Let’s Discuss ADHD

Transcript

Landon Bryant:
ADHD is a memory disorder. It doesn't mean that you're flawed, it doesn't mean that something's wrong, it just means that there's some explanations, there's some explanations available, and they can help.

Ellie Pike:
Living with a neurodivergent brain can be demoralizing, especially when comparing yourself to others. That's why I am so excited to introduce you to one of my favorite storytellers, someone who has spent over a decade figuring out how to thrive with his ADHD brain. Meet Landon Bryant.

Landon Bryant:
I am Landon Bryant of Landon Talks all across the internet, where I talk entirely too much about a place that I love, the south, and all the intricacies that have to do with that.

Ellie Pike:
Before finding success and personal momentum, Landon struggled to gain traction in life.

Landon Bryant:
And I really, literally and metaphorically, failed at everything that I could.

Ellie Pike:
It wasn't until an adult diagnosis of ADHD and years of perfecting the right medications, systems, and collaborative relationships, that he began to find a path forward. So join Landon and me as we unpack how he has learned to embrace the creative potential of ADHD, while also implementing strategies to smooth out its challenges. You are listening to Mental Note Podcast. I'm Ellie Pike.

I would actually love for you to tell us a story, because you are known as a storyteller. I know you mentioned something about a Walmart High School to me, but I have not heard the story, so if you're open to it, let's start there.

Landon Bryant:
So listen, I grew up in a small town, and in the small town, we had a Walmart. And on spring break, when I was in eighth grade, our school got blown away by a tornado. No one was hurt. So the town had to just do something with us, you can't just let an entire seventh through 12th grade school not go to the last nine weeks of school, so they decided to put us in the old Walmart building, literally the old Walmart building. And this was freshly emptied, so all of the signs were there, the only thing that was gone were the shelves, everything but the shelves was there. And so, I spent eighth grade in the baby section of Walmart, which was quite traumatizing and we're still upset about it. Eighth graders are exactly the grade to not put in the baby section, we weren't mature enough to handle being in the baby section, it was very offensive.

Ellie Pike:
Very demoralizing.

Landon Bryant:
Our principals wore Walmart vests, our bell was an air horn, the intercom was the Walmart intercom, and we had the cafeteria in the garden center, and that's all the honest to God truth. So there are some people who graduated from Walmart High School, for real, for real. I didn't graduate from Walmart High School, but I did spend the last part of middle school there, and that really did happen.

Ellie Pike:
That is so comical, and I can just only imagine seeing my principal walk through with that vest on and graduating from Walmart High School, it's amazing. I don't even know how to transition into my real question, because we do talk about mental health on this episode, but I'm wondering how, growing up in the rural south, did your culture influence your perception of mental health and mental health care in that regard as well?

Landon Bryant:
So we live in a really strange transitional time period in human history, I feel like, where we went from local to this global society, and when it was a local society... I'm from the best kind of people, they're the best people, but as far as mental health goes, it is a very religious area, so it's more of a pray about it attitude and take it to the Lord, that kind of situation, so that is the approach that was taken with mental health. And honestly, when I was growing up, if you were to say you had something going on with your mental health, it would be a lot more extreme than what we consider that today, it was just such a different world in that people weren't used to that kind of a thing. There was definitely mental illness around me, but not talked about, and you wouldn't talk about the treatment. So it wasn't really a thing.

So my dad was a banker, my mom was a teacher, and we had dinner every night, and everything was scheduled out, and there was homework time, and there was do this time, there was go to bedtime, so it was very structured. So while I did drive my mother nuts, I lost every pair of glasses, every retainer, every piece of homework, we spent so many times searching for stuff or trying to find things, it didn't present itself as an academic problem, any issues that I have, they didn't present themselves as an academic problem, but that's not necessarily what ADHD is. So I just slipped through mostly.

And then, in high school, I had really excellent teachers, but again, I was set up to where it was almost impossible to not be successful because my schedule was so guided and so specific and everything was at a certain time. I was a swimmer, so I got exercise in, it was just a whole thing. I really hated swimming, and when I look back on it, it was because I was so bored. I was just so bored going back and forth in a pool all the time, it really was torturous, but I gained some skills through all that. But then, it was when I got in college that I really realized that something was up, or when I started to suspect something was up.

