November 2, 2023 • 27 mins
How would it feel spend your entire life convinced that you were a robin but somehow couldn't manage to sing like the other robins, only to learn that you are actually a hummingbird. This is how I felt until my ADHD diagnosis, which was a revelation and the beginning of a life-transforming journey. Whether you're newly diagnosed, suspect you have ADHD, or are someone who wants to understand the condition better, take a listen and let me know what you think.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of the ADHD EA podcast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Hi everybody.
I decided to kick off thisfirst official episode with
talking about how beingdiagnosed with ADHD changed how
I treat myself.
Is there a difference betweenhow my brain worked before I was
diagnosed with ADHD and after?
No, probably not.
(00:49):
What is different is how Itreat myself.
I want you to imagine standingat the starting line with
everyone else that you startedin, say, kindergarten with.
You're told that you're a greatrunner.
You keep up with everybody.
You even maybe get to go to adifferent class that is better
suited to a person like you.
(01:10):
I want you to imaginegraduating high school and
standing at the starting linewith everybody else ready to
take off running.
You've been told your entirelife that you are a great runner
with tons of potential.
People expect great things ofyou.
They expect you to place inevery single race, probably with
(01:30):
minimal effort, and then youstart running and everyone is
beating you.
You keep pumping your legs justlike everybody else, and you
keep pumping your arms just likeeverybody else, and you're
exhausted.
Nobody else seems exhausted,but you are so tired.
Maybe you just aren't tryinghard enough.
(01:52):
Maybe you didn't get enoughsleep or car blood enough.
You go home, you car blood, yousleep.
You go to bed early and thenthe next morning you wake up and
you go to that starting lineand you hear the crack and you
take off and everybody is outrunning you again and they're
making it look so easy and youstart to wonder why is this so
(02:16):
much harder for me?
Everybody else started at thesame place.
I did, I've always done well.
Why am I not keeping up?
Maybe it's a personal choice.
Am I not working hard enough?
Am I not trying hard enough?
Am I not focused enough?
Maybe despite the fact that I'mpumping my legs and I'm pumping
(02:38):
my arms?
Maybe I just don't want it.
Maybe I'm lazy.
Maybe everyone else isn't lazyand they're just going and I am
making a choice not to go ashard as they are.
And you really start to secondguess yourself and wonder did I
maybe fool everybody for allthose years?
(02:59):
Was I actually not as good aseveryone thought?
And I just tricked them?
And you freak out and you thinkI'm lazy, I'm not trying hard
enough.
I could succeed if I appliedmyself.
Everybody says so, but everyoneelse is doing so much better
than me.
It's probably my fault, somehow.
And you really get down onyourself.
And then you see somebody andthey say hey, did you notice
(03:23):
that you are dragging a 250pound weight behind you when you
run?
And you turn around and thereit is and it's chain to your
waist and you didn't notice itbefore.
But there is a weight chainthat you are pulling every time
you race and nobody else ispulling a weight and that's why
you're so tired and that's whyyou're not keeping up.
And all of a sudden it's notthat you weren't trying hard
(03:44):
enough, and it's not that youweren't putting in enough effort
or that you were choosing to belazy and choosing not to keep
up despite having the ability,you were having to work 250
pounds harder than everyone else, and that's what getting
diagnosed felt like to me.
There's something called thegifted to burnout pipeline,
(04:05):
where kids who are identifiedsomewhere in grade school as
being above average andintelligence get to go to a
gifted program or an alphaprogram, and it is generally
something designed to challengethem and expose them to
different ways of thought andmore advanced things.
And I got to do this from fifthgrade through eighth grade.
(04:29):
They didn't have it in highschool, not that it mattered.
I was mostly homeschooled atthat point.
I only went to school forEnglish and band.
Everything else was either athome or at the community college
.
But I had somebody point out itwas on the internet and they
mentioned that the gifted andthe alpha programs were
basically just special ed forundiagnosed neuro spicy kids,
(04:52):
except nobody told the teacherthat it was special education.
So none of us were taught theskills we needed to survive in
the real world.
And it's funny, but also notbecause, yeah, that's basically
it.
I was put in this class thatdid challenge me and did, you
know, vastly widen my vocabularyand put me in touch with a
(05:15):
bunch of other kids who were,you know, bright like me.
And I don't say that to toot myown horn, but I also don't
think it's fair to, you know,play down the fact that I did
well on an IQ test Notexceptionally well, I think, I
scored like one point over whereI needed.
But because I was part of that,you know, we had different
(05:35):
classes that weren't asstructured and when I was in
high school and mostlyhomeschooling, that was also
fairly unstructured.
And even in the classes thatwere structured I didn't have to
work terribly hard to pass them.
So when I went off to collegeand I went into an engineering
program where everybody was abig fish and everybody had it
(05:56):
easy and nobody had to work hardin school.
I didn't have any self-imposedstructure, I didn't have any
study skills and, as a result, Ididn't do very well.
In fact, I flunked precalculustwice.
I didn't go to my engineeringclass pretty much at all.
My freshman year I just neverwoke up.
I had unfettered access totelevision and junk food and all
(06:18):
of the things that I didn'thave at home.
