Episode 190: ADHD and Porn Use with Kersti Spjut

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 190, ADHD and Porn Use with Kersti Spjut.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer. 

Hey everyone, welcome to today’s podcast episode. I did a really fabulous interview that I’m just so excited for you guys to listen to, specifically around ADHD and pornography use. This is a question that we get occasionally in our inbox and that we know that many of you might be dealing with. If I have ADHD how is this affecting my porn use? I feel like there are these barriers because I have ADHD and it’s making it harder for me to decrease my porn use or quit my porn use. 

Anyway, I’m having Kersti on to talk about it. And she is just lovely. I just really, really like her. Kersti is a therapist and a professor and she is moving away from her position at Brigham University into her own private practice right now. 

That also means that she might have more time to come and do more stuff with us in the Center For Overcoming Pornography. Maybe more podcast episodes. I don’t know, maybe I can talk her into coming and doing some group calls or something occasionally. I will have her come and do a little bit of training with my coaches around some sexual value based models that she uses that are really good. 

Why I love her is that she is, also she does take a porn neutral space like we do and does not use the addiction model like we don’t use and that we don’t think is the best model for our clients. So she’s awesome, please enjoy this podcast episode on ADHD and pornography use. 

Sara: Hey everyone, welcome to today’s podcast episode. Today we have Kersti Spjut with us. She is a connection of mine from BYU and has her own practice too working with people who are working to quit viewing pornography and other sexual concerns that they’re working through. 

And today, we are going to talk specifically about ADHD and what that is and how that might affect your pornography use if you are trying to cut back or quit viewing pornography. So, Kersti, do you want to introduce yourself and say hey? 

Kersti: Hey, I’m glad to be here. Like Sara said, my name is Kersti. I’m a licensed clinical psychologist and I specialize in sexual health and also perfectionism. I practice here in Provo, Utah, and I’ve worked at BYU for many years running groups and other programs for people conflicted about pornography use. So yeah, I’m excited to be here. 

Sara: Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. Do you want to tell us, Kersti, let’s just talk about ADHD and what it is first. 

Kersti: Great. Yeah,, so ADHD is, we consider it a developmental condition, meaning you’ve probably, if you have it, you’ve probably had it your whole life since early childhood. And there’s a few different types of ADHD. 

One thing to know is that attention is connected to all parts of our mental health. So if you have anxiety, it might be hard to focus. If you have depression, it might be hard to focus. If you have OCD, it might be hard to focus. And so what makes ADHD different, like I said, is that it’s lifelong, neurological, and it’s very genetically based for most people. 

And so there’s a few subtypes. One is the AD, or the attention deficit. And that’s a cluster of symptoms where it’s hard to focus. It’s hard to keep track of things. Like maybe you lose your keys, your phone, your wallet constantly. Maybe your room is a mess. Maybe you make careless mistakes. Even though you know the answer, you just kind of misread the question. 

It’s more kind of spacing out, getting easily distracted, having a hard time regulating attention, or maybe hyper focusing on one thing and forgetting about everything else. So that’s one possible type of ADHD where you just have that attention deficit. 

Another subtype is the H, or the hyperactivity. We call this the hyperactive impulsive subtype. This is what kind of the media portrays as ADHD, it’s like jumping around and always fidgeting and moving and little kids jumping off the walls. It’s hyperactivity, needing to move your body a lot and be doing something combined with impulsivity. 

It’s just hard to make choices based on long-term rewards. It’s very focused on how I feel now. I need instant gratification. I need instant sensation, a lot of sensation seeking and risk-taking and just needing a little bit more stimulation than the average person. So that’s a second subtype. 

Or you could have combined, which is both of those together, where you have trouble with focus and trouble with impulsivity and sitting still. So I would say that’s ADHD in a nutshell. 

Sara: So if someone is like, oh, I wonder if this is me because I do have trouble focusing and I do have some, it seems, impulsive behaviors, what would you say to them? What should they look out for? What should they do? 

Kersti: Yeah, great question. If they’re already connected with a mental health professional, if you have a therapist or maybe you’re seeing a doctor to talk about mental health, I would bring it up with them first and say, hey, I’ve been wondering if I have ADHD. 

ADHD is a controversial diagnosis, there’s different ways to test for it. But usually, to be confident, you need some combination of self-report, so you describe your symptoms. Performance, so you performing differently at tasks that are observed in an office setting than people without ADHD/ And also documentation from childhood. You would need like a parent or a caregiver to verify that the symptoms showed up early enough because it is that lifelong neurological condition. 

