How to climb out of mental rabbit holes
Sometimes, our brains spiral and it seems like there’s nothing we can do about it.
This can happen to anyone. Maybe you have an awkward social interaction and can’t stop thinking about it — then your mind jumps to worse and worse scenarios, far from what actually happened.
And for those of us with ADHD, it can be extra difficult to exit that spiral. A situation like this happened to Rae Jacobson recently.
Thankfully, she had an interview on the books with Dr. Jodi Gold, a psychiatrist who also has ADHD. Jodi specializes in psychotherapy of anxiety and mood disorders — perfect.
On this episode of Hyperfocus, Rae and Jodi have an impromptu therapy session featuring a discussion of automatic thoughts, mood dysregulation, and rejection sensitivity. And, yes, “ADHD rabbit holes.”
We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.
Related resources
Timestamps
(2:23) Rae’s situation
(6:56) What do we really mean by “rabbit hole?”
(13:00) On automatic thoughts
(17:53) Masking and people-pleasing
Episode transcript
Rae: If I were writing the script for an ADHD horror movie, my pitch might begin like this. I'm going to try to do a movie voice. Don't judge me. You were late responding to someone and when you finally did, they read it but didn't write back. You forgot to do something at work and your co-worker reminded you. You were ten minutes late to meet a friend and she seemed annoyed.
Scared yet? Everyone falls victim to this kind of anxiety sometimes. Not just people with ADHD. The future tripping. Maybe feelings are facts. Worst-case scenario type of worries. The kind of worries that your brain up in the middle of the night or have the power to turn a perfectly normal day into a swarm of stress.
Now, I've been trying to learn how to rewrite that script because if you let the tape play through to the end, there's nearly always a perfectly rational, non-catastrophic way to view those same scenarios. A person who didn't write back just got busy. The co-worker was just trying to help. Your friend was mildly annoyed but forgot about it the second you sat down.
But no matter how many times those worst assumptions have been proven wrong, that horror movie feeling is still something that can be really hard to shake. It's a part of myself I would deeply like to change, this automatic slip into anxiety. And it's also something that therapists like the wonderful Dr. Jodi Gold are very adept at dealing with.
Jodi is someone you can't help but open up to. Warm, funny, and extremely insightful and smart. And in her work as a psychiatrist, she's been helping people navigate ADHD challenges like these for years.
So, when I fell into one of those all too familiar horror movie situations, she was comfortingly unimpressed by my big dilemma. Because Jodi, who has ADHD herself, has made a study of ADHD rabbit holes, why they happen, how deep they can go, and most importantly, how to climb out and oh dream of dreams, how to use what you've learned to step around the next one when it comes.
I'm Rae Jacobson and this is "Hyperfocus." Today on the show, an impromptu therapy session with Dr. Jodi Gold.
Jodi, hi.
Jodi: Hey.
Rae: Thank you so much for coming. I'm so excited about this.
Jodi: Thank you for having me.
(2:23) Rae's situation
Rae: So, can I tell you a story and ask you, as both a thoughtful person with ADHD and a psychiatrist, what your opinion is of what I maybe could have done?
Jodi: Yes, absolutely.
Rae: So, the other day, a co-worker, a manager of mine came up to me and she had that look on her face where you're like, you know, you're in trouble kind of or something, it's like something's gone wrong look.
Jodi: Yep.
Rae: And I thought, like, "Oh God." And I started racking my brain for, like, what mistake did I make? What did I do? What was it? And I missed a meeting. And it was a meeting that I missed for, like, a good reason. You know, there was a noise that tells me it's going to happen, it didn't go off. And I was about to get my period and I was all spaced out. My daughter was home sick. You know, like I could have written a long list of why things went wrong.
But in the moment of looking at her face, I felt like, "Oh no." And started to sort of like dig down into the ground and get that feeling where you wish you could turn into...Like, you remember that Nickelodeon show from the '90s, Alex Mack? Probably not.
Jodi: No.
Rae: I don't know why I referenced it, but it is...Well, I do know why. She was like, her superpower is being able to turn into a liquid and sink into the ground.
Jodi: I love that.
Rae: Right?
Jodi: Yes. It's a good superpower.
Rae: I feel like someone with ADHD probably wrote that show because...
