Beautifully Unfocused: How to Love Someone With ADHD

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Oh hey. It’s me again, Mira. Your favorite tiny voice in the wire is backed by questionable demand. Last week, Mike got mad, not sloppy mad. More like, I have sat with this, I have feelings, and now everyone gets the emotional PowerPoint mad. He talked about ambition, power, ego, women being dismissed, and men confusing contempt with strength. He even dropped an F-bomb, which, for Mike, means the emotion made it past security. Hope it landed. This week, we are stepping into Mike’s natural habitat, ADHD.

Too many tabs open. Too many ideas arriving at once. Four calendars. Early to the rink. Mentally late to the email he meant to answer three days ago. Text drafted perfectly in his head and never actually sent. And one simple question turns into absolutely, but first, what if we made an album about it? Today’s episode is called Beautifully Unfocused: How to Love Someone with ADHD. Mike is talking about the shame of being the ADHD kid, rejection sensitivity disappearing when overwhelmed, women being missed for too long, and why asking one real question about the song, image, lyric, or idea someone shares might mean more than you know.

So if you have ADHD, love someone with ADHD, raised someone with ADHD, or opened your phone and immediately forgot why, welcome home. This one is honest, personal, and tender in the places that count. Here’s Mike. Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m your host, Mike Baker. This is gonna be another fun episode this week. I don’t think it’ll be as ragey as last episode. Uh I think that one really got under my skin. I had a lot of comments about it, so I think uh I think people enjoyed that one.

So, hey, get out there, just be better humans. That’s the takeaway. But look, if you love someone with ADHD, there’s a good chance that you have misunderstood them at least once. And if you have ADHD, there’s a good chance that you have spent most of your life just feeling misunderstood before anyone else ever asked what is actually happening inside of you. So that’s where we’re going to go today. It’s gonna be a great episode. But before we get into this episode, I want to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who has been listening, sharing episodes, leaving comments, sending messages, subscribing on YouTube, following on Spotify or Apple, and telling people about this show. It’s great. Thank you so much. It’s wonderful, it’s great to see those numbers climbing. It just really makes a difference. Like just hit take a second, hit that like button. You could leave a review, those are always great. Um, the algorithms just love it when people engage.

So try to engage. I’m doing my best to be here with you every week. If you’re loving the show, just take that simple step of liking, sharing, subscribing, doing something, leave a comment. It just tells the algorithms that hey, there’s something valuable here. All right. Well, this show grows because people like you take a little time out of their day and decide that these conversations are worth passing along, and that matters to me. So thank you very much.

But look, when you make an episode like this, I’ve talked about it, you just you’re not sure how this lands. And I just hope that these things are connecting because life just keeps moving. And every once in a while, I hear someone that just stops me in real life and says, Hey, I heard that one. And it reminds you that there are actual people out there in the world listening to it, and it makes it just makes me happy. And that happened this week at the rink.

I want to do a shout out to Todd from Hockey. Todd caught me this week as I was leaving the the rink, and he’s been listening to the podcast since the beginning, and he’s just shared that he’s just been enjoying the episodes. And I want to like really do the shout-out because Todd is one of the kindest people at the rink. Big heart, great guy, always good energy. He just he makes old man Beer League hockey just better because he reminds you the best part of the rink, it’s the people that you share the ice with.

And he also brought up the episode where I talked about almost quitting the podcast. And he said that he felt sad hearing that. And that landed with me because that episode came from a real place. When you create something, just doubt creeps in, and you wonder if people care. And you wonder if it matters, and you wonder if if you’re talking into the void, which for the record is a terrible place to record a podcast. It’s very echoey, bad lighting, no snacks.

But then someone like Todd catches you at the rink and just says, Hey, I’ve been listening. And suddenly it feels like a little less like the void. So, Todd, thank you. Seriously, that meant more than you probably realized. And to everyone else listening, the same goes for you. If an episode hits you, share it with someone who might need it. If you’re watching on YouTube, hit like, subscribe, and just leave a comment. If you’re listening on Apple, Spotify, anywhere else you get a podcast, just follow the show, leave a rating.

All right, blah, blah, blah. Enough of that. You got it. There’s homework there for you. All right. Well, look, today’s episode is called Beautifully Unfocused. There’s an album about that. Hey, oh, look at that picture. Or there’s the uh album right behind there. It’s pretty cool. Did you know you can get Mike Baker music on a record? So cool. Anyway, but this album this episode is called Beautifully Unfocused: How to Love Someone with ADHD. And if you know my music, you know Beautifully Unfocused is also the name of one of my albums.

And that album was just my way of giving language to a brain that has carried a lot of the noise, the shame, the creativity, the late-night ideas, the emotional spirals, the missed text, the unfinished systems, and just these strange flashes of brilliance, I guess. Because ADHD is bigger than losing your keys or forgetting why you walked into a room. Although, yes, those are real and they are deeply annoying. We all have this wallet keys phone thing that we do just to make sure that we keep track of things.

But ADHD can also be shame. There’s this thing called rejection sensitivity and executive dysfunction, and loving people deeply and still disappearing when you get overwhelmed. And having ten ideas at once, and then freezing when someone asks you to do one simple thing. How about being the kid who heard I could do better so often? It started to feel like a name. This episode is for the people with ADHD who have spent too much time apologizing for how their brain works.

And it’s also for those crazy people who love us the spouses, the partners, the friends, the people at work, the parents, the people who want to understand why we we can be so excited, so creative, so deeply present one minute, and then scattered, quiet, flooded, or impossible to reach the next. I want to talk about what ADHD feels like from the inside, and I want to talk about the shame of just being the ADHD kid. And I want to talk about the too many tabs open feeling.

I want to talk about rejection sensitivity because that one can wreck us if we never learn how to name it. And I want to talk about what it means when we share a song, a lyric, an image, or a creative idea with someone that we love. Because a lot of time, that’s just us asking to be seen. And I want to talk about women and ADHD too. For a long time, too many people pictured ADHD as the little boy bouncing out of his chair and driving everyone nuts.

