Your Brain's Not Broken with Dr. Tamara Rosier

William Curb: We're having this conversation because if your book, your brain's not broken and I have to say, I love the title of it because it hits home for me, a lot of ways, I got to be reminded that it's not broken. I'm just not in the right space to use it.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: You've broken a lot of the times though, I was just talking to someone today, very smart woman. And she was complaining about the doctor's forms that come in the mail to fill out. And she said, I just see that thick packet arrived from my doctor's office. And I feel like saying, "everyone, everyone just leave me alone. I've got to focus". I mean, if we feel like that about filling out forms, no wonder we wonder if our brain's not broken.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's just, is really easy to hit that. Like, why can't I do this? Why is this so hard for me and not hard for everyone else? And I've been definitely feeling that this winter just being like, it's just coming down, even though I'm getting stuff done. And I'm just keeping up with things. I feel like it's a struggle to get there with everything. I know it doesn't matter. It's so like, there's something wrong with you and I'm like, no, you're just, you're pushing too hard.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: You know, I hear this from a lot of my clients and I think this too, I'm like, why is it so freaking hard for me? And it's like, anytime I try to do anything on my calendar, it's like cracking a code, you know, it's in other people, I don't know, just do it.

Or, you know, this time of year when we have to return right. Returning. It's like, oh, I'm never going to be able to return to this. How does this even work? And the truth is what's hard for us is usually simple for other people. But if we focus on that, we're going to miss that. There's some times we can look like freaking geniuses because our brains put things together that other people don't put together.

So sure, looking like a grownup way too tough for us, but thinking about incredibly new provocative ideas, we can do that.

William Curb: Yeah, I mean, there's so many ideas that we can in places that we were excelling at that we just write off because I didn't fill out the doctor's form. Right. Or I can't keep my car clean. So therefore I'm not a good person. All those moralistic judgements we put on ourselves that have nothing to do with morals.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right. But we look at our neuro-typical counterparts and go, but they have a clean car. Grownups should have a clean car. Yeah. And by the way, I don't know about you, but I hate putting gas in my car.

William Curb: Sigh. Yeah.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: I love your response with ADHD and we hate it for a lot of reasons, right? We hate it because it takes time. This time of year I hate it even more because it's cold. So now it's 20 degrees and I have to stop and do something I already don't want to do. Bridge too far, man. I maybe, maybe I'll just run out of gas, which that's not really an option,

William Curb: I've done it a few times.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: I may have done it more than once myself. Yes.

William Curb: I had an old truck and the gas gauge wasn't that good, so I could not trust it that well. So it was very important that I fill up on time. I still like, even with that pressure of like putting it off, putting it off.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. Because it's, it's like brushing your teeth.

It's all those little tiny, stupid things in life that we just don't want to take the time to do.

William Curb: Ugh, I always hate what I like of reading stuff like article and it gives the. It's just something that you do every day, like brushing your teeth. If only it was that easy,

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Just work this into a habit. Oh, cool. Because guess what's going to happen. I'm going to forget. I have a habit and that's where I really thought my brain was broken. I couldn't remember, like everyone kept saying, well, just make a habit of it. Like cool story, bro. But "I forget" that I made a habit. I'm using air quotes for your listeners. I forget that that's supposed to be a habit.

So there's a lot of reasons why we think our brains broke it. We see the rest of the world just kind of trucking through life and doing ordinary things and those ordinary things make us crazy.

William Curb: Yeah. I can definitely relate. So when you were thinking about this book, who is your kind of target who you're writing it for?

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah, I, okay. I love that you asked that question because I really felt convicted. I mean, I could have titled the book, what I wish people knew about ADHD because I was working with so many people who are sad and they, they really believed their brain was broken. And after some coaching, they're like, oh, I'm not that broken.

I just work differently. And so it's to, you know, I, I was convicted because I'm like, well, I can't reach everyone because I can only see so many clients per week. I really want to write this to people so that they know that their brain isn't broken. So a lot of times it was kind of like, this is sounds very sappy, but it was a letter to the clients I haven't met yet. Try to convince them you brain's not broken.

