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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
When “You’re Fine” Feels Like the Worst Thing to Hear
Drop Date: Wednesday, April 8, 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. Can this just be the intro of you saying that and me freaking out about how amazing it is?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: So without further ado, welcome to something shiny.
DAVID KESSLER: Ari, thank you so much for joining us. Like I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on the podcast, especially after meeting at the Neurodiversity Alliance. Unbelievable. But I gotta ask, like, I'll just put you on, can I put you on the spot a little bit?
AVARI BROCKER: Yeah, of course. Go ahead.
DAVID KESSLER: When you knew you were coming on and you were gonna be talking to [00:01:00] us, was there anything that you wanted to bring up that you were thinking like, I want to talk about this with Dave and Isabel, or, I wanna, I wanna see what they think about this.
DAVID KESSLER: Yeah.
AVARI BROCKER: One of the things that I definitely wanted to talk about was my, uh, organization. Um, right now it's mostly just a website, but we have a few extra things in the works right now. Mm-hmm. Uh, it's called Learning Curb, and I'm working on turning it into a full nonprofit. That's what I wanna do. Basically it's just a centralized location where people can find resources for different neurodiverse needs, and so I haven't had the opportunity to focus a lot on myself and A DHD before I made this website and started looking for resources to include for other neurodivergent kids, and that's how I found the tools that I use myself.
AVARI BROCKER: I made it one year after I was diagnosed and it turned 1-year-old this August. So it's still crazy to me to think about, because I was diagnosed at such a late age, right? I was diagnosed at 16 despite struggling for my entire life, because a lot of times, especially high functioning kids we're able to [00:02:00] mask it, right?
AVARI BROCKER: We're able to have our struggles written off as, oh, she's just lazy. Oh, she's a smart kid that doesn't need to pay attention. That kind of a thing. When in reality I want to pay attention. I want to be engaged. Resort to public speaking and raising my hand in class, because otherwise I won't be engaged.
AVARI BROCKER: Right? So that's why making a resource like this was so important to me because I believe that. My highest calling in life is to use the suffering that I endured for my entire life to try to alleviate the suffering of my community
DAVID KESSLER: just coming in here, dropping bombs in the best way. I love this.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I'm gonna start crying.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: This is so cool. Okay, so wait, I, I wanna back up right? For our listeners, we met, um, so David and I had the privilege of speaking at the Neurodiversity Alliance. Summit in Denver, Colorado this past August, and we met Ari there, right? You had come up and asked a brilliant question of our panel, and also we got to talk after, and you had so much, so many amazing things to say.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I was like, oh [00:03:00] my gosh, we have to talk to you more. Could you please talk to us, mark? So that brings us to this moment, right? So we already kind of know you're involved with the Neurodiversity Alliance and maybe is it okay if you give us a little, maybe a little backstory about how that like connects to all these amazing things you're talking about?
AVARI BROCKER: Yeah, for sure. So, um, one of my neurodiverse strengths is interconnected thinking because my A DHD co-occur with dyslexia. So I kind of view my entire life that way, and that's kind of how I joined the Neurodiversity Alliance was in a really interconnected, interesting path. My mom found me a list of scholarships to apply to because I was too busy with school to find the scholarships.
AVARI BROCKER: I only had time to apply to them. So I didn't even know what the Neurodiversity Alliance was until I was in my scholarship interview with Kellen, like trying to get a scholarship for myself. And at the end of that meeting he was like, have you ever been involved with the Neurodiversity Alliance, like in any other.
AVARI BROCKER: Avenue or way, and I was like, no, I haven't. I just heard about it for the [00:04:00] scholarship. And he was like, you should apply to be on the National Student Advisory Council. And I was like, will do. And I did and I got it and that's how I ended up in Denver.
DAVID KESSLER: This is where you before, like between identification and learning curve, right?
DAVID KESSLER: There's so much that like kind of fills in the gap in between these two things. What is it like for you? What was it like for you when you were first identified as. You know, neuro dvir within the context of A DHD and dyslexia. Like what did that feel like when you learned about it? What did it feel like when you were starting to do your research about it?
