ADHD, autism, and the pressure to be “man enough” (Shane Thrapp’s story)

Shane Thrapp always felt different. As an adult, he found out he has both ADHD and autism — two parts of his brain that sometimes work against each other. 

In this episode, Shane shares the weight of masking his symptoms, and how society’s ideas about “real men” can make it even harder to speak up. Today, Shane is helping other men with ADHD as the Operations Director of the Men’s ADHD Support Group. He’s on a mission to show that being yourself shows more strength than pretending to be someone you’re not.

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at adhdaha@understood.org or record a message for us here. 

• What is AuDHD?

• The Men’s ADHD Support Group

(01:19) Shane’s ADHD and autism diagnoses story

(05:48) The three-way battle between ADHD and autism

(09:12) How is Shane as a boss? 

(10:21) Learning social cues, trying on identities, and societal expectations

(15:04) The Men’s ADHD Support Group, and building a community that supports each other in healthy ways

(18:34) The biggest misconceptions about men with ADHD

(21:38) Building a world that’s better for his children

Shane: I was really sick and tired of being what other people wanted me to be. And I think delving into that and really getting a grasp of my differences, again, not knowing that it was ADHD and autism at the time, but getting a grip of my difference and being OK with them and finding that acceptance is honestly the moment where everything kind of really shifted for me.

Laura: This is "ADHD Aha!," a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I head up our editorial team here at Understood.org, and as someone who's had my own ADHD "aha" moment, I'll be your host. I am here today with Shane Thrapp. Shane is a certified ADHD entrepreneur and parenting coach and the founder of "Creating Order from Chaos," a coaching and consulting business that empowers ADHD entrepreneurs and parents. He's also the operations director for the "Men's ADHD Support Group." Welcome Shane, you're not the first guest we've welcomed from the "Men's ADHD Support Group." How you doing today?

Shane: I'm doing good. Doing good.

Laura: So, you were diagnosed with ADHD when you were 36 and then something else a few years later. Do you want to start there?

Shane: Yeah, I always knew I was different. I grew up in the South, you know, and rural South for that matter, Northeast Texas, and always knew that there was something odd about me. It took me a long time to really grasp what all that looked like. It also took a lot of going through an abusive first marriage, having two children with her, and then like one day their teacher — for my oldest son — reached out to me and said, "Hey, we think your son may be on the spectrum." And I was like, "Oh, what is that?" You know. Because whenever I thought about spectrum and ADHD, it's always the crazy white kid in the corner or rain man, or all these different stereotypes that run through your brain.

And I really struggled with like, well, what does this mean? And as I started looking into it, I really started understanding there was all of these similarities that I just thought was normal, but I knew this thing was different about myself. And my wife is a special needs teacher, and as I went in there, I told her, I said, "Hey, I think I have ADHD." And my wife was just like, "Honey, you didn't know?" "No, I didn't know. How long have you known?" And she's like, "Since I read your dating profile." And so I had gone through, when I was 28, and just gotten out of this really bad relationship, I'd gone through and just said, hey, I'm just going to be honest on my profile and just be who I am. I'm done whatever this is.

And I accidentally fell into the actual thing that you're supposed to do, which was part of the masking. But it took so long for me to actually go through that, that it didn't really register with me, that that was the thing. And so, whenever I was asking her and she said that, I'm like, "Why aren't you saying anything?" She's like, "I just thought you were being a man about it."

Laura: Oh, interesting. OK. We're going to dig into that "I just thought you were being a man about it," but first I have to ask, what did your dating profile say?

Shane: Honestly, it was just a lot of my hobbies and things I actually enjoy doing and like not liking small talk, like "Hey, please don't message me about the weather." Just like go into that deep conversation that you've been wanting to have with somebody. That's all I really want. I don't care about how your day is. We'll get into that later on I'm more interested in the thing that you're passionate about.

Laura: So, that tipped her off to ADHD.

Shane: Yeah. It was just a huge indicator for her. But it took so long to actually get the diagnosis. It was like two, three years later I finally got diagnosed with that. And then kind of going from there though, I also was like, the medication didn't seem to work. And I was doing all the things and I was following all the instructions and I'm going to therapy and my therapist one day said "Hey, I just need you to relax and just, let's just have a conversation."

