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How many times have you tried to understand ADHD...and were left feeling more misunderstood? We get it and we're here to help you build a shiny new relationship with ADHD. We are two therapists (David Kessler & Isabelle Richards) who not only work with people with ADHD, but we also have ADHD ourselves and have been where you are. Every other week on Something Shiny, you'll hear (real) vulnerable conversations, truth bombs from the world of psychology, and have WHOA moments that leave you feeling seen, understood, and...dare we say...knowing you are something shiny, just as you are.
Something Shiny: ADHD
If You’ve Ever Thought “Why Can’t I Just Do the Thing?" — Listen to This
Drop Date: Wednesday, December 17, 2025
*this episode transcription was autogenerated and might contain errors
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[00:00:00] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Hello. I'm Isabelle. She, her, hers, and I'm David. He, him, his, and we're two therapists with A DHD, who sit down to have some chats about A DHD. We can promise we'll stay on topic or be professional or even remotely mature, but we can promise that you'll end up looking at you or your loved one's, beautiful neurodivergent brain in a shiny new way.
[00:00:23] ISABELLE RICHARDS: This is not a therapy session. This is something shiny.
[00:00:28] DAVID KESSLER: I love it. Do you like it? Uh, that's amazing. And can this just be the intro you saying that and me freaking out about how amazing it's Yeah. You tapping your voice. That, that
[00:00:38] ISABELLE RICHARDS: could be, that could be our first intro. That's so good. So without further ado, welcome to something Shiny.
[00:00:47] DAVID KESSLER: I'm David, I.
[00:00:55] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Yay. Okay, so, hello Russ. [00:01:00] It's nice to meet you. Russ Jones.
[00:01:01] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Russell. Allen Jones. If we're gonna go the full whole three names, this is real.
[00:01:06] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Um, so for all our listeners, uh, Russ Jones is an A DHD productivity coach, and he is the host of the A DHD Big Brother Podcast. Okay. And essentially he helps people with.
[00:01:21] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Adults with a d, d get their shit together with humor, community and accountability. Side note, just that blurb alone is a reason we wanted to talk to you, right?
[00:01:33] RUSS JONES (GUEST): I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right.
[00:01:35] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Indeed, indeed. But goodness, like we're, we're, we're, you know, we're also coming from slightly, like you mentioned, slightly different perspectives, right?
[00:01:41] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Because David and I, therapist, even though this is not a therapy session, right, like. And you're coming from the a DD coaching world, which is also a very incredible and necessary and brilliant space, but also sometimes you know the layers. Like what brought you here to this land of adhd? S
[00:01:58] RUSS JONES (GUEST): How did I get [00:02:00] delivered upon the lands of A DHD?
[00:02:02] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Excellent question. If we go back 50 years to my birth. I, uh, so I, my, my hit origin story, right, is I'm 50 now. I was diagnosed formally right around age 40, right when I was getting, uh, going through marital strife and which subsequently led to divorce. The hindsight of that, w you know when you go back and you look at your childhood and you're like, oh, fuck, that's why I dropped outta college.
[00:02:29] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Oh, you know, I had a lot of the grief and relief moments that we, that are just standard to an A DH ADHD diagnosis, right? Where it's like, oh, thank God. It doesn't mean I'm lazy. Thank God I have a name for it. But then, oh man, you know, I moved to LA to be an actor when I was 19, 20 because that was the only thing I was getting a's at in college.
[00:02:50] RUSS JONES (GUEST): I was in all the plays. I was having the time of my life. It was the most amazing thing. But I went from the structure of my family of, you know, do your homework, get good grades. [00:03:00] Not a police state really, but like, you know, you have the, a authority of your parents and the structure to zero structure. And zero understanding of what's going on.
[00:03:11] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And you're just like, I'm a fucking slob and I hate math, so I'm not going to math. And that to me was such a bummer looking back. Uh, but that's who I am and that's why I am, and here I am.
[00:03:25] DAVID KESSLER: You said some magic words, Russ, that made me immediately like, like, feel so much better. It's like when someone is engaging in a DHD coaching and they don't have a DHD, I'm going like, what's happening here?
[00:03:35] DAVID KESSLER: And in this moment, yeah. You're like, no, no, no, no. I'm part of the community. I'm here. I've been here the whole time. I didn't know I was here the whole time. And I think that gives you like an interesting piece of insight too, to like see this world through this lens of like maybe injured self-esteem.
