S2E52: ADHD & Quieting the Inner Critic + Dr Katie Brzozowski

Julie Legg speaks with psychotherapist Dr. Katie Brzozowski about the inner critic, where it comes from, why it can feel so loud for ADHDers, and how it shapes the way we see ourselves.

Katie explains how a lifetime of correction, criticism, and misunderstanding can become internalised, turning into the harsh self-talk many ADHDers carry into adulthood. These “tapes” often resurface during moments of stress, grief, burnout, or life transitions — amplifying self-doubt and making it harder to move forward.

Rather than trying to silence the inner critic completely, Katie introduces a more compassionate and practical approach: learning to separate from those thoughts, reduce their power, and stop letting them dictate behaviour. From ACT-based tools to visual techniques and gentle reframing, this conversation offers a grounded, realistic pathway toward self-compassion and emotional resilience.

Key Points from the Episode:

•  How ADHDers internalise years of correction and criticism 
•  The inner critic as learned “tapes” from earlier life experiences 
•  Why the inner critic gets louder during stress, grief, and transition 
•  The difference between “I am” vs “I’m having the thought that I am”
•  Why ignoring negative thoughts doesn’t work 
•  Using ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) to create distance from thoughts 
•  Techniques to stop getting “hooked” by the inner critic 
•  The impact of comparison and unrealistic life expectations 
•  ADHD, non-linear life paths, and redefining success 
•  Why self-compassion is essential for growth and change

Links: 

• WEBSITE: https://speakeasytoday.com/
• INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/speakeasypsychotherapy/
•  LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkathrynbrzozowski/

Thanks for listening. 

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 🌐 WEBSITE: ADHDifference.nz  

 📷 INSTAGRAM: ADHDifference_podcast 

 📖 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

KATIE: I feel like those messages, those tapes in our head, the people that told us we couldn't do it, the people that said, you know, you're not invited into our club or party or whatever, those can really haunt you and then think, I don't have anything to offer. Why would people want to buy this book or come to my seminar or listen to my podcast? Like, why would they want to do that? Because I'm just somebody nobody really cares about. And that is just so detrimental because if we let that thought have validity, then that is kind of what can jam us up.

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. I'm joined by Dr. Katie Brzozowski, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist with 25 years experience supporting people through ADHD, loss, anxiety, caregiving, and life's many transitions. Katie has worked both in hospital systems and in private practice and brings an understanding of resilience, grief, and the quiet ways we learn to survive. Today's conversation is about that inner critic, where it comes from and why it gets louder during certain seasons of life, and how we begin to soften it without pretending it isn't there. It's a conversation about emotional resilience, self-compassion, and what becomes possible when we stop treating ourselves as the enemy. Welcome to the show, Katie. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, we're going to be diving straight into the questions. We've got lots of things to cover. Very excited to have you. You've spent 25 years working with ADHD, grief, anxiety, chronic illness, and major life transitions. So, today I'd love to explore the inner critic and how does that voice show up differently for people navigating ADHD? 

KATIE: I think that's a really great question and I think it is not so much I feel like that it's different for us but maybe it's more often or more excessive. Because if you think about it, if you have ADHD you've probably been corrected by people a lot of your life, right? And so you know ,even if it's why is your car messy or you know, can you clean out your backpack or whatever, whatever it is you don't finish - a thought or you talk too much or something. Those messages have gotten in, right? And we've learned that we have to work really, really hard to be what people want us to be and to, you know, not have our car a mess or those things or maybe we just keep our car a mess. Who cares? But at the end of the day, I feel like we do end up spending a lot of time being hard on ourselves. And certainly lots of people are hard on themselves, but that's where I think the difference is that it's like I don't know if it's just that we have had more experience than sometimes other people that with having to listen to maybe criticisms or whatever and then we just kind of internalize that and then we just do it to ourselves. It can be very hard on ourselves. 

JULIE: Very yes. Harsh, nasty. And you know, we wouldn't actually say those things to a friend or someone we loved or a child or a partner, but gosh. 

KATIE: It's so inspiring when I see people with ADHD achieve things or, you know, do go after their goals, which is a lot of people with ADHD, but it's, you know, how hard it was for them to get there because they had to spend so much time in their head thinking, you know, God, you're so dumb. Why couldn't you just do it this way? You're such a loser, such an idiot. Like those thoughts. And that's kind of like, you know, lots of people have those thoughts, but we do I do think that we do tend to be very mean to ourselves. My clients with ADHD are by far all, and this isn't a giant sample size, but still, they're all harder on themselves than most other clients I see. 

