ADHD and emotions in men (Marc Almodovar’s story)

Marc Almodovar was diagnosed with ADHD at 16, after he took it upon himself to ask for help. But it wasn’t until a painful breakup in his early 20s that he began to confront the emotional toll of hiding his struggles.

In this episode, Marc talks with host Laura Key about the toxic messages men receive around emotions and strength, the myths he’s had to unlearn, and the power of unmasking. He also shares how those realizations led him to found the Men’s ADHD Support Group — a space for men to talk openly about mental health, identity, and ADHD without shame.

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

• The Men’s ADHD Support Group

• What is self-advocacy?

(01:42) Masculinity and ADHD

(08:37) Marc’s ADHD diagnosis at 16

(13:03) Fully understanding his ADHD in his early 20s

(15:43) How did Marc “marry” his ADHD?

(17:03) What are some of the signs of ADHD that men overlook the most?

(17:52) Creating the ADHD Men’s Support Group, and what’s next

(19:53) How to reframe a negative self-talk cycle

Marc: The thing that was really mind-boggling to me is that boys and men almost have the opposite issue that a lot of women with ADHD face. We see quite high amounts of diagnosis, and the thing that really caught my eye a few years ago was that, although that was the case, there wasn't really any dedicated safe spaces for men with ADHD to talk about some of the things that men specifically face, like when it comes to the men's mental health stigma, the idea that we'll have a diagnosis of ADHD but not treat it as a big deal because we think that going to a therapist or taking a medication of some sort questions our masculinity.

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 Marc Almoldovar. Marc is a social media influencer, a life coach, and the founder of the Men's ADHD Support Group, the largest online community for men with ADHD. Marc, welcome.

Marc: Hi, thank you for having me.

Laura: I'm really excited to have you here. And you are the third person we've invited to "ADHD Aha!" from the Men's ADHD Support Group.

Marc: Yeah, that's right. I'm really excited to be chatting with y'all.

Laura: Yeah, we finally got the founder.

Marc: Yeah.

Laura: We got the big dog.

Marc: Whoa.

Laura: Sorry, we can cut that out.

Marc: No, you can keep that on. I just hope people don't start introducing me as such.

Laura: My bad. So, Marc, in these interviews, I usually start by asking about people's diagnosis story, but I was thinking that maybe we start by talking about something that you and I were chatting about during the pre-interview, which is related to the work that you do with the group, which is around masculinity and ADHD. It's a topic that we haven't explicitly covered on "ADHD Aha!," and I'm just thinking we start there.

Marc: Yeah, definitely. This whole thing on masculinity and ADHD started about five years ago when I had entered the ADHD industry as an ADHD life coach at the time. And the thing that was really mind-boggling to me is that boys and men almost have the opposite issue that a lot of women with ADHD face, where as we know, women are often underdiagnosed with ADHD because the symptoms are not really seen and all that. Boys and men are kind of on the flip side of things, where we see quite high amounts of diagnoses.

And the thing that really caught my eye a few years ago was that although that was the case, there wasn't really any dedicated safe spaces for men with ADHD to talk about some of the things that men specifically face. Like when it comes to the men's mental health stigma, just in general, the idea that we'll have a diagnosis of ADHD but not treat it as a big deal because we think that going to a therapist or taking a medication of some sort questions our masculinity in some way, shape, or form. So, that was really mind-boggling to me.

And I had the idea originally to start a support group for men with ADHD on Facebook. Originally, it wasn't that large of a community. It was like about 50 or 60 members or something like that. And then once the pandemic hit, everything tremendously changed for us. I mean, you know, there's being in this world that the pandemic was kind of eye-opening for a lot of people with ADHD. Realizing that they had the condition and got a diagnosis for the first time, and the support was very much so needed because everybody was like stuck in their homes and whatnot.

