The Vibe With Ky Podcast

When you can handle the big, hard things but the five-minute task keeps beating you, it isn’t laziness. Gabrielle Juliano-Villani on ADHD burnout and the easy stuff. Gabrielle is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and the founder of GJV Consulting & Training. She built a group therapy practice to 15 therapists, burned out completely, and sold it. Then came her ADHD diagnosis, and the small stuff that kept beating her finally made sense. One month her business billed $100,000, and she still couldn’t make herself scan the paper sitting on her desk. We talk about leading a whole team while privately feeling like she didn’t belong in the role, and the acquisition offer that arrived when she was too depleted to enjoy her first trip away in over a year. Then we get into why the boring, five-minute tasks are the ones that take people down: the email, the phone call, the prescription pickup. Gabrielle explains why those tasks carry no moral value, how she catches every “should,” and why it’s so easy to miss your body’s signals until you’re already running on empty. We also talk about anxiety showing up right alongside ADHD, especially for women who spent decades without a name for any of it. Then it gets practical. What nervous system regulation actually means on an ordinary Tuesday night (it’s not being zen 24/7), the accommodations she builds in as an introvert, and two small things you can try in the next ten minutes: one deep breath, and noticing glimmers, a term from Deb Dana’s work for small moments of joy. If breathwork doesn’t feel good for you, skip that one. We finish with This or That, including done is better than perfect versus one more pass, and Medicare paperwork versus a room full of strangers at a networking event. If you’ve ever called yourself a fraud over something that should be easy, this one’s for you. Free Burnout Recovery Toolkit (Gabrielle’s small steps you can start today): https://gabriellejulianovillani.com/healing-from-burnout/ Gabrielle’s website: https://gabriellejulianovillani.com If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free and there’s no email required to use it: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