JULIE: And I think even the definition of inner critic, it's our thoughts that we tell ourselves. And because it's not necessarily spoken out loud, if a family member heard us say that out loud every day, they'd say, "Come on, no, hang on. That's rough." But we just think it. And so there's no one actually stopping those thoughts, if you know what I mean. We've got no, you know, unless it's ourselves or in therapy when we actually Yeah. 

KATIE: Right. So we know that the inner critic often gets louder, even louder. Goodness me, during sessions of grief and burnout or these big transitions that we go through in life. 

JULIE: So for ADHD specifically, how do these traits and our challenges or our past misunderstandings amplify that critical voice? 

KATIE: That voice definitely gets louder in any time when we basically need a voice to say "You're okay. You can do it. This is fine. It's going to be all right." It feels like that gets louder in those times, right? So, it's like, no, it's not going to be okay. And no, I'm, you know, I'm not capable. I'm not able to do this. I think of inner critic as being like our the tapes we have in our head, right? These tapes that constantly run and our tapes are kind of like set, right? Sometimes these are like hardwired and it's just the stuff that we hear. And they may have come from us being little, right? Saying like, "Why are you a mess?" or whatever. And then so these tapes and they just run and that's where if you're really hard on yourself that's becomes your inner critic and it's important to separate that from who you are, that these are just thoughts. These are just my thoughts saying but you also have to kind of see where did they come from? And so I think that it makes sense that they would get louder in this time but there's also ways to quiet them. 

JULIE: But it is... it can be difficult and on that point so practically speaking how do we begin to quiet that inner critic without you know ignoring it? 

KATIE: Ignoring it is bad because ignoring it doesn't make them go away. That means that they're just there and you're not even giving it a chance to be you know, dispute it or to speak up to it or anything. You're just like, "Okay, guess I must not be good at this." Right? So, I think it's really important. I usually work with a method called ACT acceptance and commitment therapy. I like that a lot for people, especially with ADHD, because we're not trying to get you to think of the... think of it in a different way. That has its place too and we will do that also especially with ADHD but like more a cognitive behavioral type intervention but with ACT we're not trying to get you to think of it differently we're just trying to get you to like manage the thought so it is background noise and so it doesn't keep you from doing what you're going to do. So basically we're like okay you can be hard on yourself fine. Fine and then tell yourself "I'm having the thought that I'm a complete loser and I'm never going to be able to do well on this podcast." Right? So, like that's my thought. But it's two completely different feelings. If you were to say "I'm a loser and I'm going to do terrible on this podcast, right?" That's one completely different situation, different feeling. If I say "I'm having the thought that I'm a loser and I'm going to do terrible on this podcast, right?" That is a completely different situation. One is I'm dealing with the fact that I am a loser and I'm going to be bad. The other one is I'm dealing with thoughts of that. That's just two real two different realities. 

JULIE: That's really, really important, isn't it? A very minor change in thought. “I am” versus “I think I'm having that thought that I am”. Yes. And I guess you know, one is extremely hard to untangle and the other one is like, right now I have that thought, what am I going to do with that thought? 

KATIE: Well, the good thing about that is that if that's the issue that you're dealing with a thought, that's the problem is you're having a thought like that. Then all you have to do is deal with the how to not how to not focus on that thought, right? In how to focus on your values, how to make like I said make it background noise and these are all from the act therapy like their different tenants of it. So I didn't make this up but I do use it a lot because it's very helpful. So one way you can do that is you can you want to try to not get hooked onto it because once you get hooked onto a thought, you know, it's very easy to spiral and to, you know, really it can keep you from doing what you want to do. If you tell yourself, I'm not going to be good at this. You might not do it. You might, you know, sabotage it. You might like it. It really can negatively affect you. So what you want to do is you don't get hooked on it. So if you say it's just a thought, you know, that's like the first basic step I give everyone. But there's other cool ways you can do it. So like let's say you're having a thought and it's really bothering you and it's keeping you from living how you want to live that day, right? You can picture a... I don't know if they have these in New Zealand. This might I don't know if this is a New Jersey thing, but you're do they have the airplanes that have the sign behind it? They like Yeah. They pull like a sign at the beach and it'll say like a different like you know, an ad or something but like pull to the side. Yeah. So if you can picture that like your thought "I'm a loser and I'm going to do terrible at this." Right. You're sitting on the beach. You're having a great day. You see the airplane. It goes by and there's my "I'm a loser. I'm going to be terrible today." Right. It seems silly, but it takes it out of yourself. It takes it... It's how can it's just a thought. I can think anything I want. Why am I letting this thought ruin my day or my or whatever? Why am I letting it ruin my day? It's just a thought. I can think anything I want. So, I'm going to think that. If I'm going to think that, fine. But I'm not going to take it that seriously. So, it's kind of doing things like that. There's lots of tricks, but I find them to be very, very helpful. 

