For all the late-diagnosed ADHD women who deserve more - this is for you!
I'm excited to announce some big news I've been waiting to share... Introducing my low-cost subscription option on the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast, The Toolkit!
For the price of a posh coffee once a month, you can access my entire back catalogue of workshops, webinars, and conversations, which have only been available to people who have been part of my membership, The Collective, and paid workshops. Not only this, but I'll be uploading BRAND-NEW workshop-style episodes, plus an INCREDIBLE Ask The Pysch feature coming soon with a world-renowned ADHD psychiatrist.
My aim with The Toolkit is to ensure that women who have waited or waiting for far too long to understand their neurodivergence can finally have access to the most up-to-date ADHD women's wellbeing information - even more than they're getting on the podcast - and honest, day-to-day practical guidance and support to help them thrive and live better with ADHD. On The Toolkit, we'll be discussing vital and life-changing ADHD topics such as:
- Burnout
- Hormones
- Perimenopause
- Supplements
- Lifestyle
- Movement
- Sleep
- Careers
- Energy
- The Nervous System
- Finding more calm and regulation
- Anxiety
- Parenting
- Spirituality
- Creativity
And so much more!
I'm genuinely excited and hope you guys come along for the journey!
So, if this sounds good to you and then maybe the cost of resources has prohibited you, I hope you'll consider joining my subscription. Every Sunday, I'll upload a new workshop to help you progress, thrive, and finally enjoy life with ADHD. As these episodes will have never been put on the podcast before, you will get direct access to the vault accumulated over the past four years since working with ADHD. You'll also get exclusive access to brand new content and Toolkit SUBSCIBER-only events and offers!
I will ensure that you receive all the best information I have in my back catalogue and that you feel you are progressing each time you listen to one of the workshops.
In today's episode, I also offer a short clip from Sunday's brand-new episode with Elizabeth Swan, a neurodiversity expert, coach and speaker. In this clip, we talk about perinatal health, perimenopause, HRT, and anxiety alongside ADHD.
Start your FREE trial to ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit subscriber podcast here.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Kate Moore Youssef:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Kate Moore Youssef:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Kate Moore Youssef:Here's today's episode.
Kate Moore Youssef:Hi everyone.
Kate Moore Youssef:So welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm Kate More Youssef, as always, and today you've just got me.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm doing a short solo episode because I have a little announcement to make and the announcement comes with a lot of excitement, actually.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I am not doing anything drastic, but I am doing something that I feel is going to be really worthwhile for so many people who are my very, very loyal listeners, and I hope that's many of you out there.
Kate Moore Youssef:I am going to be starting a offshoot to podcast, a subscription podcast, which is going to be all about offering my resources, my workshops, my webinars, all my different content, the resources that you find in my website, and it's typically behind a paywall.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to offer this for a fraction of the price.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to bring this to you as a subscription onto the podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:So those of you who are really, really sort of determined and ready and open to learn more about adhd, to help improve your lives, to expand your lives, to change, to grow, all of the things that I talk about and I want to bring to you my exclusive content at a lower price.
Kate Moore Youssef:So the subscription, if you're not familiar with subscription podcasts, typically it's either bonus content, it's ad free listening, it's anything that is extra to the podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:So the podcast will always be free.
Kate Moore Youssef:There's always going to be a free resource.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm always going to be bringing to you the guests, the experts, the specialists, and I'll be having these conversations.
Kate Moore Youssef:But what I want to be able to bring to many of you who do listen, who have been there from the very beginning, who are actively learning more about the neurodivergence, wanting to help yourselves, maybe your children, students, grandchildren, just the ripple effect that the podcast can do by lots of education, awareness.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to bring that to the masses.
Kate Moore Youssef:And as I talk so much about energy and burnout in all aspects of my community, I was trying to think of way how can I serve more people at a cost effective way that really doesn't kind of take advantage of this ADHD and I hate to use it, bandwagon, trend, whatever, is sort of emerging.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to ensure that I am giving what I can give and it feels authentic to me.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm not feeling like I'm taking advantage of the fact that there's a lot of people, especially women, who are only just understanding their own neurodiversity, who are wanting to help themselves and help their loved ones, but not necessarily having the funds and the means to do so.
Kate Moore Youssef:And for this you will get every single week new resources, exclusive content, access to lots and lots of my guidance, my classes, my courses, my workshops, whatever I have typically been selling.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to bring this to you in podcast format and I want to have this so you are able to know that you are accessing the most up to date information.
