Fostering Curiosity and Innocence in Kids

In this episode, Carter speaks with Andrew, a stay-at-home dad, about his experiences as a father with ADHD, his mental health journey, his side hustles, and his plans to pursue a career in the fire service.

• Andrew has struggled with feeling unfulfilled as a stay-at-home dad, due to societal pressure to be the breadwinner.
• The pandemic and having a newborn have affected Andrew's mental health, particularly with regards to loneliness and isolation.
• Andrew discusses the benefits of early ADHD diagnosis and treatment, as well as the impact of untreated ADHD.
• Andrew emphasizes the importance of fostering curiosity and innocence in his daughter, even in difficult conversations about topics like racism.
• Andrew and his wife have decided not to push religion on their daughter, as they believe it should be her decision.

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Transcript

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Trigger warning the following podcast contains explicit language and discussions of sensitive topics that some listeners may find distressing, including miscarriage, child abuse, mental health issues, and birth trauma. Listener discretion is advised. If you feel triggered or overwhelmed at any point, we encourage you to pause the episode and take care of yourself. Hello and welcome to episode two of the Touched Out podcast. Today we have Andrew. Andrew's from Atlanta, Georgia, married with one child who is three years old. Today, Andrew and I discuss Andrew's ADHD diagnosis and how that impacted him both in childhood and adulthood and after becoming a parent. We also discuss Andrew as a stay at home father and the intricacies that are involved in that and how that played a part in his mental health journey. We also discuss Andrew's many side hustles, one of which being a published author. You can find Andrew's work through his Twitter handle Arcane. Author A-R-C-A-N-E underscore Author A-U-T-H-O-R-I hope you enjoy today's episode and be sure to, like, subscribe and follow on all podcast platforms. Thanks guys. How are you today, Andrew? I'm doing okay. How about you? I'm well, thank you. Thank you very, very much for joining us here. Great to have you. We've got a lot of things to talk about. First of all, we'll start off with a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your family, how many kids, ages, married, everything like that. Got you. Go for it. Yeah, married since 2011, so whatever the math is on that. Twelve years. Twelve years, yeah. And we met back in 2007, so it's been a good long while. We've got one kid, a daughter. She's three in November. She was three in November. Just the most amazing kid in the world. I'm currently stay at home dad doing a lot of different things. Got a lot of irons in the fire as far as freelancing and writing and actually hopefully starting a new career completely separate from all that soon, depending how that goes, which is fulfilling a lifelong dream of applying to the fire service. So we'll see how that goes. Awesome. Very fulfilling and challenging role. My father in law is a firefighter and a paramedic, so we are no stranger to heroes in this household. It's something that my daughters and son look up to immensely. So you said that you're a stay at home dad, you've been a stay at home dad since day one. Not quite day one. She was born in 2019, and at the time I had just left one job working for a local popsicle company, doing their sort of online ordering and web dev and things like that. And then for a lot of reasons, I left that job and went to a job stage handing for a local production company. So, like big arena concerts, I would set up the stages and tear down all of that. So I started that in the summer of 2019 and had been doing that right up until COVID hit. And so since the entertainment industry basically imploded, I didn't have a lot of options at the time, not a lot of contacts. And so we thought, since my wife was working full time as a project manager, it would just made the most sense for me to be a stay at home dad. And that's what I've been doing for the last three ish years. Beautiful. And as a stay at home father, do you find that role fulfilling? Do you love that role? Do you have any kind of feelings towards rejoining the workforce versus continuing on doing what you're doing? So that is kind of the interesting thing and I feel like a lot of stay at home dads feel this. I'm not sure. I mean, differences in culture, obviously, but for definitely here in America, there is a sense of what a man's role should be. And I've never really fallen so much into that as to, like, I can't be a parent to my kids. And I absolutely love what I do, and yes, I am fulfilled by it every day. But there is always this sort of undercurrent of I want to be doing more for my family and I want to support them more directly, more financially than I do now. And so I know a lot of stay at home dads I've talked to struggle with the same thing. That's one of the reasons I've been trying to find ways to get back into the workforce in some way. I tried starting my own business, doing some consulting after hours, which consulting is hit or miss. I've been freelancing a lot and my most recent gig is doing a lot of writing for an online sort of entertainment news outlet, which has helped a little bit, but I don't know if I'll ever be the bring it home, the bacon guy in our family. I at least want to do more than I'm doing now. Yeah, definitely. So as far as you feeling like you need to bring home bacon, as you say, do you feel like that feeling comes from the existing culture that we have, probably