William Curb: Yeah. I definitely see everyone with ADHD is just sat with that feeling of why can't I do it? What is wrong with me? And it is that other side of like people being like, what do they know about ADHD, but also I'm surprised what I still learn about ADHD.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. I'm just curious. What have you learned lately about ADHD?

William Curb: So I just was doing something on caffeine and the aspects of like how we self medicate with caffeine a lot, because it's a stimulant to end. It's pretty much unregulated so we can just get it. That is a terrible idea to self-medicate with caffeine, because it builds a tolerance so quickly.

I think it builds a tolerance in like three days. And so I'm like, maybe I should cut back on caffeine.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: You know, oh, I love, I loved that episode, by the way. I thought it was great episode. I, anytime a client brings like a Red Bull, Mountain Dew, whatever, any, any high caffeinated drink, I always point it out and I say, "Hey, you're self-medicating right now, which means we should probably have a talk about your meds. What's happening with your meds. Um, when, what are you thinking you need to drink this?"

And a lot of times, it's around 3:00 to 4:00 PM. They have to do that final push into the evening. Just means their meds are running out. Their stimulants are running out.

William Curb: Yeah. Understanding that I self medicated with caffeine was something that popped into my head a while ago, but then actually like reading about it. There's also just not any research on it. There's five, seven studies maybe. And each of the studies had like a saying, like, this is something that we should look into further because there's not enough. And I'm like, yeah.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: I listened to that episode because I, I work with my clients a lot on caffeine intake and what's weird is I don't tolerate coffee very well. But there's more components to coffee than just the caffeine. And so I could easily think that I can't tolerate a stimulant. Well, a stimulant really works for me and that's how I manage my ADHD symptoms. So caffeine is a type of stimulant, but people get confused, like it's the only kind.

William Curb: So, yeah, that's one of the places that I've been definitely been looking into co-morbidities and how interested in how autism is not connected, but the, the overlap that there tends to be. I've been getting into TikTok a lot recently, and there is a lot of creator content. And then there is a lot of pushback against the ADHD creators from the autism creators being like you are not talking about ADHD symptoms, you are talking about autism.

And I think that's really important to think about like, "Hey, there are a lot of ways that ADHD presents and there's a lot of things that maybe not aren't ADHD symptom and herself, but are consequences of a symptom."

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Can I add to that? Because I I've seen that. I mean, you know, my clients send me a ton of TikToks, so my pattern is well established on TikTok for me.

And so I'm familiar with what you're talking about. I'd like to add though. So the TikTokers, the ADHD TikTokers are saying, "Hey dude, the DSM is missing all of these things" and it's a democratic solution. To the authorities kind of ignoring ADHD. And the DSM is way behind in talking about ADHD. Russ Barkley talks about that quite a bit. Right?

But what happens is the, those ADHD TikTok people have said, "Hey, there's this whole emotional dysregulation that is confusing to us." And I'd like to say to respectfully to the people on the spectrum, you guys don't own emotional dysregulation. It shows up in ADHD and it's not that, oh, look, squirrel we're distracted.

In fact, my whole book was to try to say, look at the emotional dysregulation in the mess that it causes. And so a lot of times one of the arguments is, um, spectrum tic talkers, who will say no, no, no, not reading emotions. That's a spectrum issue. However, when we're talking about ADHD, Not reading emotions could be how we present.

And that's because we're so wrapped up into our head with what's going on in our head. We forget to read someone else's emotions. It's not that we can't because there's, you know, like a colony of sounds in my head.

William Curb: Yeah. And one thing that popped into my idea about this was that all of me has ADHD. And that's going to include my emotion. So it'd be very strange for, to have a mental health condition. That's just like, but not your emotions. Those are fine. I don't have any impulsivity with your emotions.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right. Well, especially given how the brain structure works, right? I mean, if we don't have reliable access to our prefrontal cortex, remember that's the part behind your forehead?

