S2E47: The Hidden Neuroscience Behind Self-Sabotage + guest Brian DesRoches

Julie Legg speaks with psychotherapist and author Brian DesRoches (Living a Trigger-Free Life), whose work focuses on the neuroscience of emotional learning and a process called memory reconsolidation. Brian explains why so many people struggle with recurring triggers, self-sabotage, and emotional patterns even after years of insight or therapy.

Rather than simply managing reactions or trying to “think positive,” Brian describes how the brain actually stores emotional learning and how those memories can be updated and rewired through a process that allows the brain to recognise when past threats are no longer true.

The conversation explores internal conflict, self-criticism, and the protective mechanisms behind behaviours many ADHDers experience and offers a hopeful perspective: that lasting emotional change isn’t about trying harder, it’s about helping the brain learn something new.

Key Points from the Episode:

• Emotional memories vs explicit memories
• What memory reconsolidation actually means
• Why insight alone rarely changes behaviour
• The brain’s constant threat prediction system
• Internal conflict: one foot on the gas, one on the brake
• Why willpower and discipline often fail
• Self-sabotage as a protective mechanism
• Updating emotional memories through new experiences
• Reframing ADHD self-criticism and identity
• Why emotional learning may represent an evolutionary shift

Links:

• WEBSITE: https://www.briandesroches.com/
• LIVING A TRIGGER-FREE LIFE: https://a.co/d/bDgsLtC
• LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-desroches-12313731a/ 

Thanks for listening. 

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 🌐 WEBSITE: ADHDifference.nz  

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 📖 BOOK: The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD 

 ℹ️ DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or ADHDifference. Read More

Transcript

BRIAN: The brain recognizes the difference, the mismatch. And because it is an updating process, it learns, adapts, and it predicts. It will then unlock or unwire that neural network. Quite literally unwire it. It stays open for 5 hours during which time I can feed it the truth.

JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests, bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today I'm joined by Brian DesRoches, a psychotherapist with decades of experience integrating modern neuroscience with practical, emotionally transformative work. Brian has been in private practice since the late 1980s and has trained extensively in approaches like EMDR, brain spotting, internal family systems, and coherence therapy. His latest book, Living a Trigger-free Life, explores something that feels almost revolutionary. At the heart of Brian's work is the neuroscience of emotional learning and a process called memory reconsolidation. In simple terms, it's the discovery that emotional memories, once believed to be permanently hardwired, can actually be rewritten. This conversation is especially relevant for those navigating ADHD and complex emotional patterns. Today we're talking about the hidden neuroscience behind self- sabotage, the feeling voice that quietly drives behaviour, and why true change isn't about trying harder. It's about helping the brain learn something new. Welcome to the show, Brian. [It's good to be here, Julie. Thank you. Thank you.] I'm so looking forward to today's conversation. So, I'm going to dive straight in, Brian, with the questions. You've been in private practice since the late 1980s, and you've seen multiple waves of therapeutic approaches come and go. What led you to focus so deeply on the neuroscience of emotional learning rather than the more traditional symptom management?

BRIAN: It's a great question. I mean that's the essence of it is one my own experience personally of about 17 years before I became a therapist of a variety of different kinds of therapies. Some of which I could relieve some symptoms, maybe feel a little bit better like oh I'm doing something but there was no enduring nothing ever lasted. I would relapse into old behaviour patterns, frustration, negative self-talk, anxiety in certain social situations. I just Yeah. And so I had to manage all those. So what I saw when I learned about emotional learning and memory reconsolidation was that ah no wonder I'm fixing not the cause of the problem. I'm trying to fix the aftermath that happens when the cause of the problem within me gets activated. That opened my eyes up to not only my own frustrations with traditional forms of psychotherapy, talk therapy if you will. That insight and understanding didn't work, but also being very aware that just began to see the world differently, that people weren't bad, they just were protecting themselves from things that happened to them that they can't remember that they learned about the world. William Wordsworth in his poem ode to a childhood, intimations of a childhood, beautiful poem. He calls it the veils of forgetting. We forget who we are as kind of cosmic beings little children curious, wondrous, fascinated and we want to learn. And then we forget and that's because we develop, we learn how to function in the world, how to adapt, to survive or our brain is learning how to adapt to survive. It's really our brain that's doing it. And that opened me up to just this whole world of possibility for change and particularly what my triggers were about. My triggers like whoa there it is again. What is the threat that I'm experiencing right now that would cause me to withdraw or plate or be nice or not accept a compliment? And it was quite a profound was, as I say in the book is a, was a paradigm shift for me. Just the world totally changed and that's when I said this is what I'm going to do.

