Grandma Has ADHD

Episode 36 – It's Never Too Late: David Giwerc on ADHD Discovery, Coaching, and Thriving at Any Age

• Jami Shapiro • Episode 36

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In this powerful episode, Jami sits down with David Giwerc, MCC—pioneer of ADHD coaching, founder of the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), and a relentless advocate for embracing strengths over shame. Together, they explore what it means to live—and thrive—with ADHD later in life.

From his own late diagnosis to launching the first ICF-accredited ADHD coach training program, David shares how understanding and embracing your unique brain wiring—at any age—can completely transform your life. He talks about the myth of "aging equals decline," why seniors deserve ADHD support too, and how character strengths and self-permission are game changers.

Whether you're newly diagnosed at 50, 60, or 70—or you're supporting someone who is—this episode is a heartening reminder that it’s never too late to understand yourself better.



Thank you for joining us for this episode of Grandma Has ADHD! We hope Jami's journey and insights into ADHD shed light on the unique challenges faced by older adults. Stay tuned for more episodes where we’ll explore helpful resources, share personal stories, and provide guidance for those navigating ADHD. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with friends who might benefit. Remember, Make the rest of your life the best of your life.

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Grandma Has ADHD

Have you ever thought, is this just me? When struggling to stay organized, start tasks, or manage time, for those of us over 50, these challenges might not be just aging. They could be a DHD hiding in plain sight for decades. I'm Jamie Shapiro, host of Grandma has a DHD, and I'm building a community where your experiences matter.

Whether you are diagnosed, questioning or simply curious. You are not alone. Our Facebook group is filled with vibrant understanding. People over 50 who share their stories, strategies, and yes, even their struggles with plenty of laughter along the way. Ready to find your people. Join our growing grandma has a DHD Facebook community.

Please like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and share it with someone who might need to hear. They're not alone because A DHD doesn't have an age limit and neither does understanding yourself better. Together, we're changing the conversation about A DHD after 50 come be part of the story.

[00:01:25] David Giwerc: Hi, and welcome to the latest episode of Grandma Has a DHD. I always open with, I'm excited, but I'm like doubly triply excited to welcome today's guest because he is somebody that I respect tremendously, and you're going to learn why in this podcast. But he is, the grandfather of, of A DHD coaching, I would say he is the pioneer.

[00:01:51] David Giwerc: So I'm gonna read you a little bit about his intro and then we're going to get right into it. So, today's guest is David Giwerc, a pioneer in a DHD coaching and founder of the A DD Coach Academy. The first and largest A DHD coach training program accredited by both the International Coach Federation and the professional association of A DHD coaches.

[00:02:15] David Giwerc: As a master certified coach, David has transformed the lives of A DHD entrepreneurs, executives, and CEOs through his internationally recognized coaching practice, his leadership extends beyond his coaching work. I. He was instrumental in establishing national A DHD Awareness Day through a US Senate resolution and authored permission to proceed sharing his unique coaching models for adults with A DHD.

[00:02:42] David Giwerc: David's groundbreaking research on character strengths in adults with A DHD has earned prestigious recognition, making him one of the most respected voices and understanding and empowering those with A DHD. And before I even bring him on, I want to share a little bit about my experience with David Giwerc I met him at the A DHD international Conference in November of 2024.

[00:03:05] David Giwerc: When we sat near each other in a presentation, I did not know who he was. I just figured he was over the age of 50 and I was going to let him know that I was Sorry about that, David. That's okay. Starting The grandma has a DHD podcast. I did not know at the time that he had actually started ADCA, which is the program that I am currently enrolled in to earn my personal A DHD coaching certification.

[00:03:31] David Giwerc: And David not only invited me to attend a group of the coaches so that I could meet them, but gave me his direct email and said that he wanted to help me because he really believed in what I was doing and also helped me prepare for a presentation that I'm hoping will be approved for the International A DHD conference.

[00:03:51] David Giwerc: But I'm just so truly excited and honored to have you here and there's so many ways I wanna take this conversation. But welcome to the podcast, David Giwerc. Thank you. What a beautiful introduction. Talk about coming from the heart and I forgot about all those things we did together because they happen so quickly and they happen so such in depth and we have fun when we're talking and that's what makes the profession we so wonderful.

[00:04:18] David Giwerc: So I'm glad to be here. I think what you're doing is outstanding. I don't think anybody else is doing it. And I love it because now I'm a grandpa who, my grandkids call me Papa so I can understand where A DHD goes. Not only because I've seen the progression from the middle age, from the thirties up till now, but now as a person and that a grandparent with a DHD, I can really look at it from those, from that lens.

[00:04:43] David Giwerc: Right. I'm really excited to have you on both because you are a person over 50 with a DHD, and you really are a pioneer in the space. And one of the things that I have loved about the A DHD discoveryis how innovative we are and it just. Turns out that you innovated in the space of A DHD and I am benefiting personally from your curriculum and to your point, when you said something in the beginning that you had forgotten, you know, all of these connections, we with A DHD, tend to go from thing to thing to thing, and we don't savor the moment that we're in.

[00:05:16] David Giwerc: And I heard actually, in your coaching program, someone say that they had to go back to LinkedIn to recall what it is that they had accomplished because we. Tend to just go, go, go and accomplish. And we can talk about that as well. And I'm going to, if you have more than the 30 minutes, I allot, I think you absolutely, your wisdom is well, well worth it.

[00:05:33] David Giwerc: So I wanna start with you like I do with everybody, and that is your A DHD journey. How did you get diagnosed? Becauseyou know, you may have been diagnosed younger, but a lot of my guests haven't been, and I'm going to apologize to anybody who's hearing a little bit of an entitled growl.

