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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
Why Mentorship Might Be Your ADHD Survival Strategy
Drop Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2026
*this episode transcription was auto-generated and might contain errors
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ISABELLE RICHARDS: [00:00:00] Hello. I'm Isabelle. She, her, hers,
DAVID KESSLER: and I'm David. He, him, his,
ISABELLE RICHARDS: 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.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: This is not a therapy session. This is something shiny.
DAVID KESSLER: I love it.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Do you
DAVID KESSLER: 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. And you tapping your voice. That could be,
ISABELLE RICHARDS: that could be our first intro. That's so, so without further ado, welcome to something Shiny.
DAVID KESSLER: I'm David. I.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Hey, it's Isabelle. Couple episodes [00:01:00] ago, David and I were talking with Jesse Sanchez, who is president of the Neurodiversity Alliance, and it was such an amazing conversation. We made it a two-parter. But before we jump into part two, here's what you need to know. Um. One, you can just go back and listen to part one.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I mean that, that's always an option. Links in the show notes. But, uh, here's the rundown. The Neurodiversity Alliance is a national student organization for and by neurodivergent students. And it exists because too many of us. Grow up thinking we're broken or there's something wrong with us. The alliance, uh, sets up clubs where students find community, mentor younger kids and rebuild and build self-esteem that actually helps protect against depression.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And there is research that is right. Actual research to back this up. Um, we also talked a lot about how near [00:02:00] peer mentoring is the jam. When it comes to Neurodivergence, but yes. Today we're gonna go deeper into why Neurodivergence isn't just about like individual struggles. It's connected to race, class, gender, and if you've ever felt like the system work, school, adulting, lifeing in general.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Doesn't work as easily for us. Jesse explains why that's true and what we can actually do about it. This, this things get real. I mean, Jesse opens up in such a breathtakingly amazing way, um, that it brings me and David to tears. So let's jump back into our conversation with Jesse Sanchez, president of the Neurodiversity Alliance.
JESSE SANCHEZ: I wanna get your point of view on this because for, for better or worse, I'm a bit of like a, a self-help, you know, junkie. These genres of like leadership, management, it's all help. They all kind of blended and [00:03:00] not all of them are rooted in, in the most rigorous science. So I'm really curious to get your idea about this, but, oh, I'm for, I'm blanking on the, um, on the author's name, but he was really famous for his book Atomic Habit.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Um, James
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Clear.
DAVID KESSLER: Boom.
JESSE SANCHEZ: There we go. James. Clear. So James clear's idea, right? He's like, uh, when it comes to like, achieving goals or, or like behavior change, like it starts with identity. It's like I am a runner. I. That's why I am going to follow through on my habit and goal of running X miles every morning.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Then you're like, okay, I am actually someone who, if you're going through our program, you think, oh, I am someone, and you see peers and community who you relate to and their neurodivergence, their neuro spiciness, and you're like, oh. These folks are having whatever a successful life or marriage or family or career in as an educator or tech or healthcare, whatever it is, like first of all, that's [00:04:00] possible for me.
JESSE SANCHEZ: And then you're like, that part of my identity is something that. I can believe too, that I can be someone who does those things. Even with this identity in this community, I'm like, I'm kind of like muddling through this, but do you see where I'm going?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Oh yeah. I'm slipping on what you're mopping.
DAVID KESSLER: I love what you just said.
DAVID KESSLER: I'm slipping on what you're mopping is now going in the book. But I do think the way we see the world is, has a lot to do with the way we interact with the world. And the way we see ourselves has a lot to do with the kinds of risks that we take or don't take.
DAVID KESSLER: Hmm.
DAVID KESSLER: And let me just be clear about what mentoring looks like when it happens in a really effective way that I believe happens, you know, with the Neurodiversity Alliance and eye to eye and all that.
DAVID KESSLER: But mentoring is somebody just living life, hanging out with another person, and that other person is taking the behavior from them that they like, and ignoring the behavior from 'em that they don't like. It's not like a rigid, you must act this way, and this is why we walk with our head held high and no, always open the door.
DAVID KESSLER: There are no social instructions that [00:05:00] occur with mentoring. It's like, it's like what you just ordered? Biscuits and gravy. What's that? You've never had biscuits and gravy? No. Take a bite of mine. Holy cow. This is amazing. I'm gonna get this again. Yeah, yeah. Get it whenever you want. Like that's mentoring, right?
