Creating Your Unique ADHD Productivity/Rest Balance with Grace Koelma
How do you balance productivity, rest, growth and self-compassion with ADHD?
In this episode, I’m joined by Grace Koelma, ADHD advocate, writer, and creator of the Future ADHD digital planner, which has helped over 80,000 neurodivergent individuals better organise their lives.
Diagnosed with ADHD in her early 30s, Grace knows firsthand the frustrations of traditional productivity tools and has built a career around helping ADHDers work with—not against—their brains. Together, we discuss the significance of rest, its different forms, and how understanding our unique needs can empower us to lead more fulfilling lives.
We dive deep into:
✨ Why traditional productivity hacks don’t work for ADHD brains (and what does!)
✨ The power of personalised planning tools and how they can help reduce stress
✨ Why rest isn’t just about sleep and understanding the 10 types of rest ADHDers need
✨ What ‘clickbait thoughts’ are and how to stop them from hijacking your mindset
✨ How to break free from shame and embrace a neurodivergent-friendly way of working
Timestamps:
🕒 03:42 - Breaking the cycle of shame & ADHD productivity struggles
🕒 09:20 - The link between neurodivergent creativity & productivity
🕒 21:07 - Understanding the role of rest in ADHD & why we need more than just sleep
🕒 25:20 - The 10 types of rest ADHDers need for better mental wellbeing
🕒 32:47 - ‘Clickbait thoughts’ relating to RSD and how to manage them
🕒 43:11 - How ADHD affects learning & education
If you’ve ever felt like you’re failing at productivity or constantly swinging between burnout and hyper-focus, this conversation will leave you feeling empowered, understood, and equipped with practical strategies.
If you’re tired of fighting burnout and want to embrace your ADHD in a way that supports your well-being, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical strategies to help you move forward with more ease.
Ready to swap burnout and overwhelm for balance and ease this spring? Join me for a series of breakthrough ADHD Wellbeing Workshops and step into more understanding, self-advocacy, self-empowerment and self-acceptance!
Find all of Kate's popular online workshops and free resources here.
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Follow the podcast on Instagram.
Connect with Grace on Instagram (@future.adhd) or visit her website!
Takeaways:
- Understanding ADHD can empower women to embrace their unique brains and lessen feelings of shame.
- Creating personalized productivity tools is crucial for ADHD individuals, allowing flexibility and self-acceptance.
- The importance of rest varies for neurodivergent individuals, with multiple forms of rest being necessary.
- Emotional and cognitive rest are vital for balancing the extremes of hyper-focus and burnout in ADHD.
- Late diagnosis can lead to shame, but psychoeducation can help individuals reclaim their self-worth and capabilities.
- Planning resources designed specifically for ADHD brains can help bridge the gap in traditional productivity methods.
Links referenced in this episode:
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A: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.
Speaker A: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.
Speaker A: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.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:We're here another episode, another week, and I have the fantastic Grace Kuhlmer here.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:Grace is on Instagram as Future adhd and she is a late diagnosed ADHD writer, educator, podcast host, and certified breathwork teacher.
Speaker A:And Grace has a decade of experience designing planners and is the creator of the hugely popular Future ADHD digital plan.
Speaker A:It's got 80, 000 plus users worldwide, which I just think is astonishing.
Speaker A:And she blends SC research with passion and personal experience to create tools that help ADHD is embrace their individuality and work with their neurosparkly brains.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, I love that.
Speaker A:It is a fantastic book, Grace.
Speaker A:And I just wanted to say that if anybody is wondering, what I'm talking about is called the ADHD Focus Friend.
Speaker A:It's a planning and productivity workbook.
Speaker A:I've got it here in front of me and I can't wait to talk about it.
Speaker A:But I just want to say congratulations on all this success and nice to meet you.
Speaker B:Yes, thank you so much for having me, Kate.
Speaker B:And I've been such a fan of your work for such a long time and a listener of your podcast.
Speaker B:So it's surreal to be here, but a pleasure.
Speaker A:Well, it's a delight to meet you and I've had your book for a while now, and I've been kind of going through it and it's really an interesting kind of combination of so many different things.
Speaker A:It's got so much help and guidance.
Speaker A:It's beautifully illustrated, beautiful pictures and, you know, designs and.