I had video games.
Netflix had started streamingaround that time.
What wasn't on Netflix was onYouTube and lots of things were
on YouTube.
Because YouTube wasn't quite asclosely monitored as it is now
and because I had undiagnosedADHD, I was a complete slave to
my brain's dopamine needs andthe immediate reward of playing
(06:42):
video games and watching all theshows I wanted to watch and
eating whatever I wanted andtaking a nap right now instead
of waiting that all outweighedthe long-term rewards of if you
graduate college, you're goingto have a job that'll pay you a
lot of money.
So because I wasn't doing wellin school, because I flunked
precalculus twice, which Istupidly took with the same
(07:03):
professor at the same 7am slot,two semesters in a row that I
never went to because I'd neverhad to work hard in math, and I
was shocked that I had to go inperson to this class to learn
the things and you can't Ipersonally cannot learn math in
a theater filled with 300 otherkids, but there was a 250 pound
weight that I was draggingbehind me that I wasn't aware of
(07:23):
, and so, instead of going, oh,I can't focus on classes or on
studying because I didn't havethose skills taught to me and
I'm never going to be able tofocus that well because I'm ADHD
and unmedicated.
Instead, it was very much aself-flagellation of well, I was
always smart in grade school.
(07:44):
I must not be trying hardenough, or well, maybe I must
have fooled them all and serious, serious bouts of imposter
syndrome.
I had a number of people in mylife, my family especially, who
were very concerned andunderstandably frustrated,
believing that I just needed toapply myself, I needed to focus,
(08:06):
I needed to want it more, Ineeded to grow up and stop
focusing on things whims, if youwill.
I needed to be an adult andrealize that a college education
was more important thantelevision, but in my brain it
wasn't and it couldn't bebecause I suffer severely from
(08:27):
executive dysfunction.
So when I was diagnosed at 31years old at the time I was
suffering severely from burnoutand would continue to do so for
another six-ish months beforefinally going on short-term
disability leave for burnoutrecovery.
(08:47):
I was really beating myself upat work because I love being an
executive assistant.
It is a very important job.
It is crucial to the success ofmany companies.
I believe we are the unsungheroes working in the background
.
We are jacks of all trades.
We do a lot of things.
(09:08):
There are days when I amorganizing a town hall for 100
people in person and 300 peopleonline and I'm coordinating
slide decks and speakers and allsorts of very exciting,
complicated things, organizingcatering.
There's a thousand movingpieces and other days I'm
drawing a giant diaper on apiece of paper that I'm coloring
(09:31):
in for the diaper drive thatour culture club is hosting.
So it really is such a diverseand fun job.
But I will say it is not adifficult job in terms of
academic requirements.
It is a difficult job but Idon't need a master's to do it.
Heck, I'd probably guaranteethat if you started in a small
(09:53):
enough situation straight out ofhigh school, you didn't even
technically need a collegedegree to do it.
College degree helps,especially with the writing
portion and the research skillsand simply growing up a little
bit and being around the kindsof people that you'll be
supporting.
But it is not an educationallydemanding position.
It can be, but it usually isn't, especially not in smaller
(10:17):
situations.
So to be an EA, with theexpectations that were placed on
me from high school to dosomething great, to be an
engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, anon-profit director who is going
to save the chimps in Africa,for me to be just an executive
assistant was something of asurprise, I think, to a lot of
(10:39):
the people in my life and myselfas well.
But it is a job that works verywell with ADHD and it's
something that I very much enjoy.
But it was a struggle to keep upwith unmedicated.
At the time of my diagnosis Iwas about nine years out from
back-to-back concussions a storyfor another time which
(11:02):
undoubtedly worsened my ADHD.
There's a stark difference inmy functionality before and
after the concussions, but Ialso had a one-year-old at the
time I was diagnosed andpregnancy changes the brain.
It's been studied enough.
Everybody knows this and beinga mother, even without
neurodivergence.
It affects your focus becauseyou are forever split in your
(11:25):
focus.
You are always thinking aboutthat little person, even when
you don't realize you are.
You are Especially when they'rethat young and there's so many
things that can hurt them andthere's so many things that you
have to take care of for them.
They can't change their diaper,they can't go to the bathroom,
they can't feed themselves, theycan't put themselves in their
bed.
There's a lot going on.
So all of those things combinedhad me really beating myself up,
(11:49):
because in my head I was not ina hard job and at the time the
department head that I wassupporting was not super
demanding.
It was a very lax job at thattime and I was still struggling
to keep up and do the most basictasks.
And so when I was diagnosed itdidn't fix it.
I still had to do the work, Istill had to play around with
(12:12):
medications to see what helpedand I had to address the burnout
.
But there was this breath ofrelief and this wave of
self-compassion andself-forgiveness and it really
has continued over the course ofthe last year where I realized
that a lot of the self-talk thatI had in my past, a lot of the
things that I've continuouslybeat myself up about in my past,
(12:34):
my biggest regrets, my biggestmistakes.
Many of them, when viewedthrough the lens of this person,
has ADHD fairly severely.
All of a sudden, it's wow, howwere they able to accomplish
that much with this 250 poundweight behind them?
