S3 Episode 13: It’s Time to Talk About Parents with ADHD: Overwhelm, Dysregulation and Shame (and what actually helps) with Sean McNicholas

Welcome to My Mighty Quinn

In this deeply honest, compassionate, and empowering episode, I’m joined by Sean McNicholas, founder of New Me Therapy, also known as The ADHD Expert, to shine a long overdue light on a missing part of the ADHD conversation: The Parent.

This episode is for the adults — especially parents parenting with ADHD (diagnosed or undiagnosed) — who are holding families together while feeling overwhelmed, distracted, reactive, exhausted, and often quietly ashamed.

Together, we unpack why parenting with ADHD feels so relentlessly hard — and why it’s not a personal failing, but biology under pressure.

We explore the invisible load ADHD parents carry: the mental juggling, time blindness, sensory overwhelm, emotional reactivity, masking, guilt, burnout, and the collapse that so often happens behind closed doors.

And crucially, we talk about what actually helps — in the moment and long-term.

Key takeaways include:

• Why adult ADHD is still misunderstood and under-supported
• How shame, masking, and survival-mode coping develop over a lifetime
• What’s really happening in the ADHD brain during overwhelm, reactivity, and burnout
• Why symptoms like chaos, forgetfulness, snapping, shutdown, and exhaustion are nervous-system signals — not character flaws
• The role of stress, sleep, stimulants, inflammation, and lifestyle in ADHD regulation
• Practical tools for reducing overwhelm in daily family life (planning, structure, routines, sensory boundaries)
• How to expand capacity rather than simply “try harder”
• Why co-regulation applies to adults too — and how to find it safely
• How compassion, curiosity, and nervous-system awareness change the parenting experience
• Simple, realistic steps parents can take immediately to feel calmer, clearer, and more connected

This is an episode about relief, understanding, and permission.

Because when parents feel safer and more supported, families do too.

Resources

Free Guide

Sean's Website

Transcript

Lucia Silver (00:00)
Welcome back to My Mighty Quinn. Today we're talking about something we don't focus on enough and honestly it's time we did. We spend a lot of time supporting our precious children with the symptoms of ADHD, being their nervous systems, their behaviours, their diet and sensory needs and more. But what about the parent? What about the parent who's trying to co-regulate, stay calm, remember everything, manage routines,

while their own brain is overwhelmed, distracted, reactive, burnt out, and often on top of all of this, carrying shame for it as well. So this episode is for the adults, especially the parents who are parenting with ADHD, be that diagnosed or undiagnosed, and who are silently running on empty. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why parenting with ADHD feels so hard.

and you'll have a handful of resources you can use immediately to reduce overwhelm and increase connection. And a big part of this is education, because the more you understand ADHD, the more empowered you become, not just to cope, but to make real changes in your home, your relationships, and your wellbeing. And this isn't about judging yourself or forcing yourself to try harder.

It's about understanding what's happening in your brain and nervous system and what supports you in the moment and what can strengthen things longer term as well.

Today I am joined by Sean McNicholas from New Me Therapy. He's also known online as the ADHD expert. Sean supports adults with ADHD and brings both professional expertise and real lived experience into his work. He was actually diagnosed with ADHD later in life after also discovering his own children had the condition and his journey gives him a

powerful insight into what it's like to live inside an ADHD nervous system, especially while raising a family. He's trained in a wide range of approaches, including the Melillo method, primitive reflex integration work, ADHD specialist work, brain health training, CBT, hypnotherapy, NLP, rapid transformational therapy and trauma informed therapy, helping people overcome issues such as anxiety,

addictions, suicide, like ideation and other negative behaviours. And all this through a nervous system and neuroscience informed lens, which is exactly what we champion at the brain health movement. So Sean, I couldn't be more thrilled and happy to have you here. Welcome to my mighty Quinn.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (02:48)
Thank you very much, Lucille.

Lucia Silver (02:51)
So Sean, I wanna dive straight in. I'd love to begin with your story because just as I educate and communicate from a position of lived in experience with my son Quinn and his healing journey, so too do you work and empower your clients from the position of having been diagnosed with ADHD later in life. So what did that explain for you looking back ⁓ and emotionally what shifted when you realized it wasn't the usual?

labels of laziness or failure happening for you.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (03:24)
So I knew growing up that I was different in many ways. I noticed that my behaviours were different. I thought differently and I felt differently, including what I know now as emotional dysregulation, all through my adult years as well. And it wasn't until my son was getting in trouble in school with the same behaviours that I was presenting, was then I started to think, well, okay, I've seen a lot of him in me. And then one day his head of year said, he really needs to get assessed for ADHD.

Now I've heard of ADHD and I was a therapist at this time. I thought, let me just find out more about this because it's how my brain works. And once I started to read, learn more and more about ADHD, I was like, oh my God, this is my life. This has been me through all these years. The impulsivity, focus, concentration, hyperactivity, unhelpful behaviours, poor choices, addictions, relationship issues, suicidal ideation, all through my life, this was it.

spending time into this and diving into then becoming a clinical ADHD therapist. I learned more even broader than that was that I wasn't just ADHD. I always say we're all neuro-spicy in some way because I've never met one client who is just ADHD. They have a sprinkle of something else. I've got autistic traits. Some people have got dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia. There's overarching comorbidities like ⁓ OCD, anxiety, depression.

So for me, once I went through this process to understand what it was, then I went through my own diagnosis and surprise, surprise, I was severe and was combined. Which then explained a lot more to my life. And then I started to delve into my history. I started to think about my life and the causes and getting more of a backstory. My dad died when I was a young infant and my mom died 15 years ago. So I wanted to learn more.

And I accessed the freedom of information. And with freedom of information, you get the local social services, council reports, and I found that from a very young age. I was in kind of social care from three years old because my dad was hospitalized, he had a terminal illness, my mom couldn't cope. And all the behaviours, know, they call it bratty behaviour or, you know, really ⁓ unsociable behaviour. And so I was seeing a psychiatrist at three years old. I never knew this.

But obviously there was a reason behind this. I also looked at the possible causes and you go back, is it genetic, is it epigenetic? My parents were very stressed and overwhelmed ⁓ as young people in their 20s trying to ⁓ survive in the 60s and 70s in London. They were smoking and drinking, so therefore the toxins were passing through into utero. Therefore, if you're smoking, that means you're stressed, which means there's cortisol and adrenaline passing through as a young baby. Meningitis, which is brain inflammation.

I was put into an incubator for six weeks, which means I was detached from my mum. She was looking after my older brother. But then you go into like detachment disorders. Growing up in a dysfunctional home, living without a parent, traumas, poverty, abuse, neglect. So we can see there's many reasons or causes as to why my brain started to develop differently. And this led to all those behaviours, you know, from a very young age, very wild, very disobedient and all the alphabets, ODD, PDA, RSD, disorientated attachment style.

Conduct disorder, misbehaviour, the risk taking, the thrill seeking, the leads on to the addictions and trouble with the police and trouble with relationships and money and anger and then the anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. So, so many things can happen, you know, when you've got this brain and you don't know what's going on and what support you have around that.

Lucia Silver (07:08)
I mean, it's huge, Sean. I think it's quicker to list what you didn't struggle with, actually, isn't it? I mean, it is quite a catalogue of symptoms and outcomes and what we are so at pains to educate and empower upon at the brain health movement. This is biology speaking. It's not behaviour. It's not a child willing to be oppositional and difficult and reactive and angry and all these things. It's to understand why.

⁓ and really, really so powerful to have you sitting here on the other side of so much of this to be able to relate it and to hold hands with you across the studies you've done in brain development, in root cause, in holistic, into integrative medicine to understand really what is creating this spectrum of symptoms that we put under ADHD, but really it almost becomes.

a slight irrelevance, the diagnosis in many ways. It's really about understanding what the body is telling us, what we need to understand. ⁓ So what do you think and why do you think really adult ADHD, and particularly parents with ADHD is still such a missing part of the conversation, or at least has the wrong focus on it at the moment?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (08:28)
Well, like me from many parents is that we grew up without this thing called ADHD. We were just a bad child, a naughty child, a disobedient child. We never grew up in this environment knowing what this thing was. Second of all, the early thinking behind ADHD was it was a child development issue. They told children you would grow out of this. They never accepted that this would be going into adulthood. Now guess what? I've got clients in my 60s and 70s and they still have ADHD.

is still prevalent with these people, they still have issues and troubles, but it shows up in a different way because we use terminology now like emotional dysregulation, impulsivity and so on. But when it comes to the adults and the coping behaviours and the masking, it leads to issues with anxiety, issues with relationships, anger, rage, addictions, all these issues, these social issues become more prevalent with people with ADHD.