DAVID KESSLER: Mm-hmm. Because it exposed a person to a reality they didn't have before. And that happens in the way we think about ourselves in the world. Like it's not cheating to pull up on an all-nighter, it's just the task. And we do it differently. And I remember when I first heard that, I was like. What, because before I heard that and someone were to ask, how did you get this done?
DAVID KESSLER: I'd be like, who cares how I got it done? I got it done. After I heard that, I'd be like, oh my God, I had to pull an all-nighter, but I did it. I could. I could acknowledge this part that I was feeling a lot of shame about 'cause no one else did it. But once I went to Eye to Eye and saw another person who was successful and learned differently, model that it was okay to do things differently, my world changes the way I view myself.
DAVID KESSLER: Change. And hot take here, Jesse. I think if you were to run this exact protocol or research project [00:06:00] for high schoolers, it would be true for college students. It would be true for adults that are enacting on the board level. It would be true. I think this is, there's a reciprocal power of mentorship. You are, you are literally helping another person and you're getting the same amount of esteem because you're seeing their life change and it feels good.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: We're all, yeah, I mean, just, I, I big smiles and. I almost just wanna marinate. I mean, man, the food metaphors, I must be hungry or something. The food metaphor, I just like wanna marinate that
JESSE SANCHEZ: Maybe you're just getting, maybe you're getting nourished.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Oh, it's so nourishing. Yes. Okay. Something that, David, you were saying, and Jesse, you were saying.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Around the resiliency piece, something was coming to my mind around, well, one, right? That what? Like what do we mean when we say this word? And there's, I think very specific and like studies, right? Like in psychology and psychological studies, resiliency amounts to essentially stress tolerance. Distress tolerance and stress tolerance.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Like it amounts to, Hey, can I [00:07:00] face a certain stressor or certain stimuli or certain trigger? And ideally, right, like this is a piece where maybe my own slant comes in, but like ideally it like reintroduces some agency or some sense of choice or some sense of conscious, okay, I will behave in a way I don't regret later.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Right? And. That doesn't mean that I don't scream or yell or. SOB on the floor or you know, like I don't have things I do regret or that I don't make mistakes or that I think the PE like connecting back to the thing you said, David, where like mentorship isn't like you go and you sit in someone's office and they talk at you for half an hour about like how to make it in the business world.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Sure. Could that be a great informational interview? Yeah. Like you might get some data from it, but I think about mentorship as like it's a relationship, it's a showing up. Like, and spending some time together and the [00:08:00] actual environment of that relationship is what is producing the effect as opposed to the things you're saying to them or at them.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Classic example, right? With like kids, which I always forget, which is like, yeah, kids are gonna not, they're gonna, um, do what you do, not what you say. It's practice what you preach. It's like walk, let's walk together. And I think about how. With lots of clients and myself included, like, until I realized I had a DHD, I mean, gosh, the mo the mailbox moment, David, so many like the thing you said, right?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: So many of the things I would do that were like my acom, I didn't, I didn't think of this word as like accommodation. I thought that the staying up all night and pulling all nighter was a sign of like a moral failing. Because I'm an awful human because everyone else seems to be able to sit down and and study when they go to the library.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And so I always go with them and then I'm just distracted 'cause there's so many cool people I wanna talk to, you know, like, and I'm so confused as to why this works for everyone but not me. I must [00:09:00] suck, right? Like it's not just the behaviors I find myself doing, it's also the stories I tell about those behaviors and that then becomes, oh me, I am an imposter, I'm a fraud.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I can't believe I still. Pass this class even though I did those things. Right. And so I think about how you take the parts you want and you can like leave the rest behind. I'm also gonna throw in, I think a piece that we learn so much from is watching people, near peers make mistakes. Be vulnerable, own that they fucked up or messed up.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Right? Like And
DAVID KESSLER: survive.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And survive. Yeah. Like, you see what I'm saying? Like, it's like, it's not just the parts you take and you decide you wanna do. It's also like, I mean, another example is like, you know, I see some my own kids, but like, it's like how the, the second kid doesn't tend to do the things the first kid did.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: 'cause they already see what the first kid is getting from that behavior, right? So if the first kid is like throwing a big tantrum, then the second kid's like, [00:10:00] I'll just be really quiet. You know? It's like, it's that idea like, we're social beings, we do this. Right. Like we, we watch, observe, and go, okay, can I copy, paste and improve
DAVID KESSLER: in, in what we watch and observe normalizes our world and sets our expectations.