[00:05:49] David Giwerc: That is my dog, Benji, who I have treats next to me to keep him quiet and he is insisting on more. So I'll be dealing with the repercussions of that later. But back to my original question, David, your A DHD journey who says we can't stay on task. Look how beautifully you did that. You transitioned from thing to thing.

[00:06:07] David Giwerc: So my diagnosis happened in the mid nineties and at that time very little was known about A DHD. There were not a lot of options for treatment and medication. There were not a lot of people to diagnose and to treat. So I literally read Ned Hollowell's book, driven to Distraction. And when I read that book there was an epiphany because I understood the paradox of A DHD.

[00:06:31] David Giwerc: How could I be so good in some things in my life, and how could I be terrible at other things? There was no in between. It was just this huge paradox between strength and weakness. Then I read the book and at that time I also read a piece of research by a very well known researcher at the time, Dr.

[00:06:49] David Giwerc: Zakin with A-Z-Z-A-M-E-T-K-I-N. Later, there was a subsequent research study that came after that by NAR Alka, who, it was the director of National Institute on Drug Addiction. And the first ones kin said that people with A DHD when they're bored are uninterested. Neurologically have a very hard time activating their brains.

[00:07:12] David Giwerc: He showed scans of people that were engaged and interested and the A DHD brain just like look like a neurotypical brain. But when those same people, people who didn't have a DHD were asked to pay attention to boring, mundane task, they still had the neurological ability to pay attention and sustain focus

[00:07:31] David Giwerc: And then of course, the people that had a DHD. Just the opposite, their brains and the more pressure you put on them to pay attention to things that are boring or that mandatory, add pressure to that, the more their brain shut down. And then in 2009, 2011, Nara Val followed up with a nine year study and what she said in that study, basically,and I was already diagnosed.

[00:07:55] David Giwerc: But I'm just telling you that as part of the diagnosis, I went on an exploration journey to find out what is A DHD. 'cause nobody was explaining it to me. Mm-hmm. And so I finally, when that research came out in 2011, it validated a lot of what I had been working in my training and coaching that A DHD is a deficit of interest.

[00:08:16] David Giwerc: Out of that I created all kinds of visual models because Metaphor helped people with a DHD understand things that are invisible and make it more visible. But that was, I was already in my forties when that happened. But in my thirties, what I did is I went out and tried to get diagnosed.

[00:08:34] David Giwerc: And when I went to certain places, they actually told me I couldn't have a DHD because I was an adult at that time. The prevailing, model and lens for diagnosis was, it was only in children and teenagers. It could not be in adults. Finally in the local market I lived in, in Albany, New York, there was the head of the psychiatry department at Albany Medical School, and I went to him 'cause I couldn't find anybody to diagnose me At the time, I probably was the first person in a population of let's say three quarters of a million people that.

[00:09:07] David Giwerc: Took Ritalin and it didn't work, but then took Adderall and it did. And what I realized is that for the first time in my life, I can actually pause and pay attention to what I was paying attention to, challenge it because my thoughts were so fast and quick thatthe dextroamphetamine slowed down the brain so I could pause and actually ask myself, what am I paying attention to there?

[00:09:30] David Giwerc: How's it serving me? What's it doing for me? do I have the ability to change these things? And that was huge because I didn't even know I had a pause button. Sure. I didn't even know what inhibition was. So I was 36 years of age. At that time I was working for an ad agency doing very, very well.

[00:09:47] David Giwerc: Except what they didn't realize, the things that I did great, I was great at, but the things that I didn't, I worked my tail off. Like a account reports, anything with numbers were brutal for me. Mm-hmm. So about 11 years into that, after going to two or three ad agencies in New York City, very competitive business, I started to realize that this thing called a DHD had been very much a part of my life and I read.

[00:10:14] David Giwerc: An article in Newsweek Magazine about coaching. Thomas Leonard, who founded Coach University was going around the country in a Winnebago, introducing people to coaching. So I called him up and I said, I'd like to come into your program. And he said, okay. I didn't even know about my A DHD at the time.

[00:10:34] David Giwerc: The ADHD came in later when I was in the coaching program. I was diagnosed in the middle of that. Yeah. I was gonna ask you, by the way, 'cause it's important to the story, what prompted you to even get diagnosed at what age? And,it was Ned's book was the first thing. Anddriven to distraction was the first thing when I read that,I saw myself in there completely.

[00:10:54] David Giwerc: Well, what I'm asking is what made you pick up the book? What was it? I was walking by a bookstore. Okay. And I saw it in the window in New York City. Truth. Okay. I just, it was Zoom. It was like just sitting there driven to distraction and I knew my whole life there was something I.

[00:11:11] David Giwerc: Different about me, something weird. How could I do all these things so well and all these other things? How could I catch a baseball going 90 miles an hour and I couldn't pay attention to my math class? What's wrong with me? Mm. Okay. So, so, so it was a, wow. I was just, so, I saw this book and I saw the title and I went in and it was the first time probably in years, I closed that bookstore up that night.

[00:11:32] David Giwerc: I got hyperfocused and I read the whole darn thing without, 'cause I was so, and that just proved the interest piece, which I didn't know about at that time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So all these pieces came together. First. I read the book, then I went, did the research, then I found out more. And what I realized there was such ignorance about this disorder.

[00:11:49] David Giwerc: There were very few people that knew how to diagnose or treat, and that's why I had a hard time getting diagnosed. So I went to the head of the psychiatry department at Albany Medical College because, and there were only two options for medications at the time. Ritalin and Adderall. Oh no, D Arine three.