Ellie Pike:
With your own mental health?

Landon Bryant:
Yes, with my own mental health. But I just didn't really have anything to base it off of because I'd never been exposed to anything. Unfortunately, the public school system, the way it treated learning disorders and learning situations, it was very separate at the time period. They just separated out anyone with any sort of issue, and they were in a whole different building really throughout the day even. So just not a lot of exposure to what accommodations would look like, not a lot of exposure to what even ADHD is, or what any type of learning disorder would be.

Also, as a very successful academic person, it just wasn't on my radar, not at all on my radar. I knew that I was not like my sister, because she was just very perfect in all sense of she did everything correctly, she was not struggling to make it to school, she was not losing anything. I knew there was differences, I could tell there was differences, but I just chalked it up to personal failures honestly.

Ellie Pike:
What did that feel like, just internally, if you were like, okay, so I'm losing things, I know something's different, was it a feeling of what ball am I going to drop today, how am I going to fail today?

Landon Bryant:
All the time. That's a great way to put it, what ball am I going to drop today? That's how I always felt, always felt that way. Even as a kid, I don't remember not feeling that way, almost on high alert all the time, because I expect to do something wrong, or to forget something, or to leave something off, and that has defined a lot of my life. I'm a very anxious person, I'm working on that as I go along, but it's definitely from that, it's definitely from not believing that what I've done is enough.

So it really showed up in college. In college, you have a lot more freedom, and I had a lot more freedom. I was not in my parents' house, I was on my own, and I dropped the ball entirely. I had no idea how to set up systems to work for myself, I had no idea how to take notes, I had no idea how to study. I'd never had to study before, I just did the homework. So it was an entire new world, and I really, literally and metaphorically, failed at everything that I could. So after that first semester of college, it was very shocking for me to go from all As, top of my class, to literally failing a semester of college, that was quite the shock.

So I bounced around from program to program, and from school to school even, just looking for what fit, before I started addressing what was wrong in the scenario. I went to architecture school, I went to nursing school, I bounced around and bounced around. And finally, I just started working in the hospital, after nursing school didn't work out, I just became an ER tech and worked in the ER, which really suited ADHD because I am constantly in emergency mode. I'm always in red alert emergency mode, so the emergency room was exactly the environment for me to really focus that. If you are ever in a situation that is urgent, you need somebody with ADHD there, because it's been an emergency my whole life, this is nothing new, I'm ready to go.

So that suited me for a while, and then I decided it was time to move forward in life because I got married and was going to have a kid, and I knew I needed to move forward, and you can't really move forward in a hospital without licensing. So I knew I needed to go back to school, but I didn't know what that was. So I went to the University of Southern Mississippi, where my wife had graduated, and it's the closest college to me. And they looked at what was going on and they were like, "Hey, you need some help here. This isn't a regular thing for somebody with your kind of grades and academic history to have suddenly dropped off, there's something going on here."

So I got screened and lit that screener right up, and Southern did a great job of really walking me through what it means to have ADHD and what it means to have accommodations. And it was a challenge because I still believed it was personal failure at that point, I still was like, okay, y'all are calling it that, but I know that I'm just lazy, I know that I just can't keep up with stuff, I know that if I thought about it harder, or if I worked harder, if I paid attention more, this wouldn't be the case. That was always in the back of my mind. But Southern got me through, they really did, and they were really so great about it.

They even did things like... You have to take these letters to your teachers, and that lets the teachers know what the accommodations were, and they were like, "I don't feel like you're going to take these letters." And I was like, "I probably am not going to take these letters." So they would even go and do that and meet with the teacher. They saw the needs I had and helped me set up a system of be at the library this time to study, write this paper now, take a little bit of extra time on your test so you're not freaking out about it and can really focus, just a lot of the accommodations that I needed, and I got through Southern. I think the data is there because I successfully graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, and ever since then, it's been a journey to really understand myself, and understand what all that was, and understand that it wasn't a personal failure, that it was an actual need.

