The Life Of Bryony - The Life of You – From Success Amnesia to Self-Awareness: Alex Partridge’s Must-Have Tools

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Alex Partridge is back with me to share three essentials for coping with life as someone with ADHD. We talk about what it means to live in the “now”, how to quieten imposter syndrome, and why so many of us develop what Alex calls “success amnesia” and forget our achievements almost as soon as they’ve happened. Alex also shares the tiny daily practices that can gently build self-awareness, and explains why finding your people isn’t a luxury but a total lifesaver when your brain works differently. If you’ve ever felt “too much”, “not enough”, or just completely alone in how you experience the world, this one’s for you.BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODEAlex’s new book ‘Why Does Everyone Hate Me?’ is released on 24th March 2026 and is available to pre-order now.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xxCREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Alex PartridgeProducer: Laura Elwood-CraigAssistant Producer: Tippi WillardStudio Manager: Sam ChisholmEditor: Luke ShelleyExec Producer: Jamie East  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, lovely people, and welcome to the bonus edition of The Life of Briney. Today, Alex Partridge is lifting the lid on the three things that are absolutely non-negotiable for his well-being as a person with ADHD. The pillars that keep him grounded when the caffeinated squirrels in his brain get a little too loud. The risk is if you are someone who truly believes that you're on your own and you are the only person experiencing these volatile swings sometimes, it can feel very isolating. There's nothing more soothing than realizing that you're not alone in how you thought everyone else lived their life a certain way

and you're the only one with these various struggles. My chat with Alex coming up right after this. Partridge, welcome to the life of you. you, a host of ADHD chatter podcast. And so I thought I would ask you about the three essentials to coping with life as someone with ADHD. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Lovely to be here. The first one, I think, is really working on your imposter syndrome. Ooh. And people with ADHD typically have a very odd perception of time. We're either in the now, or we're in the not now.

And what I mean by that is you have a work assignment due in and it's maybe like two weeks time. So that's not in your now. So you kind of forget about it. And then the night before, suddenly it's in your now and you panic. You get a rush of adrenaline and you do it at the last minute and it's done. Probably to a high standard.

But because we always live in the now and it's only things that are happening right now that are important to us, we often forget about things that aren't in our now. And this also applies to achievements. And I think success amnesia, the actual practice of forgetting what we're good at is really prominent in ADHD. So we can do stuff to a really high standard. It can be praised. It can be really good.

But then time goes past and we forget that we're capable of doing it. So when the time comes to do it again, we don't think that we're capable of doing it. I'm writing this down, success amnesia. I love this. We forget what we can do. Yes. And, you know, the antidote to it is pretty simple. You have to really intentionally celebrate the wins and bring the evidence of those achievements into your now.

So, for example, I do a lot of public speaking. And often when I come off stage, thankfully, I speak to the audience. And they say that was a good talk. That was fun. That was, we enjoyed listening to you. And I really write those down. I write them down on a bit of paper or on my notes up. So when I do another talk and I genuinely am like, oh, my God, I'm the wrong person.

and why have they asked me. I don't deserve to be here. I don't know anything about any of this stuff. I read the notes from my last talk. I bring that evidence into my now, and it really goes a long way to silence that imposter syndrome and anxiety that wants to convince you that you're not qualified, you're not the right person to do this job.

Right. Okay. I think that's useful advice for anyone, really, who suffers from an imposterous syndrome. I think that's the one great thing about phones, smartphones. I'm generally quite anti. tech. I want to live in a cave with a stone, do you know what I mean? But I think the Notes app on the iPhone is the greatest invention ever. It's just brilliant. It just allows you to walk around with everything in your pocket. Like forget about the capabilities to listen to all the songs and

watch television on your phone and connect with people. It's like the Notes app is where it's at. Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. I totally agree with the Centre For me, it has to be physical, hard copy, real, hardback, like piece of paper that I can see. Because I think one of the biggest lies, so many people with ADHD tell themselves is this notebook will solve all my problems. I have so many notebooks that I've bought with that intention. And often... Is that an ADHD thing, buying notebooks and making lists? Absolutely.