worldwide in Australia, it's quite the same. Stay at home dads are still kind of I wouldn't say looked down upon, but it's definitely not the typical role, like the man still the breadwinner and things like that. We are slowly kind of getting the ball rolling and seeing some positive change in the way people view that role and view the division of labour between man and wife, things like that. So do you feel like your feelings are because of that societal standard or is it more of an internalised feeling that you've got yourself? See, I feel like it's hard to differentiate the two because I feel like it's a little of both and I feel like it's weird because if it's internalised, is it actually you? Or is it because it's been pounded into you by the culture over decades and generations? So I do think it's a little bit of both. They're sort of an expectation, but I've never been one to fully fall into expectations. I've always been kind of an outcast anyway, so part of me doesn't really care, but it's also more just I want to be able to that idea of supporting people and helping people is something that's always been really important to me. Just how I go about doing that might look different, but that's something that's always been really a big part of my personality. Probably a little from column A, little column B, kind of a hatch to say. So as far as those feelings go, and as far as you and yourself goes, how do you think that being a stay at home father with a newborn up until now has affected your mental health? So that's a good question because it's another one it's hard to answer because having had a kid just before COVID I commonly ask myself how much of this is the kid and how much of this is the pandemic? I mean, both end up leading to some of the same outcomes in the sense of lack of sleep, lack of time, isolation, things like that. We didn't leave the house for a year and I kept thinking like, oh, COVID, COVID, COVID. And then there came this point where I could thought to myself like, well, how much would I be going out right now anyway? Would I be going out to a movie? And no, probably not. The most we did was we took her to a drive in of the last Star Wars movie, which Jesus, I wish we'd seen something else, but what a waste of a date night. But yeah, it has been a struggle, actually. This is kind of an interesting segue. A couple of weeks ago, after three years of doing our best to stay clean, I actually did get COVID. We're all fully vaccine, we're all boosted and all of that. I'm not sure who or where I got it from, but it really threw me for a loop. And one of the things that really struck me was the idea that I don't have a lot of people to tell, I don't communicate with a lot of my family anymore for a lot of reasons. And just over the last few years, a lot of my friends have sort of split off and faded. So it's my brother and my mom and then the couple of people who I have been in contact with and had to give them the cursory. Oh, you've been in contact with a COVID person. Maybe go get tested. Having realised that and part of that is COVID isolation. Part of it is just that when you have kids, you devote so much of your time and yourself to them is one part of it. But then there's the sense that the people you know who don't have kids don't get it and it becomes harder and harder to relate to them. Yeah, I think it's something that all new parents unfortunately go through. The kind of splitting of friendships and bonds that were previously unbreakable. They just kind of wilt away. I wouldn't say there's no hard feelings because there's obviously some feelings there, but you find yourself two, three years into having a baby and all of the massive pond of friends that you previously had is now just kind of dried up and a few like little fish are still swimming in the little puddles that are left. But it's kind of few and far between and it's upsetting, but yeah, I mean, people without kids, the closest they can get to understanding is owning a pet. And I'm sure you are probably well aware that anyone that liken having a pet to having a baby and the love that they feel, you just want to scream sometimes. I think the comedian Tom Segura said it best, is I love my dog, but I love my kid more. And the difference is, if my dog was to bite my kid, I would drown my dog. So I think that sums it up pretty perfectly. I don't think if the kid bit the dog, you wouldn't drown your kid. The other thing is I want to see somebody go on a vacation and just leave their kid in a crib with a pound of food and just say like, you'd be fine till we get back. Just like send a neighbour bite and give them some water every couple of days, they'll be all right. And look, I'm in no way treading on the love that a pet owner feels for their pets. I don't own any pets because I've got three kids and I am stretched incredibly thin as it is. I don't want to have to clean up another thing poo if I don't have to sorry. Back to mental health. You have mentioned that you diagnosed with ADHD and that that was an adult diagnosis. When were you diagnosed with that? Well, here's the fun here's the fun thing. I was diagnosed as a kid. I was maybe seven or eight when I first got it. So at that point they were like so long ago, they were still calling it. Add is the primary name for the diagnosis. So I know that ages me. So all through school I was on meds and always struggled, just kind of didn't matter. What we did was always a problem. And so senior year I was on of high school, I was on the highest maximum dose of Adderall they could legally prescribe me. And I was sleeping about 2 hours a night. I had facial ticks. I was like twitchy all