Shifting Gears: ADHD-Powered Problem Solving
What happens when life throws you off course? The meeting runs late, the pipes freeze, or the day crumbles before it even begins. For most people, problem-solving is instinctive. For those with ADHD, however, it’s a far more complex process—one filled with creativity, frustration, and unpredictability.
This week, Nikki and Pete explore the unique challenges and strengths of ADHD-powered problem-solving. The ADHD brain can shine in adversity, using creativity and hyperfocus to tackle unconventional problems. But it also struggles with all-or-nothing thinking, freezing under pressure, emotional overwhelm, and the need for more time to process situations.
Nikki and Pete offer practical strategies to navigate these challenges. Start by clearly identifying the problem without spiraling into blame or “what-ifs.” Ask yourself: Is this my problem to solve? Often, the stress you carry isn’t yours to fix. Once you know the answer, reframe and readjust—communicate, prioritize, and take action, no matter how small.
The episode also emphasizes mindset shifts. Acceptance isn’t giving up; it’s understanding that plans change and perfection is unattainable. Letting go of unnecessary blame and giving yourself grace are keys to moving forward. Nikki and Pete share insights from Dr. Edward Hallowell and discuss the importance of pausing to regulate emotions before tackling problems.
Finally, they highlight the power of talking it out. Verbal processing can help you hear your thoughts, shift your perspective, and uncover solutions you didn’t see before.
This is just the beginning. Next week, Nikki and Pete will dive into decision-making, showing you how to choose wisely, even in chaos. For now, this episode is your guide to shifting gears, embracing your ADHD brain, and solving problems with creativity and resilience.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hi. Nikki, does this represent a pivot today, what we're doing?
Nikki Kinzer:
It's a pivot, and it was a problem that we solved.
Pete Wright:
It was. It's a pivoted problem solved. A pivot problem solved.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's a PPP.
Pete Wright:
It's PPS.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, PPS. Dang. I wanted it to be a PPP, but it's a PPS.
Pete Wright:
It is a PPS. We're talking about problem solving, ADHD, problem solving. That's exciting, because sometimes problems with the ADHD brain are very hard to solve, and sometimes they're very easy. What is the difference between when it's easy and when it's hard? What tools can we use to make that better? That's what we're talking about today. Before we dig in, head over to TakeControlADHD.com, get to know us a little bit better.
You can listen to the show right there on the website, or subscribe to the mailing list, and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Blue Sky, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Pinterest at TakeControlADHD. To really connect with us, join us in the Take Control ADHD Discord community. Super easy to jump right into the general community chat channels at TakeControlADHD.com/discord, where you'll be whisked over to the general invitation and login.
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We'd love to get to know you a little bit better, and have you join our fantastic, fantastic community. Visit Patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast. That's Patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast to learn more. Shifting gears, Nikki, cue that V8 rumble. We're going to shift those gears.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Isn't that a creative little title?
Pete Wright:
It's very creative. I'm creative.
Nikki Kinzer:
You're creative. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Tell me about where this came from.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right, so we're going to do a few shows diving into some of the ADHD symptoms that aren't often discussed. We do talk a lot about time management, organization, getting started, not getting started, motivation, all of those things that we talk a lot about, but there are a few things that come up that aren't always talked about, aren't always clear, and it's hard to get information around them. I'm hoping that we can shed some light on problem solving.
Pete Wright:
Let's do it. All right. Why do we start this series with problem solving? Why talk about problem solving?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, first of all, I was inspired with this topic because I was talking to a new client of mine, and it was something that she felt like she was struggling with, and I thought it's interesting, because it's not something, again, that's really brought up. Everything else is brought up, but not the specific thing.
I feel like if there is a problem to be solved, then something is happening that you probably didn't expect. What we're actually doing is facing some kind of adversity. There's some kind of adjustment that needs to be made, or something's happening. How often does that happen? Every day.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, all the time, but the challenge is you're not often clear-headed enough to see that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It just feels like, "Oh, it's a problem. I guess I don't know why-"
Nikki Kinzer:
It happens every day. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Here I am again. Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about what happens to your brain when this happens, because it does depend on what the problem is. With ADHD, you mentioned it in the intro, some problems are really easy to solve, and some things aren't. The ADHD brain definitely takes a part in that. The strengths of the ADHD brain when it comes to problem solving is thinking about how creative a person can be.
A lot of innovators have ADHD, a lot of inventors, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people that can think outside of the box. They welcome the challenge, they want to be challenged. When this problem comes, they have this new drive to them. Persistence is a strength of ADHD. You can't let it go until you solve it. You get hyper focused on this particular problem, whatever it may be. There's this determination that can come from the ADHD brain, but there are a few challenges as well.