JULIE: That's a really good analogy. And just like an airplane with that advertising banner, it comes into view and you wave goodbye as it goes out of view. So it's a transition acknowledging that transition, but it's not looping around the skies all day. It Yeah, I love that. Excellent. Katie, when someone feels overwhelmed by change, whether it's a diagnosis or a loss of a loved one, illness, or just a midlife identity shift, where do they begin and what helps them move through that chapter of chaos =rather than get stuck in it? 

KATIE: It's really easy to get stuck in it, isn't it? It's like it's easy to get stuck in our thoughts and negativity and with our inner critic. It's easy to get stuck in that on a day-to-day basis. But let alone when something is really challenging or you have a huge life transition or something like that, it is easy. I think one of the most important things I think we can do is to really honour our own journey, our own trajectory, and to try to minimize how strongly we hold our expectations that I expected my life at this age to look like this or expected my marriage to look like this or expected my work life to look like this. And when it doesn't meet those expectations, as things seldom do, right, it we often can be even harder on ourselves. Like, oh, see, see what a failure. Everybody else has this or is here or there and you're not. You know, you're supposed to be doing this by now like everybody else, but you're not doing that, so what's wrong with you? And usually when we're doing that, we are minimizing all of the other things we've done that probably other people hadn't haven't done or the different successes we've had or the things that make us really cool or unique. We don't we throw those right in the trash. It's just, oh, I was supposed to be married by now or living in this place by now or having my whatever it is. And so I think that trying to really not compare yourself and this is all easier said than done. I understand. But it is I think something to be aware of as like your first step to really just think about like listen this is my journey and I don't even all these people I'm comparing myself to I don't even know if that's actually what their life is like. That all I see is what I see I don't know what their life their life. Could be you know the same as mine or you know more difficult but I just choose other people to you know compare myself to. And then all I do is make my self feel.  So, I think respecting your journey, reducing your expectations of how things were going to be at this time. I think those are kind of really good ways to start. 

JULIE: And then because life isn't all mapped out, is it? We don't have a life guide and go we start at A. Well, we know we're going to be born and we know at some stage our life is will end and that's the only thing that's certain in life. Everything else in between. And particularly for ADHD is because we do things we think in a nonlinear way and I think certainly our life can reflect that too as our interests spike and our you know, our attention goes to a new career or we want to reinvent ourselves. Yeah it's not always like the Joneses next door is it? 

KATIE: Exactly. And I do think that's a good point about ADHD specifically is that you will see more side quests or more, you know, we get bored easily. So you may, you know, it statistically, you know, people with ADHD, they do have more higher sub rates of substance abuse or higher rates of job changes or, you know, just different there's career changes. They're more likely to own a business or start a business. Like there's just things that may be very different in that realm than for someone who doesn't have those challenges. 

JULIE: And we have a whole lot more life stories to share too, don't we? You were talking before about we might not be in the same place as we as our peers and we think that we should, but we've got a whole bunch of adventures and like really amazing life stories that would probably shock and awe many, many people if we sat down and chatted about them. 