the time. And so at this point, it's like, well, if it's not helping me with my grades at all and I'm feeling like trash every day, I'm just going to quit it and see how it does. And maybe not the best idea to quit high end stimulant cold turkey, because then I ended up with narcolepsy for a couple of months and would fall asleep and literally anywhere, standing up, sitting down, didn't matter. So that was fun. And then college. As an adult, I would pay to have that now. Let me sleep anywhere. No, I mean, like, if you if you do it while driving, that gets scary, though. Do not recommend. Please talk to your doctor before quitting any medication. So I will say that was also probably a bad idea to do that right before college, because as much as I struggled in high school, I struggled even more in college and ended up not finishing. I ran out of money and had to drop out before I could finish my degree and floated from job to job since then, honestly. And then got medicated again back in 2014. There was a series of really bad decisions that I made in my life that impacted myself and a lot of other people pretty poorly. And that was this moment of, I can't let this go on. Okay. And do you think that that was a direct result of untreated ADHD, those decisions, or was there other things at play? There were probably other things at play, but I think that that was one of the things that rooted it, was there were some other childhood traumas I didn't realise I hadn't dealt with. But I'll say this, that the ADHD led to an inability to connect those dots, to parse things and to be mindful in the moment when these things were happening, where if I didn't have this other thing on top of everything else to deal with, maybe I could have made some better decisions. I like to think that was the case. I've mentioned this to a lot of people who ask. It's like medication and getting diagnosed with the stuff. It's really important. It's not a magic bullet, though. To me, it's more like, this is the thing that helps me deal with all of my other problems is taking care of this one first. Yeah, definitely. I myself was diagnosed ADHD and I was medicated straight away and I've been on that medication ever since. And the best way I can describe that little pill, some days it can be magical, but for the most part, for me, I feel like it's a key to a suitcase that you lost ages ago. You finally found that suitcase and you open that suitcase and then you spend the rest of your life unpacking the absolute shit show that was your past. You unpack and you unpack and you find shit that you haven't seen for years and you're like, oh, my God, this makes a lot more sense. And then there's other things that you're like that's not even legible. I don't understand that at all. And you put it back in the suitcase, and then another day you'll unpack it and it'll make a little bit more sense. And it's just this never ending puzzle. And for me personally, I, a lot of the time, go between a whole range of emotions. I feel angry for slipping through the cracks and not having anyone that was advocating for me. And I grieved the life that I could have had if I had have been diagnosed earlier and had supports and pillars put in place in school so I didn't drop out three times in year twelve, two weeks before my final exams, and all of these things. But for the most part, I'm just really thankful that I can now live my life knowing that this is what it is. I'm not just lazy, it's executive dysfunction. I don't have that neural network in my brain that connects. You need to do X, so you should get the fuck up off the couch and do it. People that don't have ADHD will never understand that because that's just something that's already in their brain. They're like, okay, I've just finished lunch. I need to get my plate and put it in the dishwasher. Instead of that, I will sit there at the table, staring at the plate on a loop in my head saying, put it in the dishwasher, put it in the dishwasher. Put it in the dishwasher. And all of a sudden it's 45 minutes later, I'm still sitting at the table saying, put it in the dishwasher. And my body's just like, fuck you, I'm not playing the game. I'm 35 now, so I was diagnosed 34 for 34 years. Well, not 34 years, because I didn't have these thoughts as a baby, but for 30 years or however long you want to go with. I thought I was just lazy, and I just kind of had to accept it and just be like, well, I guess this is me. There's nothing really I can do. And the amount of relationship breakdowns, because they were just like, you're a fucking deadbeat. You don't do enough. You don't help me around the house. And the amount of constant times that I was grounded by my mother for not cleaning my room when I was asked all of these things, like, my entire life could have been so different if someone had have just been like, he's a pretty twitchy kid. He picks at his fingers a lot. He doesn't really listen in class. Like, I could pull out all of my school report cards right now, and pretty much every teacher said the same thing. He is incredibly bright, but he does not apply himself, and he is easily distracted. And it's just like, how did you all miss this? There was a lot of people that weren't doing their jobs. And, yeah, it makes me angry, but also, it is what it is. You can't change the past. So it's one of those things where it's hard to say, how do they miss this? Because there's a couple of people I've seen who said things like, it's the most over diagnosed and most under diagnosed out there. Which sounds weird, but when you think about it as it's because people get misdiagnosed. And there has been a lot of for a long time, this