Lucia Silver (09:26)
Yes, and within all of those symptoms, I find it much easier and more helpful to have conversations about what is presenting rather than the diagnosis that people often self diagnose with because we could do damage to the importance of what nervous dysregulation actually is by just every second person saying I've got ADHD or I've got anxiety or I've got depression. You know, I was speaking to

the head of the wellbeing hub in a podcast only yesterday. And she was saying, you know, it's all right. Anxiety is normal on a day where you've got a big event at school or a big interview at work, a depression to follow grievances. know, some of it is absolutely, we need to normalise it again. And some of it we really need to understand and price apart what is neurochemical biophysiological dysregulation.

⁓ And so I think that's a very, very important part of supporting our parents. And there is this, and we'll come onto it now, invisible load of parenting with ADHD. Sean, one thing you and I are both deeply committed to is educating ourselves, understanding these conditions properly, not just surviving them. ⁓

This is why I set out to heal my child, not create a course, but it happened off the back of that. Our whole child healing course and roadmap is to point the light at where we can be empowered through understanding. So in your opinion, why is learning about ADHD such an important part of improving life for adults and for parents, particularly raising children with ADHD?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (11:09)
we need to know why. Neurodivergence brain is always we're trying to make logical sense of things because our brain is like a meaning-making machine. very connected to the non-verbal so we are really connected to the way people roll their eyes, the way they smirk, the they kind of, the micro-expressions. We are always curious to understand why. So I took that real deep dive when I was studying to be a clinical ADHD specialist with Dr Russell Barkley. He says in the course

you have to become the expert. You need to know more than the doctor and the teacher because a lot of times they don't know what they're talking about. And I took that literally, you know, so I studied with Dr. Daniel Eamon, you know him, so I'm a brain health professional. went to Cambridge University to study functional neuronormativity anatomy, Dr. Melillo and his course, you know, because I wanted to know everything about the brain so it makes sense to me, you know. But then we dive into now we know why and the reason why you have your course is because you've got this fountain of knowledge now.

and you want to share this with the world because you want other parents to experience what you've seen in the progress of your own son, right? So for me, the learning is important. I posted something recently on my socials and it said, so you've been diagnosed with ADHD. Now what? Because this should be the beginning, right? Now you've been diagnosed because a lot of people have been told, get diagnosed, get on the medication, right? Let's find out what's going on specifically in this brain because when you go to see a psychiatrist,

Lucia Silver (12:14)
Absolutely.

Yeah. Yep.

Yep.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (12:36)
you answer some questions and they say, based on your response, we now confirm you have ADHD. And what is ADHD? It's a neurodevelopmental brain condition. But I want to know why, every time I speak to a psychiatrist and I say, can you tell me specifically what's going on inside that child's brain, they can't tell you. But we know with the people that we work with and the doctors that specialize in this, we can now micro-target specifically which parts of the brain are in balance, which parts of the brain are underactive, immature, underdeveloped and so on.

and we know what we can do now to improve that. So it really helps us now. And sometimes we know too much because now I'm sitting in a train station, I'm looking at people now and now I can see the imbalances. I can see the way someone's standing, I can see the way someone's moving, you know, the way they're stimming themselves. I can see already and I really want to save the world. This is the issue now. You can't unlearn what you learned.

Lucia Silver (13:27)
Yes.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (13:31)
But it's really important to do like what you're doing is really sharing your knowledge and insights so people can learn more. But for every parent, really understand what's going on inside that child's mind. Really understand there is a reason why they're doing the things they do. There's a reason why they behave in the way they behave. Because for me, I always take a breath when I see, especially when people are being reactive or responsive, is to sit back and just say, I wonder why they've just done that. I wonder why they've just behaved in that way. What's going on with them?

So I really reflect back like a mirror and be curious to them.

Lucia Silver (14:03)
Yeah, it's my it's definitely my kind of motto for 2026. Pause. Be curious. You know, that's the it's that it's that taking a beat, taking a beat that stops, you know, all the other mechanisms flying in and just giving yourself time. And that practice is neuroplasticity. Again, you know, there's a positive neural network, the more we do that, the easier it becomes.

And you know, in a way we're talking about it in terms of how we are viewing our children and how we are responding to our children. But our conversation today is really for adults and it's, let's come back to how you're feeling as an adult in that moment. You know, you might be looking at your child, but what's actually going on for you? And we really want to deep dive into this invisible load that parents are really struggling with themselves. You know, when a parent has ADHD,

Sean, what's the part that other people don't see? You what's happening internally while they're trying to hold a family life together?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (15:01)
Yeah, stress, overwhelm, burnout. You know, we talk about rejection sensitivity, there's injustice sensitivity, there's guilt sensitivity, there's all these things of the balance, right? And if we talk about the child, the child needs to worry about the child themselves. With a parent, they've got to worry about the kids, the food, the shopping, the money, the work. You know, if it's a single parent family, even more stresses. You know, is there issues in the relationship? The amount of people, especially in January,

where I have e-mails coming and saying about, please book a session with my husband, our marriage is breaking down, you need to fix him, otherwise it's the end. There are so many things in terms of, with ADHD you're five times more likely to be addicted, to be suicidal, and then we talk about breakdown of relationships, being in debt with money financially. There are so many social factors really that parents are struggling with, but really they don't understand that this is deep rooted into

the thinking and feeling and behaving of themselves.

Lucia Silver (16:02)
Yeah, it's an awful lot. know, when you're when in an ideal situation as a parent, you are the container and the safe place for your children, but actually you can't provide that safety for yourself. ⁓ So let's look at that. You know, the day to day overwhelm, ⁓ the difficulty in focus, the difficulty with executive function, you know, where parenting is actually hitting hardest. So

Thinking about it from from from your average parenting week the mornings, know getting ready in the morning the school emails the forms appointments As you say food shopping food prep cooking You know just yesterday and this is just one child by the way I just my eyes go sideways when I look at parents that have got four kids or single I'm a single mom with one child who says yes to every activity known to man and I've got

two businesses I'm trying to run by myself and I'm a full-time carer for my mum. And I think that's a lot. But I look at other people and I think, how do they do it? know, picking them up from cricket, taking them to football, getting the food down them with everything I know about the importance of blood sugar levels and eating on time and the right food and home prepped and it's got to be home cooked. You know, the constant mental load, Sean, the emotional needs of children. You know, which parts hit ADHD parents the hardest and why?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (17:26)
Well, you've just demonstrated there, you're very much, you find it very hard to say no to people.

Lucia Silver (17:31)
Yeah.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (17:32)
You give him everything. What about Lucia? Where's the balance? Because you're trying to make everyone's life so amazing that you forget about yourself. There's a role called a rescuer, the person that's always helping everyone else and just forgets their own needs. And then gets to the point of just burnout and overwhelm and says, I do everything for you and you give me no thanks or gratitude. And that's what daughter says to her mom. Well, I never asked you to do that.

Lucia Silver (17:35)
Mm. Mm. Mm.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (18:00)
People go over and above, right, too much. This people pleasing, and like you talk about, the guilt sensitivity. It's trying to give everyone everything that they can, and in return you want to feel loved and feel accepted.

Lucia Silver (18:00)
Yeah, that's true.

And is that why we're doing it? Unconsciously? Is that why we say yes to everything and totally overstretch ourselves?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (18:20)
Why are you worried if you say no?

Lucia Silver (18:23)
disappointing probably, particularly with Quinn just not wanting to disappoint him.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (18:29)
You don't have to him down.

Lucia Silver (18:30)
Yeah, yeah, I'd say that's probably and also I kind of, do do it and I do manage it and I'm here and I'm happy. But it you're right, it's keeping a check on when it's too much and staying enough in touch with my own body to know you're actually tired, Lucy, you're running on adrenaline that disconnect or disassociation can happen very easily, can't it?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (18:50)
Do you think you've let him down?

Lucia Silver (18:56)
I think there is probably still some guilt and shame around why I didn't know what I know now earlier so that Quinn's autoimmune condition... there's no question in my mind, Sean, if I knew what I knew then... no, the other way around, if I knew now... no, if I knew then what I know now, he would not be unwell. I'm absolutely convinced of it. So there probably is... yep.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (19:20)
We can all say that.

But this is the point, it's the parental guilt and shame. We carry it so much because then we try to make up for the things that have happened in the past, but we don't know what we don't know. We need to be more compassionate to ourselves and be kinder to ourselves. It's like, I'm only learning stuff now, so I can only share my insights now. I did the best I could based on my circumstances at that time.

Lucia Silver (19:34)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (19:50)
Obviously we look back, we wish we could change the past and we wish things could be better, but things were tough, right? There's lots of stuff going on.

