May 7, 2025 • 31 mins
Why is ADHD considered a disorder — and what does that really mean?
In this episode, Renee explains the basics of why ADHD is classified as a disorder and how it fits into the bigger world of psychological disorders and conditions.
You’ll learn what defines a psychological disorder, where ADHD sits alongside mood disorders, personality disorders, and neurodevelopmental disorders — and why these labels matter (and also don't).
Whether you have ADHD, are curious about mental health, want a clearer understanding of diagnostic terms, or think something is wrong with you if you have a disorder (it's not!) this conversation will give you practical insight and clarity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
Adhd. I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast and I'm excited
to be here today. I am going to talk about all
kinds of psychological disorders, conditions, just differentiating.
If you are curious, where does ADHD fit in?
Why is it a disorder? I know I. I know
(00:53):
some people think it shouldn't be called a disorder.
You know, it makes them feel bad about themselves, like, there's
nothing wrong with me. Although, you know, maybe there's things
that are challenging, but I get curious about things like
this. I wonder, what does that mean?
What category does that fit into? Some people think that
ADHD happens in life because of things
(01:15):
that happened, and it's actually not the case.
It is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The hyperactive part. If you were diagnosed with that
or if you have the combined type, that's hyperactive, impulsive,
maybe. Yeah, something like that. I always forget if the.
(01:38):
If it's impulsive, impulsivity, hyperactivity, hyperactive, impulsive.
But I do know with ADHD it is hyperactivity disorder.
So it is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
And there are different kind of personalities.
I mean, personalities. There, There are.
We might have our own here and there, maybe not truly, but
(02:01):
we might act different around other people.
Okay.
Sometimes I just do that. I just. Things come out of my mouth.
That's my other personality. But there are personality disorders.
That's what I meant to say. I just tripped up on that.
So a person. I'm just going to give you definitions on each kind
of disorder that I commonly think about or
(02:23):
know about. They're more common to know about.
There are over a dozen psychological disorders, and some
of them are more obscure, some are more common.
Adhd, I think, is the most common. I think that's when
I looked this up a while back. It's the most common.
But I will double check that before I give that information here,
(02:45):
in case you haven't seen the other episode where I talk about
that. But. Okay, let's start with a personality disorder.
ADHD is not a personality disorder, but a personality
disorder is a type of mental disorder where a
person's patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior and behaving
are way different than what's culturally expected, what the
(03:09):
norm is. These patterns are inflexible.
They're pervasive in many situations.
They just show up again and again, and they cause problems in
relationships, other areas. So some examples of personality
disorders are borderline personality Disorder, I'm familiar with
that one. I don't know if you've heard of bpd, but Borderline
(03:30):
personality, the name for that is because it's outside
the realm of the other personality disorders.
So it's outside the border. It's on the borderline.
It's still a personality disorder, but it doesn't fit into the
other categories. Narcissistic personality disorder.
A lot of times people say that person's a narcissist.
Whether they actually have that disorder or not.
(03:53):
I don't know, or I don't know if the people know who
say that. But a lot of people can point at someone and say,
that person's a narcissist. Avoidant personality disorder, antisocial
personality disorder. So those are some examples.
There are more than that. And then a psychological disorder.
Is that different than a personality disorder?
(04:15):
Actually, it's just a. A broad general term
for any condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling,
mood, behavior in a way that causes impairment, a lot
of stress. And it's kind of an umbrella that includes personality
disorders, includes mood disorders, anxiety disorders.
(04:36):
And that can be like major depressive disorder
or general anxiety disorder. If you have anxiety sometimes,
but you don't have general anxiety disorder, then maybe you don't
have. You have that condition. But just like with adhd,
there are people who have similar traits, but not enough to
(04:57):
interrupt or disrupt life. And they haven't had it their
whole life. Since it's a neurodevelopmental disorder, you would
have it since you were little. A few episodes ago, I learned
that the symptoms can show up as early as three.
Maybe because we're not doing things before we're three where
that would really show up. But when I look at my grandchildren,
(05:19):
my kids, when they had my kids who have adhd, I
didn't know to look for this. I didn't know anything about adhd.
But with my grandchildren, two of them, I can
see that hyperactive energy for sure before three,
but maybe that's not enough to be diagnosed with the
(05:39):
hyperactive, impulsive part of adhd.
But maybe in age three, there's more things that need to show
up just besides having a lot of energy, because that can
be a symptom of a lot of things. But so that even schizophrenia.
Ocd. OCD is a psychological disorder.
It is not a personality disorder. There is a personality disorder
(06:04):
called ocpd, and I made a few episodes about that
because I was fascinated by it, because I asked my psychiatrist
about ocd. If you have ocd, kinds of compulsions
or it needs to be this way, or perfectionism.
Is that often tied to adhd? He said more often
(06:26):
OCT PD is the obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder.
And I'm like, oh, what's that? What's that?
And it's really cute. Curious about it.
But OCD is not a personality disorder, but it is
a psychological disorder. So it's kind of like when you're
in school and you have the sets and subsets.
I don't know if they still do that in school, but I loved that
(06:47):
part in math where you'd make a circle or they'd
show it on the paper. They make a circle with cat, dog, mouse,
whale, fish, whatever. You know, there'd be all these
things. And then over here you'd have the mammals and
you'd have the subset. You'd have the fish.
(07:08):
What are fish? Are they fish? There's amphibians, reptiles.
Are fish just fish? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, clearly
I don't remember everything, but I did like the subsets.
That was an easy part of math for me.
I like that a lot. So it's like this with these psychological
disorders. A lot of them fit in the subset or the big
(07:30):
set. And there are different kinds. Mood disorders, this
is like major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder.
There's two kinds of bipolar disorder, Manic plus depressive
episodes, and hypomanic. I have no idea what hypomanic is.