So, during that time period, we really changed and me and my buddy John got together and actually made this into a community. And I've learned so much since then, and it just turns out that support groups and safe spaces are a great idea, not just for men, but for everyone. And when men have a safe space to talk about these ADHD specific issues, that is something that leads to us doing better in our careers, relationships, so many different things. And yeah, it's just an important discussion to be had.

Laura: One thing that came up when we were chatting last was this idea of feeling less like a man.

Marc: Right.

Laura: Heavy quotes. What are some of those ADHD symptoms and traits that can lead to that feeling?

Marc: Well, here's the deal, right? Like when we think about masculinity and the stereotype that we feel the need to meet, we often feel that as men, that we need to be the providers, the source of strength, 24/7. We often feel that we cannot show emotions like sadness, for example. But the reality is, is that men need to understand that we're human beings. When we do things like, block out our emotions, not see a therapist, not treat our ADHD seriously, I mean, what we'll see in the community is men with bottled up emotions for years and years and then one day it just explodes and it ends up in the loss of their career or loss of a relationship.

And it's kind of weird because if our goal is to achieve those things, right, like if our go is to be strong, so if our goal is to be successful in our careers and whatnot, prioritizing your mental health will actually only help you do that. To me, the conversation is not so much about not seeking to have strength or be strong or anything like that. To me, the conversation is changing what your idea of strong is. Like strong is us feeling emotions and having a space to vent that whether it's in a small circle of people that get us or a therapist, that to me is strength.

Understanding your ADHD, that's a huge deal. You know, for me, like, I always struggled with a lot of my executive functionings and my career early on and everything like that. And once I understood my ADHD and some of the tools and tricks that work for me, that's part of what has helped me excel. But my encouragement to men is like a lot of those traditional values can be good, but you just need to rethink about what the definition is of those things.

Laura: Yeah. When I think about ADHD and the things that it impacts, trouble managing emotions is a big one. And men are often told that you need to be strong and you shouldn't be showing your emotions as it is. Things like trouble managing finances, right? Really common with ADHD. And as a man, potentially, feeling like society telling you that "You got to take care of this household. You're in charge here," right? It's you're, you have to be a provider, I think is the word that you use before.

It's interesting because we haven't, I don't believe we haven't seen an underdiagnosis in men. But I'm thinking about the dichotomy of those things, like men who are like, or as boys were hyperactive, and maybe their symptoms were more obvious. But then maybe potentially, and I'm curious what you think, not learning about the impact of ADHD on these other things, and maybe it got like shoved down a little bit.

Marc: Right. Yeah, definitely. And oftentimes, like the diagnosis of ADHD will be a thing, but again, that stereotype that kicks in, right? It's like, "You have to take Adderall to be productive? Like, what are you doing?" Or "Just try harder or push harder and you'll be good." These are the type of things that we have told boys and men throughout the years, and it's just a damaging idea to be direct.

If you look in public social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram or anything like that, and just search up like hashtags on men with ADHD or ADHD men in general, you really won't see much content like out in the public because men are very fearful of expressing emotions. They don't want to be seen as somebody who just being direct here may struggle with something like erectile dysfunction due to an ADHD medication or something like that. They don't want to talk about that stuff publicly. But when there is a safe space for them, like what we see in our community, the engagement is almost like through the roof.

And oftentimes these men are, like they join our community and start taking their ADHD seriously when they're at a breaking point, when the career has come to an end, when the divorce has happened. And our whole thought is, is that doesn't have to be the case. And if we make it a normal thing to teach men that it's OK to prioritize your mental health and take care of your ADHD, you'll find a more successful approach to life.

Laura: I mean, this is why I'm so grateful for the work that you and your colleagues are doing. This isn't just a men's issue, right? We're talking about men. We're talking about masculinity, but all of that pushing down of these emotions and like the hiding and the masking, it comes out in unhealthy ways. And that affects everybody. It can brew toxicity, I imagine.

Marc: 100 percent.

