Insecurity, Anger, ADHD & Abby’s Retirement
May 30, 2023
Abby Wambach:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things, people.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, love. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.
Abby Wambach:
I already said it.
Glennon Doyle:
I know you did, it was really lovely. How are you two doing? You first, babe, how are you feeling this morning?
Abby Wambach:
I’m actually feeling good for whatever reason. I feel like the last month I’ve been teetering on not good.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
But not bad.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
And now, I’ve rose into the good stage.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh. To what do you attribute it?
Abby Wambach:
We went on a little short trip last week.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Little vacation, just you and me.
Glennon Doyle:
You mean the vacation during which we found ourselves rock climbing?
Abby Wambach:
Yes, you opted into that.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
So I just have to remind you. She opted in, folks. And…
Glennon Doyle:
We were wearing harnesses and carabiners.
Abby Wambach:
And you were a better rock climber than me.
Glennon Doyle:
I was like a mountain goat.
Abby Wambach:
You were.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I was.
Amanda Doyle:
Really?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. No offense to the mountain goats out there.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. When I got really up on that rock, I thought, “Glennon Doyle, your only hope, there’s no going back, no one can help you, so you just have to concentrate and you have to make it through this,” at which time I started focusing very hard on survival. I used my little carabiner. I carabined myself to the wire. I stayed very, very focused.
Abby Wambach:
What would you say about the presence that was required of you during that time?
Glennon Doyle:
It was good.
Abby Wambach:
Wasn’t it? It was a force-
Amanda Doyle:
It was strong to fairly strong, like my portfolio.
Abby Wambach:
But it’s a forced presence. That’s what I feel about surfing and anything that has any danger element. You are forced to be in the present. You can’t be thinking about anything else other than what you are doing. It’s a moving meditation.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, definitely didn’t feel like meditating.
Amanda Doyle:
As you were approaching highway to the danger zone, were you with every step just like, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch?” Because there’s a certain quality where you can either be like, “I’m enjoying this or I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m pissed I’m doing this and now that I’m doing it, I need to be in survival mode.”
Glennon Doyle:
Well this is what I’m doing. First of all, Abby and I, when we got married, we realized we had very different ideas of what a vacation is, okay? What I thought of vacation was very like I’m going to go read a book, it’s going to be quiet. I’m going to be horizontal a lot. Abby’s idea of a vacation is always involving some carabiner, or harness outfit, or-
Amanda Doyle:
Vertical centric.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Very vertical centric.
Glennon Doyle:
Or not even vertical, flying through the air, or we’re in trees. We’ve climbed trees and walked across bridges and-
Abby Wambach:
Zip line. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
We have gotten in a balloon and been carried behind a boat in the air while our legs-
Abby Wambach:
Parasailing.
Amanda Doyle:
Parasailing. It’s not a… Well yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
A balloon above us.
Abby Wambach:
We haven’t done hot air balloon flying yet, that’s fun.
Glennon Doyle:
We have bundled ourselves in layers and layers of clothing even when the inside is warm. And then we have gotten on machines that push us to the top of a mountain and then we have jumped off the machine and then we have hurdled ourselves down a mountain, and we have paid more for all these things.
Abby Wambach:
What machine is this? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Glennon Doyle:
Skiing.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Glennon Doyle:
The ski lift, which by the way, it’s not even the terrifying part, the ski lift part, right? That’s just getting to the terrifying part.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the getting off the ski lift that’s really the doozer.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my god.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like when you get on an escalator and you’re like, “Step, step, step, step, step, step, step, I’m doing it, I’m going, I’m going.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes. And then no one teaches you. I took one little bunny slope thing and they were teaching me how to pizza and do your little rowing, your paddles, what is it? Your skis.
Abby Wambach:
Your ski poles.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So you’re pizzaing them so you don’t go too fast or whatever. Well let me tell you what they didn’t teach me-
Abby Wambach:
Rowing.
Glennon Doyle:
What to do when you fall down. So I kid you not, four different times, the one time we went skiing, and I’ll never do it again, the little emergency patrol people.
Amanda Doyle:
Ski patrol.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, I would wait for them. I would fall down and then I would just pull my phone out of my little ski pants and just lay there staring at the sky and play with my phone until a ski patrol came, because there was no freaking way I was getting up. So I would just be on Instagram just laying there up my ass.
Amanda Doyle:
So in fact a very horizontal vacation.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I’m very horizontal… I can make anything horizontal. I’m very creative. But here’s the thing, I’m going to bring this back to my therapy because that’s what I do, all right? I think that one of my challenges is that I don’t have a lot of agency in my body. I do not trust that I’m going to be able to do shit, physical things. And so then when I try them, I don’t know what I’m doing and I feel vulnerable and embarrassed and so then I just quit and shut down. So even if Abby wants to play catch, because people want to play fucking catch when they’re 40-years-old.