I haven't looked into that. But there are some different mood
(07:53):
disorders, and that's a category where the primary feature is
a disturbance in your emotional state or mood.
The highest feature is that depression is that manic
and depression cycle. So that is what is.
Is very prominent. These involve periods of extreme sadness,
(08:15):
depression and elevated mood mania, or both.
That's what the bipolar. I don't know what these other ones are.
I won't even mention them because I've never heard of them.
It might just go in. In one ear and out the other for you.
But mood disorder is a subcategory of a psychological
disorder, and it has. It has. A lot of the people
(08:37):
with this have a lot of problems with mood regulation or emotional
dysregulation. And there is a component of that
with adhd, but not to the degree of somebody with
one of these mood disorders, although you can have more than
one diagnosis. Like, even though my psychiatrist said OCPD comes
(08:58):
along with ADHD more than ocd, it doesn't mean
it's impossible. Just what's more likely, what's more common.
Another disorder is
classified under anxiety disorders. So there's little
subset and then another subset or another category going down.
(09:22):
So
OCD is actually under anxiety disorders.
It has its own category, even though I mentioned it
before as being a psychological disorder.
It's not a neurodevelopmental disorder.
It's not a personality disorder. It has its own category under
(09:42):
anxiety. Anxiety is the driving factor for ocd,
where ocpd. That is not the driving factor.
That's not the reason you have the obsessive behaviors.
Sorry, I'm just. My. I'm wearing my Apple watch, and I
don't usually do it, and it's beeping at me.
(10:02):
I should have turned off my notifications.
At least it's not making noise, Right?
And I'm so new to my Apple watch that I still.
I don't use a lot of the features. And I'm kind of like,
what do I do? You know, If I get a phone call, do I talk
to this person? Because then I have to walk around like that.
You know, it's not my favorite thing anyway.
I do like having it because I don't miss as many things.
But. Okay, let's go back to this. So ocd.
(10:27):
Other. Okay, so the category that OCD
belongs in is under anxiety disorders, but it
has its own category, and there are more things in it besides
ocd. The new category is. And I don't
know how new is obsessive, compulsive and related disordered.
(10:50):
And this includes body dysmorphia or.
Which is a disorder. Body dysmorphia disorder, hoarding disorder.
Wow. There's a lot of disorders here that I'd rather not mention
because they're. It would be hard to live with them.
And they kind of. At least for me, they.
It's like the chalk on, you know, fingernails on the chalkboard,
(11:12):
just reading them. I don't. I'd rather not say them out loud.
Okay. Why do they give OCD its own category?
Because these disorders have a quality that the
other ones don't. They involve repetitive thoughts and behaviors
that are repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive.
And it's not a central feature of just anxiety.
(11:33):
General anxiety disorder that could have, like,
a phobia or a panic disorder. So anyway.
So, yeah, OCD is not a mood disorder, not a personality
disorder, not a neurodevelopmental disorder.
It is a psychological disorder,
(11:54):
which is interesting because they say it is.
See, this is my curious brain going right here.
They say that it is classified under anxiety disorders, and they
say that Anxiety disorders
are under psych. Oh yeah, it's under psychological disorders.
It's not under the other. Okay. I should have saved psychological
(12:15):
disorders for the end because then I could say these are the
ones that are just under that. Oh, well, I have to work.
I have to make a picture in my brain and I just did it the wrong
way. I put the. I'm putting my knee up high.
I know if you have adhd, this is something common and I'm sitting
back, I want to put my foot up by the computer.
But sorry about this. If you're watching, it's just life.
It's just how I'm comfortable. So. Okay, so let's go
(12:39):
past that. Psychological conditions.
What if it's not a disorder, but it's a
condition? What does that mean? What's, what's, what's the difference?
So it's basically a catch all phrase for either conditions.
Condition. It's a condition. It's. It's either a condition that
(13:01):
doesn't qualify as a psychological disorder or it's used
interchangeably with the word psychological disorder.
So you could say ADHD is a psychological condition or
you could say depression, anxiety, postpartum depression, burnout,
rsd, rejection, sensitive dysphoria.
(13:23):
Those things are psychological conditions that aren't actually
a disorder unless you're diagnosed with general anxiety
disorder or you're diagnosed with
a depression disorder. Major depress depression disorder, mdd.
So I have felt depressed before. I have had postpartum depression.
(13:47):
Never more. Not never even for a full day.
It always happens on. Well, it always happens.
I'm saying this, I'm six years old and I'm saying this like I'm
going to have more babies. It always happens, always happened
the day after I had a baby and it never lasted the whole day,
but it was, it was dramatic. I can't imagine living
with it for a long period of time. It was
(14:10):
just the change in my body was in my mind set was, was
so crazy. But yeah, it just was unusual.
Why am I crying? I can't stop crying.
I can't. You know, why, why, why do I want the curtains to be
pulled? I want everything to be dark in here and I don't
want to talk to a soul. That is not my norm.
I'm usually opening the curtains in life.
Someone's house coming up, you know, I, I want light.
(14:32):
Let there be light. But when I had this condition,
the psychological condition, because the hormones were rapidly
changing in my body, I got that condition, or what do
they call it before you have your Period and, and you have your
moody. It happens a few times in my life.
I can't even think of what it's called.
(14:53):
But yeah, that's a condition. You, your mood changes because
of the hormones or you might go into depression.
You might have a period of depression maybe because of those
hormonal swings. I, I, or even taking
medication if you take, taken prednisone before.
I've taken prednisone quite a few times more times than
(15:16):
I can count for my asthma or hives or reactions to
essential oils. My skin is so sensitive.
It's super sensitive. I'm allergic to a lot of things on my
skin and even some things that I eat.