And so, she started asking me a bunch of questions from this questionnaire. And as we did, she started noticing that I wasn't looking her in the eye and I was letting myself kind of fidget and I was just letting myself get into my normal mode. And when we got done, she was like, "I'm fairly certain you're autistic."

She was, "I am not going to diagnose you with autism because it requires there to be some detriment to your life and everything, as far as that's concerned, when we're looking at that. But we definitely do need to take it into consideration and put it in your record that you are autistic because that's going to change the case of how we use medication, and that's gonna change the types of therapy that you need to be doing, and it's going to change the conversation that we're having because you're essentially dealing with a battle in your brain every single day.

Laura: That's big, a battle in your brain, a battle between ADHD and autism? Do you think that's what she meant?

Shane: Well, it's kind of a three-way battle. ADHD, autism, and social expectations. This is what I'm supposed to be. This is how I'm supposed to act. And of course, my ADHD side loves the new thrill. Let's do the thing. Let's jump into the different ideas. Let's follow each one of these. And the autistic side is like, "OK, yes, we can do that, but let's put some structure, let's build a spreadsheet, let's create an outline, let's develop the table of contents." And ADHD is like, "No, just do it. And I'm like...and of course, whatever I'm doing, I need to be able to be a provider and a good worker.

Laura: The man stuff comes in there a little bit.

Shane: Right, the man stuff.

Laura: Yeah. Let's take this piece by piece. Let's talk ADHD, let's talk autism, let's talk societal expectations, and I have a feeling if we do it that way, we're gonna see that battle pretty clearly. What do you struggle most with in terms of ADHD symptoms? And I know that they can be hard to parse out because there's so much overlap, right? For example, with ADHD, you know, you may struggle to follow a conversation and seem daydreamy and whatnot. With autism, maybe you're not making as much eye contact. I'm generalizing here, but let me ask you, what are your biggest ADHD struggles?

Shane: Too many good ideas whenever it comes down to creativity. I'm not an artist. I don't draw. I don't write. I create businesses.

Laura: You had a long bio, Shane, I had trouble.

Shane: I create businesses, so that's actually the weird creativity thing. Anybody gives me a business idea, I can run it through and create so much out of it, and I get burnt out and I take too much on. Or I get bored and burnt out, and take too much on.

Laura: OK, so that's the ADHD. I know we're dramatically oversimplifying here.

Shane: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Laura: I mean, we'll get into more, but what are the biggest challenges that autism presents in your life?

Shane: The frustration that everything can't be done exactly how I want it done when I want it done and how I want it done, like where it needs to be done. That's my biggest emotional dysregulation is when things are too chaotic that I don't have any control over.

Laura: How has that kind of come to blows in your life ever?

Shane: When you are building something you need to have good infrastructure and autism sees "All right here's the structure that we absolutely need." Well, then the ADHD comes and says "Well, what about this situation and this situation and the situation in this situation this situation."

Laura: Right.

Shane: And autism is like "OK, cool. Let's plan for each one of those things" until the idea is perfect and the ADHD doesn't give a crap about perfection — well, in some cases, yes — but in this case, it just wants the idea out. It just wants to do the thing.

Laura: Move, move, move. Yeah.

Shane: And then, by the time my autism has created the documentation and created the terms or whatever like that, ADHD is bored. It's already thought of all the permutations, changes, and all that stuff. And then I'm looking at it and I can either try to push through the boredom and do this or I can just go ahead and let that go.

Laura: Wow, that was a really great illustration. I can totally imagine how tricky and frustrating and maybe at times gratifying because you have these two really strong skillsets, right? But then they also come together in a challenging way.

Shane: It's always about balancing everything. It's about understanding the need to go ahead and get something and getting to a point where this is good enough, really getting my brain to understand those details where, yes, this is good and we can go ahead launch and here's the plan for after launch, how we're going to improve and build upon it and things like that. It was one of the joys of learning about project management when I was 25. That's one of the life lessons I learned is like at some point, the project has to be good enough to launch, and you need to be OK with that.

Laura: We are gonna get to the societal expectations, but I'm curious, Shane, you're a leader of many things. How are you as a boss?

