Painful everyday realities of ADHD and executive dysfunction (KC Davis’ story)

KC Davis, counselor, author, and host of Struggle Care, talks about the everyday realities of ADHD and executive dysfunction: messiness, boredom, and keeping up with household tasks like laundry. She shares how caring for a newborn and a 2-year-old during the COVID shutdown pushed her coping strategies to the breaking point — “I lost my mind,” she says — and ultimately changed the way she understood herself.

KC reflects on ADHD signs that showed up throughout her life, from forgetting to turn in homework to biting her tongue until it bled to stop herself from interrupting people. She also discusses working memory, addiction, and the years she spent fighting for radical acceptance in therapy — and why understanding her ADHD sooner might have made that journey much easier.

• Listen: Managing expectations in relationships with ADHD (interview with KC Davis)

• Read: ADHD and boredom

• Watch: Why ADHD makes everything so hard (executive dysfunction explained)

Laura Key: Hi everyone. Did you know that "ADHD Aha!" has been on the air for five years and we've never done a proper mailbag episode? So let's fix that. Send me your questions about a specific episode, about ADHD curiosities, or even about me. If you've ever wondered it, there's a good chance someone else has too. Write in to adhdaha@understood.org and your question could be featured on our first ever mailbag episode.

KC Davis: I was talking about how people might think that leaving my cups on my bedside table means that like I'm not disciplined or I'm not motivated. But that's not true. It's just that discipline and motivation look really different for me. There's this like river of energy that runs through me. I can do anything in that river's path. But I can't step out of that river to like do some other task.

I got this comment that was like, "Hey, I really don't mean to be pushy, but like, I really really think you should get assessed for ADHD because you're literally describing like exactly what ADHD feels like to me."

Laura: Hi everyone and welcome back to "ADHD Aha!", the show where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. Have you ever wondered why everyday tasks like laundry can feel impossible when you have ADHD? Well, my guest today, KC Davis, not only knows a lot about this, it's also core to her ADHD diagnosis story.

KC is a therapist, an author, a speaker, and host of the podcast "Struggle Care." KC, I'm so happy to have you here today. How are you?

KC: Hi, I'm so glad to be here.

Laura: I was thinking to kick things off, since this is not your first appearance on an Understood.org podcast, I thought maybe we would play a little clip of something that you said on "Sorry I Missed This," which is hosted by the amazing Kate Osburn, about laundry.

KC: People will think about laundry and they'll be like, "just do your laundry." But the reality is that there are like a bazillion steps. When will you do laundry? Can you start it now? Will you be around in an hour when it goes off and will you remember it? And if you won't, will you come back in two days and it's mildewed and you have to do it again? Do you need to sort things, light from dark? Do you have any laundry detergent? Did you remember to put it on the list?

If you did, do you need to go to the grocery store? Did you get an Instacart order? Was it high enough to get the free shipping? Is the laundry detergent eco-friendly and are we stressed out about that? Once we get it into the washer, we need to get it into the dryer. And will we be around to get it out of the dryer before it sits in there and wrinkles? And if it does wrinkle, what if it all wads together inside of the pocket of your fitted sheet? So we've got to start it again. So now we have another hour we need to think about coming back to it. That's just laundry.

Laura: It's the fitted sheet that gets me.

KC: Yep. Very relatable.

Laura: The reason I wanted to play that, KC, is because as I mentioned in the intro, this struggle with everyday care tasks, dishes, laundry, keeping the house clean, is so core to your journey to diagnosis. And it really started when you began posting content about this. Let's start there. Tell us what was going on. Why were you posting content?

KC: I started posting content during the COVID shutdowns. And I had just had a baby. I had a two-year-old and then I gave birth to my second baby three weeks before the COVID shutdowns happened in Houston. So I suddenly found myself with this not quite two-year-old and this newborn baby.

And I had this whole post-partum support plan set up where my family was going to come in turns and we were going to get delivery services and we were going to get a cleaner. And then overnight all of that disappeared and it was just me and these two kids. And so, you know, I did what anybody would do. I lost my mind.

And part of what happened, I mean there was some post-partum depression and just kind of being in the trenches, but the most visible effect of that was like dishes piled up to the ceiling and laundry always on the laundry room floor and just like so much clutter everywhere that you could barely walk anywhere.