It'll come out of my skin and so if it gets so
bad that I can't get a grip on it going on.
The prednisone can really mess with your moods and
(15:40):
emotional state. I remember I was told that the
first time I took it and I thought, oh, you know,
whatever. And I was also told that you would gain weight.
The first time I took it I lost weight rapidly.
Within two weeks I lost probably 10 pounds at least.
And it was real weight, it wasn't just water weight or anything.
And I went to the doctor and he said that that never happens
(16:02):
to anybody else. But I was doing that thing like
in the hospital where, you know, after having a baby where I
would shut my blinds and back then we had answering machines.
I didn't want to answer the phone. I'd let it go to
the answering machine. And when, you know, before I'd be
like, hello. I was so always so excited to talk to people.
(16:23):
And my husband's family is not as social as my family.
I mean minus one or two people. But my mother in
law. One time I was at my husband's parents house and the
phone rang back in the landline. Only days the phone rang
and she said I can't stand answering the phone.
And I thought, you've got to be kidding.
(16:44):
I'm so excited to answer the phone. It's different now with
cell phones because, well one we can see who's calling.
But a lot of the times we get phone calls, it's if
it's unannounced, it's, you know, it's spam.
So it's no fun. Or it can be a doctor's appointment reminder
or something like that. But usually, I don't know, my people
in my life will mostly like is it an okay time to
(17:07):
talk? You get a heads up from someone you know.
But yeah, I loved Answering the phone, I'd run to the phone.
I'd probably trip and fall, too, but I'd run to the phone,
answer the phone with excitement. Not when I was on the prednisone.
I not only didn't answer the phone, but I remember wanting
to make a new, you know, now we call it like
a voicemail message, but make a new recording for the answering
(17:29):
machine. That said, if you're calling to offer
to help me, please leave a message. If you're calling to
ask me for something, hang up. Because that was.
That was my mindset. That's never, never my mindset in a clear,
normal world. But when I was on the prednisone, even when
I went on it once with my kids, I was obsessive.
(17:51):
I think I mentioned that I cry and yell and things
like that and then go to the store and just
buy things because I was angry because my husband hadn't fixed
a door or something. And then the words of the doctor would come
into my mind of, sometimes this can cause compulsive shopping
or, you know, or anger or outbursts.
And I thought, oh. But at first it was so real in
(18:13):
my head that I couldn't reasonably see what
was happening. It was more like, why.
Why is my life so horrible? You know, so you can have a
condition. You can have a psychological reaction to medication,
for sure. There are other medications you have to be really careful
with, and prednisone is one of them.
Strong steroids. There's probably other strong steroids, but
(18:34):
always watch for things like that, because if it's not your norm,
even with ADHD medication, I had that happen.
I tried another medication in addition to my stimulant, and
I did not feel like myself. I just wanted to
be on my computer designing my website, which is funny.
I probably spent two weeks doing it.
(18:55):
And now it's not the one that I have now because I changed the
website platforms. But I would just.
All day long, I'd just sit there, you know, in my pajamas, like,
I don't want to do anything else. I don't want to do anything
else. It'd be interesting to go back and see what podcast episodes
I recorded that week, or if that was a week where I could barely
get myself to record, record one instead of two.
But I. It just wasn't the same.
(19:18):
I went to Hobby Lobby, walked around because I did
need to get something. And everything I saw, I'm just like,
none of this interests me. Like, there was a total loss of interest
in so much, and it wasn't to the point of a
full depression. But if you see those changes in yourself, you
might have a psychological condition.
It might be a reaction to your medication, it might be changes
(19:42):
in your hormones, it might be some shock or something that
happened in life. Some psychological conditions or disorders
are, you know, like the neurodevelopmental.
That happens when we're born. That happens because of how our
brains are formed. But a lot of the other ones can happen
because of what happens in life. So, you know,
(20:04):
just watching out for that, getting help for that if you need
that, or even just, you know, burnout.
I don't even know why they have burnout on here.
Maybe that's just loss of interest. I don't know.
Maybe it's just. Who knows? So, okay, so we've
got that. And yeah, there are over a
dozen other disorders, like an eating disorder, anorexia.
(20:27):
You've probably heard of anorexia. That was very much in the
News in the 80s. And if you loved
Karen Carpenter, the Carpenters, you know very well what happened
to her. But bulimia, that's also an eating disorder.
Binge eating, That's a disorder. Did you know that's a
disorder. And even though you might do things
(20:49):
that are similar to this, like binge eat sometimes, it
might not qualify as a disorder. It may.
You could always go to a doctor and see.
But like for me, I. With. With sugar.
When I eat sugar and when I don't take my ADHD medicine,
when I don't take a stimulant, I can overeat sugar or
(21:14):
just eat sugar all day long, eat way more than I need because
my body keeps craving it and craving it, craving it, craving
it. But when I would look into binge eating, like I'd
read books about from nutrition experts and they'd have
all these online programs you could join about how to stop binge
eating. When I'd really read about it, I didn't have a problem
(21:35):
like eating three dinners or anything like that.
I just needed sugar in my body. So anyway, you can
always look into them and see. Is this something I'm dealing
with? Is it something I'm dealing with?
My goodness, I need to take this. Watch up.
I'm getting tired of everybody beeping me.
Maybe. Yeah, I should pause. I don't know how
to pause on here, but I'm going to try.
So just one second. And that, my dear, is an example
(21:59):
of not being able to handle distractions.
You know, feeling something on my wrist.
It's helpful in life to not miss My kids calls
or texts or something. It's not helpful when I'm recording a
podcast. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
So how is this helpful to you to know any of this?
I don't know it. For me, it's just, it's just, it's
(22:22):
just feeding a part of my curious brain.
Because I think doesn't really matter if ADHD is a
disorder. I mean, one of the disorders is sleep wake disorders.