It's amazing that that personwas able to do this and that and
(12:58):
this and that all while havingsevere ADHD.
Instead of wow, that person hadso much potential and they
wasted it.
Like I said, it's been a yearand there are still things from
my past that'll pop up and I'llgo wait a second.
That wasn't a choice I made.
That was a symptom that wasn'tme not trying hard enough.
(13:19):
That was me having anespecially bad ADHD moment
because there were multiplethings that were exacerbating
existing symptoms.
There's been a lot ofconversations around whether or
not it's even worth gettingdiagnosed as an adult,
especially if you're notplanning on medicating.
But for me, really and truly,if you have dealt with the
(13:40):
negative self-talk and beatingyourself up and thinking that
you could have done it if youjust applied yourself, or you
weren't trying hard enough, oryou didn't put in enough effort,
or you were lazy having aprofessional say that you have
ADHD and it wasn't a choice andit wasn't a lack of focus or a
lack of determination or a lackof want, or because you're not
(14:02):
hardworking enough or becauseyou're lazy.
Recognizing that it is the wayyour brain is wired is such a
relief.
Now, that doesn't mean, okay,well, you don't have to ever try
hard again and you can neversucceed because you have ADHD.
Instead, this opens up thedoors to what tools are there to
(14:24):
help people like you succeed?
What tips and tricks can youfind to help you get motivated,
to move past the issues we havewith task initiation, to help
you move past the issues we havewith rejection, sensitivity,
dysphoria, to help you motivateyourself?
When you have a brain that isvery dopamine focused and very
(14:47):
reward focused and veryimmediate reward focused, when
you understand how your brainworks and how to motivate it and
how to reward it and how to getthe best results out of it,
then I find it much easier tosucceed.
It is still difficult.
I still have my bad ADHD dayswhere I struggle to use the
tools and tricks that I knowwork, but there are fewer of
(15:10):
them when you spend yearsbelieving that you're handed the
same tools as everyone else andsomehow everyone is better at
using them.
It's hard when you are beatingyourself up in your brain,
thinking I don't have the hardworker gene that everybody in my
family apparently has.
When you think it is a personalfailing that you are quote
(15:33):
unquote lazy.
Stepping back and realizingthat what most people see is
walking up a slight incline istantamount to climbing a
mountain for you.
I think you become less ashamedand more proud because you did
that despite having dozens ofinvisible hurdles that you
(15:57):
didn't even realize you werejumping over.
Recognizing that you are ableto succeed despite all of that
is huge.
Being diagnosed also meansrecognizing that what you put in
your body affects how your bodyreacts.
I know there's a lot of debateon whether or not being die free
actually helps.
(16:17):
Personally, I have noticed thatI have worsened ADHD symptoms
when I have read die 40.
I've also noticed that in myson when he has something at
school that had read die in it,his behavior in the afternoon is
significantly worse on daysthan when he didn't have that
(16:38):
For me.
I also know that if I eat a lotof junk food, the result the
next day is generally prettyterrible.
Now that's not to say that Idon't eat any junk food.
I love McDonald's chickennuggets.
I love McDonald's chickennuggets so much that my husband
gave them to me in aheart-shaped box for our very
first Valentine's Day.
He also kept the chocolate thathe dumped out of the box.
(17:00):
But the fact that I got 20nuggets with a barbecue sauce in
the middle in a heart-shapedbox, that freaked me out because
it was very warm on my lap andI wasn't sure what was happening
.
But it was wonderful.
I can eat those, but I have tomake sure I'm balancing it with
a lot of fresh produce and lowerprocessed foods the rest of the
(17:22):
day.
If I have chips, I try to makesure I put it in a bowl so I'm
not eating too many of them.
With sodas, I try not to drinkthem at all.
I try to drink more water, Itry to drink a lot of tea and
there is a noticeable differenceon high sugar, high caffeine,
high processed food, days anddays without those things.
So I treat my body differently.
(17:45):
Now that I have this diagnosis,I am kinder to myself.
I understand the relationshipbetween my diet and my ability
to focus.
I understand the correlationbetween my cycle and my ADHD,
which definitely worsens duringthe luteal phase, which, for
(18:07):
those of you who are not aware,is the time between ovulation
and the start of your menses.
There is a lot of discussionabout overdiagnosis today.
I know I've heard it, I'm sureyou've heard it.
I have a feeling the number ofneurodivergent people is so much
higher than anybody can fathom.
But I also know thatneurodivergent people generally
(18:30):
hang out together and that it isa very heritable situation.
So when I originally went to myfamily and said I suspected I
had ADHD, there was some humorand well, if that's all it takes
to have ADHD, then I'm probablyADHD too.
And since that jokeyconversation six years ago, my
(18:52):
family has since come out andsaid wow, actually, no, I
probably do.
Am I going to get tested?
No, probably not, because whywould I bother at my age?
But the recognition of oh no,oh, I probably do.
You don't have to fit into the1990s young white, male version
of ADHD to have ADHD.
This is also probably a greatmoment to point out that ADD
(19:16):
attention deficit disorder isnow ADHD inattentive type, add.
