Our Own Worst Enemy (rebroadcast)

Summary

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Hacking Your ADHD – "Our Own Worst Enemy" (Rebroadcast)

Host: William Curb
Date: December 15, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, William Curb explores the concept of being "our own worst enemy," a feeling familiar to many with ADHD. He delves into why self-destructive or maladaptive behaviors arise, reframing them not as moral failings but as responses to unmet needs and unsolved challenges. The episode encourages listeners to approach their so-called "worst selves" with empathy and curiosity rather than shame, offering practical strategies for understanding and modifying negative patterns over time.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Worst Self" and ADHD (01:23–03:29)

• William reflects on how ADHD can lead to behaviors that feel like self-sabotage: poor time management, procrastination, overcommitting, and hyperfocus on non-essential tasks.

• Quote:

  “This is a feeling I often have felt with my ADHD. I seem to have an endless supply of maladaptive and self-destructive behaviors that stem from the condition.”
  — William Curb [01:32]

• He frames these moments as manifestations of unmet needs, rather than indicators of poor character.

2. Maladaptive Behaviors: Causes & Solutions (03:36–06:59)

• William emphasizes that maladaptive behaviors usually serve a purpose, such as:

  • Overcommitting: desire to please or prove worth.
  • Procrastination: fear of failure, perfectionism, or lack of stimulation.

• Addressing procrastination isn’t about brute-forcing discipline, but identifying the why behind it:

  • Is it perfectionism? Understimulation? Not knowing where to begin?
  • Solutions vary: redefine "done," make tasks more interesting, break them into smaller steps.

• Memorable Moment:

  “I can't just say procrastination be gone and expect any results. Although now that I say it, that does feel kind of fun.”
  — William Curb [05:16]

• He stresses that changing deep-rooted behaviors is hard work, not something immediately solved with a simple realization.

3. Empathy & Self-Compassion (06:59–09:30)

• William warns against self-judgment, which only deepens the problem and clouds underlying causes.

• Recognizes that negative self-talk is itself a maladaptive attempt to pre-empt criticism from others.

• Notable Quote:

  “If I have an angry outburst and label it as me just being a bad person, well, that's not especially helpful... But if I can step back and say, well, that was probably because I had a bad night's sleep and I skipped breakfast, okay, well then that's something I can work on.”
  — William Curb [06:53]

• He describes breaking the cycle of negative self-talk as challenging, sharing a humorous anecdote about how his brain doubled down on self-criticism even as he tried to be positive.

4. Reframing "Laziness" and Maximizing/Satisficing (09:30–13:25)

• William disputes the notion of laziness, suggesting it often points to unmet needs or misaligned priorities.

• He introduces the concept of maximizing (seeking the "best" outcome) vs. satisficing (accepting "good enough"), noting that what gets maximized is subjective—sometimes it's convenience or energy over perfect outcomes.

• Quote:

  "I tend to find that what we define as laziness is really about us not meeting our needs."
  — William Curb [10:42]

• He suggests practical strategies for tackling tasks: making them more interesting, employing rewards, or adjusting circumstances (like the timing of a workout).

• Emphasizes that energy, emotional connection, and meaning are common unmet needs for those with ADHD, driving the urge to "numb out" or disengage.

5. Going Beyond Symptoms: The Need to Ask "Why?" (13:25–14:47)

• William references a quote from Gabor Maté regarding addiction: "Ask not why the addiction, but why the pain?" He applies this to ADHD behaviors, advocating for digging beneath the surface to address true causes.
• He points out that many maladaptive behaviors are creative solutions grown out of survival, not signals of moral deficiency.
• Realistic, incremental change—rather than overnight transformation—is the goal.

6. Top Tips & Takeaways (14:48–15:19)

William consolidates his advice in three main points:

• 1. Approach your "worst self" with empathy.
• 2. Notice the situations and emotions that trigger negative behaviors, so you can manage them proactively.
• 3. Recognize that most maladaptive behaviors stem from unmet needs—seek to understand and address those first.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “These behaviors happen for a reason, and if we can work on identifying the root behavior, then that puts us into the right direction of modifying these outcomes.”
  — William Curb [05:22]
• “Negative self talk itself tends to be a maladaptive behavior that we often develop to try and preemptively protect ourselves from ... what we think we'll hear from others.”
  — William Curb [07:27]
• “Maybe making myself feel bad isn't the best way to keep me from feeling bad.”
  — William Curb [08:34]
• “If we're missing something, like finding meaning in our lives, it's easy to turn to things that will numb those feelings instead of seeking out what we need.”
  — William Curb [12:51]
• “We want to go beyond just looking at the behavior and see what's driving it.”
  — William Curb [13:41]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:23 — Introduction of the “worst self” concept and the conflict with ADHD.
• 03:36 — Causes of maladaptive behaviors: compensation, avoidance, and procrastination dissected.
• 05:03 — Addressing root causes of procrastination and other behaviors.
• 06:59 — Cultivating empathy and tackling negative self-talk.
• 09:30 — The myth of laziness, maximizing vs. satisficing, unmet needs.
• 13:25 — Gabor Maté on asking "why the pain?", not "why the behavior."
• 14:48 — Episode summary and practical tips.

