Full Transcript for ADHD Ghosting | Wait... Am I the Ghost?

which is always reliable. So to your point, it's not all bad. Stephanie: Not a sponsor. Faelyne: Not a sponsor. We both got our steps in. but hey actually, SB's not here to rate my cringe. Does it still count? Stephanie: in the universe that counts, but just not in the lab. So yes, it does have meaning, just not here. Faelyne: Fair. Stephanie: Well, do you think we should just head to the lab? Because I'm Faelyne: Let's Stephanie: guessing readings, official or not, are high. Faelyne: Readings are high. Let's head to the lab. Stephanie: Hey Storm, go through my equipment check with me. I got my headphones, I have my EMK, I have charged batteries, camera, protective necklaces, lucky ghost hunting shirt, silly bandz. do I have everything? Faelyne: Yes, looking good. Check. Stephanie: I okay. Anything I need to know before going in? Faelyne: movement on thermal second floor. Stephanie: Okay, I'm gonna go down, check it out. Stay with me. Faelyne: Copy that. Stephanie: Day two, the haunting of Dopamine Manor. Owners have reported phantom noises. Creaking, their dog going to the refrigerator in the middle of the night. And this is the the creepiest thing. The computer turns on by itself, middle of the night, every night, 3 07 AM. Faelyne: Okay. Thanks. Stephanie: Castles and Trolls is uploaded, but nobody's playing. One homeowner reported. Hearing human like voices playing the game during a gold heist coin extravaganza. No one was there. That might be data. Also, multiple tabs are left open on the computer and every morning that number grows. Okay, let's go investigate this basement. Hey, Storm Faelyne: Okay. Okay. Stephanie: with me? yes, it is definitely dark, definitely creepy down here. Okay, what am I seeing? What am I seeing? Yeah, this is definitely an environment where you one would expect some paranormal activity. I'm seeing lots of boxes. guitar amp, old art easel, unfinished Lego sets, not a sponsor, fishing gear. Abandoned hobbies. that just feels like super creepy down here. Like I literally got chills. Chills. Did you see that? Did you see that? Faelyne: See what? Stephanie: There's a cold spot down here. Something is definitely going on. Faelyne: It's a basement Pru Basements are cold. Stephanie: Yeah, but something just like flew on me. Did you see that? Like yarn? I'll show you yarn. That flew out at me. I'm I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Faelyne: Pru! Pru! what's going on down there? Pru! Pru, you good? Should I send back up? Stephanie: Look at this box of Legos with sorted out into color piles I mean, who does that? I feel like there's I don't know like like something feeding off my energy. Like I'm feeling drained and honestly like really depressed right now. Like being around all these unfinished things. Faelyne: no, did you stay up late watching the horror fest on Netflix again? Not a sponsor. You know how you get. Hey, I thought you were starting to do a Lego craft and make your own wrapping paper thing. Is that why you're lingering down there? Are you visiting the tombs of dead hobbies? Stephanie: Did you see that? Did you see that? Please say you got that. Please say y'all got that. No no there's something down here that does not want me Faelyne: Yeah, no, no, so. Stephanie: here. Faelyne: Listen, while I've got you, Stephanie: There is an energy Faelyne: Did you get any of my messages about, you know, when I was... Stephanie: I the EMF is lighting up like crazy right now. Faelyne: Copy. Stephanie: Whatever's down here does not want me to come here. And one of the first things you learn when becoming a paranormal investigator is that you have to Faelyne: you Stephanie: respect the boundaries that you are given. So I'm gonna go ahead and go back up. I'm gonna go dark on camera, but keep me check me on my air tag just in case. Faelyne: Me? sorry. You want my take on the investigation? to the camera? All right. Okay. I think, introduce myself and what my role is. All right. Hi, I'm Storm. That is short for Stormosania. I actually have dual responsibility here on the team. So officially I'm the tech lead and I'm also what people call an empath. I can feel the internal states auras, energies, if you will, of those beyond the veil and those among the living too. So some people ask me, "Hey Storm, why do you do this?" And I tell them by this, do you mean my three years of paranormal? fieldwork internship, my certification in EMF readings in both Imperial and the metric systems, the over 200 logged hours of investigations, and my seat on the boards of Canadian Paranormal Investigators and Research