The term is no longer usedamongst professionals, it is
just ADHD hyperactive type, adhdinattentive type and ADHD
combination type Again.
As I said earlier, I fall underinattentive.
(19:38):
I suspect I am borderlinecombination, but that is a
conversation for another podcast.
The final thing I'd like toaddress in this episode is
dealing with people who saythings like well, if that's all
it takes to be ADHD, everybodyis ADHD, or oh, while I'm
feeling very ADHD today, oreveryone's a little ADHD
(20:00):
sometimes.
Everyone struggles with thesymptoms of ADHD on occasion.
Everyone struggles with focusand memory and sitting still and
paying attention to boringthings and doing boring tasks
and procrastination.
We all do it.
Everyone, regardless ofneuro-spicy level, experiences
(20:20):
those symptoms at some point oranother.
What makes it ADHD is that it'snot on occasion, it is all the
time, it is constant and it veryrarely is relieved.
The people who say things likeoh, I'm a little ADHD today, I
could just as easily say on oneof my exceptionally good days,
(20:42):
huh, I'm a little neurotypicaltoday.
But the thing that separates usis it's infrequent.
I have trouble with taskinitiation with every single
task, unless it is somethingthat I am very excited by and am
getting a huge hit of dopaminefor.
(21:03):
Yes, everybody misplaces theirkeys.
Few people have had to pay foras many sets of replacement keys
as I have.
Everyone misplaces their walletfrom time to time.
I replaced my driver's licensefour times in three years
because of how many times I lostmy wallet.
Everyone struggles withprocrastination.
(21:24):
Utis are common in people withADHD because they procrastinate
going to the bathroom so often.
Everyone forgets to eat onoccasion.
People with untreated ADHD canoften deal with issues of weight
loss because they simply forgetto eat.
(21:44):
Nobody likes doing boring tasks.
For somebody with ADHD, itcauses physical pain every
single time.
So it is about frequency, it isabout severity and it is about
how it affects your everydaywork and home life when it
starts becoming severelydetrimental and affecting your
(22:07):
ability to succeed.
Now it's concerning, especiallyif it's been present.
Since childhood.
We have seen an increase ofADHD-style symptoms in people.
It's not a big surprise.
With the rise of television andsmartphones and social media.
The world has never been sodistracting and with likes and
(22:31):
comments and shares, people havenever been so reward-motivated.
They've always beenreward-motivated, but it has
rarely been so immediate.
Pavlov would have loved 2023.
He would have loved socialmedia and smartphones.
We see these distractions veryoften, but that is not the same
(22:56):
as true ADHD.
Adhd is something you are bornwith.
It is something that is presentin childhood, regardless of
whether or not it was picked upin childhood.
My mother recently sent me a boxfull of schoolwork from
elementary through middle schoolI think there may have been
some high school papers in thereas well and I had somewhere in
(23:17):
the vicinity of like 15 writingassignments from my third grade
teacher.
It was when we were learning todo expository writing, and
every single one all 10 to 15 ofthem said at the top excellent
writing, great detail.
How can we keep you within the45 minute time limit?
(23:40):
This was wonderful.
What can we do to help youfinish on time?
Unfortunately, I had to stopyou because we hit the time
limit.
How can I help you finishwithin the time range?
It wasn't a one offer or twooff, it was every single writing
assignment.
If you looked at my reportcards, they all said very bright
(24:05):
daydreams, too much.
Great grades.
How can we help focus duringlessons?
Great at math.
Please stop reading during mathclass.
When you look back through a2023 lens at my schoolwork circa
1996, god, that's a terrifyingdot circa 1996 through 2009,
(24:32):
when I graduated high school,the symptoms and signs are all
right there.
I just weren't looking for itat that time.
So what I'd like to leave youwith is this If you are recently
diagnosed, if you suspect youhave it, if you have spent
entirely too much time beatingyourself up over your lack of
(24:55):
trying, or constantly hearingthat you could succeed if you
just applied yourself, oraccusations of being lazy or why
aren't you hardworking enough,I want you to sit back and I
want you to read up on whatexecutive dysfunction is and
what the ADHD brain looks likein comparison to a neurotypical
(25:18):
brain, and I want you toexperience that self-compassion
and self-forgiveness.
I plan to talk about a lot ofthe tools and tricks that I have
used to succeed to fight myADHD, and sometimes because of
my ADHD.
I hope they will help you.
(25:39):
I hope they will motivate youalong your journey to succeed.
Maybe it'll push you towardsgetting a diagnosis.
Maybe it'll push you towardsdiscussing your suspicions with
people who have struggled withyour ADHD symptoms, whether it's
family, whether it's coworkers,whether it's your spouse or
(26:02):
your partner.
When you understand thedifference between choices and
symptoms, I think we become muchmore understanding and
forgiving of the way our brainworks.
Neurodivergent brains arecapable of wonderful, incredible
(26:22):
, groundbreaking ideas, butuntil we give ourselves the
confidence to believe that weare hardworking and that we are
capable of success.
I think it's a struggle for usto get there.
So look through your past.
Identify the moments where youblamed yourself for a lack of
(26:43):
success.
Identify what the symptom couldhave been that caused that
difficulty.
