Episode 7: Man on Pause: ADHD, Masking and Men’s Mental Health

In Episode 7, Jannine is joined by Daran, the voice behind Man on Pause, for an honest and wide-ranging conversation about ADHD, masking, men’s mental health, vulnerability, and breaking generational patterns.

Daran shares why he created Man on Pause, how his ADHD and autism diagnoses have shaped his understanding of himself, and why men need safer spaces to talk about emotion, pain, addiction, friendship, fatherhood and identity.

Together, Jannine and Daran explore what it means to become the adult you needed when you were younger, why resilience is not always the gift people think it is, and how neurodivergent people often learn to mask in order to stay safe.

This episode is about pausing long enough to ask better questions: Who am I underneath the masks? What have I inherited? What do I want to pass on? And how can we make things better for the next generation?

Transcript

Jannine 0:01

Welcome to ADHD Wise Podcast. I'm Janine Perryman, and this is a space for open conversations about ADHD and neurodiversity, bringing together lived experience, professional insights, and the questions that help us move forward. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here. Hello and thank you for joining ADHD Wise Podcast again. My name is Janine, and today I am joined by Darren. Hello Darren, how are you doing?

Daran 0:33

Yeah, I'm really good, thank you, Janine. I'm really good.

Jannine 0:35

I'm really really pleased to have you here. You approached me just as I was announcing that I was going to be doing this podcast, and your the name of your page actually caught my attention because it's called Man on Pause. Do you fancy telling me about that?

Daran 0:51

Yeah, absolutely. So I was on social media for basically for when it came out, and I am a sucker for a sob story, and I like to, I'm a natural fixer, which I'll talk about in a minute. And the man on pause is a way for me to be able to still have visibility on Facebook, but I have done a lot of work around attachment and detachment, and I wanted a place to be able to portray myself but from a non-self position. So the man-on-pause element sounds a bit like menopause. Lots of women that have been in my life have suffered from menopause, and I want to learn about it, and my daughter has some challenges with that sort of stuff, and even just saying that sort of stuff shouldn't happen. We should be more aware of what goes on for women as well as ourselves, and ourselves, we don't pause enough. So the man on pause bit, I'm on a bit of a pause. I'm on my kind of journey to what I call enlightenment, and when I get there, I will probably still have some way to go. But the man on pause bit was twofold. Men need to learn more about the women's challenges, the women's stuff, the oh, she's just this, that needs to stop. There needs to be less taboo around the things that affect our women because the things that affect our women affect our men. And the man element of what we don't do very well is information sharing, it's sharing spaces that we believe or we feel are safe. So men will often get trapped in this kind of down the pub environment of who's got the biggest or who's got the biggest dad, or to make it polite, or who's got the biggest car, and who's got this and who's done this to this girl and all that. And growing up, there was never a space for me to be able to share that sort of stuff, and it's only really been as an adult that I've started to understand and realise that the spaces for men aren't necessarily natural because of the way that we've learnt from other behaviours in our family trees, and that needs to stop. It is stopping because I can feel it. I can feel even my son's 19, him and his friends chat about stuff that lots of men that I know don't chat about, and there's a big, huge gap. So I'm 47 years old, um, still very much teenager at heart, but I'm able to use my knowledge to be able to influence my son's knowledge in terms of it's okay to talk about things when it's not very good. And the man on pause bit, it kind of came into my head, it does sound a bit quirky, a little bit like men of pause, but it gets interest, and you're an example of that interest.

Jannine 3:48

What it represented to me when I saw it, and the reason I was like, okay, I'd like to have a further conversation was because I looked at it and I thought, obviously, was we've got the ADHD connection. But then I looked at it separate to that, and I just thought, actually, the idea of man on pause, that means you're sort of taking a deep breath and having to think about some stuff. And I think that's a really, really important thing to do, because I think about the role models in my life, I think about the role models in my son's life, my stepson's life, my other half's life, his boys' lives. And I think sometimes what the adults teach us is how not to behave.

Daran 4:20

100%.

