Executive Function Decoded: ADHD, Autism, and Community

Meet ND OutLoud: neurodivergent coaches supporting people like us

Hello there. I’m Danielle Ralston. I am the founder and head coach here at ND OutLoud. What is ND OutLoud? ND OutLoud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us. TBI, PTSD, ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, all of the things. We also have a passion for supporting others like us, so you don’t have to struggle like we did in our past. We have all taken trainings and certifications so we can support you in living a better life and upgrading the things that are frustrating about your life. What is this session going to give you? Actionable tips. Yes, we’re going to talk about our programs, but I want you to walk away with something actionable for whatever is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now in your life. And if you’re a parent or a spouse of someone with neurodivergence, something to help them as well. I want you to walk away with something today.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Danielle and Shay with ND Hive and ND OutLoud, and we are talking executive function today.

What executive function actually is, and why ours dysfunctions

Executive function? What is that? Something we don’t have most days. Let’s be honest, it’s actually executive dysfunction when you talk about it in the context of being ADHD. So let’s go through what it is first. I’ll give you the technical terms: it’s the CEO of your brain. It organizes all of the departments. Your emotions, your memory, your motivation, your focus, and your action. And they all work together efficiently, hence why for us it’s executive dysfunction. Anybody who has ADHD, autism, trauma, anxiety, depression, or chronic illness, even just one of those things, heads into the executive dysfunction range.

It’s how our brain processes the energy and information for us to do the things we need to do. So we can’t start tasks, or we can start a task but there are major amounts of procrastination, anxiety, and meltdowns first. Staying focused when things get boring, I can’t do that today for nothing. Remembering steps and deadlines. Managing your emotions when you’re stressed. Adapting when your plan doesn’t go to plan, and even little changes trigger that one. Working memory, time management, and planning skills: five minutes somehow turns into two hours, or we think something’s going to take us two hours and it took two minutes. Follow-through: all of those crafts that got started and never finished. Don’t tell anyone what’s in my closet. And switching between tasks.

One of my favorite things, Shay said, is I’ll ask my husband, “Okay, how long do you think this will take us?” “Oh, just a couple minutes.” Three hours later. We’re both ADHD, so we don’t calculate time very well.

It’s a rough thing to calculate, even when we practice it over and over. I do this for a living, and today is just terrible. For one, it’s that time of the month, and yes, I’m being open about that, so that sends executive function out the window. Zero function in executive anything today. Then I have a trip to Disney in two weeks, so guess what my hyperfocus is? And it’s the holiday season, so there are new food items and new milkshakes and decorations, and, and, and.

Tools for when your executive function is offline

So what are some tools that work for you when your executive function is more “dys” than function?

Some of it is structure, Shay said. If I have something I do every single day, like I get up, I do some study and meditation, spiritual time, and then I go into a workout, that’s something I’ve been doing every day for years, and it keeps things consistent. It’s like, okay, begin. Then it’s shower and breakfast and work. That consistent nature takes a lot of the decision fatigue out of it, which decreases the stress on the executive function.

Another way is building in a release for the extra anxiety. It doesn’t have to be exercise. Get up and do some type of movement. Go for a walk. Walk from your office to your kitchen, or go out on your back porch. Something small and quick. And then create flexibility for relaxation time. What are your favorite hobbies? Build them into your schedule so your brain knows, hey, I’m going to have that at this point, so let’s settle down and focus here for a minute. Does it always work? No. That’s why you have multiple things.

Change your location, your temperature, and your sensory input

For me, when my executive functions are dysfunctioning at the ultimate level, I have a few things I do. Movement for me is not an option most days, because even walking from my couch to my kitchen is too much some days. So I will still get up and move a tiny bit, but I will change my location, change my temperature, and change my sensory needs. I was extremely overwhelmed with a sweatshirt I had on about 15 minutes ago, the ties around the neck and the hood were driving me insane. So I changed into a really, really soft t-shirt. That helped me calm down a little. Getting a cold glass of water instead of room temperature, this is more ice than water, I think, helped me cool down.

And changing my location. A lot of days, because I have MS and chronic illness, I really can’t move as much. I can hardly sit at my desk anymore, and it drives me nuts and I hate it. So I’m sitting on my couch or in my bed, but just changing my direction on the couch, which wall I’m looking at, helps.

And what are the aesthetics around your room? Shay asked. In your office, do you have things you can look at that pull your mind for a second to something a little more comforting or a little more fun? Do you have that in your living space? It doesn’t have to be big and huge. It could be something very simple and small that you change out.

