Empowering Women with ADHD: Tools and Strategies for Better Wellbeing

Speaker A: 00:00:04

So welcome to another bonus episode of the podcast.

Speaker A: 00:00:07

This is in celebration of my book launch.

Speaker A: 00:00:10

The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit will be available wherever you buy books from and the link will be in the show notes.

Speaker A: 00:00:17

And if you head to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk you'll be able to buy it there and receive a free gift when you order it through the website.

Speaker A: 00:00:26

Now I'm bringing today another bit of gold.

Speaker A: 00:00:29

I have to say, this was a workshop that I did to quite a small audience and I always believe that these, these snippets, this information needs to be shared far and wide.

Speaker A: 00:00:39

So I'm bringing you about 20 minutes from the workshop which I really hope will resonate with you and help you understand yourself better.

Speaker A: 00:00:48

And in this clip, I focus a lot on brain health, the holistic and hormonal approach to RA D H D. Now I'm in the middle of doing a BR Health coaching course with Dr. Daniel Amen.

Speaker A: 00:01:02

He's based in the States, he's at the forefront of brain health, especially alongside adhd, and he works on understanding thousands of different brain spec images.

Speaker A: 00:01:13

I'm learning so much and I can't wait to share all this knowledge with you probably later on in the year when I finish this course.

Speaker A: 00:01:20

But this is sort of just touching on the brain health side because it's so important to know that we can mold and change and rewire our brains, that it's not this, these aren't our brains forever.

Speaker A: 00:01:33

And with this knowledge and with this understanding, we can do different things.

Speaker A: 00:01:37

We can take medication, supplements, move our bodies differently, create more calm and regulation.

Speaker A: 00:01:43

So all of this is in today's shorter episode and I do talk a lot about this in the book as well.

Speaker A: 00:01:49

I'm very passionate about bringing more practical holistic lifestyle advice that you can do from today to help improve the health of your brain, calm your nervous system and improve those ADHD symptoms.

Speaker A: 00:02:03

We might not get rid of them all and that might be okay because there's lots and parts of our ADHD that we really do like, but maybe the more challenging parts we are able to take a little bit more control over.

Speaker A: 00:02:15

So Here is the 20 minute snippet from that workshop and I really hope you enjoy it.

Speaker B: 00:02:20

I really do believe that the very first step towards feeling better and understanding ourselves better is this awareness, this awareness that from what we know from statistics and again, it's all still quite blurred because everything's very, very, very new and research is still being, you know, it's brand new off the ground.

Speaker B: 00:02:42

And women's health unfortunately is very under researched.

Speaker B: 00:02:46

But what we know is that ADHD is actually not that uncommon in, in women, adhd, autism, the combination is not uncommon.

Speaker B: 00:02:55

It's very normal to have to be ADHD and autistic or ADHD with quite strong autism traits or autistic with ADHD traits.

Speaker B: 00:03:05

We also know that ADHD comes with things like dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, which is maths dyslexia.

Speaker B: 00:03:15

It comes with so many different co occurring traits like anxiety and ocd.

Speaker B: 00:03:21

So it never ever travels alone.

Speaker B: 00:03:23

So you may have had the other things picked up and noticed that your medication still hasn't quite touched the sides.

Speaker B: 00:03:30

You may have been medicated for depression or anxiety, but there may have been a feeling all your life that there's something else that's not been addressed or there's been something that you've not had, you've not been able to get this support with.

Speaker B: 00:03:47

Now women especially if, if you are a woman who has had a cycle, who knows that they, you've had hormonal cycles throughout your life, then you will probably relate to feeling the fluctuations of the hormones quite extremely as well.

Speaker B: 00:04:08

So what we know from ADHD in girls is that from puberty and probably before puberty we're noticing that the girls are more, their mood fluctuations are more extreme, their dysregulation, being able to sort of emotionally keep themselves intact, rejection, sensitive dysphoria, which I don't know if you've heard of, it's called rsd.