And it was just very overwhelming. And I started posting videos of me kind of like tackling my house and trying to get it back in order. And I was using a lot of sort of hacks that I had used in my early 20s, just like ways that I'd kind of come up with trying to get stuff like that done because it's always been a little difficult. But it's never been totally debilitating until I had kids.

It was just, "oh yeah, I'm a person that has a laundry chair and I'm a person that like only does their dishes every four days and I'm a person who like might secretly turn their underwear inside out to wear another day because I didn't do laundry in time." But it wasn't some huge thing because it was just me. And then all of a sudden I had kids and the coping mechanisms that I had subconsciously created to keep up with care tasks broke down under the weight of like having a family.

Laura: And how did people react to your content? Some positive, some not so positive, right?

(05:00) The emotional impact of social media criticism and the relief of finding a community that shares similar domestic struggles.

KC: Yeah, I mean there was definitely negative comments of people being really shaming and kind of going after me as a mother or me as a wife or me as a woman or an adult. But for every comment like that, there were dozens of comments of people who would say, "my house looks just like this. And it's so refreshing to see someone whose house looks like mine."

And most poignantly, people would say, "I feel so ashamed that I struggle with stuff like this. It seems like I should be able to be on top of it all. It seems like I should be able to hold it together, and yet I struggle with these basic day-to-day tasks and I don't want to tell anybody because I'm afraid it just looks like I'm lazy."

And that kind of started the trajectory of where my platform went and eventually where the book went, was kind of the therapist in me kicking off to people's shame and talking about how the struggle that I know that I was having, even though I didn't know that I was ADHD, like I knew that this was just like a personality facet of mine. And I knew it wasn't laziness. And I knew it wasn't irresponsibility.

It's funny, even without a diagnosis I had just come to a place in my life where I had realized like, you know, maybe I'm just a creative, you know, maybe I'm just an artist. Because I had just gone through so much. I mean I went to rehab when I was 16 and had a very structured couple of years and I went through therapy and like I changed a lot as a person and I grew a lot as a person and I became a responsible person. I became a mature, emotionally mature person.

And yet, there was this like thing that always stuck with me was just I was a messy person. I was a once every three day showerer. I never can seem to clean as I go, dishes always in the sink person, regardless of how much I like mentally and emotionally and spiritually matured. So I knew they weren't connected.

Laura: So how did you eventually come to — because at this point you weren't diagnosed with ADHD — so what happened that got you down that path?

KC: As I began to share some of these little like hacks that I used to like trick my brain into being able to do these tasks and stay on top of them, I gained quite an audience. And a huge portion of my audience were neurodivergent. They were people who were autistic, they were people who were ADHD.

And a lot of people with ADHD would talk about how this is the first thing that's ever helped me. This is the first advice about cleaning, about laundry, about self-care that's ever really helped me, that's ever made sense for my brain. And I just thought like, oh that's great.

And people occasionally would be like, "oh I started watching this great woman online and she has ADHD." And I was always like, "oh, but I don't. I don't have ADHD." Because I almost felt like it was like stolen valor. Like there were a lot of content creators that would talk about ADHD and I just wanted to be very clear like, "hey I'm not like pretending to be something I'm not to like get in on the niche."

And people would always be like, "are you sure?" Or they'd be like, "really? You're not?" And I still remember the TikTok that I made that convinced me to get an assessment.

Laura: Tell me.

KC: It was a TikTok about having cups on my bedside table. And I was talking about how when I do my like weekly reset, there's like a line item that is like, "go around the house and collect all the cups." And I said, people might think that leaving my cups on my bedside table means that like I'm not disciplined or I'm not motivated or I like can't do things, but that's not true. It's just that discipline and motivation look really different for me.

There's this like river of energy that runs through me. And wherever that river flows over, like I can do anything in that river's path. But I can't like step out of that river to like do some other task. And so the key isn't like learning how to get out of the river. The key is like learning how to make the river flow over the tasks you need to do.

Like, I'm never someone who like if I'm like walking into my room to grab something and I see that there's a cup there, like never will my brain and body get on the same page of, "oh let's just grab that and take it to the kitchen while we're here." But if I put it on like its own line item on a Sunday afternoon and I get a big dish pail or whatever, and I make it its own task, all of a sudden I don't have trouble initiating that task.

That was just something that I had observed about myself. And I got this comment that was like, "Hey, I really don't mean to be pushy, but like, I really really think you should get assessed for ADHD because you're literally describing like exactly what ADHD feels like to me." And so I did.