[00:12:05] David Giwerc: That's it. And Ritalin didn't work. Dex. So the third one was Adderall and it worked. And it worked very well. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say I've been taking it for how many years now? 35, 40 years. My blood pressure's one 20 over 80. I do things extremely well when I know how my A DHD manifests and I don't find it addicting.

[00:12:27] David Giwerc: if I was so addicting, how come I forget to take it all the time? Mm-hmm. But that's another story, right? But, but there's new research coming out on A DHD. And I'm not here to promote medications. 'cause medications are different for everyone. For some people they worked for me, they worked extremely well, especially in areas of boredom.

[00:12:45] David Giwerc: So but what I will tell you is knowing your A DHD is critical and essential for moving forward with it because it does not mean you're broken. There's strengths, there's tremendous strengths in there. You, you know, to your point, I have to share. So I have struggled as a lot of us with A DHD do with anxiety and, you know, and I remember being, I'm not going to take anything.

[00:13:08] David Giwerc: I am not going. And I've been, cancer diagnosis. me too. Been through a divorce and I remember my mother saying to me, if you had diabetes, you wouldn't think twice of taking insulin. So why would you not take something that you know would, would help your brain? Like we have to start, you know, really de-stigmatizing.

[00:13:26] David Giwerc: All mental health issues. That's, and any reason that we would take, and I do also wanna point out, because I am now, you know, really coming to an audience who are discovering A DHD, and a lot of them are not going to be able to take medication because they're 20%, 20%. So I'm, I'm even more an advocate for a DHD coaching and them discovering, that life can improve.

[00:13:49] David Giwerc: So,I wanted to hear about your A DHD story. So you saw a book and then you enrolled in a coaching class before you knew you had a DHD by the way? I started a home organizing and move management business before I knew I had a DHD. Specializing in seniors and then discovered it.

[00:14:05] David Giwerc: And then when did the A DHD coaching? A-D-D-C-A or a DD Coach Academy, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, to your point, and I'm gonna make a response to it the pill doesn't give you the skill. The pill only puts you on a level playing field. Yes. So I knew thatit put me on a level playing field, but in learning how to play in a level playing field, I had to understand how my brain worked.

[00:14:30] David Giwerc: I had to understand where do my strengths show up? How does this thing called a DHD impact it? And so coaching came out of a need to educate myself. And once I educated myself, I realized if people understood this. Wow, I could take this coaching model, this life coaching model and begin to integrate it into the dynamics of A DHD because coaching a person that doesn't have a DHD is different than a person who does have it.

[00:14:56] David Giwerc: And so I started to create educational models. One of 'em is called the I model. In fact, I'm writing a white paper about it right now. Because it's based in neuroscience and it's based in practical application. And so I went through this process and the more I went through it. The more success I had.

[00:15:13] David Giwerc: And I built my coaching practice on first trying things on me. And then out of the woodwork I started attracting people. 'cause I started writing articles about rumination and hyper focus and all. And people started reading 'em. And before I knew it, my practice was filling up very quickly and after three years of coaching, and so I took the life coaching piece and developed the A DHD lens piece because there was nothing out there.

[00:15:38] David Giwerc: There were people saying they were doing it. Nobody was doing it like me. So I explored with it and experimented for a good two to three years with my clients to see what worked. And what I realized is these models worked really well for educating. They picked it up quickly. I took metaphors and visuals and words that were familiar and put them into models that people could say, you know, your A DHD is like this.

[00:16:01] David Giwerc: You need interest for your fuel tank. And interest is the fuel to your car's engine. And your car's engine, if you don't put the right fuel in it, it's not gonna start. But once it gets started, you need a spark plug to keep it going. That's the ignition. What's the ignition? Positive emotion, not negative Emotion.

[00:16:19] David Giwerc: So the models developed a structure and framework. For myself. I was able to take that structure and framework and begin to help a person understand where does your A DHD show up? But not only in terms of pathology and impairments, where does it show up in strength and success? And to your point, people bury their success, their buried treasure deep within the subconscious because we have a pervasive negativity bias.

[00:16:44] David Giwerc: We always go for the negativity over the positivity and it buries it. And so what I realized, I sort of had a bend towards looking at the things I did. Well, that's what it got me through. 'cause my grandparents had been like that. They'd always look for the things in me that I did. Well. They were Holocaust survivors.

[00:17:02] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. So they were appreciative of everything in life and they passed that on to me and didn't let me get down. I mean, I had to be realistic, but they always looked for the good in me. They didn't always do it with themselves, but they did with me. 'cause I was their grandson and my parents too were more so my grandparents had that push.

[00:17:21] David Giwerc: And my mom always looked for the good in me. My dad was working and he had a DHD and he hyper-focused on the business. And he made a great living, but he didn't know how to balance it out. It wasn't until his eighties when I wrote my book that he started to understand his A DHD, and our relationship grew very close.

[00:17:39] David Giwerc: So all these things worked, and what it taught me is the pill only puts you on a level playing field if it works. Mm-hmm. You have to understand how your A DHD shows up, where it manifests, how it manifests, and that's where I decided at that time I was coaching, I had a full practice and people were coming to me.

[00:17:57] David Giwerc: I. Well, why don't you start training coaches? There's such a need. I realized and I said I need that, like a hole in the head. I had no desire to do it at the time, but then I realized how pervasive it was around me. So I joined Adam, which is the adult, A-D-A-D-H-D, the world's largest A DHD.