Abby Wambach:
Something to do.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t want to play catch, I don’t know how to catch the ball. I feel stupid, all right? Apparently everyone else has been in catching class for 20 years. I don’t know how to catch the ball, I don’t know how to throw the ball. So the point is when we approach this rock mountain rock climbing situation, I thought of it as here’s an opportunity for me to practice agency in my body and to try to just look stupid and feel scared and just do it anyway, and see if I can trust my body to do something hard. And I did do it.
Abby Wambach:
How did it go? Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it went really well and I did well. What I don’t really still understand is the point.
Abby Wambach:
Really? Are you serious?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. We climbed the mountain, it’s very scary. I’m doing it, I’m doing it, I’m not dying. And then I get to the top and I’m like, “Well I did that thing and I didn’t die and that was good and this view is nice.” But honestly, I was on the ground before.
Amanda Doyle:
This whole rigmarole that cost me several hundred dollars.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but you’re not doing it just to be done with it. You really got nothing out of it. The fact that you are working on embodiment, the fact that you went up there because a couple years ago when we went skiing, this is pre-therapy, so now you’re in your body and you’re able to do this thing. I didn’t see for one second you were flailing or embarrassing. Did you feel-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I did feel embarrassed several times because when I feel vulnerable, when I couldn’t find a toe hold I would get angry. I get angry inside and frustrated. And that is a cycle for me. When I’m scared, I get scary. When I’m vulnerable, I get mad because I think, “What the fuck am I doing on this rock? I shouldn’t be on this rock. No one should be on this rock.”
Amanda Doyle:
“Who put me on this rock?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, yes. “Whose fault is it that I’m on this rock?” So working through that and staying with a vulnerability and just being like actually I just have to find a toe hold right now and I can take my time and I can look stupid, but I can do it was helpful for me. And a couple things that I did learn that I felt like were good and helpful is that when we were crossing this one terrifying bridge, it was called a suspension bridge or something, and it was very rickety and bouncy and I was terrified. And the dude who was crossing it turned back and yelled, “Don’t worry, there’s only as much bounce as you create.” And I thought, “Well if that’s not true, I’ve been fucking Tigger my whole life,” just bounce and bounce and bounce and wondering why everything’s so bouncy, right? So you know what I’m saying? Sometimes there’s only as much anxiety as we create in our bodies, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. So you didn’t feel when you got done with that like, “I did that, good job, Glennon?”
Glennon Doyle:
I mean I did feel like I did that. But if I had been laying at the pool reading, I would’ve been like, “I’m doing this.” I think there’s probably things that are soaking in overtime that I’m not seeing yet.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I was excited to have a vulnerable different experience with you. I was excited to learn about the plants, lots of metaphors there. But yeah, so that’s that. Sissy, how are you doing?
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
Well I just realized something that is a real takeaway for me from your conversation. You said, “What I still don’t understand is the point..” And I think what I’m going to commission, you know how people have live, laugh, love kitchen, the wood signs all over their house, I’m going to get one that says that. What I still don’t understand is the point. I think that’s universally applicable to really everything.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I can do it, I just don’t know what the point is. Also, I think what you were talking about with the catching the ball or whatever, or doing any of these physical things, I feel like something we do is we preempt our anxiety or embarrassment by becoming a caricature of someone who can’t do the thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
“I can’t catch this ball.” And if I present that caricature then it’s funny and I don’t look like someone who is actually trying and maybe struggling to catch the ball. And so I think it’s a pretense in some ways that we do that. It just made a connection to me with the sex episodes where we’re talking about what is it so where you feel so frozen like you can’t talk, and then you have this baby voice. It’s the same idea.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s so vulnerable to show that I’m trying or that I might be actually meaning to do this thing that I’m doing that I have to just be like, “I can’t do it. I can’t talk during sex.” It’s like a connection.
Glennon Doyle:
That is the conversation we had after. She was like, “Why is it so weird for you to do those things, try this physical thing or try to play catch, or try to play pickleball with the family?” They’re all very athletic. It’s because I can either do that caricature or I can actually try really hard and trying really hard anything is so vulnerable.
Amanda Doyle:
This is me trying.
Glennon Doyle:
This is me trying is so vulnerable. I feel like that was the podcast sometimes. Anything I’m doing, I’m like, “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing. I’m trying so hard.” And I feel like, what is that Taylor Swift line? “I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try,” I’m flailing about trying so often in my life that what? Now I’m going to go do it on the fucking pickleball court too? And it’s so obvious because my limbs are literally flailing and other people look like they can do it easier. I just think it’s the ultimate uncool is looking like you’re trying so hard, which is obviously what makes it so cool.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh, I couldn’t disagree more. I think the most cool thing is people trying.