JULIE:  I do resonate with you talking about the playfulness and the joy of childhood and then we layer upon years of adulting when we cope and we lose ourselves, don't we? But underneath that we're all the child who we were but maybe lost along the way. Very, very interesting. Thank you for that. Yeah. One of your family members has ADHD and you've had many conversations about the emotional impact of that diagnosis. How does witnessing their journey shape your understanding of the triggers that you talk about self-criticism and identity? 

BRIAN: Yeah, you know, that's a great question because my family member was diagnosed she was about eight or nine and it was hard for her. It explained a lot of things, but I went into a way of relating to her that was counteractive because I didn't know at that point in time about emotional learning and what her little brain probably learned about functioning in the world, in class with friends, at home that she didn't know she learned. And so when she would start making kind of self-deprecating comments, negative comments, I just don't get it. I would jump into rescuing and counteract that instead of engaging with her. Instead of saying, "Tell me about that. Let's talk about that." To normalize, if you will, her experience and not make it just, "Oh, you've got a problem." I would change totally the way I related to her. I would be less counteractive, less jumping in, more engaging. Let's talk about how we can do this. I would attempt to understand her experience as opposed to fix her experience. That would be the... that taught me a lot. After I learned about emotional learning, I realized, oh my gosh, if I could go back and I've talked to her about that. I call it transformational listening. I've talked to her about it. We've got some wonderful conversations. I think healing conversations in terms of how she learned to feel and think about herself with her ADHD. And I learned a lot because I learned how to grow up and not be so reactive. 

JULIE: Absolutely. As a parent, I can, you know, really align with that. You want to help your child who is obviously suffering and inward, inwardly and outwardly expressing some really negative self-talk. You want to come say, "Oh, what a load of rubbish. You're a handsome young man or there's, you know...." 

BRIAN: Yes, that is the counteractive listening. We counteract what someone says because we're uncomfortable with it. As parents, I mean, boy, do I remember that. I would do that very differently now. I would engage with them to know that they were heard, listened to, and understood as opposed to, oh, you know, you're not this. That's not listening to my daughter. I wasn't listening to her. I was trying to fix her because I was uncomfortable. And I learned a lot about my own triggers about that when I really looked at what was going because that triggered me. It's like what's wrong with me? What is what can't you know? It was a growth opportunity for me when I look back at it now and since we've talked about it since. Yeah. As parents, we try to do our best and sometimes doing our best we counteract as opposed to engage. You were talking about triggers and for decades people were told that emotional memories were essentially hardwired that we needed to manage the triggers better. And then neuroscience introduced this memory reconsolidation showing that emotional learnings can actually be updated. So this is what I'm really interested in. 

JULIE: What is memory reconsolidation in simple terms and why is it such profound shift in the way we understand healing? 