Lucia Silver (19:56)
Yep.

And that's so true for all of our parents, isn't it? That nobody sets out to be a rubbish parent. You know, we were all doing the best within our capacity. ⁓ But what I do understand now is that I am through the work that I've done on my nervous system and the work that I've done through trauma therapies and all sorts of work on me, which is where you and I are very big on starting with yourself, that my capacity is greater than it was.

that list of stuff that I just reeled off to you, there would have been a time where it just would have created so much stress for me to be in all of those places. Now I look back on yesterday and yes, I still have to monitor that self-care awareness that I'm all right in myself. But the fact of the matter is I did do two podcasts. I did take Quinn to cricket and football and make him his home cook meal and get to a visit to my mother.

and lots of other things were fitted into the day, not because I need to be busy to justify my value, but because I genuinely enjoy an active life and I now can conduct that life with less stress because I understand my regulation and my capacity better than I did. So we can enjoy more if we understand how to expand our capacity, can't we?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (21:18)
Yeah, because the thing is, is that what cost, you know, at what cost were you doing these things? You know, if, if, if, if Quillen was to miss one session, would he love you any less? You know, we talk about the balance. We talk about putting the oxygen mask on the, on the plane on you first. We talk about positive selfishness. If you don't take care of yourself, you'll have no use to anyone. So the best version of yourself needs to be there. You know, and part of my process was learning about ADHD and going through therapy myself.

I realised I need to sort my own shit out first and not put my shit onto my family. Because otherwise we start to project onto our kids and the pattern continues, the learned behaviours start again.

Lucia Silver (21:57)
Yes. So getting a little bit practical, let's kind of get into some of the granular ways that we do and don't do well with our symptoms of ADHD. So listing those things, the appointments, the food, all the stuff going on in the morning. Self-care is definitely number one piece, but can we separate some of this into challenges that can help in the moment ⁓ with a hectic morning and then maybe some other things that help longer term at a more root cause level?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (22:24)
Yeah, so for me, it's about structure, it's about planning, it's about routine, about consistency. It enables us to have as much certainty as possible. It allows us to be as calm, as relaxed as possible because we know what we're doing. But alongside that is the element of communication. We need, especially with ADHD kids, we need to keep reminding them over and over again. Remember, we've got to do this tomorrow morning, we've to focus on this tonight to make sure we're ready in the morning and so on because...

Communication is key and along with communication is clarity. We need to be really granular in how we explain things so it makes sense to that ADHD child. So for me, when you talk about the school diaries, the calendars, which sports kit you're wearing today and so on, for an ADHD, we're very visual. So for me, I've got a big whiteboard there. So having visual aids like a big whiteboard or planner or calendar to document things all the time so you have everything in order in your mind.

you keep going over and over and refreshing yourself, knowing what you're doing next. Because once you have order and systems in place, there's less chaos, there's less dysfunction because otherwise you're trying to do everything in your head. Otherwise you're trying to create this kind of to-do list. You've got like 30 things to do today, which are highly unachievable and therefore you get overwhelmed and disappointed by yourself. Then you get frustrated. And then this to-do list never finishes because then it becomes a wish list, the things you wish to do, but it's highly impossible.

We have to get some order. need like a calendar, a diary to fit things in because we can't be in two places at the same time. We can't be doing one hour here and three hours somewhere else. So again, the more organized and structured you are, the more it's going to be a calmer house.

Lucia Silver (24:09)
And that speaks to a lot you've said as well about preparation and knowing what's to come. So as a parent, rather than, you know, trying to write a list frantically in the morning to navigate the hectic day, do it the night before and, you know, repeat it to your child, but also repeat it to yourself so that the nervous system can just become acquainted with and safe. We don't like surprises. We don't like, we're not great with, you know, a lot of things suddenly changing at the last minute. So the more that we can prepare and allow time for.

the better. And something else you said in our podcast before Christmas, Sean, I really took note of is you said don't just write your to do list is this great big long list because left to my own devices, my list is long enough to fill a week in a day. Actually time plot it in your diary.

That's made such a difference to me. I mean, I've usually got three lists all over the everywhere, just a list so that I can keep reminding myself of the 100 things I need to do. But what I don't do necessarily is allocate the time to it and therefore it becomes an unrealistic list. So what I have started to do, thanks to that tip, is from eight until nine, this is what I'm doing in the morning. So I'll walk the dog and then I'll prep the breakfast for Quinn.

as an, you know, or whatever it is, but with the time allocation, it's then realistic and I can look at it and go, are you joking? You've just filled eight hours with that and you've actually only got three hours. So you then become much more sensible with your expectations for yourself and everyone else around you, because inevitably with that tendency, you're not just tough on yourself with it, but you're expecting everyone else to move at a hundred miles an hour. And certainly in Quinn's case,

He's Mr. Chill. Getting him to move fast is like shovelling SHIT uphill with a fork. It ain't gonna happen.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (26:08)
For me, when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And this was a really important thing I learned with ADHD is that I cannot store everything in my head. I think I can organize, but what happens is when I'm just blindsided by something else and I'm distracted, all of sudden, all the things I was planning to do go out the window, and I can't even recall what they were. So to document it is really important. So we need context in what we're doing. We need to know when we're doing it.

We need to know what time we're starting. We need to know how long we need to do it for. We need to consider, is there anything we need to do before and after? Because when I put in my diary, dentist 10 o'clock, at 10 o'clock I'm moving to go to dentist, but actually the appointment's at 10 o'clock. So I need to put at half past nine, go to the dentist. There's simple stuff. I need to go to the supermarket. And everything I say in my diary as well always has a verb. There has to be a doing word, otherwise,

Lucia Silver (26:54)
Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, that's the alarm. Yeah.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (27:03)
dentist just is not enough for me. You know, because it makes sense at the time, but when I go back to it, I'm thinking, well, what does that mean? So the diary from me, and I use it with all my clients, and they say to me, the diary is a game changer. And by the way, with diaries, I don't use an app, I don't use anything on my PC. I use an old school diary. The reason being, again, with ADHD, if we don't see it, it doesn't exist. And the moment that window closes on the phone or the PC, it disappears.

Lucia Silver (27:26)
Yep.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (27:30)
But when you have a physical diary, you have it next to you all the time. And it's just like my sat nav, right? If I just put in my destination, the sat nav will give you step-by-step instructions to get through your day. And this is what it does. I don't need to think about anything. There's nothing in my head because I know what I'm doing. ⁓

Lucia Silver (27:41)
Yep.

Yes, you can let it

go. mean, that's what I always say to my parents with one to one, get it down on a piece of paper in an orderly fashion, and you can let it go. And if I'm feeling particularly neurotic, or particularly, you know, in an anxious state, I'll make sure that I have the same replicated upstairs, just so that it's there. And I can look at it. And once I know it's in order, and it's rehearsed in my head, then they all I let go of it. So this is this is the kind of piece, Sean for

adults around organization. Let's talk sort of rain back a bit because there's a big story around focus and the kind of the chaos spiral. ⁓ So many parents describe to me feeling like they're trying to think through fog and everything becomes a sort of scramble. ⁓

And because I know that you and I love the sort of nerding out on the kind of the brain piece, but I do think it's really helpful to explain, you know, from your perspective and from the science, what's happening with focus and working memory for ADHD. I was going to say parents, anyone with these symptoms under stress, what's actually happening and what are some of the immediate, again, practical interventions or tips we can help with.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (28:57)
It's overwhelmed. It's again, it's just sensory overload. If there's just too much going on, the brain just shuts down. All of a sudden we're activating the first sense of the amygdala, the hippocampus shrinks down, prefrontal cortex shrinks down, so all of a sudden you're not thinking, you're not recording memory. We're overloaded, we're overwhelmed. And this is why when we unpack all the things we're meant to be doing and we get it down on paper.

Writing down is the first step, but we need to give it a home. We need to put it in a diary and schedule it in. Otherwise, it's just not enough sticky post-it. And I used to be that guy with all post-its everywhere with no order. So for someone with that fog, there is just too much going on. They're just unable to think. So we need to unpack what that is. And sometimes I always hate them. Just pause for a second, go for a walk. Go for five-minute walk around the block, some fresh air.

or go into a quiet room, sit down, just do some breathing because you just need to reset your nervous system.

