Nutritional Mental Health Podcast: ADHD, Chronic Illness, and Therapy with Destiny Davis
Intro
Annika (Host): Coming up on the podcast — if there’s anybody out there telling you that talk therapy will cure your trauma and therefore cure your chronic illness, please run. Today’s conversation is with Destiny Davis, a therapist who specializes in ADHD and chronic illness. We can talk about the idea of productivity and overt productivity from like a capitalistic, societal, toxic-productivity kind of place, and that is absolutely true. But I also think that when you have ADHD, we just tend to have a lot of energy and we need to use it. If you’ve ever felt guilty about not being productive enough, scrolled all morning instead of working, or wondered why you can’t just do better — with chronic illness, you almost learn not to trust your body, and then with ADHD, your body sometimes doesn’t really exist. This conversation is for you. The way that I see guilt is that it’s data. Guilt simply illuminates what’s important to you.
Welcome to the Nutritional Mental Health Podcast, the podcast where we explore the intersection of nutrition and psychological science. I’m Annika, an ADHD nutrition research expert with my master’s in health psychology. If you’re not driving and you’ve listened to a few of these episodes before, take two seconds and rate the show so the algorithm knows to send more people here. Thanks again for listening, and now let’s get into the episode.
What Therapy Can (and Can’t) Do for Chronic Illness
Destiny Davis: Yeah. So all of my clients have chronic illnesses and usually ADHD. And we are working a lot on the whole person. I have a specific scope of practice that I stay within, but the whole person comes into therapy. So every topic of your life — finances, health, relationships, work, stress — all of that comes into the therapy room.
Annika: What I’m curious about is how do you even balance therapy with knowing that the fact that your clients are having these chronic illnesses is what is at the root of most of it?
Destiny Davis: Yeah, I think that’s a good question, because I think a lot of people living with chronic illness ask the same question — like, what can therapy do for me if this isn’t going away? So not like therapy will cure it. If there’s anybody out there telling you that talk therapy will cure your trauma and therefore cure your chronic illness, please run. But it can help in some ways — just don’t expect a miracle cure. I think about my sister. She definitely needed therapy and was having chronic migraines every single day, but the therapy didn’t help. It was literally getting outside of the environment that was putting her body in chronic fight or flight.
Annika: Yes.
Destiny Davis: And so therapy usually helps with that. A lot of times people can’t get themselves to leave a situation until they’ve worked through some of the fear and the mental blocks, as well as some logistical blocks — like if they don’t have the money to leave a bad situation but they need it, things like that. So in therapy, one of the core concepts we help clients work on, which sounds really simple but can be really deep and meaningful, is figuring out what you can control versus what you can’t. A lot of times people spend a lot of energy on the things they can’t control and very little energy on the things they can. So sometimes having somebody who’s an outside, unbiased third party — who can see it a little more clearly than maybe your friend or your sister or your parents — we can help you figure those things out without judgment. Bringing in self-compassion, reducing shame. You know, if you’ve ever said, “Yeah, I know I shouldn’t judge myself” — as soon as I hear a “should,” I’m like, okay, well there’s more work to do, because you’re telling me that you should, but you can’t, and you don’t know how, and I can help you through that. Sometimes it takes a lot of talk, a lot of mindful awareness, a lot of conversation week after week after week. Other times I work with people for like six sessions and they’re like, “That was exactly what I needed, I’m good to go now — maybe I’ll come back next time for one small thing I want to work through.”
Guilt as Data, Not Shame
Annika: When you brought that up, all I could think about was how people with ADHD have a very difficult time knowing what is realistic and what is actually in their control. And that’s coming from someone who has done a lot of work, and I still — you’ll do too much and think you can do more, when in reality that’s just burning me out. And then I’ll tell my husband, “I feel like I can do this, but for some reason it’s not working.” And then he’ll tell me, “Have you considered maybe you can’t? How does that sit with you?”
Destiny Davis: Oh, it’s all — he’s so real with me.
Annika: Oh my goodness. It’s always a wake-up call, honestly. Because it sucks when you feel like you’re not doing a lot —
Destiny Davis: Yes.
Annika: — and then you’re still not doing a lot after.