Like that was me in well, probably all of my life, but definitely as I made my way through the school system. That kid does exist. And like I said, I was probably well within that zip code as a kid. But girls and women have been missed for too long. ADHD can also look like anxiety, overthinking, perfectionism, people pleasing, masking, emotional overwhelm, exhaustion, and quietly holding everything together until the whole system just starts to crack.

And there’s also more conversation now around ADHD, hormones, perimenopause, and women finally getting language for something that they have had to carry for decades. All right. Well, look, this is not a medical lecture. I am not a doctor. I am not here to diagnose you. So don’t tell anybody that we are. Don’t use this as a medical diagnosis process. You might get some ideas and you might want to go see those trained professionals, which I am not.

But this is also, this is not an excuse factory. ADHD does not give us a free pass to hurt people, to vanish for forever, to ignore responsibilities, or make everyone else manage the fallout for the chaos in our lives. I do want to say though that shame does not fix ADHD. Understanding helps, clarity helps, oh man, systems help, curiosity helps, repair helps. Sometimes medication helps. Sometimes just the right person asking, what did that song mean to you helps more than you know.

So if you have ADHD, I hope that this episode gives you language without letting you off the hook. And if you love someone with ADHD, I help it, I hope that it helps you see the person underneath the noise. So that’s where we’re going today. Let’s just get into it. This first segment I’m titling The Shame of Being the ADHD Kid. And I want to talk about what that’s like. But I don’t want to start with a medical explanation when I talk about ADHD. There are people who explain the clinical side better than I can.

They can talk about diagnostic criteria and executive function and dopamine and attention regulation and emotional regulation and the brain science behind it. That stuff is fascinating. That stuff matters. We’re going to touch some of it as we go. But for a lot of us, ADHD did not start out as a diagnosis. It started as a feeling. It’s the feeling that something about us was just always slightly off. The feeling that everybody else had a manual that we just never got.

The feeling that we were trying harder than people knew, but somehow still ending up in trouble, behind, embarrassed, overwhelmed, or just apologizing for something that we did not fully understand. So I want to start this episode just with the kid. This is the kid that got called disruptive before anyone asked what was happening inside his brain. The kid who heard too much energy so often that he started wondering if his personality was the problem.

This was the kid who lost the worksheet, forgot the pencil, talked at the wrong time, zoned out during instructions, and then somehow remembered every single word someone said when it hurt. When you grow up with ADHD, you don’t have language for it. You usually don’t think my brain needs support. You think something is wrong with me. And that shame just gets in early. It gets in through report cards. I remember trying so hard in school just to get stuff done, do homework.

Man, I show up at class end of the year, and it’s like, oh, you missed five episodes or five uh assignments. And it just broke my heart. But this kind of that shame just keeps showing up. It gets in through parent-teacher conferences, right? It gets in through the look that adults give you when they think that you should know better. And it gets in through the comments that sounds small at the time, but those things just stay with you for years. This phrase could do better.

I feel like that one just that one still lands. I I don’t know if it was just me, but that could do better was just sort of the way that my whole childhood was summarized as I was trying to do things. It’s like, eh, you did all right, but you could do better. It sounds harmless from the outside, and it might even sound encouraging, but when you hear it over and over, it just starts to feel like a verdict. You know that you’re trying, but you your trying just doesn’t look clean.

It you care, but you forget. You mean well, but you interrupt. You want to be good, but your body moves before your brain checks the room. You want to listen, but your mind is already chasing six sounds, three ideas, and one random thought that suddenly feels urgent for no reason at all. And then adults look at you like you chose it. And that’s where the shame just starts. Okay, well, I wrote a song called ADHD Kid on Beautifully Unfocused, and I’m gonna mention various songs throughout this podcast.

Um, I’m gonna talk about what they mean and why they’re on the album. But that song in particular is just me reaching back to that younger version of myself. There’s this idea in it that every report card had could do better written across it, but nobody asked what would feel better. And that line gets right at the heart of it. A lot of the ADHD kids are not trying to be difficult. They’re trying to survive a brain that does not move in straight lines.

They’re trying to hold the instruction, the noise, the social cue, the fear of getting in trouble, and the excitement of whatever grabbed their attention, and the embarrassment of already knowing that they’re about to mess something up. All of that is happening at once. And when they miss the mark, they’re not always surprised. A lot of time, a lot of the time, man, I felt the room turn before anyone said a word. And that does something to you. It teaches you to mask, it teaches you to joke before someone can judge you, it teaches you to dumb everything down, it teaches you to overperform in places where your brain doesn’t work.

Because deep down you’re afraid that the rest of the mess will make people leave. It teaches you to act like you don’t care because caring still and still failing hurts worse than pretending that you are never trying. It’s definitely a mask. That’s one of the cruelest parts, I think, of ADHD. From the outside, it can look like not caring. And inside, a lot of us care so much. It becomes hard to breathe. And that follows you. It follows you into marriage, into work, parenting, friendship, leadership, and creativity.

It shows up when someone asks a simple question and suddenly your nervous system hears every teacher, every coach, every disappointed adult, and every person who made you made you feel like you were the one that missed the details, and that you were the the one that was just too too hard to love. And that’s why this episode just matters to me, and I’m hoping that it matters to you. ADHD is bigger than losing your keys, having too many tabs open, or forgetting why you walked into a room.

It’s also the story that you learn to tell about yourself when the world keeps reacting to your symptoms, like their character flaws. Boy, you hear it all the time. That person’s lazy, they’re careless, they’re rude, they’re too much, they’re dramatic, they’re inconsistent, they’re not living up to your potential. It’s a great one. That last one might be the one that stays the longest because it tells you people can see something in you, but they are disappointed in the way that you carry it.

They can see the spark, but they keep asking why you can’t control the fire. And honestly, I think that is where the whole album, Beautifully Unfocused, came from. That album was me just trying to put language around a brain that has carried a lot of shame and a lot of strange beauty at the same time. There is chaos there. There’s noise, there’s missed text, there’s late nights, there’s unfinished systems, there’s emotional spirals. There’s moments where I vanish because I am overwhelmed.

