Full Transcript for ADHD INTERRUPTING: OVER, OVER AND OUT

glass of water beside him. Yeah, no, I can see it. It hmm Perfectly still. Stephanie: Because he would never. Faelyne: He has standards. Stephanie: Unlike some cats we know. So put on your safety vests, grab your poppers, your fidget spinners, your rubber chicken. Faelyne: And your Celeste style floppy hat if you happen to have one handy. And let's start the experiment. Stephanie: The experiment. Okay, today's experiment is the third in our BAIL series communication. B A I L, we have looked at the B blurting, we've looked at the A arguing, and we have looked at the I interrupting. Faelyne: Interrupting sorry sorry communication pattern Stephanie: No. Faelyne: that doesn't feel like an interruption from the inside of the brain that's doing it because I got excited. Stephanie: Okay, well this is one phone call, two new friends and one apology that keeps getting interrupted by itself. Faelyne: Today's experiment may cause secondhand cringe, mild sympathetic embarrassment. Stephanie: And the particular frustration of watching someone keep cutting off their own apology. Faelyne: Some of you listening are skeptics and I know it. How is interrupting yourself even possible? You're thinking, but it is listen and learn. Stephanie: And others are listening, are true believers and they're already nodding along. Faelyne: Whichever group you fall into, stay curious, stay cautious, and remember, there isn't a control group in this lab. So let's start the experiment. Stephanie: The experiment. I'm just gonna I keep trying to say it without you. Okay, it's not working. Okay, first we need to take a reading of the current cringe climate. Faelyne: Every episode, we either take a quick reading of how ADHD Life is treating us, or we reach into the cringe mailbag for a cringe fession from the community. ⁓ Think of it as our pre-experiment data collection. ⁓ So, ⁓ today's cringe fashion comes from Rebecca from New Zealand. ⁓ She calls herself Rebecca, af but after reading her cringe-fession I think we're gonna call her Refund Queen Rebecca. So, let me get started. Rebecca says, I want to start by saying that I am a functioning adult with a job and everything. Go Rebecca. Last Saturday I said right? Stephanie: Yeah. Win! Faelyne: So, Rebecca says, last Saturday I sat down to quickly pay a bill before heading to my friend's birthday dinner. I was gonna be so on time. I was practically early. Three hours later, I had reorganized my entire filing system, discovered a gym membership I'd been paying for since 2021, disputed a charge. I was absolutely certain was fraud. It was not fraud, she says. It was a meal service kit I signed up for and immediately forgot about. And I had paid exactly Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Faelyne: Exactly zero bills. ⁓ I showed up to dinner during dessert. Stephanie: Hm. Faelyne: I told everyone I hit traffic. There was no traffic. I lived 12 minutes away. But she adds, here's the thing though, I found $340 in subscriptions I didn't know I had, cancelled

all of them, and I'm basically a financial wellness influencer now. Had to share with the crin that cringe with the spaghetti bear. ⁓ Ugh. Stephanie: Whoa. There's a win. There's the win inside of it. Faelyne: The th there's the win inside of it. Refund Queen Rebecca. Let's actually punt this over to Spaghetti Bear and see how he opines with the cringe meter. Let me just cue up our cringeometer. So spaghetti bear. Stephanie: I can't even guess this one because on one hand it's like so cringy. On the other, he's like, she's making money, s'up? and that's how he rolls. huh. Faelyne: Right? That's how he rolls. Alright, SB, let's see what we got here. Oops, I did the wrong thing. There we go. Okay, analyzing. cringe overload, Stephanie: Mm. Faelyne: Rebecca. So my take is SB's probably delighted with the money you saved, but feeling bad about how you missed dessert. Stephanie: Yeah, and the traffic, you know, people only believe that so long. All right, well. Faelyne: pushed the traffic story for some time. Stephanie: I think our first episode you said you there was traffic and you had didn't even have to leave the house to get to the meeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well Yeah. Let's head to the lab. Faelyne: That's what I was thinking of. Well, readings are high. I think it's time we head into the lab. Let's do it. Stephanie: what are we doing? Interrupting? I think it's time we head to the lab. Okay. Okay. Faelyne: Well, yep. Stephanie: Hey, s'up? Faelyne: Hey, Sup So okay. I just wanted to call because I felt things got a little weird at HAX the other day and I wanted to say that actually wait wait wait first. Did you end up trying the Beast Mode Liquid Productivity Smoothie? Stephanie: The featured happy hour smoothie for the OS animal? No. I stuck with my usual You Go, Girl! Skinny Dip 'n Divine It never