[00:03:49] DAVID KESSLER: 'cause I don't know, for me, when I look at my life before my diagnosis and I look at like how I understood my decisions, I kept, my brain kept going like. Why don't I care about this? Why don't I try harder? Right? [00:04:00] Like I couldn't, yeah. I couldn't like make myself feel good. And then once all of a sudden someone said, actually, your brain works different.
[00:04:05] DAVID KESSLER: I went like, get the heck outta here. Are you? What? And it was like realizing that my brain and then you Wait. What? I love it Russ. You're like opening your head and you're messing with the insides and like literally that's when I felt like there's a little guy in there that stopped drinking or something and like now the controls work.
[00:04:19] DAVID KESSLER: And he's like, I'm going in the right directions. But, but I think, like for you, you, you stumbled on something that I think is incredibly powerful within the context of A DHD. And it like, people often think I'm like, minimizing this or, or it's not as big of an intervention, but. Body doubling. Holy crap.
[00:04:36] DAVID KESSLER: Yeah, right. Like it's like, tell me, can you talk a little bit about like how you stumbled into how effective this is? Because like essentially you're building so much of your life and work around it and it's such an effective intervention.
[00:04:47] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Yeah, a thousand percent. So I, this will kind of be a bigger picture thing, right?
[00:04:52] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Because. Uh, the people that I work with and I've see, I see this a lot and I am this myself, is we've failed so many times at [00:05:00] stuff that we can multiverse future. See how a thing's not gonna work for us. Like, oh, that's not for me. I, I can see how that's not gonna work for me. 'cause I can see myself failing at it and I don't wanna fail at another thing.
[00:05:11] RUSS JONES (GUEST): I have this community, which we can talk about at some point. It's a paid community. So one of the members said to me, Hey, uh, you know, I've, have you heard of these body doubling rooms? Um, we should, maybe we should set something like that up. And I'm like, not really my thing, but you know, it's your community.
[00:05:26] RUSS JONES (GUEST): If you want me to put one in, I'll get a zoom room and keep it open 24 7. And I did it, and I hopped in and it is literally where I live now. It changed everything for me. Even the times that I go into my own body doubling room and nobody's there. I still, the idea that somebody might show up keeps me, uh, moving on my shitty task.
[00:05:51] RUSS JONES (GUEST): It's, uh, I think that's brilliant. You know what, I, I read it. There's a study, I don't, I'm not a big scientific study person, but I, uh, when I was doing, [00:06:00] uh, organizational psychology in a, in a course, um, there was a study that had just a sentence that said, and we found that hills truly are never as steep when you walk them with a friend.
[00:06:11] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And I went, oh, that's, that's it. The, the struggle is easier. I have a buddy that I go, I walk the Rose Bowl with on Sundays. None of us are walking around the Rose Bowl. If the other one bails, it's not like, okay, you're not gonna make it. Well, let's go anyway. I need the other person there for me to do. This thing that does not have any intrinsic interest to me whatsoever.
[00:06:35] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Yes. Okay. A couple things you're saying that I just wanna highlight, 'cause Oh my gosh, yes. One, yes. Let's go back and talk about, um, your community. Right? Okay. Because that's like a big, a big piece of. Also like sort of like maybe part of the breadcrumbs that have led us to talking today, right? Like the experience of finding more like-minded folk or like, almost like it feels like maybe filling the void that that lack of structure [00:07:00] created.
[00:07:00] ISABELLE RICHARDS: 'cause Side note, Russ, when you were describing that transition from like the nest of home, whatever that was, right? Yeah. Like for people who. The expanse of like nebulous adulthood where we, we are told societally there are certain milestones maybe we wanna hit, maybe we don't. And then, yeah, like throw in like a curve ball.
[00:07:22] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Like, oh, maybe I wanna move across the country. Maybe I wanna pursue a field that is more, we argue not the stereotypical, very straight laced, you know, nine to five. Right? Like, it's like we like not only, it's like the lack of modeling. We see the outsides, right? Like we see the Instagram posts and we hear the stories at the reunions.
[00:07:41] ISABELLE RICHARDS: You know, like we get the like. The, the concepts of like what to expect or how that works, but like, oh my gosh, like for me it was the, the realization, I mean really like my, all my structures and combinations came crashing down when I had my first kid. I was like, oh, suddenly everything does not working.[00:08:00]
[00:08:01] ISABELLE RICHARDS: 'cause everything was dependent upon a lot of like equations of how to get out of the house, let's say. And that idea that like in the absence of that structure, I think about, David, you said this too, right? Like a person with a DHD who is depressed. It's also like we're understimulated and also we're missing structure.