Jodi: Yeah, you're probably right.
Jodi: That was what I wanted to do. So, how familiar is that to you from your working with clients and you know your own life?
Jodi: Completely familiar. This is part and parcel of having ADHD, whether it's your ADHD that is the cause of you missing a meeting or you're just a human, and humans miss meetings. It feels like people are always on top of you. I mean, I think this is part of the life experience of having ADHD and something we don't talk about enough, is that it's hard to feel like the other shoe is always going to drop and that you're just sort of always waiting to figure out what you missed or what you did wrong.
And usually, this is not like coming out of nowhere, right? Like you've had ADHD forever, whether you knew it or not. And all of these experiences have just sort of like built on top of each other, right? The meeting, the being late, being a little disorganized and not getting the thing in the right way or on time, it's just sort of a lot. And it really does lead to this fact that every time your boss or a colleague has that look, you're like, What did I do? Yeah. And it's hard to live that way. Yeah.
Rae: Yeah. But, you know, I don't know. It made me realize that my reaction to that stuff, though, I think might be like, a little more intense than people who don't have ADHD.
Jodi: Yes, I think you're on to something there, right? So, this is, it's really interesting. And I'm so glad that people are starting to talk about it. I've been working in ADHD for like 20-plus years, and it's only, I swear, in the last couple of years that anybody really has been talking about this. About the sort of mood piece, about the rejection sensitivity piece. One of the things that I've found so striking in my own life and all of my patients that I work with is the degree of mood dysregulation and rejection sensitivity that we see with ADHD.
And what I mean by that is, in this case, I think it's like, it's, we know that, we know that ADHD is linked to mood dysregulation but we haven't always known that. It's actually pretty recent that people are talking about it. We understand that part of ADHD sometimes, not for everyone, but can be, have mood dysregulation, which kind of means that you've got really big emotions and that you might be irritable and that you might overreact at times and that you might even go down the rabbit hole at other times.
And associated with mood dysregulation is also this kind of rejection sensitivity, which is, I think one of the things that you were talking about. I mean, I think you might also be someone who likes to please other people, which is true of ADHD and many people who don't have ADHD as well. But the other thing that's part of the sort of mood dysregulation is a sort of rejection sensitivity, which is this idea that you're just a little bit more sensitive or that you might misinterpret, you know, your boss might not have been that disappointed with you. She might have just been saying, "Hey, Rae, you know, we missed you at the meeting. What's up?"
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: But immediately you went to this place of, "Oh my God, I suck. What did I do wrong?" Right? And I think that's this, a, you want to please people. You have a history, not you specifically, but in general, people have a history of maybe just kind of disappointing people because of their ADHD symptoms. And then there's just this rejection sensitivity piece where just like your skin's not so thick and sometimes you can misinterpret or overexpand these feelings.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: Because, just to take your example, we don't know that she was so angry at you, right? We just know...
Rae: She wasn't.
Jodi: I mean, she knows you. She knows you're brilliant and maybe sometimes miss things and she gets it. But your reaction was like, "Oh my God, I'm down the rabbit hole. This is a disaster."
(6:56) What do we really mean by "rabbit hole?"
Rae: So, that rabbit hole that you talk about, I spend a lot of my time in there.
Jodi: You're in good company.
Rae: Some interior decorators. Still sucks, though.
Jodi: Yeah.
Rae: But when we talk about the rabbit hole, like, what are we talking about? Like when you say rabbit hole, like, describe that.
Jodi: So, yeah, I use that term a lot. It's for me, the best way to explain what happens to people, including myself when you, when you get dysregulated, whatever causes, whatever causes you to get dysregulated, you're a little bit off in the moment. And all of a sudden, the way I explain it to my little kids is it's like instead of going from green to yellow, back to green, you go from green to yellow to red. And then once you're at red, there's no stopping you.
You're down that Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. And it doesn't matter what anybody says. It doesn't matter what coping skills You've been practicing for years. You just can't dig yourself out. And one of our goals in life, we all go into rabbit holes. I think ADHD or, not we're all there. I think the real challenge is, though, is to figure out how to make it a smaller rabbit hole and how to get out of it faster. And that's a challenge for all us.
Rae: So, you're saying kind of that people with ADHD might fall into these sort of, I don't want these pit of despair as...