We rely on our limbic center, our center for fight flight, or freeze to do a lot of the thinking. That's also the emotional processing center. So it's really not coincidental that most of us have emotional dysregulation issues. In fact, it's far more frequent

William Curb: And that was in the book was like the Butler and the angry neighbor, I think.

I remember, I was thinking about how I make up for a ton of my short-term memory problems with just a lot of anxiety, because it's one of the funny things I don't have trouble getting to places on time because I'm just so anxious about being late.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: You know, anytime I have someone show up early at my office, I make a note. I'm like, okay, high anxiety asked them about that because I know they got there because they're so anxious that they'll show up 10 minutes early. Oh. And by the way, like if you keep them waiting five minutes, they're going to be wound tight because that anxiety just keeps building.

And for your listeners, the metaphor is your prefrontal cortex apart right behind your forehead usually works like a Butler, a calm Butler, saying, "Tamara, you left your keys here. For Tamara if you want to leave at this time, do this. It's almost like my Butler has a Siri voice. You know, it's like, this is just do these next thing. And so the Butler organizes us. It tells us don't get too upset about that. That's not a problem. We can work it out. And so it's a very reasonable calm butler.

But for those of us who don't have reliable access to our prefrontal cortex, we don't have a butler that we can rely on. He or she might show up every once in a while, but not enough, right? Instead we have this angry neighbor shaking a shoe. If you do this one more time, if you're late, one more time, I'm going to throw this shoe at you. And so we're always trying to duck a shoe being thrown out. And that's what tends to motivate us. The big emotions tend to motivate us.

William Curb: Yeah. It's amazing. Just how the strength of those emotions too, that you're just like, oh, I thought that I was just going to get a little upset by this, but now I'm like mad for hours.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. It's funny something that didn't make it into the book. I help clients sort out. Is this a big bucket deal or a small bucket? Which bucket do we put this in? And so when I work with children, I actually have two buckets named big deal bucket, small deal. And we write out the problems and we sort about that's for like elementary age.

Uh, but with adults, because I have them sitting over on the shelf, I'm like, which bucket should that problem go with? And most of the time they were like, it's actually a small bucket issue. I'm like, well, let's keep it in the smallest.

William Curb: It's so hard in the, in the moment to deal with that idea to the moment everything feels big,

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Everything. Yeah. Except sometimes, and this is why we were bad sorters of the buckets. Sometimes things should really be in a big deal bucket. And I put them in a small deal bucket and someone will go, you know, this is a bigger deal. I'm like, oh, I miss that. Okay.

William Curb: Yeah, it's really just an aspect of all of ADHD, just like that prioritizing is so hard because everything feels like a priority. So then nothing's a priority. And then you're like just throwing darts, trying to figure out which ones actually is.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah, it's really amazing. So something I hope it came out in the book because something I really wanted to point. Is for those of us who have ADHD. There are not a lot of great reasons why we should be succeeding at anything we do in the modern world. We're great hunter-gatherers. But in the modern world, there's, we're really on a handicap and yet look at us. We're everywhere, guys. Anytime. You know, we graduate from high school college, anytime we're doing anything that is good in the modern world.

I kind of feel like we need extra credit for that. You know what I'm talking about? Like, it's like in high school, when you take honors classes or AP classes, you get more credits. So you can end up with a 4.5. I feel like we need that system for us. Like I did it and I have ADHD.

William Curb: Although what I find I do is the opposite.

Whereas, like I did it, but I didn't do it amazingly. I just survived. And so even though I have ADHD and this was harder for me, I should have done it perfectly. And so I don't deserve to have any credit.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. Um, so I don't know what you're talking about, but okay. So I totally know what you're talking about.

In fact, the book came out and they were like, oh, I should have rewritten the whole thing differently. I should have done every chapter differently. What was I thinking? And it was hard for me to celebrate publishing the book because I just wanted to move on to the next thing. An editor who's really a kind human said to me, "Tamara, this is a big deal, don't miss this moment. You're publishing book." Because my ADHD brain put it in a small deal bucket and just kept wanting to move on. And I so appreciate Andrea's words to me because I'm like, wow, she doesn't have ADHD. She's in publishing. Maybe I should listen to her about this. And she said, you know, we'll look at another project from you, but don't miss this.

