But your brain's going 11different friends are on
vacation right now.
How come I'm not on vacation?
Why are all these people inAruba?
(05:00):
Why am I not there?
Because we have more access tomore information.
Whereas that was the thing that30 years ago, when we were kids,
you would have found out on thefirst day of school, like, dude,
you went to Aruba this summer?
No way.
And then you thought about it,right?
So this sort of real time data,it serves as an aggregate,
(05:21):
right?
We're comparing our lives towhat everybody else is doing.
And it's hard to do that and notfind yourself in a power down
position compared to everybodyelse.
Ben (05:30):
Is the answer then to just turn off social media, or how do
we exist in a world where thatis so prevalent?
Matt (05:39):
We should all throw our phones in the ocean.
Uh, no, that's not possible,right?
You know, and as primarily achild psychologist, right, one
of the things I talk to parentsa lot is screen time limits.
It's a whole thing because youcannot be a student in 2024
without a laptop, right?
Whether it's a Chromebook orfamily computer, right?
(06:01):
You need the internets to dohomework.
The problem is, is the internetalso has Minecraft and Overwatch
and.
The chat rooms and Reddit anddiscord and a gazillion other
things, right?
So the solution is also theproblem.
And the harder we work asparents to try and keep that
(06:22):
stuff away, the more our kidsare inspired to find them.
How do you coexist?
it's kind of about learning toaccept an uncomfortable date
time.
I use my phone for social media.
Yeah.
For things that enhance mypractice, enhance my speaking
options.
It's like, oh, that's a prettycool conference.
I should apply to that one.
And sometimes it's like, oh,that inspires me or motivates
(06:44):
me.
I'm feeling it.
But over time I've gotten muchmore aggressive about curating
my feed.
And it's like, listen, I don'tneed to see, you know, the doom
and gloom.
I don't need to see theseheartbreaking accounts or people
who don't align with mepolitically, socially, morally,
(07:05):
whatever that might be.
You know, so if there's abenefit to the feed, it's that
we get choice in there.
It's about being intentionalabout what you consume and when.
I've set up a little rule formyself.
During the first Trumpadministration, I found myself
doom scrolling a lot.
(07:25):
Just there's gotta be good news.
There's gotta be good news inhere somewhere.
There's gotta be good news inhere somewhere that I set myself
up a rule that I was like, I canbe on this site for as many
minutes as there are letters inthe thing.
So for cnn.
com three minutes.
If I can't find it on CNN inthree minutes, it's not worth
knowing right now, it willabsolutely come up, right?
(07:48):
Instagram, eight minutes.
Facebook, eight minutes,?
And thank God they changedTwitter to X.
I'm like, Oh, I owe you oneminute.
Like Chris Evans said today, Oh,that's very clever.
Okay.
And I'm out of time.
Right?
That may not work for you, butjust having a metric in your
head builds a framework abouthow we engage with the content
(08:11):
with intention.
And the intention is the biggestthing I think that drives,
Maintaining sane limits aroundthe content where we're sort of
fire hosing.
Cause otherwise I think it'sgoing to swallow us whole.
Ben (08:25):
Comparison is the thief of joy.
And Dr.
Matt, what you were saying aboutsocial media, I would take it a
step further and say, socialmedia is the thief of joy,
because honestly, that's so muchof what it is, is comparison.
You're comparing perspectives onnews, on different media
outlets, like Jim talked abouton the previous episode,
(08:47):
frankly, it's exhausting.
Jim (08:50):
For sure.
Really, that was the heart ofthis podcast, not specifically
social media, but just how Benand I are talking as friends and
trying to figure out how do wefit in this world where it seems
like everybody else is tellingus we should be something else
or doing something else andfalling short on some of those
(09:12):
comparisons.
So what do you do with kids?
This is speaking from personalexperience with me.
And now I've got two gifted kidsand in some ways they are very
mature for their age and then.
In other ways, as they're tryingto develop from a social
standpoint, there's a little bitmore refining, obviously that
(09:35):
can happen, but something that Iactually have talked to them a
lot about is adults don't treatkids like adults.
And I know that sounds like afunny thing to say, but I, I
mean, to extend that beyondalmost like, They don't treat
them human or like they havethoughts or rights or whatever.
(09:56):
And so my kids sometimes getpushed aside because they're
treating them like someone who'sdevelopmentally at that age and
they get so frustrated becausethey're not given the time or
respect or dignity that theyfeel like they deserve.
You have that grandma that, thatwants to hug you or someone who
(10:18):
says, Hey, now we don't.
Speak that way, but then theyturn around and do it.
There's a hundred different waysthat adults are really
hypocritical with kids.
How do you help some of these,whether it's gifted or
neurodivergent kids that justfeel like, not only do I not fit
in, but now I have to play bythese hypocritical rules that
these adults are throwing at me.
Matt (10:40):
You're not to be pedantic here, but because I'm gifted,
it's very easy for me to bepedantic.
Giftedness is a neurodivergence.
That's a relatively recentfinding.
And we know the gifted brain isdifferent, right?
And one of the ways it'sdifferent speaks to exactly what
you're talking about.
So a neurotypical persondevelops synchronously.
(11:03):
So if they're 10 years old,they're 10 years old,
academically, intellectually,socially, emotionally, and
physically, they sort of hangtogether, right?
The more neurodivergent you are,your brain develops differently.
And since there's only so muchenergy to go around, what you
see is some parts of the brainare hyper advanced.
Some parts are age typical andsome parts are below, but if you
(11:26):
are 10 years old and you'reintellectually 15, being
socially 10 is going to feellike a deficit.