Speaker B: 00:04:34

You might see it in text, in articles.

Speaker B: 00:04:36

And RSD is something where you feel like criticism, feedback, rejection, anything like that.

Speaker B: 00:04:46

It feels so pervasive and so deep and so cutting and so difficult to bear.

Speaker B: 00:04:52

And you may have noticed that, you know, in relationships, friendships, parenting, in, in your careers, in all kind of, you know, parts of your life.

Speaker B: 00:05:04

You may notice that RSD might have been probably one of the hardest parts of your ADHD to deal with, or a loved one's adhd.

Speaker B: 00:05:13

So if you notice that someone or yourself has always found it very difficult to take any form of criticism or you're so highly sensitive to feeling maybe left out or rejected or that you feel that there's, there's always something happening and you don't quite know what's going on, that you know, in friendship groups or you feel like.

Speaker B: 00:05:34

A lot of people say, I always feel like I'm about to get fired.

Speaker B: 00:05:37

I always feel like my boss is about to, you know, fire me or always feel like a friend's about to pull me up on something.

Speaker B: 00:05:43

And it's a part of the anxiety of adhd and it's quite specific to ADHD actually.

Speaker B: 00:05:51

And interestingly, some doctors have done brain scans and can actually find a part of the brain where that rejection sensitive dysphoria can show up more.

Speaker B: 00:06:01

The part is, there's the amygdala, very often is the part where we're very sort of in our hypervigilant mode and it's our stress response mode.

Speaker B: 00:06:12

So the amygdala I always kind of call like a lighthouse and it's scanning for danger all the time.

Speaker B: 00:06:17

And if we think about RSD rejection sensitive dysphoria and we are constantly sort of on this, on this guard of like, you know, what's this person going to say?

Speaker B: 00:06:29

Have I offended somebody?

Speaker B: 00:06:31

Is that person criticizing me?

Speaker B: 00:06:33

It means we're constantly in a hyper vigilant stress mode, which means that our brain is in stress mode.

Speaker B: 00:06:39

Our nervous system, our gut as well, it's all interconnected.

Speaker B: 00:06:44

So we're understanding our brain health better through brain scans.

Speaker B: 00:06:49

But ADHD is, is, is very, very real and it's biological, neurobiological, it's highly, highly genetic.

Speaker B: 00:06:57

It's almost impossible to have ADHD without a family member having it as well.

Speaker B: 00:07:03

Most likely at least one parent or a sibling or an aunt or an uncle is very close.

Speaker B: 00:07:09

And what I also notice a lot in people who are understanding ADHD for the first time later on in life is that they' see the generational patterns of ADHD as well in their family.

Speaker B: 00:07:24

Now what I do want to say, a big part also of undiagnosed ADHD is addiction, addictive tendencies.

Speaker B: 00:07:33

And that can show up in alcohol, drugs, binge eating, shopping, and then that can show up also in workaholism.

Speaker B: 00:07:42

So I know a lot of ADHD people who are complete workaholics.

Speaker B: 00:07:49

They go through burnout cycles constantly and then they start again and then they recover and they are just, they can't, it's, we can't switch off.

Speaker B: 00:07:59

Which is why medication can be very, very helpful.

Speaker B: 00:08:03

I am very pro medication, I'm not anti medication.

Speaker B: 00:08:06

But what I do believe is that we can't do the medication without the holistic, well being, lifestyle side as well.

Speaker B: 00:08:14

It can't just be, I'm going to take the medication and everything's going to be fine.

Speaker B: 00:08:18

I'm a firm believer of marrying it together.

Speaker B: 00:08:21

And if the medication doesn't work or doesn't help or it's not something that you want.

Speaker B: 00:08:26

Then there are lots of other ways of helping ourselves with adhd, which is what my book talks about.

Speaker B: 00:08:33

So with medication there's lots of different options and there's stimulants, there's non stimulants.

Speaker B: 00:08:41

Some people find it really, really hard to get started and they need the medication to get started.