Destiny Davis: Yes. And I think we can talk about the idea of productivity and overt productivity from a capitalistic, societal, toxic-productivity place, and that is absolutely true. But I also think that when you have ADHD, we just tend to have a lot of energy and we need to use it — and you can use that in whatever way feels most beneficial to your life. Sometimes that means logistically, like I have to use that for survival, to go to a job and make money and pay for the house over my head and the food on my table. Other times, once you get a little more financially stable — you know where your money’s coming from, you know what your bills are — you can spend some of your energy less on survival and a little more on the wants of life. Now it’s more of that “what can you control versus what you can’t,” and do you want to spend your energy chasing something bigger all the time? You get to make that choice. But where will it be enough? If you see it as a habitual thing that’s just happening because of our ADHD brain — like it can go on a hamster wheel and never stop — then you have to be real with yourself about that. But you don’t have to squash your dreams because of it. I think that’s how the conversation usually goes for ADHDers. It’s either “I want to do so much and I have all this mental energy, I don’t have the physical energy, and I feel like a failure” — and it feels very black and white. One of my favorite values is creativity and curiosity. You have to be really curious about what’s important to you, and where you want to spend your energy because of what’s important to you. But “what’s important to you” can be a really deep question. It’s easy to say, “My family, my dog, the house over my head.” Great. But when you’re spending your free time doing something, are you doing that in the direction of what makes your life meaningful — so that when you look back in five years or fifty years, you get to say, “I spent my time the way I wanted to”?
Annika: That just brings up how I feel like I wasted my entire morning, because I didn’t do anything until we talked and it’s 1:00 right now. And just that feeling of guilt — I mean, probably something to work through, right? But also it feels like I didn’t choose to spend my time the way that I wanted to. Even though in the moment maybe I wanted to not do anything, but it felt really hard to get out of sitting and scrolling.
Destiny Davis: Totally. And this is why therapy can be so important with someone who understands ADHD, because it’s not as simple as “what do you want to do versus what you don’t want to do.” It’s also what is your brain capable of, and what is your body capable of. That’s where the chronic illness piece comes in as well, for me and my clients. I’ll also say one thing about the guilt feeling around working through it — the way that I see guilt is that it’s data. Guilt is “I did something wrong,” and shame is “I am someone wrong.” I’ve had so many mornings where I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t do anything all morning. I should have, because it would have been productive for the things I want out of life — whether it’s my own podcast that I’m trying to edit or whatever it is.” Yes, if I had gotten up and done something this morning, that energy would have been well spent and gotten me closer to my goals. So I have some guilt sitting with me around not doing that. Guilt simply illuminates what’s important to you. So if you look at it as data, the question doesn’t just become “okay, this is important to me, how do I make myself do it tomorrow.” The question becomes: what was so hard about getting up? Do I need a body double? Was it fatigue from a chronic illness? Was it too many decisions this morning — every morning I wake up with ten decisions to make, so I need to simplify that? Is it really cold out and my bones hurt when it’s cold? There are so many different ways to solve that problem — none of which are “you should just do better tomorrow.” That’s usually what the narrative sounds like.
Annika: Now that you bring that up — this usually happens when my husband goes off to work instead of working at home. It feels like I don’t exist a lot of the time when I don’t have my husband.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. And is that an “only him” thing, or an “anybody you just like to be around” thing?
Annika: Probably an anybody thing. It’s just consistent, like we make up — we’re in the same house. I’ve observed that means I can do things.
Destiny Davis: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, I think the body double concept is so big and important for people with ADHD. If this were me, trying to figure it out for myself, I would have a reflective session around it — like, what do I need to do to either change it so I can be productive during those mornings, or the opposite: can I allow that to be my rest mornings? If he’s gone, I’m just going to automatically know that’s not a day I’m getting anything done. I’m not going to plan for that, not going to try for that. A lot of times that feels like failure. But what you find when you start to allow and accept — for a lot of us who like to do a lot and are scared to not — I think there’s a fear that if we allow ourselves to rest or not be productive, we’re going to get stuck in that momentum, because that’s common with ADHD too. We get stuck in hyperfixation, whether that’s something highly productive or “sloth behavior.” An object in motion stays in motion. So we get really scared of those moments we don’t want to stay in. But if you know what motivates you — being around people, or something to look forward to, whatever it is — then you know you’re going to have another moment where you’re not going to just stay in sloth land for the next seven days, if you know something is coming to help you out of it.
