- Speaker #0
People grow up living to those expectations instead of living to who they are.
- Speaker #1
Welcome to Neurodivergent Spot. I'm your host, Sam Arian. My pronouns are he, him, and I am a multiply neurodivergent therapist, speaker, and creator. My work focuses on all things neurodiversity, but my particular interests are in autism, ADHD, learning differences, and learning disabilities. Today's guest is Shane Thrapp. Shane. Please introduce yourself to the listeners.
- Speaker #0
Hey there. As you said, my name is Shane Thrapp. I am a CEO of Creating Order from Chaos, an ADHD life coaching organization. I am also a consultant doing work for businesses in accommodations, neurodivergent support, things of that nature. I also am an operations director for the Men's ADHD Support Group, and I run multiple support groups. communities on Facebook.
- Speaker #1
Before we continue, I've got a quick disclaimer. This podcast is for information purposes only and should not be seen as a replacement for therapy, healthcare, or legal advice. Shane, I'm excited you're here. Anytime anybody successfully organizes men talking about anything mental health related, there's such stigma around it. I think it's amazing. So I'm just really excited that you're with us today. Uh, and like for to hear from you, we will dive straight in, um, to the questions. First question here. Uh, and I'll ask it and then you'll see the timer pop up on the screen. What has your journey with neurodivergence looked like?
- Speaker #0
Oh, hot mess. You know, like the whole creating order from chaos actually embodies my entire life. There's always been the chaos of my ADHD brain. And then like the. autistic need for structure and order and for a lot of times it was just a lot of like combative combativeness between the two but then whenever i would find the synergy between following the passions that i loved about adhd with the structure and order that i needed from autism i started finding the pathways moving forward and so early on it was a really big struggle But then as I got older and I discovered things like project management and coaching and things of that nature, honestly, neurodivergence kind of became my thing. So ironically enough, that's why I do it as a business.
- Speaker #1
I get it. It's why I do so many things. So I am curious. I do want to say I appreciate you kind of going back a little bit. A little bit deeper there, because at first you said it like it's just such an easy balance, just the autism, ADHD, it just balances out. And any quick tips before we keep going on how people can kind of take steps towards finding a balance?
- Speaker #0
I mean, at first you got to know, right? We're not naturally introspective and obviously metacognition kind of not our thing. So you actually have to take the time to work with people who are objectively outside of your brain. And have that discussion with them and find those aspects of yourself about how ADHD or autism affects you. And then once you understand that, you start finding the places where, well, I am really super creative, but I really struggle with putting things in order. Well, my autistic side is I love making spreadsheets. all right how can i make using spreadsheets to allow me to be creative and like how do i make those synergies work so like a lot of my creed my creativity is especially is in business which is ironic enough but even in my writing i use spreadsheets for all my writing and and i i'm very very structured and organized but it took me years to get to that point and like literally career training to get to the point where I could do that. It's not a natural skill set. So we have to train those things into ourselves.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I love that answer. I appreciate you taking the time to kind of break that down a little bit more. But let's keep going. Question number two, you coach individuals with ADHD in life, relationships, and careers. So multiple areas, right? What's one of the most common challenges that your clients face and how do you help them navigate it?
- Speaker #0
Honestly, not knowing who they are. We were just talking about that, right? We were talking about having to discover the strengths and everything. It's like that for so many of the clients because we have social expectations. We have cultural expectations. We have behavioral or age-appropriate expectations. We have all these expectations that are placed on us. And a large chunk of them are kind of arbitrary generalizations of... things like that. And so you think about books like What to Expect When You're Expecting and things of that nature. And so people grow up living to those expectations instead of living to who they are. And so along the way, they lose a lot of who they are as a person. And they don't trust that because was that a mask that I put on? And did I do those things because I enjoyed doing it? Or is it because it was actually who I am? And that's where I help people is I help them find themselves and who they are actually.
- Speaker #1
That makes a lot of sense. How often do you see that, what seems, as you say, an obvious first step, but how often do you see that first step overlooked?