Body doubling: the main tip

And then my last tip is always body doubling. Body doubling, body doubling, body doubling is always my main tip. When my executive dysfunction is really at its worst, when I go into body doubling, I can accomplish at least some basic tasks. Those of you who know me know I live there all day long. This morning we had a couple of people who don’t come in super often, and two of the guys were being goofy, and we were all laughing at each other and with each other, and we were getting a ton done. I was like, oh, I just got five things done, and I wasn’t even paying attention to the fact that I got five things done.

Body doubling allows us to feel cozy in one way, because we’re with people who understand us, Shay said. But on the other hand, we also have somebody who gets us and holds us accountable in a gentle way. We don’t always come in and say, “I’m going to work on this today.” Some of us just come in and start doing whatever we need to do. Some of us are in and out of the screen constantly because the thing we’re doing means getting up, going to do it, and coming back. There are multiple different ways, but it works, and it allows our dysfunction to start functioning.

Being in a room with multiple people in the height of dysfunction creates function for everybody, because we’re co-regulating each other and entertaining each other, which increases our dopamine, which means we get our motivation back. And when my chronic illness is at its worst, when I really feel sick and can’t do anything, body doubling is the one thing that can get me moving at least a tiny bit.

And body doubling helps because we’re there to say, “No, Danielle, today is not a day for you to work on that. You need to go rest, or put yourself in a place where you can increase your health.” Hey Danielle, did you take pain meds today? Did you take your supplements? Did you remember to drink or eat something today? Even if you don’t have chronic illness and you’re just ADHD, and very few people are just ADHD, we need to be reminded of those self-care things a whole lot. Because we get feeling so out of control that nothing is going to help, and we get that defeatist mentality going. We get in those shame loops. We get frustrated with ourselves, defeated, cynical, angry, all at once, which overwhelms us even more.

Because it’s that spiral. It starts at the top of the funnel and we roll around like a little marble going in circles, like those marble toys we had as kids, where the marble starts up here and goes all over the place to the bottom. Instead of doing all that craziness, now we can come into body doubling and say, “Okay, I’m in a whirlwind right now.” And most of the time, all we have to say is, “Okay, tell me more. What’s your whirlwind? Where did it start? What do you wish you were doing right now?” Because we all have a thing we’d rather be doing. I’m always amazed: people will come in saying, “I don’t know why I’m here today, I just feel like I can’t get anything done, I might as well hang out with you.” And by the time we’re done talking, they’re taking action and getting something done.

Success as an ADHD entrepreneur

I was on a group call with a group of entrepreneurs the other day, and they asked, “How can you be successful as an ADHD entrepreneur with body doubling?” They asked me 20 or 30 different questions, and my answer was the same every single time. They asked, “What do you consider success?” And I said, “No, what do you consider success?” Everybody considers success something different. But I’m going to be really open and honest here, because people want to know: I’m a six-figure business owner who works 15 to 20 hours a week.

The stigma out there for ADHD is that you can’t get things done, Shay said. You can’t function. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. So there’s this idea of, how can they be successful if they can’t complete the task? But in reality, we have the capability of doing things differently. We step into our strengths, we look at our weaknesses, and we say, okay, how can we adjust that so it’s not such a rough thing? One way is body doubling.

People ask me how I find success. This is my seventh six-figure business that I’ve built. Do I plan on selling this one? Probably not. I plan on this being a long-term legacy. This is the first time I’m doing this without the purpose of selling it, because this is my passion and my mission, and everybody on our team is like that. I plan that by March of next year we will be a seven-figure business, and everybody on my team will be six-figure entrepreneurs. Why do I say I know that’s happening? Because I’m making it happen. How do I know I’m making it happen? By showing up to body doubling on my worst days, my most confused days, my most chaotic days, which are almost always chaotic.

What’s the difference between a regular day and a chaotic day? I don’t know if there’s a difference at all. But I’ve had people say, “Well, you must not struggle with ADHD like I do.” Honey, I am ADHD and I am AuDHD with twelve chronic illnesses.

Systems only work with structure, and structure needs community

I think what you figured out, Shay said, is that body doubling is a system. You learned to take the things you need and create the system for you, which is what many of us didn’t know how to do. We didn’t know where to even start creating a system. We were just going along with what we were told.

Right, and none of those systems worked. I’m a high-achieving person, and I used some of those systems for years in corporate. But when I went out on my own, they did not work anymore, because there was no structure with them. That’s why they don’t work for entrepreneurs. Maybe the structure was “my boss is going to yell at me if I don’t get this done,” because you always had somebody above you. When you’re an entrepreneur, there’s nobody to yell at you except you, and that’s not going to work, because we yell at ourselves internally all the time. So having a structure and a system matters, and my structure and my system is one freaking thing. Do I have other things that help me stay organized? Yes. But I can’t do those things without showing up to body doubling.