BRIAN: Yeah, I love that question. I think you can tell by the way I'm smiling. I just... my excitement around this kind of takes over sometimes. So, I can feel it. My excitement around this there are two basic kinds of memory sets if you will. There's explicit memories. I could ask you what you had for dinner yesterday and you go, "Oh, I had beans and sausage or something." And that's an explicit memory. Or tell me about a good event in high school or a vacation you and we can see it, we can feel it, we know it's a memory. There's another kind of memory called implicit memory where we have an experience, but we don't know it's a memory. An example, you probably can't remember when you used learned to use a fork. Do you remember when you learned to use a fork? No, I don't either. But today, I can pick up a fork and use it because it has become an implicit memory. I don't have to take out the book that says how to use a fork on a daily basis. I know how to drive a car, how to swing a golf club, you know, how to use a computer. These are all implicit. I don't have to consciously bring it up. Emotional learning or emotional memories are also implicit. That is we acquire information. Our brain requires information acquires it about experiences. And let me clear the word experience is a Latin word. It means that's its origin, it means the outcome of what one goes through. That's literally what it means. So, if I have an experience of being bullied in grade school or if I have an experience of my parents being so busy most of the time that they ignore me and I try to get attention, I'm going to learn that trying to get attention and being ignored are synonymous. Then the emotion of being ignored when I try to get painful. So, I may decide to avoid getting attention. I'm going to withdraw because my brain its survival bias doesn't want me to feel the pain. But I don't know that I'm learning that. I don't know in the first seven years in the first 15 actually. But in the first seven, we don't know that we're learning these things. And as a result today, emotional learning, what memory reconsolidation does, prior to the turn of the century, it was thought that emotional learnings, which by the way, emotional are in the subcortical regions of the right hemisphere. They're right down here. And we just know them by feelings. We don't know them by images or any words because they're just memories and we don't know that we acquired them. Prior to the turn of the century, it was thought that these memories were indelible. As you say, you could not do anything. Back all the way back to Freud. Ah, you could have insight. You could have understanding. Oh, I know that I avoid this because every time I did this, my father told me I was something. I was no good at it. Okay, we can have insight but that doesn't change anything because the memory of the experience is still within me in my brain. And until I change that memory having all the insight in the world I know for my own self I had a lot of insight into my variety of various maladaptive patterns of behaviour and because I couldn't change them. Guess what I did. I criticized myself. What's wrong with me? I got a problem. I thought I was my brain, but I'm not. We're not our brains. And so, a memory consolidation enables us to unlock or unwire or deconsolidate a consolidated memory. So, it deconsolidates and it does that by introducing a what is called a threat prediction, error, an error. So the brain's always predicting. What happens is if I introduce to the brain information that contradicts what it predicts is going to happen because of what I learned will happen in the past, and the brain is predicting, it creates anxiety. And I introduce a prediction correction to the brain. The brain recognizes the difference, the mismatch, and because is an updating process, it learns, adapts, and it predicts. It will then unlock or unwire that neural network. Quite literally unwire it. It stays open for 5 hours, during which time I can feed it the truth. I'm good at what I do, and I'm still learning. People accept me for who I am. I've been to a lot of places and I've... people have never ignored me. I've done presents whatever it is we can introduce information that contradicts what the learning is which means we have to become conscious of it. That unwiring process allows the brain to update itself and then it reconsolidates. So we have a consolidated emotional memory. It gets activated. Did I introduce a correction to what that memory says is going to happen to me? Yeah, it may have happened when I was three, but not when I'm 47. No, it's not going to happen. And so I introduce that correction. Then the brain deconsolidates that memory. It then after 5 hours reconsolidates back down, closes back down with the new information. So I don't get activated as much in the future and the more you do it the more the update sticks really at the synaptic level of the brain. Julie, in traditional therapy, talk therapy, let's say, you would have an awareness. Oh, yeah. Because my mother was so busy and she threatened me with this, then I've learned to always be nice and plate everybody or boy, I cannot accept I have many clients I understand as well. Do not accept a compliment because we'll think well people will think that you're better than them. So, never accept a compliment. It's a very common one varieties of that. So let's say I'm in a situation in which I get a compliment. Brian, great job. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And that triggers me because my brain remembers if I accept I don't know this it's happened but my brain goes "Ooh if you accept this compliment then you will be shamed and humiliated. People will think that and they'll reject you." Let's say that's what my brain learned. There's the threat. If I accept it, then I'll be shamed, humiliated, and rejected. So, there's the prediction. I'm now conscious of that's happening. Okay, great insight. But that doesn't change anything. But if I now get activated and I remember all the times that I accepted compliments when people said, "Thank you. You did a great." I say, "Thank you very much." Which I really appreciate it. I work really feel good about and I didn't get shamed, humiliated or rejected. Nothing bad happened. And I look at that and while I've got my negative state in the threat state, that's the anxious state. I bring in this truth which is now wait a minute. I've accepted compliments a lot and people haven't rejected me, laughed at me, shamed me or humiliated, they just yeah, we just go on with our day. When the brain recognizes the mismatch, what it's threatening is what it's predicting is going to happen is met with information that mismatches it. It's a contradiction. The brain has to update itself Julie, has to do it because it's an adaptive mechanism. So, it's a learning new information and that's cooperating with evolution. I think we're cooperating with evolution as opposed to fighting it at that point in time. When you have the negative state combined with this positive experiences coming in, the brain goes, I think I better update myself. It unlocks it at that point in time. And that unlocking or unwiring is the five-hour process during which time I will continue to feed my brain. Hey, you know, I remember all the times I accepted compliments. It's okay. It's okay for me to do that. In fact, it's honouring of the person that says that to me. Isn't that wonderful? Then the brain closes down with this new information. And the next time I get a compliment, the activation, the triggering decreases and decreases to practically negligible or nothing. It's a very healthy way to live because we don't get as why you that's why we don't we don't get activated which is hard in the body, emotions, the nervous system, the inflammatory system, the immune system all take a beating in that process. 