Because even though it's whereyou're right, where you're
supposed to be, you are so farafield in something else, it
feels that much worse.
You know, the example I oftenuse is the basketball player,
Shaquille O'Neal, Hall of Fame,basketball player, won an MVP,
(11:49):
won multiple championships,right?
The guy couldn't shoot freethrows.
And it was the sort of thinglike his career stats and in
free throws are actually not asbad as you'd think.
The narrative writers were like,oh my gosh, he can't make them
at all.
He had about 60 percent for hiscareer, which is a little bit
sub average, but notcatastrophic.
But because he was so good ateverything else, it felt like a
(12:13):
deficit.
So the trick here when you'reparenting a neurodivergent kid
or working with a neurodivergentemployee or dating a
neurodivergent person is youhave to meet them where they are
in all the places where theyare.
In gifted education we usuallycall this the rule of five.
Every gifted kid is five kidsbecause that's the asynchrony
(12:36):
levels, right?
So that 10 year old is going tobe intellectually 17,
academically 15, socially 10,physically nine, and emotionally
six.
Wow.
I figure out how to intervenewith that kid in all of those
levels.
And when I do workshops on this,I do the birthday party test.
I'm like, if your kid gotinvited to three birthday
(12:58):
parties and they all havestrengths and weaknesses.
What birthday party would yousend that kid to based on which
parts of your kid you're tryingto emphasize?
Right.
And that's parenting reallyfreaking hard when it comes to
racing.
Jim (13:12):
Wow.
No, you, you just blew my mindbecause you probably were
already thinking ahead when Isaid, I feel like my kid is, you
know, really mature in someareas, but not so much in
others.
I already was kind of cluinginto that.
But when you said that there aredifferent ages and levels,
emotional, academic, physical, Ilove how you put that that way
(13:34):
that, wow, that's, I'm going torun home and tell my wife about
that one.
Listen to this episode, Melissa,because it's going to help you
understand
Matt (13:43):
all your episodes, but you're like, no, but really
listen to this one.
Jim (13:46):
Wow.
That's awesome.
Thank you for that insight.
Matt (13:52):
There's something amazing about telling a kid, the things
that make you different are notreflective of some fundamental
flaw in who you are.
It's literally your brain worksdifferently.
Yeah.
And, and we can point to that ona brain scan.
We can say, here's what thatlooks like.
One of my favorite quotes.
(14:14):
in this diagnostic space, is totell someone you're a zebra, not
a weird horse, right?
There's a lot of people outthere walking around thinking
they're weird horses.
Cause horses kind of look likezebras and they kind of eat the
similar things.
And you wouldn't think they needdifferent things, but zebras
need a different environment.
They eat different food.
They have different predator.
(14:36):
Horses require differentenvironments, different foods as
well.
Being able to understand thedifferentiation.
allows you to adapt yourenvironments to set you up for
success rather than trying tocontinue to jam that square peg
through a round hole.
Ben (14:51):
That's good.
what advice do you have forthose individuals who may be the
zebras, but they're married to ahorse?
I was diagnosed in adulthoodwith ADHD and it's made so much
sense.
But I'm married to a woman whois not.
And there are times where I feellike I just cannot relate to
(15:13):
her.
And she has the hardest timeunderstanding where I'm coming
from in certain things.
Matt (15:21):
Neurodivergence Is always context, but it's never an
excuse.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean,honestly, I should print bumper
stickers.
Uh, it was like, if you're anADHD adult married to someone
who's not ADHD, your ADHD isalways going to be a context for
(15:41):
how you communicate as a couple,how you guys co parent, how you
shop for groceries, how you doyard work, everything.
Cause our brains controleverything we do.
And your wife might be sittingthere like, why are you putting
away the pots and pans when youneed to mow the lawn?
You're like, well, here's howit's going to work.
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
Now your wife might say, that'sbonkers.
(16:02):
Why would you put away the potsand pans if you need to mow the
lawn?
But if she can understand howyour brain works, then it allows
you guys to have a conversation.
Within the same parameters,Because a non neurodivergent
person doesn't have what I liketo call galaxy brain.
Let's go forward with theexample, I'm putting away the
pots and pans because if I putaway the pots and pans, then I
(16:25):
can clear the counter space.
When the counter space iscleared, I'll know what things I
need to buy at the grocerystore.
And the things I buy at thegrocery store, one of those
things is grass seed.
Because I know there was somepatches in the grass that need
to be done.
And once I mow the lawn, thenI'll put down the grass seed.
So it's like a logical thing,but most neurotypical people
(16:47):
look at things in a microscope,not a telescope.
So we're looking at it like agalaxy brain, whereas our poor
partners are like, just mow thefreaking lawn, dude.
I would all interconnect.
So.
So it's the sort of thing, ifyou can explain that kind of
thinking through the lens ofthis is how my brain works, I'm
(17:10):
not saying your partner is goingto love that, understand it,
throw you a ticker tape parade,but at least they know what's
going on and you can have areasonable conversation about
it.
Ben (17:21):
One of the things I try to stress for my daughter, who's
also neurodivergent, is that.
The world isn't always going tobe,, coming at you with kid
boxing gloves.
They're gonna have their realworld boxing gloves on and you
need to know how to exist in theworld.
how do you raise a child tothrive in that kind of a world?
Matt (17:44):
fundamentally, every good relationship, whether it's work
or, or romantic or sexual orparenting, whatever it is, it's
about communication,specifically what I like to call
meta communication, talkingabout talking.