Speaker A:But it's also really full of guidance and help and knowledge and breaking things down.
Speaker A:You know, when we're first diagnosed, I know, you know, if you're late diagnosed like me, there's so many parts of our personality and so many behavior sort of traits that we had no idea was to do with like as you say, this neuro spicy brain of ours.
Speaker A:And actually when we can understand it and we've got this kind of psycho education alongside why we do these certain things, we're able to remove that shame and we're able to remove that kind of like oh, I'm broken, I'm a failure, I'm this and start actually activating our brain, empowering ourselves and moving forwards.
Speaker A:And I really think that your book helps people do that.
Speaker A:I'm so impressed with it.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:That means a lot.
Speaker B:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's really great.
Speaker A:And if, if you're the type of ADHDer that just loves color and interest and reading little things and opening things in different places, I really think you'll love this.
Speaker A:But what else it is is a planning and productivity workbook.
Speaker A:So we'll get to it all.
Speaker A:But I wondered maybe what kind of led you.
Speaker A:You obviously had the download version of something similar.
Speaker A:What led you to thinking right.
Speaker A:I need to kind of bring all this knowledge and your background and education into putting it all into this fantastic resource.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I was late diagnosed like a lot of women after my son was diagnosed and I very deep dived into all things ADHD research, trying to understand my brain.
Speaker B:And one thing I noticed was that a lot of people were starting to.
Speaker B:This was about three years ago, they were starting to talk about shame and self esteem around ADHD which is such an important topic and so important for high masking women, particularly because we've been missed getting diagnosed in school or in university.
Speaker B:And so we have a lot of negative shame stories around our capabilities.
Speaker B:And so I noticed that this was being talked about but I also had my finger in the planning and productivity space because I'd been working in that space through a previous company that I was running where I also created planners.
Speaker B:And I just saw this big divide and this big gap because the productivity movement as so many of us know, is quite a toxic.
Speaker B:Can be quite a toxic place.
Speaker B:Not always, but it can be.
Speaker B:And there are a lot of those messages that we receive from a very young age, whether it's in school, from teachers, from our uni tutors or professors, from our parents, from well meaning people who are trying to teach us how to be organized.
Speaker B:And I think what I learned in researching what science was saying about the ADHD brain and our emotional regulation and our nervous systems and how those all play with our productivity is that planning tools and productivity advice doesn't suit us at all as neurodivergent People.
Speaker B:It's mostly designed for neurotypicals by neurotypicals.
Speaker B:And when you're trying to fit your brain into that mold, that organizational system that's on a yearly calendar that you have to stick to consistently, no wonder we're all feeling shame around productivity.
Speaker B:And I think another thing that's interesting about productivity is that it sounds kind of like, oh, you have to be a planner sort of person to be into productivity, or you have to have the kind of schedule where you need a planner.
Speaker B:And I do like, you know, I have created a planner that supports people, but really it's about what we want to do in our lives, how we want to make progress towards our goals, figuring out what those goals are.
Speaker B:And if a planner can help you with that, that's great.
Speaker B:But the reason I wrote this book was that I wanted to create a resource that showed the foundation and sort of went deep into the science that supports my planner.
Speaker B:The planner is the one that has 80,000 users.
Speaker B:It's got a lot of different templates.
Speaker B:It's very customizable.
Speaker B:And at its core, the scientific basis is that inconsistency is a good thing because that's how the ADHD brain works best.
Speaker B:And the plan is actually designed for you to be inconsistent.
Speaker B:The whole thing is scaffolded with words and language.
Speaker B:And it's got, you know, this friend kind of approach, this friendly tone to help you feel like it expects that you're going to have to take time off, take weeks, months, forget about it.
Speaker B:And it expects that.
Speaker B:And that means that when you go back to it, you don't have to feel embarrassed or like, I've ruined that planner.
Speaker B:I didn't use it.
Speaker B:It's now a waste of space.
Speaker B:I have to buy a new one.
Speaker B:And so when I made the book, I wanted to dive into all of that research and explain that on a foundational level and include some templates from the planner to sort of show you how those things could work.
Speaker B:So it's a real first step for people who have been sort of broken in a way, like worn down and beaten down.
