373 Overcoming The Wall of Awful, with Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.

Penny Williams: [00:00:00] Welcome back, everyone. I am really thrilled to have with me today Brendan Mahan of ADHD Essentials and the new book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful. And we're gonna talk all about the Wall of Awful, because if you haven't heard of it yet, it is such a great metaphor for what a lot of our kids go through.

A lot of what that struggle is, um, we can better understand through Brendan's framework. So I'm so excited to have you back, Brendan. Will you start by letting everybody know who you are and what you do?

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah. Well, first thank you for having me back. Like—

Penny Williams: Of course.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: it. Um, I, my name is Brendan Mahan. I'm a host of the ADHD Essentials podcast, ADHD coach, consultant, speaker person, creator of the Wall of Awful. I'm on the board for the Men's ADHD Support Group. I'm on the board of directors for Comicon Boston.

Uh, [00:01:00] and yeah, I do ADHD stuff. Not, not that dissimilar from what you do. Um, I also work with parents. I'm kind of heading away from that a little bit and drifting over to more like corporate and entrepreneurial leadership type stuff. Um, and I spent the last, I, I guess two years writing this book along with Alex Hughes-Capel, who is my co-writer.

Penny Williams: Awesome. Let's jump right into it. What is the wall of awful?

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah, I've, I know, I'm gonna assume that your audience is kind of tuned into the world of ADHD and has probably already heard of it, so I don't want to go too long on the basics 'cause they probably know them. The gist of it is the wall of awful is the emotional barrier that gets built when we fail regularly, right?

When we mess up. Um, and it is a thing we have to get past before we can engage with the tasks that we fail at regularly or struggle with. It doesn't have to be failure. Um, [00:02:00] so if I struggle to pay my bills, maybe I have the money I need to pay them, but like the act of sitting down and paying the bills is overwhelming for me.

That overwhelming feeling before you start paying the bills, that's the wall of awful. Um, if I'm someone who struggles to make friends, that overwhelming feeling I feel when I try to, when I maybe even think about going somewhere where I might meet people, that's the wall of awful. Um, so it's just this barrier created of negative emotions that are pretty sedentary.

They're either kind of keeping us from moving forward or pushing us away, so we kind of want to go backwards away from them, and they get in, get in our way when we want to do the things that we need to do. Potentially. Not everything.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. So it sounds like it can create some avoidance.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yep. Yeah.

Penny Williams: which so many of our kids struggle with, right? And, and the parents struggle with. Like my, my kid, I call him a serial avoider. Like, he was just wired to automatically avoid, and the [00:03:00] things that you're describing, those consistent failures and struggles were just making that bigger and bigger.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah. Yeah, and pervasive demand avoidance is potentially in here, right? Like,

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: it's a bigger, stronger response to the wall of awful. Um, and it's not, it's not easy when our kids are avoiding things or, or when we're avoiding things too, right? Because what I see with parents a lot is the kid... Let's say the kid has a wall of awful for doing their homework, which is pretty common and typical. Eventually, mom or dad, whoever's helping the kid do the homework, gets a wall of awful for helping the kid do their homework, right? So it sort of builds new walls when we are struggling to help our kids, and that's an overwhelming experience for us, so we have to get past our wall before we can help them get past their wall.

And often when, and this is part of the power of the model, is a lot of the time when we go to help our kids do their homework, what [00:04:00] we're not doing is trying to help them manage the emotions that are in between them and the homework. We're often just trying to help them do the homework. And there's a little bit of emotional stuff where we're like, "This is easy. Come on and do this thing," right? But that's not the same as, "Hey, it seems like you've got a wall of awful for this homework assignment or for homework in general. Let's get past that," right? Like, let's start with, "This is a thing that's gonna be hard, and you're not gonna like doing it, and I'm sorry that that's the case, but you still have to do it," right?

"You still have to be able to initiate this task." Um, and as parents, we often don't wanna do that 'cause we just want the homework done and check it off the list or move on to having dinner together or whatever the case may be.

Penny Williams: Yeah.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: But if we can pause ourselves, right? And this has certainly helped me.

