When Self-Concept Is the Blocker

There are a few moves to today's Community & Creator Notes. It's about getting blocked, in fact accidentally blocking yourself.

There are a list of scenes and events from the last few weeks, and you'll see how they all connect and the lessons you can take from them. We'll end with a few of those Monday Dominoes — the one tiny action you can take to get the rest of the week going.

For those of you who run a community, project, or coworking space: you'll love the Coworking Community Builder Email Engine, a free six-day course on using email and email newsletters to connect and build your community. After that, you'll get my two-minute daily email and video.

The form

About this time last year, my wife was following me around our apartment asking me to fill in the form to get my ADHD test done.

#supercoolwife has forged her career working with at-risk youth and families, and she'd come to the conclusion that she and #supercoolson, our family, were at risk because of my undiagnosed ADHD. I did not disagree.

But filling in any form, even a winning lottery ticket, was too much for me.

Jeannine's call

One of my closest working relationships is with Jeannine. Together we've had a side project for the last ten years researching and championing inclusion, diversity, accessibility, and equity in coworking.

One project we were working on in 2020 was blocked, and she rang me up. I was standing outside my coworking space in Ilford, looking at Saravanaa Bhavan, thinking: shall I go in and eat or go upstairs and work?

Again, I did not disagree with the point I could feel Jeannine was about to make, but I could not understand what was going on.

She kindly — and I mean kindly — asked me:

"Is this spreadsheet thing you have not done a 'Bernie dyslexic thing' or a 'I'm the great Bernie Mitchell and, quite frankly, I should not be doing this kind of entry-level manager work'?"

She may not have said all of that. But if I was her, that's what I would have meant.

She absolutely ended with, "I don't care which one it is. Both are fine. But we need to work out how to move forward."

It is one of the few times I've been given a door to open and a choice to reset the whole thing.

It's not that I don't care. It's that I get so stuck it's impossible to see.

The grant form

Around the same time, I was working with Clare and Sam on a project at The Melting Pot in Edinburgh, Scotland's Centre for Social Innovation, and we got stuck. We had to get fifteen years of the magic story of The Melting Pot into a five-hundred-word block on a grant form.

I love words, but I was screwed, and so was Clare. Like two pirates who are going to have a limb sawn off and need to bite down on a bit of rope to handle the pain, we got on a call and worked through it. Two wildly neurodivergent people wading through slowly drying concrete, uphill, with a rhinoceros on our shoulders.

Of course, if someone had called us up and asked the same thing instead of getting into a box on a grant form, it would have taken eight seconds.

If someone had pulled us up on stage at an event because the last speakers were kidnapped by Count Binface, we could have riffed and talked for hours, then sent a hat round the audience and got enough money to buy a Range Rover.

But a form? A box? Having to get it right in the moment?

The rugby tackle

So now we're in August 2025, and eventually #supercoolwife called her brother round. Him and #supercoolson rugby-tackled me to the floor outside our bathroom, tied me to a chair, and wheeled me back into our office. They fed me slices of avocado sprinkled with paprika for every question I answered on the ADHD form.

It wasn't even an application. It was the questions Gabriela, who was to do the test with me, needed to know in order to conduct the test.

Five minutes. It was all done. The only answer I didn't know was my phone number. I got a new one when we came to Vigo in Galicia. Who knows their fucking phone number these days? I have it saved as a shortcut in TextExpander.

They hit send, left me tied to the chair, and went out for ice cream.

The diagnosis

I could whine for hours about adult ADHD and the transformation, but the last thing you want to read — and I want to write — is yet another account of a chubby, white, straight, middle-aged, middle-class male putting all his shortcomings down to undiagnosed adult ADHD.

When I told people, no one was surprised. I did not want sympathy; I was just sharing. But I announced it with unintended significance, like I was about to have my arms and legs removed.

No one cared. I found it wildly interesting, and I knew I had to get over it all as soon as possible and get on with it.

I read the diagnosis, and part of it may as well have read: "Don't ever do anything with spreadsheets and money." Most of what I actually have to do, I know what to do. I use LittleBird, Voicenotes, and Eden to organise my life and work. It's like being Martin Sheen in The West Wing, with a team of people following him around taking notes all day.

But I have never worked out my accounting.

Marcus + FreeAgent

One of the first calls I made was to Marcus, my long-time mate and FreeAgent expert. I've had FreeAgent since 2010 and know it well, but I've always messed it up.

At every BBQ since I met him 2017 Marcus has offered to help me out, but I always thought I'd get to it. Of course, I never did.

So I called him and sent him EVERYTHING. In a couple of weeks, he had FreeAgent and my devastatingly disorganised accounts sorted. For once, I could see how "free" my freelancing actually was.

Helen the ADHD coach

The next call was to Helen, to be my ADHD coach. We have a 30-minute call every two weeks, and she kindly scalpels into my crazy denial of how much I'm going to do even though I don't know where to start.

We're unlearning a lifetime of coping mechanisms, lies, exaggeration, blue-sky thinking, and masking.