Lucia Silver (29:55)
Yeah, again, it's pause, isn't it? Just pause, give your system a chance to recalibrate. And from a longer term perspective, what sort of support can we give the brain and nervous system so it's not constantly in fight or flight?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (30:11)
For me there is when I when I speak to any client and we do an intake form For me, we just don't dive into ADHD. We dive into lifestyle I want to know how you're sleeping how you're eating exercise what your stresses are what else is going on in your life I want to know if there are any a stimulant any sedatives because you know with many ADHD parents or adults You know, there is an issue with you know, they say to me I have ADHD, but I'm not taking the meds. I don't want meds

but then you find out they're taking six espresso coffees a day. And then you find out they're vaping all day long. Then you find out they can't sleep, so then they're smoking weed, or they are drinking alcohol at night time. So this is medicating in a different way. So for me, we need to work through all this and unpack it all, because my main thing is sleep. We need to get into a really good sleep routine, and as we said before, the secret to a good morning routine is a good bedtime routine.

Lucia Silver (30:42)
Yeah

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (31:05)
And once people start to make sense of this, I've got clients with me for over a year and it's like only now the penny's dropping because with ADHD as well, they don't particularly like being told what to do. They're very resistant. So they want to do it their own way. But over time, they start to trust the process and also just trust the process. Let's give it two weeks and see what happens. And that includes even the consideration with gluten and dairy. Like as you know, it's very inflammatory in the brain. can make us over sensitive. So again, I'll just say, let's see what happens if you have

dairy and gluten free for two weeks and just noticed the change because when I did it, instantly I become calmer and just more relaxed. I wasn't so erratic. I stopped caffeine years ago, sugar years ago, alcohol, everything. My life is much more calm and balanced because the ADHD brain, I call it feeding the beast, it wants this up and down. That's what it wants. It wants the dysfunction. It wants the chaos. But for me,

I've learned with the ADHD brain, we need to calm it down. We need to calm down the nervous system and slow everything down. And by doing so, I'm more balanced, I'm more organized, I've got space and time. I'm using my diary, which means I'm freeing up the capacity in my brain to think about what's going on right now. Because with ADHD, it's living in the now all the time. When you live in the now, it's survival mode. You're really activated, so you don't see the consequences of what can happen if you make poor choices.

you don't have that foresight, but also you don't have no hindsight, you don't learn from your mistakes because you're in such a high sympathetic state all the time.

Lucia Silver (32:37)
Yes, there's no connection to consequence or no connection to what's going to the fallout of that impulsivity or the fallout of you at that level of stimulation or overload. So yes, I think coming back into a safe ⁓ place is really, know, sympathetic dominance is about ⁓ a system that doesn't feel safe, that is running around trying to keep itself in a sort of dope and emergent state of sort of elevation.

constantly and then it tends to just crash and burn and doesn't really know the space of balance and that wonderful intermediary place of the parasympathetic as we call it, the rest and digest. ⁓

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (33:17)
The cycle

is tough because the cycle what I see is that people are just jacking themselves up with stimulants all day long and then they can't sleep. So then they're smoking weed or prescription drugs for sleeping. Then we talk about insomnia. You for me, insomnia is not a sleeping problem. Insomnia is a thinking problem. It means you're unable to go to sleep because you're thinking too much. And why are you thinking so much is because all day long, especially with ADHD, is you're so busy on the go all the time. You're being distracted by life, with work, with kids.

with screens, with all these distractions, that there's no time during your day to process your thoughts, process your feelings to reflect. There's no downtime. So therefore you're busy, busy, busy, you go to bed, and then the brain's saying, there's no way you're going to sleep now. We need to process all these things that have been bothering me all day long.

Lucia Silver (34:06)
Yeah. And in a way, all of the symptoms that many at least of the symptoms that we're talking about in terms of managing day to day life as a parent with ADHD, the time blindness, the sort of feeling of constant internalized pressure, the inattention, the feeling of kind of chaos, the overwhelm, the short term memory kind of loss, where am I standing in the middle of a supermarket not knowing why you're in there? And then suddenly hyper focus, you know, you've got

these very

lots of different sort of conditions and symptoms compounding one on top of the other. But really we can simplify it, can't we, Sean, in terms of where a lot of this is coming from? Can you sort of, because I was going to say, you know, talk to us again about time blindness, because that's something parents ask me to talk to you about. You know, I don't know what time of day it is sometimes, or I think it's going to it's 10 minutes, but it's an hour and a half. But actually,

most of what you're saying is coming back to similar things,

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (35:08)
Yeah, we go back to planning, organisation, structure and routine. The time blindness comes into play when we don't have a plan. You know, like we think to ourselves, I don't have to leave to do a school pick up for an hour. Then they just mindlessly go on the sofa, start scrolling. Guess what? Two hours have passed. You know, or, you know, they are engaged in something which is just consuming their minds. They lose all sense of space and time. You know, or when we talk about, you know, I've got to go, I've put in my diary, 10 o'clock dentist.

and I leave at 10 o'clock, then I realize I'm late. Or what happens is I think to myself, it takes me 10 minutes to go to the dentist, I'll leave 10 minutes before. But I get in the car, I'm just about to get in the car, I forgot to walk the dog, I forgot to put the washing out, I get in the car, I forgot there's no petrol in there, I forgot there's a diversion, and it's going to take me 20 minutes now. And all of sudden, I start to beat myself up. That inner critic starts to come out, what's wrong with me, you're an idiot. All that self-talk comes in, because that's typical with ADHD.

Lucia Silver (36:07)
within that also is with the overwhelm, with the constant self pressure and self judgment comes this reactivity and snapping and then shut down because I think if you're constantly running, catching up with yourself in a way and constantly feeling like you're never getting ahead, emotionally parents will talk to me about they go from fine to snapping. You think you're absolutely all right and then you're

screaming like a banshee in your car because you know some poor old granny stepped out to cross the road. Ordinarily you'd like to have a balanced response to that. What's happening then in the nervous system when the emotional volume turns up? And again have we got any interventions we can offer to our parents in those moments?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (36:55)
Again, they're in that kind of fight-or-flight state. They're being reactive because there is no window of tolerance left. It's the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't the old woman crossing the road that caused this. It's been a build-up where they haven't really identified how they've been feeling all day long. For me, I call it the bubbling volcano. They're completely unaware that this volcano inside is bubbling and bubbling, and they're completely unaware that they could be tired, hungry, angry. They could be feeling insignificant, unvalidated.

unloved, unwanted, there could be anything manifesting underneath, unconsciously, they're not aware of it. But they're maxed out, know, their cup is empty, there's nothing left. So what happens is with those reactive moments is this, anger, the rage, the breaking of crockery in the home, the walking out the door, slamming the door, all these things. And like I said before, at very beginning, when I see that behaviour, I'm very curious.

I'm pausing and going, whoa, whoa, where did that come from? Because the thing is, it wasn't just what someone just said or did in that moment. It's been a build-up. So it's really, again, checking in with oneself during the day. I've got a list. I'll share it you afterwards. But it goes through this list of feelings to say, check in with this every two, three hours to see how I'm feeling. Do I feel tired? Do I feel angry? Do I feel lonely? Do I feel hungry? Do I feel upset? Do I feel unwanted? Do I feel disrespected? Do I feel disregarded?

and find out where is this coming from. And spending time to process this so then you can reset yourself. Otherwise you're just bringing stuff from one place to another, carrying this load and then someone is finally going to just feel the wrath of that kind of reaction.

Lucia Silver (38:31)
Yeah.

someone's gonna get it. Yeah, I I think that is absolutely brilliant. there's, that's another tip I'm personally taking is, and I'm going to add to it, which is when you say check in with yourself every few hours and see what you're feeling, because you might, someone might make a comment and being very, very sensitive to criticism and judgment and lack of self-worth, you sort of park it, it's sort of ouch, and then you carry it on. But then suddenly,

you're carrying it through the day and that might have been the trigger or together with a bit of lack of sleep or too much screen time you didn't have your breakfast you've got blood sugar dysregulation there are so many as you say and the more we educate ourselves the more able we are to understand what those component parts might be or what we would call the total load of stresses emotional, physical, chemical ⁓ but I'm going to add to that because I think that's absolutely brilliant

But you know what? I would normally just listen to that and go, yeah, I need to check in with myself. How about you put it in your diary? How about you actually diarise the bloody thing? That's what I'm gonna do. So that every three hours, you know, I say, and those questions that you've just listed are terrific. You know, how are you feeling? How's your sense of self worth? Did anyone say anything that upset you? Have you eaten? How are you feeling in your body? Are you feeling balanced? Are you feeling tired? Are you feeling breathless?