Out of sight, out of mind. The thing with notebooks is they shut. Yeah, right. So the list disappears from your now. Same with, for me, the notes app on the phone. So for me, it has to be like a physical bit of paper or sometimes even a bracelet. Like I have a bracelet with charms on it. And each charm has a little almost like encrypted message of an achievement that I've done.

So I know what it means. So I can look at it and it's always in my now. Have you thought about getting a tattoo? Have you thought about tattooing all your achievements on your own? I think human beings were allowed like cats, like, you know, nine mistakes. And I went to Vegas and one of them was getting a tattoo of my exes. initial on my arm. So I'm quite skeptical of making another F. But yeah, and I'm six laser sessions three actually. So it's nearly gone. I have I have the word dazzle written on my wrist,

tattooed on my wrist to remind me to dazzle to not to not like turn my light down and dim my light. Well, there we go. I mean, you know, the reality is when things leave are now, we can forget they exist. We can put the washing machine on a cycle and we leave it and it's downstairs or we forget about it and we forget to empty it. Like it's the classic example and then you suddenly remember and it's damp. So you have to put it on again and it's that ADHD tax that keeps on hitting us. But it's about like putting visual reminders of everything in places that you will see all the time. And that can look like post-it notes on your fridge. That can look like keeping reusable shopping bags in your car because, I mean, I've got a cupboard full of reusable shopping bags

because I always forget to take them when I go to food shopping. But going back to like the main thing, I think imposter syndrome is such, so crippling for so many people, it holds you back, it makes you not want to put that foot forward because you don't feel qualified. But by like storing the evidence of your capabilities in a place that you see them often is such a great tip, I think, for people to get over that imposter syndrome. Right. Number two.

Working on your self-awareness. Really important. I think, as I've said, before, people with ADHD often don't have very good self-awareness. And that's not by any fault of their own. It's because they've masked for so long and they often don't really understand who they really are because they're so experts at masking. And simple self-awareness exercises, as often as you can, really basic questions, ask yourself, what happened today that made me happy?

what happened today that made me sad. What did I do today that I found easy? What did I do today that I struggled with? Really simple questions. Like, what conversations, what people did I walk away from feeling drained? What people, conversations did I walk away from feeling energized? Really simple questions. And a really big one, what do you do when no one's watching?

What do you do when you're on your own? What do you watch on TV? What music do you listen to? When I'm driving my car and I'm down a quiet country lane and I know no one can see me, I'm singing my heart out. What are you singing your heart out to? To be honest, Damien Rice.

Oh, okay. Very probably emotional underneath. Yeah, like a bit sad. Yeah, he gets me. But, you know, everyone has their own unique answers to these questions. And there you're in a child, screaming out, like reminding you of who you really are. I listened to a lot of Damien Rice in my 20s when I was drunk, like, and morose and dumped.

Yeah, I mean, he's great. Yeah, I couldn't listen to Damien Rice again now without being taken viscerally back to the year 2003. Yeah, I mean, often, you know, this applies to everyone. It's a song, isn't it? It's a smell. It's something that snatched you back to a memory. And in that moment, you can overwhelmingly burst into tears sometimes. You know, you walk through a busy supermarket and they're playing a Damien Rice song.

and you're like, damn, that breakup, and you can burst into tears. So instant and the overwhelmingness of that emotion can really hit you. So you're singing to Damien Rice. What are you watching? Oh, so for me, it depends what my current hyper obsession is. I typically struggle to stick at one topic. Like, I've been obsessed with the Titanic for the last, like, a couple of months. I went to the Titanic exhibition in London, love everything, know all the details about it.

Before that, it was the solar system and all the planets. space. Before that, it was the mating habits of blue whales. Like, where do they go? Right. Okay. Where do they? Very deep. Very deep. Yeah, basically. But yeah, so typically whatever. You know, that that in itself is an answer. I know that my attention is very sporadic and it jumps from one topic to the other. Rather than trying to force myself to be interested in something because I feel like society has taught me I should or my parents wanted me to be a doctor or someone said that I should be a certain thing or on the playground when I was a kid. You know, everyone's answers to these self-awareness questions will be unique to them.