Annika: I think that is actually the key — the awareness that it’s coming. I know I’ve talked about that with my own therapist — “I feel like I don’t really exist without my husband or somebody observing me.” But I feel like I just connected it right now: what that means is I just have the awareness that it’s harder. That doesn’t mean I can now consciously choose, I guess is what I’m saying.
Destiny Davis: Yeah.
Annika: Instead of letting it happen.
Destiny Davis: Yes. And if you can eliminate even the shame around it — the guilt serves a purpose for a moment, in reflection, to figure out what you want to be next. But then if you have this conscious awareness and you decide, “Yeah, on those mornings I’m not going to do anything,” then we don’t need to keep feeling guilt around it. We just decide that’s what we’re going to let happen. And if for some reason you do end up feeling guilt after that, maybe it just means your decision wasn’t what your inner self wanted.
Annika: Yeah, that could be true.
Destiny Davis: Yeah, it could definitely be the case. And then again, as long as you use that as data to reflect and make another decision later, then I think that’s great. But it can’t be indicative of your self-worth.
Money, Safety, and the Biopsychosocial Model
Annika: Yeah. You mentioned something earlier about getting more money and that opening up your ability to have more choice essentially about what you want to do. And that really just brings me back to what you were saying with the whole-person approach. So let’s break that down — what is the biopsychosocial model?
Destiny Davis: Yeah. So the biopsychosocial model of any kind of treatment — the bio is the biology, so that’s physically what’s happening in your body. The psycho is the emotional part, and the social part is the societal part. This is actually what I’ll be talking about, along with all of our speakers, at our conference in March in Atlanta, March 2026. We’ll be doing a conference for health professionals to continue getting practice seeing their clients and patients through a biopsychosocial lens — to look at the whole person. So the money part comes into both the psycho-emotional part and the social/societal part. I don’t want to be too prescriptive or black-and-white around the money thing. I think it’s really not about the dollar amount in your bank account — it’s more about the resources you have around you. This can go one of two ways. Sometimes I work with people in their late 20s, early 30s, who still live at home with their parents. They have a lot of shame around that. But given everything in our society at this moment, it makes perfect sense. We went to college for four or eight years and spent time learning — that used to be a thing only the privileged, wealthiest class in this country could do, not only because education costs money, but because of the time it takes to learn. There aren’t enough hours in the day to learn everything you have to learn and also work enough in this country to make enough money to live. So if living with your parents lets you learn the things you want to learn, to give you meaning and purpose in your life, then I encourage that any day of the week — unless there’s some kind of toxic environment with the parents that’s actually bad for your mental health, then okay, we’re talking about something different. But for folks who have a good relationship, or even a semi-good relationship, with their parents, I think it can be such a great thing. Money is really fascinating — there’s a lot of psychology behind it. There’s a lot we can do around a client’s financial situation, even if we can’t get them a raise. Money really is also the psychological aspect of safety and security. So if you don’t have enough — or if you don’t perceive that you have enough — then your body believes it’s unsafe.
Chasing the Next Level (and Never Feeling Like Enough)
Annika: Totally.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. And I always want to give the caveat first that when we’re talking about feelings around money, we want to really acknowledge that some people really don’t have enough. If we’re talking anything mindset here, that’s not where I’m going with it. But sometimes we do have enough and it doesn’t feel like we have enough, especially when we want more — a certain level. I think you and I can relate to this around our work — we have ideas and projects and passion around the work we do. There’s a trap you can fall into: you reach a level and you’re not even sitting here appreciating this level, you’re just going to the next level and saying, “See, I never have enough.” I think that’s a trap a lot of people with ADHD experience, because that’s what we do to ourselves.
Annika: Yeah. We’ll reach a goal and we’ll forget that we did that, essentially.
Destiny Davis: Yes. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Annika: Totally.