ADHD shame can keep you hiding for decades. Psychologist and ADHDer Joel Schwartz offers another way to see it: part of who you are, neither a gift nor a defect. Joel is a licensed clinical psychologist who runs NeuroPathways, a neurodiversity affirming therapy and assessment practice in California. He calls himself an ADHDer, and he means it as an identity. In his words, “There’s no separating it.” He was diagnosed as a kid, he almost failed out of grad school, and the way he was treated back then shaped the work he does now. We talk about what neurodiversity affirming therapy actually looks like, from the lights and the temperature in the room to letting you info dump about the concert you just went to, because until you do, nothing else is getting done. We get into the belief that a successful career rules ADHD out, and what it takes from you to keep hiding so nobody finds out you’re struggling. As Joel puts it, “It’s just so costly.” Joel walks through what a good ADHD assessment should feel like, and the questions worth asking whoever does yours. We also talk about how ADHD can show up in men, and how to take the hard days and the real limits seriously without letting shame back in the door or pretending it’s all a gift. His lens is a neutral one. If somebody can’t use their legs, you offer a wheelchair and a ramp, and in his words, “There’s no shame in that.” Then I ask what somebody can do this week to move one inch through the wall, and we play This or That, Star Wars or Star Trek included. Joel’s last answer is one I’m keeping: “You can’t not be you, so stop trying.” Find Joel: NeuroPathways: https://www.neuro-pathways.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-schwartz-psyd-40181614/ If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free, and there’s no email required to use it: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Moving or traveling abroad with ADHD can take more than a visa and a packing list. Tamarind Murrietta shares what to plan for before you go, not after you land. Tamarind is the founder of Live Abroad with ADHD, a community for neurodivergent people who want to live, study and travel internationally in ways that actually work for them. She’s spent nearly two decades living across Europe, Africa and Asia. She isn’t a clinician or a coach; what she shares comes from her own years abroad and the people she’s met. We talk about what comes after you land: finding your grocery store, getting a simple question answered without the language, and what happens when your first new friend isn’t that into you. In Tamarind’s words, “that person looks like a lifeline.” She tells the story of her first midterms in grad school overseas, when she found out the testing accommodations she’d been promised only applied to her final exams, a year and a half away. It led to the line at the heart of this episode: “If you don’t know the question to ask, you can’t ask it.” We also get into the sensory side of travel that nobody prepped me for, from why I’d rather walk Barcelona’s main strip early or late to the outdoor markets in Lagos, where an hour or two of picking up basic items could leave her done for the entire day. For the parents listening, she turns the question around and asks you to plan for yourself, not only your kid. And if you take medication, she makes the case for planning for it before you leave. Then we play This or That: aisle or window, an overplanned itinerary or an open day, and learning 10 words of the language before you land. CONNECT WITH TAMARIND MURRIETTA Special link for Vibers (ADHD Traveler & Expat Community and a free ADHD International Travel Checklist): https://tr.ee/liveabroad_vibewithky Her podcast, Live Abroad with ADHD, on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/liveabroadwithadhd/ CONNECT WITH KY Website: https://thevibewithky.com/ Subscriber Hub: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Free Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ If this conversation brought something up for you, the Mental Health Resources Hub above is free and there’s no email required to use it. Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Time anxiety is that constant feeling that you’re behind, that time is running out, and that you should be doing something important right now, even when you can’t say what it is. My friend Chris Guillebeau wrote a whole book about this feeling. Chris is a New York Times bestselling author, the host of the daily podcast Side Hustle School, and the founder of NeuroDiversion, an annual gathering of neurodivergent adults. He isn’t a clinician. He’s a writer who was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and knows this feeling from the inside. We talk about the two sides of time anxiety: the big fear that you’ve missed your chance in life, and the daily feeling that there’s never enough time in the day. Chris tells me about the book manuscript he turned in four months late in his thirties, after a lot of outward success, and why getting more efficient isn’t the same as being effective. I share what two large research reviews found about how people with ADHD judge time. It’s not everybody with ADHD, and plenty of people without ADHD feel this too. And if you got your ADHD diagnosis later in life and you’ve been counting the years since, this conversation is for you. We also get into the time rules most of us follow without anyone asking us to, how depression changes what time anxiety feels like, a simple tip for anyone who’s always running late, and one question you can ask yourself at the end of today. NeuroDiversion 2027 is March 24 to 27, 2027 in Austin, Texas. I’ll be there, and because you listen to this show, you get $50 off your ticket. Tickets go on sale in January. NeuroDiversion 2027, $50 off your ticket: https://www.neurodiversion.org/thevibewithky Time Anxiety, Chris’s book: https://timeanxiety.com/ You can also find Chris’s daily podcast, Side Hustle School, wherever you listen to podcasts. If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free, with no email required: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ If you’re struggling right now, in the US you can call or text 988. In the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans at 116 123. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists local lines. Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Making friends with ADHD can be hard. Keeping them can be harder when it takes everything you have just to get through the day. So what do you do when you can’t find your people? My guest is Trina Haynes, the founder of My Lady ADHD, a community for late-diagnosed women with ADHD, and a community builder with NeuroDiversion. She’s not a clinician, and neither am I. When Trina was diagnosed in her thirties, she went looking for one or two other women like her. She found about 200,000. She’s also a close friend of mine, and one of the people who welcomed me into the ADHD community. We talk about a feeling a lot of you will recognize: sitting down at the end of the day and realizing you never texted that person back. Trina is honest about how that guilt piles up and what it does to your self-esteem. Then we get practical: the small things that help her stay close to people, why she believes so many people are waiting for an invitation, and the idea at the center of this conversation. If you can’t find the community you’re looking for, you build it yourself. In Trina’s words, “No one is going to join your group if you don’t tell anyone about it.” She also shares how her friend Meredith Carder changed the way she thinks about burnout, by planning each day around preventing it instead of waiting to crash. And we talk about NeuroDiversion, where I finally met a lot of my online friends in person. NeuroDiversion 2027 is March 24 to 27, 2027 in Austin, Texas, for ADHD, autistic, and every other kind of neurodivergent person, plus the people who love them. The last two years sold out. I’ll be there, and I’m working with the organizers on something special for everyone who comes. Because you listen to this show, you get $50 off your ticket with the link below. $50 off NeuroDiversion 2027: https://www.neurodiversion.org/thevibewithky Trina on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myladyadhd/ Trina’s website: https://www.ladyadhd.net/ Meredith Carder’s book, It All Makes Sense Now: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748033/it-all-makes-sense-now-by-meredith-carder If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Do you need an ADHD diagnosis to understand your own brain? Paul Bowers is 67, has never been formally assessed, and has spent decades learning how his brain works anyway. Paul is a commercial photographer and video director with more than forty years behind the camera. He's not a clinician, and neither am I. He's also a motorcyclist, a mechanic, a landscape designer, a husband and a father, and for most of his life he heard one phrase as a put-down: jack of all trades, master of none. We talk about what it's like to be good at a lot of things in a world that keeps asking you to pick one, and how one subject in school convinced Paul for decades that he was secretly stupid. He explains why so few people are actually qualified to notice what's going on, and what believing "nobody noticed, so it wasn't that bad" can cost in relationships. Then we get into the question underneath this whole conversation: does it count without the paperwork? Paul is honest about why he never pursued an assessment. For him, the label matters less than knowing his own patterns. He describes the rejection sensitivity that still shows up before every interview he does, after photographing thousands of people. Rejection sensitive dysphoria isn't a formal diagnosis, but a lot of you will recognize it. I also share a number from a 2020 meta-analysis of adults 50 and over: about 2 in 100 showed ADHD-level symptoms on validated scales, but only about 2 in 1,000 had a diagnosis in their medical records. And Paul shares the one small thing he does on his own that changed how he sees himself, plus what he wrote on a label and stuck on his motorcycle throttle. Paul's work lives on his website, and he's on Instagram. Paul Bowers: https://www.paulmbowers.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulmbowers/ If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