Jannine 4:21

And I think that we want to be better for our children, so that they stand the chance of being better for their children. And just while we're on that little note, I think that there's there is something there around I think is really, really important to talk about, and that is that if you've got intergenerational stuff, whether it's full-on trauma or whether it's adversity or whether it's just patterns, it never ends in one generation. It actually takes a couple of generations at least for there to be a really significant difference. I mean, depending on the extent of things, because there are definitely some things I have not passed on to my children that I experienced. But I've had cause to apologize to my children for things they've seen and experienced that I wish they hadn't. And if I hadn't have been impacted by the things I was impacted by, I might not, they might not have been in those situations. And I remember my daughter Becca, who I recorded a podcast with earlier this week. When when she was younger, and I said this to her, I think she would have been about 14 at the time, she said, No mum, you don't need to apologize. You gave us a huge leg up from where you were, and in turn, when it's our turn, we will give our children a huge leg up from where we are. But I think there's a huge responsibility that we feel that we've got to right all the wrongs in this generation. And that's nonsense. We actually haven't, you know, it's it's that sort of helping our not feeling like it's all on us and not feeling and not allowing our children to feel like it's all on them, but that progress that you've talked about with regards to young people and young men thinking about themselves differently and hopefully women differently to how they might have done in previous generations. And I love to hear that you're somebody who will um that you will be that role model, but also that you will sort of be the person who sort of says that's actually not acceptable.

Daran 6:04

So one of the other things that I've learned over the last few months, maybe, so people act in a way that has been accepted by previous scenarios. So if people have acted in a way that other people wouldn't deem as appropriate, the only way that's ever going to stop or be challenged is by someone being brave enough to call that out. And when you think of how an abusive relationship may happen, it's usually because of safety is not there. Now, if that psychological safety aspect was there from, say, my granddad's era, his granddad's era, things would probably be different. I would bet money I again you can't prove it or quantify it, but what I can do, prove, and quantify is that once as a man you start having that ability to look a bit further or a bit deeper into what you've been told you should look at. So forget the not forget the masculinity, but put the masculinity elements aside and let your feminine side have a look at things because it's always going to be a very different view. And even using those terms in some men's groups, if you spoke about masculine energy and feminine energy, some men would go, oh, that's not me, because they haven't realized or understood that that is all of us, and we are, and I truly believe that we are all of the energies, and some people have a natural tendency to go one way or the other when it comes to if they're more masculine or feminine. You get females that are naturally more feminine or sorry, or naturally more masculine, and vice versa. But we all have both energies because we start off as neither, and we are born into what we would deem as one of them, and actually we don't celebrate that enough. Men don't celebrate their feminine powers enough, and women get often put back in the box when women try and show their masculinity, they are put in a very small box of powerful women cast aside because, well, you know, you're you're witches or you're this or you're or you're that.

Jannine 8:19

I would most definitely have been burnt at the stake if I'd have been around back then.

Daran 8:26

Back in the ages, when women hit their menopausal age, they were some of them were burnt at the stake because of the things they weren't able to celebrate their menopause as they should. They would they were forced to commiserate it because they're now no good to a man because they can no longer bear children or this. But what happened is, or what maybe happens is when women get of that age, their tolerance to ball goes, their tolerance to mistreating goes, their tolerance to all the things that they've masked for years goes.

Jannine 9:01

It really, really does.