If you’re not connected with a mental health professional, I’ll give some resources at the end, different books and places that you can look. So that could be another place to start. 

Sara: Great. Yeah, thank you. Are there a lot of people who reach adulthood or older who haven’t been diagnosed or misdiagnosed? Is that common with ADHD? 

Kersti: Yes, absolutely. Especially for women, but for other genders as well. And especially if it’s that inattentive type of ADHD, because you might have just been sitting in class kind of just zoning out, but you weren’t making trouble. You weren’t being disruptive. And so everyone was like, oh, we’ll just leave them alone, they’re probably fine. They’re just kind of spacey. 

So I would say inattentive and also female presenting ADHD are much more likely to be diagnosed in adulthood than childhood. 

Sara: Yeah, because the portrayals we’ve seen have been mostly like young boys that are crazy hyper, like that more hyperactive part. 

Kersti: Exactly. 

Sara: Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, let’s talk about ADHD with porn. And tell me in your experience, how does an ADHD diagnosis or tendencies typically influence someone’s relationship with pornography? 

Kersti: Yes, great question. When I have someone who’s been newly diagnosed with ADHD in my office, my first intervention before learning how to organize or anything like that, my first intervention is with shame. ADHD comes with so much shame, not because of the ADHD, but because of society. It’s built for neurotypical brains. 

And almost 100% of my clients with ADHD grew up feeling stupid, lazy, not good enough, not capable, because they were expected to conform and they just couldn’t because their brain is different. 

And shame obviously has a huge overlap with people who are conflicted about their pornography use. Sometimes for some people, shame leads me to view more sexual media because I want to escape the feeling of shame. And then sometimes viewing the sexual media when it goes against your values leads to an increase in shame. And then you feel like you need to escape from it again. And you might be drawn back to that shame. 

Sara: That shame spiral. 

Kersti: Exactly. And so if you have ADHD on top of that, the shame is even deeper and even more integral. Like I am fundamentally bad, not just because of my porn, but because I’m lazy and I’m whatever else. Lazy is probably the most common word that I hear. So shame has got to be the number one overlap with ADHD and porn. 

Another aspect of it is, like I mentioned, it’s hard to regulate attention. You might get more hyper-focused on some things than others. And sometimes we talk about these as sticky versus slippery activities. Sticky activities are things that are easy to stick with. Like they’re highly stimulating. They’re things like video games or things like maybe if you have a passion, you could just do it for hours and hours and not realize time has passed. 

Slippery activities are things that are harder to stay with. It’s like doing your taxes and maybe for some people it’s math or reading long history textbooks or whatever the thing is. 

We all have sticky and slippery activities, with ADHD it’s like times a hundred. And I would say sexual media is pretty sticky. It feels great. And it’s supposed to, that’s how it’s designed. For people who are allosexual and interested in sex, it’s very engaging. It’s very interesting. It’s easy to think about. It’s easy to want. And when you have ADHD, that stickiness is then further amplified. And so it might be even harder to imagine letting go of that. 

I mean, we don’t talk about this enough, but there is grief and loss if someone is choosing to let go of sexual media, because they won’t feel that good thing in that way. And that’s really sad. Even if they have good reasons for letting go of it, you’re losing access to something that’s actually brought you a lot of pleasure, and it’s okay to mourn that. 

Sara: Oh, I love that. I love that. That’s a whole podcast episode on its own. 

Kersti: Right? Yeah. 

Sara: Three part series probably. 

Kersti: Yes, exactly. There’s a lot about it’s okay to want pleasure. And with ADHD, you need more external stimulation to feel the same degree of pleasure that someone without ADHD needs. And so it’s even more appealing. 

Sara: Yeah. Can you clarify that and tell me a little bit more about that when you say someone with ADHD needs more stimulation to feel that? 

Kersti: Yeah, so one of the theories about how ADHD works is that our brain has internal reward systems, things like dopamine, but it’s a lot more complex than that. 

But essentially, as we’re going through our day, someone without ADHD will kind of just have reward chemicals happening. Like, I locked my door. Oh, that felt good. I got to work. Oh, that felt good. I accomplished a tiny task. Oh, that felt good. And it’s not like intense pleasure, but there’s a sense of satisfaction in the way that the reward systems work. 