They're not giving you a hard time, they're having one. That single sentence is the heart of autism support for grandparents, parents, teachers, and first responders. Jennifer Kaufman is a school principal with over a decade serving students with autism in northern New Jersey, and the grandmother of a child with autism. She's an educator, not a clinician, and she's honest about the moment her expertise stopped being what her family needed. When her grandson was diagnosed, her daughter wasn't looking for a principal on the other end of the phone. She was looking for her mom. We talk about why grandparents, who have raised kids of their own, can find this shift the hardest, and why following the parents' lead matters so much, because your adult child is the expert in their own child. Jennifer walks through the training she gives police officers, first responders, and campus security teams through First Response Autism, where the most useful strategies are often the simplest: more time to answer, lower lights, less noise, and removing the audience. She explains the curb cut effect, the idea that a change made for one group ends up helping everyone, and why meeting a student with curiosity over judgment changes what happens next. When I asked her for one small thing anybody could start this week, her answer costs nothing. And near the end, she tells the story of a sentence her father said to her, and when he said it, which has carried her through the toughest times in her life. Her book is Grandparenting on the Spectrum: A Journey from Both Sides of the Desk, and everything she does lives on her website. Jennifer Kaufman: https://jenkaufman.com Grandparenting on the Spectrum: https://www.grandparentingonthespectrum.com If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