[00:18:15] David Giwerc: Adult organization, wonderful organization. I eventually became president of it, but ADA gave me the opportunity to present the concepts called coaching at conferences and webinars and,people started to hear me speak and my speaking engagements got bigger and I started off my coaching practice.

[00:18:34] David Giwerc: By the way, Marla, if not for Marla, I wouldn't have a coaching practice, my wife. Okay. I wouldn't have a training. She got very involved with me. She saw that there was. An opportunity. She saw that I couldn't do this by myself because my strengths were in the coaching. My strengths were in the presenting.

[00:18:50] David Giwerc: My strengths were not in accounting. Mm-hmm. And keeping track of all that stuff, which she did really well. And then during my training, I met a wonderful woman, Barbara Luther, who eventually came, our director training years later. Now we had gone through a very difficult time in the A DHD coaching world.

[00:19:07] David Giwerc: 'cause it was new, it was like, like a frontier. Everybody mm-hmm. Could call themselves an A DHD coach. There were no standards, there was nothing. And so people were going out there and doing some damage. I was developing standards. So first I got accredited by ICF, but they didn't know anything about A DHD.

[00:19:26] David Giwerc: So I got accredited by them, but I brought. The A DHD competencies into it and then started exploring with it and standardizing it. And Barbara during that time said, if you'll do this for three years successfully, because there have been such lack of integrity with other programs. She said, if you do this for three years of integrity, or it was two years, I will call you in two years and I will come work for you if you want me.

[00:19:53] David Giwerc: Sure enough, two years later, she came in and what she was instrumental in, I had tons and tons of information written all over the place. I had 15 models and I had the whole process outline. She helped me consolidate it and put it in a language that was just beautiful. We worked together very hard on that for two, three years, and then we put all these competencies together and all those things, and so she was my editor.

[00:20:19] David Giwerc: She gave me the ability to verbally process all these thoughts. But then she said something powerfully. She says, I still don't,understand it conceptually, but I wanna understand it in my bones. So Barbara came to work for me and she literally was with me for two years every day watching how I coach what I did, and another two years.

[00:20:39] David Giwerc: Then she said, I get it. I get it. She knows this stuff really, really well.And that's when she's decided I'm gonna become your director of training because I understand it conceptually, but I need to understand it in my body and my bones and everybody I did with it. And I respected that now, at that time my,

[00:20:55] David Giwerc: Coaching practices, but the academy started to pick up, it started off with eight students and 15 and 20. And before you knew it, we had three instructor, now we have 15 and we need another five at least. 'cause there's a waiting list. And it grew because the need for what we do is so great. And what I realized is two things.

[00:21:13] David Giwerc: You have to develop a partnership of trust with people with A DHD. You have to be able to sit down and listen without judgment compassionately, and no matter what they tell, you have to say, I totally get where you're coming from. Mm-hmm. I may not do it the same way that you do, but you have a unique brain wiring that you need to embrace.

[00:21:33] David Giwerc: There's nothing wrong with you, it's just the rest of the world screwed up. Rest of the world doesn't understand it. I wanna share a quote that's such a good segue, and then I also wanna talk about being a student with you if I can, and then I wanna go back to Little David. 'cause I, I think that's one of the things that people like to hear is, how did it show up?

[00:21:49] David Giwerc: How is it?Oh yes. But let me give you this quote that just ties back to the world. So it's by, by Neil Degrassi. Mm-hmm. Who is, I guess, an astrophysicist with DH adhd. And maybe you've heard it, but it no, I don't think so. Okay. It's, I know who he is now. Okay. So it's a DHD is not a disorder. It is a phenotype, a different kind of wiring.

[00:22:12] David Giwerc: People with A DHD carry the OG genetics traits that made them the elite hunters, gatherers, and scouts in ancestral times. Fast reflexes, heightened sensitivity, scanning attention and quick adaptability. Were all superpowers in natural and environments. It only gets labeled a disorder. When you're born into a modern world that forces you to sit still for eight hours a day, memorize irrelevant information and conform to systems designed for industrial efficiency, not human brilliance.

[00:22:47] David Giwerc: A DHD isn't the problem, the environment is. You bethe just mimicked exactly what I said, and let me tell you something. He is so right. And by the way, there's research that's coming out that says it's the environment that caused it. And when I say environment, it's the perception of the environment.

[00:23:05] David Giwerc: If you go into a school system and the environment is perceived as pressure, it's gonna shut your brain down immediately. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because you're under pressure. And then add to this, it's a phenotype. Think about this. The human brain has a hundred billion neurons, well actually like 65, 70 5 billion a lot.

[00:23:21] David Giwerc: Each of those neurons, not neurons, I'm calling 'em neurons, uhhuh are chemical factories that make all the neurotransmitters. That allow your brain to function. There's 75 billion of those, and then each one of them is connected to Bridges, synaptic connections, 10 to 15,000. So think about that. In every human brain, there are trillions of ways that we process information trillions.

[00:23:44] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. And the school says, shut up and listen. Don't ask too many questions. Follow the way I do it. And if you follow the rules that we have, you'll be fine. But if you don't follow the rules, there's something wrong with you. Well, I wanna, that's crazy. I wanna throw one more at you. And I think, you know, why is it that we're seeing more of it?

[00:24:02] David Giwerc: Well, when we grew up, you had recess, we had time in between, we had nature, we had an opportunity to, get outside. And these kids have so much on their plates. So, I mean, I don't know what you think. Back to your point with, they're saying it's the environment, I would say that there is some increase in A DHD for people maybe who didn't come by it naturally from the constant screens and they don't know how to be bored.