stigma against ADHD as a diagnosis. Even today, there are psychiatrists who don't believe it's even a thing, and so they will run circles around themselves trying to figure out what it could be, and they'll medicate everything except the thing that it obviously is. And that's changing, but it never changes fast enough. And I will say the one thing that I had a very different it's weird because I had a very different experience for me because I was diagnosed so young, but in so many ways, it was exactly like yours. Because even though I was diagnosed, it still didn't always help, because I feel like it was not well understood or either it wasn't well understood or people didn't try to understand. And I didn't even understand myself for a long time because there was always this sense from my parents, who, bless them, they tried their hardest, I think. I feel like they did what they thought was best, and so I can't fault them for that. But the way they framed it was not helpful. There was always this sense of you're just not trying hard enough. And even though I was medicated, even though I knew what was going on, there was always a sense of, well, you're just not trying hard enough to beat whatever this is. And it was seen as an illness, not just a part of you really. Right. In the last several years, I've gone back and forth on a couple of different perspectives on this, of, like, there's people who like to say, add is my superpower, because I can do this and this and this, and I have this open awareness and I can hyper focus. All of those things can be so fleeting and you can't rely on them. Yeah, it's a constant struggle, you know, the amount of hobbies and things like that, that I always like to start. Or I'll do 150 hours of researching something and be like, okay, yeah, I'm going to become a woodworker and make furniture. And you go out and you start buying your own tools. And then when you realise that you're not as good as the person on YouTube that made a bloody ottoman from scratch in 20 minutes, the dopamine hit stops and you just completely lose interest. And I've got an entire shed full of the ghosts of hobbies past that just have never stuck. And this is my third episode doing my podcast and god, I hope to hell that I stick with it, because it's giving me a real nice dopamine hit right now. Hopefully I can continue on. So what's hilarious is that I've tried to do the podcast thing and I've got a closet full of crap from when I tried to do a movie podcast with my brother. But I am now 20 years into a successful woodworking hobby. It's always the same, isn't it? There's a couple of things that I know can have stuck with me over the years, like woodwork. I've recently gotten into metal work. I watched a lot of fortune fire, which is bad. Smithing. Don't take that as an example of the real deal. And all the hobbies that I've actually stuck with typically are things that involve me working with my hands and getting very physical and very active, which is why I think that I end up gravitating towards the career I'm going for now is realising that all the things I've always hated about work are the things that fire can provide for me. It's a constantly changing atmosphere, so you get that novelty every single day. You're always moving. It's very much this high energy. Like, you go and you go and you go until the thing is done, and then you breathe until the next thing happens. And it's like realising I've tried for decades to do the desk job thing and have quit or been fired from every single one of them because I can't shove myself into that box. Yeah. So I have 18 to 20 ish years in call centre and corporate office environments. So my previous company I was with for 13 years, seven of which I was in a call centre, and the rest of the time I was in financial transactions, just running reports and everything every day. And, oh, God, I went to work every day just wanting to trigger warning, just wanting to kill myself. I hated every bit of it. I had no purpose in my life until I became a father. And then I realised, Jesus, I have just been in this horrible state of burnout for so long that I have just found comfort in just this really sick and toxic womb. And, God, it was horrible. And now I work a job that I love. It's fulfilling. I don't have managers breathing down my neck. I'm, by and large, left to my own devices for my entire twelve hour shift. I maybe see my managers for like two, three minutes just for them to come grab my paperwork. And I love it. And that's the neurodivergent part of me as well. So, post ADHD diagnosis about six months ago, once my ADHD levelled out, the autism came to play and I inadvertently unmasked and I kind of had to relearn who I am from scratch. So it has been a big journey, and this podcast is a massive part of that ongoing journey to me getting my mental health to a greater state so I can show up for my kids and my wife and my family a lot more. I've talked about this on the other episodes so far, but the reason I wanted to start this podcast is because I found that most of the parenting things that I would see on social media because I like to sit there and doom scroll TikTok for hours on end is the perfect curations of family life. Just left me feeling even worse and just made me feel guilty that I'm not doing enough for my kids and I'm not showing up enough for them. And I let my kids watch a little bit too much TV, but I have autism, I have sensory issues myself and it is 150% better for them to watch a little bit more screen time instead of me becoming overstimulated and getting a little bit yelly. So it's just about finding that balance. And I found that I had devoted apart