What we can do is to codeswitch, right?
I can speak fluent neurotypicalif right?
(18:07):
When we got the mortgage for ourhome, I was like, hello, I am a
person who runs a business andmakes money.
And I will sign thesepaperworks, even though I'm
screaming on the inside, becausethis is boring as hell, but I
can do, I can do the thing.
This is why I wrote my book,right?
It's like, it's actually, it'sall about this idea.
(18:29):
of cracking the code, Ifneurodivergent people can crack
the code of what neurotypicalpeople are saying, thinking,
doing, then we've got a fightingchance not to sell ourselves out
and become neurotypical becausewe can't do that.
That's not possible.
When you name the thing that'sabout to happen, you give both
(18:50):
people a fighting chance toacclimate to what's about to
happen.
I'm sure you guys at some pointin your life have gotten a text
from your boss or your partnerwe need to talk, trigger the
rejection sensitivity dysphoriaimmediately.
Like what did I do?
But if you got a follow up text,not a big deal.
I'm just wondering about the X,Y, Z.
(19:10):
When you do that, everybody doesbetter.
You're putting the words incontext, right?
Everybody wins when we do itthat way.
That's good.
Jim (19:21):
It's interesting the way you put that.
If you are neurodivergent inthat way, you always have that
sort of feeling of panic,whereas someone who's not, it
can be a trauma response where,because I got fired.
Out of left field.
Now, anytime a boss texts me,I'm worried that it's the start
(19:45):
of that conversation again, butyou're indicating there that,,
for folks with that galaxybrain, that's every time they
get a text,
Matt (19:56):
the majority of them one of the sort of soft rules about
this is.
Neurodivergent people tend to bereally good at things that are
hard for people and really badat things that are easy for
people.
My autistic client, they'relike, just go make a friend.
(20:16):
Just go on a date.
They're like, how?
How do I do that?
But it's like, Oh my gosh, thisis a 5, 000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
I have it done by lunch.
Yeah.
And it's the sort of thing likethere's nobody better in a
crisis than an ADHD kid becausethey're like instant dopamine
burst.
I'm locked in.
(20:37):
I don't know if you guys watchFuturama, but it's like the
episode where fried drinks 300cups of coffee and he's moving
at lightning speed and puts outthe fire and saves everybody.
That's what being an ADHD or ina moment of crisis feels like.
God forbid my kid fell down thestairs.
I'd be like, I know what to do.
But if my daughter can't findher shoe, I'm like, ah, ah, ah,
(20:58):
ah, ah, ah.
It's so hard because it triggersour brain's function if it opens
the file folder of every singletime we've screwed up like that
in the past.
Which means all those feelingstidal wave us and it's, It can
be completely debilitating.
Ben (21:13):
As a neurodivergent person, I've noticed in myself the
tendency to interpret any andalmost all input and feedback as
being critical.
I mean, I can look atconversations that I have with
my boss, Hey, can we chat realquick?
Immediately my brain goes into,what did I do wrong?
(21:37):
And nine times out of ten, it'ssomething that I did right.
Or it's just a, hey, could youquick adjust this?
And with my wife as well lately,we've been moving, which is
insanely stressful.
There's boxes everywhere, andI'm having a hard time with
(21:58):
executive functioning.
When I'm stressed, anything fromher comes across as feeling
critical.
Is that a neurodivergent thing,or is that just a stress thing?
Matt (22:12):
It's probably both.
But if there's one thing thatunites all pieces of
neurodivergence, it's intensity.
We are intense of thought,intense of feeling, intense of
relationship, intense of speech.
We are just intense humans.
Whereas somebody else might golike, Oh, I wonder if my wife is
mad at me, your brain's going togo.
(22:33):
My wife's going to leave me,,And that's tough, right?
Because what we're doing in iswe're spending emotional energy
fighting battles that eitherhaven't happened.
Or don't exist.
Yeah, absolutely.
One thing I can say is one ADHDor to another focus on what is
not what if.
So you're walking through thehouse, you're like, I didn't put
(22:54):
those boxes away.
My wife's going to be so mad atme.
Another time I screwed up, lookat me being such an a hole, all
this awful stuff, that's allwhat ifs.
That's all you're creating afight that hasn't happened yet.
Stop.
And then you'd say, honey, Ididn't put the boxes away.
Now she might say, Yeah, I askedyou for the buses away.
(23:15):
Much more likely she's gonnapivot into a Okay, well, it's
fine.
Get it done as soon as you can.
Then you're moving to what isnot what if And the thing that
are our anxiety centers of ourbrains try to do is they try to
protect us by mentally Okay.
Rehearsing and refreshing allthese different outcomes are
(23:36):
brains like you're gonna be sosafe.
You're gonna be so preparedbecause our brains can't tell
the difference betweentheoretical scenarios and things
that are actually happening.
It costs us real emotionalenergy to deal with those
things.
So if you can step into thatspace with communication, be
like, Hey, I screwed this up.
I didn't get it done.
(23:56):
Or, you know, I know there wassomething I was supposed to do
and I don't remember what it is,right?
Then you are stepping into thatspace, you'll get the answer,
and you're moving from what ifto what is.
And then you'll be able tomarshal your energy to solve the
problem, rather than solutionsthat may not actually ever come
to pass.
Sure.
And you're like, Oh, great.
Well, I just repainted the denand brought us new begonias.
(24:20):
But my wife wanted me to go buysalt at the grocery store
because you're spending all thatmental energy solving problems
that you don't know what theactual target is.
The technical term for this isrejection sensitivity dysphoria.
Know what RSD is.