[00:24:25] David Giwerc: But I think like you mentioned your father had it, my mom and dad both had it. we came to it naturally. we had a DHD well before we had iPhones and iPads. Right. Well, there you said it right there. Technology. Social media, we're inundated with message constantly. Life is too fast.

[00:24:42] David Giwerc: the A DHD brain is all already too fast. Mm-hmm. If you don't put brakes on to slow it down, it goes faster and faster and gets in more and more trouble. Mm-hmm. So that's the first thing. It's the technology. It's the expectations of performance has to be fed. Listen, when I was a kid, I think the fax machine was invented.

[00:25:01] David Giwerc: You know, before that, things took forever to get there. It wasn't so terrible, but the moment the fax machine came up, people started getting anxious.Oh my God.and then the internet and all this stuff, it makes it so fast. We're in the speed trap.

[00:25:14] David Giwerc: It's a huge, huge speed trap that we're in. People don't know how to slow down and there's a belief system that the faster you do something, the smarter you are. It's just not true. In fact, look at Albert Einstein. It took 10 years for the theory of relativity. I can go through all the great inventors.

[00:25:31] David Giwerc: Writers and leaders. They were not fast. Mahatma Gandhi was slow. Martin Luther King, these people took time to process information and do it right. And yet we live in a world get it done yesterday. So it's speed, it's the speed trap. it starts to manifest in perfectionism. People are afraid for failure.

[00:25:49] David Giwerc: It's a whole spiral. It's a whole negative spiral and it's gotten worse. I was glad I grew up at the time. I did. Sure. Me too. even though I had a DHD, my teachers didn't make me feel bad. They were patient, Mm-hmm. they said he's got a different way about him. And all my teachers knew I was a good athlete.

[00:26:07] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. So they pushed, sports came easier. Look, how does a DHD help people who are older?I'm just gonna be 70. Okay,I'm gonna pause because we need to take a break and I think that is a great question to answer when we come back. So we're going to answer the question is, how does a DHD show up when you're 70?

[00:26:26] David Giwerc: And, and is it a good thing or a bad thing? I wanna find out a little bit about future or about younger David. And I want to share one of the best things that I've learned so far in your coaching program. So stay with us. And if you are enjoying the podcast like it, subscribe to it and share it with your friends. So, alright, with that we're going to take a pause and a sip of water.

 

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[00:28:02] David Giwerc: And we are back with David Giwerc. We left you with a cliffhanger and that I'm 70 years old and not yet, not yet. I'm 69. I'm gonna be 70 in February, so I will not push, I'm gonna myself little leeway here, so you're an Aquarius as well?

[00:28:18] David Giwerc: Yes. February 4th. January 29th. Okay. There you go. Something else we have in common. Yes. Okay, so I hope you can remember where you were going because I interrupted you and I know we don't do that very well when we've a h ADHD is get disrupted and transition, buttake us back to where we were when I so rudely interrupted you, David.

[00:28:36] David Giwerc: Yeah. So one of the things that people don't quite get about A DHD is that we can hyperfocus. We're really passionate about something, especially when we're inspired by something we truly love. And what I've seen with a lot of people with A DHD, they don't give themselves permission to do the things that they love.

[00:28:54] David Giwerc: You know, they start feeling guilty about it. I should be doing all these things. And one thing that I gave myself permission to do at a very young age is at least one thing every day that I love to do. And the one thing that I love to do for most of my life was sports. and I played high school and college basketball at age 64.

[00:29:13] David Giwerc: I went up for a shot three weeks before my daughter's wedding and I ripped my Achilles, just ripped it. And my wife two weeks before the wedding, I had one of these hop along braces on. I was hop along, I was talking Captain Hook at the wedding, and I still danced. Didn't stop me. Didn't stop me.

[00:29:28] David Giwerc: I was still danced. But the point of it is. This had been a passion of mine since I was 12 years old. For 52 years I'd done something and now there was this huge void. What do you do when there's that void? Well, I knew I loved sports. I knew I loved athletics, so a friend of mine took me over to our local tennis club.

[00:29:48] David Giwerc: And I started playing tennis and I loved it from day one. I loved it so much. I don't do anything, excuse my expression, half ass. When I go into something I love, I go full force, just like I do with the academy, just like I do with coaching. Just like I do with dogs. 'cause I love dogs just like I do with my grandchildren.

[00:30:05] David Giwerc: There's no in between. And sometimes I have to balance that because I have to be careful that I'm not putting everything into something at the expense of something else. That was the biggest thing I had to learn. But what I'm telling people who are my age or older, give yourself permission to find a passion because it doesn't matter what age.

[00:30:24] David Giwerc: Now, let me give you an example. I was 65, which is considered a senior citizen. Many people retired at that age. I'm not ready to retire. I want to do things. I took up tennis at that time and I just didn't take it up. I played competitively. I started playing at one level and I rose up the levels from a two oh to a three five.

[00:30:44] David Giwerc: Then I started entering tournaments and I entered one tournament for 55 and over and I, I joined the USTA United States Tennis Association, played in leagues and was competitive, but they didn't have any 55 and over leagues. I either had to play an 18 plus or 40 plus, which is really a lot younger.

[00:31:02] David Giwerc: But I was competing and I was doing well. So I get an email about a 55 and over tournament. Long Island and it's a qualifying tournament. Whoever wins that tournament gets to go to nationals and there were people from all different regions of,Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont. I was the only one from upstate New York.