You could have insomnia disorder, you have chronic insomnia or
narcolepsy, which is also about sleep and restless
(22:43):
leg syndrome. That is actually a sleep wake disorder.
I did not know that. My mom, my aunts, I think my grandma
had that sleep apnea. That's weird that they call sleep
apnea a sleep wake disorder because you think at least I
think, I think that's completely body, not
head. So if that's a psychological disorder, it
(23:08):
does have to do with the brain, right?
Obviously I don't know enough about sleep apnea and it can be
managed with, you know, CPAP machine and getting tested in
a sleep center and stuff. But if you feel bad
for any reason that you have a psychological disorder, don't,
don't. It's just how our brains are formed.
(23:30):
And in some ways it makes us way more fun.
I think, I think, I mean, not to say that nobody without
ADHD or that anybody without ADHD isn't fun, but sometimes
that's the spice of life that we have these brains that
are a little bit different. And yeah, we have struggles.
I was coming up here and had a little bit more
(23:51):
of my chocolate smoothie and I thought, drink a little bit more.
I had a straw. I drank the rest of the drink with the
straw. But the last bit, I thought, no, it's not as fulfilling
with the straw. I wanted to drink it like this down my
shirt. Just like last second things.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Now here's some other ones you've probably
heard of. This is a category called disruptive impulse, impulse
(24:14):
control and conduct disorders. So impulse control can be
part of the hyperactive impulsive part of adhd.
But this is problems with self control of
emotions and behavior, often violating the rights of others
or violating rules. So that could be along with that
(24:37):
impulse. So it's more than just having problems with
impulses. But kleptomania, pyromania, those fit in
there. That's kind of fascinating. I've heard of this one.
Oppositional defiant disorder. Have you heard of that?
Someone who just always wants to be defiant.
And these are to A degree where it is just very
(24:59):
disruptive for this person in their life.
It's very disruptive for the people around them.
Yeah, Very, very fascinating. But yeah.
I hope that you feel okay that you have adhd.
It's not the prettiest name. I wish it was a cute name, especially
for women. We could have a cuter name than adhd.
Might be why I have so much pink and flowers on my website.
(25:21):
But yeah, it's not pretty. I like things that
are like roll off the tongue. You know, kind of be
pretty in a. In a song or a poem or something.
That's not gonna be pretty in a song.
But don't fret if you are. That it's a psychological
disorder. So is sleep wake syndrome or sleep wake disorder.
So is sleep apnea. Does anybody feel
(25:46):
like, oh, I feel worse about myself because I have sleep
apnea? They might wish they didn't have it.
They might wish they weren't so tired anymore, didn't have to
go through what they do. But do they feel shame from it?
Do they feel. Or like my mom with her restless leg syndrome,
does she think, I wish I could just do
(26:08):
better? Like I should be able to take care of this on my
own without medication? Maybe some people do look for
more natural, but you know what I'm saying?
I'm just saying we don't need to think.
We need to just resolve whatever pattern we have and
just get it to stop. If you have a tendency to
(26:29):
jump up when you shouldn't jump up or whatever, you can be aware
of that and you can try to slow it down, but don't feel
like you're a bad person because you do that.
It's just part of your person. It's just part of your body.
It's really not your spirit, your being, your who
you are on the inside. It's the body and brain you've been
(26:51):
given and you're doing the best with it you can, right?
Oh, I think we are. I think we are. But yeah.
I am so excited to be on here today.
This is actually before my trip. I'm.
This is going to come out next week, but.
And it'll be a little shorter than the last one.
But I have a trip to go see
my parents. They just moved to Arizona to be near two
(27:13):
of my brothers. So I'm going to go see them there.
And I was going to. This is okay. I love Sting.
I don't know if you love Sting, but I super love Sting and I
just have. I. It's not like I loved the police in the 80s.
I did, but it wasn't like he stood out to me that
much. It was when I bought the first Sting album and it was like,
(27:34):
oh, his voice, his voice and voice. So anyway, I had tickets
to go see Sting and Billy Joel with my son Memorial Day weekend
and that concert got postponed because Billy Joel's gonna have
surgery, which I respect that. I'm not mad at him.
It actually worked out better because of when my daughter has
plans and I need to watch her children for a week, but it worked
(27:56):
out better but that got postponed a week.
So I have those plane tickets and they were non refundable, but
they were changeable. And so when my parents moved, I
thought I should probably go see them.
I should take that flight credit and go see them.
So that's what I'm doing. Yay. Instead of going Memorial Day
weekend, I'm going now and. And we'll see how recording is
(28:18):
with four kids in the house when the kids are here.
When my daughter's traveling. It's my daughter who did the the
guest episode when we talked about why ADHD gets missed
in daughters and children and girls.
Not in daughters, in girls. She's my daughter, so that's fine.
Why did I miss it in my daughter? I don't know.
(28:38):
But it's mostly not having a knowledge about it.
For sure. For sure. Thank you so much for being here.
As always. Share this podcast with others.
I would love it if our community grows, if we feel connected
in some way and we're all in this together.
As they would say in High School Musical.
(28:59):
Hopefully there's no flag or anything for that.
I wasn't singing it right. Is that trademarked?
Anyway, thank you so much. I'll be back again.
Bye. Double chins Rubber ducks Squeaky cheese and
paper cups Applesauce Superman Rocket ship San
Peter Pan Boogie boards and parachutes and soda cans Jumping
(29:22):
jacks and pillowcases for my hands Donald Duck and fire trucks
and Pokemon Santa Claus and Johnny Depp and Donkey Kong
Chocolate chips and zippers sets of 914 little children jumping
on the trampoline Model trains are passing Lights in super glue
Tangerines and magazines in kangaroo.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
(29:48):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(30:22):
I butter my toast Spread on some grape
jelly I don't mean to fuss But
I'm a chef and a good one My grandma
can't hear me I hear that breakfast is done
Getting colder, ever older so I run
(30:50):
Open windows, broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
Time for a
(31:23):
rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmony I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
Adhd. I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast and I'm excited
to be here today. I am going to talk about all
kinds of psychological disorders, conditions, just differentiating.