And so, here I am now talking to you about this, and it is really wild to me to be at this point, because it's taken so long for me to even get to a point to where I even understand my own situation, much less be able to talk about it like this.

Ellie Pike:
Well, it really sticks out to me that it was hard for you to even believe that you had this diagnosis of ADHD. But do you ever still have moments like that, where it's hard to believe that that's actually a diagnosis and that it's not a personal failure?

Landon Bryant:
Well, I do, because when you reflect on your actions, or you reflect on a moment when maybe something could have gone better, or you could have done something better, there's always this, well, if I had just done this, or if I had just done that, and that feels personal. It doesn't feel like a thing that is different about the way my brain works, it feels like something that I did, so it's a constant reminder of that.

But on the flip side of that, I've seen what the anxiety from that does to somebody, so I'm really trying to believe it. I'm really trying to let my body believe that, and I'm trying to actually personally believe it, and instead of focusing on the failures, focus on the things that it's made me be able to do really well. So it's a constant relationship with it. I don't know if I'll ever fully grasp it, and I don't know if it comes from growing up in rural Mississippi, or if there's other people that have ADHD that think that way.

I think it comes back to a time period. It just wasn't at the forefront of the '90s, it wasn't at the forefront of the 2000s, that wasn't what people were talking about. ADHD was the kid who couldn't sit still and the kid who couldn't stay there. And I can hyper-focus for hours on something and I can stay as still as I need to, but I might not remember to have on shorts or to tie my shoe. There's little things that it's not just being a busy body and being all over the place. And so, it's still just really difficult to reconcile those things. I don't know if it ever will be completely reconciled, but it's something I work on.

Ellie Pike:
I really appreciate you talking about that, because that's exactly what was happening in my mind was I remember being in school and the only impression I had of ADHD was the pen clicker and the person who couldn't stop moving around and needed more "discipline" honestly, quote, unquote, from the teachers, and that's not what it is. And so, I appreciate that it's been a journey for you to recalibrate the definition of ADHD in the first place, much less the fact that you actually have it.

Landon Bryant:
No, I agree with you, recalibrating that definition and believing it, it's a whole thing. Like you said, it was more of a behavior thing when we were growing up, it was about behavior, it was the kids who couldn't behave, it didn't have to do with executive functioning.

Ellie Pike:
So how has medication, or has medication, played a role in having this diagnosis?

Landon Bryant:
It definitely has, and anybody who's been on this journey knows that the medication side of things is very frustrating, it's very difficult. I don't know anybody who's found the right medicine immediately. It's something that you definitely have to work with your medical providers with, and that's a whole thing is finding the right provider, finding the right behavioral health specialist that can guide you through that path and is willing to work with you. One thing about ADHD is that it just is so adjacent to drug-seeking, because think about, from a provider's perspective, so you made an appointment because you are trying to figure that out, and then you miss the appointment, then you call panicked because you are out of your medicine, it's just a whole thing. It's just a whole dance to dance on, not looking like you are drug-seeking while also finding the right help.

But besides that aspect of it, just finding the right pharmaceutical at the beginning is really difficult, because they're all so different, they work in different ways. Some work with norepinephrine, some work with more dopamine, some work... There's so many ways to approach the whole thing, and I feel like I've been on all of them and worked through all of them. There's been so many times when I was on the wrong one. The first one I got on, I was still working in the emergency room, and I just remember being in the stockroom organizing that stockroom so intensely, and one of the nurses finding me and being like, "Whoa." And I was like, "Yes, whoa. What is this? I need to drink a lot of water and calm down." Because they can be too much. And it just depends on what you need, short-acting or long acting, what it acts on.

So there's not really any advice you could give generically to people about medication, besides it's going to be a process, and the first one that you get may not be the one that works for you the most. I hear all these stories of people that immediately take their medicine and they're like, "Wow, this is what people are supposed to feel like," and it never was that for me. It just moves me to a base level in a way. I definitely am not running around on the medicines, like a lot of people that really hype them up, I could focus enough to go to sleep. But anyways, it's just a process of figuring out what works for you.