I already had a psychiatrist that was treating my post-partum depression and I went to her and said like, "I want to get assessed for ADHD." And like luckily about the time of COVID was like everything was telehealth.

(10:30) The path to an ADHD diagnosis

KC: And so she was like, "well what makes you think that?" And I was like, "well," and I like moved to the side so that my kitchen was showing. And it was a disaster. And I was like, "I can do things, but like they have to be very regimented and there has to be lists. And I can't remember what's on the list no matter how many times I do it, I have to have like visual cues to like get me to do things." And she was like, "I'm going to stop you right there and we're just going to go ahead and do the assessment."

Laura: What was your reaction when ultimately it was revealed that you had ADHD?

KC: I think there was still a part of me that felt like an imposter. Like, I wasn't, but wouldn't it be convenient if I was? I don't know, there was this weird part of me that felt like maybe I'm just convincing myself this is true, maybe I've tricked the psychiatrist. But what convinced me and what kind of put the imposter syndrome to bed was she asked a lot about my childhood.

And one of the reasons that I thought that I wasn't ADHD is because like I didn't have a lot of the struggles in school that like the ADHD kids did. But she asked me if there was anything I struggled with in school and I said that really it was just homework. Like, I was interested in the lectures, I liked to learn and I would listen and I would retain all of the information. And then just from hearing the lectures, I would take the tests and get A's because I would remember everything.

I also was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder when I was young, and so I was always in the front row, which is probably like an accidental accommodation for the ADHD. But I never did my homework. Ever. For a long time it didn't matter because the way that elementary school like weighted grades, the homework just wasn't weighted for very much.

And my psychiatrist was like, "well describe to me what it was like trying to do your homework." And I said, "I remember they would put the assignment on the board. And I would think to myself, oh read chapter three. Surely that seems obvious, I won't forget that. And then I'd get home and I wouldn't think about it again." And then the next day I'd be like, "how did I forget that?" When I left the classroom, it disappeared.

And what she said to me was that that was actually a really common expression of ADHD in kids that are smart and like school because ADHD isn't the inability to pay attention, it's the inability to regulate what you're paying attention to.

(15:30) The common overlap between ADHD and other learning differences, such as auditory processing disorder and dyslexia.

KC: And there were other random — I mean she went through like the actual diagnostic questions, but again, the ones that convinced me was like, you know, she said, "hey do you tell me more about that like a learning disorder that you were diagnosed with." And I was like, "oh well I was diagnosed with audio processing disorder as well as dysgraphia and dyslexia. And I went through like a pretty serious like summer camp thing to rehabilitate the dyslexia or whatever."

She was like, "interesting. You know there's actually very large correlation between kids with learning disorders and kids that have ADHD."

Laura: Yeah. Huge.

KC: Huge. And she was like, "did you ever have any like vocal ticks or anything growing up?" And I was like, "yeah, now that you mentioned it, I did." She was like, "well did you have any addiction issues?" And I was like, "what is happening?" I mean she literally like listed—how do you know? Are you a fortune teller? And I was like, "yeah, I literally landed in rehab by the time I was 16."

She was like, "yep, there's a pretty big correlation between kids that have untreated ADHD and kids that develop addiction-substance use disorders." And so it was just like one after another after another. And even thinking through like when I was in rehab, there were a lot of like behavioral issues that I can now look back and realize were ADHD. Like I had a tendency to correct people and to interrupt people a lot.

And it was sort of couched in this like, "hey, like you're pretty self-centered and like we need you to like get a grip and get mature and not think about yourself." And so for a long time — and I did, like I learned how to bite my tongue until it bled when I wanted to interrupt somebody. But I thought that that was a moral failing that I had like conquered. And then of course realizing that that's like such a common thing for people with ADHD.

Laura: I mean I'm already hearing a lot of like what are actually ADHD symptoms being perceived as character flaws either from other people, right? You talked about like the like people thinking that you're lazy or just messy or just lack willpower, right, when it comes to the house. And now you're talking about the behavioral issues and just being defiant maybe when in reality you're struggling to regulate your attention and you feel the need to interrupt. How much do you think that sunk in with you and your self-perception?