If you are curious, where does ADHD fit in?
Why is it a disorder? I know I. I know
(00:53):
some people think it shouldn't be called a disorder.
You know, it makes them feel bad about themselves, like, there's
nothing wrong with me. Although, you know, maybe there's things
that are challenging, but I get curious about things like
this. I wonder, what does that mean?
What category does that fit into? Some people think that
ADHD happens in life because of things
(01:15):
that happened, and it's actually not the case.
It is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The hyperactive part. If you were diagnosed with that
or if you have the combined type, that's hyperactive, impulsive,
maybe. Yeah, something like that. I always forget if the.
(01:38):
If it's impulsive, impulsivity, hyperactivity, hyperactive, impulsive.
But I do know with ADHD it is hyperactivity disorder.
So it is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
And there are different kind of personalities.
I mean, personalities. There, There are.
We might have our own here and there, maybe not truly, but
(02:01):
we might act different around other people.
Okay.
Sometimes I just do that. I just. Things come out of my mouth.
That's my other personality. But there are personality disorders.
That's what I meant to say. I just tripped up on that.
So a person. I'm just going to give you definitions on each kind
of disorder that I commonly think about or
(02:23):
know about. They're more common to know about.
There are over a dozen psychological disorders, and some
of them are more obscure, some are more common.
Adhd, I think, is the most common. I think that's when
I looked this up a while back. It's the most common.
But I will double check that before I give that information here,
(02:45):
in case you haven't seen the other episode where I talk about
that. But. Okay, let's start with a personality disorder.
ADHD is not a personality disorder, but a personality
disorder is a type of mental disorder where a
person's patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior and behaving
are way different than what's culturally expected, what the
(03:09):
norm is. These patterns are inflexible.
They're pervasive in many situations.
They just show up again and again, and they cause problems in
relationships, other areas. So some examples of personality
disorders are borderline personality Disorder, I'm familiar with
that one. I don't know if you've heard of bpd, but Borderline
(03:30):
personality, the name for that is because it's outside
the realm of the other personality disorders.
So it's outside the border. It's on the borderline.
It's still a personality disorder, but it doesn't fit into the
other categories. Narcissistic personality disorder.
A lot of times people say that person's a narcissist.
Whether they actually have that disorder or not.
(03:53):
I don't know, or I don't know if the people know who
say that. But a lot of people can point at someone and say,
that person's a narcissist. Avoidant personality disorder, antisocial
personality disorder. So those are some examples.
There are more than that. And then a psychological disorder.
Is that different than a personality disorder?
(04:15):
Actually, it's just a. A broad general term
for any condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling,
mood, behavior in a way that causes impairment, a lot
of stress. And it's kind of an umbrella that includes personality
disorders, includes mood disorders, anxiety disorders.
(04:36):
And that can be like major depressive disorder
or general anxiety disorder. If you have anxiety sometimes,
but you don't have general anxiety disorder, then maybe you don't
have. You have that condition. But just like with adhd,
there are people who have similar traits, but not enough to
(04:57):
interrupt or disrupt life. And they haven't had it their
whole life. Since it's a neurodevelopmental disorder, you would
have it since you were little. A few episodes ago, I learned
that the symptoms can show up as early as three.
Maybe because we're not doing things before we're three where
that would really show up. But when I look at my grandchildren,
(05:19):
my kids, when they had my kids who have adhd, I
didn't know to look for this. I didn't know anything about adhd.
But with my grandchildren, two of them, I can
see that hyperactive energy for sure before three,
but maybe that's not enough to be diagnosed with the
(05:39):
hyperactive, impulsive part of adhd.
But maybe in age three, there's more things that need to show
up just besides having a lot of energy, because that can
be a symptom of a lot of things. But so that even schizophrenia.
Ocd. OCD is a psychological disorder.
It is not a personality disorder. There is a personality disorder
(06:04):
called ocpd, and I made a few episodes about that
because I was fascinated by it, because I asked my psychiatrist
about ocd. If you have ocd, kinds of compulsions
or it needs to be this way, or perfectionism.
Is that often tied to adhd? He said more often
(06:26):
OCT PD is the obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder.
And I'm like, oh, what's that? What's that?
And it's really cute. Curious about it.
But OCD is not a personality disorder, but it is
a psychological disorder. So it's kind of like when you're
in school and you have the sets and subsets.
I don't know if they still do that in school, but I loved that
(06:47):
part in math where you'd make a circle or they'd
show it on the paper. They make a circle with cat, dog, mouse,
whale, fish, whatever. You know, there'd be all these
things. And then over here you'd have the mammals and
you'd have the subset. You'd have the fish.
(07:08):
What are fish? Are they fish? There's amphibians, reptiles.
Are fish just fish? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, clearly
I don't remember everything, but I did like the subsets.
That was an easy part of math for me.
I like that a lot. So it's like this with these psychological
disorders. A lot of them fit in the subset or the big
(07:30):
set. And there are different kinds. Mood disorders, this
is like major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder.
There's two kinds of bipolar disorder, Manic plus depressive
episodes, and hypomanic. I have no idea what hypomanic is.
I haven't looked into that. But there are some different mood
(07:53):
disorders, and that's a category where the primary feature is
a disturbance in your emotional state or mood.
The highest feature is that depression is that manic
and depression cycle. So that is what is.