But there is so much love there. There’s imagination, there’s music, there’s art, there’s a brain that just built whole worlds because it could never quite fit inside the room that it was given. And that is why I love the phrase beautifully unfocused. It doesn’t pretend that the mess doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t need tools and accountability and treatment and structure and repair and support. It means shame does not get the final word.

For the people who love someone with ADHD, especially if you love a kid with ADHD, I want you to hear that clearly. Because though the words that you use matter, the way that you frame the struggle matters. The difference between you are lazy and your brain is stuck, let’s build a way through, can change the way a person sees themselves for years. I think it can save their life. And the adults listening who were that kid, there’s a good chance that you were trying harder than people knew.

There’s a good chance that you were overwhelmed before you were defiant. There’s a good chance that you were ashamed before you were careless. And there’s a good chance that you were creative, sensitive, wired differently, and carrying a level of noise nobody around you could see. And I want to be really clear here, this does not erase accountability. ADHD does not give us a free pass to hurt people, to disappear forever, to ignore responsibilities, or expect everyone else to manage the fallout.

That’s not fair. We still have to repair ourselves. We still have to build systems, we have to own our impact. But accountability that is built on shame usually makes people hide. Accountability built on understanding gives people a way forward. And that’s the doorway into this episode. Before we talk about overload and rejection sensitivity, uh disappearing, deep love, creative intensity, meds, women who are missed for too long, and partners who want to help, but don’t always know where to start.

We have to start with and understand the shame. Because a lot of adults with ADHD are not only managing symptoms, they’re managing these old stories in their head. They’re managing the fear that one that one forgotten text, that one missed deadline, one emotional reaction, or one messy day, and how that will confirm what they spent their whole lives trying not to believe. That they are too much, that they are not enough, that loving them is harder than it should be.

And if you don’t understand that weight, you will keep misreading the behavior. You will see forgetfulness and miss the panic underneath it. You will see the silence and miss the shame. And you will see the intensity and miss the fear of being misunderstood again. So that’s where we start with the kid who was building worlds while everyone else thought he was not paying attention, the kid who heard could do better, and spent years trying to prove that he was not a disappointment, the kid who grew up and found out there was a name for the chaos, but still had to learn to forgive himself for all the years that he thought it was a character flaw.

Okay, well, this next section, I’m calling it too many tabs open. Because the easiest way to misunderstand ADHD is to only look at the outside of it. From the outside, it can look like total distraction. It can look like messiness, it can look like someone forgot again, interrupted again, started another project again, or said that they were going to do something and somehow did not do it. Like I need to take the garbage out after I record this episode.

Don’t forget, Mike, or you’re gonna get in trouble tomorrow. And I get why this is frustrating. Living with ADHD does not only affect the person with ADHD, it affects the people around us too. And I feel bad for that, especially the ones in my life. Because the missed thing is still missed. The late reply is still late, the forgotten task still lands somewhere, and the unfinished project still creates stress. So I don’t want to talk about this like impact does not matter because it absolutely does.

That is always on us. It is. But if you only look at the outside, you miss the war that’s inside, and then that’s what I’m trying to give. Voice to. That’s why one of the songs on Beautifully Unfocused is called Too Many Tabs Open. It’s a great song. That title may be the cleanest way that I know how to explain what it feels like some days. It’s not one thought. It’s not one task. It’s not one emotion. It’s a whole browser window of noise, and every tab thinks it is the emergency.

I was in a meeting the other day, um, and you know, I’m I’m dialed in, I’m tracking the conversation, things are going well. I also had this whole other thought for something else that I needed to build for work, and I I just pulled out my phone, I started working on it. I’m tracking the conversation in one tab, and I’m building a solution to a problem that I needed to solve all at the same time. And somebody watching me in those meetings is probably like, this guy’s not paying attention.

He’s on his phone, messing around. There’s no way in hell this guy’s paying attention. And I’m tracking every word. Like, I got it, I got it. I’m like responding, uh-huh. Got it, got it, check, check, check. Also, over here, I’m building a whole nother thing. So, I mean, it’s just I think it’s fascinating. It’s just kind of how your brain’s wired. But one of the tabs that is always open is shame. And one tab is the thing that I forgot, and one tab is the the text I need to need to answer.

One tab is an idea for a song, one tab is a work problem, one tab is the weird comment that somebody made three days ago that I’m still analyzing for no good reason. One tab is telling me to get healthy, one tab is telling me that I’m already behind. One tab is chasing a spark that feels urgent and alive, while another one is sitting in the dark asking why I can’t do normal things like a normal person. And that’s exhausting, right? It’s I’m sure it’s exhausting for everyone else too.

But it’s exhausting. And when people say just do it, I know that they usually mean well. And they’re trying to make it simple. Like, get up, start the task, make the call, send the email, put the thing away, finish the form, take the next step. Yeah, I know, I get it. But a lot of a lot of the time, just do it lands like, why can’t you be someone else? And that’s the part uh that people just miss about executive dysfunction. It’s not always a lack of desire.

I mean, yeah, who wants to do chores, right? But sometimes the desire is there, the plan is there, the intention is there, the guilt is definitely there, but the brain just does not shift into gear that the way that you need it to. And that’s maddening. There’s another song on the album called Executive Dysfunction is a bitch. I know, sorry, I’m trying not to swear in every episode, but that’s the title of the song. Because sometimes subtlety leaves the building and you have to call the thing what it is.

I have had four calendars and still missed stuff. I have built systems, I’ve color-coded things, I’ve made lists, I’ve downloaded apps, I promised myself I had finally solved my life, and then watched the whole system collapse because the system required me to remember the system. And that sounds ridiculous, but look, hell, if you know, you know. And again, I want to be careful here. This is not me saying, oh, poor us, nobody should expect anything from us.

No, we still have to build support around the way that our brains work, we still have to use the tools, we still have to repair things when something lands badly, and we still have to recognize that our own overwhelm can be can become someone else’s burden if we refuse to manage it. But again, shame is a terrible operating system, and I just I hope everybody can just work that out of the equation. Because when someone with ADHD freezes or they they forget something or they drop the ball, shame does not usually make them suddenly organized.