[00:31:20] David Giwerc: I went down and we played five or six matches. I was undefeated in the six match and I played another guy who was undefeated. I was playing and I was really hyper-focused. I did not hear anything around me, and I was down five to two in the tiebreaker, and at that point I said, screw it. I got nothing to lose.

[00:31:39] David Giwerc: Go for it. I ended up winning seven five and became the qualifier for the national tournament Now. Wow. There's more to it. So I got an invitation to the National Tournament San Diego, which I went to this year, April 4th through sixth. I've told nobody this. You are the first to get this. Other than my good friend Barbara and my family.

[00:31:56] David Giwerc: No one else knows this because I don't like bragging about it, but I'm sharing this with you because I want you to know that you can do anything you want to. So I went to this national tournament where everybody was 55 and over and there were only three guys that were older than everybody else, either the top 50 players in the country.

[00:32:14] David Giwerc: I ended up winning more matches than I lost, and I was ranked 42nd in the country when I left. I just got my new ranking. I'm now 26. Wow. Wow. So, so what does this tell you? Age doesn't matter. It's heart, it's focus. And what I know about the A DHD brain is what Nora Volko said. A DHD is a deficit of interest and engagement, but there are higher levels of interest.

[00:32:42] David Giwerc: How important is it to you? How inspiring is it to you? And when you're inspired you can use the imagination and the example I just gave you, I was inspired by something that naturally came to me. Now let me say, I went and took lessons and I worked at it and I practiced. It wasn't just, but I loved it. I loved it and it was my one thing I could do every day.

[00:33:04] David Giwerc: And there were days I didn't love it, especially when I lose 'cause I'm a lousy loser. But I learned a lot. And so what I learned from this is this fits exactly into the models. It's a model for what I teach. When you are inspired by something that is truly important to you and you give your self permission to express it through your character, and for me, love and kindness and social intelligence, but my processing modalities, I need to move.

[00:33:32] David Giwerc: Movement is critical. If I'm not doing something that I need to move it, movement and creativity. Creativity is one of my character strengths. Love and kindness is one of my character strengths. Even when I play tennis, I'm kind, and so I went to the national tournament and I left, and this is what I came back with.

[00:33:49] David Giwerc: I said, you're asking me the question, how does it show up in older people? It shows up at a time. Now when I get retired, I'll even be able to do more of it. It won't be void, so give yourself permission to do this. So, okay. A couple of things that you touched on. It's interesting. I am 55 and I will tell you that if I am not doing something productive, I feel guilty.

[00:34:09] David Giwerc: Yeah.I feel, and I feel likemy brain is just, you know, just cons. It's like a race car. It's just constantly going. So, you know, I think all of us with a DHD need to give ourselves permission to not be productive. But it is very hard to just sit, sit. It's international.

[00:34:25] David Giwerc: Except for this, Jami how do we define productive? If productive means going out and doing something that's good for my brain and my body, that's really productive. But we don't think that way. We think of, I gotta get this job done. I gotta make money. I gotta pay the bills I got. But guess what? If you're not doing the stuff that makes you feel good, that other stuff doesn't come about.

[00:34:44] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. Well, and that Right. And I wanna go back to, 'cause I mentioned to you that there was one of my favorite things that I learned in your coaching program, and that was character strengths. And I think that for anybody who is listening it would be really helpful if you will define what that is and so that they have a better understanding of how that applies to your tennis story.

[00:35:04] David Giwerc: Yes. Okay. So character strengths are a strengths inventory, a survey that you've done that's been around. Since the late nineties by Martin Seligman, who is head of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, he and guy by the name of Peterson at the University of Michigan, unfortunately passed away, developed this very psychometric, reliable and valid inventory that measures how you perceive yourself.

[00:35:28] David Giwerc: It's not only how you perceive yourself, there are 24 universal character strengths that have been researched all over the world, even in tribes of Africa and Australia, that these universal attributes show up in all human beings. But the, the first five to seven are the ones that make you come alive.

[00:35:48] David Giwerc: The other ones are show up, but they show up situationally. Isn't that interesting? 'cause that's what a DHD does. It shows up situationally. So these character strengths, you just answer, there's 120 questions. Don't overthink them. Just answer them naturally. As most like me, or least likely. If you're not sure, put it in the middle and it will give you back.

[00:36:09] David Giwerc: for everybody that I've talked to, they say it's a very accurate survey of mm-hmm. The most important ingredients that make you tick, Mm-hmm. So minor are kindness, love, social intelligence, creativity. And leadership. Those are my five. Okay. Okay. And look at what you're doing and then I look at what I'm doing.

[00:36:28] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. And by the way, here's what's so beautiful, Jami. I'm glad you're bringing up. When you don't express at least two of those character strengths on a daily basis, the bad side of your A DH ADHD is gonna show up every single time. Mm-hmm. Now, no one used this with A DHD. We were the first, and we actually did a poster study of what are the character strengths.

[00:36:49] David Giwerc: Of individuals with A DHD. Now, it didn't show us what the strengths were, but it certainly showed us it was starting to trend towards creativity and creativity and humor. Okay, but where, what really showed up was self-regulation was always low. Perseverance was always low. Now, here's what's interesting.

[00:37:10] David Giwerc: The moment you use at least two of your. Signature strengths, the ones that make you come alive. Self-regulation automatically goes from 24 to the top. Why? Because you have to access, you have to pause, which is self-regulation. You have to pause, you have to pay attention. You have to access those character traits out of your body, and the only way you can do that is by creating positive emotion.

[00:37:33] David Giwerc: And so every single time, I'd love to get enough money to do a research study because what we're finding anecdotally is every person with A DHD, when they express at least two of their character strengths on a daily basis, the good side of their A DHD shows up. Every time. That's great. Okay, so I have a couple other questions that I wanna make sure that I get, to.