Is very prominent. These involve periods of extreme sadness,
(08:15):
depression and elevated mood mania, or both.
That's what the bipolar. I don't know what these other ones are.
I won't even mention them because I've never heard of them.
It might just go in. In one ear and out the other for you.
But mood disorder is a subcategory of a psychological
disorder, and it has. It has. A lot of the people
(08:37):
with this have a lot of problems with mood regulation or emotional
dysregulation. And there is a component of that
with adhd, but not to the degree of somebody with
one of these mood disorders, although you can have more than
one diagnosis. Like, even though my psychiatrist said OCPD comes
(08:58):
along with ADHD more than ocd, it doesn't mean
it's impossible. Just what's more likely, what's more common.
Another disorder is
classified under anxiety disorders. So there's little
subset and then another subset or another category going down.
(09:22):
So
OCD is actually under anxiety disorders.
It has its own category, even though I mentioned it
before as being a psychological disorder.
It's not a neurodevelopmental disorder.
It's not a personality disorder. It has its own category under
(09:42):
anxiety. Anxiety is the driving factor for ocd,
where ocpd. That is not the driving factor.
That's not the reason you have the obsessive behaviors.
Sorry, I'm just. My. I'm wearing my Apple watch, and I
don't usually do it, and it's beeping at me.
(10:02):
I should have turned off my notifications.
At least it's not making noise, Right?
And I'm so new to my Apple watch that I still.
I don't use a lot of the features. And I'm kind of like,
what do I do? You know, If I get a phone call, do I talk
to this person? Because then I have to walk around like that.
You know, it's not my favorite thing anyway.
I do like having it because I don't miss as many things.
But. Okay, let's go back to this. So ocd.
(10:27):
Other. Okay, so the category that OCD
belongs in is under anxiety disorders, but it
has its own category, and there are more things in it besides
ocd. The new category is. And I don't
know how new is obsessive, compulsive and related disordered.
(10:50):
And this includes body dysmorphia or.
Which is a disorder. Body dysmorphia disorder, hoarding disorder.
Wow. There's a lot of disorders here that I'd rather not mention
because they're. It would be hard to live with them.
And they kind of. At least for me, they.
It's like the chalk on, you know, fingernails on the chalkboard,
(11:12):
just reading them. I don't. I'd rather not say them out loud.
Okay. Why do they give OCD its own category?
Because these disorders have a quality that the
other ones don't. They involve repetitive thoughts and behaviors
that are repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive.
And it's not a central feature of just anxiety.
(11:33):
General anxiety disorder that could have, like,
a phobia or a panic disorder. So anyway.
So, yeah, OCD is not a mood disorder, not a personality
disorder, not a neurodevelopmental disorder.
It is a psychological disorder,
(11:54):
which is interesting because they say it is.
See, this is my curious brain going right here.
They say that it is classified under anxiety disorders, and they
say that Anxiety disorders
are under psych. Oh yeah, it's under psychological disorders.
It's not under the other. Okay. I should have saved psychological
(12:15):
disorders for the end because then I could say these are the
ones that are just under that. Oh, well, I have to work.
I have to make a picture in my brain and I just did it the wrong
way. I put the. I'm putting my knee up high.
I know if you have adhd, this is something common and I'm sitting
back, I want to put my foot up by the computer.
But sorry about this. If you're watching, it's just life.
It's just how I'm comfortable. So. Okay, so let's go
(12:39):
past that. Psychological conditions.
What if it's not a disorder, but it's a
condition? What does that mean? What's, what's, what's the difference?
So it's basically a catch all phrase for either conditions.
Condition. It's a condition. It's. It's either a condition that
(13:01):
doesn't qualify as a psychological disorder or it's used
interchangeably with the word psychological disorder.
So you could say ADHD is a psychological condition or
you could say depression, anxiety, postpartum depression, burnout,
rsd, rejection, sensitive dysphoria.
(13:23):
Those things are psychological conditions that aren't actually
a disorder unless you're diagnosed with general anxiety
disorder or you're diagnosed with
a depression disorder. Major depress depression disorder, mdd.
So I have felt depressed before. I have had postpartum depression.
(13:47):
Never more. Not never even for a full day.
It always happens on. Well, it always happens.
I'm saying this, I'm six years old and I'm saying this like I'm
going to have more babies. It always happens, always happened
the day after I had a baby and it never lasted the whole day,
but it was, it was dramatic. I can't imagine living
with it for a long period of time. It was
(14:10):
just the change in my body was in my mind set was, was
so crazy. But yeah, it just was unusual.
Why am I crying? I can't stop crying.
I can't. You know, why, why, why do I want the curtains to be
pulled? I want everything to be dark in here and I don't
want to talk to a soul. That is not my norm.
I'm usually opening the curtains in life.
Someone's house coming up, you know, I, I want light.
(14:32):
Let there be light. But when I had this condition,
the psychological condition, because the hormones were rapidly
changing in my body, I got that condition, or what do
they call it before you have your Period and, and you have your
moody. It happens a few times in my life.
I can't even think of what it's called.
(14:53):
But yeah, that's a condition. You, your mood changes because
of the hormones or you might go into depression.
You might have a period of depression maybe because of those
hormonal swings. I, I, or even taking
medication if you take, taken prednisone before.
I've taken prednisone quite a few times more times than
(15:16):
I can count for my asthma or hives or reactions to
essential oils. My skin is so sensitive.
It's super sensitive. I'm allergic to a lot of things on my
skin and even some things that I eat.
It'll come out of my skin and so if it gets so
bad that I can't get a grip on it going on.
The prednisone can really mess with your moods and
(15:40):
emotional state. I remember I was told that the
first time I took it and I thought, oh, you know,
whatever. And I was also told that you would gain weight.
The first time I took it I lost weight rapidly.