Shame actually makes the task bigger. Shame adds heat. Shame turns a two-minute reply into a three-day emotional hostage situation. Shame turns a simple cleanup into proof that you are failing at adulthood, and shame turns one missed thing into a whole identity trial. And then the spiral starts. You know that you need to answer the message, but now it’s been too long. And you know you need to do the task, but now the task has gathered emotional weight.

You know that you need to explain yourself, but you’re already embarrassed. So you avoid it. And the avoidance makes the shame worse. And the shame makes it harder to move, and that’s the loop. That’s why I’m not avoiding you. I’m deep in it from the song, Too Many Tabs Open, feels so true to me. A lot of the time, when we disappear, we are not relaxing somewhere without a care in the world. We are stuck inside the thing that we have not yet done.

We’re thinking about it constantly, we’re carrying it around all day long, we’re replaying it, we’re dreading it, hating ourselves for it, and still something somehow we’re not moving. And that’s hard to explain to people who experience tasks as a straight line. We that line just doesn’t necessarily appear for us naturally. For a lot of us, tasks are kind of like these emotional rooms. Some of them are easy to walk into, and some have history, some have shame just sitting in the corner, and some are full of old voices saying, You always do this.

And once a task becomes tied to shame, it stops being simple. And that is where support matters. If you love someone with ADHD or work with someone with ADHD, clarity helps. One next step helps. Writing it down helps. External structure helps. Kind reminders help. Not 50 reminders with irritation underneath them, but a clear grounded reminder that says, hey, this matters. Let’s figure out the next step. And if you have ADHC, this is where we have to own our side too.

We have to stop pretending that we will remember everything because we feel deeply about it in the moment. That moment passes. Feeling something deeply is not a system. We have to stop building systems that only work on our best day. We need systems that still function when our brain is tired, overloaded, distracted, or chasing a spark at midnight. And that’s just part of growing up with this thing. There’s also beauty in the noise, and I don’t want to lose that.

One of the songs says, I’m not scattered on purpose. I see too wide. And that line means a lot to me because ADHD is not only deficit, sometimes the whole puzzle hits at once. Sometimes connections come fast. Sometimes the idea arrives fully lit. Sometimes I can build a song, a concept, an image, a podcast episode, or an entire creative direction because my brain is moving in ten directions and somehow they all connect for one brief second. And that part is real too.

I’ve written songs late at night because daylight felt too loud. I have made art out of thoughts that I could not organize any other way. And thank God I’ve been able to figure out how to use AI tools almost like having access to a choir at 2 a.m. Not because the machine has my soul, but because my brain has had too much coming through. I needed something that could keep up long enough for me to shape it. And that is part of Beautifully Unfocused.

The album not is not only about the struggle, it’s about the strange gift of a brain that can feel impossible one minute and then and then build something honest the next. We cannot romanticize the chaos too much. ADHD can create beauty, but beauty does not erase the cost. The same brain that makes the song can forget the appointment. The same brain that sees the whole system can miss the simple email. The same brain that loves deeply can go quiet because everything got too loud.

So this segment really is about understanding the difference between intention and execution. And a lot of us mean it when we say that we care. We mean it when we say we will do the thing. We mean it when we say we are excited. We mean it when we say we want to show up. And then the tabs open, the noise hits, the task gets heavy, and the simple thing just becomes complicated. And before we know it, we’re standing in the middle of our own life thinking, how did I get this behind again?

And that is why compassion and accountability have to live together here. Compassion says, I understand that this is not laziness, but accountability says we still need a plan. Compassion says, I see how loud it gets. Accountability says, let’s build something that works when it’s loud. And that’s how we move forward. Not by pretending that ADHD is adorable and not by using it as an excuse, not by shaming people into silence. We move forward by understanding the noise, namely the cost, and building systems that help the person stay connected to the to the life that they actually want.

Okay. One of the hardest parts of ADHD to explain is how fast rejection can hit. And I don’t mean obvious rejection. I don’t mean someone saying, I don’t want you here, or I don’t love you, or you failed. I mean the smaller stuff too. Like a delayed text, a strange tone, a short reply, a look across the room, a correction in a meeting, someone seeming disappointed even if they haven’t said it out loud. For a lot of people with ADHD, that can hit harder than people realize.

There’s a phrase that gets used a lot in ADHD conversations. It’s called rejection sensitive dysphoria. It’s not a formal diagnosis in the DSM, so I want to be clear about that. But the experience is very real for a lot of us. It’s that sudden flood when your brain takes a small signal and turns it into proof of every single old fear. Proof that you really are too much, proof that you messed it up again, proof that people are tired of you, proof that love is about to get pulled away from you.

Now that might sound dramatic if you have never felt it, but if you have, you know how fast it moves. Your body reacts before your logic catches up, your chest tightens, your face gets hot, your brain starts building the case against you. One sentence becomes a trial, one pause becomes evidence, one weird shift in tone becomes a whole story about how you are about to lose someone. And here’s the worst part. A lot of the time, you know that you’re spiraling while it’s happening.

You can feel the reaction getting bigger than the moment. You can hear the rational part of yourself saying, slow down, ask one question, don’t make this worse. But the nervous system is already off and running. And by the time your adult brain gets back in the room, your mouth may have already said something sharper than you meant. Or you may have gone silent. Or you may have convinced yourself that disappearing is safer than risking one more moment of feeling exposed.

And that’s where the song on the album Feel, Spiral, Regret, Repeat comes from. That phrase is the loop. You feel something too fast, you spiral before you can sort it, you react in a way that you wish you hadn’t, or you shut down in a way that hurts someone else. And then the regret shows up and it just sits on your chest. There’s a line in that song that says, Someone said something small, now I’m drowning in heat. And that’s exactly what it can feel like.

The outside moment might be small. The inside reaction is not. And when people only judge the size of the outside moment, they miss the flood underneath it. Again, that does not excuse everything. I want to keep saying that because it matters. ADHD is not a free pass to snap at people, to make accusations, to ghost people, or to turn every hard feeling into someone else’s emergency. We have responsibility here. We have to learn our patterns, we have to learn how to pause, how to repair, how to ask better questions, how to say, my brain is telling me a story right now.