Speaker B:No one's broken but worn down by our productivity culture and who are just desperate for a way that actually makes sense to them, a new way to look at it that links our brains and our bodies and our nervous system and our emotional highs and lows and our intensity and our passion and says, hey, we don't have to be someone we're not.
Speaker B:We can take all of that and we can actually move towards our goals.
Speaker B:And here's a whole bunch of research and science and a whole bunch of tools, as you said, to help you find your own way and construct something that makes sense for your brain.
Speaker B:So that's the book in a nutshell.
Speaker A:In a nutshell, yeah.
Speaker A:No, and I love that.
Speaker A:And I think the way you describe that is that how many people have experienced life before diagnosis is that they've had burnout cycles and they've not understood why, and they've not understood their nervous systems, they've not understood their energy and how it wanes and how we have like these dopamine sensitive brains where one minute we're flying and everything's amazing.
Speaker A:We're so excited about our project, project.
Speaker A:And we wake up the next day and it's like, don't.
Speaker A:We don't even want to look at it and we're just not interested and we just give ourselves these negative connotations of I'm so flaky, why do I never follow through?
Speaker A:Why do I never stick to my goals?
Speaker A:And we see that as flaws and personality kind of dense, you know, that we, we can't stick to certain things, but when we understand our wiring and we understand our nervous system and through this book, I think you very, you know, you really explain that very much that when we navigate all the different parts of ADHD and sometimes they fluctuate, you know, and sometimes it's more challenging.
Speaker A:There's just so many moving parts to our adhd.
Speaker A:Especially when we talk about things like energy, rsd, talking about burnout, we're talking about sleep, all of a sudden, the productivity and the goals and the big ideas and all these things, it falls by the wayside.
Speaker A:So I love that you are acknowledging that this is always moving and shifting and evolving and the inconsistency has to be part of it.
Speaker A:And as a business owner myself, I know that I do chop and change my mind.
Speaker A:And I say a lot.
Speaker A:I'm very unemployable because if I was part of a team and having to deliver things, I would really, really struggle.
Speaker A:But because it's my own business and I can make decisions on my feelings, my intuition, my energy, what's going on kind of life wise, health wise, I'm able have that privilege to kind of go, you know what?
Speaker A:I'm going to pull back on that.
Speaker A:That goal doesn't feel sustainable for me right now.
Speaker A:But I feel like I want to be productive in a different area of my business.
Speaker A:Do you find that as well?
Speaker A:Is that kind of.
Speaker A:Are you guided by Things like that as well in your business?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I have joked a lot of times I work with my husband and we kind of work as equal co founders, but I joke a lot of the time that he's technically my boss because he should have fired me a long time ago and many times.
Speaker B:And he is truly the yin to my yang because he is so good at doing the consistent thing that needs to be done.
Speaker B:And so I went away for three weeks when I created the Digital Planner.
Speaker B:That was my very first product that took off and I created it in three weeks based on a hyper focus.
Speaker B:And you know what that was like.
Speaker B:It was, you know, 18 hours of work a day and he provided the space for me to do that because we had this real vision for what this product could be and I needed to hyper focus for that length of time.
Speaker B:And three weeks doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're working 18 hours a day and you know how the ADHD brain works, Kate, when we hyperfocus, our attention is magical and we build on each day the things that we did in the day before.
Speaker B:And if we're not interrupted by any other schedule when you could really make this room for it, this radical room which really only comes with being an entrepreneur.
Speaker B:It's such a privilege.
Speaker B:A lot of jobs still aren't recognizing ADHD is and or DHD is need for hyper focus and truly uninterrupted time without emails, without meetings, going offline.
Speaker B:And that's what he gave me because he's a visionary himself and he's a very rare kind of neurotypical who really does his best to be a good ally and understand truly what's going on inside my brain.
Speaker B:And he did that.
Speaker B:And then the planner took off and we very quickly got a lot of customers and I was not interested in sticking around and having to do all of the customer service every single day.
Speaker B:I did it for a while because of the dopamine high and we're still having to answer questions that we've answered a thousand times.
Speaker B:And who does that?
Speaker B:My husband and another person on his team.
Speaker B:So he is the kind of person that can keep something going, whereas I am like a starter and I want to say I'm a finisher as well.
Speaker B:But very intense energy and focus on short term projects.