One of the things I told myself, my kids are 17 now and mostly do their own thing, and we don't worry about it as much. [00:05:00] We had a little bit of a college essay drama recently, but other than that, there's been no assignment homework drama for a while. But early on, my logic was I'm helping my kids build the resilience they need to do the thing even when they don't wanna do the thing, right?

I'm helping them develop skills. I'm helping them practical skills around planning and problem-solving, and also practical skills around recognizing that there's this emotional barrier and managing their emotions and figuring out why it's there and how do I put a door in my wall or climb my wall so I can get to the other side of it and do this thing that I need to do.

So it's a useful tool as a communication device with our kids when we can go up to our kid and go, "It seems like you've got a wall of awful for this. Do you know where that's coming from? What's going on? Is it a certain part of this task that you have a wall of awful for? Is it all of it? Where are we?"

Penny Williams: It's validating. It's validating.

Instead of saying, "You [00:06:00] need to do your homework," you're saying, "I see this is a struggle."

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah, and I don't remember if it was Jessica McCabe who said this or if it was someone on, 'cause I recorded a YouTube video with her like forever ago, or if it was like a comment on that YouTube video. I think it was Jessica who said it, um, but I might be wrong. But the line that stuck with me was, "It makes the invisible struggles visible." Because people will say, "Go do that thing," and then you don't do it, and they're like, "Oh, they're just not doing anything. They're lazy, they're avoidant, they're whatever." But maybe not, right? Maybe, and I would argue probably, they're dealing with the wall of awful. They're doing a whole lot of emotional work.

But I can't see you do emotional work. I can't see my kid do emotional work unless their [00:07:00] face is very expressive, and that's not everybody. So I may not notice that they're doing all this work, and I might not give them credit for it. And instead of thinking, "Oh, my kid is climbing the wall of awful to get to the other side so they can do their homework," I'm like, "Oh, they're just avoiding the task."

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we'd see it as a lack of motivation.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Mm-hmm.

Penny Williams: Yeah. And... I'm sorry.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: No, you're fine.

Penny Williams: Let them through. Thank you. Dogs don't wanna be in, dogs don't wanna be out. Okay, I was saying something right then too, of course. Mm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: We were talking about it makes the invisible visible.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh, you said... Okay, I gotcha. You had just mentioned about climbing the wall of awful, and I know that you talk about some ways that we try to deal with the wall of [00:08:00] awful that aren't successful, and ways to deal with it that would be successful. Do you wanna talk about some of that?

Like, maybe what's our instinct as parents? 'Cause I think often our instinct, that pressure, that pushing, may not work out so good.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah. So the entire middle of the book is the strategies to get past it, right? It's four chapters. There's five strategies to get past it. Two of them don't work, so we put those in the same chapter 'cause we're not gonna spend a lot of time on the stuff that doesn't work. Uh, and then the remaining chapters are the ones, the ways that work.

The two strategies that don't work are staring at it,

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: I'm just not engaging with this task, right? I'm not doing anything that's gonna get me anywhere. I might be perseverating, I might be ruminating, like I might be really in my thoughts or my feelings about this task, and that's in a way that doesn't actually do anything, right?

Like, I can be in my feelings and suffering. That's not processing those emotions and those feelings so I can get to the other [00:09:00] side. That's just being trapped in the feelings. And the same is true with perseverating, where I'm thinking about this, but not in a way that's problem-solving, just in a way that's like, "This is why I don't like this thing, and this is why it's hard, and this is why it stinks," and so on, right?

So those strategies don't work. There's also going around the wall, which is avoidance, right? That's when I'm gonna say, "Well, first let me do this, and then I'll engage with the wall." And maybe you will, maybe you won't. I don't know. One of the places where I see that most often is with entrepreneurs, and it...

Once your kid gets to maybe middle school, certainly high school level, this can start happening in assignments or especially if they have a passion project that's outside of school that they're doing. And what I see happen a lot of the time is there's this thing that they wanna do, adults, kid, doesn't matter, and it's, "Well, before I do that, I should [00:10:00] really learn more about it," or, the one I see in entrepreneurs is like, "I need to get my website perfect," right?