Daran 9:03

Of course, and that was the essence of how the man on pause thing works for both because without women, there's no men, without men, depends on what your beliefs on how we got here is. But we we both need each other, and the fact that we need each other proves in my heart that we are both masculine and feminine together, and what we need to be able to do is work out how we get the best of that. And at the moment, the historic way that men have been told to be be brave, don't be a worse man up, don't cry, don't be a sissy. Because of the way that's been enground into people, it takes a while to break that cycle, and we don't need to be that anymore, but we still can be that. And the challenge is the people that still believe that's how men should be, if they're not willing to look at another option, there's always going to be a battle, and that that's unnecessary, and that's why I think I mean I could go off on a tangent about what I think about war, but it's ultimately most of the friction in this planet is because people don't understand who they are, and they don't understand that their impact on other people is so profound because we're all individual, people don't understand and realise their own impact, and it I know not everyone needs to be the same. We are both a beautiful race of humans or a group of humans, but on the flip side, we're also not very nice, and somewhere in that space, we're all trying to fight our own fires, and I think from a neurodivergent point of view, and what we spoke about in the chat about being authentic matters, you can be authentic and do it in such a way that you can limit your risk. There's always going to be a risk to someone by unveiling, by being courageous to just we, as you know, we don't just have one mask and it's no mask, there's multiple. So even if you can work towards demanding a safe space because you have a right to a safe space, if you can have that space that's safe, whatever that is, and just start to lower one of the masks and just start to be a little bit more you, eventually that will become easier. And the reason that becomes easier, that I believe, once we start to unmask, others start to notice. And then when two people are unmasking, three will notice, and eventually, whilst trying to avoid the echo chamber elements of what a lot of people get caught in, rather than just hearing what you think you want to hear, you can experience it. And you said at the beginning, the moment that we live in is so special, and it has to be now, and being brave enough, and because we do have multiple masks, dropping one doesn't necessarily kind of call you out because there's always going to be one underneath. And I can imagine a comedy sketch where someone will have a mask and they drop one and then there'd be another one, another one, and that's what ADHDers do all every day.

Jannine 12:25

Being that chameleon and then wondering who the hell you are amongst all of this Which mask is the real one?

Daran 12:30

And that's what I would like to be able to challenge the people or anyone listening. Show us your real mask.

Jannine 12:36

My home is my my sanctuary, and my other half, I wouldn't particularly say he understands neurodivergence and and ADHD and even menopause all that much. But I I've had a bit of a tough week and I just walked into his office earlier because he works works from home two days a week, and I just walked into his office and he just pulled me in for a cuddle. And really just in recognition of the fact that I've had a tough week, and that's that's as simple as it is to make someone feel safe enough, because then I don't have to say to him, I'm alright, when I'm not feeling alright. It means I can say, I feel crap, and I do. This week has been really bliming hard. But I mean I spoke on on a previous podcast about sort of talking from your scars and your bruises versus speaking from your open wounds. And I think I have a professional obligation to do that because this is a professional space. This is where I get my professional and personal message out, but I will only speak on here about from my bruises, not from my gaping open wounds, of which I have loads. But Andy is one of those people I would talk to about that, and I've got other people I would talk to about that. But I think that's that whole thing of not everybody is actually deserving of seeing you unmasked. And so knowing who you are underneath that mask, finding safe people to explore that mask, I think it's just so, so important. But also recognising that it's okay to wear your mask because why did we mask in the first place? Usually because there was a lack of psychological safety. So, unless you are in a psychologically safe space, carry on masking. Carry on masking and don't feel like you're being inauthentic by doing that, but recognise you're going to make yourself tired by doing that, and that you're gonna need time then with your real people to kind of explore those things. And isn't that why it's so amazing to have an ADHD community, a neurodivergent community, where we're able to be who we are?

Daran 14:32

Yes, absolutely. The challenges with that, and like I mentioned about echo chambers, I've seen some other belief groups, and I use belief purposely because obviously ADHD is not a belief, but there are some people that that self-diagnose, and I know there's a lot of work, especially in the UK, to work on the definition of when or when you don't get support. So there are some things that are kind of you can get a lot of support whether you've got your ADHD certificate or not. And I think a lot of people will still be, well, are you or not? And if if you're not certificated with ADHD, you don't get access to this help, and that needs to stop as well. And I think when you get a someone that masks, yes, there's always a reason why they mask, and it's usually to do with some sort of psychological safety. One of the challenges I found is in my professional work, I'm I'm what they call an ECG rep, it's like an employee consultancy group, and part of my pitch to be sworn in as one of those members was I'm neurodivergent, I've struggled at work. Is there anyone else out there that's like me that might have might want an outlet? And I had about 30 or 35 responses from different people, some people that were, some people that weren't, some people that think they might be. And this has only been in the last six months. So even just that at work, by me going, you-hoo, this is me, I've unmasked almost completely at work, which has its own challenges. But I'm giving people that opportunity to either see someone that's and I always use the term brave or stupid because it's both, because it all depends on I think I'm being brave, but someone else might think, Oh, you I wouldn't do that, you're stupid. So it's both, and I'm alright with that. And the input we've had from other associates who might feel similar has been outstanding, and we're now making change. So the reason I brought out specifically about when you said you're you unmask in front of your safe people, there are still friend groups that don't know that this person masks because they mask so well. And I guess uh the whole kind of weird looking in the camera thing, if anyone's watching and you know you mask and you mask constantly, and you don't have anywhere that's safe to unmask, that's probably because you haven't told anyone, and whether it be your family or someone that understands, if you are in a if you're in a space where you think there's nobody that understands, there is so many different groups. This group that Janine that you run, there's I said I I'm an ambassador for ADHD UK. There are lots of people that are feeling just like you, and if you can just drop that one mask to connect with someone, it really helps. So anyone watching that thinks, oh, I could be, you might be, but try and find someone that you can speak to and sit with and and really just be yourself with them because it's so powerful, ridiculously powerful, and it doesn't get enough credit.