Glennon Doyle:
Me too. But it’s like the belief system is-
Abby Wambach:
No, I know. And I know that the whole caricature thing is a thing, especially for people who are trying something very new. I guess my philosophy in life is to try your best everything you do, to try to become an expert at it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I wonder if there’s some gender stuff in there because you were always physical and you weren’t a sideline person. I was a sideline person. I was the girl who would watch her boyfriend play video games. I know we’ve talked about that before. Even if someone was playing a video game, I wouldn’t play it. I just was used to being the person on the side and I didn’t get a lot of practice.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I guess it’s about what you think you’re good at, right? School was never something that I was confident in. And so that’s definitely something that I probably joked with that I like, or reading.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, I’m a shitty student.
Abby Wambach:
I’m a bad reader, slow. And so I’m just like, “Oh, yeah, that’s…” And so I probably make jokes around that.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because if you’re my defense against feeling embarrassed or being bad at something is making a joke about how shitty I am at it-
Abby Wambach:
Totally.
Amanda Doyle:
Then you don’t try it. It’s not necessarily true that you’re bad at those things. You’re bad at them because you don’t engage in them.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
But you don’t engage with them because you’re scared to engage with them and then it just snowballs. And that’s how women end up not knowing what they like.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
They don’t try shit that feels like they could be embarrassed doing it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And that’s why keeping girls in sports is so important. Your thing would be schooly, brainy, reading stuff.
Abby Wambach:
Academia.
Glennon Doyle:
Academia. My thing would be physical things.
Abby Wambach:
It’s so funny, it’s like we are polar opposites in that way.
Glennon Doyle:
Of course. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Which is so interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
What do you think is the thing for you that you aren’t super comfortable with so you don’t try as much as much and might be beneficial for you to have a full human experience?
Amanda Doyle:
I think it’s the exploring sexual stuff.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh.
Amanda Doyle:
I feel like there is so much potential to be hugely embarrassed in exploring sexuality. It’s one of the only areas where I feel like I am unexplored terrain in terms of being like, “What about that? What about this? Have I ever thought about what I wanted?” I’m pretty clear on what I want in every other part of my life. I haven’t really thought about it. When I think about it, I’m like, “Yikes McBikes.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yikes McBikes.
Amanda Doyle:
Very cool.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, well we’re going to get to some Pod Squad questions today. Very thrilled about that. We haven’t done it for a while.
Abby Wambach:
These are some of my favorite days.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. You all, the inbox of our answering machine, is that-
Abby Wambach:
Voicemail.
Glennon Doyle:
Do they still call them… Okay, is just a treasure trove of the most beautiful questions, most beautiful stories. Someday we’re going to figure out how to use all of this gold that the Pod Squad just sends into us every single day. But for today, we’re just going to grab some and we never have any answers, we just have a lot of responses and thoughts and ideas.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, get it? Call and response.
Glennon Doyle:
Call and you’ll get a response. Very good.
Amanda Doyle:
They call and we respond.
Glennon Doyle:
Very…
Amanda Doyle:
Sometimes I think things are so clever in my head and when I say them I’m like that wasn’t that clever.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s hear our first one.
Anon:
Hi, Glennon. My question is when you knew that you needed to get a divorce in order to have space so that you could love Craig again, or maybe not again, but when that was all happening, but before you guys were able to have separation and space and you were still feeling so angry, what did you do with that anger? I’m so angry. And there’s an end date coming up, but it’s still months away. I still have to be in close proximity with this person and I don’t want to feel this way. I know that you’re supposed to feel your feelings, but it fucking sucks being so angry. Just wondering if you had some advice and thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know exactly where to start with this one because I’ve been on such an anger journey with this literal situation that she’s discussing. I mean I have some different thoughts about anger. The first thing I think about is we have a joke with sister that you know that thing where you can’t tell a certain person in your life certain things that other people have done to you or that you’re mad about because you know that your fury at them might pass, but you have that one person who so has your back? There’s that meme that’s like, “I would like to take you back, but I already told my sister what you did.”
Amanda Doyle:
You can’t really disclose until you’re ready to really release that person from me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because it’s over.
Amanda Doyle:
Or hear about it every day for the rest of your life.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And so sometimes when I talk about that, about just that phenomenon of having someone who has your back so totally that they will create a wall of fury to protect you from something that might hurt you, people feel jealous of that, right? “God, I wish I had a sister that would do that. I wish I had a best friend that would do that.” And that is true. It is a very lucky, wonderful thing. But I also think that it is true that we all have that fierce protector inside of ourselves. It’s like this person who has been hurt so badly by this other person, by her soon to be ex, has that sister protector inside of her. And that is her anger. So her anger is the part of her that knows that her boundaries have been crossed, that her field of honor has been stepped on, that she has been hurt, and that now the boundary needs to change. So until the boundary changes, that part of her is going to rage to protect her.