KC: I think there was some sadness because, you know, I know for a lot of people their story is like once they got their diagnosis, like for the first time they didn't feel shame. Like they realized they're not broken, that they just have this disorder. And I think for me, I didn't really have that much shame anymore because like I had fought so hard through rehab, through therapy, like I had fought so hard to gain this like radical acceptance of myself.

But like I had to fight so hard to internalize that, that then when I got my ADHD diagnosis, there was some sadness of like, had I known this earlier, it wouldn't have been such a hard fight to get to a place of self-acceptance.

Laura: That makes sense. Yeah. When did you start going to therapy?

KC: I started therapy at four when my parents divorced. And saw a therapist off and on up until my teens. And then ended up in psych ward and then rehab when I was 16. Got out when I was 18, continued to see a therapist through that and then ended up getting a graduate degree in counseling. So I kind of never left therapy until I was like 26.

Laura: Can you talk a little bit about maybe your behavioral issues and how you think that ADHD interplayed with those even though obviously it was undiagnosed at the time?

KC: Yeah, I mean the biggest part was like I've always been very extroverted, which is just my personality. It was almost like I was thinking too fast, not because I have like super processing speed, but because my brain just like skips over things. Like I interrupt people not because I don't care about what they're talking about, but because I already feel like I know how they're going to finish their sentence.

And I also know how I'm going to respond. And if I wait for them to finish their sentence, either I'm going to forget what it was I was going to say, and so if I don't want to forget it, I have to just hold on to that thought and repeat it to myself. But then I'm still not listening to the end of your sentence anyways.

Laura: Oh my god. It's torture. I'm nodding my head so so much for those who aren't watching on video. Yeah.

KC: Yeah, like it needs to come out and it needs to come out right now. And I've never cared when other people interrupt me. And so I always sort of felt like, I don't know, like this is a you problem. I had to mature a little bit to be like, oh other people's feelings matter here.

The same with like correcting. You know, if I hear someone say what time is the bus pick us up and someone says eight and I'm just like not even a part of that conversation, I'll be like, "no, it's actually 7:55." I tend to get a little like tunnel vision black and white about things and you know, care more about the argument than people's feelings, which isn't like directly an ADHD trait but was just sort of a byproduct of how ADHD manifested in my personality.

Also like with details. The only C I ever got in grad school was because I misread the syllabus. And I did this multiple times through my grad school education. Like I would read, oh it's due on 8/16. But actually it said 8/6. And no matter how many times I read it, my brain thought it said 8/16. And so that's what my brain saw. And so I would miss these deadlines and I would feel so like, uh, how could you be so irresponsible? So it was those kind of behaviors that like so often were seen as like a moral failing.

(20:30) Why traditional "clean as you go" advice is often inaccessible for neurodivergent individuals.

KC: And same thing with the messiness. Like what I realized was that like if I get out the milk and pour myself a glass, and then put the cap on the milk, and then I like go to set that milk down on the table somewhere, if anything pulls my attention, if the cat runs by, if the doorbell rang, if my kid says they need something, like I'll just go move on to the next thing and I won't remember to put the milk away until I see the milk again.

And that was a really big realization, that the only reason that I know what to do next is because I'm being visually cued. And I made this kind of long video about how working memory looks and it was sort of this little sketch of like what 20 minutes of my day looks like. And it was like, okay, I poured the milk and I go and then one kid falls and they need a band-aid. So we go to get the band-aid and I put it on there and I leave the trash there because the doorbell just rang and I go and there's boxes there.

But then I also while I'm out here I see that the trash can's out there and it needs to come in. And so it's just like it goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. And so I feel like I've spent all day like ping-ponging around my house. And then I turn around and there's like this like trail of destruction and it looks like I've done nothing.

Laura: Ping-ponging around the house is such a good expression. No, but I totally get that. I leave shit everywhere in my wake and I'm just going round and round. I kind of have the opposite issue as you. It's not that — if I see something, if I'm going to do one thing, I can't not pay attention to all the little things along the way that I have to pick up and take to wherever I'm going. But then ultimately I get distracted and I start doing more of that and then more of that and then more of that and then I never do that one thing that I was setting out to do.

KC: Yeah, that that's the choice, right? It's like, okay, I'm on my way to do something and I see something. I can literally only have one tab open at a time. I don't have that function where it's like, "ooh, bookmark that dirty sock there for later, we'll come back to it." Because if I stop for the dirty sock, I am not going to do what it was I was on my way to do. And if I pass by the dirty sock, I'll never come back to the dirty sock until I see it again, and I'm probably not going to see it again until I'm already on my way to do another third thing.