It’s theorized that in people with ADHD, the reward systems either aren’t receiving the chemicals or aren’t sending them well enough, but it’s just less satisfying. Everyday life, those little things aren’t as neurologically rewarding. And so it feels like, like for me, I love vanilla ice cream and I could have it just on its own because I just love the flavor of vanilla. But other folks that I know are like, that’s boring. I need chocolate syrup. I need nuts. I need bananas. I need whatever else on there. 

Think about how a brain without ADHD can enjoy vanilla and a brain with ADHD can enjoy it, but it’s kind of boring. And it’s the same level of enjoyment to add all that extra stuff as someone else has with just the baseline level.

Sara: And you can see how that can, like a lot with societal conditioning, that can be shame-y, very shame-y. Like what’s wrong with you that you need more. And maybe we’ll talk about this in a minute, a little bit later, but like, does it have to be wrong that that’s how you experience life? Or could that – And I don’t want to, something that can be really painful for people, I don’t want to try to put some like magic positive spin on it or anything, but could it potentially be, I don’t know, something good, something cool? 

Kersti: I love this question because it has a great overlap, both with ADHD and with sexual health. It’s not wrong to want what you want. Your desires are not inherently bad. And obviously there’s nuance to that, but someone with ADHD wanting and needing more stimulation is morally neutral. It’s just kind of how their brain processes stuff. 

To use another food example, I don’t like spicy food. I just don’t. Other people love spicy food. It adds so much to their life. So much that we use spice as a metaphor for like interest and pleasure and fun, like the spice of life. Do you like spicy food? 

And so it’s okay to like different things. I don’t need to yuck your yum. But if we live in a society that says spicy food is bad and evil, that would suck for people who really just enjoy it and have a lot of fun with it. And ADHD is similar. Like you said, we might talk in a minute about strengths. There can be a lot of upsides to ADHD, even while there is a very societal, like structural disadvantage. 

Sara: Yeah. I love that because it’s kind of like, okay, so if we’re going back to the ice cream example, vanilla is a little too boring for me. Like, so what? Like, okay, awesome. Then go find something that’s way more exciting, instead of the mindset is what’s wrong with you? You just aren’t satisfied. You just don’t like it. We can maybe switch a little bit more into a, it’s a morally neutral thing to want more than vanilla. 

Kersti: Absolutely. 

Sara: Okay, what other common patterns or behaviors do you observe in people with ADHD regarding their porn use? 

Kersti: Yeah, let’s talk about a relationship pattern, which is a parent/child dynamic. Both with ADHD and with people where one partner views sexual imagery and the other doesn’t and they’re both against that type of behavior. 

It’s very easy to fall into a dynamic where the viewing partner is the child, the non-viewing partner is the adult and they’re in charge and they set the rules and they set the appointments and they look up the books and the podcasts and they set expectations. And I want to get to the bottom of this and I’m in charge. And why do you keep acting like a child? And why are you lying to me? 

And it’s a very common marital dynamic of over-functioning and under-functioning. There’s lots of ways to say it, but both of those happen, like I said, with ADHD and with porn use. And when you combine them, it can be amplified even more. 

There’s a great book called The ADHD Effect on Marriage that talks about these dynamics and how the over-functioning partner can start to step back and be like, I am not in charge of their personal sexual behaviors or their personal organizational behaviors. I am a partner. I am supportive. I am here. I’m a co, you know, person, but I’m not over. 

And then the under-functioner also learns how to step up, to take more responsibility, to create that external structure that their brain doesn’t naturally give them. There’s ways to make that in your environment through timers and alarms and visual reminders and giving yourself rewards for smaller tasks. And there’s a lot of stuff you can do, but you have to do the stuff. 

And if your over-functioning partner is doing it all for you, you never really get a chance to learn how to regulate yourself and own behavior, whether it’s sexual behavior or otherwise. 

Sara: Yeah. This can look like, you know, we’ll get emails from spouses a lot, which there’s a lot of love and understanding, you know, lots of work for a spouse too and something that feels really painful for them. What do you recommend to someone who might be in this dynamic? 

Kersti: Oh, great question. 

Sara: Just give us the magic answer. One sentence that’s going to change it. No, of course there’s a lot, but give us something. 

Kersti: I’ll give you a few levels. So if you want just like a book to read, The ADHD Effect on Marriage is great. There’s another book called Act With Love by Russ Harris, that’s another good one. If you want some questions for reflection you could ask, if I knew my partner wasn’t going to change, how would I want to live my life? 