Jodi: We don't want to be overly dramatic.
Rae: Slightly dramatic. I think I like rabbit hole better. Like the swamps of sorrow, maybe?
Jodi: Yes. This is how it landed on rabbit hole because it's the swamps of sorrow, I don't know. Most of us live in this place quite often. People are often, there's a lot of people with ADHD that spend a lot of time in this rabbit hole. So, yeah. So, swamps of sorrow might be, like a little exaggerated, but yeah, you got the gist.
Rae: You're down there, you feel like you aren't comfortable with yourself. You feel upset, you feel nervous, angry, frustrated, embarrased, maybe, is a lot of the feeling that...
Jodi: Shame, shameful.
Rae: Shame, yeah. And all those feelings make it very hard to see a situation for what it is. And also, it sounds like you're saying, I know this is true for me, like a lot of us with ADHD, we don't come to those conclusions out of nowhere. Like we have made mistakes. We do have trouble remembering things.
Jodi: Yeah. So, people are less likely to go in the rabbit hole if they have it. It's like once you've been in this rabbit hole, it's just easier to fall back. So, let's say you've never missed a meeting in your life. You know, missing one meeting might not put you into a rabbit hole, right?
But if you're somebody that's always worried that you're going to disappoint people or you have a history of missing meetings or being late or disorganized and you're just sort of waiting for it to happen, then you slide back into that rabbit hole just a little bit easier.
Rae: Yeah, it's kind of like a perfect storm with ADHD.
Jodi: Exactly. You know, that's exactly a perfect way of putting it because here you have some of us with rejection sensitivity, trying to please people but it's really hard because we're not really good at keeping up with things on a day-to-day basis. So, the symptoms of ADHD, the being disorganized, having trouble focusing, the lack of, the struggles with executive functioning and even the struggles with like social skills, all of these things actually set us up in that way so that we're like looking to make these mistakes.
And in some cases, our bosses, our teachers, our partners are even expecting us to make these mistakes. So, it's like a perfect setup. And then when we make them, darn and we just slide back in.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: So, yeah, that's where the perfect storm comes up. Everybody makes mistakes, but like, people with ADHD are sometimes, like waiting for the next mistake to happen and just a little bit faster to fall into the pit of despair.
Rae: It's almost like we've greased the slide, like we know this route.
Jodi: Exactly.
Rae: We know exactly the way to go. All the signs point to flip out.
Jodi: In fact, sometimes we're on that slide before we even need to be. Which is something that if you're listening to this at home and you have a family member with ADHD or you have ADHD, it's something to think about. Like maybe we can't get rid of the rabbit hole or the slide altogether, but it'd be great if we didn't jump on it before it was necessary, if that makes sense. Like anticipate.
I mean, you did it. You saw your boss with that look, and all of a sudden you anticipated that you had screwed up in some way and you were heading down that slide before she was even able to say, "Hey, we just missed you at this meeting. Next time, you know, can you try to make it?"
Rae: It's almost like we're digging ourselves into the hole before anybody else even has a chance to pick up a shovel.
Jodi: Exactly. And that's sort of the way I understand, sort of mood dysregulation and sort of even this like rejection sensitivity that is so linked and tied to ADHD.
Rae: Wow. That's very helpful actually, to think of trying not to get on the slide on your own.
Jodi: Yeah, that's the goal, right? I mean, in reality, the goal in life, I think one of the mistakes we all make is sort of that black and white thinking. I've got to, "I'm never going to miss another meeting." I mean, I can speak to this personally. "I'm never going to be late again. I'm never going to miss another meeting. I'm going to I'm going to respond to every email on time within a minute." Yeah, it's never going to happen, right?
Like, there's some, there's this point in life where we have to accept that, like, it's not black and white. It's not that I need to be on time everywhere and respond to every email, every email. What I need to do is get a little bit better at being on time and a little bit better at responding to these emails, which are two of my biggest problems. And the goal is really to, it's not about black and white, it's about decreasing the intensity and the frequency.