ADHD task paralysis is not a wanting problem. Brendan Mahan named the Wall of Awful, and he explains what is actually happening when a small task feels impossible. There is something on your list right now. Not the big thing. The small one. The phone call, the form, the email you have opened four times and closed four times. At some point it stopped being a task and turned into evidence about you. Brendan Mahan, M.Ed., M.S., is an ADHD and executive function coach and consultant, a former teacher and mental health counselor, and the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast. He is not a clinician and does not practice as one. He is also the man who built the Wall of Awful, the model millions of people now use for that gap between wanting to do something and being able to start it. He takes Ky back to the kitchen where he first said those words out loud, talking to a mother whose son would not start his homework. He explains why he refuses the word lazy, calling it an answer without a solution. And he draws a line that is hard to shake: if you forget to make a phone call, that is ADHD, that is working memory. If you know you should make it, pick the phone up, and put it back down, that is not ADHD. That is something else sitting on top of it. They get into what forcing your way through by sheer will costs you, what changes when your bricks got built in doctors' offices instead of classrooms, and the smallest thing you can do tonight that costs nothing and needs nobody's permission. Brendan's podcast, ADHD Essentials: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adhd-essentials/id1332788588 His first book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful: Why It's Hard to Get Things Done with ADHD, Autism, and Anxiety (and How to Do Them Anyway), out now from Balance: https://brendanmahan.com/the-wall-of-awful-book/ Free mental health resources, no email required: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Rebellious curiosity means asking the question no one wants to ask, and answering it without blame. Dr. Yemi Penn says the one you've been waiting to save you is already you. That is the heart of this conversation. Dr. Yemi Penn is an engineer by first profession who became a researcher, keynote speaker, and filmmaker, and she hosts the Decolonising Trauma podcast. She holds a PhD, and to be clear, she is not a clinician. What she offers is lived experience and years of research, not medical advice. We get into what rebellious curiosity actually looks like day to day, how she went from an engineer who lived on fixed answers to a self-described Cultural Alchemist who "lives in the tolerance," and what it means to decolonise trauma, to step back from the one story we were all handed and ask what else might be true. Yemi walks through how to tell the difference between your real self and the inherited story running the show, and why the reality that feels most permanent might be one that is quietly keeping you company. I also share something personal: the years my existential OCD kept me locked in a version of reality that felt one step from collapse, and how her framing genuinely reframed it for me. By the end, she leaves us with something Tarana Burke and Brene Brown said best, that you are your best thing, shadow parts and all. This one is warm and honest, and it lands somewhere hopeful without pretending the hard parts are not hard. More from Dr. Yemi Penn: Her podcast, Decolonising Trauma (a verified Apple or Spotify show URL unblocks this link) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.yemipenn/ Website: https://www.yemipenn.com If you need support: Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

Nobody prepares you for the second time. The first climb out of something hard gets support and attention. The second one is quieter, because you already used up the big reaction and you already told everybody you were okay. Tim McDonald is living inside that right now. A few weeks before this conversation, he learned his cancer is back after almost six years. He is a patient advocate, a speaker, and the author of From Patient to Advocate, and he is a stage four colorectal cancer survivor and a liver transplant recipient speaking entirely from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. He explains, in his own words, what a blood test told him and why there is nothing to treat yet. He talks honestly about the first week, the one he calls mentally hellacious, when he was not eating much and doing the bare minimum and playing the what-if game he says he hates. Then he walks through the question that got him moving again: what has actually changed? His answer was that one piece of information changed, and everything else about his life was exactly the same. From there the conversation turns to self-advocacy, and this is where it stops being about cancer. Tim did not wait for a referral. He researched, made his own calls, and drove eight hours round trip for a one hour appointment to reach the right expert. His first oncologist told him to get a second, third, tenth opinion and keep going until he believed what he was hearing. That applies just as directly in a psychiatrist's office, at an assessment, or with a GP who is not listening. If something you thought you had put down has come back on you, whatever your version of that is, this one is for you. Tim's book, From Patient to Advocate: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GL3BQMH6 Tim's website: https://www.timmcdonaldadvocate.com/ Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and his content is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