Association, the French Canadian Ghost Hunters Standards, and the Judiciary Review Committee. Why? Because someone has to give voice to the voiceless. People think that ghosts are all just BOOO!, and howlings rattling their chains for attention, but it really is quite a lot deeper than that. I'm convinced there is a presence or multiple presences that have something to say. And when Pru gets upstairs, she's going to use the Spirit Vocal Isolation app. It's sort of similar to AutoTune for singing, but it's for ghosts and specters and whatnot. Pru and I developed it together at our first year at GASP camp. Girls and Spirits Paranorm Camp. Hey, I think I hear Pru coming up now. All right, team, everybody into position. T minus 2.08. Stephanie: Can you get a vibe of this room? This is the desk where the homeowners have reported the most spectral activity. This is where Castle and Trolls is turning on in the middle of the night. So I am going to try to make content. here and whoa this one's giving some really intelligent haunting vibes to me energy that it's like it's feeding off us it's responding to us you know okay here it goes going to attempt contact number one. Hello, Is there anyone there who would like to make contact? Is it? Did you hear that? Did you get that? Faelyne: Hey, are we still meeting tonight? I'm here. Stephanie: Okay, well I'm this is really picking up

something. Someone is trying to communicate. This is unheard of. Let's listen in. Faelyne: So I guess you're not coming. Stephanie: Well, it seems like the same entity in one voice. Faelyne: Hey, I'm home now. I hope you're okay. Hey, listen, if I did something to upset you... I saw you at the grocery store, so I'm guessing you're okay. Stephanie: This is off my phone. Those aren't EVPs Those are voicemails. 37 days ago. A normal person would have just responded. Would have texted back. Sorry, can't make it. That's all I had to do. Why can't I just be normal? Not that big of a deal. Running late. Can't make it. Five words - running late or not coming, but apparently that's too much for me. Did you hear that? My box is lighting up here. Did you hear hearing those pings, those phantom text alerts? Ground zero, come in, something's happening. Phantom text alerts. We're gonna capture some incredible evidence, right? Faelyne: Nope, nope, not supernatural, Pru. That is just Casper retexting the entire group because you haven't responded about where we're going for next week's happy hour debrief. Stephanie: well mm not not that one place where we ran into Zac from Crazy Ghost. He kept like looking at me like all skeptical, like he thought I was lame or something. Not going back there. Faelyne: We've already been over this. Zac's glasses just make him look skeptical. That's his resting skeptical face because he thinks everyone's lame. And not the point. Happy hour this week when? Stephanie: stand by. Something's coming in. Faelyne: Of course there is. Stephanie: You know what, I need to look up something about this case, this address, this history. I'm having a hunch about something. I'm just gonna look that up really quick and I'll I I'll I'll get back Faelyne: Pru... Stephanie: to I'll get back to the team. Just give me a just give me it's important. It could crack this thing wide open. But a few days later Yes, I understand we have a budget. Yes, I know we're over time, but my research reveals Faelyne: You told us 25 times already, Pru, in the team meeting. Stephanie: I haven't told you all all of it. This is important data and something our audience needs to know too. Besides. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't our company slogan, sending souls to the light so you can have a good night? Going back to my audience. Day two of the investigation a few days ago. Okay, fine, 18 days ago, not including weekends. I left this room with some very compelling data. Faelyne: And cut. Sorry, mandatory break, courtesy of United Paranormal Investigators, Local 313, 15 minutes, non-negotiable. Stephanie: We have a union now? Faelyne: As of right now, yeah. And since I've actually got you listening for once, I don't suppose I could get an answer on. Stephanie: hey, hold on. Something's coming in. I've got some data coming on. I need to record this. Okay, go. Faelyne: Of course you are. Stephanie: Make yourself known. Nothing's coming through. Now we have to reset Faelyne: No, no it's not. Stephanie: the equipment. Yeah. Do I do this a lot? Faelyne: Yes, yes, multiple times during this investigation. To me, you're GASP camp bestie, and while I was literally in your ear the entire time. I don't understand, why don't you just answer one question? Why don't you just say, don't know, if you don't know. It's not a big deal, Pru, but you know what? Standing me up at dinner and then ignoring me? Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal. Stephanie: The dinner I don't even have a good reason. I I just didn't go and then not going was more embarrassing than calling, so I didn't call and it just got harder harder every day. Faelyne: Six voicemails Pru. six. Stephanie: I know I actually listened to them during the investigation. I saw that you called but I just ignored the message. Faelyne: I had you on camera, Pru, when you heard them. I saw you listen to them. But then, still, Stephanie: Yeah, but I was researching. Faelyne: you didn't say anything for 18 more days. Stephanie: I w well, I was researching, you know? No. No, you're right. You deserve an explanation. Okay, it's like the longer I waited to explain about dinner, the bigger it became. And then I didn't even know where to start, so I just ignored the whole thing. And then Casper started texting about the happy hours, and then you started asking me, and every time you asked, it wasn't even about happy hour anymore. It was just about anything. It was like if I I have to answer this, then I have to explain about dinner. So I just found something else, like like the Zac thing, the equipment. I mean, honestly anything. Faelyne: So all three things were actually the same thing? Stephanie: Yeah, i it never was that I I didn't want to see you. I I did want to see you. and I missed you. I was avoiding the consequences I mean I really am sorry. Faelyne: Hey, I know it's not about me. And that's actually the confusing part. Like, I know you care, but I still end up feeling like a ghost. Like, I'm sort of transparent. Like, you don't even quite see me in our friendship. Stephanie: I wanna see you. I honestly do. I I think I'm partly invisible to myself half the time too. I've spent so much energy trying not to be fully seen that now it's become Faelyne: you Stephanie: hard to fully see myself. makes it difficult for me to fully see other people. All that hiding and blending in is what made me a really good paranormal investigator. Faelyne: Prudence Temperance Thistlewood. You are a great ghost hunter and frankly it has nothing to do with you hiding from real people, yourself included. Stephanie: Okay, Stormosania Wysteria Nightbloom. Seriously, what can I do to let you know I really do care and I want to fully see you and not the paranormal professional version, the real version. And for the record, I know that I am 100% opening myself up for corny paranormal jokes right now. Let me have it. Faelyne: I will control myself and I will not take the bait. And I'm not asking you to

never go quiet. That's okay. What I'm asking for is just simply some signs from the beyond. Stephanie: There it is. Faelyne: Anyway, I just want to know that you're okay. Something easy, no explanation needed. Hey, I'm overwhelmed. Give me a beat or hey, I'd even take a ghost emoji in my text messages. So much better than me finding out after three redirects deep into a haunted house. Stephanie: I could do that. Faelyne: Good. Now, back to happy hour. What day works for you? Stephanie: You know what? I got something coming in. Hold please. Faelyne: That data better be coming in from your calendar. Stephanie: Alright, lab coats on. What you just witnessed was not Pru being a bad friend, an unreliable one or someone who doesn't care. What you watched was a textbook ADHD ghosting cascade, and the case file goes deeper than she just didn't text back. Faelyne: Let's start with the cold spot, because that's not just a spooky detail, that's actually real science, just pointed in the wrong direction. Stephanie: A cold spot in an actual paranormal investigation is usually just thermodynamics, heat dissipating, air current shifting, convection doing whatever convection does, nothing supernatural, just energy moving from where there's more of it to where there's less. Faelyne: Which is, incidentally, a perfect description of what happens in an ADHD brain during a shame spiral. You don't run out of caring, you run out of energy. The emotional and cognitive energy required to to respond dissipates faster than it can be replaced. And what's left behind reads as cold, distant, gone. Stephanie: Entropy basically left alone, a system trends toward disorder and an unanswered message left alone doesn't resolve itself. It just gets more chaotic, harder to open, heavier every day it sits there. Faelyne: Which is exactly what we saw with the voicemails. Pru thought she caught a class A EVP, a perfectly clear paranormal