Holderness Family Values: 9 ADHD Truths (with a Side of Laughter)
These insights on living and (mostly) thriving with ADHD from the Holderness Family will make you laugh, nod in agreement, and feel a little more understood.
YouTube darlings Penn and Kim Holderness know how to make us laugh — even about life’s mistakes and miseries — through their clever, disarming videos and song parodies. In their new book, ADHD Is Awesome(#CommissionsEarned), they also succeed at making us feel seen and understood. Here are our favorite takeaways from ADDitude's conversation with The Amazing Race winners about ADHD brains, bare feet, and curious hearts.
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1. ADHD Is Awesome — In Every Sense of the Word
“Awesome can mean awe-inspiring and possessing great admiration. It can also mean terrifying and difficult to comprehend. We chose to title the book ADHD Is Awesome because ADHD can be great and wonderful, but it is also scary as hell. There’s a huge community of people who make mistakes because of what’s going on in our brains, and we feel ashamed about that. We talk down to ourselves. (I certainly did.) But I’ve learned over the last five years that, if you do the work and get the right systems in place, you can get to the better side of the awesome. You get the creativity and the spontaneity, and wonderful things can happen. But none of that works unless you get real with what's going on in your life and you're honest about it.” – Penn Holderness
"Every easy job I’ve ever had has been a struggle. The more challenging the work, the more fulfilling and easier it is. I know that sounds bonkers. When you pick something that you really care about, make sure that it’s hard, too.” – Penn Holderness
Borture (bawr-cher): The intense, physical pain experienced by individuals with ADHD when they are bored out of their minds, often inspiring the creation of borture avoidance and escape plans (think ripping up tissues into tiny pieces to keep your hands busy, chewing on your shirt collar, and going the long way to avoid a lengthy red light.)
“Kids who experience borture get labeled as troublemakers in class, especially if they’re super smart, know exactly what the teacher is talking about, and feel they have to pace back and forth just to deal with the torturous boredom of school.” – Kim Holderness
From an ADDitude reader: "When given borture, we reply with bortitude."
Surely, we've all stepped out to run errands barefoot at some point, right?
Right?
Apparently, it’s an ADHD thing. Take it from Penn, who drove barefoot to a fancy restaurant for what was supposed to be a quick curbside pickup. “I don’t have to get out of the car,” he reasoned. Until he did have to step out – to pay the bill. “A guy yelled, ‘Nice shoes, Penn.’”
"If you point your amazing brain in the direction of something you care about, hyperfocus can win the day. This happened for me on The Amazing Race, when the cameras were watching and $1 million was on the line. My brain was working at a million miles an hour and locking in effortlessly.” – Penn Holderness
"I trick myself into getting stuff done by making lists. I make them on a piece of paper, not on my phone, because when you put a check next to the thing you’ve accomplished, it’s like a little dopamine hit. Without that checkbox right there, I probably wouldn’t do any of the things on the list.” – Penn Holderness
“We’re reframing ADHD for our son, who was recently diagnosed. We told him, ‘You know how you’re really good at basketball and at solving brain teasers? Certain things that come easy to you trip up other people. On the flip side of that coin, some things are hard for you and super easy for others, like remembering to brush your teeth before you go to sleep.’ For my son to acknowledge that some things may be tougher for him makes things easier. He won’t feel ashamed or like there’s something wrong with him, because he understands the dichotomy of his ADHD brain.” – Penn Holderness
"I’m a recovering perfectionist, so it’s instinctive for me to point out things that went wrong. Offering connection instead of correction was not a natural state for me. But what I didn’t realize was that Penn was already beating himself up over the mistakes, so my heaping on in that moment was not helpful. When I approached things with more empathy and offered connection, that was a game-changer.” – Kim Holderness
"Get curious when life is going great. What are the classes or the activities that keep your focus? Follow your fascinations and you will find areas of your life where you’re killing it and you’re loving it.” – Kim Holderness
Living and (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD: Next Steps
Anni Layne Rodgers is General Manager at ADDitude.
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