How long have you been sitting at the screen? Have you got up from your desk? All of those, just checking in at the different levels, which takes us very neatly onto this idea of overstimulation, overstimulation in the home. It's something that we're a little bit more educated on and versed in as parents. We're hearing more now about overstimulated kids or parents will laugh about, thanks very much for giving my kid that.

chocolate bar they're going to be running around like a lunatic before bed or thanks very much for bringing around that noisy toy to my two-year-old at 10 o'clock at night great we kind of have a superficial understanding of something that is not going to be very well received by our children's nervous systems what we don't necessarily understand and what this conversation is all about today is for us as adults home can be a sensory

overload mecca of noise mess touch requests interruptions I really feel it Sean when in the morning Quinn is massively into 90s R &B from me I've always been yeah that's what I love you love it love a dancer but you know he'll come downstairs and straight away it's on the radio and the same in the evening and sometimes I don't even realize like this morning it was on for sort of half an hour while I was making his breakfast and I just went

Alexa turned off and I just my whole body just went I had no idea until it was gone of the impact that was actually having on my nervous system So that's just one small thing, you know, if you're living in a house with four kids a dog I don't know a noisy husband. I think there can be so many things going on

become aware of it is absolutely vital. So what can parents with ADHD do when they feel flooded and overstimulated? But maybe they can't leave actually, there's a point. I could just go Alexa turn it off and have a conversation with Quinn and say do you mind darling can I just turn it off for a bit? You might be in a house where you can't turn the volume down and you know what are realistic interventions with kids around?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (42:08)
Yeah, I mean, we need to take a step back and remind ourselves that the parent is meant to be the co-regulator and sometimes they're the dysregulated person. Right? So, and so we need to first, you know, if we have a dysregulated parent, what chance are the kids got? You know, because everyone's just shouting and snapping at each other, especially in the morning. And again, we go back to the planning and organising and what is and what is not appropriate in the mornings, right? There is no way my daughter's gonna be playing 90s R &B first thing in the morning. There is no way.

Lucia Silver (42:16)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (42:38)
Because remember as well, we are still waking up. We're still waking up, especially that young child, they need a lot of sleep, they're still waking up. So for me, that routine should be very simple, it should be very basic, it should be just like, these are the steps. For me, there's no screens allowed, but we'll go back to the evening. There has to be a bedtime routine. It's not like on your screens till 10 o'clock and go to sleep. We need to wind this young,

⁓ developing brain down, we need to wind it down. So that means we have to have an agreed time where we're to, and you know what, to have consistency in agreed times when you're dinner, you know, having bath time, having book reading and so on, the more it's consistent with that child, it makes them feel more safe and secure. There's more certainty. They know the flow of the system. They know the flow of the routine. And hopefully there's time for the parent to get some downtime themselves, but sometimes,

Lucia Silver (43:11)
ourselves.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (43:38)
There isn't, it's going down the same time as a child. Now I've got some parents that I work with and what they say is, you know, I worked late and I had to put the kids down and it got to about nine, 10 o'clock. And that's the time they should go to bed. But I said, no, I wanted me time. And they wanted like an hour on the sofa scrolling and so on. And guess what, they're waking up tired and groggy and then snapping with the kids. You know, we have to make sure and respect the bedtime routine to say,

I need to make sure screens are at nine o'clock. I need to make sure I'm in bed by 10 o'clock, regardless of what's happened in the evening. Because again, we need to set these defined rules so everyone knows what the plan is. Because the overwhelming and stimulation is, and how activated are, what are you doing with the kids? Are they playing? Are they on screens? What are they watching? Now, for me, we spoke before about conscious consumption. What are they watching? What are they reading? What are they listening to? How is that activating the brain before they go to bed?

Lucia Silver (44:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (44:34)
We need

to calm the nervous system down. When people say to me, do you know what, I can't sleep, and I say, what would you do? I said, I watch horror movies till 12 o'clock at night. I'm like, surprise, surprise. We need to be really mindful. We need to be mindful of caffeine intake. If you do drink coffee, drink it in the morning. If you have coffee in the afternoon, guess what? Caffeine stays in your system for 12 hours. So that caffeine is still in your system. Even though you may not feel as tired, it's still there in the system.

Lucia Silver (44:41)
Yeah

Yeah, and that goes for food and sugars that you're having late at night, sweet things, drinks, know, pudding, know, Quinn loves a pudding, but we're, you know, again, very hot on diet. So I make sure that whatever it is, if it's sweet, it's not processed sugar. And it happens, you know, at least by about 7, 7.30 at night, no later.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (45:03)
Food, sugars, yeah. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (45:22)
⁓ We've got a really deep dive we do with our sleep therapists on the course and we've done podcasts with them as well about the routine for bed and really understanding that a lot of children with the symptoms that we're talking about need at least an hour and a half's routine to go to bed. The wind down routine, the sensory ⁓ offloading, the coming back to feeling safe enough. You'll often find that children with symptoms of ADHD and autism and

anxiety and so forth, suddenly get very clingy towards bedtime. They ask the life's biggest questions. know, Quinn with his pans and when they used to be really high anxiety, he would ask me questions about God and sexuality and the meaning of life, you know, just to kind of keep me in the room, but also because the brain just suddenly gets activated and concerned. So the wind down routine for me with Quinn begins a good hour before we're really talking about bedtime.

Lights come low, know, we're trying to replicate circadian rhythms as much as possible, which is very difficult in a country which is dark by four in the winter, where, you know, ideally we'd be going to sleep when the sun goes down and waking up when the sun rises. And that's how our natural dopamine's and our natural melatonin and everything would function. Mitochondrial cell health, everything responds to that naturally and lives well. But when we shine a blue light or we're watching television or screens,

It sets everything off, doesn't it, Sean? So the best we can do is get this routine going, as you've said, and make sure that that phone is put away. mean, Quinn isn't allowed on the phone hardly at all anyway, but certainly not after seven o'clock at night. And the same in the morning. And when we go upstairs to bed, all the lights are on low. We don't put them on high. So there's no sort of innovating the nervous system then as well. So these are all ways of being conscious.

for him, but the knock-on effect for me has been enormous. Putting the phone away for myself, keeping the lights low for myself, keeping the music soft, winding the body down, right? I mean, what's good for the, what's the expression? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. You know, it's, there is never going to be anything that's going to be great for your child, but terrible for you. You know, we're living in a, in a sensory ecosystem that we're all sharing. We've all got this incredible body.

that knows what it needs, knows how to heal, and our bodies are really not any different from our children, are they?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (47:52)
Yeah, and going back to what you saying, it's really important to find time during the day, whether after school or at bedtime, to allow the child to unpack. Because there's things that have been on their minds, there's things that have been bothering them, and they need to feel like they're in a safe space and feel trusted enough just to lie in the bed next to them, for example, stroke in their hands, stroke in their body, because that sensory stimulation is really calming for them as well. My daughter does this with her mom every night. She lies in bed for the last hour.

and I can hear her ranting about girls at school and all this kind of stuff. But it made me smile with what you were saying because, you know, there's things that, years ago she was studying science and biology and sex and we was in bed talking and she said, I can ask you a question, Dad. I said, yeah, go on. She said, what's a resurrection?

Lucia Silver (48:41)
⁓

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (48:43)
And it made me laugh, but you know that she's been carrying it all day long. And she waited till she got home to get clarity, because she didn't want to embarrass herself in the class. So the point is that we want the kids to feel like they can unpack and go to bed with a clear mind, rather than going to bed thinking about things, worrying about things, being curious about things. This is the time to let them open up and express themselves.

Lucia Silver (48:46)
Yeah, yeah.

You are blessed. I love that.

And also because we're focusing on parents and adults with this, that co-regulation is equally relevant for us as adults, right? If you're fortunate enough to have a loving partner and wonderful communication, or maybe a bestie that you can hop on and have a chat with, same goes. know, what is it, the question I offer to Quinn, but I am encouraging this conversation with those close to me as adults is, what about this day would you like to leave behind?

⁓ As well as celebrating what was good, but a lot of the time the nervous system holds on to what has been innovating As you said with your daughter and resurrection. She's been holding it the whole day, right? ⁓ The moment we can offload the mind can then once again feel safe and move on so I think giving Finding that opportunity to co-regulate with another adult with whom you feel safe Be that a friend your partner or tell your dog. I talked to my dog a lot

But just let it go, let the day go, leave it behind you is a big part, isn't it?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (50:11)
But to be honest as well, from my experience with adults, is that sometimes the problem is in the home, right? Sometimes the problem is the partner. So sometimes it's not safe to tell this person how you feel. And we go to this, like, some people feel trapped. Some people feel that they're stuck in this relationship and they can't get out and there's nowhere else to go. So it is very tough. So I would always encourage people to find another soundboard, to find ways to co-regulate yourself as much as you can.

Lucia Silver (50:20)
Yeah.

Yes.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (50:39)
in your current circumstances, but to work through it in some way with communication.