Amanda Doyle:
To ensure that what needs to be done is done.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
To reestablish that boundary.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And until then is a fucking guard dog. It’s like, “No, I’m protecting you. I’m protecting you. I’m protecting you.” And so that anger that she is feeling when she comes into what is too close of proximity to feel comfortable for her guard dog inside is correct. That is a protection, right? That is a signal, a part of her that’s saying, “We’re not safe. We’re not safe. We’re not safe. We’re not safe.” There’s a part of me that wants to say to her just turn to that part of you and say, “Thank you. We’ve got this. We’ve got this.” And sometimes I feel like with women especially, and I only say this because I’ve had this specific conversation with several women that I trust deeply recently, it is not sometimes the actual anger that feels too painful to bear. It’s the feeling that we’re not supposed to have that anger.
Glennon Doyle:
So we’re resisting that anger. So we’re trying to push it away. So we’re trying to fix it. So we’re trying to shame ourselves for feeling it that becomes two forces pushing against each other, that’s what becomes insufferable because actually, like I’ve been taught to, so this woman’s in the kitchen with her partner and this woman feels the anger come up and she turns toward it and loosens up and is like, “Okay, so what is that?” It really is an emotion. So it’s energy and motion in your body. What does it feel like? It feels like my chest is clenching up a little bit. I’m having thoughts because I’m remembering that I’m pissed about this. I’m about pissed this. I’m pissed about this. My hands are sweating a little bit. And that’s it. That’s it. That’s all that anger feels like.
Glennon Doyle:
Unless of course then there’s another voice saying, “Don’t feel angry. Why do you feel angry?” Of course you know why you feel angry because you have an internal protective self that knows you’ve been hurt by this person and is not going to calm down and is not going to feel peace until you have established a new boundary to keep yourself safe enough for that part of you to relax. So actually, you do not want that anger to be shamed away or to repress. That’s a part of you that is activated to keep you safe, right? To give you important information.
Amanda Doyle:
I wonder if, because I’m just thinking as you’re talking, that the phenomenon of activated anger and what that part is playing in our lives. So for example, if you have a group of friends and you get in a fight with one of them, you often feel the need to voice that anger, get it out there because you’re basically defending your position and you need it to be known and you want others to see you, when really at the end of the day, the original deed has been done. It’s like that person wronged me. I have a new boundary with that person and now I have that information and I’m establishing that to take care of myself. But all the rest of the stuff is trying to justify yourself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Trying to get people to understand. And so I wonder if you’re in this position where it’s two of you, I wonder if there’s some of that dynamics going on where people from the outside being like, “You should forgive him?” Or what is that anger operating against? Is it the internal conflict that you just talked about where I should be more gracious, I should be more forgiving, or is it coming from other places? Because I feel like if you can turn to your anger and say, “Thank you for protecting me, you are an amazing guard dog and I promise you that we are not equivocating here. I promise you that whether you choose to rage and bark for the next three months or whether you wish to be just still and resolute inside of me, I’m going to get us out of here. So you don’t need to bark anymore at me to remind me, I’ve got you and we’re getting out.”
Amanda Doyle:
A guard dog barks because they need you to be aware that something’s happening and do something about it. But if there’s a way that you can assure yourself that you’re not going to go back on it, then maybe you can have more peace because sometimes it’s internal, “I need to rage because I’m worried I’m going to go back against myself.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, I think that that’s real. I can say for me, my anger didn’t stop until my internal rage did not abate. I don’t think anger knows there’s a plan, that’s all I know. I don’t think that internal anger, like a dog wouldn’t understand if you were like-
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, it would keep barking until you actually went down and removed the person. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it would help. I think that helps. But I think there’s still something that is just animal-like inside you that doesn’t intellectualize. So it can’t understand that in three weeks, you’re going to be moving out or whatever, because I didn’t feel it really settle, it really calm down, stop barking until Craig and I signed our divorce papers on the elevator down. We were together and we were in the elevator and we were good, we were cool, we were whatever. But I didn’t feel tender again until after it was signed.
Abby Wambach:
I think that there is something really positive to look at when we talk about anger. Anger is the clue, it’s the rocket ship to what we’re trying to get to, which is acceptance. Sadness will come along the way and being able to move on. And so when we are angry, right, I know that people get angry in relationships and this is not the kind of anger we’re talking about, we’re talking about the betrayal-
Glennon Doyle:
Protective anger.
Abby Wambach:
The kind of anger that is forcing you to make a change in your life, right? And anger is fuel that allows you to get to different places along the path of healing, right?
Glennon Doyle:
So good.
Abby Wambach:
And I believe deeply because I don’t get angry often, but when I do, I try to get straight to the sadness as fast as I can. And the only way I’ve ever learned to be able to do that is by accepting what has happened as fast as possible. And that’s not easy. Reestablishing boundaries, I totally believe all of what you were just saying, but in order to really get into the rocket ship and move through this, having to accept what has happened, that’s been the hardest thing for me to do.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s interesting.