Laura: So, you were diagnosed when you were 16, is that right? What was going on?

Marc: Pretty much all throughout my life, I knew I was a little bit different. In kindergarten, I was the kid with sloppy handwriting, disorganized desk, the report cards would say things like "Marc is there, but not really there." The kind of typical things that you would see in an attentive ADHD or where the hyperactivity was more in my mind as opposed to something you could see physically.

And while my attention was not present in the academic setting, I was unbelievably focused on like Batman. Like I would watch Batman, the animated series at the time, and not only did I watch the show, I would watch all the behind-the-scenes and knew who did the music and knew the writers were and all that. It was like this weird dichotomy where like math didn't capture my attention at all, but I was like above and beyond of the things that did capture my attention.

Laura: How do you remember that?

Marc: Because it stuck with me. I'm still a huge Batman fan.

Marc: OK.

Laura: I was like Batman for like every single one of my Halloweens as a child. It was my birthday parties. Anytime I watch a Batman movie, I just feel like a kid again.

Laura: Hypermasculine Batman. Sorry, I feel like I should be making some sort of genius connection here.

Marc: Yeah, no, I can almost start saying like don't be like Batman, like he would benefit from therapy.

Laura: Yeah.

Marc: A lot. He's had a lot of trauma.

Laura: He has had a lot of trouble. I'm sorry to laugh at you, Batman. I didn't mean to do that.

Marc: It's OK. Yeah, yeah, that's a great example of literally masking and just not dealing with your stuff.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, for 16 years of my life, I knew that I was a little bit different, but they didn't have a name for the way that I operated. And when I was in high school, that was a big struggle for me, because specifically that age, 16 years old, I mean, I didn't have the self-confidence that I do now. I didn't know about my ADHD or how to navigate it. So, I was really struggling in school, was about to get let back.

And when I was 16, that was the first time in my life where... I had actually admitted to needing some type of help, and that changed everything for me. That's when I had first started seeing a psychologist and therapist and all that, and did like this four-hour thing that was opening to my diagnosis. So, that was very eye-opening for me.

Laura: It wasn't that someone else spotted these things in you. It was that you proactively sought out support, and then through that suppor,t were diagnosed with ADHD?

Marc: Correct, yeah, correct.

Laura: Wow.

It was me saying that I needed help.

Laura: Wow. What were some of the things in high school that were really hard for you specifically?

Marc: The self-confidence was the number one thing. I mean, if you look at somebody's life with unmanaged ADHD, that is a rough life. We're frequently met with, you're lazy, you have so much potential, you're not tapping into it, you're disorganized, all these things that can really, really influence our self-confidence to go in the wrong direction. I didn't know to believe in myself, and I didn't know what my strengths were or anything like that. I just saw myself as somebody who was not enough consistently.

Laura: What was your home life like?

Marc: My home life was complicated. I have great appreciation for my mother and all that, but that time period, I mean, I was raised in a Cuban Hispanic household. And honestly, my mother, and her mother, growing up, the concept of ADHD was like a foreign thing. At the ADHD conference this year, one of the things that me and Dr. Marielle Hernandez got to do was like the first ever like peer support thing for ADHD, but for Latinx people. That's a whole separate conversation, a whole other podcast.

But in our families, the information and education on ADHD is not very much so there. So, my mother didn't really understand the whole ADHD thing. She didn't understand why my room was a mess all the time or why I was having all these struggles in school and everything like that. Due to her lack of knowledge, she did think that it was a lot of just laziness, to be direct. But yeah, things started to change once that diagnosis actually came through, but it was rough.

Laura: Did you get any accommodations or support at school as a result of your diagnosis?

Marc: A little bit. I do remember getting some extra time in class and everything like that. It's like I got that diagnosis of ADHD, and things got a little bit better, but I wasn't like fully where I needed to be at. Things didn't start moving for me up until like I was in my early 20s. But in school, like I knew myself a little bit, but I didn't know myself well enough to understand like what type of accommodations I needed, what support was like, and all that.