Jannine 17:35

No, it really doesn't. The whole thing around finding your tribe, I don't think we can overstate the benefit of that. Diagnosed or otherwise, your neurotype is your neurotype regardless of whether or not it's been diagnosed. I just want to just put a little caveat on that, of course. As much as we can recognise that some neurotypical people are not safe people to know our stuff.

Daran 17:56

Yeah, of course. I know absolutely. Yeah, it's not an all-round.

Jannine 17:58

It's definitely not the case that every neurodivergent person I know is a safe person to know my stuff.

Daran 18:04

No, 100%.

Jannine 18:05

You know, when I think about the things that have happened to me, the adversity, particularly in more recent years, it is necessary to let people show you that they are trustworthy before you give them everything of you. It is that sharing, it's talking from your scars and bruises, not from your open wounds. Because uh ultimately, you know, you've got that whole thing of you you don't know what you're gonna bring up for with them, and it's it's you can be your authentic I mean I'm goofy and I don't care about that, and I'm energetic, and I will I will spontaneously say something that other people might not say, and I I'll unmask that, and that's absolutely fine. I think that if you don't like that about me, that is a it that's not really my my challenge, but it depends on where you are, because I'll give you an example of where I really came unstuck because I live pretty much in a bubble where neurodiversity is accepted, and I have a lovely other half who is a bit of a diamond, even if he doesn't quite get it, he he loves me, so he's a safe person. So that's a a nice place to be in. I forgot that the world can be really cruel. I went into it was family law court, and it was when I was getting divorced from my ex-husband, and it was just to do with matrimonial finances, we didn't have any children in common. I came away from there with CPTSD, with with PTSD and with CPTSD around the whole experience because I forgot how cruel the world was. I expected that when they said, according to the bench book, they have to ask one question at a time and that you'll get a chance to respond to one question at a time, that that would be followed. And it wasn't. So there are times to mask. And that would have been a time to mask, but you forget. You forget because we live in this beautiful bubble. I do. I live mostly speaking, I spend my time with people.

Daran 19:50

But you shouldn't have had to remember. I think that's the maybe my perspective, right? You shouldn't have had to remember that it's not a safe place.

Jannine 19:58

But I will say to you, careful when you kick an ADHD or when they're down, because when they come back up, there there may be some prices to pay for those actions for those people, as and when I can be really sure that I'm on my feet enough to to contend with that. Because there is that thing around I'm I'm lucky enough, fortunate enough, but I've got enough about me and I am resilient in a way that I wish I wasn't, I wish I didn't have to be, that yeah, no, I am going to hold them to account for it. So because I'm an ADHD and I can't help it.