DAVID KESSLER: You know, and then like what did it feel like when you met the MD Alliance?
AVARI BROCKER: So I love telling my diagnosis story because a lot of people find it very surprising. A lot of times people think that the label of A DHD or dyslexia will other their child. And so sometimes, like in my case, my parents put it off for what they thought was my own wellbeing, right?
AVARI BROCKER: But what a lot of parents don't understand, through no fault of their own, just through the fault of like the way that society is set up, they think about the shame [00:05:00] aspect and not the advantages. And so my family thought that those labels would other me and therefore they didn't seek out diagnosis. But what.
AVARI BROCKER: Parents don't realize is that students recognize that they're different, right? I couldn't read until I was 10 years old. I knew everybody else could read and I couldn't. I would have to write words. I misspelled with these plastic letters like a hundred times before I was given a sheet of paper. And so after about one time of that, when my dysgraphic hand couldn't physically write anymore, I had one of my peers that was really good at checking at spelling, check my work.
AVARI BROCKER: Before I showed it to the teacher, right? So I knew I was different, but I only saw my deficits. The thing that a lot of people don't understand is that when you are different from someone, you don't see your advantages. You assume everyone has that if it's not obvious, but you do notice your deficits. I didn't see the interconnected thinking, right?
AVARI BROCKER: I didn't see, uh, my narrative reasoning. I just as, or my like 3D, [00:06:00] 2D reasoning. I assumed everybody had those things. I assumed everyone had hyperfocus. But I saw that they were able to sit and focus longer than me. I saw that they were able to spell and read better than me, and so I thought I had this one in a million uncurable disease that no one had ever heard of, like the kind of thing that you read about or like.
AVARI BROCKER: Watching a TV show where they're like, we found a super rare case that's never been documented before, and she's got this new rare disease. We're gonna call Arius 'cause like, it's literally never been found before. And then when I got diagnosed, the neuropsychologist on the last day asked me what is the worst thing I could tell you today?
AVARI BROCKER: And in tears I said that nothing's wrong with me because if none of his diagnostics could tell me what was going on, that meant I was right. It meant that I was. Forever alone, and I didn't have a community and I never would because that's honestly what I was afraid of being 16 already. Right. I had the cognitive ability to recognize my isolation and know.
AVARI BROCKER: [00:07:00] Base is for community. And then he literally laughed and said, oh, well I'm definitely not gonna tell you that I got diagnosed with one of the most severe cases of dyslexia he'd seen in his career. And from that day forward, I just fully like dove into research. My mom read like. Every book she could find on dyslexia and A DHD.
AVARI BROCKER: And about a year after that, I was finally like finding my sea legs, right? Because neurodiversity is a lot of trial and error, especially when you go to a school where. There isn't a lot of scaffolding, like the one that I went to. And so about a year after I was diagnosed, I was at a friend's house in Napa, California.
AVARI BROCKER: In between these two, like week long camp things that I had, I'd never met them before, but they like opened their house to me so that I could stay. I wouldn't have to fly back and forth. And she was listening to my story and said, I wish there was like one place where like neuro diversion kids, like you could just go [00:08:00] and get those resources.
AVARI BROCKER: 'cause it took you a year to figure all this stuff out while you're still in school and still struggling and you still yourself are saying you don't feel like you have it all figured out. And I was like. I can make that. I could do that, right? If not me, then who? And if now, not now, then when Those are the guiding questions that I use in my life.
AVARI BROCKER: And so that very night, watching a series of movies with the, the girl that was letting me stay at her house, I started learning curve.
DAVID KESSLER: My mind is blown.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I know my, I, my, my, my heart. I just, I almost like wanna go and just like, first off, thank you so much for sharing. I again, it's just not lost. It's not lost on me.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Like that moment I felt it like in my whole body when you were describing what it meant for you to be sitting in that room and like. The big, the big, I'm going to, I'm gonna start crying. Like, the biggest fear is that like, oh yeah. Like that secret belief that like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Ari iis is real, but gosh.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Oh my gosh. [00:09:00] And yeah, first off, so understandable. I think the point you're making about, you know, like parents or, or anyone, you know, like family, friends, like people trying to be, I think David, you've called it like the gatekeepers of our stigma or our. You know, shame, right? Like when people try to gate keep us or something and sort of say like, Hey, this is, this would've been a shameful thing, right?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: To be identified as having dyslexia or A DHD. That then generates like a very different relationship to your own understanding, right?