Name it.
Well, in psychology, we say wename it to tame it.
(24:41):
You start to ramp that up andyou're like, Oh, that's my RSD.
There it is.
It's like a bad penny.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben (24:50):
I'm writing that down as we speak.
Jim (24:55):
When we were talking about this beforehand, I was kind of
joking, this might be a great, agreat opportunity for a therapy
session for you, Ben, like withthe ADHD.
But again, in our last episode,we mentioned the kind of
emotional permanence thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Facebook reel or something likethat, where someone compared it
to object permanence, but thatis different than rejection
(25:18):
sensitivity disorder.
One is those feelings go away.
If not immediately presented,you're talking about something
different here.
Now, are those two thingsrelated?
Are they always present in thesame individual or kind of
distinguished those two for meand our listeners?
Matt (25:36):
It's an old exercise that I do when I'm working with
younger kids.
Take a piece of paper and youwrite your name on it.
And then for every negativeoutcome that happened to you
that day, you get yelled at byyour mom, the bus driver was
mean to you, you got bullied inthe hallway, crumble the paper a
little bit.
You're gonna end up with a ballof paper.
(25:57):
Squeeze it really tight.
And then think about all thenice things that happened to
you.
And for every nice thing, yousmooth the paper out a little
bit, you unball it.
Now, the reality of thissituation is that you're never
going to get the paper flat andstraight again, right?
It's always going to have thosecreases.
(26:17):
Now, if you're 97 percent asgood as you used to be, that's
still pretty good.
But the more neurodivergent youare, the more you feel those
creases, the more you feel thosecrinkles, those tears, because
of our emotional intensity,because of this sort of inherent
Since we're walking around withwhere I don't fit into the
world, we, we get cut deeper andit's one of the toughest parts
(26:44):
of being neurodivergent becauseif our emotions are aligned with
the people we want to be, thenthere's nothing better than
experiencing those emotions.
I always joke, like you want tobring an ADHD person to a
wedding as your guest, right?
Because they're going to be at a13.
It's going to be the best DJ,the best open bar, the best
(27:05):
desserts, the best dresses.
My suit is fantastic.
Everything is wonderful.
That's when our emotions arealigned in a positive direction.
But unfortunately, the otherside of that sword does cut you.
Where neurodivergent peopledon't get sad, they get
despondent.
They don't get angry, they getfurious.
They don't get anxious, theyhave panic attacks, right?
(27:27):
It's just, we're feeling thosefeelings a lot deeper.
any feedback is going to on itsown cost a little bit more, but
because they cost more, theytend to stack up it's never just
one thing that gets you.
It's the 11th thing, right?
But for a typical personprobably can put those 11 things
(27:49):
in 11 different boxes.
neurodivergent person isprobably putting those maybe
eight in one box.
By the time you get to the thirdone or the other box, you're
already in trouble.
Ben (27:59):
Right.
In times of stress, in my case,that's moving, for the
neurodivergent person, they hearmessages of, Well just practice
mindfulness and that'll calmyour anxiety.
Sometimes it works, sometimesit's that simple, sometimes it
(28:20):
doesn't.
Sometimes it makes it worse.
What are some of yourrecommendations for those who
are neurodivergent?
What's the best way to handleand hopefully eliminate stress
to some degree.
Matt (28:34):
Don't set your expectations on elimination.
In in mental health, we alwaystalk about things through the
lens of what we call the bigthree frequency, intensity and
duration.
It is impossible to have zerostress.
True.
What you want to do is havestress less often for shorter
periods of time, especially whenthe context is something
stressful, like moving.
(28:56):
You know, one of my clients isin the process of getting
divorced right now, and she'slike, I am so stressed.
Why am I so stressed?
I'm like, you are gettingdivorced.
Doctor, it hurts when I punchmyself in the head, but our
brains tend to skip those steps,So we're going to stop reset,
I'm going to answer yourquestion about mindfulness with
(29:17):
a great quote.
Everybody should meditate 10minutes a day unless you're
really busy.
And then you should meditate anhour a day.
Now, I think it's a great quotebecause when we get busy and
stressed, our self care thingsare the first thing to go out
the window.
My college kids right now,they're like, Oh man, it's like.
(29:38):
finals, man.
Like I can't shower.
I've got finals.
Like you need to shower more.
Cause it's fine.
I promise you it's a thing.
And it's the sort of thing, likethe more stressed out we get,
the more we're going to skipthose steps.
So those things have to becomesacred.
They have to become, I'm goingto shower.
(29:58):
I'm going to eat three meals aday.
I'm going to do whatever my selfcare thing is.
One of my long term clients, hecame to me once.
He was like, everyone tells me Igot to do yoga.
I got to do freaking yoga.
I got to do yoga because yoga isgoing to calm me down.
I was like, that's cool.
Do you want to do yoga?
He's like, no, I hate yoga then.
(30:19):
And here's the crazy thoughtdon't do yoga.
It's not the yoga.
It's the, I've set aside a spacewhere I'm doing a thing that is
calming my brain down, right?
For me, it's going for a walk.
I put on the music, usually apodcast.
Last time it was you guys.
So that's great.
Awesome.
Play a little Pokemon go.
I have a great, you know, abouta mile loop in my neighborhood.
(30:42):
I can do two of those loops in ahalf hour, come back to my
house, have a drink of water,see my next therapy client.
Bing, bang, boom.
My tank is much more filled forgoing on that mile walk.
And it would be doing 30 minutesof yoga because I hate yoga.
Now for the people for whom yogais great, keep doing it.