This is good. And because I didn't think I'd have done it perfectly enough. Like you, I just wanted to move on.

William Curb: Yeah. Well, I will say I loved reading the book. I thought it was fantastic. So great job.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Well, thank you. You're very kind, you know what gymnastics we do in our head, that we never do anything good enough. And so I I'm confessing my feelings about the book. Because I have ADHD and I have these thought patterns I constantly have to fight and I do have to fight it. And I am so appreciative of people like you who read and go, yeah, this all made sense to me. And I'm so appreciative. So I'm grateful. But again, you know, the weird things that happen in our heads.

William Curb: Yeah, a few months ago, I passed the million download mark on the podcast. And I was like, okay. I sent a text to my friend. That was the total I did for my celebration.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yup. Yup. Now, now what's your next goal, right?

William Curb: Yeah. I'm like, well, I guess, I guess the obvious one is 2 million. So wait until I do that's also doubling the goal is not-

Dr. Tamara Rosier: so you get, you get like how in this is where I work with my clients. This is a form of perfectionism, because we think we're only as good as the next goal. And I, unfortunately, again, I'm confessing a lot to you on this. I hate, I hate this confessing business, but I think it helps your listeners to know.

I don't think I have my act together. I think I have to constantly like, hold my thoughts and make sure like, Nope, that's not, that's not how you should be thinking right now. It's okay to relax a second and to go, wow, that happened.

William Curb: Yeah, but my thoughts going in a few ways here, because it is that idea that it needs to be my goal to have all my stuff put together, have it nicely tied up in a bow and that's never going to happen.

Nobody has everything together, even though it feels like other people do, especially I compare myself to neurotypical people like, they must have their stuff together. Also we don't know what they're going through to make sure that happens. I remember I was at a neighbor's house and I was like, You do such a good job with like hosting these parties and having your house just like so presentable all the time.

And she's like, the trick is I have OCD and it was like, ha ha. She's like, no, really? And I'm like, oh, that's terrible.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah, oh that's horrible. So yeah, we really have to be very careful about comparing ourselves to anyone. If I see anything that drags most of my clients down, it's the comparison.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's, it's hard to get out of, but it's, once you start going, oh, I'm not actually comparing anything. Cause that's the problem with comparison. We're not actually comparing anything. You're just going, that's better. I'm going to compare this rotten apple that I found to this perfect apple. Why would anyone want this rotten apples? Like, well, because you just found that on the side of the road and you just decided that was what you had

Dr. Tamara Rosier: or, you know, I always say, so here's your apple and that's a kangaroo - they're not even comparable. It's not even a thing. And so sometimes when we look at other people going, well, how come they can just show up at work every day on time? And I have to yell at myself. I have to do all these things to motivate myself. You know, why can't I just do it? Well, we have to figure out ways for you to do it. Not just wish that it just happened to us.

William Curb: Yeah. One of my big level ups in my perfectionism was when I just driving, listening to the Frozen soundtrack with my daughter and popped into my head, "if you're a perfectionist and you don't actually believe anything can be perfect and you're basing your worth on your work, but nothing will ever be perfect. Then you're never going to allow yourself to have any worth." And I was like, "oh no, oh no, this is, that's a bad pattern." And my initial was like, okay, just stop with the perfectionism, some work on that. And that helped. But then also eventually being it really also shouldn't be valuing your worth on your work, either both sides of that equation where wrong.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Well, yeah. And so I'm glad you had an Elsa moment and you're letting it go. I mean, I can, you know, I'm picturing you driving down the road, belting, "Let it go. Let it go." But you know, there's you're right. Our ego gets involved because when we're younger, what happens is we learned to care what other people think as a survival technique.