disappoints. Faelyne: Okay, good, because I feel like the blend visionary was really pushing the beast mode, and I was like, are you a brand ambassador for them or something? He was still like smugly wearing his C suite Pacific Northwest chapter name tag on his apron. He was totally actually never mind. Sorry, that is not why I called. I called because I wanted to apologize. For how I was being. I could feel myself getting weird. Stephanie: It's really not a big deal. Faelyne: Yeah, I know. I know. But just let I like I need to say it, I just Okay, here's the thing. Do you think that the parking lot situation is actually a city planning issue or more of the gym's issue? I should have asked Tatum Blake. I wonder if that's actually his name or did he just put it on his name tag because he thought it sounded all tech bro cool. I don't know Stephanie: Dakota. Faelyne: Yeah, right, sorry, sorry, okay. I am sorry for earlier. That is actually what I called to say. Stephanie: You you really don't have to apologize. Faelyne: I do though because I could hear myself, like I could literally hear myself going and I kept thinking, okay, Dakota, stop, wrap it up! Let Raven talk! And then I just kept going anyway. Ugh. I was being so awful. Stephanie: You know, that happens to me sometimes too. Yeah. Faelyne: Does it? Because I kind of feel you're always so attentive. You let people finish what they were saying. I never let people finish. I didn't let you finish like anything, did I? Was it bad? It felt bad. It felt like actually, you know what it reminded me of? I read this article last week about how the ADHD brain kind of Stephanie: Dakota. Hey, hey. Faelyne: sorry. I did it again, didn't I? Stephanie: Yeah, a little bit. Faelyne: I'm listening. You talk. I'm to tuned in. Stephanie: I was just going to say Faelyne: Hundred percent focused on what you are saying right oops. sorry. Okay, Stephanie: Yeah. Faelyne: really ready, really ready. Stephanie: I want you to know you weren't awful. You were just moving so fast. I had Faelyne: moving so fast. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah, huh. Stephanie: I had a little trouble following you. Sometimes you would say something and before I could even respond, you were already somewhere else in the conversation, and I was still back at the first thing trying to Faelyne: answer a question that I had already moved on from. Stephanie: Exactly. Faelyne: I do that. Stephanie: Well, a little bit. Faelyne: And the arguing, it's it's like I I kept going on the other direction on everything you said, and I don't even know why I do that. I actually agreed with you about the hot dog not being a sandwich. I agreed with you the whole time. I just couldn't stop, you know, pushing. Stephanie: Yeah, that that part was a little exhausting. Faelyne: Say more of that. I I need the honest version. Stephanie: Okay, It just felt like every time I said something, you just needed to check it, like examine it from every angle, and then debate it before you just let it exist. Faelyne: I do that. And I just always thought it was only in my head I didn't know that I actually did that out loud in conversations until right now. Stephanie: I don't I don't think you're being mean. I really don't. But it's just a bit much to keep up with sometimes. Faelyne: Okay. That's fair. And and I'm sorry for for real this time. Full sentence. Not going anywhere. I am sorry. Stephanie: I know. I could tell you were even at HAX Faelyne: I I've been reading a ton on ADHD lately and some of it's a lot to process. Like I keep reading things and going, yeah, that is me. Huh. That's been me for a really long time. Some of it makes me feel a little better, you know, knowing why I'm acting like a weirdo who's incapable of having a normal conversation. Stephanie: That sounds like a big thing to be sitting with. And you're not a weirdo who can't have a normal conversation. Faelyne: I kinda am. And it it really is a big thing to be sitting with. In my case, a big thing to be lying in bed awake thinking about at three AM. Stephanie: Hmm. Have you tried whale sounds to help you sleep? Faelyne: Haha, I am not gonna live that

one down, am I? Stephanie: Nope, that is going down in the historical documents of our friendship. Faelyne: as a testament to those who come after us. But with all this info, to be honest with you, I think I'd rather know. Like I'd like to understand what my brain is doing rather than just keep accidentally running people over and not knowing why. Stephanie: You're not running me over. Faelyne: A little bit Stephanie: Little bit. But you called. That counts for a lot. Faelyne: Hey, s'up? Stephanie: S'up, bro? Weirdo. Faelyne: Hey. Stephanie: I like your weird, it goes with mine. See you next Tuesday. Faelyne: Yes, and we can hit the HAX Smoothie Bar. The beast mode productivities are on me. Stephanie: Nice. See you later then, bro. Faelyne: Later, bro. Stephanie: All right, lab coats on. What you just watched was not Dakota being rude, inconsiderate, or fundamentally incapable of letting someone finish sentence. What you watched was a very particular, very well-documented ADHD communication pattern doing exactly what it was built to do, just at completely the wrong moment. Faelyne: And before we go anywhere, we we want to name it properly, because from the outside, ADHD interrupting looks like one thing. Dakota doesn't listen. Dakota always has to add something. Dakota can't let a moment exist without inserting herself into it. But from the inside of Dakota's brain, none of that was happening. Stephanie: This is the episode where we get into the neuroscience of ADHD interrupting. Not the aggressive kind, not the dismissive kind, the kind that comes from a brain that is so activated, so engaged, and so genuinely full of signal that it simply cannot hold the transmission back long enough to let the other person finish theirs. Faelyne: So think of it this way. You know how a CB radio works that you you can't transmit and receive at the same time? It's physically impossible. You've got to stop, say over, and then take your finger off the talk button. A deliberate conscious signal that you're done transmitting, channel is open, and only then can the other person's signal come through. Stephanie: And here is why that matters. For most neurotypical brains, that over check runs automatically. A built-in pause between receiving and transmitting. A fraction of a second where the brain checks, is this the right moment to broadcast? Is the other person still talking? Is a channel open and clear? Faelyne: So the ADHD brain's finger is already on the talk button. The over check is running late, or maybe skipped entirely. And Dakota was transmitting sincerely, enthusiastically, at full strength while Raven was still mid-sentence. Not because Dakota didn't want to hear Raven, but because the talk button was already down. Stephanie: And point one, here is the why. The ADHD brain spuffer is significantly smaller, or in some moments functionally absent. The signal comes in, the response generates, and it transmits before the check has run, before the other person has finished, before Dakota had any conscious awareness that she had just cut Raven off mid-sentence. Faelyne: Dr. Russell Barclay's research on ADHD and behavioral inhibition is the foundation here. Dr. Barclay describes inhibitory control as the brain's ability to pause before responding or being able to hold a behavior back long enough to evaluate whether or not it serves the current moment. And in ADHD, that pause is shorter, it's less reliable, and it costs significantly more effort to maintain. than it does in a neurotypical brain. Stephanie: Which means for Dakota, the interruption is not a choice. It is a transmission that got out before the seven second delay kicked in. In a live radio. In live radio and television, every broadcast has a built in delay, a buffer between what happens in the studio and what actually goes out on air, which we are demonstrating. Live TV has a producer sitting at a dump button. Faelyne: Now, I would normally make a joke about a dump button, but Stephanie: Ha ha Faelyne: I am distracted by us not having one and hearing my dog reacting to our protocols. but I will say, dump button, excuse me, another very unfortunately named term. Stephanie: Can't you like back to the producer? Okay, the producer sitting in the room is ready to catch anything that shouldn't make it through. The neurotypical brain has a version of that delay running automatically. The ADHD brain dumps button is understaffed, don't say it. The signal gets out live, unedited, before anyone in the room could catch it. here's the part that makes ADHD interrupting so costly. Dakota could hear herself. She said it. I could literally hear myself going and I still couldn't stop. That isn't a character flaw. That is inhibitory control deficit in real time. The awareness and the behavior are two completely separate systems and ADHD disconnects them. She was the producer who saw it happening, but still couldn't get to the dump button in time. Faelyne: Point two. Before we go further, we we want to take a moment. Dr. Thomas Brown, one of the most important voices in ADHD research, who passed away in August of 2025, his work on ADHD as an executive function disorder, the idea that ADHD isn't a problem of knowing what to do, but doing what you know, shaped how an entire generation of clinicians, coaches, and ADHDers themselves understand their own brain. He once described the ADHD brain as an orchestra without a conductor to organize and direct the musicians. We think he would have appreciated the broadcast metaphor. This one's for him. Stephanie: Dr. Brown's research on working memory and executive function gives us the clearest framework for what happens in that feedback loop, the apology that kept losing its own signal. He described working memory as Not a single system, but as the management system of the entire brain, like the conductor responsible for holding information active and online long enough to act on it. Faelyne: For the ADHD brain, that