DAVID KESSLER: Yes.
JESSE SANCHEZ: That was like one of the big things I learned from you, David, when we met as near peers together 15 years ago at the Neurodiversity Alliance Summit. Was the term normalization.
DAVID KESSLER: Mm.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Right. And how you talked about what we were doing together was normalizing thing and like I use that term all the time now.
JESSE SANCHEZ: 'cause it, to me it's such a precise, it's a precise way of describing I think like I. An important mechanic of, you know, kind of our effect as a community and as our work this normalizing. But Isabelle, there were so many things you said that like really struck me. Like one was like you talked about moral failing.
JESSE SANCHEZ: That's actually [00:11:00] huge because that's where most folks are at. Um, and maybe to some, to some extent, it's an ongoing struggle and challenge to make sure you're not internalizing the ableism and the stigma. Right. But. You feel like you're just a moral failing because the other thing you said was, it's not just the behaviors that you're doing, but it's the stories you're telling yourself about the behaviors.
JESSE SANCHEZ: I was like, whoa. Yes. Right. Oh no. It's actually about how my nervous system's wired. It's about how I actually pursue success. So it's actually about using language as you know, accommodation or disability accommodation. The story can really shift. And you move away from being a moral failing and having identity based in shame behaviors based in shame to something that brings you understanding integration, that resilience agency.[00:12:00]
JESSE SANCHEZ: The other thing you said was. Like seeing other people in your, in your life who've like gone through it. The near peers, the mentors, whatever. Right. And just survived. Like if we go like negative for a little bit, which like I, my whole thing is like neurodivergent joy. Like that's what I love and get to experience in this community.
JESSE SANCHEZ: And it's that shift from. Shame, moral fa failing to neurodivergent joy. But if we just go to the risk sides for a little bit, like survived, right? Like what are the real survival and like lower level on like Maslow's hierarchy of needs challenges that a lot of neurodivergent people are operating in, right?
JESSE SANCHEZ: Um, let's just talk about the. Increased rates of unemployment, underemployment, economic insecurity. Look at the data around, you know, lower life expectancy, look at the data around increased
DAVID KESSLER: incarceration.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Incarceration, absolutely right.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Relational, like [00:13:00] you could argue divorce rates, relational abuse rates.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Yeah. I don't often talk about those things a lot, but they're very close to me actually. They're very close to a lot of people in our community. And a lot of people, it's their, not only their lived experience, but sometimes it's actually their intergenerational cycle, right? Because neurodivergence is actually oftentimes intergenerational, right?
JESSE SANCHEZ: And so when you just said survived it, it really struck a chord with me that I don't usually talk about. But when I think about my own story, like I, I was talking with a close friend from community college a few years ago. And I was telling 'em about kind of the identity crises that I've experienced in my life as someone who, like, you know, I'm multiracial.
JESSE SANCHEZ: You know, I didn't have a father, my mom never knew her father. We don't have a lot of, um, ties or I, I identification with our extended family, all these different things. He was like, Jesse, I always saw you as a survivor because I know like your story and I know your family's story, right? Like my mom. Like another earlier [00:14:00] generation, undiagnosed now very much clearly self-identifies with her A DHD and her learning disabilities, but like left her home in like age nine from like a household that had a lot of neurodivergence and mental health and lack of ability to care, you know, for her as a child and you know, her journey.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Not even navigating the public education system, but just working from the time she was 12, being homeless, being independent. Meeting my, my father, right? Um, separating, you know, raising us essentially on the run my father's experience with, you know, incarceration, being in a federal penitentiary. These are all a lot of social justice work, a lot of educational access work, a lot of upward social mobility work.
JESSE SANCHEZ: I think it's so important, and I've benefited personally from incredible programming and institutions and nonprofits around first generation, low income, Latino, uh, [00:15:00] educational access programs, but none of that stuff, I think, uh, there's just so much overlooking of the, the role of neurodivergence. Right?
JESSE SANCHEZ: Like the intersectionality of all of this in Neurodivergence is really, really overlooked. Yes, and I think it's really fundamental. I think it's way too common. I think probably the data will show, and you could debate the merits of like overdiagnosis and Underdiagnosis across low income kids, but. It's important to look from a social justice lens of everyone being able to, of self-actualizing a, a society of self-actualizing families and individuals.