DAVID KESSLER: There's this part, there's this part of ARI that, like you, you said so succinctly that I think is so real. Like hits so many neuro divergent folks, like right, right. In the in the heart strings, which is, there has to be something wrong.
DAVID KESSLER: There has to be something to make this as hard as it's been, or like there's no way, like there's nothing wrong that it is. Of course, I am my worst nightmare. And there's this tension when you're going for neuropsych testing where you're like, I want 'em to like know what's wrong, but I don't [00:10:00] want anything to be wrong.
DAVID KESSLER: And I think like to know that there's a reason for suffering. You're not doing it for no reason. Like that must have pulled like so much weight off of your shoulders and it's gonna be. So different than what your parents assumed, like they're trying to help in the most, oh my god. Caring way. Like they don't wanna, they don't wanna give you a stigma, they don't wanna disadvantage you.
DAVID KESSLER: They don't wanna like label this stuff. Like, you don't need these labels because you're gonna break outta any kind of containment. We put you in and then all of a sudden for you, these labels are identifi. They're validating.
AVARI BROCKER: Yeah, I, I'm really relating to what you're saying because I think that it's a, a pretty common experience.
AVARI BROCKER: Um, there a lot of times now I still talk about being neurodivergent, obviously. Right. This is what I wanna do with my life. It's my passion. And like I said, if not me, then who, if not, not then when. So I talk about being neurodivergent a lot to. Spread awareness. And I really work to make sure that neurotypical people that wouldn't otherwise know about neurodiversity have the opportunity to learn from me.
AVARI BROCKER: Because a lot of times it isn't talked about, right? Like I've met people that [00:11:00] only tell me they're dyslexic after they hear me talking about it to like a room full of people. And so one thing I have noticed is that I all, there's some people where I'll say like, oh, I have a learning disability. And they'll be like.
AVARI BROCKER: It's not a disability. It's only disabling if you let it be. And I'm like I said, I have a disability, right? Disability doesn't equal inability. It means that society's lack of access makes my difference disabling. So when I say the word disability, I think of it like an identity, like being a woman, right?
AVARI BROCKER: I think of it as like, it's just another way to describe who I am as a person. I don't see it as a deficit, but people have an association with it. As a deficit. And so a lot of times what I'm trying to do when I interact with those people, I'm like, oh, actually, disability is basically just another way to say identity.
AVARI BROCKER: And so I think that that changing, that stigma will hopefully help with a lot of the things that. My parents were struggling with, um, when deciding whether or not to get me tested because I think that if they had access to somebody like [00:12:00] me that was talking about, uh, disability in terms of identity rather than deficit, which is a lot of what they were hearing then I think that my journey would've been really different.
AVARI BROCKER: And so I hope that other little, the neuro divergent girls out there can have a different experience. Because I'm sharing my story.
DAVID KESSLER: Oh my God, yes. Like, I think like that's. That's changing the meaning that's like reclaiming parts of your past and like flipping like the meaning of it from this like questioning part to this like really proud part, right?
DAVID KESSLER: Like you could like invert the meaning fast. If you were to look back at you, like right before you walked into that room with the testing, like right before you knew what was going on, like you're, you're not feeling so good. School's kind of hard. I know I'm a terrible speller, so when you're like, I couldn't spell until the age of 10, I'm like, there's more than like a soft head nod.
DAVID KESSLER: Like there's like, yeah. I get like I get you. What would you say now? Like everything you've learned just a couple years later, right? 'cause we're just like. We're not even like talking about like, uh, 20 years, 30 years later. Like, what would you do three years post identification and diagnosis? Like I look back three [00:13:00] years ago, like, what would you tell you?