JULIE: Yeah. And during this process, as you said, sort of deactivating the negative memory and introducing and reinforcing the new one, then that new one becomes the new, that's ... 

BRIAN: Yeah. And you're now conscious of it, too. It's like, oh, if you feel like sometimes I still experience my because of my childhood, my oh boy, people are going to think I'm a fraud, the imposter syndrome. And I know, I know where that came from. That has nothing to do with today. That has everything to do with something I learned when I was really young. And on the contrary, I can tell people what I think, what I feel, what's happening. We can have a respectful conversation. It just opens thing up. I recognize what it is. It's just my brain doing my brain survival thing. That's all that's happening. It's all that's happening. Excellent. It's very different. It's a very, it's a very one of the challenges, at least for my profession, I believe, is a very different way to thinking because we're so used to counteractive measures. Yeah. Oh, no. Let's talk about thinking positive things. Well, that's okay to do, but it doesn't change anything, you know, or let's ah when you get stressed, just get relief, do something, you know, go for a run. That's great. But nothing changes. There's no change. So, the new paradigm really allows us to evolve emotionally probably for the first time in 250,000 years. That's a species. We can evolve emotionally, which we haven't done very much of in 250,000 years. We are still pretty stone age as you can see in what's happening in the world. This is pretty stone age stuff. This is not Homo sapiens the wise one. So yeah, I think I get very excited because I see the potential of us really evolving emotionally with this knowledge. 

JULIE: And doesn't the world need that right now? Absolutely. Yes. Brian, I want to talk to you about internal conflict. And you use a metaphor of having one foot on the gas and the other one on the brake. Meaning wanting to speak up or connect or move forward, but this invisible force that holds us back. So I know for many ADHDers know this thing very well. What's actually happening neurologically in these moments of internal conflict? 