Shane: I'm actually really good.

Laura: I believe it, yeah.

Shane: Because I'm so cognizant of the struggles I have with letting people do the things and delegating to it, I actually have to make sure I'm not compensating by overdelegating. It's very much a collaborative process with me. And that comes from years and years of leadership training and things like that.

Laura: You said because you're so aware of these things, you've actually gotten good at compensating for them. But if you didn't have that awareness, you might be a very different kind of boss.

Shane: Right. 100% authoritarian boss. Yeah, that's me. It wasn't until I started learning a lot more about ADHD and the lack of self-awareness that we have that I grasped that I didn't have self- awareness. And I just thought like, "Oh yeah, I'm very self- aware." That same trap that so many people. No, I learned very quickly that I was not self-aware. I was very aware of what other people thought I should be and I didn't have a good grasp of who I really was.

Laura: So, let's talk about expectations and perception. And let's start with, how do you think other people were perceiving you?

Shane: I mean, it's how I learned the social cues is the problem. So, when I was 12, I was watching Oprah to train myself.

Laura: I used to watch Oprah, Shane. There's nothing wrong with this.

Shane: So, when I was 12 though, she had a guy come on who was an FBI body language lie detector kind of person. And he talked about this quantifiable method to understand social cues from people through body language. And of course I was twelve and very confused about all the boys and girls around me and all the different things that they were saying and the jokes that I kept missing in. All of those different things. So, I said, "Oh, this is a logical system." I'm looking up all these different searches for it and I get in the FBI body language database and...

Laura: Wow, OK.

Shane: I started learning body language.

Laura: Give me an example of a specific thing that surprised you or you were really interested in.

Shane: Micro expressions, the micro expressions every person's face makes whenever they're making a statement or anything like that, and what are signs of lying or what are sides of concern or what signs of humor, like genuine humor, what's the difference between fake humor and genuine humor. When a person's smile doesn't actually reach their eyes, we read about that, right? But I actually know what that actually looks like when the smile doesn't reach a person's eyes.

Laura: What are you, what are you seeing in me, Shane? Can you break down my body language?

Shane: Super interested, and I don't know why, but apprehensive and anxious, I hope that's OK.

Laura: No, that's OK. I appreciate the honesty. Very interested. You're absolutely right.

Shane: Kind of absorbed that for years. And obviously, I still do. And the problem with that though is I see too much. Because now we look into ADHD side of things. And ADHD sees those details. In fact, we're overwhelmed by all the details. And so, the teachers who were really frustrated with me and my mom and my dad and the different things I would see in church, I saw too much and it became too overwhelming. I kept trying to be every social expectation because, like, I'm the broken person. This is how I'm supposed to be.

Laura: Right, and I have to adapt to all of them.

Shane: Right, and so of course the mask goes on, and the mask is built around an understanding of body language. So, I am a very convincing chameleon. I would hang out with the jocks and I would be a jock and I was hanging out with rich people even though I wasn't rich, but I could talk like them and I could do the things like them, and I lost who I was.

Laura: Trying on identities, I can relate to that. I was a punk for a bit. I hung out with all the, you know, the math nerds for a but, just like adapting constantly.

Shane: 100%. I had my goth face. Imagine this with like black eyeliner, the whole night of black.

Laura: That's a vibe, Shane. That's the vibe. I think it's funny also that you picked up that I am anxious and apprehensive.

Shane: But it's the general stuff, right? It's not like mind reading or what is...The Mentalist or Sherlock Holmes.

Laura: It's hyperempathy.

Shane: Yeah, and honestly, that's a huge problem for people with autism. They're overwhelmed with all the different emotional outputs, you know, the anger, the frustration, even though the mom is trying to hide the things, or even though the father is trying to hide the guilt, like, did I break my child? And we were like, "No, no we're not broken. You know, it's OK, mommy, I'm not broken." You know, but of course the parent hears that. My mom heard that, "But mom, I am not broken," over her shame and guilt.