Lucia Silver (50:43)
Yeah, absolutely. You choose your tribe, choose carefully. It's very, very important to because you can end up feeling so much worse, Sean, can't you? If you choose someone that isn't safe and you're criticised and you're sensitive and vulnerable already and you lay that into the hands of someone who's not regulated themselves and you end up even worse. So yes, choose that person wisely.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (51:03)
Yeah, and

to go back to that with communication, sometimes you're busy, right? You pick up your son, you're busy cooking dinner and he wants your attention, but you're in the middle of cooking dinner, right? sometimes kids feel like they're just told to go away, they're not important and so on. We really need to explain to the child, please give me 10 minutes, I'm cooking a dinner, I wanna make sure we have a nice dinner together and I will come back to you and we can talk about it. Because otherwise...

the child will go away and the self-talk starts, she doesn't care about me, she doesn't love me, I'm not important, she loves my brother more than me, all this stuff. So we need to be really clear with children, know, when we're unable to meet their needs in that moment, we need to make sure that we do go back and repair that afterwards.

Lucia Silver (51:46)
100%. And can I also just say, because I keep pulling us back to parents, that goes the same for you as an adult receiving that in relationship with your partner or with a friend, you know, just communicate, you know, what you have to say is really important to me. I'm a bit stressed right now trying to do 350 things, but I really want to hear how you feel darling, if it's your boyfriend, husband or otherwise. And the same for you say.

to your partner, you know, I'm very, very sensitive if I feel brushed off, if you don't have time for me. So if you don't just communicate to me that this isn't a good time, validate that what I feel is important and that you'll find the time to talk to me. You know, this is so true across the board, isn't it?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (52:29)
Yeah, but also to be present when you are there. You know, because sometimes people are physically available but emotionally disconnected. You know, sometimes people are in the room but they're looking at their phone, for example. You know, and it's the worst thing. You know, again, I work with a child and, well, they're 16 and they get really upset when they're trying to speak to their mum about something. They said she's just on her phone and she's humming and harming me, you know, and nodding, but she's not really connecting with me. And so again, being present, being fully connected.

Lucia Silver (52:36)
Yes.

Yeah.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (52:57)
is really important because that's the engagement that someone really needs. Otherwise, you might as well not be there.

Lucia Silver (53:02)
You might as well not be there. And in fact, there's a piece of research just recently around the biological necessity of co-regulation and being fully present as an adult. And they surveyed that the oxytocin levels that are released are almost unilaterally lost when a parent picks up a phone. So where the child feels bonded to you and all those wonderful neurochemicals and all the good stuff that makes us feel safe and bonded and connected and belonging.

are absolutely shattered the minute you, and I thought, yeah, I get that. I Quinn is furious sometimes when I pick up my phone and sometimes I have to say to him, darling, the only reason that I can pick you up every day from school or come to football when it's in my working day is because I can take my phone with me. But our treasured sacred time is going to be, know, sometimes it's just the way it has to be, but you have to monitor yourself in those moments where you are checking the phone, like when we have our evening time and I'm sort of, I've still got,

you know, my business in Marrakesh, I've still got international calls coming in. But then I think actually between seven and his bedtime, that can just wait. That's our sacred time. Because even if we're just watching telly together and we're not having a conversation, if I pick up my phone, Quinn is livid, which tells me he needs my presence.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (54:23)
Yeah, but also

the touch, right? So the touch is the oxytocin.

The touch is just stroking someone's head, putting their arm around them, just touching them in the morning. You know, whether it's with your partner or with one of your children, you know, that oxytocin is being released. That's enough of a connection.

Lucia Silver (54:38)
Yes, yes. So let's move on, Sean, to something that's a ⁓ silent, unspoken piece and actually the very thing itself takes its power by being silent and unspoken and that's ⁓ and masking. ⁓ The shame cycle for parents with ADHD. You know, why can't I cope like other people? Why am I failing?

I'm too much, I'm too hyper, I can't concentrate. Why is shame so common for adults with ADHD and especially parents?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (55:17)
Shame is the emotional response to feeling not good enough. It's a common, limited belief for all ADHDers. It's as if we feel, again, we're very non-verbal, we're very sensitive creatures. So when we're not sure what's going on, when we're not sure about how people feel about us, we carry this sense of guilt or shame, or even blame for things. And a lot of the time, it comes from distorted thinking. We are thinking something which is not true.

There's been information received, whether it's verbal or nonverbal, and we sometimes generalize it, sometimes we distort it. But we never kind of challenge the thinking, and it's part of the work I do, part of CBT is all about challenging thinking because there's a lot of negative thinking that leads to unhelpful feelings and behaviours.

So it's carried for many, many years because normally people with ADHD have struggled somewhat in school, if not outside of school or at home, and they carry this kind of shame or feeling like,

there's something wrong with me or there's something different about me or I'm a bad person or a naughty kid. So we carry shame from such a long time ago, and especially if there's socioeconomic issues like with poverty or being raised in a single parent household, there's all these other things that come along with it as well. So all of a sudden we are now conditioned to go to that shame whenever we feel a sense of not feeling good enough or not worthy. And it's really hard. It's really hard.

Lucia Silver (56:41)
It's

very, very hard and it's a kind of spiralling mechanism really, because I think once you're in it, you're sort of consumed by it and it sort of then envelops your day and it feels very difficult to come out of that feeling. What do you suggest or advise in the moment to stop the spiralling?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (57:02)
Well, for me, I challenge my belief systems all the time to the point where, you know, in my morning routine, I do affirmations, for example. Part of my affirmations is to say, I am good enough, I am worthy, I do deserve love. You know, I am confident, you know, I say all these things in the morning to reaffirm myself, to remind myself of who I am now. You know, there may have been a time and a place where I was really struggling and I didn't feel like I was good enough or didn't deserve things.

But I've worked through this now myself and changed and reframed my life and reset my mindset to the man I am today, rather than still going back to this poor, struggling child. I was living in an environment where I couldn't cope and I didn't know what to do. But now I do know what to do. Now I know what I can do to help myself. And now I can reaffirm myself and know that I am good enough. I do deserve to be here. And I'm smart, I'm articulate. I'm all these things now.

which I never thought I was before.

Lucia Silver (58:02)
You're not bad to look at either. That's a bonus, isn't it? And longer term, what actually changes the internal narrative? Are you feeling that that is shifting as well? That you're presenting with those thoughts about yourself far less and replacing it with those affirmations? Is that happening more naturally now?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (58:05)
Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I let go of guilt and shame years ago, you know, when I first started to go into this kind of process myself from therapy and so on. You know, we go back to the things, when I reflect on my life, I've made some really bad choices, you know, I've made really poor decisions. But it's a very famous saying to say, forgive them for they know not what they do. You know, I made these choices based on my circumstances at that time, you know, and I was really struggling and going back into, you know, ADHD and survival mode, I was surviving for a lot of the time. So I was just...

being very instinctive and just making reactive decisions, which now I look back, I would never do. But I need to be compassionate and understanding to myself and forgive myself for the things that I've done and then let go of the guilt, the blame and the shame.

Lucia Silver (59:06)
Amen. Yes. ⁓

masking Sean just as a sort of adjunct to shame and how we handle it or don't handle it, repress it and kind of collapsing at home. I just want to speak to this because it's such a parallel universe for kids in school and adults in life. You many parents hold it together in the outside world and then kind of collapse at home with the people they love most. Just like our kids in school. ⁓

it's like taking the champagne bottle stopper out when they get home, right? There's this massive explosion, kind of school's like, no, they're absolutely fine, we don't have any problems with that at all. And you're like, what? You know, at home, they're like, hell hath no fury is like what's going on. And similarly with our adults. So what's going on with masking in adult ADHD? And why does the unravelling often happen at home?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:00:03)
Yeah, masking is lack of safety. You know, you have this authentic person and you don't feel like you are going to be loved or accepted or wanted as the authentic person. So you change who you are in order to feel safe, to feel accepted, to feel loved, to feel connected. So what happens is you kind of, you change who you are or your high part of yourself in order to feel safe. You know, and the sad thing is that it's very demanding from an energetic perspective.

to be someone or be something else whilst masking. And you carry it and hold it and so on. You never show or express your feelings until you go home. And then when you go home in that safe space, it's normally the primary caregiver that you go into. Normally, good to have my children, if there's ODD or PDA, for example, they let loose on the one they love and care for the most. And it's really sad because, know, who is the original person? Who is the real Tommy?

Lucia Silver (1:00:54)
Yep.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:01:02)
Is it the Tommy at school or is it the Tommy at home? And why is this person changing? Are they trying to move towards feeling more loved, more accepted, more significant, more validated? There's something deep inside that doesn't make them feel safe enough to be the authentic self. And that may be from, in school terms, could be from bullying. In work environments, could be again from bullying or being judged in a certain way. So they carry this persona until they come home.