I finally have gotten to a spot where I feel like I know what works for me. But then now, we've moved into I'm 36, I'm getting older, the benefits of long-term use of the medicine versus the damage it can cause, in some ways, weighing that with the doctors and with specialists, it's just a lot. I don't think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to the medication side of ADHD. So basically, good luck to everybody.

Ellie Pike:
Well, I really appreciate that you can add a little humor to that. But that really painted a picture of the journey, where you have to find the right provider first, someone you trust, and then, as you're also trying to adapt to having ADHD and build the structure that you need, naturally you're going to forget things-

Landon Bryant:
Right.

Ellie Pike:
... because that's what ADHD does. You get caught in the moment, or focused on what you're currently doing, and probably forget about an appointment every now and again, and then trying the medication and being consistent with it, or needing to switch them left and right. And there's benefits to them, but I'm sure there's also some downsides to taking a medication, right?

Landon Bryant:
There's definitely.

Ellie Pike:
So I'm curious if you could paint the picture of, and this is your story, this is not going to be for anyone or everyone who takes medication for ADHD, but what does your brain feel like on a day when you take your meds versus a day that you don't?

Landon Bryant:
Well, that's so interesting. I try to be very consistent with taking them, but every now and then, you do need to take a break and take a weekend off. Just for me, it's honestly really scary to not take the medicine because I don't trust myself at all with driving, I don't trust myself to do the things I'm supposed to. And again, this comes from years of dealing with this, so it's also something to work out in therapeutic situations. But it's just so different for me, on the medicine, I can focus on what I'm doing.

And I take short-acting dextroamphetamine, I think it is, it's like Adderall basically, I take a short-acting one, so I can take two a day or three a day. So it's like this rollercoaster ride that I get on, and at first, I'm just at level zero before I take it, and then buckle up, here we go, and there's about four hours of really intense focus and I can do what I'm supposed to be doing. And then, it wears off and there's not a thought in my head, not a single thought. And then, I take it again and go on the rollercoaster ride again. Rollercoasters are fun, but if you get on rollercoasters twice a day every day, it can get exhausting, so it's this cyclical thing.

There's long-lasting ones that can last all day. That didn't work for me, it was too intense and then I got too used to it very quickly, so it just was doing absolutely nothing. So the short-acting is what works for me. So every day, I feel like I'm on that journey of not taking it, taking it, I go through phases throughout the day of it. I can tell immediately when it wears off, because there went all the thoughts that I had. But if I don't take it for a weekend, or if I take a few days off from it, just basically everything falls apart as far as the systems that I've built to help me through life. Laundry is a disaster when you're not on your medicine, just the daily activities of living, the things that you have to do every day to maintain a lifestyle, that falls away for me. So it's worth it for me to take the medicine and go on the rollercoaster every day, even when I don't want to.

So back to medicine though, the process of obtaining and maintaining and having the medicine is one of the hardest things about having ADHD, and it can be really demoralizing. It makes you feel like a drug seeker, it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong a lot of times. ADHD medicine is controlled, it's a controlled substance, so when you get it filled, you have to get it filled exactly 30 days from when you got your last 30-day supply. So there's no day, you never have extra medicine, it's only the medicine that you need specifically for those days.

Well, we're people with ADHD, so getting there on time, on the right day, making sure we called it in, can be very stressful. And then, you'll get to the pharmacy and they're like, "We're out for four days," and then that's very stressful. Or they're like, "You've got to call your doctor and get this prior authorization," and then now you're back and forth with your doctor, you're back and forth with the pharmacy. Maybe they're like, "We don't have it, but you can go over here and get it," but you can't go over there and get it, your one prescription only works at the one place, so you have to go back to your doctor, get another prescription, take it over there. It's just a mess.

I definitely think it's very inconsiderate of people who have ADHD, but I also understand why we have controlled substances, and I do think that the medicines should be controlled, they're definitely not for everybody by any means. But our society at large and the medical industry has a lot of work to do as far as that goes.