And it's always those little things like that that I've always picked up over the years and it left me very confused and it left me stranded out because I needed to be this southern gentleman who was the provider of the family, who was the leader, who is the good father, the good example. I needed to be able to do all the different things because a good leader is able to do all of the things. You shouldn't be depending on people. The only good job is the one that you do. Those are all lessons I learned and those social expectations just killed me for so many years.

Laura: I can imagine. I mean, that's quite a brew. Quite a concoction of things going on and a lot for your brain and your body to carry.

Tell me about what you see in the men's support group. Have you seen a lot of people in the group with kind of the same order of diagnoses that you have?

Shane: Oh, no. Like when you've met one person with ADHD or autism, you've met one person with ADHD or autism, right?

Laura: Yeah.

Shane: But we do see trends. A lot of men find out that they have ADHD or autism or both, because their children have ADHD, or autism or both. And we see a lot of people coming in talking about like, "I've just learned about this different issue. What do I do? And now that I find out that I'm broken, and I'm damaged goods, what do I?" A lot of shame and guilt. A lot of issues with people going, you know, asking like, "You know, did anybody else have a hard time with like keeping jobs or staying in relationships?" And we're like, "Welcome to the club, bro."

Laura: Oh, yeah.

Shane: And I think that's one of the things I love the most about the men's group is because we don't just have those people who come in and they've started the journey, but we have the people who have been on the journey. And those people wind up in the comment sections providing a lot of support and love and care. And they don't have to. But we've built a culture around that. So they do. It's just like there's a whole bunch of guys that come in, and they sit here and say, "Hey, no, no here, let me get a little bit of that off your shoulder here. No, no. Come on, man. You can't own this burden. You can own this burden." And "Hey, check out this book about boundaries. And here's all these resources."

And of course, we're doing our part as leaders in the organization as well. We have our weekly support group calls on Wednesdays and Sundays, but at the same time, we also really have truly built a culture of men supporting men in really healthy ways. It's one of those things that really drew me to the group and working with Mark was this is, this is his vision. And he brought it around to reality.

And whenever he brought me on board, we were like, "OK, this is a real thing. What does this look like going forward?" And we started kind of kicking around ideas in 2022 in October. And I was just like, "Hey, let's just make a nonprofit out of it." And of course they're like, "I mean, who knows how to run a nonprofit?" I was like, I don't know, but I'm...

Laura: You're like "I'll figure it out."

Shane: Like, I'll figure it out. And of course, like, that's exactly what I did. It became a hyperfixation. And like, in two weeks, we had a nonprofit built and sent off and everything. And because this is where the autism kicked in and said, "Aha!" You need documentation, here's all the documentation. And so, the master of organization came into play and I got to utilize that strength, but it was also a new thing for my ADHD to be happy with.

Laura: Yeah, and most people with ADHD struggle with organization.

Shane: Yeah, my organization is really weird though. It's very particular to my own brain. So, there's definitely has to be like a documentation on how my organization works that the people have to go through.

Laura: Right. Have the numbers in your group been increasing since the pandemic?

Shane: Oh my God, yes.

Laura: Because we often hear about women's diagnoses increasing and I don't have the data on men's, but I just wondered anecdotally what you're seeing.

Shane: Yeah, we've, we went from 12,000 at the beginning of 2023 to 20,000 currently.

Laura: Geez, good thing you figured out how to create a nonprofit.

Shane: Yeah, now we have new initiatives that we're working on, an ADHD parent support group and an autism parent support.

Laura: Awesome.

Shane: Now we're looking at 7,500 members in the ADHD parents support group, and 3,100 in the autism parents support in six weeks.

Laura: What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about men with ADHD?

Shane: That crazy-ass white kid in the corner. They think about men with ADHD, and it's the really hyperactive white guy who's super extroverted and completely out there willing to just take crazy risks, and they just kind of assume that that's everybody.

Laura: Yeah, and that guy does exist out there. No shade and he struggles, but yeah.

Shane: 100%. But then there's also the people who are on the autism spectrum or who are naturally introverted or who have the inattentive ADHD and they're the daydreamers. There's the people who kind of live in the different realms. And of course, emotional regulation is probably one of the biggest misconceptions because people keep forgetting that we don't just feel negative emotions more, we feel all emotions more. So, we love harder and we smile more and we are happier and we are more curious and we're more joyful when we have the things in place to be able to experience those feelings on a regular basis.