- Speaker #0
Oh, honestly, it's one of the reasons why I'm a coach, because I don't see a lot of coaches that do that. There's a large number of coaches that'll dig into your values and stuff like that. They'll dig into your strengths, but very few coaches will dig into who you are, right? Not just your values and strengths, but also your weaknesses and also like your resources. Because once you start really determining all of those different things, you start to determine like what you are capable of doing with what you have. So you have a much more realistic aspect or concept of who you are in totality rather than just the values and strengths. I think we don't have enough people to go far enough into that to really, truly discover the person.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that makes sense. As you're talking, I sort of, I'm sort of thinking back. mostly based off of it fit in my schedule in grad school. I took a class on a short-term brief therapy model, solution-focused brief therapy is what it was. And there's some nice things about it, but there's not much about it where you help the person connect to who they are. There's times we just need to problem solve, but sometimes we need to know ourselves. And I remember just sitting there, just sort of always felt like that piece was missing. throughout the semester.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, but when you look at like strengths and values, right, that leads to one set of solutions, right? But if one of those solutions, so say, you know, I really struggled with bookkeeping, right? With some people, the solution is you hire a bookkeeper, but what if the person can't afford a bookkeeper? What if their socioeconomic situation is not a strength? It's a weakness. Do you know that? So are you able to give that person actually good advice if you don't know that about them and that they're socially, economically not able to get that kind of tool in place? So now we sit here and say, okay, well, socially, economically, for some reason, you're not able to afford that thing. All right. How do we get you to a place where you can, right? So let's talk about the overhead that you're charging your clients. I see a lot of this with my entrepreneur clients. Like, all right, you can't afford that right now. What kind of, you know, that's so let's add that to your overhead. What does that change in your prices and what you're charging? And so like, we kind of have to work all those different things around in there.
- Speaker #1
Uh, yeah, no, that makes, that makes sense. Walking somebody through the process of seeing that full perspective. Uh, yeah. Yep. Um, and I see sometimes just self-reflection here. There are things that I may be good at, but miserable if I put them in the wrong context. I was in a corporate route in my life one point in time. I'm very good at analyzing things. But when my job became almost all data analytics and I got away from my values of helping people, because that's sort of the role I found myself in, I was miserable. Yeah, I was good at it. I was really good at some of the analytical pieces, but I was miserable doing it.
- Speaker #0
because it broke away from values yeah honestly that's where i see a lot of people struggling is because the work that they do encompasses like what they are willing to accept and some people's bar is way too low right some people's bar is like oh they'll pay me money And for people with ADHD, that's a really detrimental mindset. What we have to really understand for us to stay motivated and within the business or within the relationship or within the thing that we want to be in, there has to be something that like really encompasses our values, really understands our strengths. And like there has to be accommodations for the weaknesses. Because if we don't have those, then the stress levels are going to get so severe that we're just going to wind up quitting and self-sabotaging.
- Speaker #1
I don't think I self-sabotaged, but I did quit. That's left there to go back into direct care as a therapist. It was definitely a good move before I self-sabotaged. Let's keep going. Questions here. As someone who consults with businesses on neurodivergence. What are some key accommodations that you think workplaces should implement to better support ADHD employees?
- Speaker #0
The ability to, like, work outdoors. I'd love to see a lot more businesses that have, like, encourage outdoor space working. Like, working out in the sun. Like, you know, like, maybe under the shade, obviously. I don't want to be, like, directly in the sun because, you know. white. But at the same time, I do want to make sure I want to have my ability to be able to work outside or I need to have the ability to be able to get up and pace and walk. And there just needs to be movement based or like, you know, freedom based accommodations that a lot of people need, not just neurodivergent people, neurotypical people need this too. But we really need to have the space to have a lot more fluidity in where and how we work. And that, cause that, that allows us to be able to get the quiet space that we need. One of the things I loved working at like Cisco was they had quiet spaces and they had spaces like that, that really appreciated it. And I think more businesses need to have that freedom of movement.
- Speaker #1
Uh, I love the options that you listed out there going outside. So it's such a, I don't hear that one listed as much, uh, when people talk about this kind of thing, but yeah. Um, My first thought, honestly, though, was like, come on, man, I'm in Georgia. I would never want that accommodation half the year. But also some of my favorite jobs I've had in life were outside in the fall, stuff like that, when the weather's nice, just to go sit out there. But yeah, the way you described that, I appreciated it. Final question here. You're involved in several advocacy organizations. What do you see as the biggest barrier to ADHD awareness and support right now, and how can we work to change it?
- Speaker #0
I think, honestly, it's the, we do not teach ADHD and autism and neurodivergence in general well in school, right? Like, from, you know, kindergarten all the way through medical school, we don't. understand or are aware of ADHD, and we don't communicate it effectively across the different things, right? The doctors and the researchers are submitting their papers. ADHD and autism are one of the most studied neurodevelopmental issues that are out there. However, that data doesn't make it into the hands of educators often enough, and it's definitely not put into the hands of parents often enough and we don't really celebrate neurodiversity at all in any school system and i think that we just really need to be putting a lot more emphasis on that across the board as a known quantity of our neurodiversity you know
- Speaker #1
This is when normally I ask somebody where they'd like to go back and deep dive, but can we stay here for a little bit more conversation?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- Speaker #1
I wonder how many people listening to this may hear that and say, wait a second, Shane, I don't think that's right. We do talk about this stuff and where I would counter them to say, well, yeah, but outdated viewpoints, right? Sure, they're talked about, but it's the current research you're talking about. That's what's not talked about. It's sort of the topic in general, but for these outdated views, and we're ignoring ongoing development. Is that a fair response for me?