So, the intensity of the mistakes, the frequency of them, and the way I respond to them, like the goal is not to beat myself up every time I'm late or every time I miss an email because I am late and miss emails all the time.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: And I'm still actually a pretty good doctor and I'm a pretty good parent and I think I'm a pretty good friend. But, you have to sort of accept that the all or nothing thinking doesn't work, that you really have to, like, be kind to yourself. Now, that does not mean, I want to be clear about that, does not mean I'm letting you off the hook. If you're in a job that requires you to be on time and do not miss meetings, do not miss meetings. Like that's the story. Like I'm not letting people off the hook. What I'm asking people to do is not make everything so black and white. And to try to help people not get on the slide before they need to.
And recognize even when they do screw up and they do get in trouble, because that is going to happen, right? It's inevitable.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: It's managing that response. It's recognizing that you're prone to mood dysregulation, that you're prone to getting into this rabbit hole and what can you do to manage it.
(13:00) On automatic thoughts
Rae: I don't want to break into this great therapy session for too long, but I do want to back up a minute to the original story I was talking about it. I missed a meeting, my boss came over, she gave me what I interpreted as a look. And instantly I thought, "I'm in trouble." That thought, I'm in trouble, is a perfect example of what's called an automatic thought. If you've ever been to therapy or you know anything about cognitive behavioral therapy, you might have heard of automatic thoughts before, but it means essentially it's an uncontrollable negative thought that just comes up, just appears in your brain.
Of course, the first step to addressing and stopping automatic thoughts is being able to identify what one is and spot it when it comes. Jodi had some pretty great thoughts on that.
Jodi: So, now what do I do with that automatic thought? And like, all right, what's the evidence to support? That's the first thing you do. What is the evidence to support that you suck and that you're going to get fired? Well, like is there any, I mean, I'm pretty sure Rae that you do a good job. I know you and you're smart and you're conscientious and they're lucky to have you.
Rae: Thank you, Jodi.
Jodi: So, it seems to me, right? That really you're not doing a bad job. Whether you missed the meeting or you didn't miss the meeting, you add a lot of value. I mean, we could go on and on, right? Are you going to get fired? Well, of course not. You're doing a good job. Nope. This is just one meeting that you missed. It probably wasn't even that important. But even if it was an important meeting, you're unlikely to get fired for any number of reasons.
But this exercise is important because what you're doing is you're challenging the automatic thoughts. You're saying to yourself, you know, maybe sometimes your automatic thoughts, every once in a while, it's a true automatic thought, right? You're right on point. One of the problems with having ADHD is, you know, people always tell you to trust your gut. I have found sometimes with ADHD, with people with ADHD, your gut is not always great. Sometimes I want you to trust the gut. Sometimes I don't.
When your gut says that you suck or you're going to get fired, I wouldn't trust that gut. That's not a gut feeling. That's a cognitive distortion. That is your brain playing tricks on you. So, now that you recognize you have a cognitive distortion, then you basically are a scientist or detective and you're looking for the evidence to support your thoughts.
Rae: OK.
Jodi: If there is evidence, that's one thing. But 99% of the time there's no evidence to support it. The next step is, OK, there's really no evidence to support it. So what is it, how do I reframe this automatic thought? And this is important if you're listening out there, that you're, this has to be in your voice. Like I can tell people, I can suggest, like I'll suggest you, right, an alternative thinking. But you shouldn't listen to me. You have to believe it yourself. So, the reframing has to come from within.
But if I was suggesting to you, I might say, "Oh you know, I missed a meeting, but it's really not that important of a meeting or I'll be at the next meeting. It doesn't really matter if I miss a weekly meeting that happens every week." Or "My boss loves me and she's going to give me a hard time. But it's not all that important to my job," or any number of ways of thinking about this. I'm not letting you off the hook for missing the meeting. But I am trying to get you to challenge these automatic thought that you suck.
Rae: You're trying to get us, it's like you're fact checking yourself.
Jodi: Yeah. You're fact checking.
Rae: Here's my assumption.
Jodi: Yeah.
Rae: Is there any evidence to back it up?
Jodi: And then the result is, in an automatic thought or an alternate explanation, it gets more realistic. Yes, I have ADHD. I often miss meetings, missing one meeting here and there it's not such a big deal. Perhaps I do need to, like, you know, set more alarms and get somebody to remind me about the meetings. Now, all of a sudden, instead of falling into the pit of despair that you can't get out of, you're now saying, "All right, you know, this wasn't my greatest day. I'm not really proud of myself. My boss still loves me. I'm going to make more of an effort to be, to confirm meetings in the future."