I think it's so important to listen to them because, as I said, that is you're in a child screaming out, saying, look, remember me, this is who we are. Okay, so third and final thing that's essential to coping with life with ADHD. So I think it's never worrying alone. it's so important to find community, find your tribe, find people that make you recognize and reminds you that you're not the only person experiencing life this way with its many ups and its downs because the risk is if you are someone who truly believes that you're on your own and you are the only person experiencing these volatile swings sometimes of extreme hyper-focused

to being triggered by a tiny comment, it can feel very isolating. And we see, unfortunately, you know, the link between depression and anxiety when there is ADHD and it's not understood or the person isn't aware that they're living with it. Finding community reaching out, there's nothing more soothing than realizing that you're not alone in how you thought everyone else lived their life a certain way and you're the only one with these various struggles. Yeah. Community.

And you've done such an amazing job of creating a community. I mean, it's been the last three years of my. life really. I think we're on about five million people now and the podcast is great. The books are great and it's what's what's the most rewarding thing for me is meeting people at events and hugging people. Normally I'm just standing there but they go into hug and the tears and the emotions that shared because often for the first time in their lives they've been seen, they feel seen and understood after often. There was one lady I met at an event.

She was 85 years old. And she said she listened to something on my podcast. One of my guests share a story. And for the first time in her life, she felt understood and seen. And she wasn't interested in getting a diagnosis. But she said it felt like closure, is what she said, you know,

which was really sad, but also incredible to hear. And she looked back through her entire life. And with this new, paintbrush and she was adding colour and context into past relationships and past jobs and stopping and starting and impulsively buying cars and a house she impulsively bought and then sold a year later and lost a load of money and she cried really emotional um those are the most rewarding moments and seeing the community seeing these incredible people in person and seeing the impact it's it's absolutely amazing i think it's a fascinating thing isn't it that i suppose the

people that have sort of currently weaponising mental health and talk about overdiagnosis and they talk about labels defining us. And actually, I would say that sometimes, often, most of the time, these labels help to free people so that they can be their full, wonderful selves. and I think that's what's most important, that it's not about being defined by a condition or an illness or whatever your mental health thing happens to be. It's about understanding it so you can be freed to be yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

I do a ton of talks in schools and I meet a lot of parents and the vast majority are very on board with the conversation around neurodiversity. But from time to time you meet a parent and they say, I don't want to put a label on my child. And the truth is, a child with ADHD or autism, if you don't put that label on them and set them on their journey of self-understanding, they're going to get labelled as too much, too sensitive, not enough. They're going to get really toxic labels anyway.

The most important thing you can do for kids is starting that journey of understanding as soon as possible. Because when a child feels like they're different and their others, as I said, that's when they start abandoning there in a child, they start adjusting who they are, masking, changing their entire personality just to fit in and sort of appease that feeling of being different. I had an amazing guest on my podcast called Janine Perriman, and she bought her daughter, her six-year-old daughter, a teddy bear, and it said, never too much, embroidered on the chest. And she said that it had two meanings. First was that you are not too much ever. Your behaviour is not too much. And secondly, whatever you want to come to me,

with, any problems, any issues, anything at all, nothing is too much, nothing is off the table. And she said from that moment, when she gave her daughter that teddy bear, the bond between her as a mother and her daughter was unmatched. I think that needs to be what we all get ourselves now, a teddy bear saying never too much. I'm going to go and buy myself one of those, Alex. It's a good idea. I mean, yeah, we all need that reminder. Oh, thank you so much, Alex.

You're never too much. Pleasure. Thanks, Brian. A huge thank you to Alex, who I'm now pretty convinced is my long-lost brother. I want to know what are your non-negotiables for navigating life as a neurodivergent person? Why not share them with me on Instagram at at Life of Brinypod? And if you enjoyed this bonus episode, give us a quick follow or leave us a little review. But most importantly, take a deep breath, do one nice thing for yourself today.

and I'll see you for the next episode of The Life of Briney.