You don't have to earn rest. The calm you keep chasing is not something you arrive at after enough effort. It is already in you, and something else is in the way. Most of us were taught the opposite. Push harder, optimize more, stay disciplined enough, and eventually you get to relax. Brea Segger has spent over twenty years working with leaders, entrepreneurs, and high achievers, and she says that framing is the trap itself. Brea is an embodiment guide, not a therapist or a licensed clinician. Her background is unusual: she started in international business development and mergers and acquisitions before spending more than a decade running a holistic medicine institute in Canada. She knows the high achiever world from the inside, which is part of why this conversation goes where it does. In this episode she takes apart the language her own field runs on, including the phrase she has nearly removed from her own website because it turned into another rule book. She makes the case that suppressing your emotions was protective rather than a failure, and that the little kid who learned to push things down was doing exactly what kept them safe. She puts the high achiever and the person in active addiction on the same continuum, and explains why that framing removes shame rather than adding it. And she describes self-trust as something you already have and forgot, not something you build from nothing. I told her about a long stretch where I could not tell the difference between rest and guilt, where sitting still felt like I was failing at something. Her answer reframed the whole thing for me. Then I asked where a person should actually start. Her answer took about four seconds: lie down for five minutes and do nothing. Not meditate. Not fix anything. Just be there. So I asked the follow-up I knew some of you were thinking, which is how you get back up once you are down there. CONNECT WITH BREA SEGGER Her website and newsletter: https://www.breasegger.com/ Her podcast, Beneath The Story: https://www.breasegger.com/beneath-the-story-podcast She also has a retreat coming up called The Embodied Woman Mastery Retreat, six days in Costa Rica this November, for women, capped at eight people. Full details are on her website. Kyrus Keenan Westcott is a content creator and mental health advocate, not a licensed mental health professional. This podcast is for education and entertainment and is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience and expertise; their views are their own. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

There is a version of you that you already decided was worthless. Michael Kopper spent years proving his was, and then went back for the pieces worth keeping. Michael is the Executive Adviser and Coach at Basis Technologies, where he works with executive teams on the conversations they have been avoiding. He is not a therapist or a clinician, and nothing in this conversation is clinical advice. What he is, is someone who rebuilt a life after it came apart in public, and who now spends his days helping leaders be honest with the people who work for them. Michael was a finance leader at Enron. The decisions he made there sent him to federal prison. He does not soften that, and neither did we. But the part that stayed with Ky is what came after. Michael did not just rebuild. He spent years working very hard at pretending the old version of himself had no value at all, and it took four or five years before he went back and looked again. When he did, he found two things worth keeping. In this conversation, Michael and Ky get into why companies keep promoting their best people into management and then never show them how to do the human part of the job. Why owning a bad decision is what makes the consequences survivable instead of fatal. Why there is no work version of you and a home version of you, and what it costs a team when leaders pretend otherwise. And what you can actually say at work when telling a senior person you are scared is not safe. If you have ever decided an old version of yourself was worthless and then spent years proving it, this one is for you. The framework Michael works from is The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp. Want more? The ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub is where Ky goes deeper. The Real Ones tier, five dollars a month, includes the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, where podcast guests flip the script and interview Ky. Reverse the Mic is for subscribers only and is not part of this public episode. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Everything else: https://thevibewithky.com Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

There is a version of rest that never arrives. You will relax once the list is done, except the list is never done. Gary Ware has a name for that, and it is not laziness. He calls it living on a proving ground. It is what happens when play drains out of a life. The people around you stop being people you enjoy and start being competition, and work turns into something you have to earn by proving you are worthy of it. Plenty of us have lived that way so long we stopped noticing it was a way of living at all. Gary Ware is the founder of Breakthrough Play. He is a facilitator, a keynote speaker, a coach, and the author of Playful Rebellion: Maximize Workplace Success Through The Power of Play. He is not a clinician. What he works with is applied improv, practical tools, and his own experience. He was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia at twenty six, after six straight hours of testing, and he has said that day was the worst day of his life. That is not how anybody tells you a diagnosis is supposed to feel. We get into the night he nearly fell asleep at the wheel driving home from an agency job, and what made him pull over. We get into the company that quietly took the word fun out of its stated values and replaced it with excellence, and how nobody ever said out loud what was being given up. People just stopped going to lunch. And we get into what actually helps. Taking a play history. The one question that opens it up. A five minute move you can make this week that costs nothing and asks nobody's permission. Gary also flipped the microphone around and asked me his own questions. That part is not in the public episode. It lives in the Subscriber Hub. CONNECT WITH GARY Website: https://www.breakthroughplay.com WANT MORE? Join the ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Or on Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ The Real Ones tier is five dollars a month. It includes the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, where guests interview me. Both are subscriber-exclusive and neither is on the public feed. Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this content is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