Laura: Both ways leave their own little mini paths of destruction, right?

KC: And any time I've tried like, "oh well just clean as you go, just clean as you go." It takes so much mental and emotional energy for me to do that that I'm exhausted by the end of the day, and it's just not sustainable for me.

(25:30) The sensory seeking nature of the ADHD brain.

Laura: I was also curious about addiction and how you think that played into or how ADHD, undiagnosed ADHD, played into that.

KC: It's a little bit above my pay grade, but my understanding both scientifically and also just experientially is like when you think about people saying that the ADHD nervous system is just kind of hardwired different. We have that interest-based, that urgency-based. And when people talk about dopamine, I mean the function of dopamine and serotonin is really complex.

However, I do know that all of those things involve the pleasure center of your brain. The motivation, the mood-control, seeing actions and consequences, delaying gratification, like all of those things are happening in your executive functioning and there's a lot of interaction with your like the pleasure center in your brain.

And we know that there are some differences in those systems in people with ADHD, which isn't to say that like all addicts have ADHD, but it is to say that, you know, I think that having a slightly differently wired like pleasure center and executive functioning, like I don't know, man, it was just like the best thing I'd ever done and I was not able to stop.

Laura: Yeah.

KC: And we do know that kids that are on ADHD medication have a far less risk of developing substance use disorders. So we know that there's a correlation there.

Laura: And I think that people often think it would be the opposite, right, because people consider that ADHD medication would be like a gateway drug, which is not true if it's properly prescribed and it is properly dosed and it actually will have quite the opposite effect.

KC: I think that's also one of the reasons that kind of convinced me that the ADHD diagnosis was real. Like I had been on SSRIs for the post-partum depression and it wasn't totally helping. And then I got on Vyvanse for my ADHD, and all of the sudden the depression went away.

Laura: Oh, interesting. Okay. Unpack that.

KC: The big thing with my depression was like I never felt sad. I felt apathetic. I felt emotionally flatlined. I didn't have anything to look forward to because with two kids everyday is exactly the same. There's no little like, "ah, it's Friday" or like, "ooh, finally, five o'clock." I would say that like every day I woke up and thinking about the day ahead was like looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

Like, there's two kinds of boredom. There's the boredom of having nothing to do and then there's the boredom of having so much to do and all those tasks are boring. So you can't go do anything interesting. And for a lot of like having a newborn, it's just boring tasks. There's nothing to look forward to because it's not like you can a sleep is no escape, you're going to be waking up in two hours. You're exhausted.

And so add that to the shutdown where I can't go anywhere. And what was interesting was that there's only one other time in my life that I experienced a depressive episode. So the other time was when I was living and working in Guatemala City. And I had gone over there to work for a church, but I work really fast. And so there were a lot of days where like I would be done with what I had to do within a couple hours and then like nothing to do for the rest of the day. And so I was pretty bored.

And my Spanish was okay, but it wasn't good enough to keep up with social interaction. And so I would come home, put on the TV, compulsively watch TV until four in the morning, go to bed, wake up, go to work, and just do it over and over. I wasn't coming out for meals, I was living with a host family. I wasn't showering, I wasn't coming out for meals, I was totally emotionally flatlined. And the only thing I could feel was by like living vicariously through TV shows.

So you would think that like being single and living in Guatemala has nothing to do with having a baby and like having a big family and being overwhelmed with your laundry, but there were two things that connected those two experiences, and one was isolation and the second one was boredom. And not bored like I can be bored. But I'm talking days on days on days of being under — stimulated. And it's hard to talk about this without someone who doesn't understand like rolling their eyes. But like truly people with ADHD experience boredom as pain.

Laura: You've kind of touched a nerve with me here. This you're touching on something that I've never really been able to articulate before, which is I spent a lot of time abroad myself. And I spent a year in in Spain. And it should be the most exciting time. I'm in my early 20s, you know, I'm working for a study abroad company, I'm on my own.