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Tone & Style

William’s style is warm, self-aware, and honest, blending humor and personal anecdotes with practical advice. He’s gentle in challenging harmful narratives while encouraging listeners to extend to themselves the same compassion they’d offer a friend.

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Summary

This episode of "Hacking Your ADHD" challenges listeners to rethink their so-called “worst” selves, framing maladaptive behaviors as attempts to cope with unmet needs rather than moral failings or laziness. William Curb guides his audience through practical, empathetic strategies for understanding and managing these patterns, ultimately advocating for a kinder, curiosity-driven approach to self-improvement—one grounded in realism and self-compassion.

Transcript

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[William Curb]

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[William Curb]

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[Co-host]

Welcome to Hacking your adhd.

[William Curb]

I'm your host William Curb and I have ADHD. On this podcast. I dig into the tools, tactics and.

[Co-host]

Best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team, I was listening to the radio the other day when my Own Worst Enemy by Lit came on a fine example of pop punk from the late 90s. And while I enjoyed the song, what stuck with me was thinking about the name of that song. My Own Worst Enemy. This is a feeling I often have felt with my adhd. I seem to have an endless supply of maladaptive and self destructive behaviors that stem from the condition. Poor time management, hyper focusing on non priority tasks, over committing and procrastination are just a few examples of how my ADHD can manifest in ways that feel counterproductive. And what we're talking about here is this view of ourself as our worst self.

[William Curb]

That self of ours that comes out.

[Co-host]

In ways that we may later regret or that seem to work against our own interests. And with adhd, these moments can be frequent and frustrating. There have been many times when I've thought about this worst self of mine.

[William Curb]

And how I wish I could just.

[Co-host]

Undo all this bad inside of me. I mean, looking around online, it isn't hard to find people who are prescribing how you can become your best self. However, many of our worst selves behaviors do not indicate our value as people. Instead, they were a reflection of our unmet needs and coping mechanisms. So in today's episode we're going to be talking about this worst self of ours, how it manifested, why perhaps we should have a bit more empathy for these maladaptive behaviors, and also how we can work on moving forward to perhaps not our best self, but at least possibly a better one. If you'd like to follow along on the Show Notes page, you can find [e-mail]188 I also wanted to let you know about the Hacking youg ADHD newsletter. Any and all distractions and that's what.

[William Curb]

This newsletter is all about.

[Co-host]

The things that have caught my interest over the past week that I think also might be interesting to you. In it, I bring you the top things of the week that have caught my attention from the world of ADHD and beyond.

[William Curb]

If that sounds like something you'd like.

[Co-host]

In your inbox, just head over to hackingyouradhd.com newsletter and sign up.

[William Curb]

Alright. Keep on listening to find out how.

[Co-host]

Maybe I'm not actually my own worst enemy.

[William Curb]

Our worst selves often emerge when we're trying to make up for ways that ADHD impacts our lives. So it's essential to keep in mind that these behaviors manifest for a reason, such as when we are trying to compensate for something. For instance, over committing might stem from a desire to prove our capabilities or to avoid disappointing others, while procrastination can be a response to fear of failure or perfectionism, while other times they will manifest directly because of our adhd. Poor time management might arise from our struggles to prioritize or inability to estimate how long activities will take. Hyper focusing on non priority tasks and help avoid the overwhelming anxiety of starting a high priority project, or simply be a way for us to build stimulation during an otherwise unstimulating activity. This is an essential idea for us to embrace. Often when we think about these habits and behaviors that we see in our worst selves, we simply see them as something that needs to be excised. If I'm procrastinating and think, well, maybe I should just do the Thing that I just shouldn't procrastinate, and I'll stand up and walk over to the thing I'm supposed to be doing and then just stare at admit before wandering away because I didn't address the actual reason I was procrastinating. Procrastination can come from many different sources, and if I'm not addressing the cause and I'm just trying to address the symptoms, which in this case is the procrastination itself, then I'm not going to be making any progress in solving the problem. If it's perfectionism, then I need to redefine what done looks like. Maybe I'm understimulated and I need to.

[Co-host]

Make the task more interesting.

[William Curb]

Perhaps I don't know where to start, and I need to break down the task into more manageable pieces. Each of those reasons for procrastination requires a different approach to solving the problem. I can't just say procrastination be gone and expect any results. Although now that I say it, that.

[Co-host]

Does feel kind of fun.

