You Are Not Broken: Reframing Depression and ADHD as Unfinished Business

Host: Kate Brownfield, Certified Whole Person & ADHD Parent Coach
Guest: Dr. Kate Lund, clinical psychologist, peak performance coach, TEDx speaker, and author of Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting 

Episode Overview

In this empowering “Kate + Kate” episode, Kate talks with Dr. Kate Lund about what resilient parenting really looks like when you’re raising kids with ADHD, big emotions, or health challenges. Drawing from her own medical journey (hydrocephalus as a child), 20+ years as a psychologist, and parenting 18-year-old twins, Dr. Lund explains resilience not as “pushing through,” but as a lifestyle: managing your stress response daily so you can ride the waves of homework battles, morning chaos, and dysregulated kids. She teaches a simple, science-backed tool—the Relaxation Response—that parents can practice for 5 minutes morning and night to lower reactivity, model calm, and create a more regulated home.

If your baseline feels higher than other parents’ because your child is more intense or more dysregulated, this episode will help you stop comparing, honor your real context, and build steadiness you can actually sustain.

What We Talk About (Highlights)

• Resilience as a lifestyle: Why it’s daily stress modulation, not one heroic moment.

• Managing your stress response: If we start “high,” every challenge spikes us to shutdown.

• The Relaxation Response (Herbert Benson): Choose a soothing word/phrase + breathe → practice 5 minutes a.m./p.m.

• Modeling regulation: Regulated parent → calmer energy in the house → kids see what’s possible.

• Avoiding the comparison trap: Your life, your child, your bandwidth—design for your context.

• “Step away” moments: Why parents sometimes need a 5-minute reset before re-engaging.

• Ripple effect for ADHD families: Calm first, then coach skills (homework, mornings, transitions).

Resources & Links

• Guest: Dr. Kate Lund

• Book: Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting

• Technique discussed: The Relaxation Response (Herbert Benson)

About Your Host, Kate

I’m Kate Brownfield, Certified Whole Person & ADHD Parent Coach, author of How We Roll: A Parent’s Journey Raising a Child with ADHD, and host of The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast. I help parents understand ADHD through a whole-person lens—because every child is unique, and so is every family.

🌐 Find me: ADHDKidsCanThrive.com

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