Abby Wambach:
So the rethinking about it and the rumination over and over, and every time you see the person, it triggers you, all of that stuff is to me just a lack of acceptance. And you might not be able to accept the situation by still being inside of it.
Glennon Doyle:
And what you’re saying is making me so… Anger has energy.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Sadness, in order to get out of a relationship like this woman is trying to do, it takes such incredible energy.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, it does.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so hard, it’s damn near impossible rearranging your life, rearranging your finances, trying to figure out how you’re going to get forward, dealing with, you have kids, your family, your friends, the amount of energy it takes. If you were only left with sadness or depression during that time, you would not have-
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
The fire.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That is required to begin again, to have another big bang to begin another universe. So could we look at anger too as not only a protector, a guard dog, but the fuel that is given to us in order to make change? Because if not, we’d just lay down and cry.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, just give up.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. The specific question is what did I do with it beforehand? And I would just end by saying the truth of the matter is that I tried so hard to not be angry that I would be angry at myself for being angry at Craig. My mind was a clusterfuck about it, layers of inception, shame and anger. But what my body would never do is listen to my brain. So what would happen is that Craig would reach out to me and I would recoil. My body was not letting me out of it is all that I can say. My body was like, “I don’t know how you’re going to try to rationalize this in your brain, but good luck getting me on board.” The truth that I did not feel safe, it didn’t matter how many therapists, how many stories, how many justifications, how much religious shame about forgiveness, none of it mattered.
Glennon Doyle:
At the end of the day, my body was saying, “We are not safe, we need a new boundary and we’re not going to relax until you get it for us.” I think we just make friends with and respect the anger and we know that no matter what we say to it, it is not going to go away until we’ve done what it needs us to do for it.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay, let’s do Kathy.
Kathy:
My name is Kathy and I’m raising two beautiful boys who are both neuroatypical. My youngest has ADHD and my oldest is being tested soon for a high functioning autism spectrum disorder. And he is a teenager going into high school, so he’s very high functioning, but struggles socially. And particularly, my question is around him. I am a recovering codependent and trying to parent a teenager who can’t really sense certain social situations the way that a neurotypical teenager would be able to. So I feel like I have to have some pretty tight reins on him on his phone and on his relationships and trying to be involved. But I’m also painfully aware of the fact that I’m codependent, but those things might just be challenging for me anyway even if he was completely neurotypical. So I’m just wondering how you balance control, how to know whether you’re holding the reins too tight when it comes to raising kids, especially kids that need a little extra help. I hope that makes sense. Thank you so much.
Amanda Doyle:
Those are big questions. They’re big questions and I think they probably apply to every kid. I will say that I do not have direct experience having a kid with autism, but I do, as Kathy is going through right now, do have the experience of testing for it and having it be within the ecosystem of possibility. And we do have neuroatypicality in our home. And it sounds like they both have diagnosed ADHD. I have found that the hardest part about this is that we are given this message, “Okay, your child has a disability, your child needs help and needs support and may need medication, and we need to build in structures to support them.” And so every alarm is going off in your head that they need a lot of help. And we talk about this specifically in the context of school a lot and down the road from school is career, right? So what is the 504? What is the IEP? What are all of the supports and structures we can build in to make things okay for them?
Amanda Doyle:
And we never talk about it outside of that ecosystem in terms of the social supports, the role it plays in a family unit. It’s like it starts and ends at school and none of the rest is talked about. And so first, I would just like to mention the school piece of it. I am of the belief that yes, those supports are necessary and I know that it’s a disability and I know that there’s a lot that is wonderful about naming things a disability and getting the services you need. I also know that a very large percentage of the world is diagnosed with ADHD and that there are people that are absolutely thriving who have ADHD. They may not thrive in school. I have had to make adjustments that they may not get the test scores and the grades that match up to what were my previous expectations or their capabilities that their level of intellect will not be reflected in their school scores. And that’s a hard pill to swallow. But once you do, I think it becomes easier.
Amanda Doyle:
And I’ve just tried to accept that if they can understand who they are and if they can live in who they are without self-medicating, then they will be absolutely fine in the long run. If you think about the people that have ADHD that have found their way into their passion, you’ve got Shannon Watts who credits her ADHD with being able to hyper-focus to the extent of taking on the NRA and virtually taking them down with Moms Demand Action. Emma Watson, Simone Biles, Lisa Ling, Justin Timberlake, he has OCD and ADD. Dav Pilkey started writing his incredibly successful Dog Man books while he was in detention at school because that’s where he was put because they didn’t know what to do with him. Bill Gates said he was always having difficulty concentrating and learning things in school. I mean it’s all right. Just get through school and have your kid understand how their brain works and they will be fine. Outside of school, it’s really hard because it’s like you need to let them struggle to learn their own competencies.