I think one of the biggest ones to highlight are the all or nothing thinking, the black and white thinking that happens with ADHD. It happens so quickly that you don't even notice that it's happening until probably somebody like me as a coach brings it to your attention. When we're looking at all or nothing thinking, here's this problem that has come, and you only think of it, like there's only one solution, or the day has been ruined because something didn't happen in the morning, and so the afternoon is gone.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. This is the cognitive dissonance of ADHD though, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
You just said, we welcome the challenge to think outside of the box, which implies let's look at a lot of possible solutions on many different horizons, and suddenly, there will be only one. Suddenly, there can be a shift and we stop being able to see all of the solutions, like the overwhelm of choice becomes too overwhelming, which is the peril of intermittent reinforcement, that I can feel confident when sometimes it works and I can see a lot of things, and then I can feel absolutely three inches tall when many times, it doesn't work. I feel a lot of shame that goes along with that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. I think that, I hope I explained this correctly, with ADHD, everything feels urgent, right? It's really difficult to prioritize. I think that that is the same thing with a problem, that a problem can arise and it feels, even though it may not be a big problem, it feels like a big problem. Then there's all of this baggage that comes around that.
Even though it's probably something that you can solve and you really can have the rest of your afternoon, but it feels big, bigger than it is. I think that the next thing I'm going to talk about is not just the ADHD brain, it's just human nature. If you're in a crisis, you either freeze, or what is it? Fight?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's fight or flight, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Fight, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Fight, flight, or flee, I think, are the big three.
Nikki Kinzer:
When you're in a crisis, for example, you get into a car accident, maybe it's just a bumper, not a big car accident, but it's just a, you rear end somebody, you may shut down because it's like, you're kind of in a little bit of shock. That's a challenge because you're overwhelmed with the situation, so you're not going to think clearly.
Giving ourselves some grace, because this is, I bring this up because this was one of the examples that was brought up to me, and having to walk through the situation and normalize that what this person was feeling was actually very normal. You're not going to necessarily think of every single thing to do when you hit somebody.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That's really interesting. Just a brief sidebar.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
My daughter was in a car accident, a very minor one, this was a long time ago, and actually just didn't stop quick enough because of moving traffic, heavy traffic, and bumped into the back of another car. My daughter is trained medically, so the first thing they do is get out of the car and see if everyone is okay in the other car, and check for things like head injury and all of that stuff, and is supremely confident because of their competence.
At one point, the driver of the other car says, "I'm just going to call the police," and everything falls apart. Suddenly, they're outside of their realm of competence and experience. It went from medicine to the law, and the law is unknown territory. Murray Gell-Mann is a scientist or was a scientist, I believe he passed away, and he came up with Gell-Mann amnesia with Michael Crichton.
I think I've talked about this on the show, where it's the whole idea that you're reading a newspaper, and you read the front page story, and it's something you know a lot about, you have high competence and expertise and you think, "Oh, the newspaper's ridiculous. This person got all the facts wrong," but then you turn the page, and now you're reading something that's in a field that is not your domain expertise, and you're like, "Wow, that's really interesting."
The odds of them being factually inaccurate to an expert on the page you know nothing about are just as high as they were on the front page when they were factually inaccurate with something you do know a lot about, but we forget that. I think it's really important to understand where the paralysis is coming from in a crisis situation. That seems to imply a tool that we can employ when we're not in crisis situations to help ourselves feel more confident later.
If you need to understand if you're overwhelmed by the law in traffic, you could read up on what you actually have to do in a minor traffic accident, so that you feel confident and not overwhelmed, that kind of a thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Does that make any sense? Am I just word vomit?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, no, absolutely. No, no, no, no. It makes a lot of sense.
Pete Wright:
Increasing competence is really important for ADHD to help avoid these kinds of crisis shutdowns.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, and it is interesting, because we did talk about what would be the steps you would do if this happens again, so that you do feel more confident in what you would do, or what could happen next time, which hopefully there's never next time. The next piece I think that can be challenging, and I see this especially with students, is you're studying for something, and now you've got to study for a test. There's these problems that you have to solve, but you're still processing learning the information on how to solve the problem.
It takes time, it takes listening to the lecture again. It takes listening to the lecture plus reading what was in the text, and reviewing your notes, just giving yourself some space to process what you're learning, and then being able to apply it, and not just expecting that you're going to get it out of just one lecture. I was talking to my daughter specifically about this, because she's a psychology major. Right now, she's taking all of the basic Psych 101, Psych 102, all of these basic courses.