BRIAN: That's a... Yeah, that's a... and we all have that experience where we want to do something but boy, you know, it's like I put my foot on the gas because I want to go and at the same time I put my foot on the brake, it's like and that's hard on the engine. That's really hard on the engine. So what's happening is the brain has taken in some information a stimulus or an internal I want to do something. I'm in a meeting. I'm in a business meeting with my team and they're talking about problems and I know that I could contribute. I've got some knowledge and information and I want to do it. But my experience of speaking out when I was young was that people laughed. So I learned that speaking out and shame, laughter, being humiliated, they got fused as a learning in my brain. I learned, my brain learned if you do this, that's going to happen. So I'm in this meeting and I'm 35 and we're having a meeting and I want to add to it. Put on the gas. Oh, I really I can add to this. And the brain goes stop. It creates anxiety. We feel this tightness in our body right away. The body's sign that there's a threat here if you do this and we feel it and it was like "Wait a minute." A foot on the brake and we sit there and what's happening the brain has perceived a potential threat based on something it learned in the past. If I really get involved if, I really fall in love with someone they will consume me, which is unfortunately a common one for many, I will be lost but it's not conscious. So the brain perceives the information from inside or outside. It does its always doing a threat assessment all the time. So it does its very quick threat assessment very quick. It determines oh you learned this back then. Then it generates anxiety because it says "Don't go there." So we start to feel anxious. Anxiety is telling us there's a threat here. There's no threat, but to the brain there is. To the brain there is a threat. And it's very real to the brain. And it feels very real to us. And the brain that activates anxiety. The anxiety activates a protective mechanism. Conflict, criticism, avoidance, withdrawal, placating, people pleasing, addictions. The brain then activates a protective mechanism that are commonly the problems or the symptoms that we bring to psychotherapy to be fixed and we get a relief but we don't get change because the real cause is the learning. If I do this then this will happen. I may have acquired that 30, 40, 50 in some cases I can tell you 70 years ago with some of my clients that are in their 70s and 80s. It's like, whoa, wow, they just realize where they acquired this learning and then we can change it. So, it's a sequence that happens in the brain that information comes in, the brain does its threat assessment, determines that what I want to do or what's happening is a threat based on something it learned in the past, activates anxiety. Anxiety activates a protective mechanism and my foot's on the brake. 

JULIE: I can personally relate to that, Brian. I remember. I was diagnosed when I was 52. So I had years of undiagnosed life. And I recall being very nervous and anxious about conflict, any kind of conflict, particularly say in a corporate environment where I wanted to speak out and to say my piece. And I know I now understand it, but at the time I could be quite blunt with my words. I had lots of energy. I could talk very fast. It might not come, you know, and I was almost afraid of myself. So in comes the threat of the conflict and the ramifications of that is that I felt invisible. I felt that I never really got to say what I thought was really important. And so this loop... I can completely relate to this loop. No, now I know what it is. Yeah. Because I didn't get to have my say. I didn't get to stand up for myself in a way that I thought I truly deserved. Very, very interesting. It's all making sense. But at the time, yeah, lots of unpacking to do for sure. 

BRIAN: So, how I'm just curious for yourself. I mean, here you are doing a podcast. You're very visible. You're putting yourself out there. You're giving, you're using your voice to influence people and to bring knowledge. That's very different than sitting in a business meeting and not saying how you... wow. Wow. 

JULIE: Yeah. However, since my ADHD diagnosis and many, many insights and lots of understanding, I have blossomed in so far as I know that I have something to say and I really want to have this conversation. And I guess that passion and drive allows me to do this. Wow. Whereas I didn't understand it before. Yeah. 

BRIAN: Wow. So what I hear is that you recognize, wait a minute, I have gifts to bring. I have things I want to say. I have a voice that I want to share. I have experience, you know, being an actor. I have experience with being and expressing. And what I hear, that's a form of memory reconsolidation right there. Right there it is. You introduce to the brain. So wait a minute. I've got a lot of Whoa. And so you introduce to the brain information that contradict. Oh, you better I'm invisible. I better stay safety. And wow. Wow. It's very surprising when I talk to people with this. They start creating experiences of memory reconsolidation for themselves with friends at parties. It's a I call it a real time transformation by being aware of the learning and then pushing beyond taking the foot off the brake and finding what the brain predicted. It didn't happen. No, it didn't. Did it? It didn't. Did didn't. And the brain just goes, "Okay, well, update time." No. Wonderful. I'm glad it is. 

JULIE: Yeah. Yay for updates, I say. Why does trying harder and being more disciplined or using willpower rarely solve that kind of self- sabotage?