Daran 20:31

No, of course, I think the resiliency thing is something that I've experienced. So I've spoke to lots of different people that either are neurodivergent or think they are, and one of the common things is how resilient people are. And again, brave or stupid, right? Because there are some situations that people get treated on. So people that may be in business or run businesses for themselves, people will take advantage of people that are neurodivergent. It's a well-known fact that people who are neurodivergent have more risk around how they're treated or if people manipulate them, etc. And the resilience bit, again, just because someone is resilient, it doesn't mean they ever deserved that lesson. And a lot of neurodivergent people that I know, the ones that have been treated pretty badly, they get to a point because of the work they do, they don't necessarily sit in that victimhood, they've gone through it enough to know it's not just the one-off. And most of them that I know will say, it's alright, I'll I'll be good. Now, I've been that, I've been that person, and that is still a mask, even even if it's very, very raw that you can see that it's an emotional mask, and most of us will be alright, and most of us shouldn't have had to be that resilient, and I think sometimes we forget that we we forget that we are products of someone else's decisions, we are. Affected by decisions of other people until we're old enough to be able to either not pass that on, and that links in with the passing on bit, but resilience doesn't always mean good because there's a big bit of resilience that we forget about, and that's the reason why we've had to be, and that's important.

Jannine 22:20

Yeah, I'm not into the toxic posity of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. No, what doesn't kill you gives you trauma. And we don't w I'm not a better person for that. My nervous system gets jangled far faster. As a result of that, I have more things that I have to contend with as a result of those those things, and I I wouldn't wish that on anybody, actually. I think that you know struggle is good, you know, pushing against things, working things through, striving for something, getting a few knockbacks. Adversity is kind of like on the line and trauma is over the line. If you nobody is better off having been traumatised, even if sometimes these things help us to work out what matters to us, who we are and who we won't be, because I know there are adults that I experienced in my childhood who taught me who I did not want to be. They showed me who not to be.

Daran 23:14

Which is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than not knowing who you are. Because there's only really one who we are, we are only one person, we're one individual, and we can act a lot of the times when you talk about the break-in cycles, generation cycles, we quite often mimic a little bit of how we were brought up, and I think that's natural because we didn't really know any different. But as an adult, you've got that choice, and obviously, as as a child, it's never the child's fault, but once the child's old enough to be able to look at that, they can then use that to move on. I think it's I've kind of lost where I was going with it. It's a classic ADHD, but yeah, the the yeah, the cycle breaking thing, I think, is really important, and the learning who we don't want to be has usually been off the back of a lesson that wasn't necessarily pleasant, but I always believe there's lessons in most things, but I'm now I now understand that not everything needs to be a lesson. So I I even myself, I've done a lot of work on myself, I've still got those to go, and I still try to look for the lesson and everything. I do believe there are lessons and everything, but sometimes when I try to practice more and more about living in the moment, and someone that's a ADHD, a fixer, a bit of a worrier, a little bit of kind of fake anxiety that's not really anxiety because the things aren't really gonna happen. So all of that mixed in to then go, oh, I kind of sit back and just kind of see, it's really difficult. Really, really difficult.

Jannine 24:58

Talk to me about the fixer thing.

Daran 25:01

So the fixer thing, so I have always been so from a teenager, because I was that different one, because I was that one that had those kind of I guess in some ways they were boundaries, but I didn't really realise they were until adulthood. I've tried to fit into spaces, or I've I've never really had a massive friend group, I still don't. Three, four, five real true friends, small family, and growing up, before there was Facebook and likes and all this sort of stuff, how many friends you had was usually an that usually gave you an idea of how well you were liked. So the friend at school that had multiple that fitted into multiple groups, they had 20 friends. They must be more popular because I've only got three. So although I was still trying to find my space, I was similar to my son, I'm friends with different, I was friends with different groups, but I was never really proper friends with anyone in group in particular. So I started to buy my way into friend groups. I've always been generous, I'll always fix people's problems. If you've got a problem, come to me. When mobile phones first come out, I I moved away and I was paying 75 quid a month for an unlimited Mercury one-to-one phone plan. So if my friends needed me, I could phone them back and it not cost them any credit. And it was a time when I needed someone and there was nobody, and that was really my first kind of thing of what are you doing? Now, although me offering myself up to people, essentially what I'm doing now, I'm trying to I'm trying to waken people up to things, I'm trying to give people something to think about when it comes to their own well-being, their health, their divergence, whatever it is. I'm still trying to offer that as a platform, but without the element of fixing, because I know I was never going to fix anybody because I never had the answers for someone else. They already have the answer, and they just haven't been able to articulate the right questions, and that is where I now sit. So now I can try and use my experience to encourage people to think about what they're asking rather than expecting the answer to meet the question.