Destiny Davis: And sometimes it’s really helpful to have friends — if you have anyone in your group who’s really good at celebrating things, making a thing out of it. I’ve had friends who, when I graduated grad school, were like, “We have to have a party.” I’m not good at that at all. So when she implemented that, I could have said “no, no, no,” but instead — she’s going to play that role in my life of keeping me grounded in, “Hey, you achieved this, let’s acknowledge it.” Anytime you can get external help like that with the things you’re not good at — obviously you can’t just create a friend out of thin air who does that — but I think as people with ADHD, we tend to miss that whole object permanence concept. We don’t see things that aren’t in front of us. So if our friends are somewhere else and we know they’re in our life, we might forget about it. Really putting a conscious effort around reaching out to those people — “Hey, I’m graduating this weekend, can we do something?” — and knowing they’re going to pick up the slack there. I think it’s important to have little anchors like that, little things you can implement in your life. You don’t have to be good at it. I think that’s the other problem — we feel like if we’re not good at it, what’s the point, we’ve got to be perfect at it otherwise it’s not worth doing. That’s another trap we can get into.
Annika: Very large trap — that black-and-white thinking, especially around perfectionism.
Destiny Davis: Yes.
Annika: Yeah, we fall into that trap way too many times.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. And again, you use it as data — that’s kind of where I go now with all emotions. If you can acknowledge that there’s a part of you that feels a lot of shame around different emotions — even if it’s still like, “I know I shouldn’t be perfectionistic” — if you can just get rid of that part and say, “Okay, but it’s data. I’m feeling perfectionistic, and that is preventing me from what? And what am I really scared of? Am I scared of failing? Am I scared of actually succeeding? Am I scared of succeeding and being alone still?” Maybe this is really about that — really reflecting on what that fear is, especially in the chronic illness community. Am I worried that maybe I know I can succeed — I’m actually not worried about my ability to succeed, but will I spend so much energy to get there that I’m going to be exhausted to even enjoy it?
Annika (mid-episode note): If you’ve been enjoying this episode, you might like to know I teach you how to reduce your ADHD symptoms using food every single week for free in your email inbox. To sign up for my email list, tap that link in the notes below. For more personalized support, join my monthly membership, where you get one-on-one support from me, a new monthly ebook — like this month’s on no-think breakfast and lunch options that still help your ADHD — and also early access to my blogs and YouTube videos. If memberships aren’t your thing, go to my store and get the ADHD Nutrition Manual, my eight-ebook collection that teaches you first how to understand your body cues and develop a regulated nervous system through an ADHD lens, then dives into how to best help your ADHD using real nutrition science. There’s also support guides, like an ADHD example menu. Finally, I just released my first cookbook, called the Eat to Focus Cookbook, with my friend Katherine Cassidy. If you ever wanted to stop thinking about what to eat and start eating for your brain, this is the cookbook for you. To learn more and get your own copy — we’re hand-shipping them ourselves — check out the description. Now, let’s get back into it.
Beware of Anyone Selling a “Cure”
Annika: How do you see the intersection between chronic illness and, say, finances or social supports? What comes up as being more difficult, and what are some areas you’ve noticed are helpful?
Destiny Davis: Yeah, I just did a workshop last weekend and invited a financial social worker to one of my monthly workshops that I put on for anyone with chronic illness, for the general population community. She gave a ton of resources — I’m not a financial therapist, so it’s way beyond my scope, but she gave so many resources. I think it’s important to remember that you’re not supposed to know everything — you’re just supposed to be willing to learn. If you can learn about what your biggest need is right now — is it community, is it getting food on the table, is it managing your medical debt, getting that out of the way or managed with a plan — what is most important to you, and then can you find resources to help you with that and stop trying to do it alone? That’s why I built a lot of the program, the workshops and teachings I put out there — because there are things out there for us, whether that’s aid and resources statewide, local aid, or federal aid. There are resources out there. Nonprofits often put a lot of education and financial programs out there. Sometimes it’s hard to know which direction to go into, but if you can find someone you trust — whether that’s an influencer online, fine — just make sure they’re not selling some kind of false hope or cure, and are actually trying to provide resources. What I see being a large issue, especially online, is people selling us cures — which is basically selling us hope.
Annika: Yeah.
Destiny Davis: And then it doesn’t work, because you can’t just cure some of this.