BRIAN: Well, you know, that's a great question and first let's look at it from a cultural perspective. In our western culture, trying harder, doing more, pushing, you know, is very much, you know... I remember reading an advertisement for a workshop and the advertisement said, "Battle your negative beliefs. Fight against the feelings." And I thought to myself, "Oh my god, we're doing inside what's happening outside in the world." No. And there are many forms of therapy, experiential therapy such as internal family systems or somatic therapies that don't do the counteract. They do the invite. They invite that experience. And so what is so critical is when you recognize you're self-sabotaging, anything that you do that you feel or I'm sabotaged is a protective mechanism. Your brain is doing it because that's what it's supposed to do is to protect you. It doesn't know it's self-sabotage. It's just doing its job and it does it well. Unfortunately, it's using old information to do it, which then causes the withdrawal, the avoidance, the conflict, the negative talk. Recognizing my experience personally and professionally is recognizing those patterns. When behaviours become patterns, that's when we really need to look at it because it's become so automatic. And so if I push harder, what am I looking at? If I'm going to push going to push through, I'm going to fight. I'm actually looking at the problem. I am actually reinforcing the very thing that I want to change. There's a.. in neuroscience there's a there's a kind of a statement. It's called the quantum Zeno effect. And it's basically this. What you focus on you strengthen. And so people will say I don't want to be unhappy. Okay? They're looking at themselves unhappy and they're reinforcing unhappiness as opposed to I want to be able to deal with feelings unhappiness in a positive way. How can I do that? What creates that feeling? Let me explore that instead of fighting it. You look at what what's behind this? What thoughts, feelings, what experience? What awareness is out there? Yeah, that's so pushing against. Yes, we do it. It's so easy. I even fall back with clients even now and even though I've been doing this for this form of, if you will, healing and transformation for about 11 years now. I have family I even now sometimes I'll counteract. I'll say, "No, no, no. You don't. Let's talk about and I recognize Brian, you're doing this because you're uncomfortable, not because they're uncomfortable. You're doing it because you want to fix them instead of helping them heal and transform themselves." That's an acute awareness. It's very different. It's very different. Yeah. 

JULIE: Brian, you're an author of course and your book Living a Trigger-free Life and you talk about that understanding and emotion and managing emotional reactions often don't create enduring change, which we talked about. And these calming techniques don't necessarily eliminate the actual trigger. Why have these counteractive approaches like positive thinking or surface level regulation become so dominant?

BRIAN: You know, I really have to look at that myself both personally and professionally trying to like and you can't do something about something that you don't know or you can't see. Example, I like to play golf and I'm trying to improve my putting. So, I'll get some, I'll go "Here's how I putt." I'll get, I'll use that as feedback so I can revise my stance and the way I hold the club and all kinds of things. I'm basically learning and adding to my learning and improving it. The predominant model for change either you change these subconscious you know, change your subconscious beliefs which is possible to do but it's the unconscious experiences that are driving all the vast majority of problems that people experience. It isn't subconscious beliefs, but we do we try to reprogram our subconscious and because that's the only thing we could do based on the information that we had at that point in time and for the majority of the 20th century based on that experience. That's all we could do. Insight, understanding, develop a different neural network, think differently, think positive thoughts, exercise, meditate. These things are all good and important, but they don't really change the underlying cause of the problem or symptom to begin with. And with that neuroscience, particularly the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation, that's changed the ball game. Once again, a paradigm shift. I think it'll be 10 to 30 years before our models of helping people transform change. It'll at least be at least a generation, maybe two, because it's so radically different. It's so radically different. We're not used to engaging with our emotions and we're not used to it. We particularly negative ones is like push them away, push them away. And because that's what we've learned that's been the only model, if you will or template that's changing fortunately with the work of like the Coherence Therapy Institute, hopefully my book will have some influence on that. I don't know. But it's a, it's just different way of thinking. A different way of thinking. And we all know that different ways of thinking are uncomfortable for all of us as a species because we have to develop new patterns. And that's hard to do. That's just hard to do. 

JULIE: If the old ways don't work though, would be absolutely foolish not to try new ways. An alternative. 

BRIAN: Yeah, that's ... I couldn't agree more. It's uncomfortable and I know when I first started using this process and this understanding I wrote a 10-page little thing for my clients and I realized that it wasn't enough. So I spent seven years research it to get to produce this book because it has drawings in it about what's happening in the brain, that people really understand this is not hocus pocus. This is not. This is very real, very real neuroscience that we can now apply like a technology. I call it a human technology because its application produces predictable results in terms of transformation.