And I found myself just completely bored, wandering the beautiful, beautiful city and listening to at that point, it was a Discman. I didn't have dating myself here. I didn't have an iPod or maybe I had an iPod, I don't know, an early one, like a big one. Just walking around, listening to music, pretending to work out, putting on workout clothes, walking for five minutes, walking back to my little dorm room, back and forth, back and forth, going out drinking if I could, but I didn't really know anybody, just depressed. And it was supposed to be this liberating moment. I had free time, I was alone, I was sowing my oats, and it was just I was so bored. I couldn't find any joy.

KC: Yep. And the thing about something to look forward to is interesting because dopamine is not pleasure, it's the anticipation of pleasure. There it is. Yeah. And what got me when I had little little kids where they needed something every second of the day, they had to be watched every second of the day, I realized that I couldn't do any projects.

The reason that we get into hobbies like we do as ADHD people, part of that is, ah, the excitement, there's a hyperfixation on it, the happiness comes from the thinking about what you're going to buy, what you're going to do, what you're going to make. It's an anticipation. And so when you are in a position like in new motherhood, like being overseas, where like you can't do even those simple, simple little things that would bring you a little bit of like, "oh, this this is so I'm so focused, this is so this, this is so that." Truly like people with ADHD, like we will get depressed. And it doesn't show up as sadness, it shows up as apathy.

Laura: And there's so much judgment that comes with that especially for new moms or moms in general because you're supposed to be finding so much joy in these little monotonous moments with your kids. So much meaning. So much meaning. And of course, yes, it's like I love my kids, but I didn't look forward to, "oh yay I get to change another diaper, what a glorious moment for me." Did you experience that, that guilt feeling?

KC: Yeah. And I think also like it's hard because I didn't want my kids' formative years to be like the mom that was always just like staring at her phone. And so I would resist the phone, and then I burned out because I was trying to be 100% present all the time and it was so insufferably boring. And I had to realize that I'm not capable of giving 100% engagement.

And so when I try and I can't, I end up just like powering down and giving 30% all the time, and that it's really better for me to start to structure my day so that there are pockets of 100% engagement and then pockets of time where I'm giving 100% attention to something else. I had to kind of learn to like pace myself so that there was a balance between like needed things and stimulating things and rewarding things and engaging things and things like that.

Laura: KC, you're not a big fan of the the term self-care. Is that right?

KC: No.

Laura: Tell me why.

KC: Because it's just so often the solution that we offer to people, especially women when we feel overwhelmed. And a lot of the like self-care advice always to me ended up feeling like just another thing that I had to put on my to-do list to somehow make time and energy for that I wasn't going to be able to make time and energy for, and then just like another thing to feel guilty about.

It's like, I don't want to wake up early, I'm tired. I don't want to go to yoga, I don't like yoga. I don't want to take a bubble bath, I want, you know, to get my kids bathed so that I can read that book I like. You know what I mean? Like my poor therapist, he kept trying to tell me like, "maybe you should take a bath." And I'm like, "I don't want to take a bath. Could you stop telling me to take a bath?"

I think the idea of self-care always having to be extra activities is really oppressive to people who already feel like they don't have enough time or energy and there's too much to do. And so I think before we look at extra things to add, it's also self-care to address like our belief systems that are telling us like, "oh I'm a failure because laundry's not done." Like, that's self-care to address those belief systems. That's self-care to take a breath and remind yourself like, "hey, having laundry doesn't make me a failure."

It's self-care to find shortcuts. It's self-care to take your medication. It's self-care to feed yourself. I think learning to be gentle and self-compassionate with yourself as you do the things on your list and to be compassionate towards yourself when you can't get it all done, that is where self-care begins. And doing that puts us in a much better position to begin to like widen the seams of the never-ending to-do list to find those little pockets to add something that's purely for pleasure.

Laura: KC, you're such a pro you brought it back to laundry, which is what we started with.

KC: There you go. I did that on purpose.

Laura: Good job. Is there anything that you want to plug, anything that our our listeners should look out for from you?

KC: Yeah. My first book is still available. It's called "How to Keep House While Drowning." I did release a second book this year. It's called "Who Deserves Your Love," which is taking the same sort of principles of moral neutrality and self-compassion and applying them to relationships. So next year in 2027, I have a cookbook coming out that is all about kind of like how to feed yourself while drowning.

Laura: KC, it's so great to spend some time with you. I love the way that you describe things.

KC: Thanks.

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 to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give. "ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine.

Jessamine Molli: Hi everyone.

Laura: And edited by Alyssa Shea. Video is produced by Calvin Knie, our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive producers are Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.