[00:08:20] ISABELLE RICHARDS: We're missing a sense of like purpose of mm-hmm. Sometimes it's urgency, sometimes it's accountability. Sometimes it's like body doubling, right? I'm wondering like what got you from when you got that, when you got the diagnosis, you've mentioned right, that it like, it almost like did the replay and you were able to go, oh, okay.
[00:08:38] ISABELLE RICHARDS: If you repair some self-esteem. Curious what then led to building A-D-H-D-B brother or the community?
[00:08:45] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Yeah, for sure. I, I love that you, you said like repairing self-esteem and I'm like, that didn't come for a long time. I have, I'm diagnosed depressive disorder as well, so like the slog. It, it really happened during COVID, like, you know, COVID killed me.
[00:08:59] RUSS JONES (GUEST): [00:09:00] COVID stole all of our smiles. Right. You couldn't go to the grocery store and connect with anybody anymore. Yeah, and I'm an extrovert. So I'm like, oh, EV, no one wants to look each other in the eye anymore. And we're all homebound and or stuck at home. So I just started helping by making silly videos on Facebook and, you know, doing some just random coaching advice, which was just random.
[00:09:26] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Just, this is what's working for me, but let me put it out there. Let me at least just try to help. And so, um. I did some purpose work where, uh, you, you know, when you're down and you're just like, I, I need to figure out what I'm doing on this planet and why am I here and what's going on? And so the purpose work, FI found that I'm, I'm at my best.
[00:09:47] RUSS JONES (GUEST): I'm at my happiest. When I'm in service of somebody, I'm, um, I'm helping a person. And so the, uh, I was like, okay, let me just start coaching and helping in whatever way I [00:10:00] know how. I'm an integrative wellness type person. I like whole body type stuff. Like, where are you outta balance, you know, a DHD people are like, I'm this, and we're hyper-focused on like a thing to the detriment of the rest of our lives.
[00:10:14] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And so I was like, okay, let me learn how to coach for that. But I have, I don't know if it's a diagnosable the thing, but man, if you say something to me wrong, I'm not gonna just automatically do what you tell me to do. So if I go the through these courses and I'm, uh, uh, I take this certification program and I'm like, a three hour session, fuck that.
[00:10:38] RUSS JONES (GUEST): No one's and no one that this A DH ADHD is ever gonna sit through that. Mm-hmm.
[00:10:43] DAVID KESSLER: I'll
[00:10:43] RUSS JONES (GUEST): never do that. And so then I bail. I don't do anything for the piece of paper that says I can do a thing. So, uh, then I took another one where it was a DHD specific. Did the same thing, got what I needed, and then I'm out.
[00:10:55] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And I started formulating a way to help. But the thing that's [00:11:00] missing, and this is the thing that was missing when I did coaching, and this was my same thing with when I would go to therapy, which I love, is appointment amnesia, right? Where you go and you have a beautiful session, you have a epiphanies and you cut, oh yes.
[00:11:14] RUSS JONES (GUEST): That's what was going on with mom and dad, right? And then you go outside and a song comes on the radio and everything's gone. It just is gone. And that was the way it was when I hired an A DHD coach. It'd be like, okay, yeah, let's talk about your calendar and your da da da. And then I wouldn't do the work.
[00:11:33] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And then an hour before the session be like, ah, what did I say? What was I gonna do? I gotta have something to show for it. So that was the missing piece. What are we doing? And so the community is my view of the most affordable way to get. Not just a sense of comradery, that's intrinsic. You get a room full of a DHD people together, we automatically love each other.
[00:11:53] RUSS JONES (GUEST): We automatically get each other. We automatically hold space for each other. It just, that is the way, that is our way. [00:12:00] But you, it's the way, but you, that is the way. Hello? My, I recognize you. I see you. But like, what about the doing of the work? What about the, the shit that we wanna get done that we're not, like the laundry is still not getting done.
[00:12:16] RUSS JONES (GUEST): I just now know a thousand ways to do it.
[00:12:18] DAVID KESSLER: Oh my God. I love what you're saying.
[00:12:19] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Yeah. So like, get a room. Here's the thing that makes community so rad. I'm gonna proselytize it really quick. Uh, any community but the right kind of community, if you hold each other, if you're all working on the same thing, this is the body doubling daily accountability.
