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Navigating the Tangle of ADHD and OCD with Natalia Aiza

Hacking Your ADHD

Release Date: 01/27/2025

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Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! This week I'm talking with Dr. Megan Anna Neff, an AuDHD clinical psychologist, author, and educator. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from George Fox University, which she completed the same year that she was diagnosed as autistic. Dr. Neff has moved away from traditional clinical practice to focus on creating research-informed, lived-experience-centered, and emotionally resonant resources and training through her platform Neurodivergent Insights. In our conversation today, we discuss her diagnosis, how ADHD and Autism tend to run in families, and the ripple effects that...

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Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Psychological Implications of Exclusion in Individuals with ADHD Symptomatology." That's a hard word there. This study asked a...

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Hey team! This week I'm talking with James and Sam Brown, co-authors of Focus: The ADHD guide to productivity that actually works - James is a science communicator with a PhD in Biomedical Science, and 20+ years in academia and Chair of the adult ADHD charity ADHDadultUK. Sam, also known as Mrs. AuDHD online, is an Executive Administrator with ADHD-informed PA expertise, an ADHD coach, Director and Secretary of JBHD Ltd, and a Trustee of ADHDadultUK. Together (with Alex Conner) they co-host The ADHD Adults podcast. As both of them were diagnosed as adults, they use their lived (but...

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Hey Team! This week I got a chance to catch up with my good friend Brendan Mahan and talk with him about his upcoming book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful. Brendan is one of the first people I got to know in the ADHD space and I feel lucky to have done so because for one he’s just an awesome guy, but also because his approach to ADHD has always just felt so real and coming from a place of lived experience. Brendan is the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast, a board member of the Men's ADHD Support Group and the Director of Professional Resources for Calmer Con: Boston - and also one of the few...

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Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what that paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "The Experiences of Adults with ADHD in Interpersonal Relationships and Online Communities: A Qualitative Study." This study looks at...

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We’re diving back into the vault today to bring you a foundational episode on one of my favorite ADHD strategies: Automation. We all know the struggle—if it’s interesting, we’re all in. If it’s boring? It’s nearly impossible to start. Because so much of "adulting" is inherently repetitive, automation allows us to frontload our work so our "future selves" don't have to rely on willpower alone. Top Tips from this Rebroadcast: Frontload your effort: Save time and brainpower by making decisions once and letting tech handle the rest. Systematize first: Learn why...

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Hey Team! Welcome back to a special encore presentation of Hacking Your ADHD. I’m dipping into the archives this week to bring back an episode that has only become more relevant since it first aired. We’re talking about misinformation—a topic that feels like it should be easy to define and identify, but as we know, the ADHD brain loves a rabbit hole, and not every rabbit hole leads to the truth. We’ve all seen those posts online where we roll our eyes and think, “How does anyone actually fall for this?” But here’s the kicker: that exact feeling of immunity is...

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Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and any practical takeaways we can find. In this episode, we're discussing a paper called "Time Perception in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Does Task Matter? A Meta-Analysis Study." This study...

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We’re diving back into the archives today to revisit one of our most-requested episodes. Does the hum of the refrigerator feel like a jet engine? Does a scratchy shirt tag ruin your entire afternoon? You aren't alone. With ADHD, our "filters" often don't work the way we want them to. We can’t simply ignore the background noise or the overwhelming scent of a neighbor's perfume. In this encore presentation, we explore the world of hypersensitivity and what it means to be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) while navigating ADHD. In this episode, we revisit: Why our brains struggle to...

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In this special rebroadcast, we are revisiting a conversation about a phrase many of us use at the start of a new project or a new year: “I want to hit the ground running.” Often, we start with great momentum, but it doesn’t take much—like an unexpected illness or a change in schedule—to throw a snag into our plans. For those of us with ADHD, we tend to thrive on speed and urgency. We don’t want to wait around, and that "emergency" energy can be a powerful motivator. However, living from one urgent task to the next often means we never get around to the things that are important...

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Hey Team!

In this episode, I’m thrilled to welcome Natalia Aíza, a multilingual counselor and OCD specialist. 

Natalia is the founder and executive director of Kairos Wellness Collective, a therapy center that focuses on holistic care for clients experiencing OCD and Anxiety - located in Boulder, Colorado. They offer therapies including Exposure Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Play Therapy, Art Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Neurofeedback. Obviously, we won’t get into all of that in our conversation today, but we do hit on a few of those.

Also, separately, I wanted to mention that Kairos is the Greek word meaning “the perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words or movement; also weather.” And really, I just wanted to share that because I love words like that - I just find them neat.

Anyway, in our conversation today, we dive into the overlap of ADHD and OCD - how they are similar and how they differ, and also the unique challenges each presents, especially when they are co-occurring. Natalia shares her personal and professional insights on distinguishing between ADHD distractions and OCD compulsions and how to approach treatment for each.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/209

Also before we get started, I wanted to let you know about my AMA on YouTube Live, happening the week this is released on January 31st at 10 AM Pacific - if you’re interested you can find that on the Hacking Your ADHD YouTube page, youtube.com/@hackingyouradhd and subscribe to the channel - or if you want to submit a question ahead of time you can do so at hackingyouradhd.com/ama

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This Episode's Top Tips

    1. It’s important to remember that you need to approach OCD and ADHD treatments differently; techniques beneficial for one may exacerbate the other.
    2. Try to distinguish between compulsions and simple fidgets or stims—while symptoms can be similar, it’s essential to understand the root causes that characterize compulsions.
    3. Be proactive in seeking diagnosis and treatment if OCD symptoms appear; early intervention can prevent the condition from worsening.