And too many people get locked into the really angry guy in the basement kind of stereotype especially whenever you sit here and hear about a men's group. I have a number of women who came to me and messaged me and they're like, "Hey, I just wanted to know is like, does your group do a lot of women bashing?"

Laura: What did you say?

Shane: No. This isn't like the He-Man-Woman-Haters Club. It's a place for men to be able to talk about erectile dysfunction because that's not a safe subject to have in your public groups or co-ed groups. The minute men talk about infidelity, they're immediately the villain. Infidelity is wrong, breaking the trust and things like that. But there's been kind of an overcompensation in our society...

Laura: Yeah, I hear you.

Shane: That ignores the nuance whenever we're dealing with these kinds of situations, and men need that space to be able to talk. Because if they don't, guess who they do become?

Laura: Right, totally.

Shane: So, they needed that space and to have that space. But we have a lot of misconceptions about the men's group and men in particular, like, "Oh, it's just a bunch of angry white dudes sitting here talking mad smack about women." and I'm like, no. A: diversity is huge for our group. We're an international organization, like the whole nine yards. Everybody else will hold each other accountable in the group.

There's a lot of people like where a guy does come in and he's like, he wants to sit here and bash about his ex-wife and he needs to vent about it. And guys coming in there and say, "Hey, you know, totally understand it, but let's not apply this to all women. Generalizations are dangerous. Because you're going to get stuck in that trap that you're gonna think that all women will do this to you if you keep following down this road" and it's just people being compassionately accountable.

Laura: It just sounds like a really safe and lovely space that you've developed. Is it the thing in your career that you're the most proud of?

Shane: No, my children. That's what I said in your career. No, but that's the thing. My whole career is built around making a world for my children to grow up in that's going to take care of them.

Laura: Wow, that's really beautiful.

Shane: Yeah, that's been my driving force all my life ever since I started really understanding ADHD and neurodivergences. Like I want to create a world that my children can go to school and the teachers embrace their creativity and really understand where they're coming from and other parents start teaching their children that neurodivergence and neurodiversity is a value that we need to have as a society.

And if I can sit here and influence a father to teach his son that, and if I could influence a mother to teach her daughter that, if I an influence her grandparents, if I influence the educators, if I get influence the people to get them to understand the importance of neurodiversity and respecting people for who they are and how they are, regardless of your expectations, that's what I do. And if the men's group does that, I'm ultimately proud of the men group for it. If the ADHD parents support group or autism parents support group does those things, you know, I have a lot of really lofty ambitions. And so, right now, all three of my groups are things I'm super proud of.

Laura: Shane, is there anything else you want to share before we sign off?

Shane: I just really hope that people start to understand that it's really important that we start to live a life, being happy living a life that other people may not understand. We don't need to have other people's expectations so ingrained in being who we are. We need to discover who we are on our own, with the help of people who are supporting and loving and caring. And we need to find that person who we, because every mask that we put on has an aspect of who we are, naturally. We just need to bring all those people into one cohesive person and find happiness and joy in that.

Laura: That's beautiful. It's so interesting that you picked up on my apprehension and anxiety, and what you're seeing is my mask of I'm on video and I don't particularly enjoy it, but I do it for the people.

Shane: Right, I actually understand that. I just started my own YouTube channel because I'm doing it for the parent support group and I'm on video and I've always been a podcaster. Always been a podcaster.

Laura: It's like, why did we get into podcasting? So we didn't have to be on video, right? But here we are. I love you all. Thank you for watching. Shane, it was so good to talk to you today. I really enjoyed this. Thanks for coming on the show.

Shane: Thank you for having me on. This has been literally a bucket list moment for me.

Laura: Oh my gosh.

Shane: I'm really stoked about this.

Laura: Thanks for listening today. As always, if you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at adhdaha@understood.org or send a message to our voicemail inbox. You'll find a link in the show notes along with resources and links to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.or. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want us to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine!

Jessamine: Hi, everyone.

Laura: And Margie DeSantis.

Margie: Hey, hey.

Laura: Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Scott Cocchiere, Seth Melnick, and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Laura Key.