What's up, survivor Gang? Welcome back to Survivor Notes. My name is Jon Murphy, psychiatric nurse practitioner, and you're here with me on the Compass Point Institute podcast Network. Just settle on in and let me talk about what's going on. August 15th, 2025, that was the day that Jon Murphy, myself, the man that's talking to you now, became a published author.
Happy to announce my first book Cheat Codes, how I hacked my ADHD Brain, and you can too now available on Amazon as well as the Kindle store. I'll leave. Links in the show description, but I wanted to mention that I got a book, so I hope you read it. I hope you enjoy it. Here's the story behind the book. So I started a blog, my Focus Path blog, and I wrote on this before ai, I just wanna mention that. This is real writing here. Real words flowing outta my fingertips and my pencil.
And what was I writing about? I had this very strange thing that happened. I somehow ended up in a chair 20 years after I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I'm prescribing meds to people with ADHD. I had somehow got it in my head that I didn't have ADHD, the medicine that I always took, that wasn't meds. It was a problem. That was the problem, and I went to grad school and it was the same. Wash, rinse, repeat cycle.
Didn't have good habits crammed at the last minute, took medication when I needed to take it. The PCP gave it to me. Didn't ask me any questions. I didn't know what I was doing. Probably thought I was doing something wrong. cause the way you get treated at the pharmacy. And then I went off the meds and I've been off the meds before, of course in most of my twenties, mid twenties. I went to undergrad without 'em.
But nonetheless, I went and somehow ended up in the chair at ADHD clinic and I saw the ad and I was like, oh, I know these meds. And then I sat and talked to patients and I realized, whoa, I really do have a problem. So much of this stuff is tied up in, whoa, there's something not quite right about me, but it's something you probably always knew all along. We have to survive conditions, situations, and circumstances. We gotta survive 'em.
And part of this is surviving the world and understanding our limitations. And the fact of the matter was I had been working in high stimulation psychiatric unit environments, and now I was just face to face with a person, another human being, telling me their life story. It was a privilege to be there, and I was living like a monk. I was sober. I was waking up at the same time every day, going to bed, working out, and I was falling asleep.
So that was a wake up call time to get serious about my medication and when I did, took my own advice, met a great psychiatrist. Shout out to you, Dr. Parsons, if you're out there. Great guy. And he helped me get on track and then I developed behaviors and patterns of trying new things. Eventually I slayed those dragons, felt pretty good about myself because I proved I was worthy. But that's just the beginning of my story. Why do you feel unworthy in the first place?
Nonetheless, so many people had issues with ADHD, so I've read about it. Developed all these strategies, habit formation, it's sound, behavioral science, 1, 2, 3. Initiate plan, reflect I. I know the roadmap. I wrote about it and I compiled it and I refined it, and I updated it. And there it is for you on Amazon cheat codes. But I caution you that the reason why it was so boring to teach those skills, and I'm glad it's all there. It was the first time I fused self-disclosure with my practice.
That worked really well. People, you gotta know what the struggle is. The struggle is real. And I remember sitting across from an old clinician and feeling like what's wrong with me? Or. You know that cold, detached dehumanized, look here, take these pills and you need to focus. But developing consistency with the medications, all that stuff is secondary because you gotta, now what? You gotta apply the medication.
You can try things you haven't, you can initiate in situations, you can actually execute the things that you want. I saw an interesting quote on ADHD comment on the Compass Point Institute, YouTube channel. Someone said ADHD if it was just being lazy, it would be more fun cause it's so shame soaked and hard and challenging when you can't do the thing. But if you're a lazy, that's fun. It feels good to be lazy. It doesn't feel good to not be able to do it despite everything and.
I wrote about it for a bit when I was writing my memoir, which is on hold for now. I think that the memoir just can't come out that fast. Get the first 40,000 words or so, whatever it is, and it was this like memory of just falling asleep at my desk and the English class, and everyone's laughing at me, including the teacher and the spit all over my desk. My goodness. It's what's a make of that? And I felt like I was doing it on purpose, even though I wasn't. Isn't that weird?
Nonetheless, here we are and I got my first book on Amazon. I'm pretty proud of that and I think it's a great way to start my writing sort of career, this phase of my career as an author, as a writer. I love to write. I'm excited about the things I had planned. This book's meager. It's just a little 50 pager, so it shouldn't be too tough. And at the end of the day, what you're buying is not this long literary prose, but just some common sense strategies, some cheat codes to apply to your life.
So in true ADHD fashion, there it is. There's the guide. But the reason why it was so hard to teach these skills is because these things suited me. So you wanna take the principles that lie outside yourself and apply them uniquely to you, because our nervous system are automatic responses to things. Those things that we perceive as a threat, that's a much deeper, that will determine our success or failure. The things we're threatened by. What are we freaked out by?