Amanda Doyle:
They need to learn natural consequences of what happens, but they also need more support, which sometimes comes really close to looking like you’re saving them from their natural consequences. When my kid leaves for baseball, it’s like you’re 10-years-old, you’ve got to learn to know that you have all your stuff. But I’m like is that reasonable for someone with ADHD? Where is the line between where you’re coddling them and saving them from learning and also being like but this is what you’re dealing with in life, whether it’s fair or not, you’re going to have to be able to make this work for you at some point. I don’t think there’s an easy answer and it’s really freaking hard. And the only thing that I have learned that helps is that what I found I was doing so much is being so scared for the natural consequences that I was being in a relationship with my son’s behaviors and struggles and not in a relationship with him. That every time something would happen, I would say, “Well what did they say? Are they mad? Are you in trouble?”
Amanda Doyle:
And so I was constantly responding to that instead of responding to him as a human and trying to make a relationship with him as a human. And we talked about this in Episode 166 that was about my change from trying to use my love to help him and instead using my love to love him. And the thing that we know about kids with ADHD is they often feel like they’re letting others down and they often feel like they’re doing things wrong, and they often feel like they are not, “Good.” And so if you are just having a relationship with struggles and behaviors, you are feeding into that idea that they are not good, even though everything in your body is trying to make them be okay and good, they can believe that they are not. The thing that has worked really well in our family is that something I didn’t know before the diagnoses is that if your kid has ADHD, there’s a 40% chance at least that you or the other parent will have ADHD.
Abby Wambach:
Will have it or have it?
Amanda Doyle:
Well has it, whether it’s diagnosed, and that number is probably higher because so many of us growing up in a different era were not diagnosed.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
So I haven’t gone through the process yet, I’m going to, but my husband has and he has ADHD. And so I think that’s a gift you can give your kid if you’re willing to go through and find out the way you work, that we are able to say to Bobby, “Your brain works the way your dad’s brain works in this way,” and he doesn’t feel othered and he doesn’t feel like there’s something wrong with him, that he’s not going to be able to figure out life because he looks at his dad and he’s like, “You figured out life.” And I think that helps the whole family. John takes his medicine, Bobby takes his medicine. It’s not like he’s the person that there’s something wrong with, which incidentally, if you are someone in the family who does not have ADHD and you have a child with ADHD, there is a high percentage that your partner will have ADHD.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s something that’s not talked about a lot, but when you are the singular parent who does not have it, it is a huge struggle because what kids with ADHD need is they need consistency. They need schedules. They need structure. And it becomes overwhelming. And so actually concurrently with Bobby’s medication, John got back on his, which he hadn’t been in since college. And that has been a giant gift to me because I feel like he can more actively participate in the consistency when he couldn’t before. I think it’s a real setup in a lot of extent because it’s like they have a disability, they need tons of help and they need to learn to deal with what they’ve got. And you can’t be saving them from everything. And it’s not an answer other than to say it’s really fucking hard, Kathy.
Amanda Doyle:
And I think the key thing is just making sure they know that your fear for what their life is going to look like doesn’t become their fear for what their life’s going to look like and that whatever is happening with them is going to be what’s happening with them forever. So you can’t save them from that. You can only help them cope and navigate and not believe that they are bad because if they believe that they’re bad or if they believe that whatever’s happening in their life is wrong, then they are going to start self-medicating. And then the ADHD is going to be the least of our problems.
Glennon Doyle:
If our culture is based upon good kids are the ones who sit for eight hours, are the ones who raise their hand, are the ones who are listening constantly, are the ones who are on time, are the ones who are not talking back, we have a very particular cultural idea about what a good kid is. If these neurological differences keep a kid from even it being possible for them to match the culture’s idea of what goodness is. How does a family, how do you still create the idea of goodness… What a family then defines as goodness? How do you redefine it? How do you say to a kid, “I know that you’re going to get…” Because it’s not that they’re not getting those messages, that they’re just pulling them out of thin air, they are getting those messages.
Glennon Doyle:
I was a teacher, I know those are the kids who have to go to the principal’s office who kids roll their eyes at who are disruptive in air quotes, right? Besides the fact that no kids should be having to sit for eight hours, but that’s a different story. How does a family then… It almost feels that it would be necessary to actually name that in a family whose kids can’t match that and say, “We have a different standard for goodness and success and love because in that world out there,” and of course I think about the queer kids. Whoever in a home is not going to be affirmed out there, how do you create a… Like Michelle Obama says, “Go out in the world, go ahead, but come here, here’s where we like you.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
What do we do to create that and what have you seen work in your home?
Amanda Doyle:
I think in some ways it really does start with the blessing of this being hereditary is that your kids know and believe that you are good.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
And when you can make a parallel to say, “Our only goal is to understand you and our only goal is to help you align yourself with your own values. So what are the values I see in you are these. And you look at your dad, see how he does, see how he can look at anyone’s baseball swing and no one else can do this, but within looking at a baseball swing for 20 seconds, he can diagnose down to the twitch of a fingernail the way that that child needs to adjust their swing to be successful, that’s because of the way his brain works. And your brain works like that too. You know how you can remember every single baseball statistic of every game you’ve ever played in? That’s the way your brain works. I can’t do that.” It’s seeing them-
Glennon Doyle:
Love that.