JULIE: With the release of your book Living a Trigger-free Life, what's happening right now? What feels meaningful or hopeful to you right now? What's happening in your world right now? 

BRIAN: Oh, that's a wonderful question. All of us, I do believe all of us as human beings want to create a world of connection, a world of belonging where we feel like we belong and we want others to feel like they belong. That there's a sense of, there's a lot of research going on right now in terms of consciousness and how we can raise our level of consciousness and awareness instead of division of unification and unity and I believe Julie that is a spiritual process. I think the cosmic child, the cosmic being, we see that with babies. What happens when you see a baby? There's a feeling that happens inside of us, a feeling. Or we see a young child playing and it's like, wow, that still lives in us, that curiosity, that awe, that connection with nature and with each other. But we have forgotten it because of the we've had to adapt to the world of being a human being as opposed to a spiritual being. So I'm very interested in and doing a lot of research around what lies underneath the learnings that we had to acquire to adapt to the world as a human being. What lies underneath? And so I'm doing a lot of research around that. I find that fascinating. 

JULIE: Wow. And hopefully another book will explain it all to the rest of the world. 

BRIAN: I thank you very much. That's what I'm hoping. That's what I'm hoping to certainly. Yes. 

JULIE: Wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing the conversation back to ADHD. I've got a couple of questions for you. Especially for ADHDers who have internalized these messages of being too much or not enough, how can understanding these patterns as protective rather than effective restore self-trust? 

BRIAN: That's self-trust is really that's a, that is absolutely a wonderful term to use. First thing is to recognize that and you said it well learnings because it's having ADHD regardless of where you are in the spectrum because that label tends to associate it and connote certain things those who have it and I've had people tell me I do. I've not been diagnosed, but sometimes I wonder and yeah, sometimes I do. But I've, we, I know for my daughter, for example, has internalized "There's something wrong with me. You know, my brain doesn't work right. It's not normal." And to say, "Wait a minute, no." First of all, you're not your brain. Secondly, you learn some things because you have a brain that functions in this way that you can work with. And what is the truth of that? And the real truth is you're curious. You sometimes can be very divergent in your thinking. You're very creative. There's a lot of positives that don't get integrated into the negatives of being someone who has what I think I personally think ADHD is kind of a neurodivergent thing. We're as a species going through an evolution in terms of the brain and what we're seeing out there is this evolutionary process as we evolve as a species. And so I tend to put it in that light and people with ADHD are kind of forerunners of how the brain needs to prepare itself for the future. And I tell people laugh when I say that, but I firmly believe that I don't think this is an, it's an evolutionary process is what I believe. Into being able to see, wait a minute, what are the gifts of having ADHD and there are gifts. There are gifts. My daughter's discovered and she's had to plan and work with things. And then take the gifts and when you get in this negative, oh my god, there is something wrong with me. I'm scattered again. No, you're not. Your brain is just interested in a variety of things. Let's allow that interest to be there. And how do you develop the focus? In other words, you bring in, you do a mismatch with the negatives because of the labels and the way they've been applied. You know, that's one thing I think that's part of me. And secondly to remember I'm not my brain just like I'm not my heart and I'm not my liver. I'm not my stomach. You know, I'm not my lungs. I have them. I have a brain but I'm not my brain. So, how do I work with my brain given that it functions this way? And that kind of puts it in a different perspective. Can't wait to read your book actually. That really intrigues me and will reinforce a whole bunch of beliefs. But it will, it's lot of examples. Lots of examples. a lot of stories in there, personal stories, but a lot of client stories to give examples of the how do you do this? How do I update my brain? And fortunately, the science is so clear. The five steps are very clear to do it. Does it take work? Yeah, because it's a different way of thinking. Does it work? Yes, it works. It works. 

JULIE: Thank you so much, Brian, for joining me on the show today. I really appreciate your time and knowledge. It's just been terrific. Thank you. You're very welcome. 

BRIAN: Thank you, Julie. Many blessings to you on your journey and to everybody out there that's listening to you. Many blessings.