Kate Moore Youssef:And this is not necessarily the podcast information.
Kate Moore Youssef:This is more about specific topics.
Kate Moore Youssef:So it can be varying from rejection, sensitive dysphoria, understanding that, how to help yourselves, growing from that, the awareness, learning about anxiety, learning how it manifests, and how we can use different language and new techniques and tools to help ourselves through the lens of adhd.
Kate Moore Youssef:Every single week, I'm going to bring to you a selection of what I believe is the best content that I have.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm going to be constantly updating this so there's going to be access to previous workshops, things that you've looked at and thought, you know what, I can't afford it right now, or it's not something I'm able to do.
Kate Moore Youssef:Perhaps you're waiting for access to work and you don't know when that's coming.
Kate Moore Youssef:This is going to be at a low cost.
Kate Moore Youssef:And you may be wondering, why am I doing this?
Kate Moore Youssef:So I'm not stupid.
Kate Moore Youssef:I know that I have a very active, loyal listener base.
Kate Moore Youssef:And so I'm weighing this all up and thinking, what can I do?
Kate Moore Youssef:That feels abundant, that feels good to me, that feels like there's a great energy exchange where I can tap into my thousands of listeners, I can offer them the resources, offer you guys exclusive content, bonus content, and it feels good to me.
Kate Moore Youssef:It feels like I'm not exhausting myself, I'm not burning myself out because I really want to be here and I want to be showing up every single week.
Kate Moore Youssef:And if I burn myself out constantly by launching new workshops and new series and new programs.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm not able to then do the job that I want to do, which is essentially bring to you the most up to date conversations I can have with the most knowledgeable people from around the world around adhd, neurodiversity in girls and women.
Kate Moore Youssef:And we're only scratching at the surface here as a huge passion of mine is bringing in more self compassionate and awareness and education.
Kate Moore Youssef:So we're understanding ourselves better, we're understanding our loved ones better.
Kate Moore Youssef:We're able to offer ourselves the forgiveness, the self compassion, the understanding all the things that we may have gone for decades not having.
Kate Moore Youssef:And then bringing this through the lens of okay, like where can we work from now?
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to be able to offer to you the resources to help you reframe.
Kate Moore Youssef:Reframe how you've been speaking to yourselves for years and years and start really leaning into how you want to live, how you want to feel more authentic, and how you want to start accepting the brain and the nervous system and everything that comes with adhd.
Kate Moore Youssef:So here's what you need to do.
Kate Moore Youssef:If you are listening right now on Apple Podcasts, you'll be able to find it on Apple Podcasts and you're then able to do a free trial, try it out, see what you think.
Kate Moore Youssef:If you're really enjoying the content and you're happy to pay this low cost alternative, I promise you I will keep offering you all these resources, all these workshops and all these resources that are really difficult to find.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I get testimonials and emails and messages pretty much every day telling me that if it wasn't for these resources, one of their children may not have been diagnosed, or a student may have gone missed or for themselves, or they weren't able to advocate for themselves at work or to the doctor, or they weren't able to understand the connections between hormones, women's health issues, autoimmune issues, chronic fatigue, all these different things, gut issues.
Kate Moore Youssef:As you know, I cover all of these in the podcast, but I go much deeper in a lot of my online resources.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I want to bring this to the masses.
Kate Moore Youssef:That is my goal, my purpose, my passion.
Kate Moore Youssef:I want to help you get access to this groundbreaking information and really be able to educate yourself so the ripple effects can start occurring that the next generation is able to have this awareness and have this knowledge and not feel like where has it been all my life.
Kate Moore Youssef:So head to Apple Podcasts, you'll see this subscription offer.
Kate Moore Youssef:Give it a try.
Kate Moore Youssef:Try the free trial and see what you think.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm open to lots of ideas, but I really want to ensure that whatever I have offered originally behind quite a high cost paywall eventually is going to be coming through the subscriptions.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I really want to maybe show you how this is impacted people.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm going to read out a testimonial here and I hope this helps you and makes you make that decision that it is worth it, you are worth investing in, you are worth and you're worthy and you are deserving of the help and support that can often feel really tricky to find.
Kate Moore Youssef:So this is one of the testimonials Kate has accompanied me through my ADHD journey.