[William Curb]

So that might work just a little bit. And this is true for many of our maladaptive behaviors. These behaviors happen for a reason, and if we can work on identifying the root behavior, then that puts us into the right direction of modifying these outcomes. Of course, this doesn't mean that we'll always find simple and easy solutions. In fact, most of the time we will see that we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves, especially on those maladaptive behaviors that have been really baked in. We're also going to find that many of these behaviors aren't just a result of a single source. For example, I may go, well, my perfectionism comes from my desire to not disappoint people. But then I have to work on figuring out why it's so important for me to not disappoint people. And that in turn may lead to something else as well. Now, I do want to be clear here that I'm not trying to absolve anyone of the consequences of our worst selves. Some of the more extreme maladaptive behaviors we can develop, like anger issues, addiction, or self harm, can have dire consequences. Rather, this episode is aiming at trying to build that gap of empathy that we might have in regards to those behaviors. While it may seem that we shouldn't have empathy for these behaviors, it's important to realize that they don't exist in a vacuum. If we want to start modifying the behaviors, then it's also important to understand why we develop them in the first place. Coming from a place of judgment isn't going to help us find a solution. And I often find that the judgment itself obfuscates the reason. If I have an angry outburst and label it as me just being a bad person, well, that's not especially helpful for trying to correct that behavior in the future. But if I can step back and say, well, that was probably because I had a bad night's sleep and I skipped breakfast, okay, well then that's something.

[Co-host]

I can work on.

[William Curb]