from working, I've devoted all of my time to my wife and kids and I lost my sense of self identity. So, yeah, this podcast is all about me kind of reclaiming that sense of identity and filling that social cup and trying to gain knowledge from other parents around the world while discussing mental health and something that I feel very passionately about. So that's kind of my journey back to you because this podcast isn't about me. You just want to say something? Is this a mirror? Same person. It's uncanny. No, that's one of the things, like the last few years, especially that first year of parenthood. God, I sunk every waking hour, every moment into it and I definitely feel like that was a bit to my detriment, maybe. I mean it's I feel like my daughter's in as good a place as we can have her be. I will get into that in just a minute. But the loss of sense of self is definitely something I've struggled with too. And so that's why I have been diving into some of those hobbies like woodwork and making things and of course, because America being what it is, I'm like, oh, well, let me take this hobby and turn it into a side hustle. And don't try and do that. Actually, you're doing that, so don't take my advice. But they can quickly burn out the thing that you like to do too and turn it into just another piece of work. i just want to chat with other parents all around the world and gain insight and gain knowledge and share knowledge. That's fantastic. Just have a real conversation about the mental health struggles of being a parent. Well, it's like here's the one of the things that I particularly wanted to touch on is that when you have ADHD, I feel like there's a lot of resources out there now, more than there ever have been, but the way that they frame it tends to be like, okay, there's plenty of general purpose stuff. There's tonnes of books about how to survive work in school if you have ADHD. There's even a handful of books about relationships when you have ADHD. But what there aren't any of that I've been able to see are books or resources for parents who have ADHD. All of the parenting books are all from the other perspective of how do you parent a kid who has ADHD? I'm like, yes, my daughter probably does. She's very young, she's three, but we're seeing the sort of early signs and that's going to be very useful. But it feels like nobody talks about the struggle of the parent who has it, because I think even now, adult ADHD is something that's sort of only now becoming to come into the cultural conversation. I think everyone not even everyone, I think that there is a growing number of people that are starting to realise that ADHD and autism are quite hand in hand and the two can often live alongside each other. But ADHD in particular, I think people are finding that that is also a spectrum and there are varying levels, as we were talking about before, me slipping through the cracks, as I put it. That was just kind of a way of thinking to myself at the time. But after I've educated myself a little bit more and discussed this with people with ADHD, and way back then, I probably wasn't looked at as ADHD because I wasn't the kid that was bouncing off the walls and tipping tables in class because they just couldn't sit still. That's how Add or ADHD was viewed back then. But slowly, as history has come along, we are getting to this place where it's like, okay, well, there's a set of traits and those traits don't necessarily all have to fit into your own box. But anyway, sorry, back to talking about books. And there were no books for parents with ADHD, right. You are currently writing a book, is that correct? I am, yes. And I wanted to do it specifically from that perspective of what are the challenges of parenting with ADHD. So working title right now is Attention Deficit dad, but obviously I want to market it to anybody who moms, dads or other who are having the same struggle. And obviously coming to this from the perspective of, I am not a doctor, but this is something I've lived with my entire life and I've found plenty of things that don't work and a handful of things that do. And obviously your mileage may vary, but I want to share my story and my struggles and the things that I finally found have worked better. And of course, most important, I think the things to avoid and if you have not read the work. Of Bernay Brown. I highly, highly recommend it. She's a writer. She doesn't specify in ADHD, but her focus is a lot on emotional intelligence and particularly when it comes to the feeling of shame. And I think that anyone who struggles with ADHD has dealt with that as a central facet of the struggle is the shame of it all. Because you see everybody around you doing better and doing these things easily that do not come easily to you. Like you were talking about with putting your plate in the dishwasher. Everyone has the thing and you are struggling to do the thing and you can't and everyone else seems to just do it like that. And that when you live alone or you're just worrying about your job is hard enough, but when that impacts your family, your kid, that is a recipe for some serious depression and anxiety. Yeah, definitely. So the book you're currently writing, are you close to finished? Just started. Where are we at? Early drafting phase right now. Early drafting. You are a published author already, is that correct? Published author of some some smaller pieces. No books as of yet not published. I've I've completed several and that I'm that are currently query several civil out on sub at the moment. So we'll we'll see where that goes. Okay, but they're not self help books or anything like that. No, actually genre