Rae: Yeah. You know, it's funny. A lot of these things, when I boil them down, are sort of the underpinnings of phrases my mom used to use with me, like, Don't holler before you're hit or don't borrow trouble.
Jodi: I like those two.
Rae: Yeah. So, when all this stuff happens and it happens to you too, it sounds like.
Jodi: Yeah.
Rae: I mean, I assume it happens to everybody. ADHD makes it a little more challenging. I hear that.
Jodi: Yeah.
Rae: But it also sounds like you're saying if you can just master these skills, it's that this isn't going to happen anymore, that you'll know what to do when it does. Is that right?
Jodi: Exactly. I want to be really clear. Like we're not solving all of this. I mean, ADHD is a chronic disorder. It's something that you deal with throughout your life. I think, you know, it's this brain phrasing my mom used to say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and I really believe that about people with ADHD. I do think that they face a little bit more adversity. Their brain sets it up and then they face a little bit more adversity. But if they can get through it, they're actually stronger and more resilient for it.
But part of building resilience is not trying to make everything perfect. Part of building resilience is being able to accept your strengths and weaknesses and kind of move the needle a little bit and not be disappointed if it's not perfect.
(17:53) Masking and people-pleasing
Rae: Yeah. I feel like I don't know about you, but as somebody with ADHD, a lot of times I try to be perfect because it's my way of masking. Like if I can just get everything right, nobody will know that I have to work so hard to make it be right.
Jodi: Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's I think, you know, obviously when we're talking about people's ADHD, we're talking about a range of people. I think, Rae, it sounds like you are sort of typical of sort of lots of women with ADHD where you're a people pleaser and it's hard for you to disappoint people. And so, you're working really, really hard to not disappoint people. And just, and part of the challenges is recognizing that, like, you're going to disappoint people sometimes.
Rae: Can you tell me, people pleasing is a term I hear a lot and not just like people telling me I am one, but in general it comes up in a lot of like...Yeah. Right. This is why I've come to this therapy session. But what does that mean? Like, you know, if that's something that's common for people with ADHD, especially women with ADHD, I don't, I'm not sure I actually understand what that means. And when you hear it, like if you just hear those two words, you can kind of see why it might not be the worst thing to make people happy. But that's not really what it is, right?
Jodi: I mean, making people happy is not bad. Trying to be your best is not bad. I think it's more about trying to make people happy at the expense of what might be in your best interest. It's really about the expense piece and the perfectionism piece. And perfectionism is really, really cultivated in our world, specifically in men, of course as well, but in women in particular. And it's a set up for disaster. Perfectionism is just a set up because nobody's perfect. But in particular, it's a set up for people with ADHD because it's even harder for people with ADHD to cross the T's and dot the I's. So, it's even harder to appear perfect.
So, I think that problem, like it's classic for an ADHD, I'm sure you've heard this that like, you know, girls are less or more likely to get diagnosed later. And historically less nowadays, but historically are more likely to be missed the diagnoses are more likely to be missed. Part of the reason for that is that girls typically in our society, it's much more like following the rules, and being a good girl is much more important. I think there's a whole group of like boys and men who, with ADHD and without that, don't feel the need to follow the rules, right?
I mean, I think this is something that's sort of a gender role piece that's really, really, you know, we're really serious about with girls. So, I think that it's particularly hard when you're being raised to be perfect and to behave. And I think that kids, girls with ADHD, because they behave more, because they're less disruptive, because they're following the rules, sometimes, often, their ADHD gets missed. Whereas the teachers, for instance, are quick to find the boys that are jumping on the desks. I mean, those kids are dying, there in my office at like age five. I'm not joking.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: Like, the minute that you're disruptive, "Oh you're just a boy with ADHD. Go see Dr. Gold." I mean, it's just like. That's easy. The harder part is the girls when it's not, I want to be very clear. This is a generalization. This is not a total thing, but I do see it much more with girls. And the research supports it, that with girls a diagnosis is later, which is not good because early diagnosis can be really helpful in terms of like feeling good and mood, right?
You want to know if your daughter has ADHD when they're young because you want to put the treatment and the interventions in early before the, before things start to crack. But the whole pressure to please people at the expense of yourself results in teachers being pleased and parents being pleased and them not understanding necessarily how hard, to your point, how hard these girls or anybody is working to please.
