"Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults" with Caroline Maguire

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Mar 19, 2026

Caroline Maguire, social emotional learning expert, ADHD coach, and author focused on friendship skills. She unpacks the impulsive friendship cycle and why neurodivergent brains rush trust. Short practical strategies get spotlight: the ice cream scoop method, the idea of an emerging friend, masking versus adapting, and ways to troubleshoot lopsided relationships.

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INSIGHT

Friendship Problems Are Neurological, Not Moral Failings

Many friendship books ask neurodivergent people to change themselves to fit an extroverted model.
Caroline Maguire realized existing advice ignores neurology, so she reframes friendship as a neurological mismatch not personal failing.

ADVICE

Define Your Own Friendship Numbers

Decide your own social numbers based on your social battery rather than forcing Dunbar's model.
Caroline advises knowing your limits (e.g., three close friends) and communicating about them so others don't misinterpret non-response.

ADVICE

Choose Adapting Over Masking

Stop suppressing needs (masking) and instead adapt deliberately by reading the room without losing yourself.
Masking means pretending preferences don't exist (e.g., attending unbearable noisy concerts); adapting is temporary and choice-driven.

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If you've ever given everything to a friendship and been left wondering what went wrong, Caroline Maguire has a gentle but clarifying answer: you probably gave too much, too soon, to someone who hadn't yet earned it. That's not a character flaw — it's the ADHD brain doing what it does when it finally finds someone who sees it. The dopamine hit of new connection can tip straight into hyperfocus, and suddenly you're all-in on a relationship that hasn't had time to prove itself. Caroline calls it the impulsive friendship cycle, and she has spent years helping neurodivergent adults find their way out of it.

Caroline is a social emotional learning expert, ADHD coach, and author of the award-winning Why Will No One Play With Me. Her new book, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults, arrives April 14th — and it's not another book that asks you to fix yourself to fit a friendship model built for someone else's social battery. Instead, she starts with a reframe that carries the whole conversation: our friendship struggles are not a personal failing. They're a neurological mismatch between the way we were taught to connect and the way our brains actually work.

In this conversation, we dig into the masking vs. adapting distinction that has already sparked significant conversation in our Discord community — including what makes the difference between reading a room and suppressing yourself entirely. Caroline walks us through the ice cream scoop method for building trust slowly, what "emerging friend" means and why it matters, how to troubleshoot a friendship before you decide it's over, and the unmasking story she never expected to tell — including the moment Ned Hallowell called her out on a mask she didn't know she was wearing.

This episode is part of our ongoing relationships series, and it may be the most practical and personally honest conversation we've had in it yet. The book is available for pre-order now, with bonus resources, at any major bookseller.

Links & Notes

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
(01:51) - Introducing Caroline Maguire
(03:19) - Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults
(15:48) - Adapting versus Masking
(28:35) - Over-extending "Friendship"
(41:32) - About the Book

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