And it's hard to turn off that survival technique, but here's what happened. And when we're in our thirties, we realize that survival technique is kind of kicking our butts and it's okay. You know, I, I go easier on 20 year olds, but something happens when you're into your thirties, in your forties. You're like, I can't be true to myself anymore if I'm constantly trying to please others. And so then we set up a fall guy in her brain go, okay. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to please that chick and she's in my brain, but she's worse than any one outside of me that I've tried to please. And so there is a lot of negotiation. I always have to negotiate with that side of myself. Like it's okay, you can be happy here or something I say to her, "I'll be happy for the two of us right now."

William Curb: Yeah. I mean, that kind of reminds me of early on in the book where you were comparing ADHD to racing in a three-legged race. And it's just like, I just, I just got to work with you. I can't choose not to. If I just tried to drag you along, this is going to be a bad time for both of us.

And so yeah, like sometimes yeah, you gotta, how am I going to work with you? How am I going to get you to work with me?

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right. And they know. Yeah. So, you know, for your listener in the book, I said, you know, Hey, my ADHD is like, you know, like I have to run a three legged race. So it's the most with ADHD, you have to run three races.

Other people just run a normal race. And so every morning I'm like, "Hey, how are we going to do this today?" And she always wants to sit down. She gets tired very easily. She sees a dandelion or something to look at. And so I'm always having to negotiate with her. Something I didn't put in the book because it's a bit dark, but I'm going to say it here is I have a PhD because pretty much I just would knock her out everyday.

And it's, that's dark and there's a reason I didn't put it in the book is because I just don't. I want to be able to explain it further, right? But it's actually an act of self-loathing it's I only have time for your BS and I hate you. And I would essentially knock her out and drag her body as I raced and you just don't do that a long time in your life without your body starts to get mad at you. You have all kinds of problems because of that. So really learning to work with your ADHD and be kind, um, that has been probably my biggest personal growth.

William Curb: Yeah. It's working with the ADHD is really hard because it feels so much slower than if you could just do it the other way, but you can only drag them along for so long. And while it sounds like a great coping mechanism, it, no,

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Nope. And yet, I'll be really honest. When I was writing my dissertation undiagnosed untreated, I didn't know anything else. And so I did the best I could, but then when I realized what was happening, I'm like, oh, We can't do that anymore can we so I started to be nice to her.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's, uh, people that's hard to do. It's hard to be nice to your ADHD because you don't want to. Cause it feels like it's been holding you back for so long.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Well, especially for those of us, I think you and I are very similar. Like we like to get stuff done and we like, we like the feeling of like taking out a task and finishing a task. And then we have the ADHD side of herself sitting down to pick dandelions and looking at butterflies. We're like, you get a right the second,

William Curb: just to just, I just force myself to do this. We can just go and do it. We'll be done. And then we can, then we can go to the dandelions and I don't like that.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. And it doesn't really work as well as with it. No, I do know that when she's medicated, she could run the race. She's still going to be a little bit slower, but she can run. She can keep pace with me. As long as I slow down a little bit. Nothing ever goes as quickly as I think they should go.

William Curb: Yeah. I think that's a great point too. It's like, we, we want things to go with, like, just like. I can envision things going so well and they never go as well as I envisioned, because I don't think about everything that could be going on. It's like, oh, I'm going to sit down and write this. It's going to be perfect. Oh, I don't know what that word means. I need to stop and look that up. Oh, I thought I knew what that concept was, but maybe I don't. And so it's like, oh, there's all these little turns. I have to take that in and think about it.

Before we finish up. I also wanted to make sure we talked about, energy management because you've got the Solve-it grid in the book, which is fantastic. So we're not going to go specifically into that cause that's, as we talked about before, the podcast is very hard to visualize without having the visuals right in front of you. So, listeners are going to have to buy the book because it's fantastic and it's got this great tool in it. It's talks a lot about energy management, which is something I'm really interested in because I've really discovered how important following my energy path through the day was. Over the summer I got COVID and that was not great for me. I had about 30 minutes a day that I could be productive because I was just exhausted the rest of the day. And it really drilled home that you got to work when you can work. Can't just hope that you're scheduling your time, the right way.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: By the way, I was working with a client last week who was just recovering from COVID and she searched out the session by saying, you know, ADHD people shouldn't be allowed to get COVID.