Ellie Pike:
It sounds like there's not much wiggle room, and even planning for vacation, if you have to get your prescription filled while you're on vacation, but it's a class A or class B, something like that, where it's highly controlled, and your pharmacy can't just transfer it to another pharmacy. So I can empathize with that process and that it's super challenging, because you have to think ahead, you have to have systems in place in order to be able to access your medication, and also the providers in place and the insurance. There's so many levels and hoops to jump through in order to get the medication and medical care that you need, it's so tough.

Landon Bryant:
And the medicine is what would make me do those things. So when you don't have the medicine and you're trying to get it and you're having to jump through all those hoops, it's really a challenge. And I know that probably sounds so lazy to people without ADHD, because it's like, just go do it. But it just doesn't work that way, that's not how an ADHD brain works, it's just not. I wish it was.

Ellie Pike:
If life was that easy, where you could just go do something or just change your mind, just do this instead, none of us would have a mental health issue.

Landon Bryant:
Just fix it, it's fine.

Ellie Pike:
So I do want to ask you, so besides medication, are there systems that you put into place that help you with day-to-day life?

Landon Bryant:
There are. My whole current whole situation is one giant accommodation, I feel like. I learned to accommodate myself from my university, and my wife, her career for the past 14 years was teaching special education, so her job was really to accommodate and help accommodate a lot of high performing students that did have some learning disorders. So I live with someone who is an expert in that field, fortunately, so our whole life is set up to where we either are okay with the side effects of the things that we live with, or she's got systems in place to help me deal with it.

And then, when I blew up on the internet, I knew I needed a team, because just the communication alone was enough. And one thing that it does to me is when I get overwhelmed is I just will shut down entirely. I needed somebody to just help me with my day-to-day and help me know what to do every day. Whatever this job is that I have now is so random and it's so all over the place and it's not the same every day, it's a podcast here, it's an interview there, it's a brand trip there, and I was unable to keep up with it, it was so stressful. And I understand that I'm in one of the best places to be with social media and I'm so grateful for that, so I knew I needed to be enjoying it, so I knew I needed some help.

So I hired our friend, her name is Terry, and she is just a business-minded lady. Every day, I get on my iPhone, she updates my to-do list, and so I just do that, whatever that is. So instead of having to plan out the week ahead of time, she plans out the week ahead of time, and I just look at what I'm supposed to do on Monday, and then I cross that off the list, and that is the best money I've ever spent. I've gotten so much more done because of that. It's like there was all this floating around, all around me, floating around, and just had no sense to it, and this helps it be less chaotic. So I feel like I'm able to be more creative and to create more. So I make way more videos in a day than I would if I had to do all the rest of the stuff and had to keep up with it. There's this sense of dread and this sense of what are you forgetting that that really takes away from me.

So the biggest accommodation that I have is Terry, but my wife guides all of it. She's led me to see what I need and what needs to be done and to make that happen, so I am just very blessed with a lot of women, honestly, there's a lot of women that make this happen.

Ellie Pike:
I really appreciate you saying that all of those things are hard for you, because that in itself is hard to, I think, admit for a lot of folks, and it sounds like it creates this feeling of... I like what you said, when things were just floating around you. So you're probably wondering, where do I even start? Which one do I grab?

Landon Bryant:
Which one do I grab? Exactly.

Ellie Pike:
How do I pin it down? I follow some folks who do different types of things for ADHD, and one of them is even a dietitian that specifically works with people with ADHD, and she talks about how hard meal prep or planning for meals is because it's so many multiple steps.

Landon Bryant:
So hard.

Ellie Pike:
And so, my husband, who has ADH, said recently, he found a website where you can pay $12 for a whole month, or something like that, and you can generate a meal plan, where it also comes up with your list of groceries alongside of your meal plan. And I don't personally love that, because I like the creative aspect of me diving into what do I want to cook, I also like to improv, so I don't know if I love that system for myself, but I've really had to pause a couple of times this week and say, "Oh, I could actually benefit from this." But most certainly, I think that he would feel like he can contribute more to our meals, because some of the planning and prep is done, so then he can just come in and do the creation of it. And that likens to your story quite a bit, and you being able to do the creation and the part that you're really good at.