Jannine 27:32

Yeah, so I definitely used to be a bit of a rescuer, and one of the things I learned through coach training was about not being the superhero but helping people to find their own cape. It's like it's helping people to help themselves actually is is about that's what you can you can give someone a fish if they're hungry, but you can also teach them how to fish that they can do it for themselves. So it's it's all of that, isn't it? And I I definitely became the adult I needed when I was younger. I had uh quite an adverse childhood and I definitely went about from sort of like probably my mid-twenties, becoming the adult I needed when I was younger. And I'm proud of myself for that, but it did make me a rescuer and did create that vulnerability in me where I would put myself out for other people. I feel really lucky, actually. And the only silver lining to adversity is that you do find out who your friends are. That is the only silver lining. Very, very good. Who was really there for me. And and you know, and I And at times it's been nobody. And in childhood it was nobody. I ended up in the care system when I was 14. Not gonna labour that point, but you know, there was actually to be fair, now I realise a lot of people didn't even realise I was in the care system, but the reality for me as a 14-year-old was nobody loves me, I'm unlovable. And so I've gone about making sure no child ever feels unlovable. Because I don't want that for any child, because all children are lovable. They are children, they are not for the adversity, they're they're not usually trying to cause a problem, they're having they might be causing a problem because they're having a problem.

Daran 29:09

If you think of kind of projection and mirroring, children generally mirror their parents. Like I've just said, we have generations of men that don't talk about their feelings because their dad didn't, and their granddad didn't, and I know a lot of men that I know or know of are now more in touch with their feminine side, they're more open about stuff that they feel, and that's probably gonna take a few generations again, but the whole I I also I'm an IV, an independent visitor for Readin Borough Council, and they provide kind of chaperones for children that are in care, and there's only in in all of us for Reading, there's two men, and the young lad that I'm seeing, he's 16 years old, he's been waiting for an independent visitor who's a man since 2024, I think. So when I joined up, he was over the moon because he got his man Ivy, and the some of the stuff that he's gone through, his level of intelligence at his age is very, very high. So him and I both talk about our feelings really openly. Now, he's come from a generation of trauma, but he's able to articulate his feelings without any there's there's no real filter on it, and I hope that it is a generational thing that that younger men and younger boys and the boys that will be men. I'm hoping that there's enough talk about men's stuff. There's there's men's groups, there's Andy's Man Club for kind of suicide awareness, there's men's walking groups, obviously men walking and talking. I do a walk with men walking and talking. There's loads of groups, and it's amazing. And I hope that there's just I think what they say, the 51%, if if ever there's an opinion or something, if it tips over 51%, there's usually enough for it to kind of go that way. And I hope in my heart of hearts that men are able to show and practice being a bit more vulnerable safely, and that isn't usually in a pub where everyone's everyone's on the beer or everyone's on the whatever they're on, or playing football, or these types of or watching football, yeah, and there's there needs to be a space for other people, and that is slowly changing, and I'm glad that I can be a small part of it. I feel like a big part of it, but in a small way, and I'm alright with that because I'm meeting more and more people as I do my thing that are thinking and feeling similarly. The feedback that we get around the men's kind of well-being, the feedback we get from women who want their men to be more vulnerable, and they want their man to not be in pain because he thinks he's got to have this egotistical bravado of man, man, man, when actually just go and just go and hug someone and just be like, just be grateful for the time you've got with them, but it is changing. I can feel it and I can see it.

Jannine 32:19

Thing is, men who are in pain, anybody who is in pain who hasn't processed that pain, who hasn't done the work on themselves, will pass on that pain. Or they will internalize it. And I definitely know men who have experienced things, and basically they are just a walking ball of pain that is internalized, which is awful. You know, we don't want that for people, we want people to be able to talk about what's going on for them. And then there's another group of men who are a walking ball of pain who pass that pain on. Literally, they just throw it everywhere and they cause so much harm. And actually, if we can, if we can improve men's mental health, it's not just many benefits, it's women as well, because women are safer, you know, and we're talking about male loneliness, and I'm like, oh, be someone that someone wants a relationship with, then and then they get called a stemp or something like that, and it's like, oh my goodness, that's not a thing.