voice. It wasn't paranormal. It was real. It was just thirty seven days late. Stephanie: Researchers call that delay the shame avoidance loop. The longer a message sits, the more loaded it feels to open, which makes it easier to avoid, which makes it sit longer. Each day adds interest to a debt that was never that big to begin with. Faelyne: Dr. Edward Hallowell, no relation to our haunted house skit, but honestly, wouldn't it be a little amazing if his last name was actually Halloween right now? So let's say. it right? Stephanie: It basically is. Faelyne: Dr. Halloween draws a distinction that matters a lot here. There's guilt, which is feeling bad about a specific thing that you did, and then there's shame, which is feeling bad about who you are, for struggling at all. Pru's Spiral had both. Stephanie: Then there's the Phantom Texts. The Happy Hour Ask Pru kept dodging. That one's a textbook overwhelm response. Dr. John Ratey You know I want to put a clever little spooky spin on his name, but I can't think of any. Anyway, Dr. Skeleton Ratey. Does that

work? Faelyne: It totally does. Stephanie: Okay. Dr. Skeleton Ratey describes the brain as running hotter, more activated, more reactive to input than a neurotypical brain, which means an ordinary low stakes of text can register as a demand instead of a question. Faelyne: Right, and when a demand feels bigger than it actually is, the brain does something completely predictable. It goes looking for literally anything else to focus on. We're calling this one mm Zac. Stephanie: A Zac. Faelyne: A completely unrelated tangent your brain reaches for at the exact moment a real question gets too close. Named after Well, you saw the skit. Stephanie: Poor Zac. His glasses make him look skeptical, now he's a whole diagnostic category. Faelyne: And that's not Pru being difficult. That's rejection sensitivity, a well-documented ADHD pattern where the fear of being doubted or or judged hijacks the conversation because that fear is louder in the moment than the actual question being asked. Stephanie: And then the drift. Pru's hyperfocus on the house's history wasn't random either. Dr. Russell Barkley, still no spooky wordplay here. His work on ADHD as fundamentally a time blindness condition is the piece most people get wrong. It's not that Pru doesn't know time is passing, it's that the ADHD brain has a much weaker internal signal for duration. A few minutes of research and 18 days can Feel identical from the inside, right up until someone points out the gap. Faelyne: Which is why hyperfocus isn't the opposite of distraction. It's literally the same mechanism, but just aimed somewhere else. The brain didn't stop caring about Storm's texts. It just found something with a louder, more immediate reward. And time blindness meant there wasn't an internal alarm letting Pru know how long she'd been gone. Stephanie: So every anomaly in this haunted house had a real explanation. The cold spot, entropy, the EVP was six unheard voicemails, the phantom alerts, overwhelm and rejection sensitivity, a Zak, if you will, and the missing days were time blindness, riding shotgun with hyperfocus. Faelyne: Guilt, hiding, overwhelm, shame, time blindness, which conveniently spells GHOST So if you're the type whose brain drops information the second you stop looking at it, there is your five second cheat sheet. Stephanie: A brain hack for the busy and the haunted. Faelyne: You're welcome. So, Dopamine Manor was haunted. Not Pru. All of it was just an ADHD brain doing exactly what ADHD brains do under pressure. And every single behavior in that basement had a name, a mechanism, and more importantly, something that actually helps. Stephanie: Which is where we're headed, but first stop. Faelyne: Validation station doot doot. Stephanie: So if you just watched that skill and felt your stomach drop the seconds those voicemails started playing and playing. Faelyne: And if you've ever gone quiet on someone you love, not because you stopped caring, but because the caring got so loud it short

