loader from loading.io

Navigating the Tangle of ADHD and OCD with Natalia Aiza

Hacking Your ADHD

Release Date: 01/27/2025

Research Recap with Skye: Circadian Rhythm show art Research Recap with Skye: Circadian Rhythm

Hacking Your ADHD

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 to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "ADHD as a Circadian Rhythm Disorder: Evidence and Implications for Chronotherapy." Now, this is a perspective paper looking at the...

info_outline
The Bypassing Creative Consistency with Susanne Schotanus show art The Bypassing Creative Consistency with Susanne Schotanus

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! As many of you know, I have a passion for writing, and so I’m excited that today we are diving deep into that world and why it often feels like an uphill battle when you have an ADHD brain. I'm talking with Susanne Schotanus, an expert ADHD coach who holds the unique distinction of being the world's first dedicated ADHD writing coach, as well as the founder of the annual Basecamp to Brilliance writing summit. Susanne brings a wealth of clinical and practical insight from her years spent coaching everyone from burnt-out university professors to memoirists struggling to organize...

info_outline
Scaffolding the ADHD Brain: How Habits Fail and Systems May Save Us show art Scaffolding the ADHD Brain: How Habits Fail and Systems May Save Us

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! When I moved into my neighborhood, most of the houses weren't built.  So I got to see over the course of a few years, a lot of the work that went into putting those houses up, all the day-to-day progress that always kept happening, and how every step seemed to set them up for the next step. Now, nobody expects a brick wall to just materialize out of midair on pure willpower or a house to get completely built with no effort. yet when it comes to managing our daily routines, that’s exactly what we try to do. We expect our internal motivation to keep us on track despite our own...

info_outline
Tearing Down Cement Walls of Shame with Ron Capalbo show art Tearing Down Cement Walls of Shame with Ron Capalbo

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! Today I’m sitting down with Ron Capalbo, known to many as @adhd_ron on the socials. I’ve gotten to know Ron at a number of ADHD conferences and had a great time at Neurodiversion talking with him about Dungeon Crawler Carl and figured it was time to have him on the pod. Ron is an AACC-certified coach through the ADD Coach Academy who specializes in strengths-based development and helping adults navigate the messy "shame cycle" that so often accompanies an ADHD diagnosis. He’s spent years building a community focused on honoring unique brain chemistry rather than fighting a...

info_outline
Research Recap with Skye: Fidgeting show art Research Recap with Skye: Fidgeting

Hacking Your ADHD

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 Watterson 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 to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called A Quantitative Analysis of Fidgeting in ADHD and Its Relation to Performance and Sustained Attention on a Cognitive Task. And so,...

info_outline
Hacking the Limbic System’s Spending Habits with Christine Lane show art Hacking the Limbic System’s Spending Habits with Christine Lane

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! This week, I’m talking with Christine Lane, an accredited financial counselor (AFC) with a master's degree in psychology. Christine has ADHD herself and, luckily for the rest of us, her hyper-fixation happens to be on personal finance. She’s the founder of Mind Over Money, where she focuses on the psychological hurdles that make traditional budgeting feel like a personal failure rather than just a glitch in your executive function. In our conversation today, we get into her "Four-Bucket Banking System" and why we need to stop making our money multitask. We also explore the...

info_outline
Coping with your ADHD (rebroadcast) show art Coping with your ADHD (rebroadcast)

Hacking Your ADHD

In this rebroadcast of Hacking Your ADHD, host William Curb returns to the fundamental concept of coping—redefining it not just as an emotional reaction, but as a proactive problem-solving toolkit designed to mitigate predictable ADHD mishaps. Curb explores the critical shift from "reactive" stress management to "proactive" strategies, such as building calendar buffers and utilizing visual organization systems like hooks and "point of performance" reminders. By distinguishing between effective tools and maladaptive habits like self-defeating humor or impulsive spending, the episode...

info_outline
No Pain, All Gain: Somatic Healing with the Workout Witch Liz Tenuto show art No Pain, All Gain: Somatic Healing with the Workout Witch Liz Tenuto

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey team, today I'm talking with Liz Tenuto, more widely known as the Workout Witch. Liz is a somatic specialist with a degree in psychology from UCSB, who has spent over a decade helping people release chronic stress through movement. She's also the author of Moving Through Trauma, which hit shelves in January. Liz's work bridges the gap between psychology and physical health, specializing in how trauma and stress manifest as psychological issues like gut problems, insomnia, and chronic pain. In our conversation today, we're diving into the world of somatic exercises, which are slow...

info_outline
Research Recap with Skye: Sleep Problems show art Research Recap with Skye: Sleep Problems

Hacking Your ADHD

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, 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 "Prevalence, Patterns, and Predictors of Sleep Problems and Daytime Sleepiness in Young Adolescents with ADHD." And so this is a study...

info_outline
Stop the Panic: Regulating Your ADHD Brain with Jenna Free show art Stop the Panic: Regulating Your ADHD Brain with Jenna Free

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team! Today I’m talking with Jenna Free, a Master’s-level Canadian Certified Counselor and ADHD coach, who focuses on polyvagal theory, which is to say, she helps people understand their nervous system. She works specifically with neurodivergent adults to move them out of the "fight, flight, or freeze" responses that make ADHD symptoms feel ten times heavier than they need to be. In our conversation, we’re moving past the usual "tips and tricks" to look at the biological hardware of the ADHD brain and, more specifically, on nervous system regulation. We discuss the mechanics of...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

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

The #1 ADHD Coaching app for teens and adults. Use code HACKINGYOURADHD for 30% of your first month!

https://www.shimmer.care/

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.