Kate Moore Youssef:Her podcasts have been invaluable, steering me through diagnosis to the complex questions that come up when you dig deeper.
Kate Moore Youssef:I had some one to one sessions which were incredibly powerful and professional and valuable, providing the confidence I needed to change things.
Kate Moore Youssef:Kate's course helped me rediscover my authentic self with weekly check ins, strong supportive content and video calls every few months.
Kate Moore Youssef:Kate really values her clients and puts in so much effort to support ADHD women with her content.
Kate Moore Youssef:She's a guiding light I couldn't be without.
Kate Moore Youssef:I mean that really makes me feel quite emotional reading that.
Kate Moore Youssef:Because this is what I needed.
Kate Moore Youssef:This is why I started the podcast, is why I started with all the resources, because I needed it.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I've been doing all the digging, getting curious, asking the questions, bringing in all these guest experts and learning and teaching myself all of this, going through the courses so I can then kind of break it all down, make it as simple as possible so all of you guys can understand yourselves better.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I wanted to be able to share maybe one more.
Kate Moore Youssef:Here's one.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm feeling a lot lighter and after our session, my struggles were so clear and I could articulate exactly why I needed the help and was able to see the things with my eyes.
Kate Moore Youssef:It was great.
Kate Moore Youssef:If the conversation would have happened before our session, I would have felt like a fraud.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I'm breaking all down, I'm opening it up.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm allowing you to really delve into the resources and see what works for you.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I really hope this new alternative, this new version of the podcast will help you.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I'm going to give it to you, give it a try.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I hope to God that, I really hope to God that this does help.
Kate Moore Youssef:Because as you can see and hear, my energy is all there, my passion is just as strong and I am here on a mission to empower as many neurodivergent women to accept, understand and love themselves even more now that they have all this new awareness.
Kate Moore Youssef:So now you've just heard me talking about the toolkit and everything that we're going to be bringing.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I wanted to share with you an exclusive sneak peek into Sunday's episode.
Kate Moore Youssef:It's going to be the first episode, and I want to share this with you because I need you to understand how powerful I think these conversations are going to be.
Kate Moore Youssef:Now, you may have heard a little while ago, I launched the ADHD hormone series.
Kate Moore Youssef:And this is something that I'm incredibly proud of.
Kate Moore Youssef:I was having groundbreaking conversations on the hormone series, connecting the dots between ADHD and hormones a lot, lot, I would say quite a lot before many other experts were, because I was noticing for myself and also noticing with a lot of my clients and my community, how profound the impact of hormones were on the ADHD traits and symptoms, and how many women were coming and getting diagnosed or assessed for ADHD while they were going through perimenopause or at the beginning stages of perimenopause.
Kate Moore Youssef:And what we do know now is that neurodivergent women tend to go through perimenopause earlier.
Kate Moore Youssef:We also know that neurodivergent women are more likely to suffer with PMDD and postnatal depression.
Kate Moore Youssef:Now, I know this can sound difficult to hear and maybe very validating also of your experience and sort of looking past at your own hormonal journey.
Kate Moore Youssef:And this is why the ADHD hormone series was so powerful for so many people and so many women.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm a huge advocate for women understanding their own cycles, understanding their own hormones, so they can help themselves, empower themselves, but also discuss it with family members and partners and work colleagues and however it can manifest, make life feel easier and more effortless.
Kate Moore Youssef:Because I think I can speak for many of us that life has probably felt like we've been swimming upstream, that we've been carrying bags of rocks on our back and not quite understanding why we found life so difficult.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I'm going to have a little snippet of our conversation from the first episode of the Toolkit, and it's with Lizzie Swan, Elizabeth Swan, and we talk quite a lot about pmdd, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is a condition that occurs before our periods and affects mood and physical health.
Kate Moore Youssef:And we know that women, especially girls and women, can really suffer of having a higher risk of having PMDD alongside probably undiagnosed neurodivergence.
Kate Moore Youssef:So we discuss this a lot and I wanted to share this clip with you so you understand the value of what I'm going to be bringing to the toolkit.
Kate Moore Youssef:So here is today's short clip with Lizzie Swan, and you're going to get the full clip on Sunday's episode.
Guest Speaker:I've been really fortunate to have two incredible gps.
Guest Speaker:One who saved my life should always book me a double appointment.