Like I have to do, I have to get these things in place before I can do this other thing. And it just isn't necessarily true. The one that drives me craziest is, "Well, I have to learn all this stuff and then I can do that thing." That's true to a point, but that point is much earlier than most people think when they're dealing with the wall of awful.

The "I need to learn all this stuff" is a form of perfectionism. It's like, "I can't do this perfectly until I've learned all the things." And I got news for you, you're not gonna do it perfectly even if you do learn all the things, 'cause there's a lot of stuff you have to learn by doing, and it doesn't matter what it is.

It can be writing a book, it can be drawing a picture, it can be playing a sport, it can be speaking another language. It doesn't matter, right? Playing guitar. I can learn all there is to learn out of a book [00:11:00] about how to play a guitar, but until I play a guitar, I don't know how to play guitar. So I really encourage parents to pay attention to their kid if they're stuck in that, "Well, I have to learn and learn and learn."

Just have them go do it. And also, parents, don't trap your kids in tutoring services forever, or training or coaching or whatever. Let them go do the thing, and let them mess up, and let them fail, and let them learn from failing, 'cause we learn a lot from failing. It, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't have coaches and tutors, 'cause certainly they're useful.

But pay attention to where you are in this growth period for your kid. It might make sense to have them go make some mistakes, figure out where their deficits are, and then circle back to the tutor or the coach.

Penny Williams: Hmm. And we never stop learning. Like, there's never an end to the learning. I can continue to think that I have to learn more, and there's always gonna be more to learn. It's kind of this [00:12:00] never-ending loop that—

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: open loop. Yeah.

Penny Williams: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So then what is a healthy, um, you know, sort of successful, effective approach to the wall of awful?

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Let me, can I do the one that's kind of both, that's sort of great and sort of not so great? So the one that's sort of great and sort of not so great, it works, but it's not healthy, is smashing.

Penny Williams: Hmm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: That's when we, so the wall of awful is made of all these sedentary emotions, right? I said earlier. They're sedentary, they're pushing away, they're slowing us down.

When I take my anger or my frustration or my anxiety related to this task and use that to activate and push through the wall, use that to push through these sedentary emotions, because anxiety and anger and frustration are activating. Sometimes they activate and send us forward, and sometimes they send us backwards.

But if I [00:13:00] activate and go forward into the wall, I'm smashing. And I call it smashing because it does damage, right? Like, I'm using this like a hammer, right? Like a blunt force anxiety, blunt force anger, and I end up doing damage as I crash through this wall because there's shrapnel, there's bricks flying all over the place, right?

And that's gonna hurt me if I use my anxiety, if I'm like, "Why do I suck? What's wrong with me? How come I can't just do this? I stink, I stink, I stink, I stink, I stink." And I'm using that to get myself going, right? Because I don't want to stink, but I keep repeating it over and over again. I'm hurting my self-esteem. If on the other hand, I get angry with my mom or my dad for asking me to do this chore that I hate doing and I'm like, "Shut up, I'll do it. Fine. Get off my back. Leave me alone. I'll do it, blah," now I'm damaging my relationship with my mom or dad or my friend or my boss or whoever it happens to be.

Penny Williams: Yeah.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: So that's the way that is not so great, but it does work, and [00:14:00] there's times when that's the best choice.

It, but it's the least skilled option that actually gets us to the other side of the wall.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. Not—

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: reasonable, it's, it's gonna lead to burnout, yeah. Um, and the reason it's the least skilled is because we're still in the limbic system and the amygdala when we're doing that. It's fight. It's the fight response of fight, flight, and freeze.

And going around the wall is flight and staring at it is freeze. So those three are our body's stress response. It's just how we respond to stress. They're gonna be less skilled because we can't bring our executive functions and our higher order thinking skills to bear when we're in fight, flight, and freeze. And again, that doesn't mean that sometimes you don't want to have that fight, because every now and then it's like, "I just gotta get this thing done. I'm just gonna push through," right? And there's a little bit of smash happening, but it's a controlled smash. It's like, "I know what I'm doing.

