How to ADHD

The Brain Chronicle Newsletter | What a wild year it's been! (Patreon)

Published:

2025-11-28 22:30:01

Imported:

2025-11

Tags:

Brain Chronicle Newsletter

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Download The Brain Chronicle _ November 2025 Edition.pdf

Content

Hello Brains & Hearts!

As the year starts to come to a close, it’s wild to think about the year How to ADHD has had.

I got to try new video styles alongside Kai (my Producer), J2 (my Swiss Army Knife of an Ops Manager) and Steph (my Writing Assistant).

After 7 years of the community asking for a collab with Cas from Clutterbug… I did not just one but TWO collabs with her THIS YEAR!

I finally have the How to ADHD Instagram posting regularly with the help of Harley (my Community Manager).

I also now have an email newsletter that goes out each week.

Oh! And I started writing my second book!

I want to thank you all for supporting my team and I here on Patreon. I’ve had to cut some costs this year but the fact I haven’t had to cut more at this time is partly because of you all. My team and I cannot express our gratitude enough. Putting out content for free doesn’t earn us a lot of money, but ensuring that the people who need it most have access to free information and tools is SUPER important to not just me but my team, as well. So… just… THANK YOU.

P.S. As per How to ADHD tradition, my team and I will be trying to take off the last couple of weeks in December to recharge. This means most perks will be paused for December, but will start back up in January. :)

Many of us experienced criticism and comparisons where we were often being (directly or indirectly) told to be more like a neurotypical. And often without realizing it, we internalized these ableist messages, and started leveraging them against ourselves.

This isn’t mutually exclusive to ADHD, but it does impact the ADHD community pretty hard.

So I opened up a discussion about it. You can check that out here.

From the conversations, my team and I noticed some internal and external strategies for combating internalized ableism.

1) Internal Strategies

Stating the Facts: Some of us have the habit of thinking “Why can’t I just ____.” Combating these types of thoughts with facts can be helpful: “Because I have ADHD!” But for a lot of us? We like to put a funny, humorous, and/or playfully sarcastic spin on it, “Oh nooo my disability is disabling meeee, how can this be?! dramatic collapse onto couch”

Calling “Hard” Hard: An easy task for one person, doesn’t mean it's universally easy for everyone. Sometimes it’s empowering to admit, “This is hard for me!” Acknowledging that a task or situation is hard for us gives us the chance to recognize the struggle, which can spur us to find strategies or accommodations to make the thing a bit easier.Reframing: Flipping the script from “I’m just being lazy” to something like “I’m struggling with executive function.” or “I’m allowed to rest and recharge.” can be powerful. Just be careful not to fall into the trap of toxic positivity!Wins are Wins!: Moving in the right direction, no matter how tiny the move, counts. Celebrating even those tiny wins (without any judgments or comparisons) can help normalize recognizing our own efforts. It can feel weird, at first, but for some, it helps them to find a confidence in themselves they didn’t have before.

2) External Strategies

See the Struggle: Externalizing the struggle can make it easier to see. Engaging in the ADHD community helps us see and hear about struggles similar to ours. And this can help normalize that yes… ADHD can come with a lot of struggles and that’s NORMAL. I’m proud of the How to ADHD Discord community, because it’s filled with amazing Brains ready to remind you (and me, frankly) that we’re enough and we are not alone. 💜Accommodations: Someone said something we thought was powerful: “You wouldn’t take away someone’s bifocals and expect them to see the same as someone with 20/20 vision.” But so often that’s exactly what we do to ourselves. We expect ourselves to act neurotypical when we aren’t. It might feel awkward and scary, but leaning into accommodations can help normalize (to ourselves and others) what works best for OUR brain.

NeuroDiversion 2026 | March 20 - 22, 2026https://www.neurodiversion.org/

NeuroDiversion seeks to be as neurodivergent friendly as possible, which is a HUGE goal to try and hit. I went to their very first one this year, and I’m excited to see what their 2026 conference will be like! If you’d like to go, you can get $50 off your tickets by using code “HowtoADHD” at checkout. :)