27. ADHD and Survival Mode: How to Stop Trying Harder and Actually Thrive (with Rachel Few)

From the outside, she's on top of it. Then something small happens — a cold, a bad night, one extra thing — and the whole thing collapses. And she decides the collapse is the problem. She needs to be better. More disciplined. Try harder.

But the collapse isn't the problem. The collapse is information. The problem is that she's been running her whole life on a system that was never built for her brain — and every time it falls over, she reads it as proof that she's the thing that's broken. Rachel Few is back, and this one is about the loop underneath all of it: if I could just try harder. Why effort was rewarded your whole life, why it stopped working the moment you had kids, and what it actually takes to stop surviving and start thriving — not the influencer version with the one massage and the full cup, the real one.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — The collapse isn't the problem. The collapse is information.

02:07 — Why 'just try harder' worked for years — until it didn't

03:12 — Jane's two years out of school, and the effort trap hiding inside a success story

04:36 — Add kids, and the sprint you can't run as a marathon

05:42 — Fight or flight: why you can't get the drone view of your own life

06:41 — Why every mum deserves a coach, and nobody questions it for a marathon

06:56 — The homework trap — leaving every appointment with more to do

09:02 — Why women keep landing back on 'I'm the problem'

10:25 — Effort that's purposeful vs effort that's just doing, doing, doing