I'm gonna limit the damage and I'll be able to move forward." [00:15:00] The two that get past the wall that are healthy and effective, but effortful. I don't wanna make it sound like these are necessarily easy, right? Are putting a door in it and climbing it. So putting a door in it is about changing our emotional state.

It's about utilizing things that motivate us to get going, and I'm not a big fan of relying on motivation as a way to get past anything, to start anything. I'd much prefer that we either make the task easier or up our skills or resources to be able to do the thing more readily, reduce the barrier to entry.

But it's a choice, right? Like, I can play with the dopamine response and play with, um, Bill Dodson's INCUPS model, right? Where he talks about the interest-based nervous system of ADHD.

Penny Williams: Yeah.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: That model is [00:16:00] putting a door in it. Like, if we follow that model and we're looking at, uh, interesting, novel, challenging, urgent, and passion are his, that's what INCUPS stands for.

I tend to think interesting and passion are like two peas in a pod, right? Like, I think of interesting as in cognitive and thinking, and passion as emotional, but they're both kind of the same, like, I'm engaged with this thing. The only one of INCUPS that I wouldn't lean on all the time is urgency, 'cause that's kinda smashing, right?

Like, "I don't have enough time. I gotta do this." Like, that's an emotional response. But I find this interesting, I find this novel, it's unique in some way. I find it challenging, and that's an engaging thing. It's not overwhelmingly challenging. It's compelling. Or it's connected to stuff that I'm really passionate about, or connected to my values.

All that stuff is great. All that stuff is super healthy. Um, so that's putting a door in it, [00:17:00] is finding the things that are gonna get me to those areas. That might mean that I go and work in a new location. I've been doing that. I just finished up the workbook that's gonna come out in February to accompany the book that comes out in September, and I started hitting a wall eventually working in my office.

I was like, "I just, I'm done." So I went places. I found coffee shops that I'd never been to. I wasn't even going to places I usually went to. I was finding other spots. Um, and all of that added some novelty and helped me engage more readily with the stuff that I was already interested in, but I was struggling.

Um, and it also, like, I worked really hard to make interesting activities in the workbook too, and that was a challenge, right? So that kinda kept me motivated and moving forward. And I don't know that motivation is necessarily the right word here, but it's the word I'm using. Um, it kept me engaged, it is probably a better way to put it.

Um, when it comes to climbing, [00:18:00] climbing is about sitting with those emotions and processing them. And people are like, "We know Brendan. We heard, we saw the video." I've split climbing into two different categories in the book. There's a, the book expands on everything pretty significantly. One of the ways that I expand on climbing is that I split it into active and passive climbing.

So active climbing is the stuff that people have heard me talk about. I'm gonna validate my emotions around this task. I'm gonna say out loud what the task is and what I have to do. I'm gonna engage with it in a way that helps me break it down into small, more manageable tasks. I'm gonna make that first step as easy as possible, that kind of stuff. Passive is different.

Passive is really using our mind-wandering mode and our default mode network to do some emotional processing in the background when we're not even engaged with this task, right? I'm not even necessarily doing it. And that [00:19:00] is important. It matters, right? We don't get into our... Man, come on, Brendan.

We don't get into our, um, default mode network often enough because our phone's crowded out. Back in the '80s, like I'm an '80s and '90s kid, right? Pre, pre-smartphone. I would stand in line at the grocery store and nothing. I'm just standing in line at the grocery store, right? You go to the dentist or you're, whatever, you're walking somewhere, whatever it is, you're kind of just, your mind is wandering.

You're in that default mode network, and as a result, I was processing emotions and solving problems subconsciously.

Penny Williams: Right.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: We don't have that opportunity as much anymore. And one of the things that is problematic there is we do have more anxieties now because we don't get to process them in the background as much as we used to.

So the default mode network and mind wandering can lead to [00:20:00] rumination really easily. It can mean we get stuck in these negative thought spirals and things. But we can steer it. We just don't always do it. Like I just listen to some music while I'm doing this, and it gets me going in the right direction, right?

Do I need to be thoughtful? 'Cause that's gonna be one kind of music. Do I need to be kind of revving myself up to get going for an interview or to write the workbook or something? That's a different soundtrack to my life, right? So I'm a big fan of music as a way to sort of help that process along, and I'm also a fan of walking, um, especially in the woods.