Speaker B: 00:08:46

And then when they're taking the medication, they go into hyper focus mode and they get all the jobs done that it needs to do.

Speaker B: 00:08:53

They're able to get all their work done.

Speaker B: 00:08:56

However, the downside to it can be that they might not get up to go to the toilets, they might forget to drink, they forget to eat, they go into such a tunnel of concentration that afterwards they're good for nothing.

Speaker B: 00:09:09

You know, their, their brain capacity has been completely wiped out.

Speaker B: 00:09:14

And the only thing we can do is either go and lie down, numb out, scroll, go to sleep.

Speaker B: 00:09:23

We just have to sometimes take ourselves away.

Speaker B: 00:09:25

And sometimes a lot of people don't like that feeling.

Speaker B: 00:09:29

Yes, we get that, that done.

Speaker B: 00:09:30

But to have that every single day, that's a very extreme way of living.

Speaker B: 00:09:36

There are different ways.

Speaker B: 00:09:37

There are the non stimulant or the long acting medication can be less jarring on our nervous system, I would say.

Speaker B: 00:09:45

But if medication is something that you would like to go down, it's very important you speak to a psychiatrist.

Speaker B: 00:09:50

And the psychiatrist knows a lot more than I do about all the different types.

Speaker B: 00:09:54

But there are, as ADHD is getting more understood, as brain health is getting more understood, that there's more medication now with regards to mood regulation, helping the nervous system, helping restlessness, helping things like rsd.

Speaker B: 00:10:12

So we can really pinpoint how our ADHD shows up.

Speaker B: 00:10:16

And it's very unique.

Speaker B: 00:10:17

Now I want to recommend another book and it's called how to thrive with adult ADHD.

Speaker B: 00:10:23

And it's by Dr. James Custo and he's based here in London and he's a psychiatrist and he has also got ADHD.

Speaker B: 00:10:32

But what's very unique about Dr. Kusto is that he is not just understanding ADHD from a psychiatry perspective.

Speaker B: 00:10:42

He understands it from how it shows up, how it's shown up, and it's manifested in our bodies and our lives in so many different ways.

Speaker B: 00:10:52

So he's coming at it in that way.

Speaker B: 00:10:53

Now what I want to say is that he thankfully validates what so many people, especially women, have talked about with regards to living undiagnosed.

Speaker B: 00:11:04

And that is things like chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, hypermobility, migraines gut issues, if you are aware at all.

Speaker B: 00:11:19

But the gut and the brain are connected, and we've got a vagal nerve that goes all the way up and down and it's connected.

Speaker B: 00:11:28

And a lot of people call the gut the second brain.

Speaker B: 00:11:32

So if ADHD is a neurobiological condition, which it is, then not, whatever's going on in our brain is going on in our gut.

Speaker B: 00:11:42

So, for example, I have.

Speaker B: 00:11:44

I grew up and I lived with IBS for probably about two or three decades.

Speaker B: 00:11:50

And it was directly connected to when I felt more stressed, when I felt more anxious, when I felt more worried.

Speaker B: 00:11:57

And it was also triggered by different types of food as well.

Speaker B: 00:12:01

But mostly it was triggered by stress, worry, or anxiety.

Speaker B: 00:12:06

So all of this is kind of painting a bit more of a picture for you that, yes, nutrition is really important.

Speaker B: 00:12:14

Now, the downside to having nutrition being important for people with ADHD is that with our executive functioning, it's kind of like a bit of a chicken and egg situation, is that we can struggle.

Speaker B: 00:12:29

We can struggle to remember to go shopping, we can struggle to remember that we haven't made dinner, or we get to a point where we are so hungry that we then need to eat something and we just have to eat whatever is there because we've kind of not been this interception, which is kind of not.

Speaker B: 00:12:48

Not quite being in touch with our body and not quite having that sort of sensory side of.

Speaker B: 00:12:54

We either have the sensory side where we can feel absolutely everything, or we're all of a sudden starving or all of a sudden desperate for the toilet, or we're all of a sudden so dehydrated that we need to just drink this.