Just give yourself permission.
(31:03):
If it's Tai Chi, let it be TaiChi.
If it's martial arts, if it'spainting, if it's.
If it's going to a rage room,one of my clients and they're
very financially well off, theygo to a rage room every Friday
at one o'clock and, if you'vegot the money and the
wherewithal, do it, right?
And that's the thing.
That's more therapeutic thanyoga would ever be for that
(31:27):
person.
Any good intervention startswith the intersection of
interest.
What are you interested in, andwhat is available to you?
You might be like, Ah, yes, I'minterested in rock climbing.
I'm going to go climb a rockwall.
If there's not a rock wallwithin 40 miles of you, probably
not the best intervention.
(31:49):
What could we do instead?
How do we supplement that,right?
That's where we start beingcreative and clever.
That's how we solve the problem.
Jim (31:58):
You said a couple of things that triggered in me, the
disparity between neurotypicaland neurodiverse, because I find
a lot of times.
The difference in response fromneurotypical is just what is
socially normal and acceptableat the time.
A lot of people, if you toldthem every Friday, I go to a
(32:21):
rage room, they would think,wow, you're crazy.
Like, right.
What kind of rage do you have inyou?
Or as a great example, you justtalked about Pokemon go, you
stinking nerd.
I can't believe that you wouldwaste your time going out and
catching Pokemon.
And yet the person who said thatis the same guy who has all the
(32:45):
stats of his favorite footballplayers memorized down to the T
and, uh, It watches every singletime it's on and is reading all
these different articles, waymore nerdy and immersed in
football than you are inPokemon.
And yet you're the nerd and theyare celebrated as a man.
(33:08):
There's that hypocrisy insociety that I actually came
back at somebody like that onetime.
I'm like, how is what I do anydifferent than you?
Painting your chest and go anddo a Vikings game.
And he's like, why are you sosensitive, dude?
Matt (33:22):
In high school, I did high level soccer and I did musical
theater, you know?
So I was Finn Hudson before FinnHudson was Finn Hudson.
And that's right.
I just get a glee reference.
Hot topical pop culture guys.
Um, yeah, you're on it.
And I'm telling you, like.
I wish my small town growing upto have the arts.
(33:43):
It wasn't until I got to highschool where I was able to do
this and people would be like,dude, so you're gay.
I'm like, ah, yes, because I'm aguy who does theater.
Therefore I'm gay.
I was like, first off theatergirls are very pretty and
they're very flexible becausethey're all dancers.
And they're also like justwildly aroused all the time.
But no, no, no, please go takethe field hockey girls.
(34:06):
Like you're stupid.
Right.
But it was the nineties and gaywas a slur, right?
It was like, Oh, you're gay,very clever.
But it was like, you couldn'tfit in that space.
I used to sit on the bus.
With my disc man, Cause it wasthe 90s.
(34:27):
Of course my mix is right.
Um, but they were like Broadwaymega mixes and I was terrified
that people would hear them.
And then I would be mocked orthrown in a river or whatever.
You didn't realize like, yo,man, you catch that new Lincoln
park.
I'm like, first off, I loveLincoln park.
I think the park's awesome.
(34:48):
And sometimes I was listening toLinkin Park or Jay Z or
whatever.
But most of the time, the thingthat was getting me the most
hype was the Joseph and theAmazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Megamix.
And screw you if you're not downwith that.
Now that's 40 year old me.
Well, my nerdiness, 16 year oldme crawled in a hole, Oh,
(35:10):
absolutely.
And, and so we say this to themen out there who are secretly
listening to showtunes.
Or won't admit that they LARP onweekends, or, you know, have
nine unfinished Harry Potterfanfics in their hard drive.
Those communities will welcomeyou in a more authentic,
(35:32):
meaningful way than being inyour company's fantasy football
league ever will.
And you don't have to choose.
No one's asking you to pick aside, but give yourself
permission to do the things thatmake your soul happy, because
that's going to pay for itself athousand times over.
(35:54):
In a way that going along togetting along never will.
Jim (36:00):
We said it on an earlier episode.
Everybody needs to go to a Renfair at some point or another,
Matt (36:05):
Why would you go to Ren fair?
It only has sharp weapons,wagons of mead and corsets.
You're right.
That's not for anybody.
You should definitely not gosave more Ren fair for me.
Right.
That's right.
Right.
My goodness.
Jim (36:20):
Turkey legs.
You forgot the turkey legs.
Matt (36:22):
I forgot about the turkey.
Sorry, usually I just go deepinto the flagons of mead.
And you, you'll get used to theword flagon enough.
It's a very good word.
You're right.
The more we let masculinity bedefined by the monoculture.
The more we lose the diversityof thought, feeling and
experience that makes the worldmore interesting and more
(36:46):
meaningful.
And frankly, if you're listeningto this from a business
perspective, more productive.
Yeah.
Do you want every man in youroffice to be like, you got it
boss.
We should put a clock radio init boss.
You know, let's get an app forthis boss.
It's going to be the atypicalguys who are like, listen, the
gay community is never going tobuy this because of this reason
(37:07):
that I know, cause I'm gay.
Or, you know, Hey, if you madethis small tweak, you would tap
into the nerd market and nerdshave money to burn.
That's the diversity of thought?
That's why neurodivergence isevolution, We are moving in a
direction of, of not just onlyeating vanilla ice cream.
(37:29):
But somebody who's putting baconand maple and bourbon and ice
cream.
And I want to put that guy onthe express lane to heaven.
Right.
Cause it's like, yes, why did wenot do that earlier?