For a lot of us, the support just stops. You finish high school and the programs end, the services end, and nobody hands you a replacement. Your social life quietly becomes your own problem to solve. Jamie Pastrano said something in this conversation I have not stopped thinking about. There is no milestone for loneliness. You get one for a first job, a first apartment, riding the train alone. There is not one for having somebody to call on a Tuesday night. And if nobody measures it, nobody plans for it. Jamie is a licensed social worker and a peer certified provider, and a mom. She watched her autistic son age into that gap and could not find him a solution. Brittany Moser is a former teacher with a master's degree in autism studies. Rebecca Matchett, who everybody calls Becky, spent two decades in fashion, co-founded Alison Olivia, and holds a patent in women's sizing. Together they built Synchrony, a social app made specifically for neurodivergent adults who want to make real friends. Not adapted from something else. Built from the ground up for us. The part that surprised me is the way you get in. You upload an ID, and somebody who knows you vouches for you. I assumed that would push people away. They told me the opposite. Wide open platforms are exactly what failed this community, and those extra steps are what finally let people stop performing once they are inside. We also talk about masking and what it does to your body, what happens when the diagnosis came late or never came at all, and how to bring something like this up with someone you love without it landing badly. And we go straight at the AI question, because there is an optional coach in the app named Jesse. Synchrony, the app and the download links: https://joinsynchrony.com Go deeper in the ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ The Real Ones, five dollars a month, gets you the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, where my guests flip the script and interview me. That one is subscriber-exclusive and never hits the main feed. Jamie, Brittany and Becky recorded one for this episode. Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this content is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky.

A man came in from three hours of surfing and asked his partner if she was angry at him. She said no. Why would I be angry? You love surfing. He only asked because the woman he dated before her used to yell at him every single time he went. That story stopped Ky cold, and it is the heart of this conversation. A lot of us were trained to read somebody needing space as the beginning of the end. Your partner goes quiet. They want a night alone. And your brain has already written the breakup speech. Simone Milasas is an author and a relationship facilitator from Australia. She co-wrote Relationship. Are You Sure You Want One?, wrote Joy of Business and Getting Out of Debt Joyfully, and hosts The Choice, Change & Action Podcast. She has spent years in rooms full of people asking her how to fix their relationships, and her answer is almost never the one they showed up for. Her position is that relationships do not fail from bad communication. They fail from needs, expectations, and projections nobody ever said out loud. Ky and Simone get into the five elements of intimacy, trust, honor, allowance, vulnerability and gratitude, and why you have to give all five to yourself before you can hand them to anyone else. They talk about the myth of "the one" and how it keeps people stuck. A concept she teaches called creationship. Why she keeps a second bathroom on purpose. And the money conversation she used to book a restaurant table for four to have. The line that keeps sitting with Ky: when she needs an hour alone, it is not against him, it is for her. Heads up, there is some language in this one. MORE FROM SIMONE MILASAS Her podcast, The Choice, Change & Action Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-choice-change-action-podcast/id1512950259 Her website: https://www.simonemilasas.com/about WANT MORE? Everything lives at TheVibeWithKy.com. The blog, the newsletter, the store, and every other episode. https://thevibewithky.com/ For the deeper stuff, join the ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Or on Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ The Real Ones tier is five dollars a month. You get the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, a subscriber-only segment where guests flip it around and interview Ky. Neither one shows up in the public feed. Ky is not a doctor or a licensed mental health professional. Nothing here replaces working with one. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

