Understanding the ADHD and Anxiety Overlap with Dr. Mona Potter
Hacking Your ADHD
Distinguishing between ADHD and anxiety can feel a bit like trying to figure out if you're sneezing because of a cold or because your neighbor just started mowing their lawn - or maybe it's a bit of both, the symptoms look the same, but the solution is very different. This week, I’m talking with Dr. Mona Potter, a Harvard-trained, board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and the Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder of InStride Health. Dr. Potter spent years at McLean Hospital pioneering treatments for anxiety and OCD, and has a unique perspective on how we can manage the specific...
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Research Recap: Discontinued Use of ADHD Meds
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I’m your host, William Curb. Today, I’m joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series, where we dive into a single research paper to find practical takeaways. In this episode, we’re discussing a paper called "Adherence, Persistence and Medication Discontinuation in Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Literature Review." This study asks: what’s happening in the real world with medication adherence? Are people taking their meds, and if not, why? I found this paper through a presentation by Bill Dobson at the 2025 ADHD...
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Nervous System Regulation and the Stages of Burnout with Garrett Wood
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Burnout is one of those terms we throw around a lot in the neurodivergent community, but often we don't realize we're in it until we've hit a wall. Today, I’m talking with Garrett Wood, a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and founder of Gnosis Therapy. Garrett specializes in working with high-achieving professionals—which is often code for high-masking folks—helping them navigate executive well-being and nervous system regulation. In our conversation, we dive into the nuances of burnout, specifically how it differs from just being tired, and we walk through the five stages of...
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Crushing Your ADD with Alan P. Brown
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! This week I’m talking with Alan P. Brown, the creator of ADD Crusher and host of Crusher™TV. Alan is an ADHD and productivity coach who spent decades struggling with undiagnosed ADHD while working as an advertising executive in New York. His own "mess to success" story involves battling addiction and navigating a career where he felt like he was constantly floundering, only to turn it all around by developing his own "brain hacks." In our conversation today, we dive into some of the practical strategies Alan developed to get his brain in gear, like the importance of identifying...
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Research Recap with Skye: Childhood pain and ADHD
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I’m your host, William Curb, and today I’m joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. We’re diving into a paper titled "Pain Associated Diagnosis in Childhood Before the Diagnosis of ADHD." We want to see if kids who were eventually diagnosed with ADHD showed higher rates of pain-related medical visits before that diagnosis even happened. This is a vital question because about a quarter of chronic pain patients are also diagnosed with ADHD. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at - Unconventional Organisation...
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You Don’t Need to Earn Your Rest with Alyece Smith
Hacking Your ADHD
Hello all you beautiful people, happy new year. I’m gearing up for 2026 after a few set backs at the end of last year that we’ll get into in a future episode. But today we’re talking with Alyece Smith, founder of Socially Ausome, a neurodivergent entrepreneur coach, and the host of The ADHD CEO Podcast. She specializes in helping business owners build sustainable systems that actually work for their brains rather than against them. In our conversation today, we get into why we often feel the need to "earn our rest" and how that can lead to burnout. We also jump into how to systemize your...
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ADHD-Friendly Goal Setting with Chris Wang (Rebroadcast)
Hacking Your ADHD
It’s hard to believe we’re already into 2026. If last year felt fast, this year is moving even quicker. As we settle into the rhythm of a new year, I found myself looking back at some of the most impactful conversations we’ve had on the show—specifically those that help us navigate the "new year pressure" without the burnout. That’s why today, we’re revisiting a fan-favorite conversation from the archives with Chris Wang, CEO and co-founder of Shimmer. Even though this originally aired at the start of 2025, the strategies Chris shares are more relevant than ever. We dive deep into:...
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Research Recap with Skye: Subclinical ADHD and the Entrepreneurial Path
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 single research paper and dive into what it says, how it was conducted, and any practical takeaways. In this episode, we’re discussing a paper titled "The Effects of Subclinical ADHD Symptomatology on Subjective Financial, Physical, and Mental Wellbeing of Entrepreneurs and Employees." Essentially, this study looks at...
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Breaking Down Tasks and Big Feelings with Vanessa Gorelkin (Rebroadcast)
Hacking Your ADHD
For this week’s episode, we are dipping into the archives to revisit a conversation that resonated with so many of you. I’m talking with Vanessa Gorelkin, a seasoned occupational therapist and ADHD coach who’s been working in the field for nearly 30 years. Vanessa holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis (Bran-Dice) University and a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy from NYU. She specializes in executive function strategies, emotional regulation, and anxiety management, and she brings a unique perspective to helping adults with ADHD navigate the day-to-day. In this encore...
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Research Recap with Skye: The ADHD and IBS Connection
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I’m your host, William Curb. Today I’m joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we dive into a single research paper to see what it says, how it was conducted, and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we’re discussing a paper called "Association between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and intestinal disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis." It’s a fascinating one because they started with nearly 2,000 papers and narrowed it down to 11 high-quality studies. If you'd life to follow along on the show...
info_outlineHey team!
This week, I’m joined by Rae Jacobson, journalist, ADHD expert, and host of Hyperfocus at Understood.org, to talk about how we make sense of ADHD when it feels like it’s everywhere. Rae has spent over a decade reporting on mental health and neurodiversity, and she brings that blend of research, lived experience, and sharp humor that makes big ideas actually relatable.
This was honestly one of my favorite episodes that I’ve recorded this year - while Rae and I were brainstorming ideas that two ADHD podcasters could talk about, I think we hit on a very salient topic, the over-pathologizing of ADHD within the community. While we love to find all the things that are from our ADHD, it’s also true that not everything is because of our ADHD.
In our conversation today, we dig into the ways ADHD often gets pathologized, how everything from losing your keys to getting a song stuck in your head can get blamed on ADHD, and why that can actually make it harder to understand what’s really going on. We get into “symptoms of symptoms,” the tricky overlap between ADHD and other conditions like depression and anxiety, and why community spaces like Reddit can both help and hurt when it comes to self-diagnosis. And of course, we also go down a few very ADHD side paths about clutter, shame spirals, and why having too many pens is basically a personality trait at this point.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/258
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
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- When considering what is and isn’t ADHD, it’s important to remember the context of ADHD as a chronic condition - as in it’s something that we deal with all the time. Everyone is going to lose their keys every once in a while, but with ADH,D the difference is in the pattern and the impact. Without the systems I have in place to make sure my keys go into the same place every time, I would be losing them every day.
- Not everything annoying is an ADHD trait; sometimes it’s just being a human in a busy, overstimulating world. While there are a lot of comorbidities with ADHD, if we try to label everything as ADHD, we lose the ability to tell what actually needs attention. Instead of asking, “Is this ADHD?”, try asking, “Is this making my life unmanageable?” That’s the line that separates “normal chaos” from “I might need help with this.”
- But when ADHD does show up alongside things like depression, anxiety, or trauma, those conditions can feed into each other. You need to figure out who’s driving the bus. Treating the wrong “driver” means you’ll burn energy fixing the wrong problem. So before building systems or blaming ADHD, step back and ask what’s actually behind the behavior.