Daran 33:10

I think it's I think it's surreal. So I didn't really have a relationship with my dad. So my and so when you said about you became the parent you needed, I very much became the parent that I needed. And my biological dad, he's he passed away when I was 20 so many years ago. And what really opened my eyes up about the whole kind of what we need from somebody was that he had lots of addictions. I also have lots of addictions, have had lots of addictions. I suspect he was probably talking to my uncles, he was probably neurodivergent and just misunderstood. And I've been a the difference between his life and my life is I've had more information to hand. And I will absolutely not live my life without using that information as best as I can. It's not always wisely used because some of it's not good information. Now, I've been able to pass that to my son, and I've been able to create this environment where my son can talk about stuff like that. Now, I never necessarily had that with my dad because he wasn't there. So for me as a father now, I look back and think, well, I never had that, but I never knew what I didn't have. And my mum had different partners who were really nice and I loved them, but they were never really my dad. And the whole nature-nurture thing of passing things down, at some point in that family tree, one of the men has to be able to stand there and be brave enough. And maybe this is something I call out to any men that are watching or listening. If you feel that there might be something going on, you will have a feeling that you might need to do something different to change things, to stop addictions, to stop behaviors. When you get those feelings, be brave enough to sit with them and act upon them because those feelings are not there for anything random, they're there because something wants you to listen to it, feel it, and the courage it takes as a man to just say I need help is ridiculous. The courage it takes for a man to say I need help and I'm gonna go and get help is even more. Now, I know next mental mental well-being week or mental healthness awareness week. As a man, I cannot, cannot speak highly enough about the men that are running groups voluntary, whether it's a charity, whether it's men that are really trying to provide men some sort of courage, because courage comes from different places, right? And it doesn't always need to be in a in a poison form, so alcohol, drugs, whatever. If men can be a little bit more open to where you can get strength from, whether it be peer support, group support, be a little bit more open than what you are, and things will start to fall into place when it comes to how brave or safe you are to share how you're feeling.

Jannine 36:19

It's always brave, actually, to share how you're feeling. And I think that it's I actually think that is it's particularly hard for for men. I think it is difficult for women too, particularly if you come across that I think oh just kind of just want to say this because I think this is important. Sometimes people think that you're either strong or you're vulnerable. I just want to say I'm definitely a strong woman. I am also definitely vulnerable. It isn't one or the other. And I think that if men can understand that you are, it's okay to be both strong and vulnerable. I think that maybe that sort of like is helpful. It doesn't make you weak that you're vulnerable in in a particular area, and vulnerable to addiction is definitely something that's highly, highly correlated with ADHD. A lot to do with the dopamine-ticking things, and a lot sort of to do with the mental health aspect of the 20,000 additional negative messages, and that doesn't necessarily mean the overt stuff. Sometimes it's like the eye rolls and they're just feeling like you're not good enough. And then as an adult, you're giving yourself those same messages, and then you might end up smoking some stuff that you probably shouldn't be, or doing something else that you shouldn't be doing, because you're compensating for how you've been made to feel. At some point you've got to step into that yourself and allow people to help you, which means you have to be vulnerable, which is it's the whole double-edged sword thing, right?