[00:12:35] RUSS JONES (GUEST): It changes everything. It makes the doing of the work easier and the slog of the work easier. Like you go to like a, a coaching session, right? And you, you get one back on, back and forth thought partner. So maybe you get one dumb idea from a person, right? Big deal. Maybe it works. It doesn't get into a room of 10 people with 10 dumb ideas, and one of those is gonna be genius.
[00:12:56] RUSS JONES (GUEST): You'll be like, oh, I'll try that. I'll try your stupid idea. Oh my God. It was the best [00:13:00] idea ever. And then you get to be, you get to have the comfortability of the discomfort of like, I'm gonna share my dumb idea. And it's probably stupid and you might change someone's life. No, I love what you're saying.
[00:13:11] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Can I
[00:13:11] DAVID KESSLER: pour the science on what you're saying?
[00:13:13] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Oh,
[00:13:13] DAVID KESSLER: please. 'cause I don't have it. I wanna validate what is it I'm gonna support, I'm just sitting here validate. I'm winging it. David, pour that science on me.
[00:13:23] DAVID KESSLER: Yeah. Okay. So I just did that. I'm so sorry. World. So Russ. Uh, so much around A DHD has to do with the intersection in terms of what I've read, and what I really understand now is the intersection between self-esteem and self-efficacy.
[00:13:36] DAVID KESSLER: Which are like two things that I think the world kind of misunderstands. Like everyone believes self-esteem is like the end all, be all of everything, right? But let's, let's like, let's change this. Self-esteem is just the basic belief that you can survive. Oh, that's it. Like if you, if self-esteem is like knowing that you can, uh, like if I go to a movie, like I, I'll sit through the movie, right?
[00:13:55] DAVID KESSLER: Or like, and just knowing that I might not like it or I might not know what's going [00:14:00] on, but just knowing that I'll survive to the end, that's self-esteem. Self-efficacy is like knowing the ingredients to success and knowing what you need to succeed, right? So it's like self-esteem helps you do that class the first time.
[00:14:13] DAVID KESSLER: But self-efficacy is like why it feels better every time you go and every time you do something. Well, every time we, we as in like the A DHD, the royal we or whatever, like every time we try to do something and then don't do the thing we set out to do. Like, I'm gonna empty the, I'm gonna do my laundry, or I'm gonna empty the dishwasher, or I'm gonna, and these are like low hanging fruit things.
[00:14:33] DAVID KESSLER: They actually turn into significant injuries at the end of the night if we don't do them because they hit our integrity pieces. Right? It's like, it's like, oh, it's just the laundry. It's like, yeah, but I wanted to do it. It's like, well, you mowed the laundry and you did all these other, but I didn't do the fricking laundry.
[00:14:46] DAVID KESSLER: Like, your brain won't, won't feel good. You won't reward you for it, and you can't trick yourself about it. You can't lie and be like. It was too hard. It's like, well, you know what you were doing? Like you, you know that you couldn't, maybe didn't need to watch an extra episode and you could've done the like that thing, but when you know there's a [00:15:00] body double now when there's another person there, all of a sudden there's structure because they're seeing what you're seeing.
[00:15:06] DAVID KESSLER: All of a sudden there's risk applied to what you're doing. Like, are they gonna see me distracted? I don't wanna be distracted. Then they'll be distracted. Now there's meaning on them, right? It increases the risk and stimulation around like how you can be there for the other person. And if they're only there for a little bit of time, it actually creates structure.
[00:15:23] DAVID KESSLER: Well, they're only gonna be here for 20 minutes, so I might as well do the thing that will help them do their thing for 20 minutes. Or I don't wanna look like I'm the one not paying attention and you're doing work for other people, which preserves we go right back to. Helps self-esteem because I can show up easily for another person.
[00:15:39] DAVID KESSLER: I didn't even finish the laundry, but me being here helped Carol and Steve get the thing that they needed done. So I have worth today. Instead of a all or nothing thing. Right. And so what we found in like we found scientifically like body doubling is an absolute accommodation for A DHD. And I will call my friends and [00:16:00] be like, I gotta go to Costco.
[00:16:01] DAVID KESSLER: Does anyone wanna go with me? And they're like, I don't need to go shopping. I'm like, I don't ask you if you need to go shopping, like I'll get you a hot dog. But like I need someone to go with me 'cause otherwise I'm gonna rationalize like I really don't need to go. And it's like that moment someone else is on that trip, Ross, it's like that's body doubling.