In this episode of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, executive function coach Sean McCormick explains why ADHD procrastination is a signal that a task needs a different person, not more willpower. This one is for you if you have been called lazy your whole life and always suspected that word never quite fit what was actually happening. Sean McCormick, M.Ed., is a credentialed education specialist who taught public school special education before he understood his own ADHD. He founded Executive Function Specialists for students, built the Executive Function Coaching Academy to train educators, and co-founded an adult coaching practice called UpSkill Specialists. He joined me for this conversation after we spent three days together at NeuroDiversion 2026. The shift in this episode is small and it changes a lot. Executive function is not a measure of effort, it is a set of brain-based skills involving working memory, self-regulation, and task initiation. Once that lands, the question stops being why can I not make myself do this and starts being what does this task actually need. Here is what comes out of the conversation: - Procrastination often points to a task that needs a different person, which Sean calls who not how. - Constraints create real freedom, and Sean explains the fixed non-negotiables he keeps in every week. - One full unscheduled day, phone off, does more for an ADHD brain than another productivity system. - Sean shares what five years of sobriety did for his focus, decision making, and follow-through. CONNECT WITH SEAN MCCORMICK UpSkill Specialists, his adult executive function coaching practice: https://www.upskillspecialists.com/ For educators thinking about coaching, the Executive Function Coaching Academy: https://www.executivefunctioncoachingacademy.com/ CONNECT WITH KY Website: https://thevibewithky.com/ Patreon, for the ADHD Deep Dive Library, exclusive neurodivergent content, and the Reverse The Mic segment that is not available anywhere else online: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook subscription, for the ADHD Deep Dive Library, exclusive neurodivergent content, and the Reverse The Mic segment that is not available anywhere else online: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/thevibewithky TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thevibewithky The ADHD Vibe Store: https://thevibewithky.podia.com/ This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.

In this episode of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, psychological flexibility, how to feel a hard emotion without letting it run your life. If you have ever told yourself you will start living once the grief lifts or the anxiety quiets, this one is for you. Dr. Elisabeth Morray is a licensed psychologist and the VP of Clinical at Alma, where she supports more than 24,000 therapists. She joined me on this episode to explain psychological flexibility, and she trains clinicians in acceptance and commitment therapy, so she teaches this for a living. The core shift is simple but it changes everything. Your pain is not proof that something is wrong with you, it points straight at what you care about most, and you can keep living toward that even while it hurts. Learn why your brain is great at solving physical problems and terrible at solving emotional ones Hear the grief question no client ever says yes to, and what it reveals about love Get a real way to keep grief and anxiety from swallowing you whole See why your struggles are understandable adaptations, not personal failures Find a therapist through Alma: https://helloalma.com/ Dr. Elisabeth Morray's practice, Emerge Collective: https://emergecollective.info/ TheVibeWithKy.com: https://thevibewithky.com/ Patreon, for exclusive neurodivergent content and the Reverse The Mic segment where guests put me in the hot seat, not available anywhere else online: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook, for that same exclusive content and Reverse The Mic: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/thevibewithky TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thevibewithky ADHD Vibers Store: https://thevibewithky.podia.com/ This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.

In this episode of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, therapist Calial McCarty explains why masking drains your mental health, and what it takes to stop performing okay. This one is for you if you have spent years being the easygoing, low-maintenance one, and you are quietly exhausted from holding it all together. Calial McCarty is a licensed mental health counselor and board-certified autism specialist who is AuDHD and chronically ill herself. She wrote Naturally Divergent, a book built on one idea: your divergent brain should not have to bend to neurotypical rules. She works with late-diagnosed kids and adults every day, and she leads with her own story first. Ky and Calial trace masking back to childhood and follow it all the way into adult burnout, so you can finally see the pattern in your own life. The shift here is simple and steadying: the structure around you needs to change, not you. Understand why masking drains you on a biological level, so you can stop blaming yourself for being tired. Learn the small, low-burnout first steps for unmasking without overwhelming your whole life at once. Hear how chronic illness reshaped what a successful day looks like, and how self-advocacy changed Calial's care. See why being yourself was never the problem, and why the right people will not ask you to shrink. Follow Calial McCarty and find her book Naturally Divergent and the Neurobloom Center: https://www.instagram.com/naturally_divergent_therapist/ TheVibeWithKy.com: https://thevibewithky.com/ Patreon, for exclusive neurodivergent content and the Reverse The Mic segment not available anywhere else online: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook, for exclusive neurodivergent content and the Reverse The Mic segment not available anywhere else online: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/thevibewithky TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thevibewithky ADHD Vibers Store: https://thevibewithky.podia.com/ This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.