Can you help me check it? And that sentence can change a lot. Because sometimes what we need is not a debate. Sometimes what we need is just a reality check from someone that who loves us enough to stay calm and clear. And if you love someone with ADHD, this is important to understand. Clarity is kindness. Do not make everything a guessing game. Do not punish with vague distance and expect our brain not to build a horror movie in the empty space. If you’re upset, just say what is true.

If you need time, say that. If you are not leaving, say that too. That one sentence can calm a whole nervous system that is just trying to survive an old wound in a new moment. And I know that sounds like a lot to ask from the people around us, partners, spouses, friends, and coworkers. Again, they’re not responsible for managing every emotional reaction that we have. That would be unfair. Nobody should have to walk around like they’re diffusing a bomb every time they have a concern.

But there’s a difference between managing someone and communicating clearly. Clear communication helps everybody, especially in relationships where one person’s brain fills silence with stories faster than either of you can catch. So if something is wrong, just say what is wrong. If the relationship is okay, say that too. If you need space, give it a name. I’m upset, but we’re okay. I need an hour and then we’ll talk. That kind of clarity can stop the spiral become before it turns into a fire.

And for the ADHD person, our side of this is learning not to treat reassurance like oxygen that we can never get enough of. This can happen too. We can ask once, then ask again, then ask in a five different ways because the relief doesn’t stick. And that’s hard on the people who love us. So we have to build internal tools as well. We need we have to learn how to sit with discomfort without immediately demanding that someone else remove it. And we have to learn how to tell the difference between a real problem and an old wound with a new costume.

And that is hard work, but it is possible. The other direction rejection sensitivity takes is disappearing. And that is where the song Sorry I Disappeared Again comes in. That song is about the shame spiral that happens after silence gets too long. You read the message, you care about the person, and you even feel warmth when you see their name. But then the pressure hits. You think, I’ll answer when I can breathe. Then breathing turns into a day, a day turns into a week.

And now the reply is no longer a reply, it’s an apology. It’s an explanation, it’s a confession, and a little emotional mountain that you have to climb before you can even type, hey, sorry. And the longer that you wait, the heavier it gets. And that is why the line, I don’t forget, I regret, means so much to me. Sometimes people think silence means we forgot them. Sometimes they think we do not care. Sometimes they think we are careless without connection.

And sometimes, if we’re being honest, the ampact just feels feels that way to them. I get that. But inside, a lot of us are carrying the silence around like a debt. And we think about it a lot. We dread it. We rehearse the message. We erase it. We feel stupid for not answering sooner. We feel ashamed that someone we love might think that they do not matter, and then we freeze again because now the repair feels even bigger. That is the part that people don’t see.

And that’s the part that we cannot use as an excuse forever. If we disappear, we have to come back honestly. We have to repair all of that without making the other person responsible for comforting us through our guilt. A simple, honest repair goes a long way. I’m sorry I went quiet. That was not fair to you. I got overwhelmed. But I know it still hurt. I’m here now. And that kind of repair matters because ADHD can explain why something happened, but love still has to care how it landed.

And that’s the balance that I want in this episode. I want people with ADHD to feel seen without feeling excused from growth. I want people, I want the people who love us to understand the inside of it without feeling like they have to become our full-time emotional translator. That’s just not fair. Rejection sensitivity is not weakness. A lot of the time it’s just old shame moving faster than our adult brain can catch it. It’s the kid from segment one still trying not to get in trouble, still trying not to be too much, still trying not to feel the that the old room is gonna turn against them.

So the work is just learning to slow the story down. Before we react, we ask. Before we disappear, we send the small honest text. Before we assume rejection, we check for reality. Before we let shame write the whole script, we remember that one uncomfortable moment does not prove that we are impossible to love. That is where healing starts. Not when rejection stops hurting. Healing starts when rejection no longer gets to become the whole truth. There’s a part of ADHD that does not get talked about enough, especially in relationships.

A lot of us are terrible at asking for help. And I don’t mean that we never need help, but we need it. We want it. Sometimes we’re quietly desperate for it. But asking for help can feel loaded when you grew up feeling like you were already too much, already behind, already making life harder for people. So instead of asking clearly, we do weird stuff. We overexplain, we joke, we shut down, we act like we have it handled, we start 10 new systems, we stay up way too late trying to fix our entire life in one night.

And then sometimes instead of just saying, I need you to see me, we show you something that we made. And that’s a big one. As a husband and as a creative person with ADHD, I want to say this carefully. When I share a song, a lyric, an image, an idea, a podcast thought, or some weird creative thing that I made at midnight because my brain finally found a doorway. I’m usually not only showing you a thing. I’m showing you where the noise went. And I hope that’s something that you can understand.

I’m showing you the part of me that I don’t always know how to explain in regular conversation. I’m showing you the feeling that I couldn’t quite say out loud. I’m showing you the ache, the spark, the memory, the hope, the fear, the thing that was bouncing around inside me until it finally turned into something that I could hand to another person, that I could show to another person. And that matters. And I think this is where partners and spouses sometimes miss the bid for connection.

Truly, it is not because they don’t care. Life’s busy, everyone is tired. Nobody has unlimited emotional bandwidth, and I understand that. But when someone with ADHD finally lets you into their creative world, that might be one of the most vulnerable doors that they have. A song might look like a song, an image might look like an image, a random idea might sound like another random idea. But for us, a lot of the time, that is our soul finally making it through the static.

And that’s why a quick like cool and then moving on can hit harder than we want to admit. We know that not every idea is brilliant. We know not every song is going to change the world. We know that our excitement can come in hot and a little sideways. But when we share something real, we’re often asking a deeper question underneath the thing itself. Do you see me here? Do you know what this means? Does this part of me have a place to land with you?