KATIE: Oh, absolutely. I think that's one thing that people with ADHD should really embrace is that, you know, you really can't if you're afraid to fail, if you're afraid to mess up, you know, you really don't accomplish anything because you can't do anything without risk. We're usually pretty good at taking those risks. Not to say we're not going to beat ourselves up if we fail or we don't do well, but it's like I feel like the taking risks and the I think I can do this, I'm going to do this. We might get bored and tired of it the next day and quit, but this still or move to something else. But I think that it is, you know, I think that is unique to us and not we're not the only people that accomplish stuff and have a million ideas, but we definitely do accomplish things but also have a million ideas.  I have a funny aside. Well, it's relevant, but I had started a Facebook group a few years ago, and it was supposed to be for women over 40 with ADHD. And so, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be so great. I think it's really necessary." Because I noticed in my 40s, I felt like my ADHD was getting worse. And I didn't really like I never really even told people I mean, I'm sure they figured it out, but I never like said anything. I just was like normal. But then things just started feeling more overwhelming. I felt more forgetful. I felt more like I don't know what happened, but I just felt like it was it became really obvious. And I just so I started like letting people know. And so then I started to think, well, maybe there should be a group for people in this age range, women specifically, because we know that menopause and perimenopause, the hormonal changes does make ADHD symptoms can make ADHD symptoms worse. So I thought I'll do this group, right? Well, I quickly it was very fun, but I quickly realized first I don't have the time to do that, but I don't care because I thought it was going to be really great. And we got up to 7,500 members. Then my thing gets hacked. The Facebook gets hacked and I didn't pay attention to the email that said, "Is this you?" or whatever. I didn't pay attention. So, the person that hacked it, then they violated standards and then it got cut off. So, now there's no more Facebook, there's no more group, and it went away. So then it came back. I finally got access to it like after a year and now I have access to it, but I'm like so afraid to go back to this group that has all these members and be like, "Oh, I've been gone for 2 years." In the meantime, while I was not paying attention to it, we had 450 member requests and I'm like, so I'm thinking, I need to go back and resurrect it. But it's just like those kinds of things. I feel like we could probably all relate to that kind of story. Like it's so much different than a linear like someone's I'm going to start a Facebook group. Then if they get a notification they just say oh no it was hacked that's not me and then there no problem. But now this is a two-year saga of you know so I just feel like I'm more just try to like take it in stride than get mad at myself. I still get mad at myself but I try not to. 

JULIE: We're pretty good at risk taking and sometimes we can think long and hard about maybe mitigating some major outcomes, negative outcomes and other times our brains are going so fast we just leap at it and there's no time like the present. That's the way I feel too. Very, very similar. Just diving in and doing it and working it out as you go along. You were talking about life after 40 for women with ADHD and you work with many people in midlife and older who are redefining meaning. Tell me about softening the inner critic and rediscovering purpose.

KATIE: Well, I feel like as we talked about the inner critic with ADHD, it's comes from a lifetime of these kind of negative perceptions of us or being corrected or whatever. And I feel like the best way to kind of not start over, but if we're trying to reinvent ourselves where we're like, "Okay, I'm tired of this nonsense. I want to be who I want to be now. I'm not gonna try to people please. I'm not going to try to put myself down or whatever. I'm not going to be small." I feel like the you want to first figure out what is it that's like jamming me up. What is what things from childhood what are these negative things like and kind of try to make sense of them so that they don't keep. And therapy can help with that usually like they don't keep coming up. So, the way I always describe it is like if you're mowing the lawn, right, and there's weeds and you mow the lawn, the weeds are gone then, but guess what? They're coming right back up because you didn't pull it out from the root. So, if you are thinking that you really want to make some changes or do something different in your life, you kind of have to examine the roots of those problems and really get to the bottom of it. And then you can you may not have as much of that doubt or those things coming up because you got rid of it. But if you just mow it over, they will keep popping up. So, I feel like those messages, those tapes in our head, the people that told us we couldn't do it, the people that said, you know, you're not invited into our club or party or whatever, those can really haunt you and then think, I don't I don't have anything to offer. Why would people want to buy this book or come to my seminar or listen to my podcast? Like, why would they want to do that? Because I'm just somebody nobody really cares about and that is just so detrimental because it's not true and it may be true for some people. We're not. Not everybody's going to like us but it's not true in general and we just have to kind of but if we get that thought have validity then that's it that is kind of what can jam us up. 

JULIE: And I really like the analogy of pulling out the weeds rather than just mowing over them because pulling out those weeds or addressing our inner critic, it does take work, but it's worth doing it. It's worth addressing it rather than ignoring it. Absolutely. Katie, I would like to talk to you about grief. Now, you're a former hospital social worker and now a private practice founder and you've spoken about living in a culture that's really uncomfortable with grief. How does that culturally discomfort intensify self judgment when someone's trying to survive loss for example?