JESSE SANCHEZ: You, you can't overlook the neurodivergent, the neurodiversity lens. And I think we really, really do. And I think that's one of the things that makes me really. Most passionate about leading this work in this community and being able to bring neurodiversity awareness and neuro inclusive practices to the New York City public school system where they're [00:16:00] supporting millions and millions of students, many of whom are black, brown immigrants students.
JESSE SANCHEZ: I,
DAVID KESSLER: I love, I love so much about what you're saying. It so needs to be said because I think the parts of us that we, we hide become silent. And then they don't speak for anyone, which is really hard. You are owning really, I think, important parts about who you are that I'm impressed that you're bringing up today.
DAVID KESSLER: I think the way I think about neurodivergence in our world, I think a parallel would be glasses, eyeglasses, and i'd, I'd want to imagine what everyone in the world that has glasses right now, what they would be like if they never had glasses in their life but still had eye trouble. You'd be far less attending.
DAVID KESSLER: You would be way more clumsy. You would have way more frustration in so many different places. You would not attend your identity as a person and the things that you'd like would shift so dramatically. And then all of a sudden in your thirties or forties, one goes, did you know that you might need glasses?
DAVID KESSLER: And you're like, what are these things called? Glasses? And somebody hands you glasses and all of a sudden you can see [00:17:00] again, the way we understand Neurodivergence has a lot to do with like putting on glasses because we can understand why things are happening. It's not a part of a character defect. It is a, a character defect until it isn't.
DAVID KESSLER: And I think that's such a powerful juxtaposition that we have to hold as neurodivergent folks. And I think Jesse, the intersectionality of Neurodivergence is it doesn't just go after rich people, you know, like neurodivergent.
JESSE SANCHEZ: And it does very much so too, actually. It's like it's across.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Yeah. And it will, yes.
DAVID KESSLER: Well, the data that you're saying, Jesse, and I'll make sure I'm, I'm, I'm, I'll say it, I'll go on blast, is that wealthy people get identified first and without money and resources, school systems don't identify people. It's easier to talk about behavior problems as opposed to neurodivergence that you can't afford to lessen around.
DAVID KESSLER: Right? Like this is a, a typical IEP, which is an individualized education plan in the school system, costs the school thousands of extra dollars to run an IEP. So what [00:18:00] incentive does a school have to identify a person
JESSE SANCHEZ: or what disincentives do they have? Yeah.
DAVID KESSLER: And then what does that do to long-term relational health, incarceration rates, jobs, all this stuff?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Well, and exact, uh, first of all, yeah. I mean, Jesse, thank you so much for sharing. Right. Like, it's just, I just wanna almost like. Just like honor that, right? Like I find that so powerful to share personally as well as, you know, just aware that it's not, yeah, it's not the go-to side, you know, like the, the, you know, the parts of us that carry all those traumas and that survived all those things.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: It's also like inherent in like, like what are the diagnostic criteria, right? Of surviving traumas. You try to avoid it. You don't wanna go there. And our society as a whole tends to like, isolate and, you know, hide and kind of go do, do to a lot of that, whether it's death, whether it's loss, whether it's grief, whether it's trauma, abuse, all the cycles.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Right. But I love what you said about the intergenerational of both. [00:19:00] A DHD, all kinds of neurodivergence as well as trauma rates and survivorship rates of all kinds of things. Not to say, again, this is not me saying, oh, trauma equals neuro spice uhuh, and I cannot, like the thing you said, David, about the glasses, like we don't even realize, like with the glasses metaphor, it would be like you didn't even know the world could be seen clearly.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And you see the increasing isolation and shaming hidden in there, but you also see disconnection, and I don't know of anyone who would say any kind of trauma, any kind of like that idea that shame thrives in secrecy and in the hidden spaces, right? Like. That is real. So now imagine generations of humans who haven't even known that they could, you know that what's up is something that isn't a moral failing.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And then [00:20:00] like imagine again, and generationally how that teaches you how to raise kids or not. How that contributes to emotional neglect.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Yeah.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And absolutely. It's not a privileged thing. It's not like, oh, you get you, oh, I have, I have earned enough money. Therefore, but in a way, with neuro, with Neuropsychs sometimes it's like you're paying to be able to be diagnosed.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: You're paying, you have to have access to that. Right.
JESSE SANCHEZ: I wrote a little to that point, Isabelle, I wrote a little note here to myself and, uh, this David, this first came up when you mentioned about how like, oh, like rich people. And I was like, oh, well they, they're neuro spicy too. And it made me think of that idea of this, this notion of like, the future is already here.
JESSE SANCHEZ: It's just unevenly distributed.