management system is running with significant interference. The original intention, I called to apologize, is the signal that Dakota is trying to transmit. But every associative leap, every redirect, every new thought that fires pulls that signal off frequency. The beast mode liquid productivity smoothie, the parking lot, the Hacks Blend Visionaries C-suite name tag, every single one of those was. Dakota's working memory dropping the original signal and locking onto the strongest broadcast in the room. Stephanie: The orchestra kept playing, the conductor lost the score. Point three, the contradiction reflex. This is the part where Dakota argues about the hot dog and agrees with Raven about the hot dog at the same time. And this one is worth understanding on own because it looks like stubbornness from the outside and feels completely logical on the inside. Faelyne: Dr. Edward Hallowell's work on ADHD and emotional impulsivity makes a distinction that applies directly here. There is impulsivity as behavior, the blurt, the interruption, the transmission that gets out before the check runs, and then there is impulsivity as redirection. So the moment where the ADHD brain receives incoming signals and immediately begins generating a response based on its own associations. rather than staying tuned to what the other person was actually broadcasting. Stephanie: For many ADHDers, receiving a statement automatically activates analysis. The brain doesn't just hear the signal, it immediately starts stress stress testing it, cross-referencing it, running against everything it already knows. And that process generates a countersignal. Not because Dakota wants to debate, but because that is how her brain processes incoming information out loud in real time. At Raven. Faelyne: And the contradiction reflex fired, even when Dakota agreed. The hot dog. She agreed the whole time. The reflex didn't care. The counter signal went out anyway. Because the ADHD brain on active transmission isn't checking whether the debate is necessary. It's checking whether the frequency is live. And it was. So let's go to point four, the signal gap. And this one is for everyone who has ever been Raven. Stephanie: Dr. Ari Tuckman, whose work on ADHD and relationships is some of the most practical useful in the field, makes a distinction here that's worth its own moment. He draws a clear line between the intent of ADHD communication pattern and its impact on the person receiving it. Two completely different broadcasts, running on two completely different frequencies, and neither person can hear the other one clearly. Faelyne: From inside Dakota's brain, every interruption was engagement, every redirect was contribution, and every contradiction was analysis. Her broadcast was running at full signal and it felt like connection. She was in it. She was interested. She was activated, alive in that conversation in a way her brain experienced as caring very deeply. Stephanie: From where Raven was sitting, the data looked completely different. Dakota always had something to add. Dakota always came back to herself. Dakota's signal was always louder and stronger than Raven's. And Raven didn't have access to Dakota's internal experience. She only had the transmissions she was receiving. Faelyne: Mm-hmm. And Dr. Tuckman's research on social impact of ADHD, not a sponsor, is clear on this. That gap between intent and impact, when it goes unnamed and unaddressed, it actually accumulates. So it's not one interrupted sentence, it's the weight of many interrupted sentences, many small redirects, many moments where Raven was mid transmission and Dakota's signal came. Stephanie: was what Dakota was beginning to hear. Not because she didn't care, because until that phone call, she didn't know there were two broadcasts in the room. Faelyne: And that brings us to our final point, point five, the repair instinct. Stephanie: Dakota called. She didn't avoid it, minimize it, or wait for Raven to bring it up at Tuesday's smoothie run at Hacks while the blend visionary hovered nearby with unsolicited optimization data. She picked up the phone and called the same day. Faelyne: For a lot of ADHDers. The shame that follows a social collision like this is loud enough to shut down the repair entirely. The ADHD brain in a shame spiral is not a brain that picks up the phone. It is a brain that replays the transmission on a loop at 3 a.m. and constructs 17 reasons why Raven probably doesn't want to hear from her anyway. Stephanie: Dr. Tuckman's work on ADHD and relationships is clear on this. One of the most damaging patterns in ADHD social relationships is not the interrupting itself, it