Amanda Doyle:
And not just seeing the part that gives you grief, it’s seeing the way their brains work and seeing the gifts. It’s talking about Shannon Watts. See how much you care about violence in schools, see how deeply it affects you, that’s the beauty of your brain. And you’re going to be able to do whatever you want because of that. And also, let me show you the other parts of the way your brain works. Let me show you why things happen at school that you don’t want to happen. It’s because impulsivity is a thing for you. So let’s talk about what works for you in that and what doesn’t, and I know you care about being a good teammate. I know that you want nothing more than to be a good teammate to your friends. And also when something bad happens on the field, you will sometimes react in a way that is inconsistent with your values to be a good friend. So what can we practice to help you align your behavior with your values?
Glennon Doyle:
I love it.
Amanda Doyle:
And also honestly, it’s horrible for me to say, but when I was in a relationship with his behaviors and his struggles, there was less for me to see to love and adore and protect.
Glennon Doyle:
Of course.
Amanda Doyle:
But when I put down that mantle of having to be in a relationship with his struggles and his challenges, it opened my eyes to everything that is so beautiful that I want to protect in him as opposed to protecting from him.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Oh, God, sissy, you are such a beautiful mother.
Abby Wambach:
I know, I just learned a lot about a person, a mother that I want to be.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because it’s everything. It’s not like some people have things that are bad and some people have things that are good, we all have things. And there’s ways that that thing is challenging and there’s ways that that thing is beautiful. And it’s this thing that you have in your life. It is going to make life hard and it could also be the thing that makes your life extraordinary, and here’s all that shit on either side.
Amanda Doyle:
And we talk about that too from the way my brain works. Guess what I was? Very, very, very good at school. I did all the shit you were supposed to do, I never got in trouble. And guess what the tricky side of that equation is? You’re so focused on performing that you’re not really sure what is of you and what is expected of you. Anyone who doesn’t think that there is a flip side of every gift or challenge is fooling themselves.
Glennon Doyle:
And every freaking thing that our kids happen to show our kids is just a sledgehammer of every worldview, everything we’ve ever had for ourselves. So does being someone who has created such an identity on being good and staying within the lines and then having children who are constantly coloring outside of the lines, how has that changed your perception of worthiness in the world, how to walk on the earth? Because I imagine that they have been little teachers for you also. Do you find yourself coloring outside of the lines more or being like, “Fuck you, world, I actually don’t care about your ideas of goodness anymore?”
Amanda Doyle:
It was really, really, really hard. I mean I’m not trying to rose color it. For the first two years, it was pretty devastating to me because I was like, “What does this mean he won’t be able to do? How will his choices be limited? Will he not be able to go to the schools that I went to? Is all of that just off the table?” But I think in a roundabout way, it liberated me early from the fiction that others maybe are able to carry for longer, which is that your kids, the good things that they do are a reflection of you, the bad things that they do are a reflection of you. Who they become is about you. And in this beautiful way, I was disabused of that quite early because I’m like, “This is a whole ass human being that is who they are,” and how limiting that would be to be like, “Oh, that part is me. Oh, here we go down this path, it worked for me.”
Glennon Doyle:
You can’t love them. At least you have a chance to love your children because you cannot love something that you believe is a reflection of you.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, and I’m coming at it with a real genuine ass curiosity because-
Glennon Doyle:
Beginner’s mind every damn day.
Amanda Doyle:
Beginner’s mind because I’m like what I don’t understand is the point.
Glennon Doyle:
Is the point.
Abby Wambach:
They’re going to be okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I firmly believe that they’re going to be okay.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, 100%.
Amanda Doyle:
And I think if you just believe that, then you can just put that aside. They’re going to be okay, okay? Bill Gates is okay. Once you just decide that they’re going to be okay, it takes the weight off of the rest of it. Now your job is to just love them and help them navigate, which by the way incidentally is the job of every parent.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And just to see them as separate entities that you do not completely understand.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, and that you’re not superior to.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s things that they can do that I could never do.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, let’s hear from Kris.
Kris:
Hi, sister and Abby and Glennon. This is Kris. My question for Abby is I have always wondered, Abby went from superstar athlete, the world watching her in all of those high-powered soccer games and then she retired and then her identity I think had to shift and change, certainly now she’s a mom and all these other things and an advocate. And I’m interested in a month after retirement, what did it feel like for Abby? Was she on the struggle bus? Was it tough? Did she know it was coming and so it was easier? Just interested in that whole identity shift thing. I have to believe it was huge. Love you guys. Talk to you later. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Kris, what a good question. Well a month after my retirement, I was basically drinking myself to death.