Are we someone that embraces change 'cause that was good for us, or recoils from it? 'cause that was bad. All things to be talked about and considered when we're crafting our survival story and writing the survival story is powerful. Doing this work is powerful. It's healing, and you gotta speak it out loud. Whatever happened, whatever's going on. These narratives exist. Everything's not, it's not that bad. You're just being dramatic bootstraps.
It's all your problem walking around with your head. Maybe it is. And it's not until you write it down, you look at it that you realize, whoa, that did happen. And we know we're not crazy 'cause our grownup brain picked it all up. So here we are. 2025 Survivor Mode Survival Notes survivors out there. We're all surviving it for here. And no matter what you're moving through and what you're going through, no matter where you are across this world, I saw there's multiple countries listening.
So what's up to everybody? And we can go through this together. There's a lot of division in the world today and. We can scroll passively and subject our minds to propaganda and divided conquer, psychological warfare tactics. Or we can scan ourselves and say, how do I feel now when I go on the phone? How do I feel when I get off? And ultimately creation the internet. You have a voice. I have a voice. I'm using it now. But there are perils. Simply put.
Use your voice, engage on your terms, disengage on your terms. I went on YouTube, so I've been posting a lot of stuff there. Compass Point, YouTube channels, as well as other channels I've had over the years looking around. But the main ones at Compass Point Institute, going in and getting familiar with it, it's just such a beast. The algorithm over there.
And all of a sudden I just see all this stuff and new viral video, some influencer, some, white influencer has some real talk and it's just the same old stuff, the race narrative. But he's telling the truth though, and it's just so confused and confounded and there's the, it's a confusing world out there, but we should never be divided by the color of our skin. Superficial things, they mean pretty much nothing. But that's what they want. They want us to be divided.
They want us to feel like we're alone in this world, but we survived and we survived a group that was dysfunctional. But you get to choose what group you're in now. And I'm running the show over here. I'm building a community over here of survivors. And I know I can because I've done the work individually with the patients that I see. I know your struggles are real. That's your truth. You can own it. You can speak it, you can name it. You could move with it.
The change is being responsive to the people, the circumstances, the situations, the technology. No matter how personal or how macro we gotta move in the world, we have to take that input and move in the world, not react, respond. So I'm gonna ask you not to react to me, but to respond. Think about it. Apply it to your life. If anything feels automatic and involuntary, chances are. So long as you're over like 20 or 21, you don't need to do it anymore. We go on and here we are as adults.
It's safe to feel it's safe to move. It's safe to go anywhere to shift the focus. To responsiveness, so take it in. When you hear the words from me, Jon Murphy or Jonathan Murphy as a, I'm embracing my full name, my full legal name, Jonathan Murphy. It was always Jon Murphy. I remember writing. It was so simple, but it's very clear now why Jonathan was not the name I liked because I was teased this little song. Jonathan, da weren't dancing around.
If any of you guys have been bullied by your own family, I get it, but I don't have to worry about it anymore. And for the first time, cut out all these people, the doors, cutouts too extreme. There was no cutting. Just a gentle breeze. Close the door. Dink suddenly I look at my name, eh, I guess I don't mind it. It's my name after all. So Jonathan Murphy. There's a million of them too. Amazon. The book is Cheat Codes. How I hacked my ADHD. Brain, you can too. Gimme a, a review over there.
That'd be great. Five stars. Nah, only if you think there is, it is five star worthy, which I hope you do. But either way, that type of thing is helpful. Nonetheless, it's helpful. It's helpful to have you here on Survival Notes, trying to get in as regularly as I can. If you wanna stay in touch with One Market on, just check out my Focus Path blog. If you're in the states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Washington, and Oregon you could be a patient of mine, but this is my.
A kind of personal space here. So you'll, you see me dialoguing a bit differently when it's clinical, but whether you're dealing with ADHD, adult, autism, interpersonal, family issues, narcissism, complex PTSD, or even bipolar disorder, I think maybe you've been through the system and how people kinda. Just be like, here you go. Here's your pills, or whatever. But I like doing it a different way. I think everyone's story is unique and ultimately it's just about reorienting people.
What have you been through? What have you gone through? And then one day, hopefully it is, people just move on. They kind of drift in and out. cause all they need is themselves. All you need is yourself. It's just a reminder of that. It's a little bit of validation that we're not losing our minds. We're not crazy. We really did go through it. And we can change, and we can learn and we can grow. cause ultimately there are gonna be people out there.
They're not so fortunate to have empathy and care. But if you do, you're one of the lucky ones. So there it is. Okay. Hey you. You're the lucky ones. We're the lucky ones 'cause we survived. And we'll talk to you next time.