AVARI BROCKER: So that is a really interesting question because I have kind of thought about that. Like what would I tell my younger self if I could go back in time? It's a question you guys asked at the Neurodiversity Alliance and it's kind of been percu percolating for me ever since then. And honestly, if I could go back and tell my younger self anything, I wouldn't take the opportunity because I believe that all of those struggles that I had at all the moments that I had have made me who I am.
AVARI BROCKER: And for a long time I had a lot of. Difficulty loving myself. And now that I, now that I try to be more active in that arena, I wouldn't do anything to change the person I am today because I'm finally proud of her and I love her. And so I wouldn't wanna change the experiences that make her who she is.
AVARI BROCKER: But if I was going to give advice to anybody else in a similar situation about to get diagnosed, I would, I would tell them to. Be brave and actually do like some research, look [00:14:00] into it, because I didn't know what dyslexia was until like three weeks post when I was diagnosed. And I actually used to lie to people and quote Marks saying that I had dyslexia because I didn't feel like explaining what I thought was my complicated one in a million situation.
AVARI BROCKER: And so like if people ask me like, oh, why do you have so much trouble reading and spelling, I'd be like, oh, I have a, I have dyslexia. That's probably what it is, right? And so I think I always think about that as like such a funny condition of my experience. Like I felt so isolated and was so unaware of my now core identity that I thought telling people that was me was a lie, you know?
AVARI BROCKER: And so I would definitely say if you think something might be different with you, do the research and then get tested as soon as possible. I want it. I thought that. Something was quote unquote wrong with me, basically my entire life. But before the summer in between eighth grade and freshman year, I, [00:15:00] I told my mom, I was like, I won't survive in high school like this.
AVARI BROCKER: I know I won't make it in high school like this. I can't finish my tests in in the time that they're giving me. I can't finish my homework without extensions. Like I'm scared and I don't think I can do this. So I got an eye diagnosis for slow tracking that gave me one 50 time on tests, and that's the only accommodation I had for my freshman and sophomore year.
AVARI BROCKER: Again, with severe, uh, dyslexia, DYS, and A DHD. Throughout my freshman year, I struggled immensely. I cried basically every single day inside and outside of class and to the learning specialist. And she just wrote me off as having anxiety and being a perfectionist, telling me that I wouldn't always get an A and sometimes it like I'd have to accept getting a B.
AVARI BROCKER: And I'm like, well, if I know a hundred percent of the material, I deserve a hundred percent on the assignment, or I deserve a hundred percent on the test. Right? And so I, I had actively been advocating to try to get diagnosed. For a year and a half at the point that I was, because I got rejected from the [00:16:00] state testing facility because my grades were too good, and then I had to get on another waiting list for a private facility, and my parents had to pay $6,000.
AVARI BROCKER: Just for me to discover my own identity, that's the advice I would give is like, do research yourself too, because there's a lot of strategies you can try to implement even if you're not sure yet and you can, like, you can't self-diagnose obviously, but if you have a better idea of what you think is going on, you have.
AVARI BROCKER: More ammunition, right? Knowledge is power. You have more ammunition to try to convince people that this is something that you actually need because the neuropsych, the, um, the learning specialist that didn't think that I had. Any learning disability was the one that wrote my recommendation to get tested for learning disabilities.
AVARI BROCKER: Right. And so like there's a lot of juxtaposition there where it's like, well, maybe if she had understood my circumstances differently, I could have got tested earlier and at a lower price, stuff like that. So I'd say that just like in every situation, knowledge is definitely power. Research it, [00:17:00] even if you don't think that you have it like I did.
AVARI BROCKER: Right. Do anything you can to try to understand yourself better and then go into it with bravery and compassion because nothing's wrong with you. It's just an opportunity to learn about yourself and your differences.
DAVID KESSLER: I just wanna say holy cow, number one and number two, I'm just gonna translate like what I heard you say and I need you to like to, to hear it.
DAVID KESSLER: For David, I was suffering. I was in a ton of pain, and if you take that pain away from me, I don't know if I am who I am right now. So I need a ton of that pain and suffering, and then I needed to go away or get worked on once I got this diagnosis, like once I got this identity. Am I saying that right? You want the pain and suffering?