Speaker B: 00:13:07

Often it can be quite difficult, you know, to find that middle ground.

Speaker B: 00:13:12

So with our executive functioning, I always say to people, is that where you struggle with food and eating and prep, it's like, try and make your life as easy as possible and not put any blame or shame on the shoulds.

Speaker B: 00:13:29

And it's the women, unfortunately.

Speaker B: 00:13:32

I'm not saying men don't have this, because I think men do, but the shoulds for women, because of our societal conditioning of how we should be, and if we a bit different and we don't quite fit into that box, we can carry quite a bit of shame around that in different capacities.

Speaker B: 00:13:52

So this is all really just an invitation.

Speaker B: 00:13:56

It's an invitation for you to be a bit more curious and to get and have that permission to do what feels good to you, like start living a life instead of having to constantly pushing one way that has never felt quite right to start living life according to what feels better to you.

Speaker B: 00:14:17

And I think we're in a better position with the way the world is going after, you know, the pandemic where it's more flexible working, we're able to do more online work, we're able to try have more breaks.

Speaker B: 00:14:33

Well, being is more, you know, spoken about, people are understanding mental health better, and we're able to start really prioritizing things like that a lot more.

Speaker B: 00:14:44

And I think what's wonderful is that there's books and there's podcasts and there's awareness now where we can start asking the questions and connecting the dots and advocating for ourselves and no longer being told by a doctor, oh, this is, you know, this is the way it is, and you just have to deal with it.

Speaker B: 00:15:03

Now, what I do want to talk about is women and hormones, because this is, I know mentioned it before, but if you have suffered with your hormones throughout your life, and what I talk about with suffering is from puberty that you've really struggled from, maybe like a menstrual perspective of low mood and feeling very low, depressed, anxious, perhaps pmdd, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is a really extreme version of premenstrual tension, means that if you probably for at least, I don't know, 10 days of your, your cycle, you have felt incredibly low and depressed.

Speaker B: 00:15:51

And unfortunately, some women, you know, there's suicidal ideation there.

Speaker B: 00:15:55

And you may have noticed that as a constant cycle.

Speaker B: 00:16:00

Then you may have had children and you may have felt a little bit better during pregnancy because of the surge of estrogen and the surge of progesterone.

Speaker B: 00:16:08

And we sort of, we feel like that we've not feeling those fluctuations too much.

Speaker B: 00:16:14

And then after childbirth, you may relate to things like postnatal depression or postnatal anxiety, and it may have shown up in different capacities for you.

Speaker B: 00:16:24

And then what we also know is that ADHD women, neurodivergent women, are more likely to start perimenopause earlier, and it's more likely to show up in a more difficult and extreme way.

Speaker B: 00:16:39

And so when I say earlier, it can be as early as late 30s, early 40s, and it can be ongoing, which is why I'm a huge, huge advocate for hormone replacement therapy.

Speaker B: 00:16:54

I'm a huge advocate for making sure that your doctor understands about neurodivergence.

Speaker B: 00:16:59

So hormone therapy can almost be used as a type of medication.

Speaker B: 00:17:05

And some women notice that they, instead of going down the stimulant route, they go down the hormone route and that helps them so much, so much.

Speaker B: 00:17:16

And they.

Speaker B: 00:17:16

And what we've got to remember is that our hormones, it, we need them until we die.

Speaker B: 00:17:21

So no matter how old you are, hormones, it's never, ever, ever too late to try hormone replacement therapy.

Speaker B: 00:17:28

Now, I know that some women aren't able to take them because of breast cancer or ovarian cancer or breast or cancer risk in the family.

Speaker B: 00:17:39

There is growing evidence and research to say that it's still going to be okay.

Speaker B: 00:17:44

Again, it's kind of quite divided and it's still quite contentious, but we are starting to understand that these risks may not outweigh what we could benefit from hormones, especially for neurodivergent women.