And those are all really good.
Right.
So that's the thing.
That's what makes a more robustand interesting and productive
world.
Ben (37:50):
You were talking about the different kinds of ice cream and
mixing the bourbon and thedifferent flavors.
So when you go to the gasstations.
What kind of slurpee are yougetting?
Matt (38:00):
Well, as a proud New Jerseyan, I let somebody else
pump my gas and then I go in andget the thing.
Um, I've never shared thispublicly.
You do 80 percent coke, a splashof Sprite, and then the rest
cherry.
Absolutely.
The lime in the Sprite picks upthe cherry, and then you get the
best cherry Coke.
(38:20):
You may take that with you,share it with your friends,
paying a small royalty fee of99.
99.
Jim (38:26):
You've, you've said a lot of valuable things here today,
but that one may be the mostimportant.
Ben (38:31):
I'm telling you.
It's true.
I figured you were a mixologistwhen it came to that gas station
machine.
So I'm glad to see I was provencorrect.
Matt (38:41):
And I, and I was a bartender for many years and I
was very good at it.
And it's the sort of thing wherepart of being neurodivergent,
right, is putting yourself insituations that play to your
strengths.
So as a gifted ADHD or who'svery social, bartending is like
the perfect job for me.
No kidding.
Cause I'm small talk.
(39:03):
I'm talking to people.
I'm throwing drinks.
I'm great at it.
And then one summer, I was 20.
everybody else quit or gotfired.
And the owner came up to me,he's like, you're managing the
bar.
And I was like, I'm what now I'm20.
I, I couldn't sign for theliquor deliveries, right?
Like, because I was old enough.
We talked about something thatdoesn't play into my strengths,
(39:23):
organization, scheduling,ordering.
It was terrible.
And thank God they foundsomebody pretty quickly.
Maybe the bar would have goneunder.
I would have been like, okay,new policy.
Everything is free.
I'm very scared.
So if you're out there andyou're like, I hate my job.
This is not making my soulhappy.
It's probably because it's notthe right fit for you.
(39:45):
Neurotypical people can sort ofdo more stuff.
They have a wider band oftolerance.
Our bands of tolerance arenarrower, but they're deeper.
So if there's the thing youlove, you can do any version of
that thing.
Give me an ADHD or who's inoutside sales, right?
They're just like, I'll go tothat conference.
(40:06):
I'll go, I'll go to a networkingevent.
I'll go talk to that strangerand they're going to get you
business.
But if you have that personworking in the freaking mail
room, then they're going to be aless happy employee.
They're going to make you lessmoney and you're probably gonna
have to replace them sooner.
So it's like, wow, why would wenot do this?
Ben (40:27):
Are there certain career fields that.
Neurodivergent people typicallyexcel in.
Is that a thing?
What are your thoughts on thatpiece?
Matt (40:36):
Once again, it starts with interest and availability.
What I find is that if you movealong the pathway Of the things
that interest you, theopportunities that become
available are much more alignedwith the person and professional
you need to be.
In my twenties, I thought I wasgoing to be a standup comic, I
did improv exercises.
(40:56):
I did a lot of standup inBoston.
Thank God YouTube didn't existthen.
That's all I'm going to sayabout that.
Oh man.
Being around theater people hasalways made me happy and it made
me a better public speaker.
And, you know, a decade laterI'm opening rooms where I'm
talking to 1800 professionalsfall all over Europe and
thinking to myself, like, thankGod I did all that standup.
(41:20):
Cause you know how to use amicrophone, you know, how to use
silence, you know, how to use astage, you know, you may never
make it as a professionalcosplayer.
Though I would argue the barrierto entry to that has never been
lower.
Thank God for the internet, butmaybe Star Trek isn't the thing
that pays your mortgage, butmaybe your interest in Star Trek
(41:41):
makes you the best scienceteacher ever, or maybe you keep
your job as an accountant, butyou volunteer at the sci fi
museum on weekends.
You don't have to center yourinterest in your life, though.
It's obviously great if you can,but there's room on the table
for all the different dishes.
And I think that's the thingthat a lot of people forget,
(42:03):
like starting a podcast justjust to pick an example out of
the sky.
Jim (42:08):
That's right.
It's filling a need for both ofus for sure.
Ben (42:11):
It has, yeah, in ways I didn't necessarily expect.
It's been really good.
Over emotional ness.
Talk to me about that becauseit's something that I experience
pretty often.
You mentioned the intensityearlier.
That's very much what it is.
It's like I feel the emotion,but then I feel it reverberate
(42:35):
and it ripples into absolutelyevery aspect of my life.
I just feel things very deeply.
And sometimes the amount oftime, it's almost as if I, I
feel things for too long,according to how others may feel
and interpret experiences.
(42:56):
So what's the.
the cause for that overemotional ness and, what are
some suggestions on how toharness that and, keep it from
spilling over too much intoone's life?
Matt (43:12):
Great questions.
Let me ask you this.
You know anybody who's lactoseintolerant?
Uh, yes.
So would you say that they can'teat the right amount of milk or
dairy?
Sure.
Right?
I mean, I mean if they did, itwould just cause unpleasant
experiences.
(43:32):
Absolutely.
So you wouldn't come up tosomeone who's lactose intolerant
and say like, dude, you don'tneed enough ice cream.
It's kind of silly, don't youthink?
Sure.
Can you tell I've used thisexample before?
So when people say you'reoverreacting or you're over
emotional you're layering injudgment into an emotional
(43:54):
experience.
If you take one thing away fromtonight, guys, I want you to
think about this.