[00:37:54] David Giwerc: One is, can you give me an example of an A DHD situation that just happened to you that might be relatable to people who are listening? Just, I have them all the time. Well, for, on a daily basis what I have to do is catch myself as procrastinating. And because I get stuck in these old stories, so if I have a list of things to do, if I go to the thing that is most boring, most mundane on my list, like I gotta do the bills and I gotta do whatever it is, doesn't mean I have to start there.

[00:38:29] David Giwerc: It means I need to get momentum in the brain. And so what I've known for 30 years is you don't start your day with a DHD in your most boring. Unenergetic mundane task, you start it with the thing that gets your brain going, it's momentum. So I look at the thing that I wanna do most. Mm-hmm. And I get that outta the way, but I limit it because I could spend the whole day doing the things I love to do.

[00:38:51] David Giwerc: Mm-hmm. And I limit it for 30 minutes. And before you know it, my brain's gone. It makes it easier to do these other things. Now, if something's really boring, I use assistive technology. I don't use the word processor 'cause it's too slow to me. I use voice activated software. I dictate my emails, I put them in a email.

[00:39:12] David Giwerc: I put them in my file to be looked at later. I edit them at the end of the day. I don't do it all at once. I just get things, big things done in chunks. Mm-hmm. and I learn my system. My system is the moment I see my momentum stopping, it means I need to pause and activate it. I know the things that activate it start from areas of strength, and I use those areas of strength to bring them into my areas of weakness, like voice technology, like movement.

[00:39:38] David Giwerc: During the day, my legs get tired. I get up and I walk around. I can feel my legs and my brain are in sync. My legs are tired, so is my brain. I get up and walk around. I listen to music five minutes, and then I come back. So these are daily hacks or things that I use because I don't do it the way everybody else does.

[00:39:57] David Giwerc: I don't start with my most boring task. I start with the one that activates me the most. I know how my brain works, so I use those things and I always take some sort of physical break during the day to walk to do something physical because if I don't. It affects me. Okay? Mm-hmm. Now, before I knew about my A DHD, I did just the exact opposite.

[00:40:19] David Giwerc: I did what I thought I should be doing, and I procrastinated.I got very little done. Sure. Okay. So those are the kinds of things I do. Okay. Well it wasn't so funny, but it was definitely helpful. So can you share a little bit about Little David before you knew you had a DHD growing up so that, those of us who are discovering our A DHD later in life can, I think when you go back and you look at how you acted, you, you can totally see it, you know, hiding in plain sight.

[00:40:47] David Giwerc: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of hiding, I did a lot of that too. Nobody could find me, but, very hyperactive. Mm-hmm. Very assertive. Mm-hmm. Very physically active. In fact, I was nonstop and it was hard to be around me. My mom and dad had a very tough time. I mean,if I didn't like something, I took it away from kids.

[00:41:08] David Giwerc: I broke up things. I had to be the center of attention. I really disrupted a lot of people around me, but the thing that they liked about me, I always had a smile on my face. I was good natured, but I made it bad for everybody else. So they couldn't get too angry at me. But they got angry enough.

[00:41:24] David Giwerc: Teachers had a really hard time with me, reeling me in, because once I got going,I was in the principal's office. I asked a ton of questions. I asked so many questions. That the teacher had to send me to the principal's office. What you didn't realize is curiosity was one of my strengths that I was being punished for, but they never gave me any rules.

[00:41:45] David Giwerc: Maybe you only asked five questions a day instead of every two seconds. So they didn't know how to handle it. Mm-hmm. So the one thing that saved my life was sports, Mm-hmm. So at age nine they got me involved in basketball and baseball. Baseball was too slow for me. If they put me, I had to be a catcher or pitcher or forget it.

[00:42:03] David Giwerc: So I was a catcher and played baseball, but then I got into basketball for many, many years and that's what savedthat's what calmed me down because back then they didn't know A DHD was sure. I was just a hyperactive kid that got in trouble, right? And that sports mellowed me out. So mine showed up very much in very physical activity and expression with no impulse control.

[00:42:24] David Giwerc: I. Zero. Mm-hmm. Zero. And, and the sports mellowed that impulse control down. And as I got older, I realized if I don't work out, there's gonna be trouble around here. Mm-hmm. And to this day, I need to, Yeah. Not I love as much as when I was younger, but still. Yeah. you're definitely the poster child for having a good understanding of, working with your A DHD and what you need to do to make it, your superpower.

[00:42:47] David Giwerc: And I know that that's a word that a lot of us don't like to discuss, but I wanna bring this to an end and I wanna talk to the audience who are listening to this podcast. And I have had people say to me, why does it matter? Why does it matter that a 65-year-old just.

[00:43:01] David Giwerc: Discovers that they have a DHD. And my answer to that, and you and I kind of talked about it when we met for you to help me with my presentation, was the word jro transcendence, which is Eric Erickson's ninth stage of life when he was in his 90 eighties. And he, started to talk to his peers and evaluated his life and make peace with the decisions and who he was.

[00:43:23] David Giwerc: And just kind of wrapping up. His life. And so I believe thatwhy I am enrolled in your coaching program. I believe that offering coaching to seniors who are, discovering themselves and looking at their life, like, I don't believe that you're ever too old to learn about yourself.

[00:43:43] David Giwerc: And one of the traits of A DHD is curiosity, to your point. So what would you say to our listeners who are. Considering coaching and what they, what they should look for and how they can find you? Well, so life is about stories. Life is about constantly telling ourselves stories and the, and we have a book and each chapter of the book changes as we age and as we age we can create new chapters in the book.