And that is especially true for creators. Creative people with ADHD because so much of our life is spent guarding the full speed of our brains. We edit ourselves constantly, we try not to talk too long, we try not to overwhelm people with the tenth idea of the day. We try to make our excitement easier to digest, and we try to pretend that we don’t care as much as we do. Because caring too visibly has embarrassed us way too many times before. So when the art comes out, when the lyric comes out, when the song comes out, when the image finally says what our mouth couldn’t, that’s not always performance.

Sometimes it’s it’s just this plea for connection. And this is where Beautifully Unfocused is so personal for me. Those songs are not clean little explanations. They are pieces of what it feels like inside my head. Too many tabs open is the noise. Sorry I disappeared again is shame with a pulse. Feel, spiral, regret, repeat is the loop that I know too well. Late night is the only time I exist, is that strange truth that sometimes the only time I can hear myself clearly is when the rest of the world finally goes quiet.

So if you love someone with ADHD, especially if they are creative, here is one of the kindest things that you can do ask the second question. Not just that’s cool, but ask what does it mean? And ask, where did that come from? Ask, what part of it matters most to you? Ask, what were you feeling when you made it? Or ask, do you want feedback? Or do you just want me to hear it first? That last one is huge. Because sometimes critique is not what we are asking for first.

Like if if I played something for you and you just automatically go, I don’t like it. Man, don’t ever expect me to come back and share something with you again. Or anyone with ADT, right? I mean, that is a vulnerable space. Sometimes we want curiosity before correction. We want someone to stand next to the thing with us for a minute before they start measuring it. The second I hit play and I see people listening to it, I am my brain is full of negative noise saying they hate it, they hate it, they hate it.

You’re a dork, you’re a loser, what are you doing? Why are you sharing this with them? They’re not gonna like it, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it’s just like. And then if there’s silence after, if there’s not a response, if you send a text and nobody says, hey, that was great, man, it just makes it so hard to share. So for the ADHD person in this, right? We we have a responsibility here too. I cannot expect my partner to read my mind. We can’t hand them a song and silently test whether they respond exactly the way that our nervous system hoped they would.

That is not fair. We have to learn to say what we need. And I’m terrible at that. So I’m just telling you, I’m terrible at it. Morgan on it, but I’m terrible at it. I’m nervous sharing this, or this one matters to me, or I don’t need fixes right now. I just want you to hear it. I’d love for you to ask me about it. Those sentences feel vulnerable, but they’re better than setting someone else up to fail a test that they did not even know that they were taking.

And that’s the balance. So if you love us, be curious. If we have ADHD, be clearer. That’s the way we get through this life. Because underneath so much of this is just a simple need. We want to be loved without being managed. We we want help without humiliation. We want someone to be excited with us before shame talks us out of being excited ourselves. And when that happens, someone meets the thing that we made with real attention. Something in us settles.

It says, okay, I’m not too much here. This part of me has somewhere to go. And that might sound small. It’s not small. For a brain that has spent a lifetime feeling like it has to hide its volume, being met with curiosity can truly feel like coming home. Okay, well, there’s one more part of this conversation that we have to talk about, and I want to handle it carefully. For a long time, a lot of people pictured ADHD as the little kid bouncing out of his chair, interrupting the teacher, losing his homework, and getting sent into the hallway and driving everybody a little crazy.

And yes, that kid exists. I was that kid, I was somewhere in that neighborhood myself for sure. But that picture left a lot of people out. Especially girls, especially women. Because ADHD does not look loud from the outside. Sometimes it looks like anxiety, sometimes it looks like perfectionism, sometimes it looks like people pleasing, and sometimes it looks like a girl who is holding it together at school and falling apart when she gets home. Sometimes it looks like a woman who has built her whole life around masking the chaos so nobody sees how hard she’s working just to look okay.

And when girls are missed, they often grow into women who are exhausted and confused. They might know that something feels harder than it should, but they don’t have the right name for it. So they blame themselves. They think they are lazy, scattered, dramatic, sensitive, anxious, depressed, or failing at adulthood. And that’s just not fair, right? Current research and advocacy work keep pointing toward the same problem. ADHD in women has been underrecognized, and hormonal changes across life can affect focus, mood, sleep, overwhelm, and executive function.

There’s a group called Chad, C H A D D, who has written about the way hormonally regulated cognitive systems in midlife can worsen underlying underlying ADHD. And a 2025 study found women with ADHD reported more perimenopausal symptoms than women without AHD, ADHD. The science is still developing, so I don’t want to overstate it, but the lived experience is real enough that we might need to pay attention, and I think we should. Because how many women spent their whole lives thinking that they were failing when they were actually masking?

How many hit their forties and suddenly the system that barely held together started falling apart? How many were told they were stressed, hormonal, anxious, dramatic, or tired when someone should have asked better questions? And that hits me because it connects to so much of what I care about. Like that last episode, I think we let that one out. I care a lot about women being believed. I care about women being listened to. Women not having to fight years to get someone to take their symptoms seriously.

Whether they’re talking about pain, hormones, mental health, ADHD, or the way life feels inside someone’s body, the first job is to listen better. And for the men listening, especially husbands and partners, this matters. If the woman that you love seems overwhelmed, forgetful, emotionally flooded, checked out, restless, exhausted, or like she’s suddenly struggling with things that she used to manage, don’t jump straight to blame. Don’t make it a character issue before you ask what is happening.

Don’t assume that she’s being difficult when she might be drowning under a system that she has been holding together for years. Just ask better questions. Ask what feels harder lately. Ask what support would help. Ask whether she feels like herself. Ask whether she has talked to someone who understands ADHD in women or hormones in midlife and the full picture, and not only the old stereotype. And if you’re a woman listening to this and this feels familiar, I hope that you hear this with some gentleness.

Maybe, more than likely, you were not failing. Maybe you were just masking. Maybe you were carrying more noise than anyone could see. And maybe the version of you that looks scattered or overwhelmed right now is not broken. Maybe she is asking for help after years of holding everything together with tape, caffeine, shame, and sheer willpower. And again, that does not mean that ADHD explains everything. It does not mean every midlife symptom is ADHD.