is the avoidance that follows it, the silence that gets misread as indifference, the repair that never comes because a shame spiral convinced you it was too late. Faelyne: Dakota's repair was imperfect. The apology got interrupted 17 times by Dakota. The parking lot got relitigated. The blend visionary got a full character analysis mid-apology. The signal dropped and found itself again and dropped again. Stephanie: But it got through and Raven felt it. She said so. She said, I could tell you were, even at hacks. The transmission was messy, but it landed. Faelyne: And here's something that doesn't get said enough about ADHD brains. They're often extraordinarily empathetic. The same nervous system that broadcasts before the chick runs that loses a signal midopology that runs hot in a contradiction. Listen, that same nervous system picks up interference in a relationship instantly. ADHDers often feel a fractured connection before they can even name what broke. signal is off and they know it, even if they don't know why yet. Stephanie: The ADHD brain does not sit in static comfortably. This is where the impulse to act fires, to do something, anything to clear the frequency and reestablish contact before the shame spiral has time to build its case for going off air permanently. Some

brains will stay in the static for days, but Dakota picked up the phone the same afternoon. Not because the transmission was going to be clean, because sitting in the dead air with someone she actually cared about was harder than risking a messy signal. Faelyne: that it's not avoidance. That's the ADHD antenna. And yes, spaghetti bear is absolutely trademarking that. Stephanie: It's over here somewhere. Faelyne: i that antenna is tuning in signals just as designed strong clear coming right at ya Stephanie: The repair does not have to be clean. It just has to get through. Faelyne: Which is exactly what the protocols are for. Stephanie: So if you just watched that skit and felt every single second of it. Faelyne: If you've ever been mid-sentence and watch somebody's eyes shift and you know you've lost them, if you've ever been three topics away from the thing you actually called to say, if you have ever heard yourself from the outside and felt the specific horror of no, that is what I sounded like. Stephanie: If you've ever been Dakota trying to get the signal through, and if you have ever been Raven patiently holding the frequency while someone else's broadcast ran louder than yours. Faelyne: The science explains the pattern it does not sit with you after when you're replaying the call and wondering what Raven meant by see you on Tuesday and whether that was warm or just polite. Stephanie: That is what we are about to do. Faelyne: Welcome to the validation station. Here is what I want you to know about ADHD interrupting. It is not evidence that you don't care. It's not evidence that you're selfish or that you think that your signal matters more than everyone else's. It's evidence that your brain is running a broadcast that it can't always hold back. And that is a neurological reality, not a moral failing. Stephanie: A lot of ADHDers, and I want to say this with a clear signal because it matters. A lot of ADHDers grew up being told they were too much, too loud, too everywhere, too fast. And somewhere along the way, the brain learned that having something to add was how you earned your place in a conversation, that being quick, being engaged, being full of signal was a way to belong. Faelyne: And the interrupting is often that survival strategy still running, still trying to stay in the conversation, still broadcasting at full volume, because somewhere back there, going quiet felt like disappearing. Stephanie: It just hasn't learned yet that sometimes the most powerful thing you can broadcast is silence, staying on their frequency, letting their signal finish before yours begins. Faelyne: And for those of you who are raven right now, who love someone whose broadcast runs louder than yours and whose transmission cuts across yours before you've even finished, that experience is real too. The exhaustion is real. The small moments of going quiet and small because it's easier than trying to re-establish the signal. Those cost something. And it's valid and important to name that. Stephanie: The ADHD brain is not doing it to you. But that doesn't mean it isn't affecting you. Both things are true at the same time. And the conversation worth having is not the one, you always interrupt me, but more like when your signal cuts across mine, here is what goes off air for me. That conversation changes everything. Faelyne: It certainly does. And if you're Dakota, if you heard yourself in that skit and you recognized the feedback loop, the parking lot tangent, the apology that kept losing its own signal, that recognition is not a reason to spiral. That's your monitoring system coming back online. Stephanie: You