Get rid of the word should.
Get rid of the word should fromyour vocabulary because should
is all the possibility of couldplus shame.
Say things like overreact orover emotional.
What you're saying is myemotions are wrong.
No emotion is good or bad.
(44:16):
Emotions are comfortable oruncomfortable and that comfort
is based into their fit to theenvironment.
Now you might You might bewalking down the street and see
a squirrel get hit by a car,right?
And you might be like, oh man,that sucks when that happens.
But then Jim might be like, boohoo! I found a dead squireel! It
(44:39):
would be out of sync to yourreaction.
But the best thing aboutfeelings is they can't be wrong.
You can say, I wish my feelingsweren't so big.
I don't understand why myfeelings are so big.
But your reaction is yourreaction, and it begins and ends
that sort of self compassion,and you can start there, then
(45:01):
you're in great shape.
That's a sort of, the broad,that's the psychologist in me
talking.
Sure, yeah.
The brain nerd in me goes, okay,so we have a limbic system in
our brain, it's our emotionalcircuitry.
And then a prefrontal cortex inthe front part of our head,
that's essentially the brakesystem on the engine that is our
brain.
The one of the things thatalmost all neurodivergences have
(45:24):
in common is a weaker prefrontalcortex.
And prefrontal cortex, among itsmany jobs, it's all about
behavior inhibition.
So it's stopping before youstart.
You know, the ADHD brain isn'tready.
Aim.
Fire.
It's ready.
Fire.
Aim.
Yep.
Right.
That's your not doing its job.
(45:44):
So when you've got aneurodivergent brain, and this
applies to gifted kids too, isyou have these giant feelings
and these giant feelings lead tothoughts and those giant
thoughts lead to behaviors.
And the part of your brainthat's supposed to say, hold on,
is that a good idea?
You've already run past it.
You bang your head against a,against a doorframe, go and
(46:05):
punch a wall as hard as you can.
And somebody goes, why'd you dothat?
And you're like, I don't evenknow, because big feelings lead
to big behaviors without thatthought check in there.
The coolest thing is that theprefrontal cortex is like a
muscle.
the more we work it, thestronger it gets, the stronger
it gets.
More inhibition skills will getback and you can regulate
(46:26):
yourself a little bit more andbe more successful in managing
that stuff.
Jim (46:33):
Some of the conversation you were having over masculinity
in our society and how youreally want to see this more
neuro diverse world be somethingthat's accepted.
Now you're talking about thisanalogy of lactose intolerance
there, where there's even givingourselves grace for just being
different than other people.
(46:53):
I know kind of your main statedgoal is just making.
The world more friendly towardsneurodivergent people.
So outside of starting a podcastto help talk through some of
these issues, what are some waysthat you can do that with the
society that in a lot of waysreally is resistant to accepting
(47:15):
that power?
Everyone isn't neurotypical.
Matt (47:20):
The best thing I can say there is you can't make other
people get it, but you canconsistently present them with
that information, right?
So if at that point, like ifthey don't read the PowerPoint,
if they don't read my book, ifthey don't listen to the
podcast.
That's on them, but you havepointed them in the direction of
(47:42):
the information they need.
I tell every parent I work withand every adult I work with in
the workplace, make a little onepager about your kid or
yourself.
Here's my strengths.
Here's my weaknesses.
Here's where I do well.
Here's how I don't do well.
These are the things thatmotivate me.
These are the things that makeme shut down.
And if you can hand that to yourboss, HR manager, teacher,
(48:03):
principal, whatever, you'resaying I don't know how much
you're going to follow this.
But this is the cheat sheet forme.
This is the way to work smarter.
Not harder with me.
Early on when I was dating mywife, my best friend was like,
Matt doesn't get angry often,but you can tell he's angry when
he gets really, really quiet.
That's true.
(48:24):
If I go quiet, you know, I'mangry.
And there was a couple of weeksafter that, I was like, stomping
around angry about something.
My wife is like, This is whatMitchell is talking about.
You're mad.
I was like, I am mad.
Oh no.
I've been spotted.
Damn it.
All we can do is educate andthen you find the environments
that are the most affirming theycan be.
(48:45):
And that might be changing jobs.
It might be.
advocating with HR or your childstudy team at school.
It might be going to work foryourself.
It might be you white knuckle itthrough the week, but on Friday
night.
You guys get together and youplay Settlers of Catan for six
hours and then all that angstmelts away because you found a
(49:09):
way to be back with your people.
One of my colleagues, shedescribes it as the take off
your bra moment.
She's like, no woman wants towear a bra.
We have to, for reasons, but youget home and you reach in, you
yank it off and you thring itacross the apartment.
And that's when you know, you'reback amongst your people.
But for me, it's, it's the takeoff my tie moment.
(49:30):
And it's like, I'm back to beingme.
I've taken off my costume.
Yeah.
Then taking that energy andplugging it into people who also
don't want to wear ties or bras.
Yeah, you get to benefit fromall that social grace without
having to play as much of the,of the game driving society.
Jim (49:52):
I think we've got an episode title there, Ben fling
off your bra with Dr.
Matt,
Ben (49:56):
there you go.
There it is.
Matt (49:58):
That was my dating profile.
Jim (49:59):
Uh, we want to give you some time to plug your book or
if you have an ask of ourlisteners or if you have just an
insight that you want to shareas a ending thought for our
podcast listeners,
Matt (50:14):
I will say this, the thing that gives me the most hope for
the future is that thisgeneration has normalized more
ways to be more things than Ithink existed when we were kids.