Annika: No, exactly.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. I had a therapist ask the other day, “How do I know when I’m stepping out of my scope of practice?” She was referring to nervous system regulation work and how it can help mitigate certain chronic illness symptoms — and there’s a lot of programs out there now that basically claim to cure your chronic illness through somatic work. Nervous system regulation tools absolutely work for regulating your nervous system — breaking you out of fight or flight and into a place of connectedness and groundedness. The reason she was getting tripped up — and I’ve been exactly where she is — was this confusion of, “Am I trying to help them cure their illness through nervous system regulation, or am I trying to help them just feel less anxious about it?” When we as therapists stay in our scope of practice and our lane, we can use all the nervous system regulation tools, but we don’t promote it as a cure. If you have a reduction in migraines because your migraines were tension migraines and you’ve learned how to relax the tension in your body, that doesn’t mean I have some magic migraine cure. It just means that of the forty-plus different causes of migraines, you happen to have one I could help with. I’m not a neurologist and I can’t tell you where your migraines are coming from — it could be a mixture of tension plus something hormonal plus something environmental. So, yeah, I probably got a little off track there.
Treating the Whole Person, Not Just the Symptoms
Annika: No, that was perfect, because that brings it all back to seeing it as the whole person — because there really is no way we exist in only one of those aspects of the model.
Destiny Davis: Exactly. And this is where medicine has gone really wrong — they only focus on the bio. “You have migraines, you have ADHD, here’s this stimulant for it, here’s this migraine medication for it — alright, go on.” It’s just touching the biological aspect. Granted, they don’t have the time — I don’t blame them — they don’t have the time to go into someone’s life story and all the different nuances that come along with trying to get through your own personal blocks, as well as societal blocks, to do some of these behaviors and actions that are important to you. But that’s where therapy comes in. And if we can get therapists, doctors, physical therapists, registered dietitians, occupational therapists together, and do this work together instead of siloed — private practice here, private practice there, hospital here, this there — if we can get together and talk to each other, that’s going to make all the difference. That’s why I love having all of my practitioners in the same — it’s not a network, but the same overarching brand, I don’t know what you call that.
Annika: Yeah, like a clinic.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. So they all talk to each other, and I don’t have to sign ROIs, releases of information, and I know for sure they can all see every part of my chart.
Annika: It’s so convenient.
Destiny Davis: Totally. Yes. But it also requires them to want to look at that.
Annika: Yeah.
Destiny Davis: I agree. I think sometimes even when people have that system, they still find there’s this kind of disconnect — “Hello, it was in my chart, why are you acting like you have no idea?” But that comes down again to that willingness. Not only willingness — I want to be very fair here — the systems these medical professionals have to work in do not allow for that kind of time. It’s awful. Especially now, with private equity and venture capitalist influence, it’s getting even worse. So we’ll see what happens there. But my hope and goal is that I can reach enough medical professionals, and also non-medical professionals, to advocate for themselves — “Hey, I know you might not be able to do much better than this seven-minute appointment, but can you please lead me to a resource?” Just to be able to say, “I don’t have time to explain the education of this, but here’s a YouTube video I trust from a medical professional.” That’s so easy to do these days — it doesn’t take any time, they just have to know the resources are there.
Navigating a Broken Healthcare System
Annika: That brings me to thinking — what can a healthcare professional do if they only have so much time, and say they know their client has ADHD, and there’s all this information they want to give them — how can we make sure the person with ADHD is being taken care of?
Destiny Davis: Yeah. I think with those handouts, you literally have to have a caveat written somewhere — or maybe you make your own brochure. A doctor can make their own brochure and hand this note out to their ADHD clients: “Here are the things we know that motivate ADHDers — urgency, mirror neurons, body doubling, interest.” Just lay it out there. “The work I’m asking you to listen to, the education I’m asking you to engage with, is hard and it requires some support. I don’t have the ability to offer that support here, but here’s a great therapist that can, or an ADHD coach” — I believe coaches have a place in this, especially for shorter bursts, like 20-minute check-ins throughout the week, which is really important. So it’s really just not denying the truth of the matter — “I’ve got ten YouTube videos that are really good for you to watch about your condition, whether it’s ADHD or ADHD and another condition, and I know it’s going to be really hard for you to watch this on your own. Please bring this up with your therapist or coach if you have one” — which requires getting to know your patients a little more than they usually can. But again, offer them a menu of options and say, “The motivation behind this is going to be hard, here are some ways we know can increase motivation,” and then the rest is really up to the patient at that point. There’s really only so much the doctor can do.