In this episode of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, autistic burnout takes center stage as Patrick Casale shares how his own success nearly broke him. This one is for you if you built a life that looks great on paper but leaves you running on empty every single day. Patrick Casale is an AuDHD therapist, business coach, and podcast host who built a career of international retreats, coaching programs, and a group practice before he ever found out he was autistic. He has helped hundreds of thousands of mental health professionals grow their businesses, and he speaks openly about what that pace cost him, including the chronic illnesses that eventually put him in the hospital. We talk about why tying your worth to your output is a biological setup for burnout, not a character flaw, and what it actually takes to build a life you can live in. If you have ever felt like the harder you push, the worse you feel, this conversation puts a name to why. Learn why autistic burnout is a nervous system and biology issue, not a willpower problem Hear how undiagnosed ADHD can feed addictive patterns like gambling long before a diagnosis Understand the grief and relief that come with a late autism discovery Get a real framework for boundaries that protect your mental and physical health Follow Patrick Casale and check out his work here: https://linktr.ee/patrickcasale Connect with Ky and go deeper: TheVibeWithKy.com https://thevibewithky.com/ Patreon (five dollars a month for the ADHD Deep Dive library, exclusive neurodivergent content, and the Reverse The Mic segment with guests, not available anywhere else online) https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook (same exclusive content, including Reverse The Mic, not available anywhere else online) https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Instagram https://instagram.com/thevibewithky TikTok https://tiktok.com/@thevibewithky ADHD Vibers Store https://thevibewithky.podia.com/ This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.

In this episode of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, sleep expert Derek Hales explains why your mattress might be the quiet reason you keep waking up exhausted. If you have been blaming your brain, your schedule, or your stress levels for why you never feel rested, this conversation was made for you. Derek Hales is the founder and editor-in-chief of NapLab.com, where he and his team have tested over 565 mattresses using objective, data-driven methods built entirely in-house. After a frustrating and expensive experience trying to buy his first mattress as a newlywed, Derek built a platform dedicated to cutting through the noise and giving sleepers real, unbiased answers. In this episode, Derek breaks down how the mattress industry is largely designed to confuse shoppers into overspending, what most marketing claims actually mean in practice, and exactly what to buy if you have zero time to research. The conversation also gets into how ADHD brains already run in a low-grade fight-or-flight state, and how a wrong mattress can compound that neurological load in ways that are hard to separate from other causes. Key takeaways from this episode: If your sleep feels noticeably better in a hotel or at someone else's home, your mattress may be a bigger factor in your energy levels than you think. The vast majority of sleepers do best on a hybrid mattress with a medium-firm feel, and spending between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars covers most of what the market has to offer. Cooling features on mattresses are often real but applied at levels too small to make a difference, so take brand claims with a grain of salt. Your pillow, sheets, and mattress protector all affect how your mattress performs, and a cheap protector can undercut even a high-quality bed. Get your free personalized mattress recommendation from Derek and his team at NapLab. Answer a few questions about your sleep needs and budget and they will send you their top pick within 24 hours. https://naplab.com More from The Vibe With Ky: Website and neurodivergent blog: https://thevibewithky.com Subscribe on Patreon for 5 dollars a month. Get access to the full ADHD Deep Dive library, the Reverse The Mic segment with Derek, and exclusive content not posted anywhere else online: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Subscribe on Facebook for 5 dollars a month for the same exclusive access, including the Reverse The Mic segment with Derek and content not shared publicly anywhere else: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/thevibewithky TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thevibewithky ADHD Vibers Store: https://thevibewithky.podia.com/ This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.