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🎙️ Episode 13: Understanding AuDHD – Executive Functioning and Daily Life (Part 2)
Episode Summary
In this episode of The AuDHD Psych Podcast, clinical psychologist Aaron Howearth moves from explaining executive functioning to exploring practical ways autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD people can work with their brains in daily life. He looks at how differences in working memory, processing speed, time perception, self-monitoring, and motivation interact with anxiety and self-esteem, and why our capacity to start, continue, and finish tasks can swing so dramatically from day to day.

Aaron describes how an ADHD-style “problem-solving brain” can flip into a “problem-finding brain” when worry and rumination take over, especially in generalized anxiety. He introduces worry postponement (also called worry time or the worry chair) as a structured way to park worries during the day, revisit them briefly in a time-limited “worry window,” and reclaim attention for the people, tasks, and moments that matter. Read more about worry postponement here: 

https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/CCI/Mental-Health-Professionals/Generalised-Anxiety/Generalised-Anxiety---Information-Sheets/Generalised-Anxiety-Information-Sheet---05---Postpone-your-Worry.pdf

He also shares neurodivergent-friendly tools for time blindness, task initiation, and follow-through: externalising time with alarms, visual timers, and apps; body doubling and social accountability; reducing visual clutter and sensory load; and building routines gradually through habit stacking rather than overwhelming, all-or-nothing life overhauls. Throughout the episode, Aaron reframes “disorder” not as something inherent to autistic or ADHD traits, but as a mismatch between our brains and inflexible environments and expectations, inviting a more compassionate, neurodiversity-affirming way to understand executive functioning differences.

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Executive Functioning & Self-Concept – How repeated struggles with organisation, planning, and follow-through shape self-esteem and internal narratives like “I’m a failure.”
• ADHD Problem-Solving vs Problem-Finding – When a fast, creative brain shifts into scanning for everything that might go wrong and filling the gaps with negative assumptions.
• Worry Postponement – Using scheduled worry time to note worries during the day, revisit them briefly later, and reduce rumination while still letting the brain feel heard.
• Environmental Accommodations – Supports like written instructions, reduced visual clutter, sensory adjustments, and breaking tasks into smaller, more manageable steps.
• Time Blindness & Externalising Time – Making time concrete with timers, alarms, visual countdowns, and short, structured work blocks (e.g. Pomodoro-style sprints).
• Body Doubling & Accountability – Using co-working, study buddies, supervisors, therapists, or friends as external anchors while respecting strong drives for autonomy.
• Habit Stacking & Routine – Attaching new behaviours to existing habits so helpful routines become more automatic and less dependent on motivation in the moment.
• Redefining “Disorder” – Viewing diagnosis as a description of mismatch between person and environment rath

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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podca