Glennon Doyle:
Struggle bus, struggle bus check.
Abby Wambach:
Super easy time there. I was terrified of retiring. I didn’t know what kind of a life that I wanted to live and I was also going through a divorce. Nobody talks about that transition enough. I think that we all just assume we’re going to sail off into the retirement sunset. But I was 35-years-old and I hadn’t made enough money so I had to find a new career, a job. And I actually don’t know if I have ever been so untethered in my life. And I think that that was a big reason why I was turning to alcohol and struggling to figure out what I wanted because for so long, it was so clear. It was so easy. I had this road that I traveled down and I was a feminist and I was a sports star, and I was just doing everything that I had dreamt of doing. How do you top that? Really? That was a big concern of mine. I will never do something that will give me this much joy, which is why it was so terrifying.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like is the rest of my life just a decline?
Abby Wambach:
That’s it. Is this as good as it gets? That’s a horrific thought. Luckily, I got sober a couple months after my retirement, and that for me changed everything. It allowed me to deal with the feelings of terror, to deal with the confusion, to just let myself be a little untethered for a while. And then we meet, I become an Insta mom, and I was able to jump into a new life because of my sobriety. I could start fresh. It was the Etch a Sketch where I just shook the thing up and it was clean slate. And I actually feel like, and I don’t know if this is just special to me how my brain works, but I decided, “Okay, I’m going to become the best parent in the world.”
Amanda Doyle:
Gold medal parent.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I know that that’s not possible and it’s a ridiculous thing to think or say, but that’s just how my brain works. And so I got into the car line and chatting with the parents at the school.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s true. She was like, “I’m Glennon’s wife.” They were like, “Who’s Glennon?”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. They were like, “She’s never come to chit-chat before.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. But I do think that it took me about two years to settle into this new identity. In fact, both of you came down to Florida where we were living at the time to do the Abby Summit. Do you remember the summit?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
And I had to figure out how to be a person. I didn’t know how to do adulting.
Glennon Doyle:
What’s a calendar? What’s a schedule? It was literally very… How to make a list, how to make a to-do list.
Abby Wambach:
And we put a plan together around what are the things that I enjoyed doing? What did I love? What was I good at? Now, fast-forward to right now today, I did not have podcaster on my list of things that I thought would be my life, but I think that that’s what’s so beautiful around the time of transition that I was in, I was able to go and create. Rather than be sad about what I left, I have been able to step into and co-create a totally different life and one that I think I was more meant for than soccer player life. That was a very unique path and I think very few people are capable of doing it, not because they’re not good enough at it, but because it requires a different personality, a different mindset to be able to travel and be on the road for 300 days a year and not have stability and not have security in a job.
Abby Wambach:
I felt like my body and my heart and my soul came home in a way that I had never really felt before. So yes, it was terrifying that transition. Yes, it was very scary. But I was able to find people around me that could support me through that walk home to myself in a way. I don’t know, that was boring.
Glennon Doyle:
Are you kidding? It’s so beautiful. Why do you think that what you say is boring? Is this you feel vulnerable like when you’re rock climbing?
Amanda Doyle:
This is your caricature.
Glennon Doyle:
This is your caricature, this is you feel like you’re rock climbing.
Abby Wambach:
Okay, so I have to say this.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, God.
Abby Wambach:
You two are the best podcasters in the world to me.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
The way that you craft your responses and you have all of these analogies and amazing answers, I just talk from my heart and so there are times that when I start going, I realize I have made no sense. It’s just been super honest from where I’m at. And so I do get a moment where I feel like this isn’t as good as their answers.
Glennon Doyle:
Babe, I feel certain that if we pulled the Pod Squad and said, “Who is it on this pod that makes your heart open the most that you adore?” I think they’d probably try to say it in a way that didn’t hurt our feelings because that’s how they are, but I believe that you are the heart, that you are-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but some people aren’t coming for the heart, right? And I respect that. I think that all three of us appeal to different parts of people as they’re listening to us.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re everyone’s favorite. You’re everyone’s favorite, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re brilliant
Abby Wambach:
But I do, I have an actual insecurity around it at times and I think that it comes out when I have to answer some of these questions.
Glennon Doyle:
Well now you know how I feel when I’m wearing a carabiner and how sister feels when she’s trying to be naked in bed and have sex. We all have our challenges, okay? I love you.
Abby Wambach:
I love you too.
Glennon Doyle:
We can do hard things.
Abby Wambach:
See, I love you. I love doing this with you.
Amanda Doyle:
I love you so much, Abby. I love you G-Bird. I love you Pod Squad.
Abby Wambach:
I can’t believe we get to do this.
Amanda Doyle:
Bye.
Abby Wambach:
See you next time.
Amanda Doyle:
Bicycle.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios.