The main point: a lot of us are essentially “cold-blooded” — meaning neurodivergent, ADHD-leaning, or simply sensory-sensitive — and our capacity to function hinges on the micro-environmental inputs we can control, so the real leverage is finding and installing your own “warm rocks.” I say this as someone who’s both lived it and coaches people through it: treating this as a physiological truth (think autonomic nervous system reactivity, interoceptive sensitivity, and increased allostatic load) reframes failures of willpower into predictable consequences of mismatched context and depleted executive function. Practically, that looks like environmental scaffolding and co-regulation strategies — noise-cancelling headphones, private rooms, scheduled solo sabbaticals, coaching that actually speaks our language — which reduce cognitive load, stabilize arousal regulation, and free up prefrontal resources for creativity and problem-solving. We unpack why school and many workplaces are “warm-blooded systems” expecting self-regulation, why that mismatch produces chronic survival mode for cold-blooded folks, and how compassionate, tailored interventions (behavioral scaffolds, rhythm-based routines, and targeted supports) create reproducible capacity. I also argue that coach–client pairing matters: a warm-blooded coach pushing platitudes won’t help a cold-blooded person, whereas a coach versed in neurodiversity and sensory modulation can provision the right hot-rock architecture. So, here’s my ask in jargon and plain English: identify one or two warm rocks this week, implement them (external supports + boundary engineering), and test the hypothesis that your environment, not your moral failing, is the variable you can change to feel better and do more.

Some of us are warm-blooded and some of us are cold-blooded, and if you're cold-blooded, your surroundings decide a lot more about how you function than you've been told.

In this episode I talk about a conversation I had with my colleague and friend Elena that shifted something big for me. She shared the idea that people with ADHD are often "cold-blooded." Like a lizard, they don't regulate their own temperature, so their environment plays a huge role in how well they can think, create, cope, and feel okay. Warm-blooded people can move through a messy house, no sleep, a loud room, and a packed social event and still get on with their day. Cold-blooded people can't, and most of us were raised in a warm-blooded world that expected us to act warm-blooded anyway.

I also share what this looked like for me at a recent international figure skating competition, why I couldn't create the way I wanted to while I was there, and the "warm rocks" I've learned to put in place for myself, like alone time as an introvert and being coached by people who understand how I tick. When you know you're cold-blooded, you can stop judging yourself for struggling and start giving yourself what you need.

Key Takeaways:

Cold-blooded people are deeply affected by their environment, and that's not something you chose

Most sensitive people, neurodivergent people, and a lot of women are more cold-blooded than we realize

Pushing through a cold environment while pretending you're warm drains a huge amount of energy

Warm rocks are the external supports that make the hard things easier: your space, your structure, your support, your alone time

Look at where you're struggling and ask what warm rock would make it simpler

Pick one or two warm rocks, put them in your week, and see what happens

If you want help figuring out where your warm rocks need to be and what they could look like, book a discovery call. We'll look at where you're struggling, what support you need in place, and how to structure it so it works for the way you're wired.

You are not the only one. I promise you that.

Links referenced in this episode:

https://amandahess.ca/bookacall

Takeaways:

1. I reframed my struggles through an ADHD “cold-blooded” metaphor — using thermoregulatory language and autonomic nervous system concepts to explain how environmental affordances and sensory gating impact executive functioning and creative capacity, which gives me permission to stop pathologizing myself.
2. We need to identify our “warm rocks” — concrete environmental and structural scaffolds that reduce allostatic load and optimize our cognitive bandwidth for sustained task performance.
3. I noticed that trying to perform high-demand tasks in a cold environment depletes my capacity, so we prioritize situational modifications like solitude, noise-cancelling headphones, or scheduled coaching to enhance sustained attention and creative output.
4. Because society expects warm-blooded norms, I argued for compassion and systemic accommodation: educational and workplace designs should integrate neurodiversity-informed ergonomics and predictable routines to prevent chronic regulatory overload.
5. I confess I use coaching as a personal hot rock — it's targeted external scaffolding that recalibrates my inner homeostasis, reduces executive friction, and helps me translate aspirational goals into implementable micro-behaviors (no shame, just strategy).
6. Practical action step: we pick one or two warm rocks this week — experiment with environmental tweaks, temporal structuring, or social boundaries, then monitor shifts in productivity, mood, and perceived capacity to see what actually increases our regulatory resilience.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. amandahess.ca/bookacall

Hey, I'm Amanda Hess.

I'm a certified life coach.

But what you need to know is I'm a sensitive woman just like you, and I'm going to help you understand yourself better so that you can approach your life differently and feel really good about it.

Let's go.

Hello, my friends.

How are we today?

Okay, listen.

I recorded a whole podcast.

A whole podcast didn't actually get recorded.

I spoke for 25 minutes, but nothing got recorded, not my voice.

So this is coming a little late because I had to rerecord it.

And you know what?

We roll with it.

We do what we gotta do, and it's not a problem.

And yet I had to redo it.

But today I wanna talk to you about something that came up for me when I was having a con conversation with a colleague of mine.

So I have a colleague who I love dearly.

And she is a woman who I came through coach training with.

Her name is Elena.

And Elena and I, throughout the years, off and on, have shared coaching.

And we were coaching together.

And she offered this to me and I just felt so compelled to offer it to you because it was so transformational for me.

And just the way that she talked about it allowed me to heal something in myself that really needed to be healed.

And it's going to heal you too, I think, when you hear it.

So we were just talking about how I cope and deal with my day and how I get myself to do the things that I need to be doing, especially trying to create change, trying to do something differently than I've done it before.

And really looking at the way that I approach it.

And I was just sharing how some things were bumpy and difficult.

And she just shared this thing with me and I'm going to just share it with you, which is that she had been diagnosed, going through a diagnosis for adhd.

And when she got that diagnosis, one way one person talked about it is that one of the qualities that ADHD people have is they're cold blooded.

And it's worthwhile looking at just the definition of cold blooded versus warm blooded.

So cold blooded animals are like lizards and snakes and things like that.

Right.

And I can't get into the whole biology chemistry aspect because I don't know it that well.

I'm sure I learned it at some point, but at 50 years old, I don't think I kept that in my brain.

But I do understand that cold blooded animals don't temperature regulate.

So what happens is if they're in a warm environment, they are warm.

And if they are in a cold environment, they are cold.

And that's why cold blooded creatures can't live outside in the wintertime because they cannot temperature regulate.

So just worthwhile noting, right, so if they are in a cold environment, what will happen is they will seek out heat number one, because that's what they need to keep their blood pumping and to keep themselves like doing what they need to do.

Whereas a warm blooded animal can actually keep themselves warm to an extent.

Right, to an extent.

The thing about warm blooded animals is we'll die if we get too cold.

Cold blooded animals will just slow down.

Everything will just slow down.

And so she was saying to me that this, this thing that she had heard is that people with an ADHD diagnosis frequently are cold blooded.

And what that means and I, it's not different from what I've shared with you before, but what that means is that they are really sensitive to their surroundings.

Their surroundings are really important when it comes to their ability to function optimally.

And when she said that, there was just something about it that clicked so heartily for me and just married a lot of things that I teach and helped me understand myself just a little bit better and gave me this information that I could use moving forward.

And I want you to be able to use it too.

So if you think about the people in your life, There are lots of people in my life and there's probably people in your life as well that are obviously warm blooded in that they can really and truly move through their day.

And their surroundings aren't that noticeable to them, not that important to them.

They don't really bother them.

And I really notice that in say like my husband.

So it doesn't matter if the house is messy, it doesn't matter if there's a lot of stuff happening.

It doesn't matter how much sleep he's had, it doesn't matter if he's nourished or not.

It doesn't matter if he's drank water or had quiet time.

He can just engage in the tasks that he needs to do for his day.

And this is true when he's socializing with people, when he's at social events, when he's dealing with people, he just self regulates in a way that is honestly amazing and something that I look at and go, oh, that's an experience that a lot of people have now for many years.

I really didn't even break that down in that way.

What I thought of it as is, oh, they're normal and I'm abnormal.

Like I'M struggling to cope and that means there's something wrong with me.

For instance, I remember when I had my first baby and it was the first time really where I had to sit there and not drink my coffee first.

Like when you get up in the morning and the baby's awake, you gotta take care of the baby.

Nobody cares if you've had some quiet time this morning, like you're taking care of the baby.

And for many years I even think about like those first years of motherhood that I experienced, really pushing myself to do it the way that, that you're supposed to.

And I'll put that in air quotes.

Do it.

And I think that we live in a very warm blooded world where the world expects you to self regulate.

But interestingly enough, many of us people in the world are actually cold blooded.

And so maybe you class yourself as ADHD or neurodivergent or you are a sensitive person or you see yourself as an empath or you're just the kind of person that's like, I really like routine that really needs to be in place for me to be okay.

Regardless of how you really talk about yourself, there's a knowing inside of you that your environment plays a big role.

And I like to make it general and talk about having a sensitive nervous system, which is what you'll hear me talk about on this podcast.

But I do think it's worth noting that when we are more sensitive, it's not because we want to be more sensitive.

Okay?

We're not choosing that for ourselves.

We're not choosing our OCD tendencies.

We're not choosing to be overwhelmed by sensory experiences that are like chewing tinfoil for us.

We don't choose that for ourselves.

This is something that just happens.

And I notice, I would say 99% of the people that I coach almost always are cold blooded.

And that is just something that we want to just first of all acknowledge and notice and just make it part of your natural makeup because it makes everything that comes next so much easier and so much simpler.

If we understand that there are warm blooded people like my husband that can naturally regulate no matter what their environment and that there are cold blooded people who cannot, we get to understand how it is for those of us that are cold blooded and we get to really approach ourselves differently and also have more compassion because we are really as young people not given permission to be cold blooded.

It's like you're cold blooded, but we expect you to act like a warm blooded person.

So I think about going to school as Being an example, going to school, you have to go to classes.

When they say to go to classes, you have to get up when they say you have to get up.

You have to be with people working on a project that maybe are not your people.

The smells aren't what you want them to be.

The environment is louder than you want it to be.

It is a shitstorm of things that you can't control.

You're a cold blooded person and there are no warm spots for you potentially.

And that makes school really genuinely difficult.

And then as we're moving through our day and moving through those things, we are in survival mode.

That and what that really means is we're seeking heat, right?

We're seeking that warmth, we're seeking that ability to feel regulated and feel okay and feel like we're surviving at any moment.

And I just really noticed that especially for neurodivergent kids, they are just thrown in that environment and they're expected to just figure it out.

So if you don't really identify with neurodivergent because it is a big word and it's got lots of different meanings and connotations, but at the end of the day it just means your brain works a little differently than what the world expects.

I don't even want to say it works differently than the majority because I don't even think that's true.

I think that there is a hearty percentage of the world that would consider themselves to be neurodivergent and it might even be upwards of 50%.

Because when we start really understanding ourselves, there's just a huge portion of us that are more cold blooded.

And I will say that I think more women are more cold blooded than men.

And that's not to say that we can't appear regulated and we can't do the things to regulate ourselves.

It's just understanding that our environment has a big factor when it comes to how well we're going to be doing, how productive we can be, how creative we can be, how good of a problem solver we can be, how okay we can feel.

Because if you're perpetually cold in this cold environment and you're just trying to pretend that you're warm, think about just the energy that it requires to move through that.

Like everything is slowing you down and then you're pushing yourself to keep pushing through, this is I think the experience for so many of us, women in particular, and where we went with this when I was speaking with my colleague, with my friend, is that we want to be able to meet ourselves where we're at and not have judgment about it.

So, for instance, for me, if I'm in a really cluttered space where there's shit everywhere and it's messy and it's dirty and it doesn't smell very good, my ability to be able to be super regulated in that environment has been majorly decreased.

And this is true in so many different areas.

Like I was speaking to my friend about this and just talking about.

I was recently at an international figure skating competition where I was competing.

And I wanted to have the capacity to be able to do a lot of creation when I was there, to really work inside of this podcast, what I put out in the world, really show you my ideas and what we can do to help ourselves.

But that requires a really creative part of my brain, which means I need to have capacity.

And because I was at the skating competition, I didn't have a lot of capacity because of a lot of reasons.

Number one, I wasn't at home.

I was staying in a house with three other people.

Well, three to five other people, sort of depending, which was great.

But definitely that environment reduced my capacity.

Now, there were some really great things about it.

First of all, being in a house versus a hotel worked way better for me.

And having a room where I could shut the door and have privacy was really good for me.

It was visually a very appealing house.

It was a very lovely space and it definitely helped.

But then when you think about being at the rink and practicing and being surrounded by people and people competing and people being dysregulated themselves and dysregulated people being around you, this affects me and it probably affects you too, because we're cold blooded.

So our environment informs us, it changes how we can cope.

It actually does something physically to us.

And when we see that, then we can start to understand why.

And I needed to understand why I couldn't really create in that environment, because the environment wasn't warm enough for me to be able to have that safety, to be able to create in the way that I want it.

Now, this applies to you in your life, if you think about all the things that you do throughout your life.

And then if you think about the things that you struggle with.

So it could be that you struggle with sitting down and doing your budget and working your finances, et cetera, et cetera.

And that could be because that is a not warm environment for you in that there are things that help make you more successful doing those things.

So it could be that, first of all, the environment of where you do it needs to be addressed.

And also like the things that you have in place, guidelines, structures that help you, that support you, the way that your brain works, need to be in place.

And so what my friend was saying to me is, we need to find our warm rocks.

We need to find our hot rocks.

Like if you were a lizard and it was cool outside, you would be beetling on over to your little hot lamp and your little hot rocks so that you could heat up.

And the way that you can use this in your day to day life is really think about what would it look like for me to have a hot rock in this particular environment.

So potentially it could be working on money, it could be whatever you're doing in your work, it could be what is going on for you at home.

Maybe it's that you want to start dating again, maybe it's that you want to be able to have more intimacy in your marriage.

Maybe it's that you want to be able to have a better relationship with your children, whatever it is, right?

Where's your hot rocks?

What are the things that are needed externally to be able to support what you're going to be able to do internally?

Ultimately, that's what I'm saying.

So for myself, there is coaching.

That is a big part of what I do.

Obviously I am a coach and I coach other people all day, every day.

That, that is a huge part of who I am and what I do.

But then on top of that, there is me being coached.

And I'm a big believer in coaching.

I'm a big believer in coaching, but I don't just let just anybody coach me.

That's just not effective and not good for me.

Because if you're a warm blooded animal trying to coach a cold blooded animal, we're not talking the same language.

And I find this happens quite a bit.

So what I've really learned is that the coaching spaces and places that I need to be in, these are places that need to understand how I tick and they need to work in a way that works for me.

So one of the things that I really teach and I teach on this podcast and I teach to my clients and is, I think, a really huge pillar of what is required for us to be able to truly experience a happy and fulfilling life is figuring out what works for you and learning how to have your own back and using those things and putting those things in place.

So for myself, there's always a coaching component to what I do.

I, I find that to be one of my Hot rocks, one of my warm rocks.

I need that there so that I can be more regulated and I can show up the way that I want to show up.

And it allows the difficult things to be more easily handled, if that makes sense.

So when you are looking at your life, when you're looking at what's going on for you, I want you to really think about the things that are difficult for you, the things that are genuinely hard, right.

And I want you to consider what are things that you would typically want to put in place there that would make it a lot easier, that would make this simpler, that would allow you to be able to do this quicker, with more joy, with more ease.

What needs to be there for you to be able to do that?

Those are your warm rocks and you want those warm rocks to be there.

Sometimes that can be the environment within which you're doing it and it's really noticing.

Like, am I trying to do something really mentally challenging at the kitchen table when everybody's around?

That to me would be like a cold blooded animal in the cold versus oh, I'm gonna go to a coffee shop or put myself in my office, or I'm gonna make sure I've got a really lovely cup of tea and I've got some noise canceling headphones on.

And I'm just doing this in a way that's feeling good for my body and then I'm going to engage in this.

We wanna start being able to give ourselves what we need.

So for instance, even the skating competition that I was at, there's plenty of social events you can go to.

Like, I could have been out and about every day, I could have been talking to hundreds of different people.

I used to really force myself to do stuff like that many years ago before coaching.

And what I realize about myself is that I'm an introvert.

And so I need time alone to be able to refresh and I need to give that to myself.

And so I, so I've really learned that one of my warm rocks is alone time with my own brain without needing to worry about the FOMO of what's next.

It's like, no, no, no, I need time for me.

I don't need to sign up for the thing that's supposed to be fun because I won't find it fun.

And so these are the pieces that we start putting together.

We start adding more pleasure, we start adding the things that work for us.

We start really understanding ourselves really well, understanding what kind of support I need to have in place, structure of that Support looks like what planning my day looks like based on how me and my personality work and where my warm rocks are.

So as you're listening to this, I want you to just take a little time and think about where is it that I find myself really struggling and what are the warm rocks that I could put in place for myself to ensure that I'm more regulated, that are really my external surroundings.

I'm not just coaching myself through it.

If you would like some help with that, what I'm going to say to you is you really should book a discovery call because this is something we can do on a discovery call.

Now, we're not going to be able to get the whole thing done on that call, but we are going to be able to establish where warm rocks need to be present and what they could look like.

And we can talk about the structure of that.

And then if you want support with that helping, you know, implement that, then that's something that we can do together in coaching, right?

So if you want to do that, you can go to amandahest ca bookacall and we can get on a call and we can talk about your warm rocks.

But whether you do that or not, it is really valuable to consider that your environment is something that you can control a lot of the time.

And even if you can't control the whole thing, there are opportunities to bring in these warm rocks.

And what do those warm rocks look like for you?

Pick one or two, put them in your week this week and see what happens.

What happens?

All right, my friends, this is what I've got for you.

I hope it helps you.

It really helped me thinking about it in this way I could geek out about it forever.

I would love to see you on a discovery call and to talk it through with you, but otherwise I will see you next time.

Bye for now.

Thanks so much for listening today.

If this podcast is helping you, please follow wherever you listen and consider leaving a review.

You it truly helps this community grow and allows me to support more women like you.

I'm excited to see you back here next week with a brand new episode.

Until then, take care, friend.