circuited the whole system. Stephanie: If you have ever avoided a friend for so long that the avoidance itself became the thing you were avoiding. Faelyne: We see you, we are you. And before we tell you what to do about it, we want to sit here for just a moment because the science explains the ghosting, but it doesn't sit with you in the dark or keep you warm in a cold spot. Stephanie: Welcome to the Validation Station. Science Rides Shotgun, real talk drives. Or as some ghost hunters say, Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake hole. Faelyne: Yeah he does. Stephanie: Yeah. Faelyne: Did you see yourself in that skit? Honestly, because I did. The voicemails piling up, the the dread of finally listening to them, the way one small unanswered message can somehow turn into six and thirty-seven days and a whole relationship that you're now too embarrassed to fix? Stephanie: And the redirects, how an easy question like, where should we go to happy hour can somehow turn into a whole tangent about a bespeckled ghost hunter named Zac, because anything, literally anything, feels safer than the real answer. Faelyne: Yeah, the gap between what your ADHD brain is telling you a conversation means and what it actually means is exhausting. You're not just avoiding a text. You're managing the guilt of avoiding it, managing the shame that goes with the guilt and the growing certainty that too much time has passed and it can't be fixed now. Stephanie: While also being a person who deeply truly cares about the friend on the other line. Faelyne: Storm said this herself. She never thought Pru didn't care. It's that not showing up got easier for Pru every single day. Stephanie: Friend, you are not a bad friend. You are not incapable of connection. You're not someone who doesn't care enough to reply. Faelyne: You're someone whose brain treats an unanswered message like a debt that gets heavier every day it's unpaid, until picking up that phone feels less like texting a friend and more like walking into a trial. Stephanie: And yes, sometimes that costs you, sometimes six voicemails that go unheard for over a month. We are not gonna pretend otherwise. Faelyne: But sometimes, and this part needs to be said clearly, the person on the other end isn't looking for a perfect explanation. They're just looking for a sign that you're still there. Something as small as a ghost emoji. Stephanie: Which is a fantastically low bar. And I have to say I got one from you today, so thank you. and most of us don't clear it not because we don't love our people, but because by the time by the time we need to send it, we're already convinced it's too late to send anything. Faelyne: That three AM voicemail replay sponsored by your amygdala. Yes, a sponsor. Stephanie: Yeah. a timeless classic, like The Shining, not a sponsor. Faelyne: Redrum redrum, Mrs. Torrance, Tony said the ghosting started for a reason. Somewhere Stephanie: Yikes Faelyne: along the way, going quiet felt safer than being heard, well, I supp especially if you have the redrum voice in your head. But Stephanie: I don't know. Faelyne: you know, safer to not be seen struggling or not be seen dropping the ball or being anything less than fully put together. And You've spent a lot of years being told that struggling to keep up with the texts and the plans and the follow through means that something's wrong with you. Stephanie: The shame that follows a misread message is real. The spiral is we're real and the why can't I just be normal and a reliable friend? Thought is real, and we're not skipping past it. Faelyne: We are sitting with it right here. Because every version of you who meant to respond, who thought about that friend more than they'll ever know, who carried the guilt of that whole thing around for weeks, that person cared a lot and more than the silence ever let on. Stephanie: You deserve to understand why your brain does this, and you deserve tools that work with your neurology, not tools built for brains that experience time and overwhelm differently than yours. Faelyne: And you deserve to know that the same brain that makes you disappear sometimes is the same brain that, once it does show back up, shows up completely, fully present, all in. Stephanie: Just occasionally thirty seven days late. Faelyne: Occasionally thirty seven days late. Stephanie: And I have to point out here, people with ADHD make some of the best friends. The fun, the empathy, the creativity, the unique perspectives, 100% off the EMF meter. But sometimes the invisible barriers can make friendships harder. You're not unreliable. You have just been carrying around more than other people can see. Faelyne: And whatever awkwardness awaits, that's the cringe we're here for. Yeah we are. Stephanie: It's a cringe. We're here for. Real quick. If the lab is your kind of place, hit follow wherever you're listening. It's the fastest way to make sure the next experiment finds you. Faelyne: Future you will not remember to come back and look for us. We know this about you. Stephanie: We know this about ourselves. Faelyne: Hit follow. Go ahead. Right now. While you're thinking about it. Stephanie: You've heard the voicemails. We've swam in the shame spiral and we've done the math on five words this