AVARI BROCKER: I feel like for me personally, the pain and suffering has led me to where I am today, which has given me the opportunity to help a lot of other people. Do I think that other people should have to endure that pain and suffering? Absolutely not. Right. I don't, I don't want other [00:18:00] people to have to suffer like I did.
AVARI BROCKER: But I think that if I had been diagnosed when I was younger, right? I'm, I think I'm a pretty smart person. I'm here at college for a biomedical engineering degree and I was gonna become a prosthetics engineer. Because of my late diagnosis, because I'm like fired up right now, right before college, right before I'm in the workspace.
AVARI BROCKER: Like it got me to do learning curves super fast. It got me to like start doing speaking events really fast. So for me personally, having that late diagnosis was able to energize me when I had enough power to have meaningful impact in the space. I think if I had been diagnosed younger, it would've been really good for my mental health.
AVARI BROCKER: It would've been really good for my like impact I would've otherwise been able to have. In my community, right? I would've been, I think, one of the best biomedical engineers ever because I would've put like the full force of my neurodivergent strengths into that. And then also like my passion and dedication that I now am putting into the neurodivergent [00:19:00] space, I would've put into that.
AVARI BROCKER: So I would've been certainly on a different path. I would certainly be a different person, and that's why I want to claim that suffering and say that I need it right to be the person that I am today, but I need it to happen for me. So that it doesn't happen to other people.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, Avari listeners can't see this.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: I'm literally covered in goosebumps the whole time you're talking 'cause like the thing, the way you're speaking and it's like, I, I feel like one, you have such an incredible. Way of describing something that like I've never heard put this way before, and like in a way where I'm like, exactly the thing, the thing.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: And yes, like David was saying, like if I'm hearing right, it's like there's this idea and you know, the term we can like explore, but it's this idea of like trauma mastery. There's this like idea, right, that like when we have. Gone through hell and back. The thing that then makes that experience, [00:20:00] like helps us make meaning of it is the way that we get to stop it from happening again or interrupt that cycle for anyone else, right?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Or we already fell on the grenade, now we're gonna like clear the minefield for everyone. 'cause it's almost like in, in a multiverse, right? There's another path. That, you know, I'm hearing in you that would, would have, um, like just kind of redirected the same you, the same energy of you, but might, might have spared you, like when you describe like, what it felt like to go to school every day.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Right. Or to be crying in inside, inside and outside of class. Side note, as someone who cried inside and outside of class, probably every day for like four years, I, I like, I don't know. I felt that in my whole body when you said that, I was like, yeah. And. I almost also wanna create like so much. Um, power and potency to the idea that like, the dream is right, that like people can get to this place of love for themselves and like [00:21:00] connection to themselves.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Like you're demonstrating and it feels like the thing you're trying to name is like, Hey, you can skip that suffering part. What if you're just more compassionate for yourself already? You know? Like, what? And, and again, that's a hard, that's like a. What, how can we generate compassion for ourselves when we don't understand ourselves?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Like I hear you saying, get out there. Try to understand it first. Don't be afraid to advocate for yourself. And then recognize too, like you said, like, yeah, there's like circumstances and sometimes like gatekeepers, like that learning specialist, right? And just because they're in positions of power or you know they're older than you, or oh, they've done the job for 20 years, does not mean they know more than you about you.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: At all actually. I mean, Ari, I know we're like up on time. I cannot thank you enough, first of all for like, just your willingness to talk to us today and like making time. Like you, you are the, the leader you are. The like, like I know Neurodiversity always talks a lot about this, but like, you literally are, [00:22:00] and I know this is weird to say, right?
ISABELLE RICHARDS: 'cause my, my kids are like. We'll say The next generation behind yours listening to you makes me feel so good for them. Thank you so much. This is, you're so cool.
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.
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. We're on Instagram as something shiny podcast, and if you're looking for more information, useful links, definitions, visuals, everything we can think of and more is on our website at.
ISABELLE RICHARDS: Something shiny podcast.com and it's all free. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you in two weeks.