[00:16:16] RUSS JONES (GUEST): To take to that, like all the way to the other end of like, you're apresso you are, you have no friends, you are, don't wanna talk to your friends. This is why some kind of an online space where you, you know that there's other people there. Is super helpful. 'cause not everybody has a friend. Not everybody has.
[00:16:36] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Um, man, and I, I, I, I was, I had Dr. Bruce on, uh, we were talking about suicidal ideations and we were talking about depression and it was, we were talking about like the suicide hotline and I'm like, I don't get it. Like, would anybody ever really call that? 'cause when I ideate or when I am in my down spots, I have my Core four and it's these four friends that I can call anytime I want.
[00:16:59] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And she was like, [00:17:00] yeah, that, but some people don't have that. And I'm like, oh man, that was, that was a light bulb moment for me of like, how do we help the people that like don't have money for coaching, right. Or don't have money for therapy, or don't have money for, uh, or don't have the people in their lives.
[00:17:14] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Like those people need something. Oh my God. Yeah. But that's why we
[00:17:17] DAVID KESSLER: have the podcast and that's why we volunteer and that's why we go help the people. That's why we're building communities and that's why we're not like, right. But you're, I know, but you're right. You're right. It's sort like, it's like how many people can easily be lost because we were lost.
[00:17:30] DAVID KESSLER: How many people could be forgotten because we weren't noticed? These are three people that weren't diagnosed in their teens that are talking right now. What the hell happened? Yeah. I'm the earliest diagnosed here. Like at 2019, or no, 19 years old. Or 20, right? Like, like that was the youngest. I had the most advantage and all I saw was a lot of pain.
[00:17:52] DAVID KESSLER: And so like when, when we're, we're catching it much later and you're saying like, what do we do about depression and stuff like that? Like I go, well, damn it Russ, you're here so I wanna [00:18:00] swear. But like undiagnosed and unidentified A DHD builds depression because it hurts people's self-esteem and identity.
[00:18:07] DAVID KESSLER: Yeah. And it creates a confused sense of self, like. What part of me is gonna show up today? What part of me is gonna be effective? Like I was able to read that whole book a week ago, but I can't even read a page today. Like it's so complicated. And when we don't get any kind of validation for like why it is the way it is, we end up making these notes in terms of our narrative.
[00:18:26] DAVID KESSLER: Like, well, it's because I'm a dumb person, or that's because I don't care enough or, or what have you. And I love Russ. You're starting to challenge that like other people, other people can challenge like how you're feeling when you're feeling down. Not anyone. Four. Like you have four. Yeah.
[00:18:43] RUSS JONES (GUEST): You know, you're, you're, you're, it makes me think about like, there, um, I'm not an affirmation person.
[00:18:48] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Like, uh, I, I'm have such an adversarial relationship with my brain, but like I'm hardcore into task formations, right? Like, what is a person that loves themselves? What do they do? [00:19:00] What's the task?
[00:19:00] DAVID KESSLER: It's the behavioral activation around loving yourself.
[00:19:03] RUSS JONES (GUEST): And then I could do that and give my, give my stupid brain a data point.
[00:19:08] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Like, oh, actually look you monster pile of skull spaghetti. I actually do. I,
[00:19:16] ISABELLE RICHARDS: I'm not laughing. I'm laughing because that's the best way to describe what sometimes is in my brain. The mon sweet monster, captain of skull spaghetti.
[00:19:25] RUSS JONES (GUEST): Monster. Yeah, monster
[00:19:26] ISABELLE RICHARDS: Pilot. Alright. I guess I may, maybe Mine is a boat. I'll take a boat.
[00:19:29] ISABELLE RICHARDS: I'll be Captain. Boat pilot. Yeah. Brilliant.
[00:19:31] DAVID KESSLER: Thank you so much for listening. If you ever have that thought where you think, Hey, I have nothing, stop. Remember, you're so something's shiny.
[00:19:39] ISABELLE RICHARDS: That's right. Just as you are. If you like what you heard and you want to hear more free episodes of this podcast. Please subscribe, rate and review anywhere you listen to podcasts.
[00:19:50] ISABELLE RICHARDS: We're on Instagram as something shiny podcast, and if you're looking for more information, useful links, definitions, visuals, everything we can think [00:20:00] of and more is on our website@somethingshinypodcast.com and it's all free. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you in two weeks.