How to ADHD

The Brain Chronicle | August 2025 Edition!

Added 2025-08-29 19:02:46 +0000 UTC

Hello Brains & Hearts!

This month has been a tough one. My partner and I are both navigating the grief of losing not one, but two close family members. Your support here on Patreon gives me the flexibility to take some time to focus on caring for myself and my family when things like this happen. I couldn’t be more grateful, so thank you sincerely.

In other sad news, we did have to say goodbye to our Production Coach, Mo. We knew early on that we could only afford to pay him for a few months, and we hope that we’ll be able to bring him back onto the team in the future if the circumstances permit. He did such an amazing job while he was here and we’re very grateful for his help with our content these last few months!

Despite a tough month, there have been some amazing highlights too! I had a lot of fun taking my first real set of professional pictures, if you’re able to see behind the scenes, you’ll get a lil glimpse of that! I can’t wait to share with all of you the results of that photoshoot. 😊

And the team has done an incredible job building much-needed production templates, as well as organizing brand assets in a way that makes it far easier to work with. ♥️ I couldn’t be prouder of this team.

That’s it for this month, but keep reading if you’d like to hear more about how to cope with rejection sensitivity by using the Four R’s strategy!

💜Jessica

Thank you to our SUPERbrains+ for voting on what topic to cover next!

Were you “too sensitive” growing up?

Rejection Sensitivity or “RS” – when we readily expect and often perceive rejection – is extremely common in the ADHD community.

So, our amazing friend, author and ADHD expert Caroline Maguire, created something to help navigate this! The 4R method — Recognize, Respond, Reflect, Reframe (Click here for a free worksheet!).

The first two steps, Recognize and Respond, come more easily than the last two steps. And once you learn how to properly Recognize your emotions, you're more likely to Respond appropriately.

What stumps a lot of us is Reflecting and Reframing. When we feel rejected, cognitive distortions can shape narratives that feel convincing, even though they aren’t accurate. So without further ado…

💡How to Reflect and Reframe

This is an exercise called Feeling vs. Fact. The goal here is to recognize your two brains – your emotional brain and your logical brain.

STEP 1

Grab a pen and paper (or notes app!)

STEP 2

Make a section labelled “Feeling”. Then write down what you feel.

For example, say you send a vulnerable text to your best friend. They read it and then… crickets. You might write down, “I feel hurt.” “I feel angry.” Or, “I feel rejected.”

STEP 3

Create a new section for “Facts”. List only the verifiable facts.

It’s important not to write down what you think are facts. Keep it to what you can verify. Verify means you can prove a fact beyond a shadow of a doubt. “They didn’t bother to respond, so I must not matter,” is not a fact – it’s a cognitive distortion.

A fact might be, “They didn’t respond.” This exercise helps you separate your feelings from the event itself.

From here, you can take it a step further by playing the “What If” Game. The goal is to brainstorm neutral or positive possibilities intentionally. This helps you to stop focusing on the worst-case scenario (hello, cognitive distortions!).

STEP 1

Grab pen and paper (or notes app!).

STEP 2

Write down the scenario you’re dealing with, such as “They didn’t respond to my text.”

STEP 3

Beneath the scenario, list out reasons why your friend didn’t respond that don’t relate to you. This can look like…

What if their phone died?

What if they were rushing somewhere?

What if they are in a bad place today and don’t have the mental bandwidth to respond?

*Most Importantly* – Take your time with these exercises!

It’s hard work untangling facts from feelings and devising alternative scenarios. These two exercises help loosen the certainty behind our first (often more catastrophic) thought.

Because every time we challenge RS, we weaken its grip and give our brain a chance to learn something new: one event isn’t rejection. It’s just life happening — and we get to decide what story we tell about it.

Looking for your perks? We got you!

Built a “pantry” full of video making “ingredients” to help our Producer and Editors “cook” more effectively!
Have created or are in the midst of creating templates ranging from video style templates to thumbnail “templates” (they’re more what you’d call guidelines… than actual rules templates… but they count!)
Managed to narrow down which photos we’ll be buying from my first real photoshoot for How to ADHD! (There were so many good ones… narrowing it down to 20 was no easy feat!)