Within two weeks I lost probably 10 pounds at least.
And it was real weight, it wasn't just water weight or anything.
And I went to the doctor and he said that that never happens
(16:02):
to anybody else. But I was doing that thing like
in the hospital where, you know, after having a baby where I
would shut my blinds and back then we had answering machines.
I didn't want to answer the phone. I'd let it go to
the answering machine. And when, you know, before I'd be
like, hello. I was so always so excited to talk to people.
(16:23):
And my husband's family is not as social as my family.
I mean minus one or two people. But my mother in
law. One time I was at my husband's parents house and the
phone rang back in the landline. Only days the phone rang
and she said I can't stand answering the phone.
And I thought, you've got to be kidding.
(16:44):
I'm so excited to answer the phone. It's different now with
cell phones because, well one we can see who's calling.
But a lot of the times we get phone calls, it's if
it's unannounced, it's, you know, it's spam.
So it's no fun. Or it can be a doctor's appointment reminder
or something like that. But usually, I don't know, my people
in my life will mostly like is it an okay time to
(17:07):
talk? You get a heads up from someone you know.
But yeah, I loved Answering the phone, I'd run to the phone.
I'd probably trip and fall, too, but I'd run to the phone,
answer the phone with excitement. Not when I was on the prednisone.
I not only didn't answer the phone, but I remember wanting
to make a new, you know, now we call it like
a voicemail message, but make a new recording for the answering
(17:29):
machine. That said, if you're calling to offer
to help me, please leave a message. If you're calling to
ask me for something, hang up. Because that was.
That was my mindset. That's never, never my mindset in a clear,
normal world. But when I was on the prednisone, even when
I went on it once with my kids, I was obsessive.
(17:51):
I think I mentioned that I cry and yell and things
like that and then go to the store and just
buy things because I was angry because my husband hadn't fixed
a door or something. And then the words of the doctor would come
into my mind of, sometimes this can cause compulsive shopping
or, you know, or anger or outbursts.
And I thought, oh. But at first it was so real in
(18:13):
my head that I couldn't reasonably see what
was happening. It was more like, why.
Why is my life so horrible? You know, so you can have a
condition. You can have a psychological reaction to medication,
for sure. There are other medications you have to be really careful
with, and prednisone is one of them.
Strong steroids. There's probably other strong steroids, but
(18:34):
always watch for things like that, because if it's not your norm,
even with ADHD medication, I had that happen.
I tried another medication in addition to my stimulant, and
I did not feel like myself. I just wanted to
be on my computer designing my website, which is funny.
I probably spent two weeks doing it.
(18:55):
And now it's not the one that I have now because I changed the
website platforms. But I would just.
All day long, I'd just sit there, you know, in my pajamas, like,
I don't want to do anything else. I don't want to do anything
else. It'd be interesting to go back and see what podcast episodes
I recorded that week, or if that was a week where I could barely
get myself to record, record one instead of two.
But I. It just wasn't the same.
(19:18):
I went to Hobby Lobby, walked around because I did
need to get something. And everything I saw, I'm just like,
none of this interests me. Like, there was a total loss of interest
in so much, and it wasn't to the point of a
full depression. But if you see those changes in yourself, you
might have a psychological condition.
It might be a reaction to your medication, it might be changes
(19:42):
in your hormones, it might be some shock or something that
happened in life. Some psychological conditions or disorders
are, you know, like the neurodevelopmental.
That happens when we're born. That happens because of how our
brains are formed. But a lot of the other ones can happen
because of what happens in life. So, you know,
(20:04):
just watching out for that, getting help for that if you need
that, or even just, you know, burnout.
I don't even know why they have burnout on here.
Maybe that's just loss of interest. I don't know.
Maybe it's just. Who knows? So, okay, so we've
got that. And yeah, there are over a
dozen other disorders, like an eating disorder, anorexia.
(20:27):
You've probably heard of anorexia. That was very much in the
News in the 80s. And if you loved
Karen Carpenter, the Carpenters, you know very well what happened
to her. But bulimia, that's also an eating disorder.
Binge eating, That's a disorder. Did you know that's a
disorder. And even though you might do things
(20:49):
that are similar to this, like binge eat sometimes, it
might not qualify as a disorder. It may.
You could always go to a doctor and see.
But like for me, I. With. With sugar.
When I eat sugar and when I don't take my ADHD medicine,
when I don't take a stimulant, I can overeat sugar or
(21:14):
just eat sugar all day long, eat way more than I need because
my body keeps craving it and craving it, craving it, craving
it. But when I would look into binge eating, like I'd
read books about from nutrition experts and they'd have
all these online programs you could join about how to stop binge
eating. When I'd really read about it, I didn't have a problem
(21:35):
like eating three dinners or anything like that.
I just needed sugar in my body. So anyway, you can
always look into them and see. Is this something I'm dealing
with? Is it something I'm dealing with?
My goodness, I need to take this. Watch up.
I'm getting tired of everybody beeping me.
Maybe. Yeah, I should pause. I don't know how
to pause on here, but I'm going to try.
So just one second. And that, my dear, is an example
(21:59):
of not being able to handle distractions.
You know, feeling something on my wrist.
It's helpful in life to not miss My kids calls
or texts or something. It's not helpful when I'm recording a
podcast. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
So how is this helpful to you to know any of this?
I don't know it. For me, it's just, it's just, it's
(22:22):
just feeding a part of my curious brain.
Because I think doesn't really matter if ADHD is a
disorder. I mean, one of the disorders is sleep wake disorders.
You could have insomnia disorder, you have chronic insomnia or
narcolepsy, which is also about sleep and restless
(22:43):
leg syndrome. That is actually a sleep wake disorder.
