Lance Burdett didn’t know he had ADHD until he was thirty-five. Growing up with undiagnosed neurodivergence, constant relocations, and no stable friendships, he drifted through school and into construction before a radio ad changed everything. His story is one of radical self-discovery forged through adversity, mental health crisis, and the moment he learned to be as kind to himself as he was to others in crisis. In this episode of Kintsugi Heroes, Lance shares how untreated ADHD shaped decades of his life, what depression and suicidal ideation taught him, and why self-compassion became the foundation of lasting change.
Lance Burdett’s story begins in a state house with a brain that worked differently from everyone else’s. Teachers called it ‘won’t sit still, can’t concentrate’. By ten, he’d accumulated ten thousand more negative comments than his peers. Nobody knew he had ADHD. So he left school with almost no qualifications, drifted into construction, and stayed there until a radio advertisement suggested something else might be possible.
At thirty-five, Lance joined the New Zealand Police. A behavioural science tutor spotted something that changed everything: he simply had never been shown how to learn with his different brain. Developing his own rote-writing system, he nearly topped his training wing and went on to become New Zealand’s lead crisis negotiator, training with the FBI at Quantico and introducing human-centred selection criteria that required candidates to have lived through and recovered from genuine struggle.
But behind that achievement lay a severe depressive episode, suicidal ideation, and nightly self-medication with alcohol. The turning point came at a photocopier, a conversation with a Padre, and finally a psychologist willing to name what was happening and model help-seeking for a man in a high-pressure role.
Today Lance runs a thriving consultancy, has published three books, and carries one message into every workshop: be as kind to yourself as you are to those around you, because self-compassion is where lasting change begins. His recovery wasn’t about fixing ADHD. It was about learning to treat himself with the same kindness he extended to people in crisis. In this episode, he opens that story entirely.
In this Kintsugi Heroes conversation with John Milham, Lance shares the story behind the moments below.
🎙️ IN THIS CONVERSATION:
• ADHD is the organising thread of Lance’s entire life narrative — from childhood report cards (‘won’t sit still, can’t concentrate, needs to be punished more’) through learning difficulties at police college to his late-life self-identification and advocacy for neurodiverse crisis negotiators.
• Lance discloses a severe depressive episode with suicidal ideation mid-career, describes the moment of recognition at the photocopier, and details his pathway through a Padre to a psychologist, modelling help-seeking for men in high-pressure roles.
• The episode is structured as a resilience arc: every setback — poverty, academic failure, depression, burnout — is reframed as formative material. Lance explicitly states ‘It’s because of adversity. It made me.’
• Lance’s closing call to action centres entirely on self-compassion as the foundation of social change, and his recovery story pivots on learning to treat himself with the same kindness he extended to people in crisis.
• Lance opens the conversation with the word ‘duty’ and returns to it throughout; his consultancy, books, and negotiator training reforms are all framed as obligations owed by survivors to those still struggling.
• A substantial portion of the conversation examines how each generation moderates the next, how stoicism was handed down as a harmful legacy, and how younger generations display greater empathy and emotional awareness.
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