Right now, she's all, the psych class is is all about the brain, and all of the different parts of the brain, and the names. It's confusing for the first time when you've just learned this. I was trying to reassure her that, "This is going to be part of all of your courses going forward. This isn't something you're just learning once, and then they expect you to know about. If you were just taking a psych class just to take a psych class, yeah, sure, you're going to memorize it, and you're going to take the test, and then you're going to forget about it, but for you, it's different," because she wants to be a therapist.
You need to know how the brain works. You need to know why these things happen and how they all connect, but it's not just in one class. It's going to follow you through all of your courses, and eventually, you're going to know it like that, like anything that you become competent in. I think, I hoped, reassure her that I don't need to know it all right now, and that it will take time to figure it out. Emotional dysregulation. Whoa, that's a big one.
When a problem is happening, when something happens that you're not expecting, especially, you can get angry, you can get frustrated that the problem even exists. You can become reactive, avoidant, argumentative. A lot of things could happen there with that emotional dysregulation.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, and emotional dysregulation is the giant wall that prevents you from processing clearly. Understanding, this goes back to the tools that you employ while you are not dysregulated, which is so hard to say.
Nikki Kinzer:
Ugh, so hard to say.
Pete Wright:
It's so hard to say. That's the challenge of emotional dysregulation, you never know what's going to trigger it, right? You never know what you're going to run into on a given day that will throw you out of sorts and cause all of the other things.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's so true.
Pete Wright:
Slow processing, freezing, paralysis.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. I have to say, I think in a lot of moments, it's okay to just throw your hands up in the air and say, "Okay, I'm done for the day. I'm going to start again tomorrow." We got to give ourselves some grace.
Pete Wright:
Now, we're going to talk about transitioning into what do you do, coach?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, it is such a practical, I'm going to talk about some practical ways to approach problem solving, and then I'm going to talk about some less practical ways.
Pete Wright:
Oh, good.
Nikki Kinzer:
We're going to see both the practical and the non-practical. This is not going to be surprising to anybody. You have to identify what the problem is, right? We need to be specific. What is it that we are dealing with? I love the exercise that you had us do a few episodes back, where we were talking about the limiting belief, and-
Pete Wright:
Structured journaling.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, the structured journaling, and that's when I was writing this outline. I was thinking about that, like, "We've got to keep it factual. Let's take the emotion out. Let's take everything out that we think it is, but let's be factual." The example I have is that the morning meeting that you had ran late, and now you are behind on the rest of your day. That's the problem. Not going to talk about how I feel about it, why it happened. That's just what the issue is. I'm now behind.
My next question, is this my problem now? This is what I think is so baffling. You may surprise yourself how much stress or anxiety you may be taking on when the problem is not even yours to solve. Now, I am so guilty of this with my children, that I will take on their problems, and I will try to solve them for them, and I will come up with all kinds of things, but it is not my problem to solve. They're the ones that need to do it. They're the ones that need to have the life experience.
That's one area, but to keep going with the whole morning meeting thing, is this my problem? Well, yes it is, because it directly affects me. I need to deal with it. I need to figure out what kind of adjustments I need to make this afternoon. The morning meeting did not run late because of me. It ran late because of Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hey, now. No, I think that's really important. What you're saying is it affects me, but not because of me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Say that like a thousand times.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
It affects me. I'll adjust because of it, but it's not because of me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Do not take on stress which is not yours to own.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't need to take this on. Exactly. Exactly. I'm not blaming you, either. It's just this is the fact. These are the facts, right? Then what's next? What do I do here? Now, I have to think of how I'm going to solve this problem. What needs to happen? In our next show, when we are talking about ADHD symptoms that aren't talked about, we are going to talk about how to make decisions because that's a big one.
That's a really difficult thing to do for a lot of people. For this example, the decision is that I need to list out the adjustments that I need to make, and I need to prioritize who I need to get in touch with, and then I need to take action. I need to get a little list going, and I need to text people, or make a plan, or break it down, or whatever. I have another example about taking action and breaking things down.
I had a client recently, there's been a lot of cold weather in the East Coast. He had frozen pipes, was going to start our meeting late. As we were talking about his pipe situation, he's telling me about it, and he's writing stuff down, because all of a sudden, frozen pipes has several little action steps that have to happen to get it fixed.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's part of that process too, is that here's the problem, and here, I need to break it down, because it's not just fixing a frozen pipe.