Or a great one is I want you to look forward to your 30 year anniversary and imagine your spouse is giving a toast and they’re describing the type of partner that you were during those 30 years. How did she show up or how did he show up? And focus on becoming that person instead of trying to make your partner become the person you want them to be. Those are some places to start. 

And then I highly recommend couples therapy. I think it’s a really great place to have an external like third party who’s trying to be fairly objective and neutral, see the dynamic in real time and help you start to step out of it. But just know you’re not alone. I mean, it’s a very common dynamic. 

Sara: Yeah. And I always tell spouses too, and tell me if you agree with this, try to find, like you said, finding a neutral party is so huge, especially with this, because you don’t want to go to someone who’s always going to paint the porn user as a betrayer. You also don’t want to go to someone who’s saying, hey, you should just get over this. You need to find someone here in the middle that can hear and validate, heal and help. 

Kersti: Yeah, which also includes showing your woundedness. Like if you’re hurt by your partner’s sexual behaviors, instead of trying to get him to stop, saying, “Hey, can we have a conversation sometime about my feelings? I’d love to connect with you and let you in to how hard this is for me.” That’s a lot scarier than saying, “Okay, if we do this, we’re going to be done in three months and then everything’s going to be fine,” you know? 

Sara: Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. 

So challenges that people with ADHD face in managing their pornography use compared to the general population. We talked about some of these. We talked about hyperactive and the idea that your brain needs a little bit more stimulation. And then, yeah, what else? 

Kersti: Yeah, I think along with that, one of the interventions I find most helpful for contextualizing and understanding sexual behavior is shifting your focus away from sexual behavior towards values. Like what kind of person do I want to be? What matters most to me? What is worth feeling discomfort for? 

And values are like a long-term reward. They are not immediate satisfaction. And so this approach can be helpful for people in figuring out how to either let go of or relate differently to sexual media. For people with ADHD, it might just feel too distant or like, well, I want to live my values, but I keep forgetting because my brain is just all over the place. 

And so I think it’s good to know it’s okay to need what you need. If you need more reminders, like if you need to set an alarm on your phone that reminds you to be more patient or to be kinder to your kids or things that it might feel like, oh, I should just do that naturally. But you might not be able to, at least right now. Like you might need, like I said, timers, alarms, list systems. And it’s really common for a system that worked for a few months to stop working because it becomes less novel and therefore boring. 

Sara: That sounds relatable to me. Like a lot of this does on some level. 

Kersti: Yeah, that’s a human thing. We adapt to, we habituate, right? And so again, just letting go of shame. I need what I need. If it worked for me three months ago and it’s not working now, it’s okay to try a different system, try a different calendar, try a different way of organizing my day or my tasks. 

I’m focused on moving in the direction of what matters. And if porn doesn’t align with what matters, I’ll also be moving away from porn, but it’s different than just moving away for the sake of moving away. You could go to Mars. You could go be a terrible person who never looks at porn. It doesn’t mean you have a good life, right? And so focusing on cultivating that good life is going to be structured differently for people with ADHD because values and the good life are so long-term and so vague. 

Sara: Yeah. Really good, I love that. Getting away from, even like that all or nothing thinking or we really have to be done, instead of focusing on that we’re focusing on the values. So good. And then, because I do talk quite a bit about feeling how you would feel now if you felt like you were successful in your efforts. And how can you today feel like you wish you could if you had quit porn already? And that’s a really great way to do that. 

And to stop basing your goodness as a person off of whether or not you viewed, but like, how are we trying to live our values and work towards those? It’s powerful. 

Kersti: I love that. Yeah. 

Sara: That’s powerful. Okay,, any other strategies or interventions that you’ve found effective in helping people with ADHD manage their porn use? 

Kersti: Yeah, I think it’s helpful to know that probably the number one research supported intervention for ADHD broadly is medication. And that’s not saying everyone with ADHD has to take medication or they’re a bad person. It’s not right for everyone, but there’s a huge body of evidence that it can be massively helpful for a lot of people because most medication prescribed for ADHD is a stimulant. It’s stimulating the brain. It’s giving that extra dose of satisfaction that the external world isn’t quite giving. 

And I know there’s a lot of different opinions about medication. And again, I really respect personal autonomy. I would like to maybe offer a metaphor that I find helpful thinking about this. 

Sara: Please do, because I’ll get emails or questions or from people in my program that say, I don’t want to take ADHD meds. What else can I do? You’ve got to go talk to your doctor or your healthcare professional. So tell us.