And I think it's interesting because I get what she's talking about. I've had COVID and I know the, I call it narcoleptic tiredness. I could just drop and I it's, it's amazing how fatigued. It's not just fatigue of, oh, I'm just not productive. It's a bone tired fatigue.

William Curb: Yeah. And the mental fog, like I cannot think. I just sit there and be like, what was I supposed to be doing here?

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right? So that's it, let's start there with the energy management because. What happens is our brains are working enough to go, but really I should be doing something. And so, by the way, I don't know about you, but sometimes my head and my body don't talk. And so my head goes, "no, no, no guys, we're fine. We're fine. We're not sick." My body's like, "I dunno, we're pretty achy." And, and it's like, my, my head will keep hitting snooze on the body and I'm trying to grow that area. Listen to my body. It's a whole, whole big challenge for me, but I I'm, I'm learning, right? So I'm also learning energy management.

ADHD people we don't have any governors. And do you know what a governor is?

William Curb: Yeah, just something to modulate how we're at, where you're at. You can't go beyond this point.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Exactly. So, they're used in engines. Go-karts have governors on them because they know what little teeny boppers spinning too fast around the track.

So they regulate how, how fast you can go in a go-kart. We don't have governs. And so we have no idea how fast we can go and we don't have any idea of speed limits

William Curb: Yeah, that's hitting home pretty well right there.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. So what happens is I have to teach my clients. We don't have a governor. We're not going to get a governor. What I can teach my clients to be miserly. And I'm talking primarily emotional energy because we can be miserly with the emotional energy. I think the rest will fall into line.

So, you know, in the book I write about an embarrassing time. I kind of wish I had cut this, but, me hopping into my car on a hot summer day and it's hot and immediately beads start to form on my chin and I'm like, wow, I'm so mad. You know, you know, neurotypicals are like, well, what would you think it's a hot day. You jumped in your car, like, seriously, this isn't rocket science. So in a moment like that, I'll take a deep breath and go, you know what? I don't want to waste this energy right now. I'm just going to get up, turn on the air, let it cool down a little bit in a step back yet. And so a lot of times I catch myself and go, no, no, no, I don't want to waste energy.

And so that's what I'm talking about, about wasting energy. So let's say you're married and your spouse does something like, wow. You know, he didn't really have to talk to me like that instead of holding that grudge immediately, let it go, go, oh, maybe he's having a bad day because I don't want to waste the energy to figure out what the hell that meant if it's just a passing. Now if it's, if it's a theme or a pattern, that's a different thing. I'm just talking about those little things that throughout the day, that just irk us. And sometimes it's interesting to be irked and we like to take, take care of that irk and kind of help it grow up to resentment or bitterness or something or anger even.

And so if I can just release that, that little bit of irk first. That's where I'm going to get more emotional balance.

William Curb: Yeah. You don't have to take everything personally because often it isn't personal. It's just, this is something I do a lot I've learned to do in while driving is someone cuts me off. It's not because they're a jerk it's because they're having a bad day. I hope they have a better day because that would be nice if we all had better days. And I remember the first time I did that and I was just like, oh, that feels way better.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: So, yeah, you're talking about attributional theory here. It's really funny because we, we think others should view us, like, well, give me a break. I was having a rough day. However, we don't tend to give other people a break and we tend to judge people on their behaviors. And yet we want to be judged by kind of our heart.

And it's funny because we forget to do that for other people. You know, the person could have cut you off because they were just, weren't paying attention. That's still doesn't make them an evil jerk. It makes them careless, still not an evil jerk, but we jumped to evil jerk must die!

William Curb: And even with that, I go, okay, what if they are a jerk? Now I'm letting them control my emotions. I don't want to give them the satisfaction. Like the best way to control trolls online is to go, Hey, are you okay? They don't know how to deal with that because that's not the reaction they're looking for.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right. They're looking for a fight. Yeah. I love that. You said that. I think that's really, I think a lot of times we hand over control of our emotions to other people. And I think taking back our emotions and owning them is really important.