Lucia Silver (1:01:30)
I think understanding it as well from a nervous system perspective, you our systems are adaptive, aren't they? So if we are feeling frightened in school, anxious in school, our nervous system responds in fight or flight. We run away or we get aggressive and we attack. you and I have talked before about this sort of easy visual metaphor, exactly. Or like, you know, like a lion's in the room.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:01:51)
or we freeze.

Lucia Silver (1:01:57)
Or we might decide to go into, we don't decide by the way, that's completely incorrect. Our bodies adapt into a state of form, which is people pleasing. This is very much an adult behavioural trait and one I've mastered for years and really have to work hard to let go of is, you know, being charming and people pleasing because that's safe. And if I'm with my hyper vigilance watching tones of voice, and as you've said, body languages, I know how to...

get a situation into being pleasing enough that I can kind of control it to the extent that it's safe. But it's absolutely, as you've said, exhausting. So when I come home and I'm in my own space, I don't have to do that anymore. And if we've been doing any of the above for a sustained period of time, as you've described, know, in that incredibly engaged state and having to mask, might, know,

was masking his stim all day long. know, there's lots of different things we can mask, emotional outbursts, feelings of just wanting to hide away or run away. When we do that over a sustained period of time, Sean, our nervous systems are exhausted, not just needing to kind of unbottle, but sometimes what we'll see is a complete shutdown, a freeze. Nervous system just has got no more to give. It's played the game all day long to be safe.

and it's now in an environment as you said with its loved ones where it feels me and then it shuts down that's the other way it responds just locks as a lot of teenagers do or as men sometimes do they just lock themselves in their room at night and they're just I don't know what the way they disappear to but they're not emotionally available anymore because that nervous system has just crashed and burned hasn't it

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:03:44)
Yeah, mean, masking is hiding and hiding is repressing and you're repressing yourself. But I see it in a way of being in survival mode, you know, because you're fearful of that. If I say I'll do the wrong thing in this moment, I could be at risk in some way. And I mean, talking about fawning, fawning is survival modes to I just need to comply to make sure I stay alive. No, but I read recently in research is that when you invite a flight sympathetic state, you consume five times more energy.

So then you go into adrenal fatigue as well. And I don't really see anyone really talking about this, but we talk about ADHD and the low production or low activity of dopamine, but dopamine converts into adrenaline if under threat. Now, if you're in fire to flight all day long and you need adrenaline, guess how much dopamine is being converted into adrenaline? And then you wonder why there's low amounts of dopamine in your system.

Lucia Silver (1:04:39)
Yep. And that's also where conditions of autoimmune disease come in because the system has been under chronic stress for so long. The adrenals, the gut, everything, brain on fire, gut on fire, everything is dysregulated. Nothing is working anymore and the body starts to turn on itself. And that's where you get conditions like Quinn's with PANS. So it is so important to understand where your body is at, where your nervous system is at and to address it as... ⁓

As soon as possible for our kids, we're talking about the outcome of adults who didn't have the opportunity, the language or the education that we now have to understand and are reaping the fallout of it now. But it can be prevented and it can absolutely be in so many cases reversed. So now let's look at how this impacts on relationships, Sean. You touched earlier on rather bleakly, but on the fact that January is

one of the highest rates for relationship breakups and certainly the highest rate of divorce. ADHD shows up pretty fiercely in relationships and co-parenting, doesn't it? With couples kind of turning ADHD symptoms often into character judgments and assassinations and...

We need to understand helpful phrasing and reframing that stops these conflicts escalating at home, right? So longer term, what's gonna help couples build understanding and teamwork within, often both mum and dad, by the way, with symptoms of ADHD, right? I mean, it could be both.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:06:11)
Absolutely, and that's, first of all, I would say to the adults is to check, just go online to do an assessment to see if you think you may have some neurodivergence. Because some people may be surprised, some people might be unaware that they have the inattentive type, for example, they think ADHD is this one bouncing off the wall, very impulsive and hyperactive, but there is the inattentive type as well. Then it's about communication, then it's about explaining, you know,

In my house, I'm called the fourth child, because sometimes I could behave in a very immature way that I'm unaware of. But it's about the people, the couples, understanding each other's roles and responsibilities, understanding each other's characters. Sometimes if I'm stressing about something, I get a touch on my shoulder and say, you okay? You seem to be getting stressed about something, what is that? And it kind of resets me to think about, okay, what is that?

completely unaware. One of the things with ADHD is there's lack of awareness, especially with this emotional dysregulation. So sometimes we're not even aware of how loud we can be, how active we can be, or how reclusive we can be. We can withdraw or we can approach. So it works in many different ways. I've also noticed that there is in couples, you say for example, the man has got ADHD of a certain type,

they are normally married up to the inattentive type without even knowing. I've noticed that the partner will be the more anxious type, this person will be the more optimistic type. It seems to be a pattern that I'm seeing a lot. So they kind of find, they meet their match, they find their yin and yang, which is very interesting. It's about working with each other then. I use a method called MIMI, right? And MIMI is sometimes when something happens,

Take an example, we'll talk about men because men are the typical type for this. ⁓ They get upset by something that's been said or done. ⁓ Could be their wife has said something to them or did something and this person goes into themselves and it makes about me. It's like, you don't care about me, you don't love me, I'm not important and so on. This is when Mimi shows up because all of a sudden you become the inner child, the wounded child, right? Is that you made it about yourself and then you're reacting as if it's the case when it's not the case at all.

The intention was not to upset you. The intention was to explain to you something's going on. And in that moment, for example, we expect the partner to reset us to say, can I speak to Sean for one minute? I want to just check if Sean's okay. Because we need to separate Sean and Mimi, the young child, because the young child comes up time and time again. And the clients have started to use this method. And they said, I cannot believe how powerful this technique is.

because we forget how many times we go into ourselves because that inner child, that wounded child is still stuck there sometimes. And we make everything about us because with ADHD we can sometimes be egocentric, like a young child, and everything's about me. So by using this method, especially when you've got an understanding partner who's co-regulating, it really works.

Lucia Silver (1:09:27)
I love that. I love Mimi. And also it's kind and compassionate rather than going, you're so self-obsessed, stop going on about yourself all the time. And then that sets them off onto another spiral of self-loathing because they don't mean to do it. That's just the narrative, the internal narrative and the wounded, as you say, in a child. to speak to the inner child is such a compassionate and loving way through, but it does demand

a lot of a partner and it demands that they are self regulated enough to be able to offer that space and not everybody can do it. Another person could be triggered by it because their needs in turn weren't met. They're in a child is going, well, hang on a minute. It's all about you. I need some time. Something that Brene Brown talks about is sort of checking in with a partner as well, because you may well have a very compassionate partner, but that may not be the case 24 seven.

And she used this technique where you check in with your partner and out of 10, where are you today? know, how full is your barrel? Which I think is great in terms of just being mindful of where you both are. And Brené says, you know, when I'm at a two and my husband says, hey, I'm at a seven, I can carry you today, we're good. All good. But if she says she's at a two and husband says he's at a two, they're both like, ooh, we just both need to be a little bit more.

careful, a little bit more mindful, but it's just, you know, shining the light on what's going on in this present moment for you both.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:10:55)
Yeah, and by being present and being curious, it's really important to recognise when your partner's been activated by something. Because we can easily get into it ourselves. We can activate two adults and it just blows up. So sometimes when someone's been activated, we need to be mindful of that and to withdraw, even though we want to get into the argument because Mimi wants to show up and Mimi wants to argue. But sometimes we need to withdraw and say, okay, this is not going to be healthy for this relationship because we're going to blow up here.

So we need to just let the situation calm down and then circle back to it. And then going back to that as well with Mimi is that it has been known that one of the partners, one of the wives, when she sees her partner being triggered, she'll say, is Mimi here in a teasing way, which makes things even worse because then he activates even more. So we need to speak to the adult in We need to ground it from that perspective.

Lucia Silver (1:11:22)
Yes.

Yes.

Thank

Yes, yes. Sean, let's move on to a quick quick fire round with you. This is short and sharp, but I think it's got some really important little pearls of wisdom in there as a standalone piece. So I'm going to ask you about five or six questions, starting with one thing ADHD parents should stop doing immediately.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:12:16)
I would say the main thing which I'm seeing is screen time. So reducing screen time

Lucia Silver (1:12:24)
one thing they should do more of.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:12:29)
Be present, be connected, and give themselves some space and time to reflect. Give themselves some downtime. Like in my day, in between client sessions, I've got these fine lines of half hour breaks to go for a in nature, just to reset, to leave my phone behind, to, know, just check in with myself. How am I doing, how am I feeling? What's been bothering me today? Where's this come from?