Have a little compassion andfigure out how you could work
with your ADHD in the future toavoid that situation.
It's possible, I assure you.
Until next time, this has beenthe ADHD EA Podcast.
(27:05):
Thank you.
Hi everybody.
I decided to kick off thisfirst official episode with
talking about how beingdiagnosed with ADHD changed how
I treat myself.
Is there a difference betweenhow my brain worked before I was
diagnosed with ADHD and after?
No, probably not.
(00:49):
What is different is how Itreat myself.
I want you to imagine standingat the starting line with
everyone else that you startedin, say, kindergarten with.
You're told that you're a greatrunner.
You keep up with everybody.
You even maybe get to go to adifferent class that is better
suited to a person like you.
(01:10):
I want you to imaginegraduating high school and
standing at the starting linewith everybody else ready to
take off running.
You've been told your entirelife that you are a great runner
with tons of potential.
People expect great things ofyou.
They expect you to place inevery single race, probably with
(01:30):
minimal effort, and then youstart running and everyone is
beating you.
You keep pumping your legs justlike everybody else, and you
keep pumping your arms just likeeverybody else, and you're
exhausted.
Nobody else seems exhausted,but you are so tired.
Maybe you just aren't tryinghard enough.
(01:52):
Maybe you didn't get enoughsleep or car blood enough.
You go home, you car blood, yousleep.
You go to bed early and thenthe next morning you wake up and
you go to that starting lineand you hear the crack and you
take off and everybody is outrunning you again and they're
making it look so easy and youstart to wonder why is this so
(02:16):
much harder for me?
Everybody else started at thesame place.
I did, I've always done well.
Why am I not keeping up?
Maybe it's a personal choice.
Am I not working hard enough?
Am I not trying hard enough?
Am I not focused enough?
Maybe despite the fact that I'mpumping my legs and I'm pumping
(02:38):
my arms?
Maybe I just don't want it.
Maybe I'm lazy.
Maybe everyone else isn't lazyand they're just going and I am
making a choice not to go ashard as they are.
And you really start to secondguess yourself and wonder did I
maybe fool everybody for allthose years?
(02:59):
Was I actually not as good aseveryone thought?
And I just tricked them?
And you freak out and you thinkI'm lazy, I'm not trying hard
enough.
I could succeed if I appliedmyself.
Everybody says so, but everyoneelse is doing so much better
than me.
It's probably my fault, somehow.
And you really get down onyourself.
And then you see somebody andthey say hey, did you notice
(03:23):
that you are dragging a 250pound weight behind you when you
run?
And you turn around and thereit is and it's chain to your
waist and you didn't notice itbefore.
But there is a weight chainthat you are pulling every time
you race and nobody else ispulling a weight and that's why
you're so tired and that's whyyou're not keeping up.
And all of a sudden it's notthat you weren't trying hard
(03:44):
enough, and it's not that youweren't putting in enough effort
or that you were choosing to belazy and choosing not to keep
up despite having the ability,you were having to work 250
pounds harder than everyone else, and that's what getting
diagnosed felt like to me.
There's something called thegifted to burnout pipeline,
(04:05):
where kids who are identifiedsomewhere in grade school as
being above average andintelligence get to go to a
gifted program or an alphaprogram, and it is generally
something designed to challengethem and expose them to
different ways of thought andmore advanced things.
And I got to do this from fifthgrade through eighth grade.
(04:29):
They didn't have it in highschool, not that it mattered.
I was mostly homeschooled atthat point.
I only went to school forEnglish and band.
Everything else was either athome or at the community college
.
But I had somebody point out itwas on the internet and they
mentioned that the gifted andthe alpha programs were
basically just special ed forundiagnosed neuro spicy kids,
(04:52):
except nobody told the teacherthat it was special education.
So none of us were taught theskills we needed to survive in
the real world.
And it's funny, but also notbecause, yeah, that's basically
it.
I was put in this class thatdid challenge me and did, you
know, vastly widen my vocabularyand put me in touch with a
(05:15):
bunch of other kids who were,you know, bright like me.
And I don't say that to toot myown horn, but I also don't
think it's fair to, you know,play down the fact that I did
well on an IQ test Notexceptionally well, I think, I
scored like one point over whereI needed.
But because I was part of that,you know, we had different
(05:35):
classes that weren't asstructured and when I was in
high school and mostlyhomeschooling, that was also
fairly unstructured.
And even in the classes thatwere structured I didn't have to
work terribly hard to pass them.
So when I went off to collegeand I went into an engineering
program where everybody was abig fish and everybody had it
(05:56):
easy and nobody had to work hardin school.
I didn't have any self-imposedstructure, I didn't have any
study skills and, as a result, Ididn't do very well.
In fact, I flunked precalculustwice.
I didn't go to my engineeringclass pretty much at all.
My freshman year I just neverwoke up.
I had unfettered access totelevision and junk food and all
(06:18):
of the things that I didn'thave at home.
I had video games.
Netflix had started streamingaround that time.
What wasn't on Netflix was onYouTube and lots of things were
on YouTube.