KATIE: Well, I think it does also go back to us comparing ourselves with others or us, you know, a lot of a lot of times with ADHD, you really you become more independent because you I know sometimes you just don't want people in your business like or people helping you with stuff because you're afraid they're going to criticize you for how badly you've done it or what a stupid way that is. So, you may just do more things yourself. So, you end up being kind of independent not asking for help as much. And so I think when it comes to grief, then it's like you if we're judging ourselves based on maybe those tapes, but then also like just looking around, we're going to feel more self-conscious. We're going to feel like, oh, look, everybody else is just getting by or everybody else, nobody else is dealing with this or I can't burden anyone. I can't ask for help. And so I think all of those things can just make the process really hard. I feel like sometimes we are also feel kind of isolated and alienated just in general or could and so this idea of feeling kind of like odd man out or we think differently. And then that kind of makes us not feel like part of the group that happened that's even worse then especially if you have an off-time life event like you have a grief or loss at a time when you know of a person that typically that wouldn't be something that normally happens at that stage or at that age. You know I work with grief and loss so in I practice. So I work with people that have lost children, people lost parents, people lost spouses. And if that, you know, if you lose your spouse in your 80s, that is very sad and difficult, but it's also not an off-time life event. That's not an unexpected time. If you lose your spouse in your 20s or 30s, that is an off-time life event. That is an unexpected time. So those times are always even more isolating and alienating. So that's why I think it's important to, you know, recognize that, but then also reach out for help. People with ADHD, myself included, I feel like I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like there's a struggle sometimes to not overshare or to overshare and then beat yourself up for oversharing. I don't know if anybody has that experience out there. I struggle with that and so do my clients. Somebody will come in and she'll be like, "I just kept telling myself, stop saying so many words. Stop saying so many words." And it's, you know, stop talking. And I know I do that too when I'm talking sometimes. I'm like, "Why are you still talking? Stop it." And so I feel like if we do overshare, we could we could really be hard on ourselves like, "Look, see why why'd you tell that person all about that?" But at the end of the day, you do need to find people that you can trust that you who you know care about you that you can share with or go to a grief group or something like that. But yes, I think in general society just doesn't want us to doesn't want us to talk about anything that makes people feel uncomfortable in any way. But that's part of life. There's people are not happy all the time. Life is all the things. But happiness is the best one. So that's the only one we want to deal with. And if you're sad, don't be sad. Be positive. There's some things you just aren't positive. When you lose someone significant in your life, that's just hard. It's just hard on that. 

JULIE: I think there's a there's a very wobbly line between oversharing and undersharing because oversharing first of all if you overshare with another ADHD it's welcome sister let's just chat you know go for it. With someone who's not familiar or not used to hearing some quite details you know, quite personal details for example, they might feel more a bit uncomfortable. With that the opposite undersharing I know that can feel very isolating, can feel that you're putting you're muting your personality and dumbing it down to make others feel more comfortable. So, it's a tricky... it's a tricky balance. 

KATIE: Yes. And I'll bet we do both of those in a pretty high degree. It's like it's like the people like people that are either like 15 minutes late or like an hour early. It's like you have to do one or the other, but it's being on time is very hard. But you can be early, but you're going to be extra early because you're so anxious. You don't want to be late. And so it's kind of sounds a little similar to that. 

JULIE: Absolutely. I'd love to hear more about your practice, your current practice. What's energizing you or making you feel good about your work at the moment? 

KATIE: Well, thank you for asking that. It's you know it has been a little challenging of late I would say just with there are certain problems and things people come to therapy for that are pretty not routine. But we have years of research and years of experience and all of these things kind of help us deal with them. And now I feel like we're kind of in a territory where people are coming in and they're talking about things that are going on in the world that are like also upsetting to myself or they're just they're not there's not like a manual for how to help them deal with that specifically. I mean I can go find some ways but it can be very hard. So I think I've been having that's been a little more challenging. So to answer your question, I have been trying to focus on kind of okay so what can we do and what are things that are going to be like useful to people maybe not in the standard way maybe more fun or you know so I'm trying to increase like programs increase like you know having retreats having you know, delivering services in a different way than we have before. Because I just feel like that way it's certainly effective and beneficial but it just I don't know if It's beneficial for everyone all the time. And so, and I also think as therapists, me and my team, I think it is hard to see so many back-to-back single one-on-one when there's other stuff we could be doing that's also helpful and maybe, you know. So that I think that, you know, also trying to do more social media and do more outreach and just kind of establish new things that's just that's been kind of kind of fun. 