Lucia Silver (1:12:54)
Create space, we could say. Yeah, create. Yeah, I love that.

one sentence to replace why can't i cope

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:13:04)
I'm resourceful and I'm resilient.

Lucia Silver (1:13:09)
One boundary that changes everything.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:13:13)
saying no with an explanation.

Lucia Silver (1:13:17)
saying no with no explanation. Love that. With an explanation. ⁓

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:13:19)
with an explanation. So for

example, you say to me, can you help me ⁓ pick up my car tomorrow? And I'll say, look, I'm sorry I can't do that because I've got an appointment, but I can help you in the afternoon. So again, if I just said no, Mimi shows up for you and says, he doesn't care about me. I'm not important enough. But when I explain to you, it's nothing to do with you. I've really got commitments, but I would like to help you later on in the day.

Lucia Silver (1:13:45)
Yeah, lovely. A psychotherapist did once say to me, which I was very interesting, Lucy, you're such a people pleaser, can't you just say no? And I said, well, I can, think I can, but he said without the 25 minute explanation. I was like, well, yeah, but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. He said, how about, if it was a cinema and it was a movie, and you really didn't fancy the movie, it is acceptable to say.

You're not saying you don't want to go to the cinema with the person. They go, do you fancy this movie? And you go, no, that's not my type of movie. You don't then have to give them an essay. It's all right that you don't like that movie and they do like that movie. You'll find another movie that you both like. So I think also within that, here we are with our quick fires, typical you and me drilling down, but quick fire questions is yes with explanation, but it's also all right to just not necessarily agree or not necessarily want to do something as well, right?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:14:44)
Yeah, but circling back to what we discussed earlier on, I sense you have a real sensitivity to letting people down.

Lucia Silver (1:14:51)
Yeah, absolutely. So yes, it's about doing it in a nice way. When you start practicing it, you get it really well. No, I don't want to do that. But yes.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:15:02)
⁓

But again, the fear of letting people down is the fear of rejection. I fear if I let you down, you're not going to be my friend or I feel I'm not going be loved. Exactly.

Lucia Silver (1:15:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'll be unlovable.

100%. One nervous system support that helps fast.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:15:20)
⁓ One thing I do is call a dark bath. And a dark bath is basically running a really hot bath to the very top and you switch in the lights off or close the curtains down so the room is black. So you desensitize all your sensory input. And then I play some really slow classical music, a really slow tempo classical music for about 20 minutes. And I lie in the bath and I breathe deeply into this slow tempo and it really switches me off. And ⁓ I call it going back to the womb.

to be in this lovely wet sack in darkness with no sensory stimulation. And it really resets me. I'll come out there and if it's bedtime, I'll go straight to sleep. If I have it on a Saturday, ⁓ late morning, and again, just resets me for the weekend. It's really lovely.

Lucia Silver (1:16:09)
that sounds wonderful. How about ⁓ one longer term support that genuinely shifts things?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:16:17)
So the nervous system, for me, it's about finding time during the day to have a walk in nature. For me, it's just about calming down the nervous system and connecting. There's something called savouring, which is what I do is that you go out in nature, whether it's local to a field or to a park, anything like that, and you slowly walk around. And the advice is to look up. The reason why we look up is that we're connecting to our visual senses. If we look down, we go into self-talk.

How many times do you walk somewhere and you're looking down, you have a lot of self-talk. You can't do any self-talk when you're looking up. So for me, I go for a walk around this field, I'm looking up and I'm tuning into my sensory input. My phone is left behind, so I'm disconnected from the device, but connected with nature. And what I do is that I'm looking at the birds, I'm hearing the sounds, I'm rubbing the bark of the tree, but really connected with nature in such a way where I'm just stopping and pausing and just saying, where is that bird? I can hear it, where is it?

And it's really allowing me to connect with nature, you know, and just really, this is why we're here in this world. We've got a beautiful world here, and we're living in boxes, we're moving around in boxes, we're looking in boxes. You know, we are disconnecting ourselves from the world we have.

Lucia Silver (1:17:31)
And it costs nothing, right? No excuse, costs nothing. Our final piece then, repair over rupture and some reassurance. I've learned this the tough way. I've had to learn it's not about being perfect in raising Quinn. It's about choosing repair over rupture again and again. And we've got very good at this, Quinn and I now, almost to the extent where he'll say,

I don't mind if we kind of have an upset now because our conversations afterwards are so cool, know, they're so connected, you know, he really feels that we take that opportunity to leave behind what we need to and grow from what we can. So I want to ask you this as a parent, when we do get it wrong, when we snap, we shut down or react in a way we regret, what does matter next? And how do we repair with our children without drowning in guilt?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:18:27)
We go back to removing, like the child will take it in themselves to feel like they feel unloved and wanted, uncareful and so on. So we need to go back to what happened to say, I just want to circle back to what happened today. I just want to reflect on it. I've realized that I was in the wrong. It was my fault. I'm really sorry. You did nothing wrong. You are loved. You are the most important person to me and so on to really repair it and to say, is there anything else I can take from this or anything you want to share with me? So let them express how they feel as well.

and we really hear them and we feel them, we validate what they're saying, but really just close off that wound. And this is not just for children, this is a lot with parents because with parents and adults, we can be much more spiteful. We've never been spiteful to our child really, but it's like we throw out this box of pain of memories, all these things that you did 10 years ago and 15 years ago, and remember when you did this to me, you know, so we're very good at throwing this out when we're in that kind of heightened state of like...

frustration and disappointment and so on. So again, we need to circle back and find some time just to, in a quiet moment, again, not to try and do that when someone's activated, we need to find some homeostasis there and find that repair opportunity to reflect and find a way to build things forward and with compassion and love.

Lucia Silver (1:19:47)
Yep, it's filling me up a bit. So in our final words, Sean, if a parent is listening deeply to this and feels they are failing, what's the truth you want to leave them with today?

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:20:08)
I want them to know that they're doing a great job. They're better than they think they are. ⁓ I think it's really important to be kind to yourself, be kinder to yourself, to find some time for yourself. And if that means sometimes you cannot give the child everything they want, it's fine because we need some balance. We need to look after ourselves in order so we can look after our loved ones around us. But also, just learn as much as you can about ADHD, what ADHD is.

what we can do to improve our lives. Because there's so many things you can do to improve your life, which again, do not cost anything. But it's about finding that balance. And by doing so, your life will change.

Lucia Silver (1:20:49)
Sean, thank you genuinely. This has been such an important conversation because what you give people, it's not just gold information, it's relief, it's clarity, understanding and hope. And what makes your work so powerful is that you unite this real lived experience with extraordinary expertise. You bring your own journey as an adult with ADHD as a man.

incredibly emotionally versant male and as a parent raising children with ADHD into the room in a way that really I think will make our audience feel instantly understood and most importantly not judged. But what I also deeply respect is the depth behind what you do. You're not repeating surface level advice or resting on old thinking. You're constantly learning. Every time I speak to you, you're on another course.

speaking to another world-leading expert, you're staying curious, you're looking at the latest science and breakthroughs and always asking why. And that commitment to understanding root causes and not just managing symptoms is rare and it's exactly what parents, adults, kids, all of us need. And honestly, I think if more of our medical system approached health with the same humility and curiosity and commitment to truth and focus on root causes,

we'd be in a very, very different place as a society right now. So thank you for the work that you do and for showing up for parents and adults and kids in such a meaningful way. And for anyone listening who wants to explore more of Sean's work, all of his links are in the show notes. Plus we have a fantastic free guide for you to download called Uncover ADHD, the ADHD Cheat Sheet, 10 Top Tips for Families Living with ADHD.

Thank you so much, Sean.

SEAN MCNICHOLAS (1:22:43)
Thank very much and I must say that you are also doing a fantastic job. You are setting the precedent to so many parents about how you can change someone's life and I'm really proud of you too. You know are a pioneer in this space so well done, keep doing what you're doing.

Lucia Silver (1:23:01)
Thank you, Sean. If this episode has helped, share it with someone parenting with ADHD, because this is one of the most isolating experiences when you're doing it silently. And if listening today has made you realize, I need more understanding, more tools and a clearer roadmap, we do have a deeper educational support inside the Brain Health Movement's Whole Child Healing Course, our multidisciplinary whole child and whole family root cause approach, bringing the world leading experts and doctors into one place.

and guiding you through it in the right sequence so you're not guessing, you're following a clear healing blueprint step by step.