Kersti: Yeah. And I’ll give more non-medication strategies in a minute, but with medication, and I’ll say this too, I am not a prescriber. I don’t have prescribing privileges. I’ve worked as a mental health provider in doctor’s offices, and I’ve had a lot of conversations with doctors about medication, but this is not medical advice. This is kind of like a meaning making way of thinking about medication. 

Because ADHD is so genetic, there’s just this like strong, strongness to it. I guess the word is strength. And some mental health conditions are like that. And I compare it to swimming across a lake. Let’s say we were all dropped off on one side of a lake and told to swim to the other side. And we get in the water and realize some of us were given weights on our wrists and ankles. And they’re not so heavy that we can’t swim, but it does make it a lot harder to swim. 

And the lake is pretty wide. And at some point, we notice the other swimmers can just put their arms out and float for a minute. But if you do that with the weights, you actually start to sink. It’s a lot harder to float or to tread water. You have to be actively swimming with these heavy weights and it can be pretty exhausting. 

I think of medication as taking off the weights. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to try, or you don’t have to swim or learn different strokes or approaches or techniques for getting across the lake. It just makes it so that you can mess up and not completely fall behind or drown. 

Sara: Yeah, I love that. Oh, so much more compassion, like understanding. And for some people hearing that they might be like, oh my gosh, like feel in their heart like, yes. Okay, thank you. 

Kersti: Yeah. 

Sara: It’s hard, you can imagine, to not know, right? If you’re swimming and you don’t even know that you have the weights on your wrist, you can’t even see them or you’re unaware of them or you think everyone else has them. Why are they going so much faster than me? 

Kersti: Yeah. 

Sara: I just must be really weak or whatever. 

Kersti: Exactly. And that’s where that shame comes in. Like I’m just a bad swimmer. I’m just a bad whatever the thing is. I’m bad at school. I’m bad at work. I’m bad at relationships because I can’t remember things the way other people can, or I can’t follow through the way other people can. Or I just feel so drawn to like porn or social media or whatever thing gives me that satisfaction that I’m lacking otherwise. 

It’s worth exploring and talking to your doctor about what it could look like if you tried that. And I’ve had folks where they’ll do genetic testing and none of the ADHD medication metabolizes really well in their body. And so it’s not even an option for them. And so there are other strategies as well, but I would say at least consider it. At least think about it. 

Sara: Yeah. Right, you can always try it and then stop. 

Kersti: Yeah, exactly. 

Sara: I’ve been on other medications like SSRIs for depression and anxiety and they have saved my life at times. And what modern day medicine miracle a lot of these are, I’m very pro using them. And then also your body knows. You can trust your body, you can trust your heart to help guide you and what’s going to be correct for you. And anyways, so I, you know, always recommend that. 

Okay, any strengths associated with ADHD that listeners can maybe focus on or develop? 

Kersti: Yeah. So one of the biggest strengths that I see, and this isn’t across the board. Everyone’s unique, of course, but often people with ADHD have the ability to hyper-focus on things, especially creative tasks. And they can just sort of get lost in writing music or writing plays or creating a video game or, you know, doing these things. 

There’s certain tasks that take a long amount of deep work to be successful at. And ADHD, if your area of hyper-focus aligns with one of those tasks, you can be massively successful and create things that neurotypical people might take a lot longer to create because they’d be stopping and going to the bathroom and stuff. So, you know, it’s all things in moderation, but there’s often a degree of, like I said, hyper-focus, creativity, playfulness, right? Like who made roller coasters? I don’t think it was someone neurotypical. 

Sara: Yeah, good point. 

Kersti: Like creating things that give a lot of joy and stimulation, right, that all of us can benefit from. We talked about food, but think about all of the areas of your life where you enjoy something. It’s fun to have different levels of stimulation and be able to try new things and have novelty. And we owe a lot of that to people with ADHD. 

Sara: Yeah, I love that. I’m still giggling at the roller coaster comment because, yeah, that’s so stimulating. You fly down and fly off of things. I love it. 

No, it’s so good. And what I’m hearing you say too is, and this is part of that shame work, is instead of seeing this as something that you’re always fighting against, or you have to like tame this part of you, is there a way to create a relationship with this ADHD part that is like a really beautiful relationship where it can thrive maybe? 

I don’t know, I hesitate saying that because if it’s something really painful for people, I don’t want to come off as trying to put a super positive spin on it. But I do follow some people that I really like. They talk about their neurodivergence, which includes ADHD, and they talk about it as a superpower. And they’ve been able to, in their life, see it as that and cultivate it almost like a little superpower part they can turn on. 