I really like walking in the woods with or without music. It typically steers my thoughts pretty well, and if they end up, I end up ruminating and I don't have music, I just pay attention to it and I, maybe I add music or maybe I stop and look around and observe the world around me for a little bit and hope that breaks me out of it.

Um, but it's this soft, it's called soft fascination is what I'm talking about here, sort of being in awe of the [00:21:00] world around us, even if it's just a small amount that we don't get enough of because the phones are in the way. Um, so I recommend putting the phone down, even if all you do is leave it in your car when you go to the supermarket and you're walking the aisles and you're just walking the aisles and your thoughts go where they go.

Yeah.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: It's important stuff.

Penny Williams: Yeah. I was just wondering the other day, like, how did we get through all of these boring things back when we didn't have anything to entertain ourselves? But we did, but—

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: knew how to be bored.

Penny Williams: remember that now. It feels foreign now to think about that. It's kinda crazy.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: One of the, this actually isn't in the book, but one of the things I've been playing with recently, in the past six months or so, I call it analog doom scrolling 'cause I don't have a better name. But I was just, I was talking to a client one day and he was like, "Yeah, I just doom scroll too much," and so on.

And I was like: What did you do... Like, I sort of asked him as for both of us. I was like: What did we do... 'Cause we're about the same age. I was like: What did we do before we doom scrolled? Like, we're old enough that we're [00:22:00] both pre-phone. What did we do? And he and I just sort of talked that out for a little bit and came up with, uh, what I, for lack of a better term, am calling analog doom scrolling, except there's no doom scrolling in it, right?

'Cause back then we had coffee table books and things that were interesting to flip through and look at, but you're not really super engaged with it. It's just passing the time and letting you think about things. For me, I looked, I read a lot of role-playing game books when I was a kid, and comic books, and sometimes I was reading them to read them, and sometimes I would just look at the pictures and flipping through stuff and mildly thinking about what this is.

And I think it's important that we get back to that to some degree, is figure out what did you do, if you're our age, what did you do when you didn't have a phone to doom scroll on? And impart that to your kids, right? If you're pre-phone, and I imagine most of the parents are, when you were 10, what were you doing instead?

And can you give that kind of a strategy to your kids? [00:23:00]

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Making room for processing, right? We're making room for processing. Processing emotion, ideas, all that sort of—

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah. And doing one thing at a time, right? Like I would sit in my room and listen to an album, and that was all I did. I don't know that that's how music gets consumed anymore. At least not for like my kids and their friends and the people I know. It's usually the music is being played in earbuds while they're doing something else.

Like, or you could just be in part of the music and take the earbuds out of your ears and let it fill the room that you're in.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. That's why I love to go see live music, because it's immersive. There is no space, no draw to be looking at your phone or doing anything else. You're just surrounded by it in a way. Um, yeah. [00:24:00] Can we talk a little bit about the parent's role here? And, like, obviously the parent, the adult can have their own wall of awful, but if we are trying to help a kid who has come up against their wall of awful, I think sometimes we push, which is more like trying to smash the wall, right? What do we need to be aware of? What is our role in helping them with their wall of awful?

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: One, one important piece before we go to that, one important thing is make sure you're not giving your kids the gift of your walls of awful,

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: right? Like you're probably going to, but just be mindful of whether you're doing that or not, and if you have done that, tell them. I have a wall of awful, like less so now.

Um, I was on here earlier, like a little while back, and I talked about all the OCD stuff that my family went through and the sheer level of [00:25:00] anxiety that my family was going through. A couple of times during those years, we dealt with some tech stuff, like you would expect, right? Printer breaks, you get a new phone, those sorts of things.

And I was not in a place to handle that well or effectively. Forgot a password, whatever. One of my kids got a wall of awful for anything tech-related when it, in those veins, right? Like figuring out his email password is a total anxiety spike for him. And I know it's my fault. Like I know it's because I...