There are more ways to bemasculine, there are more ways
to be feminine, there's moreways to be a person.
(50:36):
And that's awesome.
But if you're sitting therewatching this new generation
thinking it's left me behind, ithasn't.
We can ride in that slipstream,right?
Be the person you want to be.
The best time to start somethingwas 10 years ago, the second
best time is right now.
So if you've been putting offlearning Klingon or playing the
(50:59):
theremin or learning how thetheremin goes, then today is the
day,?
The old ways are broken and youdon't need to play those games
anymore,?
And that's, that's the way thatyou're going to be the best
version of yourself.
Whatever that thing is going tolook like.
And if that message and theother stuff we've talked about
(51:21):
today resonates with you, thenplease do buy my book.
That would make me and mypublisher very happy, but really
my favorite thing is to go outand give talks in the community.
I mean, I've spoken to schoolsand companies and conferences
all over the world, and there'sjust nothing better than getting
in a big room full of people andsaying, here's a story.
We're going to laugh.
(51:41):
We're going to cry.
You're going to leave with sometechniques and strategies.
If I can make your life a littlebit better, then that's what
gets me out of bed in themorning.
There's lots of ways tointerface with me, whether it's
for therapy or buying my bookor, having me come out to your
organization, but please feelfree to reach out and we'll find
out what's the best fit for you.
Ben (52:01):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here.
Thank you for reaching out.
Just on a personal note ofcuriosity, I know you and Jim
spoke towards the beginning ofputting all of this together,
but how did you hear of Real MenHug?
Was it just an internet search,or how did we get here today?
(52:22):
I was on another, I think, Ithink I was on the Men's Therapy
podcast.
And, and he shared out that hewas a big fan of you guys.
And I was like, Oh man, well, ify'all are good enough for him,
then I should reach out.
And it's since I reached out,you know, a lot of people I like
(52:44):
and respect personally andprofessionally have been like,
they're up to something reallygood here.
So it kind of makes me feel likeI got it on the ground floor.
You know, it's like when you seethe local band.
And you're like, oh man, theysigned to a label.
You're like, I called it.
Right.
So don't forget me in threeyears when you're, you know,
leading Spotify chart.
(53:06):
You can have me back.
Jim (53:07):
If we're leading charts, we'll have you back on for sure.
Ben (53:12):
It's just so crazy to hear you say that because I feel like
we should be saying that to you.
You've got all of this exposureand connections and whatnot.
So to hear you speak of us ashighly esteemed, it, it's.
It goes a long way.
Yeah.
So thank you.
Appreciate it.
Matt (53:29):
As I'm fond of saying, it's easy to say when it's true
and, uh, As a guy who's tryingto navigate in a world that
feels increasingly hostile toguys like us, I want to amplify
this, whatever platform andstrength I have, because more
people need to hear the stuffyou guys are talking about.
(53:49):
Cause there's a lot of men outthere who are just thinking the
way the world is, isn't for me,but what other way is there,
right?
I mean, why do we think thesuicide rates are so high for
middle aged men?
Yeah.
Is you realize.
I'm not the high school footballstar or wrestler or whatever
(54:09):
that I was.
I don't want to be that guyanymore, but what else is there
for me?
That's why this stuff is soimportant.
I'm always going to be a childpsychologist first.
But men's mental health is ahuge concern.
It's a rapidly increasingproblem and we're not throwing
resources at it because there'sstill this idea that we should
rub some dirt on it or buck up.
(54:32):
And if men out there are hearingthree men being vulnerable and
open, then, we might not just bechanging hearts and minds.
We might be saving lives.
Ben (54:42):
Yeah, that's powerful.
Jim (54:44):
Dr.
Matt, we are definitely going tostay in touch and I'm excited to
see more out of you and shareand listen to some more of what
you have to say.
I am not just saying this.
I am excited to purchase yourbook as well.
I don't know if that's I don'tknow if that's already out yet
or not, or the, it saidSeptember on your web page.
So I'm not sure if that's stillthe case.
Matt (55:05):
So pre orders are going to start in about a month and then
physical copies in September.
And I'm going on a bit of a booktour this fall.
I'll be doing state giftedconferences in Alabama,
Tennessee, Indiana, andIllinois.
and maybe Texas and we'll seewhat, you know, where, where
else my travels take me.
Jim (55:26):
Awesome, I think we're gonna wrap up.
Matt (55:29):
Let's do this again sometime.
Seriously, you guys are so easyto talk to.
Ben (55:32):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
Jim (55:34):
For sure.
Thanks so much.
Ben (55:36):
All right.
We'll see you, Dr.
Matt.
Jim (55:40):
Wow.
I honestly was blown away.
Actually being able to sit downand chat with him.
That's the first time where Ihave hopped onto my phone and
written something down.
Cause I wanted to remember itfor later.
I'm like, I got to talk to mywife about this.
Ben (55:56):
It was so good.
Jim (55:57):
So good.
Ben (55:58):
There were so many things that I wrote down and Jim wrote
down.
So Dr.
Matt, thank you for joining us.
That was just an incredibleconversation.
Real men hug and they alsoapparently drink coke because
even Dr.
Matt was drinking a coke
Jim (56:15):
was he
Ben (56:15):
he was see this is my neuro divergence.
I don't miss a beat I remembereverything
Jim (56:24):
real men hug, but they also move from what if what is That
was phenomenal.
Oh my gosh.
Mind blowing.
Dr.
Matt, you get to listen to someof these comments at the end
that we don't edit out and justhear us fangirling over all of
(56:45):
your knowledge.
So thanks so much again.
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