William Curb: And not easy, but it's, you know, it pays dividends.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. And I, I love, I love what you just said. That's so part of this kind of, you know, we don't have the emotional governor, but creating these rules of, I don't, I don't want to spend my emotional energy that way, especially everything in our lives takes emotional energy.

And so why would I waste it on someone who cut me off when I know that I have to do this task later on and that's going to take emotional energy. I just, I want to be a little bit more miserly with it.

William Curb: Yeah. I think that's a great way to put it too, because it's just easy to be like, to feel like, oh, I'll have an infinite amount of this, but I don't think it runs out surprisingly quick.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: It does run out quick. Doesn't it? Yeah.

William Curb: The other aspect that I've thought about this before is I know with a lot of ADHD people, they will have a, just, just the hub the day that they're there on there. Like, I am just so good today and I'm going to get everything done. It's going to be a super productive day and they do it. They do all of the things. And then the next day they crash. And the assumption is originally that I'm going to do all these things. Cause I know I'm going to crash tomorrow. Theory that I've been thinking about is like, am I crashing because I'm doing too much?

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Right. That's the red blue pattern that I talk about in the book. I happen to have that pattern myself, like, all right, I'm on today. And the red quadrant is kind of the go, go, go quadrant. And, and then I flopped to blue because I can't sustain that high emotional energy. And so, yeah, I do. I flopped a blue and I'm like I'm tired. The other thing we don't understand is would we gear ourselves up to have a super productive day, super productive?

And we're doing everything we're just super, super, super we're borrowing against tomorrow.

William Curb: Yeah. And we're not being productive by doing any of the recovery things either. It's like, could, could I not do something that would be good for me tomorrow too. I'm just doing things. Doing that borrowing from here. I'm not doing anything to be like, okay, let's also do this productive thing. That's gonna make me feel awesome tomorrow.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah. You know, it's funny because I'm, I'm always surprised of when I get to Friday night. Like, I don't know why I'm so tired, but I'm exhausted. My husband just looks at me like, are you serious? You can't figure this out. Like you've been going, going, going all week and now your body's like, "Hey, we're done", but each Friday night I'm somewhat surprised at how tired I am. And I think it's kind of funny that I don't really ever figure this out. I mean, I know it enough to write about it. And yet each Friday night, I wonder why I'm so tired.

And I say it almost every Friday and every Friday night, he's like, well, you've had a busy week, you know, you leave it all on the field during the week. I was like, yeah, I guess I did.

William Curb: But it also sounds like you're then like, being like, Hey, it's time for the weekend. It's time to do the stuff I need to to help recover.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yes, but now that I'm learning, I am learning slowly but surely. And with very slow learner, it seems I'm learning to take those breaks during the week. I make certain rules for myself, like stopping work by 7:00 PM and going into kind of a, in the book blue quadrant like lower activities. Kind of fun, but not really stimulating activities. I try to do those more and more during the week now.

William Curb: Yeah. Those are great and hard to get yourself to really engage in, to be like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, this is important too.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Yeah, it is. I am starting to learn the value of get this balance. Before I just had a toggle switch on or off in either I was on fully productive or off asleep and, and now I'm learning to modulate a little bit better.

William Curb: All right. Well, I'm really enjoying our conversation, so I'm like stupid clock. So do you have any thoughts you want to end with?

Dr. Tamara Rosier: I would love to encourage people to remember things will always take longer than they want to plan for. And that you will always either overestimate your energy or underestimate your energy. We usually don't get it just right. So just be aware of the time and the energy.

William Curb: It's finding that balance.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Finding that balance.

William Curb: All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I've had a great time. I think everyone listening should go and read the book because I got a lot out of it. And if you enjoy this podcast, I think you would also enjoy the books.

Dr. Tamara Rosier: Thank you so much.

Be sure to check out the book Your Brain's Not Broken