entirely correct. Correct. This is actually my first attempt at a nonfiction book, period. I'm normally actually a fantasy and horror author. Okay, beautiful. I'll let you plug that at the end if you wish. So as far as all of this and all of the juggling and all of the fingers in different pies and everything like that, how do you prioritise self care and your mental health outside of parenting and working and your side hustles and everything like that? The way I've had to do it. Just because of again, everyone's your mileage may vary. Everyone's family is different, everyone's situation is different. The way I've had to do it is from the time my daughter wakes up till she goes to sleep. She is my number one priority. So you can kind of look at it as you're on shift for twelve to however many hours. I might get a couple of minutes here and there, five to ten minutes at a stretch to do something else. But it's like you can think about it that way. But it's weird. It feels weird to think about it like a job because I've never liked any job I've ever had. Maybe this is the job I love enough that I don't think about it that way, but it's just the thing I have to focus on. And then once she's down for the night, that's kind of my moment to let all the mental health stuff just sort of spill out where I can put it together and analyse it. So that's kind of my way of doing it not saying that that'll work for everybody, but it's kind of like just not necessarily tamp it down or keep it in, but just sort of like, put the brakes on that stuff until I have the time to really unpack it all.

So usually it's like from 08: 36:00

00 till whenever I go to bed, that's my time. That's me and my wife's time. So that's when we get our time to connect. If it's a night, we can spare it. I can spend an hour working on my writing or a hobby or something. And those have really it doesn't even take much time for me to feel like I'm connected to something other than other than my daughter. It's just these little reminders of, like, yes, I also write. Oh, yes, I'm also a husband. Yes, I'm also all these other things. That's been the biggest thing for me. I can take the little five to ten minutes when I need them. It's worth noting that my mother in law lives with us, so if I desperately need a break or I'm at this point where I'm feeling like I'm about to chuck my kid out of window, I can have somebody else watch her for a couple of minutes while I reset. And do you have kind of like, that hard limit where you're like, okay, I'm not coping very well right now. I can tap out and someone else will be able to be there to look after your daughter. Yes. So this is, again, why I'm immensely, immensely thankful of having my mother in law live with us, because my wife works full time, so her work schedule can be a little flexible, so she can come out sometimes and help if we desperately need that. But most of the time it's me. And then if I need that time with I do have a hard limit. It's usually when I notice that my voice gets a little too loud and this is where I will say if you are medicated, it is so important to take your pills. Because when you do finally find the right pill or pills that you get it. Dialled in that ability of that stuff to keep me mindful is the most important thing. And that's what I've found. It's not that I don't ever get pissed off. It's that I get to put the mental breaks on and say, like, okay, I'm here at this point where I'm about to start saying some things I regret and yelling at my daughter who is three years old, and this is developmentally appropriate. Three year olds piss you off, and then you can step away and be like, okay, I can take a few minutes. I can have somebody else watch her. While I usually not even do anything productive, I just need to be away somewhere else long enough to get my head on straight. Yeah, well, I'm glad that you have your mother in law there. I think that there are probably many people out there that wouldn't describe living with their mother in law as a godsend or a gift or anything like that. So I'm really glad that that works for you and I'm really glad that you have those supports in place outside of the household, though, when it comes to prioritising your own mental health and your own self care. Are you actively in therapy? Do you use the gym or anything like that? So the gym is coming since, like I said, I'm applying for my local fire department. That's definitely something that's got to get rid of the dad bod. So that is in the works as far as therapy, yes, absolutely. I did get a psychiatrist and a therapist, both of which offered me something completely different. Therapy happened not until a couple of years ago, actually, and I didn't even start it because of the ADHD. It was, to put the story long story short, I cut some toxic people out of my life, some my father particularly, which was pretty rough, pretty painful. And so actually, I started on getting a therapist for the two of us to work out of our differences, and it just didn't happen. And then I made the decision to go, no contact, and then got a separate therapist to sort of deal with that fallout and then realised I needed it for far more than that. And I absolutely, 100% recommend it if you have the means to do so. Just having 100% having a neutral third party who can look at things differently and give you that different perspective on things. And I know it's always hard because when you're going to a therapist, it's your perspective, you're just telling them things as you see them. And maybe I am the asshole. Who knows? Hopefully somebody else can set me straight if they need to. Yeah, I can't advocate enough for