Speaker B: 00:17:59

And what we are understanding as well is that a lot of women who have been on synthetic hormones like birth control, for different reasons, not, not necessarily just for contraception, maybe they've been put on birth control because of mood regulation, because it was there to help them with stabilize certain things.

Speaker B: 00:18:20

But actually the synthetic hormones have been the, the kind of the catalyst for things getting worse.

Speaker B: 00:18:29

Because again, I go back to this sort of sensitive nervous system that we've got.

Speaker B: 00:18:33

This everything is quite sensitive.

Speaker B: 00:18:36

So I talk a lot and I've spoken on the podcast as well with different specialists about body identical hormones which are basically mimicking or mirroring our hormones that we already have in our body, not synthetic.

Speaker B: 00:18:50

So as you can hear, there's a lot there.

Speaker B: 00:18:55

And it.

Speaker B: 00:18:55

I don't want to overwhelm people too much, but I wanted to kind of give you a little bit of a picture about what's going on for ADHD in women and why actually it's really important that we do.

Speaker B: 00:19:07

We are more specific about women because we have this situation with our hormones and we have this situation that there's lots of layers.

Speaker B: 00:19:17

It's kind of like a Venn diagram, if you think about that and you think about how many lay on layers.

Speaker B: 00:19:24

And if we understand the adhd, then we can start helping ourselves in the different capacities.

Speaker B: 00:19:29

And sometimes it can just be hormones and we get those balanced out and that gives us more energy, we're able to sleep better, our mood regulates, our anxiety dissipates, because what we know is progesterone is very, very helpful for anxiety and stress and our nervous system.

Speaker B: 00:19:51

So when we are able to really balance not just the estrogen, but really get the progesterone and the estrogen more kind of in harmony, our ADHD symptoms are much easier to deal with.

Speaker B: 00:20:04

And incredibly, I mean, this is like blows my mind that there's a lot of research and evidence coming out now that women's mental health issues and historically have been prescribed with pharmaceuticals, with medication, which again I'm 100% for.

Speaker B: 00:20:23

I think so many people do so well on antidepressants, but a lot of women have been given antidepressants when actually they did need hormone replacement.

Speaker B: 00:20:34

And what we know is that hormone replacement can be just as effective against anxiety and depression as well if we get the balance right.

Speaker B: 00:20:44

So none of this is perfect.

Speaker B: 00:20:48

ADHD is not easy to live with.

Speaker B: 00:20:50

It's not easy for ourselves, it's not easy for our family members.

Speaker B: 00:20:54

It's a difficult, different life to navigate.

Speaker B: 00:20:59

But what makes it even harder is the lack of awareness and the lack of education and the lack of self compassion that we, we need to have for ourselves.

Speaker B: 00:21:09

And when you're slightly older age and later on in life, it's very important that we offer ourselves this self compassion.

Speaker B: 00:21:19

Very, very important that we have done what we can do with the resources and the knowledge and the understanding and the support that we have had.

Speaker B: 00:21:31

And no matter what we try and fix now, we can't change what's happened in the past, but we can offer ourselves that love and that kindness and that acceptance of that's how it was.

Speaker B: 00:21:44

And how can you make your life feel easier and how can you make your life feel more effortless and supported now that you have a bit more information?

Speaker A: 00:21:57

Hope you enjoyed that episode, that conversation and like I said, I really did just want to bring you that extra knowledge and wisdom so you can understand yourself, your ADHD and perhaps how it showed up for you over your lifetime and especially in maybe the generations of women in your family as well.

Speaker A: 00:22:15

So that's it from me today.

Speaker A: 00:22:18

Please do go and buy the ADHD Women's well Being toolkit.

Speaker A: 00:22:20

It mean so much to me and please do share it.

Speaker A: 00:22:23

If you enjoy the book, share it, review it and let's get this community out there.

Speaker A: 00:22:29

Thanks so much and I'll see you.

Speaker B: 00:22:30

For the next episode.