whole time. Now let's talk about what to do with all that. Faelyne: Four protocols, some of these we've road tested on ourselves repeatedly, some we know work because we've watched them work with clients, and both count as data. Stephanie: It's all in the show notes, as always, because you're driving or folding laundry or investigating that weird sound you heard in your closet right now, and you're not writing any of this down. Faelyne: No judgment, only science. Stephanie: Protocol one, check for a pulse. Faelyne: Now that's not set a time once a week to go through your messages. That's just a planner with extra steps. And if frankly, if that worked, this podcast would be called something else

entirely. Stephanie: This is smaller than that. You're not doing a full excavation. You're not exhuming the body. You're just checking, is anything in here on life support? Anything urgent? Anything time sensitive? Anything that's about to become a bigger problem if it sits one more day. Faelyne: Take a dip. Don't dive. And if you actually need to find one specific thing, an email or a text that you don't mind answering, but it's buried under 48 others, use the search bar. We're calling this the Search and Desist method. Trademark pending, SB approved. Stephanie: Wherever he is. Type it, hit enter, and here's the important part. Be a horse with blinders on. Laser focus on the search bar. Everything outside the box does not exist. Faelyne: The moment your eyes wander away from the search bar, you have opened Pandora's inbox and all of its messaging miseries. Stephanie: Blinders on, box only. That's the whole protocol. Faelyne: BOBO! Sorry. Stephanie: Great. Faelyne: Listen, you're not rescuing the whole inbox today. You're just keeping it on life support. Full body rescue is a different day, a different amount of energy, and frankly a different you. Stephanie: Thirty seconds. Laser focus, no side quests. That's the protocol. Okay, protocol two, send the static. Faelyne: Pru had five words the whole time. Running late, can't make it. And she still couldn't send them. Why? Because by the time the moment came, it wasn't about the words any more. It was about the fact that any reply at all meant admitting that she'd gone quiet. Stephanie: So lower the bar all the way down. You don't owe anyone a full explanation in the moment, you owe them static proof of life. I'm overwhelmed, give me a beat. Or a Storm so generously offered a ghost emoji, because that works too. Faelyne: One character. That's the whole ask. Stephanie: Protocol three, know your ignition triggers. Faelyne: This isn't a notice when you're in a rabbit hole protocol, because come on, let's be honest. Nobody knows they're in the rabbit hole when they're in the rabbit hole. That's kind of the whole problem. Stephanie: Right. This one only actually works if you already know your own hyperfocus triggers going in. Novelty, urgency, a diabolical creative problem, competition, unexplained orbs and mysterious knocks. If you took our hyperfocus ignition quiz from a few episodes back, you already know what your haunt is. Faelyne: And if you haven't taken it yet, it's still up. The link will be in the show notes. Go and find your haunt before it finds you. Stephanie: Yikes. And once you know it, you can flag it before it starts, especially if you're working with somebody on something who's depending on you. Say, hey, this project has all my triggers in it. I might disappear into it. Check on me if you don't hear anything by Tuesday. Faelyne: And that's it. You're not promising not to hyperfocus. Listen, sometimes you need to. Sometimes the answer is go Full Carrie on purpose. Stephanie: But do it with intention, with a witness, with someone who knows to come looking for you if you are not seen for eighteen days. Faelyne: Not including weekends. Stephanie: Obviously. Alright, protocol four, the contact attempt. Faelyne: This is making contact, basically, what Pru actually did at the end there once she finally listened. Stephanie: When you're ready to re-engage after going quiet. And by going quiet, I also mean when you're physically present, but your brain's elsewhere. Skip the apology tour, skip pretending it didn't happen. One honest sentence clears the house faster than either. "I went quiet, that's on me, I'm back now." Faelyne: And you don't have to have the whole explanation ready. Pru didn't walk in with a perfect answer. She walked in and just said the truth thing. I don't e even have a good reason. And you know what? That's allowed. Stephanie: Now, the relationship doesn't need a flawless account of where you went. It needs to know that you're willing