are not broken. You are not a bad friend. You are someone whose broadcast runs hot, whose signal generates fast, and who is learning, maybe for the first time, that the most important transmission you can send is sometimes just I'm still here. I'm still listening. Go ahead. Faelyne: Dakota left that call fully tuned in. Stephanie: And if you're just now tuning into this podcast. Faelyne: Welcome! You are exactly where you need to be. Stephanie: And because that's the cringe. Faelyne: We're here for. Stephanie: Real quick, if the lab is your kind of place, hit follow wherever you're listening. Future you will not remember to come back and find us. Faelyne: We know this about you. Stephanie: We know this about ourselves. Faelyne: It follow. Go ahead, right now. While the signal is strong. Stephanie: Okay, back in the lab. We have watched the interrupting in action. We have broken down the neuroscience. We have sat with what it costs and what it means. Now let's talk about what to actually do about it. Faelyne: Three protocols road tested in the field on ourselves as always and on the people who love us and have signed a no liability waiver. Stephanie: Or NDA, unfortunately. All of what we talk about is in the show notes because you are driving or folding laundry or at hacks, waiting for the blend visionary to finish telling you about his C suite chapter, and you're not writing any of this down. Faelyne: No judgment, only science. Stephanie: Science! This week's science, radio broadcasting, the physics of signal transmission, frequency interference, and what happens when two broadcasts try to occupy the same frequency at the same time. Faelyne: Because if anything captures what ADHD interrupting feels like from the inside, it is a broadcast that is already transmitting before the incoming signal has finished arriving. Full power, full frequency, no malicious intent, just on air before the check ran. Stephanie: Protocol one, name the broadcast. This is your FAPs. Faelyne: This is your physical awareness protocol. And if you listen to episode 10 on ADHD blurting, you already have Stephanie: Which I just I just live example. Go ahead. Always learning. Faelyne: There we go. There we go. so you already have this foundation because this builds directly on it. The blurt has a physical signal. So does the

interruption. It just feels slightly different. Stephanie: The blurt signal is urgency, it's pressure. I need to transmit this right now. The interruption signal is momentum. It's the feeling of your broadcast already building. Your brain has received incoming signal, generated a response, and it is warming up the transmitter before the other person has finished speaking. Faelyne: For a lot of ADHDers with ADHD communication patterns, this happens actually in the body before it registers in your awareness. You may lean forward slightly, your breath may shift. There's a readiness, a kind of pre-transmission hum, if you will, that precedes the interruption by about one beat. It's subtle, but once you know it's there, you're gonna be able to feel it every time. Stephanie: And the protocol is not to shut the broadcast down, it is to name it internally. Not I should probably wait. That is too vague. Your brain will file it and keep transmitting. Something more explicit like, My broadcast is loading, the other person is still on air. Faelyne: Name the broadcast. That's it. That is the whole first step. One internal sentence that creates just enough separation between the incoming signal and your response that your monitoring system has time to run its check. Stephanie: Because here is what naming does neurologically. It activates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for impulse regulation and self-monitoring. For the ADHD brain, that system needs a prompt. Naming the broadcast is the prompt. You are manually activating the signal check that runs automatically in neurotypical brains. Faelyne: Now protocol two. Hold frequency. Stephanie: This is staying protocol. For ADHD working memory, for the feedback loop, for the apology that kept losing its own signal, this is the one. Faelyne: When you feel that broadcast loading, when the associative leaps are firing, and your brain is already three topics away from where the conversation actually is, hold frequency. One question before you transmit anything. One curiosity question that just keeps you tuned in to their signal for only one more exchange. Stephanie: And not a complicated question, not a therapeutic intervention. Something small enough that it barely feels like a protocol, but completely changes the direction of the transmission. Could be, did it work? How long have you been doing that? What happened next? Any of those. Something that keeps you in their broadcast for one more beat before you begin yours. Faelyne: And here's what hold frequency does, that name the broadcast can't do alone. It gives your working memory