It’s funny, Shay said, because your system of creating body doubling years ago became this space for all of us, for anyone, to come into and be part of. That was a system you didn’t realize you were creating. And there are always systems within the system. Your system is: show up for body doubling, with your list of things you want to get done. Then somebody else comes in, and they don’t mess up that list. They come in and say, “Here’s what I need to do.” And then it’s, “Oh, okay, I can see Danielle doing hers. Maybe I can do mine.” It gives us hope.

It gives us all hope. And honestly, why did I create this? Because I freaking needed it. I needed other people to chat with me and entertain me and bring their spicy kitty on camera so we could all ooh and aah over the kitty or the puppy or the baby. We need to be entertained. We need novelty. We need change. We need something different to see, hear, and engage with, and that’s what body doubling gives us every day. Even those in silent body doubling still get that, and people will be messaging each other even in complete silence.

So what structure do you need? I’m going to tell you: community. Community is the structure, because somebody else can help you figure out the rest of the structure you need. Again, my structure does not work unless I’m in community. If I isolate myself and say, “I can do this myself, I’m smarter than anybody else,” that’s when I fail. That’s when I lose my house and my cars and have to move in with my mother-in-law. There’s some experience in that. I almost lost my marriage.

We’re not telling people about executive function because “you need to have us.” We’re telling you this because we see the struggle you’re going through every day. We’ve lived it. We’ve been through it. We’re here to say, how can I help you? How can I give you the system you’ve been looking for, wanting, needing, and desiring, but didn’t know where to find?

What it costs, and why one session a week is not enough

And it’s a lifesaver. It’s cheaper than buying a cup of coffee every week. And we plan on keeping it there. We may have found a way to not raise our prices in January like we thought we would have to. If by end of year we can get another 250 people inside the program, I will not have to raise prices ever. Think of all the more people we can help. At $19.99 a month, we have 10 hours of coaching, mentorship, body doubling, and support a day. Then we have an online community where you can share every recipe, every gift, every stupid thing going on in your life, pictures of animals, whatever you want. And our custom app is coming at the beginning of the year, because we’re planning ahead and we want everybody to have what they need affordably.

Affordably, because that’s a big deal. We are two of thousands of ADHD coaches out there who can help with executive function. But executive function doesn’t happen in the one 30-minute session a week, or even a one-hour session a week. That’s not enough. It happens in the daily grind of living life. Because when we try to live life alone, we fail. When we live life in community, we succeed. Humans, neurodivergent or not, were not meant to live life alone.

And the more we invest into community, Shay said, and I don’t mean invest in a business, I mean invest in the community you want to be part of, the more you feel uplifted each day. The more you feel like you have a purpose, the more you desire to give back to other people, and that fills you up so much more. You get more than you think you do. It’s like what a teacher says: I learn more from teaching, because I have to prepare for someone else.

Stories over information, and what kind of coach you need today

Somebody came into one of our calls this morning and said, “I’m having this issue in my business.” They asked me the question, I answered it, a couple of other people had input. And somebody else on the call, a stay-at-home mom who was just there to get her to-do list done, said that was the most helpful thing ever: “I didn’t know that. Now I’ve got something I can do in my home.” These two things had nothing to do with each other. We don’t know who we help by the things we say. When it’s directed at one person, the other people are listening, gathering knowledge they need for themselves and applying it.

Even people who have other ADHD coaches, not related to our team, will come in and say, “You just said this and it blows my mind, look how I can apply this.” Then they come back and say, “My coach was so annoyed that you showed me how to do this when she’s been telling me the same thing for a year and a half.” And I laugh, because we have a therapist on our team who was working with my best friend, who I’ve been telling things to for 15 years. The therapist told her something in my words, and she came back saying, “This is so amazing.” Are you kidding me? But that’s what community does. It creates stories we can learn from instead of information. Sometimes we need a story to learn from, versus information. I know I learn better that way.

And as a coach, something I make sure to do, because I can help anybody even when my executive dysfunction is at its worst, even in complete and total meltdown chaos: the question I ask myself, and all my coaching academy people have this on post-it notes in their offices now, is what kind of coach do your clients need today? Be the coach your people need today. Even in my executive dysfunction: what can I be for somebody else today? If you could work with somebody who asks, “What can I be for you today?”, not what am I going to take from you, it is life-changing.

If you want to join something and have fun with us all day, come join my chaos, because I bring the chaos every single day, from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Central. No long-term contracts. We have people who come in, then aren’t here all summer because they’ve got too much to do with family and kids home from school, and they come in and out as they need. Do that. Come join us. We want you to have fun. We want you to have the support. Because we were not meant to do life alone.