Guest Speaker:And I think this is a top tip, is you can request a double appointment for mental health and you should always make space for me because it takes me, you know, I'll say in 500 words what most people can say in 10, because I talk a lot, but she'd always make time.
Guest Speaker:And time with GPS is something, you know, those two words don't usually come together positively at the moment, but I have that time and that space to explore.
Guest Speaker:And then I moved house and I almost didn't want to move house because I'd lose my gp.
Guest Speaker:But, you know, we'd got on this pathway to really positive treatment.
Guest Speaker:And then I met another gp.
Guest Speaker:I was really fortunate.
Guest Speaker:And I have to say, in order to get that gp, I had to see six others in the same practice first.
Guest Speaker:And so if you hear no, or you have treatment that doesn't work for you from one gp, try another, go back and see another.
Guest Speaker:You know, as people with ADHD and women with adhd, we are determined.
Guest Speaker:Most of us have been through incredible adversity to get to this place.
Guest Speaker:Don't take no for an answer, go back in and, like I say, ask for that double appointment.
Guest Speaker:But it gave me the opportunity to try different things.
Guest Speaker:I mean, if I could tell you all the different medications I've been offered and tried, it would go on for a while.
Guest Speaker:I mean, just some ones that your listeners will have heard of, probably.
Guest Speaker:Citalopram, Sertraline, venlafaxine, pregabalin.
Guest Speaker:These are.
Guest Speaker:These are medications that I have tried and just weren't successful for me because I knew that the sense of.
Guest Speaker:I call it, I'm vibrating at higher frequency, but at all times I had the difficulty with the mood swings that were really severe and those periods, not so much of depression, but of almost flatline.
Guest Speaker:And I now know that that's the period when I need to rest, but also that sense of fizzing and not quite having enough ability to focus.
Guest Speaker:And it just got harder with age, particularly when I went on to have children, because I wasn't just responsible for caring for myself, I had to be responsible for others.
Guest Speaker:And that Additional demand on my executive functioning broke me, I'll be honest, just broke me.
Guest Speaker:But going on to the medication, what I've been able to do with my current GP is go to her, with recommendations from Attitude magazine, from Chad, from people like yourself online, and be able to say, I know this isn't the silver bullet, but can we try?
Guest Speaker:And I've been able to try these medications and find one that works for me.
Guest Speaker:Similarly with the ADHD team who.
Guest Speaker:That's how they're supported the nhs.
Guest Speaker:We have an ADHD team.
Guest Speaker:And that was one of the challenges with my diagnostic pathway, is that in my county, you can only be assessed for ADHD and then you start a new referral process for autism and you can't just go in for one holistic assessment of need, which I find very, very challenging because.
Guest Speaker:Yeah, but that's where we are at the moment and I'm hoping that will change.
Guest Speaker:But in terms of treatment, the first medication I was prescribed was a stimulant medication called Concerta.
Guest Speaker:And it's a wonder drug for lots and lots of people.
Guest Speaker:And it's really important that everyone knows that what works for one person may not work for another.
Guest Speaker:And likewise.
Guest Speaker:But what happened with the concert when I took it, particularly when you titrate, which means you get your medication levels right, I actually was flung straight back into feelings of absolute panic all of the time and it heightened my feelings of anxiety to an almost unmanageable level.
Guest Speaker:And I did some research and it seems that concert, there are links to exacerbating pre existing conditions of anxiety and I was able, I did have to chase quite a bit.
Guest Speaker:It wasn't easy, it wasn't a matter of me just phoning up.
Guest Speaker:I had to chase over a few weeks to sort of come off the concert and to find another way.
Guest Speaker:And I was terrified at that point because I thought, first of all, I thought, okay, maybe I've not got ADHD and I've imagined everything because if I had ADHD and I took medication, then the medication would stop my ADHD symptoms and I'd feel better.
Guest Speaker:But now I've taken it, I don't feel better, I feel worse.
Guest Speaker:So maybe I'm.
Guest Speaker:Maybe I've just been making all of this up and it's all in my head.
Guest Speaker:And then I had to manually override that and I was able to try another stimulant.
Guest Speaker:I'm really open about it.
Guest Speaker:I take lvance.
Guest Speaker:And actually the ADHD team said to me, some people find this a smoother ride than Concerta.
Guest Speaker:And for me, it works, but alongside that, I have other things going on, like lots of people.