Because YouTube wasn't quite asclosely monitored as it is now
and because I had undiagnosedADHD, I was a complete slave to
my brain's dopamine needs andthe immediate reward of playing
(06:42):
video games and watching all theshows I wanted to watch and
eating whatever I wanted andtaking a nap right now instead
of waiting that all outweighedthe long-term rewards of if you
graduate college, you're goingto have a job that'll pay you a
lot of money.
So because I wasn't doing wellin school, because I flunked
precalculus twice, which Istupidly took with the same
(07:03):
professor at the same 7am slot,two semesters in a row that I
never went to because I'd neverhad to work hard in math, and I
was shocked that I had to go inperson to this class to learn
the things and you can't Ipersonally cannot learn math in
a theater filled with 300 otherkids, but there was a 250 pound
weight that I was draggingbehind me that I wasn't aware of
(07:23):
, and so, instead of going, oh,I can't focus on classes or on
studying because I didn't havethose skills taught to me and
I'm never going to be able tofocus that well because I'm ADHD
and unmedicated.
Instead, it was very much aself-flagellation of well, I was
always smart in grade school.
(07:44):
I must not be trying hardenough, or well, maybe I must
have fooled them all and serious, serious bouts of imposter
syndrome.
I had a number of people in mylife, my family especially, who
were very concerned andunderstandably frustrated,
believing that I just needed toapply myself, I needed to focus,
(08:06):
I needed to want it more, Ineeded to grow up and stop
focusing on things whims, if youwill.
I needed to be an adult andrealize that a college education
was more important thantelevision, but in my brain it
wasn't and it couldn't bebecause I suffer severely from
(08:27):
executive dysfunction.
So when I was diagnosed at 31years old at the time I was
suffering severely from burnoutand would continue to do so for
another six-ish months beforefinally going on short-term
disability leave for burnoutrecovery.
(08:47):
I was really beating myself upat work because I love being an
executive assistant.
It is a very important job.
It is crucial to the success ofmany companies.
I believe we are the unsungheroes working in the background
.
We are jacks of all trades.
We do a lot of things.
(09:08):
There are days when I amorganizing a town hall for 100
people in person and 300 peopleonline and I'm coordinating
slide decks and speakers and allsorts of very exciting,
complicated things, organizingcatering.
There's a thousand movingpieces and other days I'm
drawing a giant diaper on apiece of paper that I'm coloring
(09:31):
in for the diaper drive thatour culture club is hosting.
So it really is such a diverseand fun job.
But I will say it is not adifficult job in terms of
academic requirements.
It is a difficult job but Idon't need a master's to do it.
Heck, I'd probably guaranteethat if you started in a small
(09:53):
enough situation straight out ofhigh school, you didn't even
technically need a collegedegree to do it.
College degree helps,especially with the writing
portion and the research skillsand simply growing up a little
bit and being around the kindsof people that you'll be
supporting.
But it is not an educationallydemanding position.
It can be, but it usually isn't, especially not in smaller
(10:17):
situations.
So to be an EA, with theexpectations that were placed on
me from high school to dosomething great, to be an
engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, anon-profit director who is going
to save the chimps in Africa,for me to be just an executive
assistant was something of asurprise, I think, to a lot of
(10:39):
the people in my life and myselfas well.
But it is a job that works verywell with ADHD and it's
something that I very much enjoy.
But it was a struggle to keep upwith unmedicated.
At the time of my diagnosis Iwas about nine years out from
back-to-back concussions a storyfor another time which
(11:02):
undoubtedly worsened my ADHD.
There's a stark difference inmy functionality before and
after the concussions, but Ialso had a one-year-old at the
time I was diagnosed andpregnancy changes the brain.
It's been studied enough.
Everybody knows this and beinga mother, even without
neurodivergence.
It affects your focus becauseyou are forever split in your
(11:25):
focus.
You are always thinking aboutthat little person, even when
you don't realize you are.
You are Especially when they'rethat young and there's so many
things that can hurt them andthere's so many things that you
have to take care of for them.
They can't change their diaper,they can't go to the bathroom,
they can't feed themselves, theycan't put themselves in their
bed.
There's a lot going on.
So all of those things combinedhad me really beating myself up,
(11:49):
because in my head I was not ina hard job and at the time the
department head that I wassupporting was not super
demanding.
It was a very lax job at thattime and I was still struggling
to keep up and do the most basictasks.
And so when I was diagnosed itdidn't fix it.
I still had to do the work, Istill had to play around with
(12:12):
medications to see what helpedand I had to address the burnout
.
But there was this breath ofrelief and this wave of
self-compassion andself-forgiveness and it really
has continued over the course ofthe last year where I realized
that a lot of the self-talk thatI had in my past, a lot of the
things that I've continuouslybeat myself up about in my past,
(12:34):
my biggest regrets, my biggestmistakes.
Many of them, when viewedthrough the lens of this person,
has ADHD fairly severely.
All of a sudden, it's wow, howwere they able to accomplish
that much with this 250 poundweight behind them?
It's amazing that that personwas able to do this and that and
(12:58):
this and that all while havingsevere ADHD.
Instead of wow, that person hadso much potential and they
wasted it.