I did not know that. My mom, my aunts, I think my grandma
had that sleep apnea. That's weird that they call sleep
apnea a sleep wake disorder because you think at least I
think, I think that's completely body, not
head. So if that's a psychological disorder, it
(23:08):
does have to do with the brain, right?
Obviously I don't know enough about sleep apnea and it can be
managed with, you know, CPAP machine and getting tested in
a sleep center and stuff. But if you feel bad
for any reason that you have a psychological disorder, don't,
don't. It's just how our brains are formed.
(23:30):
And in some ways it makes us way more fun.
I think, I think, I mean, not to say that nobody without
ADHD or that anybody without ADHD isn't fun, but sometimes
that's the spice of life that we have these brains that
are a little bit different. And yeah, we have struggles.
I was coming up here and had a little bit more
(23:51):
of my chocolate smoothie and I thought, drink a little bit more.
I had a straw. I drank the rest of the drink with the
straw. But the last bit, I thought, no, it's not as fulfilling
with the straw. I wanted to drink it like this down my
shirt. Just like last second things.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Now here's some other ones you've probably
heard of. This is a category called disruptive impulse, impulse
(24:14):
control and conduct disorders. So impulse control can be
part of the hyperactive impulsive part of adhd.
But this is problems with self control of
emotions and behavior, often violating the rights of others
or violating rules. So that could be along with that
(24:37):
impulse. So it's more than just having problems with
impulses. But kleptomania, pyromania, those fit in
there. That's kind of fascinating. I've heard of this one.
Oppositional defiant disorder. Have you heard of that?
Someone who just always wants to be defiant.
And these are to A degree where it is just very
(24:59):
disruptive for this person in their life.
It's very disruptive for the people around them.
Yeah, Very, very fascinating. But yeah.
I hope that you feel okay that you have adhd.
It's not the prettiest name. I wish it was a cute name, especially
for women. We could have a cuter name than adhd.
Might be why I have so much pink and flowers on my website.
(25:21):
But yeah, it's not pretty. I like things that
are like roll off the tongue. You know, kind of be
pretty in a. In a song or a poem or something.
That's not gonna be pretty in a song.
But don't fret if you are. That it's a psychological
disorder. So is sleep wake syndrome or sleep wake disorder.
So is sleep apnea. Does anybody feel
(25:46):
like, oh, I feel worse about myself because I have sleep
apnea? They might wish they didn't have it.
They might wish they weren't so tired anymore, didn't have to
go through what they do. But do they feel shame from it?
Do they feel. Or like my mom with her restless leg syndrome,
does she think, I wish I could just do
(26:08):
better? Like I should be able to take care of this on my
own without medication? Maybe some people do look for
more natural, but you know what I'm saying?
I'm just saying we don't need to think.
We need to just resolve whatever pattern we have and
just get it to stop. If you have a tendency to
(26:29):
jump up when you shouldn't jump up or whatever, you can be aware
of that and you can try to slow it down, but don't feel
like you're a bad person because you do that.
It's just part of your person. It's just part of your body.
It's really not your spirit, your being, your who
you are on the inside. It's the body and brain you've been
(26:51):
given and you're doing the best with it you can, right?
Oh, I think we are. I think we are. But yeah.
I am so excited to be on here today.
This is actually before my trip. I'm.
This is going to come out next week, but.
And it'll be a little shorter than the last one.
But I have a trip to go see
my parents. They just moved to Arizona to be near two
(27:13):
of my brothers. So I'm going to go see them there.
And I was going to. This is okay. I love Sting.
I don't know if you love Sting, but I super love Sting and I
just have. I. It's not like I loved the police in the 80s.
I did, but it wasn't like he stood out to me that
much. It was when I bought the first Sting album and it was like,
(27:34):
oh, his voice, his voice and voice. So anyway, I had tickets
to go see Sting and Billy Joel with my son Memorial Day weekend
and that concert got postponed because Billy Joel's gonna have
surgery, which I respect that. I'm not mad at him.
It actually worked out better because of when my daughter has
plans and I need to watch her children for a week, but it worked
(27:56):
out better but that got postponed a week.
So I have those plane tickets and they were non refundable, but
they were changeable. And so when my parents moved, I
thought I should probably go see them.
I should take that flight credit and go see them.
So that's what I'm doing. Yay. Instead of going Memorial Day
weekend, I'm going now and. And we'll see how recording is
(28:18):
with four kids in the house when the kids are here.
When my daughter's traveling. It's my daughter who did the the
guest episode when we talked about why ADHD gets missed
in daughters and children and girls.
Not in daughters, in girls. She's my daughter, so that's fine.
Why did I miss it in my daughter? I don't know.
(28:38):
But it's mostly not having a knowledge about it.
For sure. For sure. Thank you so much for being here.
As always. Share this podcast with others.
I would love it if our community grows, if we feel connected
in some way and we're all in this together.
As they would say in High School Musical.
(28:59):
Hopefully there's no flag or anything for that.
I wasn't singing it right. Is that trademarked?
Anyway, thank you so much. I'll be back again.
Bye. Double chins Rubber ducks Squeaky cheese and
paper cups Applesauce Superman Rocket ship San
Peter Pan Boogie boards and parachutes and soda cans Jumping
(29:22):
jacks and pillowcases for my hands Donald Duck and fire trucks
and Pokemon Santa Claus and Johnny Depp and Donkey Kong
Chocolate chips and zippers sets of 914 little children jumping
on the trampoline Model trains are passing Lights in super glue
Tangerines and magazines in kangaroo.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
(29:48):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(30:22):
I butter my toast Spread on some grape
jelly I don't mean to fuss But
I'm a chef and a good one My grandma
can't hear me I hear that breakfast is done
Getting colder, ever older so I run
(30:50):
Open windows, broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
Time for a
(31:23):
rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmony I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
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