The Hidden Load of Taking Medication
Annika: One thing I think about is even with taking medication — say you’re prescribed medication, there’s a lot of barriers to getting that medication, whether you have some sort of chronic illness or it’s just ADHD.
Destiny Davis: Yeah.
Annika: You have to go to the pharmacy, you have to actually pay for it in a lot of cases, you have to remember to take it consistently every single day, and you have to navigate the side effects.
Destiny Davis: Yep.
Annika: It’s a lot of information. And I know for people who have chronic illness, also people with ADHD, information overload is a huge thing, because then your brain is just working too much.
Destiny Davis: Yeah.
Annika: And then you don’t have the energy to follow through with anything.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. I think when it comes to that, what I’d want people to hear — the non-medical professionals, just the patient with ADHD — is back to what we talked about earlier around productivity and shame. Especially when it’s something for your health, there’s so much shame, because it’s like, “Well, I need to be doing this to feel better, so if I can’t do this and I don’t feel better, I have no one to blame but myself.” That’s usually what it sounds like. But if you can take that shameful part away and say, “I simply didn’t have the bandwidth — mental, emotional, or physical — to finish this today, the thing I was supposed to watch,” or “Maybe I did watch it, but I couldn’t really absorb or navigate how much information was in there” — then watch it again tomorrow. Don’t berate yourself for not being able to absorb it all. Yes, watching it again tomorrow is going to be hard and not highly motivating, because now there’s the extra obstacle of “well, I already watched this once and didn’t get it the first time, why would I do it again” — but the answer is because you will gain something more the second time, and something will click that didn’t click before. So either it’s the wrong type of education and you need to seek something else out, or it’s the right education, but because of how our brains work it was just really hard for you, and you’ve got to watch it multiple times. Sometimes it’s that hard truth of what is within my control and what isn’t, and if something isn’t working, what can I do about it in a way that isn’t shame-based, and gives myself so much grace and patience and the opportunity to keep trying.
Annika: I think that sounds like the key — recognizing when something isn’t working, and instead of shaming ourselves for not being able to complete it or do it in the way we thought we should be able to, just recognizing that maybe the issue isn’t ourselves, but rather our approach.
Destiny Davis: Yeah.
Annika: Or our expectations of ourselves.
Destiny Davis: Exactly.
Fixing What You Can Fix
Annika: Yeah. Thinking about obviously my own life, because that’s who I am, that’s all I got. But also people I’ve worked with in the past — I used to work in in-home mental health, where I helped people with serious and persistent mental illnesses navigate the world we live in. Honestly, most of the issues were stemming from financial insecurity.
Destiny Davis: Yes.
Annika: And we can’t do much about that, unfortunately. But what we could do was figure out — we can’t fix that part, but what are the aspects that we can fix?
Destiny Davis: Yeah.
Annika: Where can we get them closer to fixing?
Destiny Davis: Yes. Yeah. Like, if someone’s coming home from a long work day, and everybody has to come home and take a shower or take one in the morning — just choosing something you can say, “I actually do do this every single day.” What’s one small thing you can do during that moment? Are you usually thinking about your to-do list in the shower? Okay, can you put that to the side and put some music on? Give yourself a break from the grind in your brain, any little tiny moment throughout the day. There’s a funny reel going around online about this generation’s version of a smoke break — it’s blowing bubbles. And the reality is that when smoking was no longer the cool thing to do, which obviously good —
Annika: Love that. Here again, yep.
Destiny Davis: — it also took away those 15-minute breaks. That was literally something no one batted an eye at — you were allowed one to two 15-minute smoke breaks depending on the length of your shift. That was just so normalized. We need to have something that’s normalized like that again, that doesn’t blacken your lungs.
Annika: Yes. And that also applies even if you aren’t able to work.
Destiny Davis: Yeah, absolutely.
Annika: Instead of feeling stuck in your house all day, whether you’re mobile or immobile, whatever it is.