Landon Bryant:
Precisely. And meal planning is a difficult thing for people with ADHD, we struggle in our house with that kind of a thing. I can't believe it's every day, I have to do this at least three times a day. What in the world? There's so much to decide? And there's so many decisions that go into it, and you get that decision fatigue to where that even making dinner is a difficult decision to make. So it is real, the meal fatigue is really for real.

Ellie Pike:
I really appreciate what you're saying about decision fatigue, that seems really pertinent, I appreciate that.

Landon Bryant:
And when I was a teacher, it was really intense, because I had been decisions all day, all day long, from four-year-olds to sixth graders, then you come home and you also have to decide what to eat, and it was just too much. That would be enough to just send me right over the edge. Okay, that's it, I lost it. We also have to eat food at the end of that long day? I cannot deal with it, it really can be overwhelming.

And overwhelming and frustration and the emotions that come with that are part of ADHD and it's something that you have to be aware of, and it's something that I'm constantly working to catch in the middle of, when I'm feeling that frustration or when I'm getting worked up like that. I'm not ever going to say I'm good at catching it, but I'm trying to learn to be better at being aware of those moments so that you don't lash out at the people that you love, and that you don't say things that you would regret, or that you don't have an emotional outburst over literally dinner, the smallest of things. That's the side that is really gross about ADHD is the emotional dysregulation part of it.

Ellie Pike:
Well, and adding to the pieces of ADHD characteristics, I know for a lot of folks, the challenging pieces are anything that could be labeled, quote, unquote, "mundane" and novelty-seeking is a big part of ADHD characteristics. Is that something that you can relate to too?

Landon Bryant:
Very much so. So I just got back from a really intense trip, I worked the all day, every day, and so then you get home and now it's back to making videos every day. Yesterday, I really struggled getting going, because it's like, well, I just did a lot harder, more intense, more exciting things, I don't want to do this part anymore. That's a real feeling that you get all the time and you have to work through it. But the novelty of things definitely has a lot to do with how into it you are, and once the novelty is worn off, it's really difficult.

Ellie Pike:
You alluded earlier to having specific strengths because of being neurodiverse. Would you elaborate on that of what are those strengths?

Landon Bryant:
Obviously, I'm very interested in a lot of different things, and I think that is a strength very much. The array of things that I'm interested in, and the array of things I've done because of ADHD and interest in looking for something interesting and interest-seeking, has really defined who I am. I've done so many different things, from working in science labs, to the emergency room, to waiting tables, and all of it has built me into who I am today and what I do today, and I think it's a superpower to be interested in all those things. But also the superpower of hyper-focus, if I am able to spend a whole day writing, because that's what I was into. Learning to wrangle that and use it for good is the trick to ADHD, using the ADHD for good and finding the thing that it helps you do and then doing that.

Ellie Pike:
I absolutely love hearing you say those positive things, because I know that there are so many challenges that come with ADHD, but the positives are so unique. I wish I had an ounce of that kind of focus on new interests and energy to follow this train of thought for a long time, but instead I'm multitasking all the time, which I know is a skill that a lot of people with ADHD wish they had, and so it's pros and cons to all of it. And so, I really appreciate that you're able to see some of that. And I imagine that you haven't always been able to, right? And especially when you were undiagnosed as a kiddo. So one of my questions for you is, what do you wish you knew about ADHD or mental health when you were a kid, or now, anytime?

Landon Bryant:
If I had not had the experience of really believing I had all these personal failures, I don't know who I would be today, because a lot of what I am is driven by that anxiety, so I would just be a totally different person. I like who I am now though, so I would hate to change anything. I would not go back and change the way anything is, I'm pleased with the outcome. But it definitely would be a different experience with who I am in the world. It's really hard to undo the trauma of failing for so long and thinking that it's your fault, and it defines everything now. So that would be something that I would do a little bit differently is just generally believe in it and reference that, instead of thinking it was me personally.