Laura: So, it's like you were like dating your ADHD in high school. It seems like you got married to your ADHD, and your twenties. Is that right?

Marc: Oh, wow. Oh, man. Yeah, that just, I got to write that down somewhere. I've always struggled with how to say that. That's exactly how I'm going to say it. Yeah. 100%.

Laura: What was a specific thing that happened, dare I say, like an "aha" moment that you had in your twenties when you're like, "Oh man, this ADHD is, it's legit."

Marc: Honestly, a breakup at the time had triggered that. I kind of just realized how much I relied on external sources for my own well-being. When she left me, I realized I let that relationship kind of define my own self-worth. It's like I was so dependent on this person to feel good about myself in a way. So, that time period kind of triggered me to really just get to know myself a little bit more as opposed to just get back into dating and seeking out another partner. I was like, "Let me date myself a bit and marry myself."

Laura: Like, date myself, marry my ADHD.

Marc: Yeah. So, let me find out what my interests are a little bit more. Cause I'm like super young at the time. I'm 20 years old. What do I want to do with my career? And even though this seems like off subject, everything I just mentioned is very related to ADHD, right? Because I think that like that involves not masking the ADHD so much, in my opinion. Like I think a lot of navigating ADHD is not so much about trying to be normal, but really about tapping into your strengths.

Like years later, I would learn that I'm very loaded with empathy. And when I'm in a setting of supporting someone on an emotional level, I go from super talkative and distracted to 100% listening, which is like my specialty and peer support and me learning what my strengths were, were so beneficial to my ADHD because now I'm at a place where things are not perfect. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you like, I got this thing nailed down. I still have struggles to this day.

But now I'm at a place where I can wake up in the morning and do what I'm good at and be myself for my career. It's not something that many ADHDers get to say. That is something that's a result of me trying out a bunch of things in my early 20s and just learning what I am good at and how I wanna utilize my strengths as opposed to learning to be super organized and do something administrative and mask my ADHD full time.

Laura: So, where did you go from there when you married your ADHD? How did you do that? I'm sure there are people listening who are like, "How do I do that, because they're probably listening to you, Marc. Who's this extremely competent, self-assured, successful person here? How did you get there?

Marc: Marrying my ADHD, first of all, I started with therapy. That was a really huge thing for me, at least when it came to navigating the self-talk side of things. That was really big. I have this thing about myself that a lot of ADHDers have, where I don't really just moderately get into something. I just make something my whole life, or I don't have any interest in it at all, right? So, that was the case with my personal growth journey. I most certainly picked up "Driven to Distraction" by Dr. Ned Hallowell and some of the Russell Barkley books and everything like that.

And I just really wanted to learn about what it meant to be successful with ADHD. And the all or nothing side of me was like, not only do I wanna learn this, but I wanna to learn how I can help other people. That's when I got into the coaching industry, and the marrying started to happen when I really got involved in this community. I started on social media and just wanted to find other people who think like me and work with other people who do similar work, and I mean, it's just been so beneficial finding that community.

Laura: Based on all of the interactions you have with men with ADHD, what are some of the signs of ADHD that you feel like men overlook the most?

Marc: There's so many. Because the thing is, there's a lot of things that we don't even realize are tied to ADHD. Like the finances, for example. What will happen is, the members come to our community going through some of the things I mentioned earlier. They'll go through a bad breakup of some sort, they'll go just getting fired in their career, and as they get into our community, they'll realize some other things with the educational content in there. Like "ADHD actually affects my finances that influenced my last relationship." Or "This ADHD thing is not just about struggling to focus. Like a lot of my struggles, doing my day-to-day chores actually comes from the ADHD."

Laura: How many members do you have now?

Marc: We just hit around 20K recently.

Laura: Wow, congratulations.