- Speaker #0
I mean, 100%, because we're still treating ADHD and autism like they're childhood disorders, and they're not. You know, they're neurodevelopmental disorders that affect children starting at age zero all the way through 12, right? And then, like, but... It's that's that neurodevelopmental stage. It keeps going on through life, but everybody just kind of pretends that after like 18, apparently these things just are supposed to go away. Especially when people are, are, you know, what people consider high functioning, which is stupid. It's just like, I'm able to adapt better. Like, that's all it really means is I'm able to adapt to the expectations better. And, um, we don't, we don't really. We don't talk about it enough as a society, you know, to where parents can sit here and say, well, my child is four. Why do they act like they're two? Or my child is six. Why do they act like they're four? Like my child has the hyperactivity of a three-year-old. Okay, well, cool. Then it sounds like we probably need to talk about ADHD and what that means. And we don't do that enough. You know, we don't even have conversations about. Because it immediately goes into a diagnosis, right? And one of the coolest things at the conference that we had last year was a doctor who talked about, like, let's just talk about the actual struggles that people deal with. Let's remove the whole concept of ADHD and autism. Let's remove that from the board. Let's just talk about the functions, the cognitive struggles that they have, and let's focus on just those issues. So let's just talk about executive function issues that people struggle with. Let's just work on those issues. Let's remove the whole ADHD and autism from the equation as labels. Let's just talk about the struggles that people have. And then when we start looking at that, then we see a huge breadth of issues that people deal with on a daily basis because neurodiversity is so varied across different brains.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's that idea of just breaking it down. It feels like it's. much more able to individualize the conversation that way. Right. Like this is sort of, you're not both of our clients. And so it's, let's not talk about this kid's diagnosis, this person that diagnosis, like what do they struggle with day to day? Let's have that conversation because that's way more productive because every diagnosis, right? Like I sort of think there's a future where if we're going to continue with this paradigm with the DSM and everything. uh that we have currently that you know autism spectrum was a huge step and i think we're going to find more diagnoses that'll be sort of viewed viewed clinically even as a spectrum disorder like i think as a spectrum should be how it's viewed right it's already different different
- Speaker #0
traits but perfect example of what i'm talking about in like the scientific realm adhd is considered a spectrum issue because of the different criteria that a person has to go The spectrum goes hyperactive and attentive combined, right? That is a spectrum. And people are talking about the presentations that people have because of where they sit on that. And that's one of those things that we saw a lot of people starting to talk about at the conference. But a lot of people were talking about, I've never heard of it put out that way. And they're like, yeah, as we're kind of moving forward in this conversation, we're starting to recognize these different things. And so that information that's. five or six years old isn't mainstream yet. It needs to be mainstream. It needs to be a lot better understood. And we're supposed to, within the next year, have DSM-worthy criteria for ADHD and autism in adults. That's supposed to be coming out. Hopefully, we should see some of this from this year's International ADHD Conference.
- Speaker #1
Where do you think that people should go to keep up with this research?
- Speaker #0
I think good resources outside the men's ADHD support group.org. We have a lot of blogs there. Attitude Magazine is probably one of my favorites. Chad is really starting to step up there and really talk about a lot of adult issues and things like that. But I think Attitude Magazine really focuses and has a much more... a broader emphasis on the totality of age. And I think more people who are in the audience would be finding, would find themselves better off there doing research on, on that kind of stuff.
- Speaker #1
Got it. I appreciate you sharing those resources. So wrapping up here, Shane, people who have heard you share today and they want to learn more from you or maybe interested in working with you or some of whom might benefit from some of your services and resources. How can they find you?
- Speaker #0
Uh, creating order from chaos.com because go there. Um, if you check it out, I've actually had a freebie. It's a values and strength freebie that you can go there and check it out. Um, and, um, just, you know, check out what I do. I work with entrepreneurs. I work with parents. I work with adults with ADHD. I'm going to teach you about ADHD. I'm going to work with you on it. We're going to delve into the struggles that you have, and we're really going to define who you are and figure out who that person is.
- Speaker #1
Awesome. Shane, thanks so much for being here and just sharing with us today. I've really enjoyed this. And thanks for listening to Nerd Avergent Spot. Again, I am Sam Arian. I hope that you'll give the show a quick subscribe, follow along. And you can find me on Instagram at Nerd Avergent Spot. From there, you can find all my other places online.