But not just in terms of hey, I need to take better care of myself, but also I can go, hey, when I'm not taking care of myself, I'm more likely to get irrationally angry at small things. I should watch out for the signs that I'm heading into that mental state so I can head those things off so I don't blow up like that again. I can work on identifying the mental habits that lead to that kind of reaction and see if I can adjust so that even when I'm cranky, I'm also not blowing up this Self compassion is one of the most critical steps in managing our adhd. It's easy to fall into the trap of negative self talk where we berate ourselves for perceived failures and shortcomings, especially these maladaptive behaviors. However, this only exacerbates the problem by reinforcing feelings of inadequacy and creating other maladaptive behaviors to try and make up for them. Negative self talk itself tends to be a maladaptive behavior that we often develop to try and preemptively protect ourselves from from what we think we'll hear from others. I know for me, it frequently came out of the form of self deprecating humor. No one can make fun of me about how late I or forgetful I am if I'm ahead of the game and I'm the one making the jokes. Now, to be sure, this isn't the case for everyone, but more often than not, when I see someone making a joke at their own expense, I can bet that it's probably something that they're actually really sensitive about. Again, this is where I think it's essential for us to have empathy for ourselves. If we can work on understanding that we're being mean to ourselves in order to protect ourselves, it can help us see how maybe that isn't the best approach for what we're trying to achieve, because maybe making myself feel bad isn't the best way to keep me from feeling bad. And again, having realizations like this doesn't make the process of Changing those hardbake habits suddenly easy. If I've been using self deprecating humor for years, it's going to be hard to break out of that habit. I know. When I started working on overcoming some of my negative self talk, I had the thought, man, I'm such a piece of trash. Wait, no, I shouldn't call myself trash. Yeah, only a piece of trash would call themselves trash. Thanks for that piece of wisdom, brain. Of course I responded to the course correction with more negative self talk because that was the habit I had already developed. Fortunately for me, I found the humor in this particular situation and the absurdity helped me work through the moment and we can build on these ideas as we choose to approach our worst selves with empathy. We can recognize that these behaviors are not signs of weakness or moral failings, but as a response to difficult circumstances. By understanding the root cause of our actions, we can begin to address them more effectively, and we can also consider some of the ways that our other worst self behaviors develop. Right now I'm thinking about things like being lazy, which I find is something that often comes up when I'm thinking about my worst self. I mean, I'm not doing all of those things I want to be doing, so it fits right in there real nice, huh? Now I've done episodes before about how being lazy really isn't a thing, but for this episode I'm going to focus on an economic idea I have a bit of a problem with, but I think still helps illustrate what I'm talking about. And that's the idea of maximizing versus satisficing. The basic idea is that maximizing involves seeking the best possible outcome, while satisficing is about settling for a good enough outcome. My problem with this idea is that I feel like maximizing has a problem with definitions because it's about maximizing our outcome. But the maximum outcome is subjective. I've seen this concept in terms of something like finding lunch. A maximizer will spend time finding the best restaurant that's going to give them the best lunch experience, while a satisficer is going to find one that's good enough. But that defines the end goal there as best lunch experience. What if I'm maximizing the speed of getting food into my mouth? Or what if I'm on a budget and I'm maximizing my bang for my buck? Both of those are valid things to maximize that the best lunch experience maximizer would view as satisficing. The point here is that we're often maximizing for something but it isn't always the best possible outcome in terms of our adhd, we're often optimizing ourselves for less desirable long term outcomes in favor of immediate satisfaction. Instead of hanging up my coat, I'll toss it in the corner because that's faster. And I'm optimizing for speed here, even though realistically it would only take me seconds to hang that thing up. What this means is this whole idea is one of priorities. What's important to me now versus what's important to me in the future. So let's go back to laziness. I tend to find that what we define as laziness is really about us not meeting our needs. Because when we step back and look at the reasons behind why we're not doing something, it's rarely because I just don't want to do it. Although that is also a perfectly valid reason. And let's start with this. I don't wanna what's the reason behind what we don't want to do? Is is it a lack of motivation? Is it because it's genuinely an unpleasant task? Because those are solvable problems, or at least problems where we can alleviate some of that burden. If it's motivation, we can work on figuring out what would make it more interesting for us to do. Maybe you need to listen to some music while doing it, or figuring out a reward to go along with completing that task. And if it's just genuinely unpleasant, we can figure out what would make it less unpleasant. And here I'm thinking about maybe cleaning something gross where a good pair of gloves and some air freshener could help. Of course that isn't going to make it more enjoyable, but it might make it more bearable. Or maybe we have something like we want to start going to the gym more, but we're finding that after work we're just so exhausted we can't get ourselves to make it happen. Labeling ourselves lazy here would be easy, but pushing through that resistance probably isn't the answer either. The first thing to look at here is whether or not we're giving ourselves enough rest to have that energy. But it also could be simply an issue of timing. Maybe going to the gym right after work isn't the best time for you, but you might have better luck working out in the morning or the evening. Our energy levels will always fluctuate throughout the day, so we're going to have times when doing things like going and working out will be harder and times when they'll be easier. The point here is that often the piece of the picture we're missing when we're thinking about our worst self is that maybe our worst self is coming out to meet those unmet needs that we're just trying to ignore. Sure, it would be awesome if I had infinite motivation and energy throughout the day, but no one has that, and this applies just well beyond physical energy. We also need emotional connection, mental stimulation, and doing things that bring meaning to our lives. When we're not purposefully meeting these needs, we'll find other ways to compensate for them. This is where we can see many maladaptive behaviors coming out. If we're missing something, like finding meaning in our lives, it's easy to turn to things that will numb those feelings instead of seeking out what we need. This means that if you're trying to correct that behavior of, say, just zoning out in front of your TV while scrolling on your phone for hours, you need to find something that will fill those holes. Behaviors are filling, and it's not an easy path, but it's certainly a more fulfilling one. I know a few months ago I did an episode about Gabor Mate's interpretation of ADHD and how I didn't agree with him there. But right now I'm thinking of a quote of his regarding addiction, which goes, ask not why the addiction, but why the pain? And that really sums up what this episode is about. We want to go beyond just looking at the behavior and see what's driving it. What's the underlying trigger driving the behavior? If we're seeking to better ourselves, we must go beyond treating the symptoms. While it's easy to assign moralistic values to the behavior of our worst self, I think it's important to step back and just acknowledge that the behavior is what it is and view it as something we developed for survival. Sure, it wasn't the best way for our brains to go about things, but it worked with what it had. With that in mind, we can work on setting realistic goals for modifying our behavior. We want to focus on making sure that we're meeting our needs and doing the things that align with who we want to be. The focus here is on creating realistic routines and habits for us to keep up with. This isn't about instantly becoming our best self overnight. Instead, we're just doing a bit of course correction to try and get to the place that we actually want to end up at. There are going to be a lot of ups and downs with this process, so it's important that we're coming at it with empathy and understanding that it won't be easy and that it will take time. Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end. Before you go though, let's do a.

[Co-host]

Quick rundown of today's top tips.

[William Curb]

1. Approach the idea of your worst self with empathy.

[Co-host]

Focus on the fact that you develop these maladaptive behaviors for a reason.

[William Curb]

2.

[Co-host]

Pay attention to situations and emotions that trigger your worst behaviors to anticipate and.

[William Curb]

Manage them more effectively. 3.

[Co-host]

Often our maladaptive behaviors come out when we're not doing a good job of.

[William Curb]

Meeting our basic needs.

[Co-host]

If we're engaging in numbing behaviors, we can look below the symptoms to try and see what's really setting them off.

[William Curb]

That's it. Thanks for listening.

[Co-host]

I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me [e-mail] contact if you'd like links or to.

[William Curb]

Read this episode's transcript, you can go.

[Co-host]

To the show notes [e-mail]188 and now.

[William Curb]

For your moment of dad. If you spell the word absolutely nothing.

[Co-host]

Backwards, you get gilton get, which coincidentally means absolutely nothing.

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