The T-score

A few weeks ago, I went back to my ADHD diagnosis because I could not understand why I get so blocked.

TL;DR: most people score 50% on their ADHD test. My scores are all 70% to 87%, and a lot of it is self-concept. I can't open a jar of jam without worrying what people will think.

It's fucking amazing I manage to publish on the internet so much. I always feel judged.

I read that and then knew I had to work on it. And I stopped everything. Part of me was determined to overcome this, and the other, stronger part of me said: don't do anything until you have "cured this."

Which is, of course, a crap idea. Because being in motion, being alive and active and with people, is how you stay alive and active. We all know the quote: you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

I read The Courage to Be Disliked around the same time, and one of the points it makes is brutal but useful: whatever you're doing is a choice to stay where you are. That sounds harsh, but it's worth considering. If Martyn Sibley can swim with dolphins, I can work out how to do my work.

The seizure

So I seized up and could not write this newsletter for weeks. I made so many notes in LittleBird, Voicenotes, and Eden.

I'm currently working on Coworking Canada 2026 with Ashley Proctor, who is also neurodivergent and a long-time advocate for inclusion and diversity in coworking. I'm able to say to her, "I have everything ready, I just can't put it in a document yet because I'm having an ADHD moment," and that actually speeds things up because I'm not overthinking how to explain why I'm behind.

The amount of creative energy you hemorrhage trying to explain yourself when it's just quicker to cut the negative vibes off at the leg and go for a walk and come back and do it.

Then I was so mad with myself I came to O'guirri, got a lush cup of coffee from Josh, and just sat down and started typing with no notes. Just my head and keyboard.

What I've done

A few things I've done:

I run or walk the same one-mile loop every day. It is half a mile up and then half a mile down. It's beautiful — you can see the Atlantic, mountains, the city of Vigo. Everything is trees and sky. But it's boring going around and around. I do it to be bored, and the kick at the end of having done it is the reward. I'm staying with the boredom.

Spend five minutes getting going. Berenice talked about this on a Drive Network call a few weeks ago when we were talking about over-planning. You can do anything for five minutes. I now do this with even more commitment. Sit down and get on with it for five minutes. If you can't do it or are distracted, see what you do then.

In the same call, Jonas talked about how he works with people who over-prepare for videos. They learn the script and freeze up. When he asks, "How did you get into this?" they start talking like humans again, and their passion and charisma return.

There is a line in a Jen Sincero book: "Worrying is praying for things you don't want to happen." Worth spending a few brain cells thinking about.

I have become aware of how much time I spend dreading things, even though I know nothing is going to happen. I thought I was able to outrun this, and I am better than most people after years of meditation, journaling, and therapy.

But I get the "dread monster" at a high level. Without me realising, it does a full-on assault on my foundations and can disable me for a day.

There is a lot on this in Gay Hendricks's book The Big Leap. I read this when it came out, and I read it every other year. His research examined how we get to a certain point, and our false sense of self-worth kicks in and says we can't go any higher, and we find a way to blow ourselves up.

So if your sense of self-worth is low, you blow yourself up all the time. The real gift for me from the ADHD diagnosis is the knowledge that my sense of self-worth is so low I am letting off hand grenades all the time.

The battle

This is my main battle of the last few months. It is daily hand-to-hand combat with everything and everyone close to me, including me.

High self worth Bernie: "Bernie! Let's go for a run and listen to that amazing newsletter you just wrote so you can proof-read it and see how it flows."

Low sense of self-worth Bernie: "Let's stay home and deep-clean the suitcases and listen to another David Bowie book to see if you can get some ideas for the next newsletter. But first, go to the cake shop. You deserve a treat. You've been running five days in a row — who does that?"

Monday Domino

Make a note on a piece of paper or on your phone.

• What is something you just haven't got around to doing that's really important?
• Don't overthink it, pick the first thing that pops into your head. It doesn't matter what it is.
• Write it down and stare at it for a minute and think: what is in the way of me doing this?

Moby Dick

When I was at university, one of our books was Moby Dick, and I was enchanted by it. I never finished it, even though I managed to write a 5,000-word essay on it.

For years I've been meaning to read the whole thing, and I was watching an episode of the TV show The Mentalist a few weeks ago. The whole episode hinged upon references to Moby Dick.

I got the book off the shelf beside me, downloaded the audio version, and started reading. I do one chapter a day, and I ask Google Gemini to give me a rundown of the symbolism in each chapter so I know what I'm looking for.

I have a much better understanding of what is going on in this book than I ever did. It is not an easy read, which is why I'm only doing a chapter a day, but the way Herman Melville ties everything together and how every single word counts is phenomenal.

Bernie's Picks

• Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap
• The Courage to Be Disliked
• Coworking Canada
• LittleBird, - Connects to everything I use and keeps me on track.
• Voicenotes - Brain dumping while you walk and talk.
• Eden - Research, capture, and creation for content.
• The Community Builder's Email Engine — my free six-day email course