therapy, and not even therapy in general. It's very important to find the right therapist for you. The therapist that you gel with that has a similar personality and similar ish life experiences to you, so they can actually give you the tools that are necessary to fill your tool bag and have those resources available for you to work on your own shit outside of therapy. I've been in therapy all my life and I have seen dozens upon dozens of therapists. And up until maybe ten years ago, I was like, yeah, therapy is a good thing, it's good to talk about your feelings, but I never actually learned too much from it. I just felt it was like, I'm going to this place to talk about these things and they're going to be like, that's no good. But I have since found a therapist that I gel with and my life has changed so drastically and I have figured out things and learned things about myself that have just blown my mind. So any listeners out there. If you are contemplating therapy, find a therapist for one, but test them out. If you go to a session and you go home feeling like, that was good to talk about my feelings, but I don't know if they're the right person for me, don't quit therapy entirely. Find another therapist and keep trying. And I guarantee you, one day you will find the therapist that clicks and you will be so much better off for it. It's like being in a relationship, really, because it is a relationship in its own way. Yeah, it's like having a bad therapist is worse than having no therapist. 100%, I've come out of sessions with a bad therapist feeling actively worse. So absolutely fine. Find one. And, like, it's a daunting process. And again, that's where the meds can help, because I can help keep you going until you can get that next piece of the puzzle. Yeah. I tend to be a very trusting person, and I honestly do see the world through rose tinted glasses, and I try to find the beauty in the ugly side of everything. So I tend to put a lot of trust in any and all of the therapists that I had previously been to. And now that I've got the one that clicks, I look back and I'm like, jesus, why did this one try to tell me that Buddhism is the answer? And I had one that was very pro Catholic, and I was raised in a Catholic family, and that contributes to a lot of my childhood traumas and issues with identity of self and the shame. As we talked about before, my wife and I, our parents on both sides have religion in their lives. My entire extended family are all still devout Catholics. My daughter's an age now where she asks a lot about where NAN NAN is, which is my mother, and she unfortunately passed away from cancer in 2015. So my daughter never met her. But we've got Photos up and everything, and I'm honest with her. I've had conversations surrounding death, and it's so easy to fall back on religion as, like, this pillow to protect her, and she'd be like, NAN Nan's up in the sky and she's watching over you. And when you die, you go to this beautiful place where you're surrounded by all of your loved ones and you can live in eternal bliss. And that's such a beautiful thing to put together for a kid, because you want to protect your kid. But the harsh reality is when you die, it's probably just nothing, and that's totally okay. And look, I'm not saying that there's not an afterlife because obviously I don't know. But I don't believe in things where there's no tangibility, and if I can't hold it in my hand, I'm not going to believe it. So when my daughter asks about death and things like that, I've explained to her that there's billions of people in this world, and all of those billions of people believe in one of this group of things. This is called religion. And these people believe in Buddhism, these people believe in Hinduism, these people believe in Catholicism or Christianity, et cetera, et cetera. And I've explained God to her, and I've explained their belief systems, and I said, when you are older, if you feel like you are gravitating towards one belief, I will support you in doing so. But that will be a decision that we let our kids make by themselves. It's not something that will ever be introduced to them or pushed upon them like it was to me. Right. And here's the thing. I was raised Catholic as well, and even went so far as to go through confirmation, which even at the time I did for my mom's sake, because she was very devout and my parents were going through a pretty nasty divorce at the time, and I did that kind of grease the wheels, which is not the reason to do anything involving a religion. Left the Catholic Church, found religion elsewhere. So I'm actually pretty a pretty spiritual person. But everyone's got their own perspective, and I think all of them are valid in their own ways. So if it doesn't work for you, that's totally cool. I've never been one to push religion on anybody, especially not my kid. And my wife and I are very we're both very religious, actually. But we've come to the decision that that's not our decision to make for our daughter. It's hers between her decision, between her and whatever else she decides is out there. She's only three, and she's already asked us questions about death, and we will talk about it as frankly as we can. If she asks where you go, she hasn't yet. But it's just we don't know. And I think that's a perfectly valid answer that we don't know what happens, you die. But beyond that, I don't know. And I don't think there's any we can talk about the physiological death of somebody as best as we can and how she's asking where babies come from already and three years old of this kid. Oh, my God. Some of the questions that they come up with are so incredibly profound, and