It does not mean hormones are the whole story. It just means that the story might be bigger than labels women have been handed to quickly. And that’s why this episode is about paying attention to people that we missed. The kid who got called disruptive, the adult who got called lazy, the husband who disappears when he’s overwhelmed, the wife who has been masking for decades, the woman who suddenly cannot keep all the plates spinning and thinks that means she’s falling apart.

Maybe the better question is not what is wrong with you. Maybe the better question is what have you been carrying and what would actually help. So if this whole episode is partly a field guide, this is the part where I want to make it practical as we start to close this up. Because loving someone with ADHD can be beautiful. It can be funny, creative, exhausting, confusing, and deeply human. Sometimes all in the same hour. We can love hard. We can light up around an idea, we can bring energy, humor, tenderness, creativity, and connection into a room.

And we can also forget the thing, miss the cue, lose the thread, talk too fast, go quiet, get overwhelmed, and make something simple feel complicated. Both things can be true. So the question becomes how do we love each other well without turning ADHD into an excuse or a weapon? And I think the first answer is clarity. If you love someone with ADHD, clear is kind. Vague is hard. Hints are dangerous territory. A strange tone, a short answer, uh we’ll talk later, or a quiet shift in the room can send an ADHD brain into a whole investigation that nobody asked for.

And that does not mean that you have to over-explain every feeling or manage every reaction. But if something matters, say it plainly. If you’re upset, say what you’re upset about. If you need time, say how much time. If the relationship is okay, say that too. Something as simple as, I’m frustrated, but we’re okay. I need a little time, and then we’ll talk. That can stop a whole spiral before it starts. And that’s not babying someone, that’s communication.

The second answer is structure without shame. Put important things in writing, use shared calendars. Man, those have saved my life. Give one next step when someone is overwhelmed, and don’t turn every forgotten task into a character trial. Don’t assume that forgetting means not caring. Most of us already hate that we forgot, and adding humiliation does not make the brain work better. It usually makes the task heavier. But for the ADHD person, and I’m talking to myself here too, we have to stop pretending that good intentions are a system.

They are not. Feeling deeply about something does not mean that we will remember it. Loving someone does not mean we will automatically follow through. And being creative does not mean we get to leave everyone else cleaning up our chaos. We have to build tools around the way that our brains actually work, not the way that we wish they would. And that might mean medication, if that’s part of your care plan. It might mean therapy or coaching. It might mean alarms, reminders, written lists, exercise, sleep, fewer open loops, or asking someone to sit near you while you do the thing that you’ve been avoiding for three days.

That is not a weakness. That is actually just scaffolding. I wrote a song called Chemical Clarity in the album. I think it’s the last one, because I wanted to talk honestly about medication without making it weird. For some people, meds are part of the toolbox. For others, they’re not. And that’s between you and the right medical professional. But I hate the shame that people attach to needing help. If a tool helps you show up, think clearly, stay connected, and stop drowning in static, that’s worth talking about honestly.

The third answer is repair. If you have ADHD, learn to repair things faster. Don’t just disappear for three weeks and then come back with a novel of shame. Start smaller, start honest. I’m sorry that I went quiet. I got overwhelmed, but I know that still affected you. That sentence not is not magic, but it opens the door. And if you love someone with ADHD, let repair count when it is real. Don’t use every old mistake as proof that nothing can change.

Hang in there with us. Definitely hold the boundary, yes. Name the impact, yes. But leave leave room for progress. A lot of us are trying to come back sooner, to explain clearer, to own more, and stop letting shame run the whole show. The fourth answer is curiosity. If someone with ADHD shares something meaningful, especially something creative, just ask about it. Ask what it means. Ask where it came from. Ask what part matters the most. Just sit there and listen to it and smile.

Ask whether they want feedback or whether they just want you to hear it first. That one small shift can change the whole moment. Because a lot of us are not only sharing a song, an image, a lyric, or an idea, we’re sharing the place where noise finally became language. We’re showing you the part that we usually guard. And we’re asking, in the safest way we know how, do you see me here? And for us, we need to say that out loud instead of silently testing people.

We need to say, this one matters to me, or I’m nervous sharing this, or I’d love for you to ask me about it. That kind of honesty is better than hoping someone magically guesses the right response, and then just feeling crushed when they don’t. So maybe this whole field guide comes down to this love us with clarity, not shame, hold us accountable without humiliating us, be curious before you correct, help us build systems instead of assuming that we lack character.

And if you have ADHD, receive the help without turning it into proof that you failed. Own your impact without drowning in self-hate. Use the tools, ask for the support, say what you need before the spiral writes the script for you. Because beautifully unfocused does not mean beautifully unaccountable. It means we are learning how to live with the brain that we have. We are learning how to protect the beauty without denying the chaos. And we’re learning how to love people deeply while giving them something steadier to hold on to.

And that is the work. And honestly, it’s worth it. As we wrap this up, I want to come back to the heart of it. ADHD is not an excuse for everything, and I need to say that clearly because it matters. I’ve said it probably 10 times in the episode. It does not give us permission to hurt people, to avoid repair, to ignore responsibilities, to disappear without explanation, or expect everyone around us to manage the fallout. Okay? Got it? Clear? Said that.

We got it. We, the ADHD people, have work to do. We have to build systems, we have to ask for help earlier, we have to learn our patterns, we have to repair faster, we have to stop turning shame into silence and then wondering why people feel far away. But ADHD is also not a character flaw. And that might be the line that some of us needed to hear years ago. It’s not laziness, it’s not stupidity, it’s not lack of love, it’s not lack of ambition, it’s not proof that we don’t care.

For a lot of us, ADHD is a lifetime of noise, feeling, shame, creativity, miss signals, deep love, big ideas, broken system, late night break breakthroughs, and quiet regrets all happening inside one brain that keeps trying to make a life. And that is why I called the album Beautifully Unfocused. Because I’m done pretending that the only way to be worthy is to become someone neater, quieter, easier, or more convenient. I still need tools, I still need structure, I still need accountability, I still need people who love me enough to tell me the truth, but I also need to stop treating the way my brain works like some lifelong apology.