Daran 37:42

Or Occam's razor or whatever things they say. And I think that analogy of the kind of double-edged sword, that is where taboo sits. That's where stigma sticks to mental health. And hundreds of years ago, or long, long, long time ago, if people, like I said to you, people that had the menopause years ago were burnt at the stake and kind of accused of this and accused of that. And it wasn't so long ago where if you presented a certain neuro behaviour, you were just sedated and chucked in a nuthouse. And asylum, I mean the the amount of asylums that we have in the UK or that we did have in the UK, if you didn't fit the stereotypical, if you weren't, if you didn't fit in that round peg hole, you were given a different label and you were put somewhere else. And it wasn't, it was only in a couple of generations that if you presented certain aspects of your ill health or or Tourette's or whatever, you were just class as a nutter, off you went. Now, that double-edged sword is where that stigma sits, and I think as a as a group of humans alive now, I do I do feel it edge into the right way, and I think that right way, I think it's inevitable because I think things do change. I know spiritually there's lots more people talking about spirituality, there's lots more people talking about alternative medicines, about alternative wellness, and dare I say, if any men are listening and you know what a soundbath is, that's brilliant because lots of men have got no clue what a sound bath is because it's something that women do, that sort of thing is changing.

Jannine 39:26

And I think I know there's always been lots of men when I've gone to do that sort of stuff.

Daran 39:31

Maybe it depends on where it is, but there's there's there's lots of things changing, and I think it's brilliant, and I'm glad to be as as a saying I'm gonna say diagnosed, I've always known, but I've the legal aspects of it. Was my ADHD was in 2024, and most recently was my autism, which again lots of work being done in the background around the similarities between them and the fact that lots of people will still say, Oh, everyone's ADHD. Well, no, that's not true, but it's okay for you to have that opinion, but that's not factually true, and it also doesn't mean that you have to be one or the other.

Jannine 40:08

I was gonna ask you if you had a a wrap-up message.

Daran 40:11

Yeah, so I think about messages. So, my opening message, my kind of North Star question you said was about being authentic, and the risk around some people listening, understanding what being authentic means, they might not even know what that means. So, have a look, have research into it, or have a look at what you think being authentic is and see if you can practice that or sit in that space, if it's safe to do so. And also, as a man, you can still be authentic about feelings without losing any of your masculinity, and I do think some men still think and believe that if they do say, for example, when I was at school, if someone was to have worn pink, pink shirt as a man years ago, they would have been a they would have been gay, they would have been a puff, they would have been all these things that aren't true. That's a real like far-end example, but you what you do and what you talk about as a man and the feelings you share doesn't make you any more or any less masculine than what you are now or what you will be after. What opening up and being a bit braver about your feelings does is gives you an opportunity to look within and start fixing some of the things that you have that you may want fixing. Once you realize you're not actually broken, you can start to work on that properly. And I just think be brave, eventually, things will start to fall into place. They have for me, they do for other people, but I also acknowledge that some people that just doesn't happen easily, but we're all worth all of our effort and more. And when we realise as an individual that we have that power to do that, things start to change, and that's what I think is happening.

Jannine 42:06

Darren, thank you so much. This has been I I could literally feel like I could talk to you for hours um about this stuff. So perhaps we'll have to have another conversation further down the line. Yeah, absolutely. Um so much has come from the from this, it's kind of gone around the houses and then back around full circle, which is how I love things to be. So just a reminder to everybody that it's supposed to get better for future generations, that's kind of the point. You know, our parents were were children of of war, and of course, therefore, as generations have gone on, it should be improving for our future children. And so, you know, you we can let things go and we can allow things to shift and we can allow things to change, and just because we were raised a certain way doesn't mean we have to raise our children a certain way. And we need to stop and have a think. What did I need when I was younger? Darren and I are examples of people who've sat there and have thought to ourselves, who do I want to be? Because actually, authenticity kind of brings that to it as well. It's like, well, I don't know who I am. Who do you want to be? There is that, and we can, you know, you feed what you then want to be, and that's part of coaching, whether it's self-coaching, whether that's actual coaching with somebody else. That's the journey. Darren, it's been amazing to have you here.

Daran 43:14

Yes, no, thank you, and I I appreciate what you do, and the more we can talk about it to the many, many people, the better. So I appreciate what you do as well, Jenny.

Jannine 43:22

Yeah, and an amazing nod to ADHD UK because they do amazing work. Thank you for listening to ADHD Wise Podcast. ADHD Wise exists to help bridge understanding and support for people exploring ADHD in broader neurodiversity. If you would like to know more about us and our services, please visit www.adhdwise.uk. Follow ADHDwise UK on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Take care and we'll see you next time.