Like I said, it's been a yearand there are still things from
my past that'll pop up and I'llgo wait a second.
That wasn't a choice I made.
That was a symptom that wasn'tme not trying hard enough.
(13:19):
That was me having anespecially bad ADHD moment
because there were multiplethings that were exacerbating
existing symptoms.
There's been a lot ofconversations around whether or
not it's even worth gettingdiagnosed as an adult,
especially if you're notplanning on medicating.
But for me, really and truly,if you have dealt with the
(13:40):
negative self-talk and beatingyourself up and thinking that
you could have done it if youjust applied yourself, or you
weren't trying hard enough, oryou didn't put in enough effort,
or you were lazy having aprofessional say that you have
ADHD and it wasn't a choice andit wasn't a lack of focus or a
lack of determination or a lackof want, or because you're not
(14:02):
hardworking enough or becauseyou're lazy.
Recognizing that it is the wayyour brain is wired is such a
relief.
Now, that doesn't mean, okay,well, you don't have to ever try
hard again and you can neversucceed because you have ADHD.
Instead, this opens up thedoors to what tools are there to
(14:24):
help people like you succeed?
What tips and tricks can youfind to help you get motivated,
to move past the issues we havewith task initiation, to help
you move past the issues we havewith rejection, sensitivity,
dysphoria, to help you motivateyourself?
When you have a brain that isvery dopamine focused and very
(14:47):
reward focused and veryimmediate reward focused, when
you understand how your brainworks and how to motivate it and
how to reward it and how to getthe best results out of it,
then I find it much easier tosucceed.
It is still difficult.
I still have my bad ADHD dayswhere I struggle to use the
tools and tricks that I knowwork, but there are fewer of
(15:10):
them when you spend yearsbelieving that you're handed the
same tools as everyone else andsomehow everyone is better at
using them.
It's hard when you are beatingyourself up in your brain,
thinking I don't have the hardworker gene that everybody in my
family apparently has.
When you think it is a personalfailing that you are quote
(15:33):
unquote lazy.
Stepping back and realizingthat what most people see is
walking up a slight incline istantamount to climbing a
mountain for you.
I think you become less ashamedand more proud because you did
that despite having dozens ofinvisible hurdles that you
(15:57):
didn't even realize you werejumping over.
Recognizing that you are ableto succeed despite all of that
is huge.
Being diagnosed also meansrecognizing that what you put in
your body affects how your bodyreacts.
I know there's a lot of debateon whether or not being die free
actually helps.
(16:17):
Personally, I have noticed thatI have worsened ADHD symptoms
when I have read die 40.
I've also noticed that in myson when he has something at
school that had read die in it,his behavior in the afternoon is
significantly worse on daysthan when he didn't have that
(16:38):
For me.
I also know that if I eat a lotof junk food, the result the
next day is generally prettyterrible.
Now that's not to say that Idon't eat any junk food.
I love McDonald's chickennuggets.
I love McDonald's chickennuggets so much that my husband
gave them to me in aheart-shaped box for our very
first Valentine's Day.
He also kept the chocolate thathe dumped out of the box.
(17:00):
But the fact that I got 20nuggets with a barbecue sauce in
the middle in a heart-shapedbox, that freaked me out because
it was very warm on my lap andI wasn't sure what was happening
.
But it was wonderful.
I can eat those, but I have tomake sure I'm balancing it with
a lot of fresh produce and lowerprocessed foods the rest of the
(17:22):
day.
If I have chips, I try to makesure I put it in a bowl so I'm
not eating too many of them.
With sodas, I try not to drinkthem at all.
I try to drink more water, Itry to drink a lot of tea and
there is a noticeable differenceon high sugar, high caffeine,
high processed food, days anddays without those things.
So I treat my body differently.
(17:45):
Now that I have this diagnosis,I am kinder to myself.
I understand the relationshipbetween my diet and my ability
to focus.
I understand the correlationbetween my cycle and my ADHD,
which definitely worsens duringthe luteal phase, which, for
(18:07):
those of you who are not aware,is the time between ovulation
and the start of your menses.
There is a lot of discussionabout overdiagnosis today.
I know I've heard it, I'm sureyou've heard it.
I have a feeling the number ofneurodivergent people is so much
higher than anybody can fathom.
But I also know thatneurodivergent people generally
(18:30):
hang out together and that it isa very heritable situation.
So when I originally went to myfamily and said I suspected I
had ADHD, there was some humorand well, if that's all it takes
to have ADHD, then I'm probablyADHD too.
And since that jokeyconversation six years ago, my
(18:52):
family has since come out andsaid wow, actually, no, I
probably do.
Am I going to get tested?
No, probably not, because whywould I bother at my age?
But the recognition of oh no,oh, I probably do.
You don't have to fit into the1990s young white, male version
of ADHD to have ADHD.
This is also probably a greatmoment to point out that ADD
(19:16):
attention deficit disorder isnow ADHD inattentive type, add.
The term is no longer usedamongst professionals, it is
just ADHD hyperactive type, adhdinattentive type and ADHD
combination type Again.
As I said earlier, I fall underinattentive.
(19:38):
I suspect I am borderlinecombination, but that is a
conversation for another podcast.