something to do while it's holding that original signal. Your brain is still active, it's still generating the questions, still listening to the answer, processing that incoming data. It's doing all of that, but it's doing it on their frequency instead of forcing everyone to jump to yours. Stephanie: Think of it as a fidget spinner for your brain. Ooh. For ADHD brains, idle is not a stable state. Hold frequency does not ask your brain to go quiet, it redirects the activation toward the other person. You are still broadcasting just on their channel. Faelyne: And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, by the time they finish answering the question, the thing you were about to transmit has dissolved. It wasn't needed. You just needed a moment to catch up to the signal that was actually in the room. Stephanie: Which is almost never the signal you prepared for. Faelyne: Almost never. Stephanie: Protocol three clear transmission. Faelyne: Now this one is the repair protocol for the feedback loop, for the apology that kept getting interrupted by itself for the moment after the ADHD interrupting has already happened, and you're standing there knowing that you just cut someone off and you need to reestablish contact. Stephanie: One sentence, clean, clear, then stop transmitting. Not an explanation, not a justification, not twelve more sentences trying to clarify the first one. One clear signal. I cut you off. Where were you? Or I lost the thread. What were you saying? And for the bigger moments, I talked over you back there and I'm sorry. Faelyne: The repair lives in the sentence, not in the explanation that follows it. The ADHD brain will want to add one more thing. It's going to feel unresolved. It'll feel like the transmission ended before the signal was complete. Send it anyway. And then hold frequency. Go back to their broadcast. Let them respond. Let their signal be the one that fills the space. Stephanie: Because what Raven needed in that call was not a perfectly delivered apology with full contextual framing and three supporting points. She needed to feel like the other person on the other side of the line was still tuned into her frequency, still receiving, still there. Faelyne: Clear transmission is how you prove that you are. Stephanie: Three protocols. Name the broadcast, feel the pretransmission signal, and name it internally before it goes live. Hold frequency, one sincere question before you switch from receiving to sending. Clear transmission, one clean repair sentence, then stop talking. Faelyne: All three are in the show notes. No writing required. The signal will find you there. Alright. The lab doors are opened, and before we pull out the call for your interrupting transmissions, we have our first incoming signal from the cringe mailbag. Now, this one came from a listener who calls herself Trisha from Lawrence, Kansas. But we are calling her, and we say this with fondness, with full cringe survivor admiration, orbital disaster. Stephanie: Orbital disaster, welcome to the lab. Faelyne: Alright, let me just pull it up here. Okay, alright. Ready? Stephanie: Mm. I'm settling in for this one. Ooh, I guess we gotta bear we're good. We're good. Let's do it. Faelyne: Okay, so let me just have a quick boo. So my husband got really excited last month because he found this vintage record player at a

garage sale. Like seven-year-old boy energy thrilled. He called me not only from the first sighting of this record player, but after the purchase, after putting it into the car, and from the driveway. And at each call, he was followed by texts and photos. He was next level excited. And the when he proud proudly showed the record player to me and started babbling on about where he would set it up. So on, and I want you to know I meant this to be helpful. I said, Yeah, that sounds great, but record players need a lot of maintenance, and the needle replacements are usually pretty expensive. He went quiet, he brought it inside, he set it up in the living room, he hasn't mentioned it to me since. I didn't even know I did that until I heard my daughter say, Yeah, but Mom to her friend on the phone last week and I stood in the hallway and stared at the wall for a full minute. Stephanie: The daughter Faelyne: Standing in the hallway. Stephanie: Staring at the wall. Faelyne: orbital disaster. First of all, that Kring's fashion has everything. Second of all, the record player is still in the living room, he still loves it. And you have just run the most important diagnostic of your entire communication history. That, my friend, is not failure. Remember, that's data. Stephanie: And your daughter saying, Yeah, but mom, to her friend on the phone. Faelyne: Also data. Stephanie: File it, don't spiral on it. Faelyne: File it, don't spiral it. Oof. Spaghetti bear has already filed the trademark on that, by the way. Stephanie: He moves fast when he's motivated. Faelyne: Orbital disaster, thank you for your transmission. You are not alone in that hallway. There are a lot of us standing in a lot of hallways right now. Stephanie: And now we want your interrupting transmission. The apology that kept getting cut off. The moment you could hear yourself and still could not find the dump button. The conversation where I know. I Faelyne: Sorry. I can't help that. Stephanie: know. I know. The what's the other thing I can't say? there's another thing that Faelyne: Do doo. Stephanie: Yes, that one. Yes, that okay, I knew there was one. Okay. The conversation where your talk button was already down before the other person finished sending. Duty. That's it. Faelyne: that's another good one. Yes. So listeners, Stephanie: Yeah. Faelyne: I'm a boy mom. Doo doo jokes have been in my house for decades. Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Faelyne: So folks If you were Raven in this scenario, when you went quiet because it was easier than re-establishing contact, where a small window closed and you didn't say anything because the moment had already moved on, we want your story as well. Stephanie: We do. Email us at the ADHD spaghetti bear dot com. The the is required. Spaghetti may monitors all of our transmissions and he has standards. Faelyne: Yes he does. Or go ahead and click the link in the description to fill out our cringe fashion form. Anonymous submissions are always welcome. The lab has a strict confidentiality policy. Stephanie: Yep, and spaghetti bear enforces it personally. Faelyne: He has time. The water glass beside him remains untouched. Stephanie: Unlike Eddie the Cat. he has time. Faelyne: He has prioritized other things. Stephanie: He has. Okay. And this week's bonus question for the comments? Faelyne: If the ADHD brain is a radio broadcast, what station are you? Are you smooth jazz that somehow always ends up on heavy metal? Top 40 Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Faelyne: randomly cuts to shipping forecast. Classical that gets that goes full emergency broadcast with no warning. Stephanie: Okay, these could also be playlists for people who don't listen to the radio. Okay. I'm probably NPR. Drop your station in the comments. We need to know. Faelyne: My radio station is definitely CBC, which is Canada's NPR. So your transmission Stephanie: Well. Faelyne: could be our next experiment. Help us out. Help all of us feel a little less likely, like the only one whose signal runs hot. Stephanie: No judgment. Science. Faelyne: Only science. Stephanie: Yeah. Okay, experiment concluded. ADHD interrupting is real. It is neurological and it is not a character flaw. It is a fast brain running a broadcast that it truly cannot always hold back. And one that is absolutely capable of learning when to hold the frequency instead. Faelyne: Protocol 1, name the broadcast. Feel that pre-transmission signal before it goes live. Name it internally. Your brain needs the explicit prompt. Give it one. Stephanie: Protocol two, hold frequency. One genuine question before you switch from receiving to sending. Stay on their channel one more beat. Your brain is still active, the antenna is pointed in the right direction. Faelyne: Protocol three, clear transmission. One clean sentence and then stop transmitting. Let the silence do its job. The repair lives in the sentence, not in everything that comes after it. Stephanie: Dakota left that meeting with a better understanding of her own signal than she had just an hour before. Faelyne: And the mission isn't over. Stephanie: The data is still coming in. Faelyne: Even at three AM. Stephanie: Especially at three AM. Faelyne: Your working memory is an unreliable signal buffer at three AM. Stephanie: Keep it away from the playback button. Faelyne: This has been the third transmission in the BAIL series. B for blurting, A for arguing, I for Stephanie: Interrupting. Next time we will discuss let it Faelyne: Go, let it go. See what I did there? Stephanie: Ha ha Faelyne: That's the one where we bring it all. Stephanie: Together we know. We Faelyne: Can't wait. Stephanie: Over and out. Faelyne: over and out. So instead of interrupting your next conversation, interrupt your scroll and hit follow right now while the signal is strong. Stephanie: Future you will not remember to come back and find us. We know this about you. We know this about ourselves. Faelyne: And if the lab is your kind of frequency, leave us a review. 30 Seconds from You helps another ADHD brain find us. Stephanie: Every follow, every review, every share puts us in front of someone who needs to hear that their brain isn't broken. Faelyne: It's just running a very enthusiastic broadcast. Stephanie: With a slightly underside buffer. Faelyne: We'll be here. Stephanie: In the lab. Faelyne: Holding frequency, but until then, try not to die of embarrassment. Stephanie: Embarrassment. Faelyne: we're pretty good there. Stephanie: Yeah.