to come back. Faelyne: And honestly, a full account of where an ADHD brain has wandered? Like even over the last ten minutes, listen, you don't do that to people you love. Hey, Steph, what were you thinking about just right now? Stephanie: How much time do you have? Faelyne: Right? Okay, Stephanie: huh. Faelyne: four protocols. All of them. Honestly, they come down to the same idea. Stephanie: Which is? Faelyne: The bar from s for staying connected is like way lower than your shame spiral is telling you it is. Stephanie: Five words, one emoji, one honest sentence. Faelyne: And that's it. That's your whole ghost busting toolkit. All right. Lab doors are open, and after today we know something's haunting you. Stephanie: Maybe you've got your own version of the voicemails. 47 unanswered calls, 312 unanswered texts sitting there in eerie silence, getting heavier each day. You ignore them, visiting you in your nightmares, sitting on the end of your bed, demanding to be heard as they reach out to grab you and Faelyne: Okay. Terrifying, terrifying. You gotta stop that. That's too scary. Stephanie: Ha ha. Faelyne: Listen, maybe you've got your own Zac. Some completely unrelated tangent that your brain reaches for the second a real question gets too close. Stephanie: Aww, your own pet Zac. Or maybe you're the one who's been ghosted and that does not feel good. Sending the "Are we still on?" text into the void wondering if you did something wrong when really the other person was just drowning and doesn't know how to say so. Faelyne: Either way, we want it. Your cringe. Your ghost story. You know, the one that lives rent free in your attic? Stephanie: Email us at TheADHDSpaghettiBear at gmail dot com. Remember the the the T H E before ADHD because spaghetti bear requires the formality. Faelyne: He has standards even while ghosting us for his mid recording union break. Stephanie: Or click the link in the description to fill out our cringefession form. Anonymous submissions are always welcome. and while you're clicking on that, the hyper focused trigger quiz is there too. Two minutes tells you exactly what your brain is about to fall into next. Faelyne: Your disaster could be our next investigation. Stephanie: No judgment. Only science. Faelyne: Only science. Stephanie: Investigation concluded. ADHD ghosting is real, it's neurological, and you're not a bad friend for doing it. You're someone whose brain treats silence like the safest option when it costs you and the people you love most. Faelyne: Protocol one, check for a pulse. A 30-second scan, no full rescue required. And if you're hunting one specific message, use the "Search and Desist" method. Blinders on, inbox only. Stephanie: Protocol two, send the static, you don't owe a perfect reply. Just one line, one emoji, proof of life. Faelyne: Protocol three, know your ignition triggers. If you feel yourself about to go Full Carrie on purpose, say so first. Give someone the rope. Someone who won't let go. Not like Steven did in the Poltergeist, because once you've entered the portal, you need someone outside waiting. Stephanie: Protocol four, the contact Faelyne: Not a sponsor. Stephanie: I was just thinking, "Steven, don't let go!" protocol four, the contact attempt. Skip the apology tour, one honest sentence. I went, quiet, that's on me. I'm back now. Faelyne: The bar is lower than your shame spiral is telling you. Stephanie: True. Five words, one emoji, one honest sentence. Faelyne: That is the whole toolkit. Stephanie: Pru had five words the whole time. Faelyne: Five words thirty seven days. Stephanie: That's the protocol underneath all of the protocols. The bar was always lower than you thought. Faelyne: And frankly, that is the best news I have heard all day. So until next time, keep investigating. And try not to Stephanie: Try not to ghost the people you love. I'm just saving Faelyne: Well done. Stephanie: people from listening to that. Okay. Faelyne: Hit follow right now while you're thinking about it. Stephanie: Future you will not remember to come back and look for us. We know this about you. We know this about ourselves. Faelyne: And if the lab is your kind of place, leave us a review. Thirty Seconds From You helps another ADHD brain find us. Stephanie: Every follow, every like, every share puts us in front of someone who needs to hear that their brain isn't broken. Faelyne: It's just wired differently. Stephanie: Help us find them. Let's build our community together. Faelyne: We'll be here, waiting. Stephanie: In the lab. Faelyne: Obviously, that's assuming we don't ghost ourselves. Stephanie: That's weirdly a possibility. Faelyne: Yeah it is.