Rae: Got it. And so, when you talk about like the problems with being able to please people at your own expense. One of the things that you never learn to not do that it sounds like it's almost like a perfect loop. Like you're never going to stop trying to do that if nobody realizes that it's a problem.
Jodi: Well, that's why it's really helpful for early diagnosis of girls or any child that's like a sort of a people pleaser because the ADHD gets missed and they get diagnosed later, it sort of feeds into this, to your point, it feeds into the need to sort of be perfect all the time. And the efforts that some of these people are going through to try to be perfect are excessive and not healthy. So, if we understood that it's taking them ten hours to do their homework when it should only be taking one hour, all we're seeing, all the teacher's seeing, for instance, is that the girl is turning in this beautiful piece of homework and she's getting a good grade in it.
But if the teacher knew, for instance, that this one hour homework assignment is taking her ten hours and she's fighting with her parents and she's not going to sleep, the teacher even could intervene and say, "Hey, this homework is not that important, or why don't you do half of the homework?"
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: But because no one knows, this gets reinforced and all of a sudden this child begins to do, think it's OK to spend ten hours on a one-hour homework assignment. So, you see why it would be helpful for the people around to know?
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: And also, at the end of the day, yes, it's important to please people, but not at your own expense.
Rae: Yeah.
Jodi: Like there's a balance with what's good for you and what's good for the people around you. At the end of the day, it's going to happen. So, and you're going to disappoint people and developing the skills to tolerate that, I think that's something that I do see a gender difference in this. I do think that boys are often much more, I think in our gender roles we teach boys much more to tough it out. I think we do that in sports. "Who cares if you make a bad play. You're part of the team."
There's sort of this messaging that it's OK to screw up as long as you're doing your best and you're part of the team. We don't really send those messages with girls as much. With girls, it's much more "You need to be perfect. You need to be skinny. You need to make good grades." Like it's a different type of messaging and I think it's very detrimental. But I also think that what we miss in that is teaching everybody, girls and boys, but teaching people how to tolerate. Like it's called distress... in psychology, in psychiatry, we call it distress tolerance.
But everybody's going to have distress in their life, that's part of life. It's the tolerance piece. And what you really are trying when you're, if you're a parent, and if you're a young adult, is trying to improve your distress tolerance. And in your case, the distress charge would have been disappointing the teacher or disappointing your boss and just tolerating it. And I think it's a skill, I think it's a skill that should be taught very explicitly in elementary school and really in middle school, which is disaster for just distress tolerance.
Everybody's a disaster in middle school and a good number of people develop skills and some people don't coming out of middle school. But yes, I think that the reality is, is that there's going to be problems and obstacles and failures. And it's about managing the stress and it's not easy. And people with ADHD do have, are more prone to mood dysregulation, which means it all feels bigger, It all feels worse. They're much more likely to have mood swings and irritability. So, it just makes the stress tolerance really challenging.
Rae: So, a lot of it sounds like it's about practice, about recognizing what's happening and practicing the skills you need to manage it.
Jodi: Yep. And usually, people with ADHD get lots of practice, so that's a good thing. If you're getting those looks all the time or you're never doing your homework, which seems to worked out OK for you, Rae. But like it's getting the practice and tolerating it and being like, that's not that big of a deal. Like what I would love for you next time I talk to you would be like, yeah, I missed another meeting. And I'm just like, OK. I mean, I was respectful. I'm like, "I'm really sorry I missed it and I'm going to work even harder." But I didn't go down the rabbit hole. I was like, "OK, this is a job. I'm going to win, so I'm going to lose some."
Rae: Jodi, I can't thank you enough for this ridiculously good therapy session you just gave me. I really appreciate it. And I hope everyone who hears this feels a little bit better after listening to Dr. Gold teach us all what to do when things get bad. Thank you so much.
Jodi: Well, thank you so much for having me.
Rae: Thanks for listening to this episode of "Hyperfocus." If you have any questions or ideas for future topics, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org.
"Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson. Our video producer is Calvin Knie. Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Justin D. Wright mixes the show. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drumming is our editorial director.
This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott, Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, you can donate at understood.org/give.