Kersti: Yeah, I love that framing. And it’s both, right? It’s both a superpower and there can be pain associated with it. And everyone’s had a different story. Everyone’s had a different set of messaging. Some of my clients were directly told by parents, like, you are stupid. Obviously, that’s going to stick with you. And learning, I love how you described it as like a part of you. Hopefully, we’ve all seen Inside Out by now. 

Sara: If you haven’t, go now. 

Kersti: And what happens when you try to exile a part of you? First of all, you can’t. And second of all, it causes more problems than the part was causing in the first place. And so, giving some compassion, maybe imagining like pulling up a chair for your ADHD and saying, hey, I know you’re trying to protect me and keep me stimulated and keep me enjoying life. And that matters a lot. And here’s some other things that matter too. And I’ve got you. And replacing that shame with some self-compassion. 

Sara: Yeah, so good. Thank you. Okay, anything else that you would like to add or that we missed? 

Kersti: Yeah, I mean, maybe not specific to ADHD, but anytime I’m talking to folks who are conflicted about their use of sexual media, I want you to know that your life is now and there’s not some future life that’s like better or fixed where you’re completely free from either the behavior or the desire for the behavior. 

Anything that you wish you could do once you’re “done” with porn, you can start doing that now. And you don’t have to wait. It’s kind of like a lot of us will say, oh, I’ll be happy when... When I get that job, when I have the baby, when I get married, when, when, when. When I’m done with porn, right? It’s just as much of a myth in this case as it is in the other cases. 

Your life is now, in the present. That’s all you have access to and that’s all you have guaranteed. And you can do the things that matter to you right now. You don’t have to wait. And it’s okay to want what you want, even if you don’t ultimately end up choosing that every single time. 

Sara: Oh, yeah. Really good. Thank you so much. I love it. I love you. I think you’re awesome. 

Kersti: Same. 

Sara: I think you’re so awesome. So how can listeners find you or learn more about your work? We have some listeners who – So also, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Kersti is moving to her private practice right now. She’s moving out of her, a lot of the roles she’s had at BYU into private practice. And so do you do online or is it only in person? Tell us about that too. 

Kersti: Yeah, I do both. I do online or in person. My office is located in Provo, Utah. I’m part of PSYPACT, which is a compact of psychologists that allows me to practice virtually in, I think it’s 42 states right now. 

Sara: I was going to ask about that. Cool. 

Kersti: So if you Google PSYPACT, P-S-Y-P-A-C-T, you can find the list of states that have legislation that approves this compact. So I can see people through telehealth in those states. And I do individual therapy, couple therapy. I’m hoping eventually to start some groups for this type of work as well. 

But you can find all of that at my website. My name is not intuitive to spell, so I’ll say it once, but you might need to check the show notes. 

Sara: Yeah, we’ll put it in the show notes too. 

Kersti: Yeah, but it’s just drkerstispjut.com. And that’s also my Instagram handle and also my email, [email protected]. Feel free to reach out. 

Sara: And it’s Kersti, K-E-R-S-T-I, Spjut, S-P-J-U-T. That’ll be in the show notes, but it is spelled for you. 

Kersti: Thank you. 

Sara: Cool. Awesome. So your website, did you say Instagram? 

Kersti: Instagram, yeah, I’m probably most active on Instagram. I think I have other social media pages professionally, but I’m really just on Instagram. And I can share some books for the show notes as well that have some of those behavioral strategies for ADHD. If you’re struggling and medication’s either not working or not an option for you, there’s lots of good tools in these books that I’ll share. 

So the first one, The ADHD Effect on Marriage, the author is Melissa Orlov, O-R-L-O-V. The next one is another book, it’s called The Smart But Scattered Guide to Success. Two authors, last names are Dawson and Guare, G-U-A-R-E. 

This one I recommend as more of like an encyclopedia than a book to read through. Every chapter focuses on a different skill, like starting tasks, finishing tasks, organizing things, like managing your impulses. I would just pick one chapter that you struggle with and try some of the tools in that chapter instead of trying to read it from start to finish. 

And then the last one is called Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Russell Barkley. 

Sara: Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. 

Kersti: Thanks for having me. 

Sara: Yeah, we loved it. So awesome. All right, you guys have a great rest of your week and we’ll talk next week, bye bye.

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography. 

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn’t have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent. 

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.