Marc: Yeah, it's a combination of Meetup and Facebook and Discord. It's kind of cool because this work has obviously something that's changed my life tremendously. And it all goes back to this one just impulse idea. Like, I was going for a walk five years ago and thought I would just start a little Facebook group and follow through with it. And yeah, years later, it is such a large part of my life now.

Laura: And it's hard for people with ADHD to follow through on these ideas that they have. So, you must have been really interested in it.

Marc: Yeah, this is one of the ones that worked out for sure.

Laura: One stuck. What's coming up next for the group?

Marc: We are really just consistently building our event aspect of our nonprofit. I mean, we do monthly events where we bring in different experts. Like we had Dr. William Dotson on not too long ago and he really did an amazing job and gave us an endorsement, which was really cool. And Dr. Carolyn Parcells, like so many different like ADHD experts, have come on and spoken and we're looking to continue to do that. And we also have a variety of in-person chapters that I'm loving. We have one in New York City, North Carolina, California.

It's a part of the group that's very much so growing and the goal is to provide the benefit that I've experienced in my own life in the past few years where there's not just an online community that I have, but I have like this small circle of friends that I can go and grab a cup of coffee with when I need someone to talk to about things or when I just want to have fun. It's kind of cool because to this day, I'm still navigating my own ADHD and navigating my own self-talk.

And sometimes the self-talk is negative. Sometimes the self-talk is something that I have to talk back to. And when I'm feeling down about myself, I just think about like, "Dude, you're having such a positive impact on people. Like you do great work. Why are you overthinking if your hair looks okay, or if you said something weird or anything like that? You're doing great work."

Laura: I need a little bit more of that in my life. What kind of self-talk recommendations do you give people who are still in the midst of that failure cycle, reframe their self-taught?

Marc: It takes work. I think that we should be a little bit extra about it, in my opinion. Like affirmations for me have gone a long way. I'm a huge believer in coaching and therapy, and obviously, support groups have a little bit bias on that one, but I think it's important. But any type of support that you can get in that area goes a long way. And I really think that we need to understand that this matters quite a bit, probably even more than we think.

Like something that people with ADHD will struggle with is taking on something new and like following through with it. We'll do things like do like a 30-day meditation program, and then forget to do it on day 11, and then day 12, we're spending our day beating ourselves up and saying all these bad things about ourselves. When we can start saying things like "I didn't follow through on day eleven, good thing is I'm not defined by it, and tomorrow is a thing." Like that's the type of conversations that we need to be having, and it's very possible for us to get there, but it does take a lot of support.

So, my suggestion to everybody is to use social media and the internet to your advantage here and start looking for those people that will be your hype man. It will go a long way.

Laura: Look for your hype man, I like that.

Marc: Yeah.

Laura: Is there anything that we haven't covered that you want to share?

Marc: One thing that I just like to encourage people with ADHD, I think I kind of touched on this earlier, but Pomodoro techniques and exercise and all the type of things that we typically hear about with ADHD tips, they're great, you should do them, all that. However, I think that the most important thing that any ADHDer can do is learn to look at the mirror and genuinely appreciate what they see. That is the ultimate accomplishment of an ADHDer.

The bad news is that the ADHD is not going to go away. But the transformative thing for me is that I learned to talk about myself in a little bit more of a positive light. I know when I have a slip-up, that doesn't define me. I know that I can keep going, and I can get better, and I learn from it. And I know to remind myself of my strengths and utilize them to not only help myself, but to help other people. Every other person with ADHD can get there too. And you owe it to yourself to appreciate who you are and talk about yourself in a positive way.

Laura: Wow. Thank you for that. I can see why people want to join the Men's ADHD Support Group. If that's the kind of, you know, wisdom that they're going to get, it's really impressive, Marc. We'll put a link to the group in the show notes. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on the show and for all of the work that you do.

Marc: This was really fun and likewise I'm honored to be on such an amazing platform.

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.org. 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.