Pete Wright:
Right, but going back to what we were talking about before, crisis and emotional dysregulation, if you don't go through this sort of emotional dissociation with the thing that's going on, like frozen pipes, you will, for lack of a better word, freeze in this process, because you won't be able to functionally break it down and take that next smallest step.
Sometimes, like I'm sure we're going to talk about this next week, sometimes you're going to have to make a decision based on incomplete or crappy information, and that is a muscle. You just have to learn to do it. It stinks. It's hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's hard, for sure. All right, so now I'm going to talk about some of the more less practical approaches of problem solving. This first one is acceptance. Whew, that's a hard one. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a coaching session and all of a sudden, I can see the light bulb in the person's eyes light up, where this kind of hits them, where, "Oh, okay, so you're telling me that plans actually do change. What I thought was going to be either I predicted the future and I was wrong," that acceptance that problems do come up.
A task can turn into more tasks once you get into it. That's a big one that I've noticed with people is there's this frustration that I thought it was just going to be me dealing with this one frozen pipe, but now it's not just this one frozen pipe, it's this, and the hot water, and all of this that-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it turns out that was a symptom of something much bigger.
Nikki Kinzer:
That was much bigger, and that's so frustrating, but it is part of what happens. Accepting that this is part of life, and not to take the blame yourself. You didn't do anything wrong because you have a frozen pipe and it has more steps in it than what you thought it was going to. There isn't anything there to fix, except for the frozen pipe, not you. That's the separation.
We need to let go of the what ifs, the should have beens. I could have done this if I knew this, or done better, or whatever. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time, period. Give yourself grace. Learn from the situation, as we were talking about before. If we want to be better prepared in the situation of being in a car accident, then let's read that up. Let's figure out what would I do if I ran into somebody in the intersection?
Learn from that situation, and then review the above steps. Is this a problem to be solved? Is it my problem to be solved? Just giving ourselves a lot of grace.
Pete Wright:
You would say this is a less practical approach, and I don't even think it's an approach. I think this, you just talked about mindset, right? This is not an approach to solving problem. This is what you have to do in order to do everything above.
Nikki Kinzer:
Very true, very good point. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
When I was doing some research around problem-solving, I came across something that Dr. Halliwell had written. It is based, well, it's a different take of the Serenity Prayer, so people are going to recognize it, but listen to the words because they are different. This is the first time that I have ever seen this from Dr. Halliwell. It was in an article that we'll go ahead and put into the show notes so you can see where I found it.
This was the first time I've ever read it, and I just thought it was really amazing. This is from him. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the insight to prioritize wisely what I want to change, the patience to resist trying to control everything I could, had I the energy and time; the courage and skill to change the things I have chosen to change, and the wisdom to know the differences among all these." Pretty amazing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's nice.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I really like that and I'm really glad I came across it. That's something to think about. The next two are, I suppose that they're less practical, but I think you're going to probably be able to tie them into these practical things too, but pausing when you feel dysregulated. We know that this is something that is taught to us, that if you start feeling heated, if your emotions are running high, sometimes the best thing to do is to get yourself out of the situation, and walk away, and be able to process.
This is something to think about when you are in crisis, or the problem is much bigger than you. It feels so big, really recognizing how this feels in your body. Are you getting heated? Are you flush? Noticing these things, and then settling down your nervous system. I'm sure that our dear friend, James Ochoa, would have a lot to say about the need to settle our nervous system in these emotional storms. We need to breathe, we need to get outside, we need to reset, and take some time to really process.
It's hard to come up with solutions when you're really upset. That's something to think about too, that this is not the time to skip to that step of, "Oh, I need to brainstorm solutions." Let's take a moment and pause for a few minutes or whatever you need. The last thing that I want to talk about is talking it out. ADHD folks are verbal processors. That's why coaching can be so effective is that you need time to be able to talk out what you're thinking, what you're feeling.
It makes a difference to hear yourself and to hear somebody else's perspective. You can work with other people to help you brainstorm. That's why teams and collaboration work so well is that we don't have all of the answers. We feed off of each other. In our weekly meeting, we call it the Brain Trust here at Take Control ADHD, we are all coming up with ideas and really working off of each other. That makes a difference.
Talking to other people and just really giving yourself some time to process things. Next week, we're going to talk about how to decide on those solutions, so stay tuned.
Pete Wright:
All right. Looking forward to it. This is a nice little trio, I think? We have a trio of episodes?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, we sure do.
Pete Wright:
This being the first? We're excited to talk about all of these issues this way. Thank you, everybody, for downloading, listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute about the conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server.
You can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright, we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