And if I had, if we hadn't been going through what we were going through at the time, I don't think I would've cared. I would've been like, "This is annoying, but it's not the end of the world." But at the time, I didn't have space for annoying. There was too much stress in our house. Um, so I gave him these walls of awful, and I've said that to him.

I'm like, "Dude, this stress is my inadvertent gift to you, and I want to help you put it down. I want you to give it back. Like [00:26:00] I want you to return that, don't keep it. Let's get rid of it," right? Yeah. Um, so if you've given your kid a wall of awful, just be transparent with them. Like let them know what the wall of awful is, talk to them about this concept, and then talk to them about the stuff that they don't need to carry 'cause it's really your issue, not their issue.

And the same is true, the reason I started there is because there's also that to a smaller degree when we go to deal with their walls of awful, right? If they're stressed about doing homework. Let's say they're doing some math homework, and I don't have any issues with math, but I do have a wall of awful for my kid doing homework and getting past their walls of awful.

If I go into that help session elevated and escalated or dysregulated, if my emotions are flying a little hot, tight, a little hotter, I'm potentially adding bricks to their wall when I don't need to be. So the more I [00:27:00] can keep myself balanced and center myself and be the rock in the storm that they can cling to, the better off everything is gonna be, the whole situation.

Um, so that, that's really the primary thing is like before you go to help your kid, get yourself square and then help them. And it's not uncommon that parents see the kid is struggling, worry about the kid, feel their own wall of awful starting to build, and then smash. Like they're, "I'm just gonna smash through this 'cause I have to go help my kid right now."

And they feel that urgency, and that urgency may or may not be true, but the urgency leads to smash 'cause now that's the least skilled option that gets me to the other side.

Penny Williams: Yeah.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: And when I smash, even if I don't smash in sight of them, right? Even if it's like I go into my bedroom and I, "gotta make sure my kid gets their stuff done," right?

And I, off I go back to the kitchen to help them. [00:28:00] My energy is not good. Like the whole, yeah, my vibe is not, is aggressive, it's more pushy than it needs to be, and I'm just adding bricks 'cause now my kid is like, "I can't make mom or dad happy. They're gonna be, they're always mad at me, or they're gonna be mad at me 'cause I don't do this.

We're already fighting and they haven't even said anything to me yet, but they're, I can tell." Like they're reading our emotions just like we're reading theirs. So the more we can anchor ourselves and get ourselves centered before we engage with this stuff, the better off we are.

Penny Williams: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And talking about emotions, I think we don't do enough of,

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Mm-hmm.

Penny Williams: and then they're not processing them. They're avoiding the emotions that have built this wall of awful that they need to find a way through, right? And yeah. So much good stuff there. I know that there's a lot more detail to it, and we're out of time already.

So if you'll let everybody know where they [00:29:00] can find you online, where they can find the book, and I'm gonna link it all up in the show notes as well.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah. So I'm published through Hachette Book Group in their Balance imprint. So the book is anywhere you buy books. Wherever you buy books, go and buy the book there. Um, the website is wallofawful.com. Nice and simple. It'll take you to places like order on all of the sites, right? It'll be like Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble and Amazon and like wherever you want to order it.

Um, and, and the rest of the stuff is in the navigation bar up at the top, right? So it'll send you to the podcast, it can send you to me and what I do. Um, but "The Wall of Awful," there's a whole page for it with various endorsements and some freebies that I'm gonna be giving people when the book is out, who order it.

And yeah, that's all you need to know is wallofawful.com.

Penny Williams: Perfect. And like I said, I'll link it up for everybody, and I encourage them to pick up the book, find your podcast, find your [00:30:00] YouTube. You will learn more. There's so much more to learn from Brendan. I've learned a ton over the years. I always enjoy our conversations. I feel more hopeful after I talk to you.

Like, okay, there is a plan, there is a way, right? Like, these things can change, and, um, I needed that as my kid was growing up, and so I really appreciate that from you.

Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.: Yeah, we talked, Alex, my co-writer and I, talked at length about the importance of infusing the book with hope. 'Cause it's a hard topic, right? It's a difficult thing to talk about, so we're like, "We gotta have hope in every chapter." So, um, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Penny Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I'll see everybody next time. Take good care.