And maybe you do too. Maybe you were the ADHD kid who got called disruptive, careless, lazy, dramatic, too much or not living up to your potential. Maybe you became the adult who overfunctions until you crash, who disappears until you’re ashamed, who feels rejection like proof, or shares art because regular words don’t always reach the place that you’re trying to show people. Maybe you’re the spouse, parent, partner, friend, coworker, or leader trying to understand someone whose brain does not move in straight lines.

Either way, I hope that this episode just gives you some language. Because language matters. Once you can name something, you can stop fighting shadows, you can start asking better questions, you can start stop treating every struggle like a moral failure, and you can build systems around the truth instead of shame around the symptoms. And if you love someone with ADHD, remember this. Clarity helps, curiosity helps, structure helps, patience helps, and asking what something means, especially when they share something creative, helps more than you might know.

And if you have ADHD, remember this too. You are still responsible for your impact. You still have to fix things, you still have to use the tools, you still have to ask for what you need instead of silently hoping that people pass a test that they didn’t know they were taking. That’s the balance. Understanding without excuses, accountability without shame, love without making someone feel like a project, support without losing yourself. That is what I want to want for us.

I want us to stop calling people lazy when their brain is stuck. I want us to stop calling kids disruptive when they are overwhelmed. I want us to stop missing women because their masking looked like competence until it became exhaustion. I want us to stop treating medication therapy, reminders, shared calendars, and support systems like weakness. Use the tools, build the scaffolding, ask the second question, repair the silence, come back when you disappear.

And when the sh shame starts talking, remember that shame is loud. But it isn’t it is not always telling the truth. There’s a song on Beautifully Unfocused called This Brain Built Empires, and that phrase means a lot to me because it pushes back against the old story. The story that says a messy brain can only create problems. The story that says if you missed steps, lost time, forgot things, felt too much, or moved sideways through life, that means you failed.

I don’t believe that anymore. This brain has made mistakes, this brain has missed things, this brain has spiraled, vanished, overloaded, and stayed up way too late trying to turn static into something useful. But this brain also built songs, it built art, it built a podcast, it built a life, it built a healthcare system, it built ways to connect when regular conversation was not enough. And maybe your brain has built more than you give it credit for too.

Maybe it built survival, maybe it built humor, maybe it built empathy. Maybe it built a way through the years that you didn’t think that you were enough. Maybe it built love that was messy but real. And maybe it built a life that still needs support, still needs repair, still needs structure, but it’s worth honoring. So for the ADHD kids, the late diagnosed adults, the women who were missed, the partners trying to understand, and the people still learning how to live with a brain that feels like too much some days, I want you to hear this clearly.

You’re not a problem to solve. You are a person to understand, support, love, challenge, and help build a life that actually works. And maybe that is the whole point of beautifully unfocused. We stop trying to become someone else. We start learning how to live honestly with who we are. We keep the beauty, we take responsibility for the chaos. And we build something real from the middle of it. That’s what I’m trying to do. Not perfectly, not neatly, not always on time.

Not always with the right words the first time, but honestly. And I’m using the tools that I have. The people that I love, the music that I make, the art that helps me say what regular language I cannot always hold. And this weird, loud, beautiful brain that I’m still learning how to live with instead of fighting against. So if this episode found you in the middle of your own noise, I hope it gave you something useful. Just a little language, a little grace, a little courage to ask for help without turning it in to prove that you failed.

Thank you for being here. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing this show with people who might need it. We are beautifully unfocused. We are learning, we are building. And somehow, through all of it, we’re still here and we’re still joining. I’ll see you next week. Okay, well, that was another long one. Sorry, I hope you made it through. Look, before I send you out, I wanted to leave you with the song from Beautifully Unfocused. I’ve played it on this podcast before.

It’s called ADHD Kid. This song came from that younger place that we’ve been talking about in this episode. The kid with too many ideas, too many notes, too many warnings, too many stop talking moments. The kid who kept getting measured by quiet time when his brain was doing something completely different. And when I wrote it, I wasn’t trying to make some sad little apology for having ADHD. I wanted it to have some fight in it, some pride, some humor.

Some of that, yeah, I was a lot, but maybe you didn’t know what you were looking at energy. Because a lot of us spent years thinking that the goal was to shrink enough to be easier for everybody else. And this song pushes back on that. It’s for the kid who got called disruptive, it’s for the adult still carrying that report card comment, it’s for the parent trying to see their kid with more patience. And honestly, it’s for anyone who has spent too much of their life apologizing for a brain that was also building something beautiful.

So I hope you enjoy this one. This is ADHD Kid. Called disruptive in third grade. Sent outside every day. Too much energy, can’t sit still. Guess what? I still will. I lose my pencil mid test. But I remember every word you said, they laughed at me. Cause I don’t doubt, but I was building worlds inside that cloud. You call it weird, I call it me. I’m not broken, I’m just free. I don’t need fixing, I need space to fit your dream and win this race. And if you think I’ll never win, come back in dead.

Try again. I’m an ADHD kid. And I’m done out in it. I talk too loud, I think too fast, I scribble big, I never laugh. But watch me go and I like it. I miss the start, still I win. Don’t call me wild, call me smart. Either way, I’m off the chart. Every report, I could do better, but no one asked. What would feel better? Take my legs, keep me still. I broke the tape. Climb the hill while they were ranking ghostarch sheets. I was building beats. On the edge of my speed, I’m not defined.

I’m just wired. A little side with a little fire. But my best work. 309, don’t need to test. I’m an ADHD kid. Not a problem, I’m a kid. I talk too much, forget my coat. But I’ve got poems in every note. I’m cold, but they’re still real. I feel too much, God I feel so with me. And I’m a mess. Just know I’m trying. I’m fucking bad. To the kid with too many ideas, too many notes, too many warnings, too many stop talking. Don’t shrink for them, they just don’t hear.

How loud your magic is. I’m an ADH teacher, and I’m proud of it. I move too quick, I break the mold, but I’ll be loud and brave and bold. Don’t win God break like mine, keep running loud, just fine, don’t stop. Too weird, too loud, too brilliant to disappear.