you're just blown away with this thirst for knowledge that these three year olds have, and then five minutes later, they're spinning around in circles screaming, I'm a Taco, I'm a Taco. And it's a lot. They keep you on your toes. This is so funny. This was a few months ago. I was putting her down for the night, and I was singing her all of her songs like I do every night. And then just before she goes to bed, she'll come to me and says, daddy, death is a part of life. And then she hits the pillow and she immediately falls asleep. I'm like, Well, I'm going to be thinking about that all night. Yeah, I think kids definitely see a little bit more than adults can see. We grow up and lose that innocence, but I think that innocence is essential to them being able to see more that we can see. Sometimes innocence, to me, it's curiosity, is the most important thing to foster in a kid, and that's what gets knocked out of everybody, is people stop getting curious about the world around them and they stop asking those questions. Now, sometimes she'll be like, Daddy, I have an important question. What if I had lots and lots of hands? Okay, but then she'll ask questions about, like, we saw some I can't remember what it was that we saw, but we ended up having conversation about racism, and she saw a picture of an old sign saying, no black people can use this bathroom. She's like, Why do they do that? Well, because of these reasons. She says, well, that's silly. You know what? It is silly. I was so proud of her in that moment of being able to ask those kind of questions and to recognise at such a young age. And that's one of those things to go back to the shame thing, we, I think, as parents, kick ourselves a lot over every little mistake that we make. We're like, Did I do something wrong by having ADHD and having a kid, knowing that she could have it, too? Did I do something to her to cause it? Did I do something wrong? Have I yelled too much? Did I screw her up? And then get those times like that? You're like, you know what? No, I think we're doing okay. I think we're doing a good job. I heard a line not too long ago that I have really tried to implement as, like, a personal mantra, which is, bad parents don't wonder if they're bad parents. Bad parents don't worry if they're bad parents. Bad parents just are bad parents. And I think that really sums it up. If you're sitting there at nighttime thinking, oh, God, am I screwing my daughter up? Or is she going to need therapy? Because I got a little bit grumpy at her smashing a plate or whatever, and you're sitting there worried about that, and you're trying to come up with ways to remedy that so that doesn't happen again. You're not a bad parent. You're just doing the best you can with what you've been given. And I think that is a really important distinction to make. Yet again, I've talked about this on every other episode that I've done, and I will continue to talk about it on every episode from now. And that is just be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Give yourselves a break. Before we wrap up any last minute things that you would like to discuss. As we said, I'll let you plug your books if you so wish. Everything like that. Take it away. All right, well, first off, I want to say, in reference to what you just said, I think the most important thing is to be curious and to listen. I feel like if you've seen the movie, which I know everyone's going to see it now, everything, everywhere, all at once. One of the big messages of that movie is, like, you can try your hardest and things might still not work out the way you want them to, despite how hard you tried. The important thing is to recognise that and to keep trying and to not give up on yourself or your family. And I think there's no more important message than that is that even if one day your kid comes up to you and says, you screwed me up, it's like, well, you know what, let's talk about it and let's figure it out and just to move forward from there. So I think that you're absolutely right. We've got to give ourselves grace and we've got to just do the best that we're capable of. And I think just talking to people like we're doing here is one of the most important things you can possibly do, knowing that you're not alone in these struggles. There's nothing more helpful than that to me. So find whatever community you can in person online. There's people out there that can help. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think that's that's it for right now. That sums it all up. Yep. Yep. And attention deficit. Dad hopefully coming to bookshelves near you soon. Yeah. Is there any sort of social media or anything that people can follow you on? I definitely want to keep in touch so I can absolutely track the progress of that. Yes, I am at Arcane_author at nearly every social. So it's A-R-C-A-N-E underscore author on Twitter That's where you find my insane ramblings and any book news. That's still where all the writers hang out, despite all of the madness there right now. Awesome. Well, yeah, as I said, I will definitely keep track of that book. I can't wait to read it when it comes out. Hopefully won't be waiting too long. Thank you again, Andrew, for joining us today. It's been a great chat. I truly appreciate it. I believe it's probably quite late where you are now, probably around 930, ten ish. I'll let you get to doing whatever you want to do and get some sleep and all that, but yet again, thank you so much, mate. Had a great time. This is outstanding. I would love to do it again. If you have a spot for me, just keep in touch. Always, mate. Too easy. You have a good one. You too. All right, bye.