The final thing I'd like toaddress in this episode is
dealing with people who saythings like well, if that's all
it takes to be ADHD, everybodyis ADHD, or oh, while I'm
feeling very ADHD today, oreveryone's a little ADHD
(20:00):
sometimes.
Everyone struggles with thesymptoms of ADHD on occasion.
Everyone struggles with focusand memory and sitting still and
paying attention to boringthings and doing boring tasks
and procrastination.
We all do it.
Everyone, regardless ofneuro-spicy level, experiences
(20:20):
those symptoms at some point oranother.
What makes it ADHD is that it'snot on occasion, it is all the
time, it is constant and it veryrarely is relieved.
The people who say things likeoh, I'm a little ADHD today, I
could just as easily say on oneof my exceptionally good days,
(20:42):
huh, I'm a little neurotypicaltoday.
But the thing that separates usis it's infrequent.
I have trouble with taskinitiation with every single
task, unless it is somethingthat I am very excited by and am
getting a huge hit of dopaminefor.
(21:03):
Yes, everybody misplaces theirkeys.
Few people have had to pay foras many sets of replacement keys
as I have.
Everyone misplaces their walletfrom time to time.
I replaced my driver's licensefour times in three years
because of how many times I lostmy wallet.
Everyone struggles withprocrastination.
(21:24):
Utis are common in people withADHD because they procrastinate
going to the bathroom so often.
Everyone forgets to eat onoccasion.
People with untreated ADHD canoften deal with issues of weight
loss because they simply forgetto eat.
(21:44):
Nobody likes doing boring tasks.
For somebody with ADHD, itcauses physical pain every
single time.
So it is about frequency, it isabout severity and it is about
how it affects your everydaywork and home life when it
starts becoming severelydetrimental and affecting your
(22:07):
ability to succeed.
Now it's concerning, especiallyif it's been present.
Since childhood.
We have seen an increase ofADHD-style symptoms in people.
It's not a big surprise.
With the rise of television andsmartphones and social media.
The world has never been sodistracting and with likes and
(22:31):
comments and shares, people havenever been so reward-motivated.
They've always beenreward-motivated, but it has
rarely been so immediate.
Pavlov would have loved 2023.
He would have loved socialmedia and smartphones.
We see these distractions veryoften, but that is not the same
(22:56):
as true ADHD.
Adhd is something you are bornwith.
It is something that is presentin childhood, regardless of
whether or not it was picked upin childhood.
My mother recently sent me a boxfull of schoolwork from
elementary through middle schoolI think there may have been
some high school papers in thereas well and I had somewhere in
(23:17):
the vicinity of like 15 writingassignments from my third grade
teacher.
It was when we were learning todo expository writing, and
every single one all 10 to 15 ofthem said at the top excellent
writing, great detail.
How can we keep you within the45 minute time limit?
(23:40):
This was wonderful.
What can we do to help youfinish on time?
Unfortunately, I had to stopyou because we hit the time
limit.
How can I help you finishwithin the time range?
It wasn't a one offer or twooff, it was every single writing
assignment.
If you looked at my reportcards, they all said very bright
(24:05):
daydreams, too much.
Great grades.
How can we help focus duringlessons?
Great at math.
Please stop reading during mathclass.
When you look back through a2023 lens at my schoolwork circa
1996, god, that's a terrifyingdot circa 1996 through 2009,
(24:32):
when I graduated high school,the symptoms and signs are all
right there.
I just weren't looking for itat that time.
So what I'd like to leave youwith is this If you are recently
diagnosed, if you suspect youhave it, if you have spent
entirely too much time beatingyourself up over your lack of
(24:55):
trying, or constantly hearingthat you could succeed if you
just applied yourself, oraccusations of being lazy or why
aren't you hardworking enough,I want you to sit back and I
want you to read up on whatexecutive dysfunction is and
what the ADHD brain looks likein comparison to a neurotypical
(25:18):
brain, and I want you toexperience that self-compassion
and self-forgiveness.
I plan to talk about a lot ofthe tools and tricks that I have
used to succeed to fight myADHD, and sometimes because of
my ADHD.
I hope they will help you.
(25:39):
I hope they will motivate youalong your journey to succeed.
Maybe it'll push you towardsgetting a diagnosis.
Maybe it'll push you towardsdiscussing your suspicions with
people who have struggled withyour ADHD symptoms, whether it's
family, whether it's coworkers,whether it's your spouse or
(26:02):
your partner.
When you understand thedifference between choices and
symptoms, I think we become muchmore understanding and
forgiving of the way our brainworks.
Neurodivergent brains arecapable of wonderful, incredible
(26:22):
, groundbreaking ideas, butuntil we give ourselves the
confidence to believe that weare hardworking and that we are
capable of success.
I think it's a struggle for usto get there.
So look through your past.
Identify the moments where youblamed yourself for a lack of
(26:43):
success.
Identify what the symptom couldhave been that caused that
difficulty.
Have a little compassion andfigure out how you could work
with your ADHD in the future toavoid that situation.
It's possible, I assure you.
Until next time, this has beenthe ADHD EA Podcast.
(27:05):
Thank you.
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