[00:44:10] David Giwerc: And the new chapter in the book is, I just discovered my A DHD and my life has been reinvented. I have a new life. I have a life that I didn't realize when I was younger. Not something to grieve upon. It's just those past years now give you the pleasure of understanding the difference between understanding it and not understanding how much better your life can be.

[00:44:31] David Giwerc: And the coach is instrumental in inviting you to enter your own new story of possibility and reinvent it by saying, well, look at what you do so well. What would happen if you did more of it than less? What would happen if you gave yourself permission to proceed with doing these new things that you know you're really good at, but you didn't know until now?

[00:44:52] David Giwerc: What would happen? What could you do? How would your energy feel? This is what a coach will do brilliantly with you, and they won't let you forget it. They will tell you this new story that you're bearing constantly. How are you gonna remember to pay attention to it? Because if you don't, I will. Mm-hmm.

[00:45:09] David Giwerc: We become advocates for executive function.The person that sees you with an objective lens because you can't see yourself because you have a hard time distancing yourself emotionally from it. And as you begin to distance yourself with a person that knows how to do that, that's trained in it, we begin to stand for it.

[00:45:27] David Giwerc: Look at how great you are at this. You're telling me your language is all about the dark side, but I see this beautiful side of light that you've buried. And I see it every day. How can we invite you to bring more of that into your life every day? How can we do that? What's the first thing we can do? And the moment they begin to give themselves permission to do that, everything changes, or A DHD no longer becomes a deficit, you know?

[00:45:54] David Giwerc: It becomes an attribute that needs to be expressed uniquely. And that's the new story. And it doesn't matter if you're 90 or nine. Whenever you find it, every day should be an expression of what makes you come alive. Mm-hmm. No matter what age you are. And that's what coaching does. It invites you collaboratively with somebody that understands it initially better than the person who has it, but is inviting them to see not only the definition conceptually, but how it shows up in their life practically.

[00:46:26] David Giwerc: How does it show up so that they can see it every day and say, when this shows up, I gotta pause and pay attention to it and not let the dark side get in the way of the light side. Sure. And you can embrace it. So if somebody wanted to become an A DHD coach, then I would encourage you to, and I, did look into different programs and the people that I respected the mostin this space had gone through your program.

[00:46:48] David Giwerc: And that's Adca, A-D-D-C-A, Dot com, ad ca.com. And how would someone find, because I don't think they go to a advocate to find a coach. yes, they do. Oh, okay. I'm not very, in fact, when you become a certified coach, we have a director. It's only for the people that get their certification going through, and it's broken down by niche.

[00:47:11] David Giwerc: I think there might even be one for seniors, if I'm not mistaken.Or there should be and if there's not, guess who's gonna start it? But me or you? No. You a Barbara? No. You okay? You Because, because when you get certified, then we're gonna have an opening for a new opportunity that's not been there before.

[00:47:28] David Giwerc: No one's asked for it. And that's how we do things. Great. So we're gonna do that. And it breaks it down by need. So there's for executives, for adults. So you go into the adult category and there are coaches that will coach older people. It's not their niche like it's gonna be yours mm-hmm.

[00:47:46] David Giwerc: Specializing. But you can go and find specific traits that you want for a coach. Look 'em up. And it will take you to all those coaches that specialize in that niche. That's d ADHD coaching. That's great. Well, you just gave me an incentive to finish my 50 hours sooner than I had planned on. And I also just wanna mention we're gonna have a link to doing the Via character strength so that they can get an idea of who they are.

[00:48:09] David Giwerc: I know a lot of coaches, when they start working with someone, we'll give that assessment to people. And I think it's so helpful to know what your strengths are. David, is there anything that I did not ask you or that I should have?you're the principal and I'm the student.

[00:48:23] David Giwerc: So there's that intimidation factor. No, this was very a wonderful, wonderful interview. It's just so thorough. So, I think the thing is that people listening to say, I want you to know this is how coaching is, it's authentic. And this is how people with A DHD are. I'm biased.

[00:48:38] David Giwerc: They're the most authentic people in the world. Yeah. We don't like small talk. No. And they appreciate everything 'cause they've had it so tough. Mm-hmm. but it doesn't have to be tough. That toughness that you went through is a reminder of how you need to change it to this new way. And always, look, I went through the tough, but that's what taught me how to be where I am now.

[00:48:57] David Giwerc: So in other words, you can't know what a strength is unless you feel the weakness and you can't know what success is like until you've had challenges and quote unquote, I don't even like to call 'em failures, but you've got lots of that stuff inside of you. Allow yourself to go and explore and discover it and embrace and express more of it every day.

[00:49:18] David Giwerc: I wanna wrap up with one more thing that I like to share with my audience, and that is, rather than feeling shame of our A DHD, we should feel proud and resilient because we have cobbled it together. And I love to use the quote, and I'm gonna butcher it a little bit, they said that Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, only she did it backwards and in heels.

[00:49:38] David Giwerc: And that's sort of what I feel about A DHD. we had to. So thank you. Thank you for being a guest. Thank you for all that you've created for me and for the world that I am stepping into and that our listeners are stepping into. And, aging does not mean that you don't get to discover yourself and improve your life, and that is what this podcast is about.

[00:50:00] David Giwerc: So again, join our Facebook community. Grandma has a DHD look into the coaching program. Become a coach. You know, there's no reason you can't work if you're retired. It's. Definitely fulfilling and thank you so much.

 

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