JULIE: That's great. In growing your business in different ways and look at, you know, looking at different angles, providing a similar service but just in different ways. It's exciting. That's great. It certainly helps with our novelty and our drive. 

KATIE: Yes. Yes. I know. One I always like I have these ideas and I get excited and I start implementing them, but it always takes me so much longer. Like it'll take me like a year and in that time like five other programs will come out like that are like what I was planning. I'll be like no I've been working on that. Like it's just I sometimes get have a hard time putting it out because I want it to be perfect but you know perfect it doesn't work out all the time. So I just have to do it and so it's just a that's I think that could be a struggle but it is fun. 

JULIE: I do relate to that and what I've learned is start it because that's where your passion is and tweak it as you go. Yeah. Refine it as you go. So it doesn't have to be perfect on day one. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to ask you for someone who's listening who feels worn down by that inner critic, that inner dialogue, what would you most want them to hear today? 

KATIE: I think I would just reiterate that this is their journey and that whatever maybe try to identify that critic, you know, is that your mom's voice? Is that your friends growing up? Was that your teacher? You know, where is this critic coming from? As much as you can get to the bottom of that. And then just kind of say like, listen, it's not serving me. It's not helping me. And if it really won't shut up, then you just try to put it in the background and you can make it be flying on the airplane. You can also sing it. So if you have like a thought that's really upsetting you or it's making it so you're criticizing yourself so much, you feel like you can't get started, then you can just sing that thought, you know, to yourself. And that's it sounds silly, but again, we're trying to just minimize that that that thought you can think anything you want. So why are we letting it dictate your life, hat is doesn't make any sense. And we're not even trying to dispute if it's true or not. We're just saying I'm having this thought. I'm going to sing this thought to make it so I don't get hooked on to it. So, I would say use those use techniques like that to try to just if you can't get rid of the thought, you just put it in the background. And you know, sometimes you can assess if the thought is, you know, is that based on some flawed belief? Is that a limiting belief? Is that something that I've been telling myself that's just not correct? I have a great example of this and this I'll end on this I think. So when I was younger I was invited to a birthday party. Okay. And I just well now I have sometimes but sometimes I'll have some social anxiety and I'll be like "Oh they're not they don't want me at this event or I'm sure they're going to think I'm dumb." Right? These are our inner critic. Right? These are all our thoughts that there's really no real reason for that other than this. This one, the real reason, was based in in in childhood but I felt like so now I'm struggling with feeling like people don't want me around and then I trace it back to okay. So when I was a child and I was in third grade a girl invite me to her sleepover party and I said yes. And then the night of before the day before the sleepover party she called me her father had a heart attack and was in the hospital and so the party was cancelled. So the day of the party I called my other friend and the mom said she's not here she's at a birthday party. And I said whose birthday party and it's the girl. So she had made up that her father had a heart attack to uninvite me from the party. Yes. So now this is like 40 years ago and so now I am 40 years later, more than that you know, still worried people don't like me because they uninvited me to that party. So, I had someone tell me like, "Oh, so you've never been invited to a party or you never went to a birthday party?" And I was like, "No, I've been to birthday parties." And then they were like, "Oh, like only one." And I was like, "No, I've been to birthday parties." And at that moment, I was like, I spent all my time focusing on the times I was excluded, the times I wasn't invited, the times people didn't like me. And I had completely for 40 years I had completely thrown out any evidence that I was included or that I had gone to birthday parties or that I had friends or people did like me. That all went away. And I think we do that. We tend to minimize the positive and focus on the negatives. And when I did when I could finally shift that, I think it was like, okay, you know, there's people like me and people don't like me, but it's not that no one likes me. I'm not included. And that really helped me in social settings as an adult. So I think try to reframe those things if you can and if you can't then you just make them background noise. 

JULIE: Oh that's wonderful Katie. Thank you. All about perspective isn't it? All about perspective. Putting those thoughts yeah resizing them. Resizing them instead of being huge. Make them teeny tiny. Sing them. I love that. I love that. Also, it adds an element of fun and non-seriousness to some of those physical voices that we have. 

KATIE: And you know what, integrating whimsy and integrating anything fun, that's always a good thing, too, just in general. 

JULIE: Agreed. Agreed. Katie, it's been wonderful having you on the show today. Thank you so much for your insights and some great tips. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. You're welcome.