Destiny Davis: Yeah, absolutely. Literally right before this podcast, there were so many things I could do on my computer — I’m a little behind on a lot of things right now — but I was feeling really that coffee jitter, and I knew if I just kept pushing through it was going to lead to a migraine by the end of my sessions tonight. I went for a walk. I didn’t want to do that, but I did, because I knew it was what my body needed more than pushing through and getting stuff done on the computer. That’s just a small example.
Learning to Trust Your Body Again
Annika: I think that itself is something a lot of people don’t know about themselves, because with chronic illness, you almost learn not to trust your body anymore —
Destiny Davis: Mhm.
Annika: — and kind of try to avoid your body in general. And then with ADHD, very similar — your body sometimes doesn’t really exist, and you don’t remember when you need to eat something or take a walk, and it’s very confusing, because maybe your anxiety is just your body needing to move — issue.
Destiny Davis: Yeah. And I wonder if that’s where it comes to again, for how to help manage ourselves — understanding what our body is actually asking. But to do that, we have to be willing to sit with it.
Annika: Yes.
Destiny Davis: And be willing to hear “I don’t know” at first — because I think a lot of times, even especially my neurodivergent clients, who I love and resonate with, when I ask a question they don’t know the answer to, they just say “I don’t know,” and there’s a quick — “okay so what are we doing spending time here” — there’s an anxiousness, a frustration, and I get it. But then it’s my job to encourage — I didn’t ask that question with a shameful “you should know the answer right now, like we’re in fifth grade.” I’m asking the question to leave space and room for curiosity, so we can sit here in the silence while you think about it — which can also be really hard, even in therapy, because then there’s this time pressure, this “okay, I’ll think about it later.” So then again I have to kind of rally up and put some container there of “no, this is the space to do that, because you might not be able to do it alone later.”
Annika: Yeah, that’s why I love therapy with ADHD — because that’s the one space my brain has compartmentalized as being, “I can share emotion with this person, and we are exploring emotion, being serious about it, in this space and time.”
Destiny Davis: Totally.
Annika: Outside of that space and time, it’s still really hard for me to sit with my emotions.
Destiny Davis: Yeah, we’ll get there one day.
Destiny’s Conference and Community
Annika: One day. Tell me all about — you mentioned your conference.
Destiny Davis: Yes. So in March, March 6th and 7th, 2026, I’ll be hosting a large in-person conference. It will also be virtual for anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to travel. We’ll be taking a lot of COVID precautions and things like that, but it’s still always a risk to gather in person, so the virtual option is there for folks. It’s going to be a speaker panel of a sex therapist who works with sex and chronic pain, a physical therapist who does a lot of the emotional side of pain and helps people learn how to be with their body and be a partner to their body. We’ll be talking about neurodivergence and chronic illness. This conference is for any professional, and there will be CEs for therapists. Everybody else — we’re actually kind of making the talks so you can apply for CEs with your state boards, but we can’t guarantee it, because we don’t know everybody’s professions. But yeah, it’s great, because I think a lot of times all we need, as therapists and physical therapists and medical workers, is also that support that we’re telling our clients they should get. So this is my way of providing that support within the professional community.
Annika: I love that. People, especially if you’re a therapist listening to this, I’ll have that information in the description to go sign up and get your CEs.
Destiny Davis: Yes. And at the same time, learn more about how all this not just impacts your clients and how to work with them, but also you yourself.
Annika: Yep. Yeah.
Destiny Davis: Yes. And for anybody who’s not a therapist or medical professional, and you just have chronic illness — I do have a low-cost monthly membership with monthly workshops and support groups inside. There’s a sex and chronic pain support group, a general support group, and a monthly workshop. Last month’s was on finances and managing a chronic illness. So that’s for anybody who needs that kind of low-cost but also very supportive environment to come and learn without shame.
Annika: Incredible. That’ll be linked in the notes. Thank you so much. We’re talking, Destiny.
Destiny Davis: Thanks so much, Annika.
Annika: Thank you for listening to this episode. As always, I love to hear your comments, whether that’s in my email inbox or in the comment section here. Remember to check out the links I mentioned earlier in the description. I wish you a lovely day or evening, and I will see you next time.