Ellie Pike:
I imagine the more you are educated on the science behind it, it probably helps take away that power of believing it was your fault.

Landon Bryant:
Definitely.

Ellie Pike:
So I know that you've mentioned that to me before, that your brain is a physical organ, and that's very different than, hey, I failed, or I am a failure.

Landon Bryant:
Very different. And ADHD is a memory disorder, and it's parts of your brain that are not working the way that other people's brains works. And I hate to say they're not working correctly, because brains work. And it's things like how you were talking about multitasking, the reason that you can't multitask when you're ADHD is because you can't remember what you're multitasking. When it's not right in front of you, it is very difficult to bring that back up.

And it even goes into relationships with people, unfortunately, some of my best friends, I don't really talk to all that often, I don't talk to as much as I should, because they're not right in front of me. The thing that's not right in front of me, if it's not on my to-do list for today, or if it's not in this room, it does not exist to my brain, because my brain is so focused on what it's doing right then, literally everything else is shut aside. So when there was all these tasks floating around, I don't have the ability to remember which one I'm supposed to focus on, much less to remember all these things. So it gets really overwhelming, and that's when you start getting those feelings of frustration and overwhelm.

But it comes down to just memory in general. And when I learned that, and when I understood that it is a literal organ, just like your heart is an organ, just like everything in your body, that was revolutionary for me to be like, oh, wait. Because we are our brains, in a way, I feel like I am that part of my body up there. So it's just hard to understand that that is a physical thing and it has physical limitations and reactions and ways that it's unique. That was quite shocking to me to realize that.

Ellie Pike:
I really like your description. And before we leave, I'd love to know if there's anything that you would say to any other adults specifically that are out there with ADHD?

Landon Bryant:
I would say that if you have any thought that maybe, in the back of your brain, do you feel like you could be better, or do you feel like you wish you had done this, or you wish you had not done that, if you have those feelings that are a theme of your life, it's worth it to investigate. It can't hurt you to investigate it at all. That's the thing about medical professionals is that they're professionals, and if that's not your route, that's not your route, and they're going to let you know. I understand access to healthcare is a privilege, but if you have access to healthcare and have the ability to get it checked out...

I'm 15 or 16 years into this journey of believing what this is. You don't have to believe it at the very beginning to just go talk about it and just discuss it and sit down with a professional and see what's going on, because there's a lot of things that it causes that aren't just ADHD itself, like anxiety, and it affects your relationships with people that you love, and it affects your day-to-day. So I think it's very... You are worth enough to go have that investigated, you're worth it. And it doesn't mean that you're flawed, it doesn't mean that something's wrong. It just means that there's some explanations, there's some explanations available, and they can help.

Ellie Pike:
Thank you so much for that encouragement, I think we all need that, and it's an amazing way that we can support others with that similar message.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Mental Note Podcast. I hope Landon's insights have inspired you to think differently about the challenges you face and the unique strengths that lie within them. His journey from feeling like he was failing at everything to embracing his ADHD as a source of creativity is a testament to the power of self-awareness, perseverance, and finding the right support. Remember, success isn't about fitting into a mold, it's about finding your own path and thriving in it.

Mental Note is brought to you by Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center. If you'd like to talk to a trained therapist about treatment, please call them at (877) 850-7199. If you need a free support group, check out pathlightbh.com/support-groups and eatingrecovery.com/support-groups. If you like our show, sign up for our e-newsletter, and learn more about the people we interview at mentalnotepodcast.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review on iTunes, it helps others find our podcast. Mental Note is produced and hosted by me, Ellie Pike, edited by Carrie Daniels, and directed by Sam Pike. Till next time.

Presented by

Ellie Pike, MA, LPC

Ellie Pike is the director of alumni, family and community outreach at ERC & Pathlight Behavioral Health Centers. Over the years, she creatively combined her passions for clinical work with…

Presented by

Landon Bryant

Landon Bryant is a dynamic force in the world of social media, rapidly gaining fame as an influential Southern storyteller. You likely know Landon from his often hilarious, sometimes controversial…