DAVID KESSLER: Beautiful.
JESSE SANCHEZ: It's people who have the most, like means, who are able to then access all of the, you know, cutting edge, you know, resources to support their thriving and flourishing. That dynamic is just so starkly clear in our community. Access to neuropsych, access to diagnosis and label, [00:21:00] access to care.
JESSE SANCHEZ: And then what we're trying to do is break that down and level the playing field where. You know, someone who was product of the public education system, low income, Pell Grant recipient, first generation community college student like me, can like go to a national summit and meet students from like.
JESSE SANCHEZ: Literally private neurodivergent, K through 12 schools and Ivy League schools.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Wait a tweet, time out. I didn't even realize that existed. Okay. Like in the accountant.
JESSE SANCHEZ: And then there's, there's like the resource sharing and the knowledge sharing. That happens and there's this incredible social capital sharing and it's not even redistribution, it's just expanding it.
JESSE SANCHEZ: 'cause you don't really lose social capital once you have it. But you can give as much of it away as you are willing to. So the, the, the social capital sharing. In this [00:22:00] community is one of the things that I think makes it so powerful. It's why I sometimes think of us as like a neurodivergent society, right?
JESSE SANCHEZ: And why it's so important for me to make sure that we are really present and involved and engaged with the most privileged neurodivergent circles and families and those most at need and that we're bringing together.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I mean, David, I know you say this all the time, but you reduce. Suffering. When you increase understanding,
DAVID KESSLER: increased understanding.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. Like equation for compassion, equation for like figuring stuff out,
DAVID KESSLER: increased understanding, reduces suffering. That's so
JESSE SANCHEZ: good. It's so simple.
DAVID KESSLER: Just looking at our time and knowing where we are and knowing who you are. I have to ask a couple questions and this is like my, my ridiculous question, but I'm, I'm actually kind of curious about like your answer.
DAVID KESSLER: If you could go back in time. Talk to yourself, what age would you wanna talk to yourself at and what would you say?
JESSE SANCHEZ: Probably when I'm entering, like when do we, when do we [00:23:00] enter the, the education system? Like five, right? Like age four, age five. When you're starting school. What I would say to that young child, I would say, you are loved beyond measure.
JESSE SANCHEZ: No one can take that away from you. And it's not at all based on what you do. It's just because you are who you are.
DAVID KESSLER: Isabelle and I just got reduced to tears and I just like, yeah. My, my like 6-year-old needed to hear that.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: My 6-year-old needed to hear that too. It's so weird, Jesse, when you were saying like, or uh, David, when you asked like what age and then Jesse, you went, well, I'd wanna go the younger the better.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And then you said, when do we enter the school system? And I'm like, oh. Oh. Doesn't that explain a lot that a lot of the stories I tell about myself are so linked to that. Entering of that school system time,
JESSE SANCHEZ: it's entering major institution may you know, it's the level of our first kind of institutionalization, if [00:24:00] that's the right way of putting it.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Well, yeah. Let's remember. The educational system right now as it stands, was based on a. Literally creating worker bees for the industrialized in industrial complex back in the industrial Revolution. Side note, not a shocker. I'll put links in the show notes, but like literally everything from our, the, the, the bells to the desks, to the subjects, everything is designed to build worker bees.
JESSE SANCHEZ: It's efficiency, it's output, it's performance,
ISABELLE RICHARDS: it's it's product. Yeah. Like humans, as product, as human capital. I just felt chills and how interesting then that, I'll just throw this in there, like how interesting. Then that brains that don't adapt nervous systems that don't easily adapt to said system at times find themselves at great odds to it are really traumatized by it.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Yes.
DAVID KESSLER: All that being said, Jesse, I can't thank you enough for coming on. What I want, everyone [00:25:00] else that's listening to you right now to know. Is that you are an incredibly cool person. Yeah. Like anyone walking next to you on the street would be like, who's this cool guy? And like, I'm happy to have you speak for me anytime you want.
DAVID KESSLER: Thank you so much.
DAVID KESSLER: Thank
DAVID KESSLER: you so
DAVID KESSLER: much
DAVID KESSLER: for listening. If you ever have that thought where you think, Hey, I have nothing, stop. Remember, you're. Something's shiny.
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 or on Instagram as something shiny podcast.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And if you're looking for more information, useful links, definitions, visuals, everything we can think of and more is on our website at. Something shiny podcast.com and it's all free. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you in two weeks.