Guest Speaker:And I was able to work with my GP to manage those symptoms and address what was happening there.
Guest Speaker:It's been trial and error, but it also means you have to stick with it.
Guest Speaker:And, you know, it is exhausting.
Guest Speaker:And you're going through a process where you have this sense of bereavement for yourself and those years that this young person that you look back on didn't get that support and you're.
Guest Speaker:You're sort of managing all of those emotions, trying to understand yourself better and then you're going on this crazy ride of meds.
Guest Speaker:But I do want to say also what's been revolutionary for me is I take hrt and, you know, one of the things that I would love GPs and healthcare professionals to understand is that having that understanding of supporting estrogen levels for women with ADHD alongside other elements of treatment really needs to be part of a cohesive plan.
Guest Speaker:And simply going from two pumps.
Guest Speaker:I'm doing this because I have gel.
Guest Speaker:Going from two pumps to three pumps of estradiol gel made a phenomenal difference.
Guest Speaker:And I have the flexibility to increase my pumps in that week leading up to where my site, where my period is.
Guest Speaker:And I do wonder to myself, because I share, I try to share freely, as much information as I can, but I.
Guest Speaker:That's years of research that got me to that place of what to request and it's.
Guest Speaker:I don't feel it should have been my responsibility as the patient to come up with those suggestions and some of those ideas.
Guest Speaker:So it's a real constant conflict of emotion.
Guest Speaker:But trial and error and not expecting anything to be the silver bullet.
Kate Moore Youssef:Maybe we can talk a little bit about postnatal depression.
Kate Moore Youssef:I don't know if that was something that you experienced, if that was.
Kate Moore Youssef:Maybe your mood was exacerbated post birth and how.
Kate Moore Youssef:Maybe.
Kate Moore Youssef:How did you find being pregnant with adhd?
Guest Speaker:I have a couple of areas that I'm really deeply passionate about and I'm doing lots of research and at the moment to try and raise understanding.
Guest Speaker: arch article that came out in: Guest Speaker:And first thing for us to be really clear about is that in that immediate postpartum period, just after that baby is born, your estrogen levels will drop, absolute steep decline and, you know, by 100 to 1,000 fold.
Guest Speaker:And hormonal fluctuations are likely the same for women with ADHD without.
Guest Speaker:But, you know, we have to come from the place that ADHD is a neurological condition and estrogen impacts on the brain and we just have to think about how those things correlate.
Guest Speaker:But the research has shown that particularly around that period of perinatal and postnatal, there can be additional complexities for women with adhd.
Guest Speaker:For myself, my children are the be all and end all of my existence.
Guest Speaker:And I love them to that goes without saying, but I feel like we have to qualify this here.
Guest Speaker:But I did not enjoy being pregnant.
Guest Speaker:And when I say I didn't enjoy being pregnant, that was for me probably the tipping point in terms of what I now look back and recognize as quite severe anxiety and extreme low mood.
Guest Speaker:So many, as, you know, I can look back and identify now, the mood swings for me intensify during pregnancy.
Guest Speaker:A loss of control over what was happening to my body and almost like a sense of being taken over.
Guest Speaker:There were so many elements to being pregnant I struggled with, not to mention the uncertainty of what was going to happen when that baby was born.
Guest Speaker:And the research, the recent research suggests that there are many reasons why perinatal depression is more likely in women with adhd.
Guest Speaker:And one of as well as the oestrogen fluctuations, our social anxiety is a major risk factor for women who, particularly in the third trimester and immediately after the baby is born.
Guest Speaker:Because what can happen as a consequence of that social anxiety is that we, this is a huge generalization, but we may be more unlikely to have those social structures in place to provide that support.
Guest Speaker:And looking back on my own experience, I did not want to ask for help.
Guest Speaker:I wanted to be capable.
Guest Speaker:You know, I've come from a really successful career.
Guest Speaker:There wasn't.
Guest Speaker:I hadn't really failed.
Guest Speaker:I was doing great.
Guest Speaker:And then all of a sudden I was in a situation where things were out of my control.
Guest Speaker:And I, you know, I make myself feel safe by trying to get control of everything.
Guest Speaker:But if there's one thing that's going to make you feel out of control, it's having children, whether that's biologically or that's through the adoptive process or fostering.
Guest Speaker: But research from: Guest Speaker:And having read that research, I look back and I think I constantly thought that I was failing.