Speaker B:I don't really like a project that goes for three years and I think that's normal for ADHD is because we don't see time like neurotypicals do.
Speaker B:I've heard it called spiral time.
Speaker B:I'VE heard it called time blindness, but I'm not a big fan of that term from an ableist perspective.
Speaker B:But I like to call it time and attention.
Speaker B:It's actually, I write about this in the book when I talk about goals and I talk about the fact that we see every stage of a project at once.
Speaker B:We have visionary brains.
Speaker B:When we have an idea, we have the kernel of the idea and then we can see sort of three years into the future.
Speaker B:Except for we don't know it's three years in the future.
Speaker B:It feels like it's happening now.
Speaker B:And so every stage of the project, whether it's promotion, whether it's marketing, whether it's study that we need to do and it overwhelms us in that kernel stage because we don't know how to separate time periods out.
Speaker B:It's not how our brain works.
Speaker B:And that means that we're really good visionaries.
Speaker B:It means that we can go far ahead in time.
Speaker B:But it really feels overwhelming for our brains and our nervous systems.
Speaker B:And that is something that I don't think neurotypical productivity ever has understood about our brains and making planners that work for us.
Speaker A:I love, love that you've just kind of explained something that perhaps I've struggled to explain before because that's exactly, exactly me.
Speaker A:You know, if I have an idea, I all of a sudden think about every part of it and I see it all wearing in my head.
Speaker A:And then the overwhelm kicks in of how am I going to do that?
Speaker A:I'm going to need another team member and then I'm going to need this and the money and the, and everything just kind of.
Speaker A:And then I have to move away from that noise because sometimes I think this is, this is going to be a great idea.
Speaker A:But you can see how quickly we can get overwhelmed.
Speaker A:And it really upsets me when we hear about all these amazing neurodivergent people coming up with fantastic ideas and they can visualize, like you say, they can see far ahead, but then the things like the logistics and the admin and all the consistent day to day jobs just kind of get the better of them and they shut it down because that overwhelms just too big.
Speaker A:And it sounds like you've got an amazing ally and your husband and we all kind of wish that we have that yin to yang and sometimes we don't have that and it can be really hard and we kind of feel a bit stuck in our business and a bit kind of like, oh, I just need somebody to help me Because I can start this and I can do all the dopamine stuff and the hyper focus, but then the other stuff has to come from it to be able to kind of execute it and get it out there.
Speaker A:I'm interested.
Speaker A:You know, obviously you're a mum, you've got kids and you took yourself away for three weeks.
Speaker A:I'm so kind of inspired by the fact that you had such a vision and you knew that the only way to execute this, you know, in the grand scheme of things, three weeks is nothing.
Speaker A:You know, kids, when they're older, they're not going to remember you, what you did that, you know, in three weeks.
Speaker A:But it's a big kind of commitment, isn't it?
Speaker A:You really.
Speaker A:It's an investment and knowing.
Speaker A:And many of us kind of think, you know what, I can't do that, or, you know, it's not going to be worth it.
Speaker A:But for.
Speaker A:You obviously know how your brain works so that in that hyper focus of being able to sit there uninterrupted and, my God, what we can achieve when we're not interrupted, you knew that that was an investment that was worth making into what clearly has been paid off.
Speaker A:Because you've sold, you know, 80,000 copies of your planner.
Speaker A:Can you tell me, did you feel fear over that or did you kind of have complete trust that this was the right decision?
Speaker B:It's a funny question because I think ADHD is, and neurodivergence in general, because I actually identify now as Audi hd.
Speaker B:But I'm fairly sure that this still applies to adhd.
Speaker B:So feel free to corroborate this, Kate.
Speaker B:But I feel like in our deepest selves, the sort of very childlike way that we used to operate as kids, we kind of know what we need to do.
Speaker B:It's that hyper focus for a lot of us, and we did it as kids where we would become obsessed with something.
Speaker B:Maybe it was minerals or gemstones, or maybe it was Barbie, or maybe it was Lego, or maybe it was Anne of Green Gables.
Speaker B:And we would become immersed in that world and we didn't want to stop and come in for dinner.
Speaker B:And I think that's deep inside us and I think we've been conditioned away from that through our culture and society that says we work between nine and five, we do it five days a week.
Speaker B:School is very similar to that.
Speaker B:It's nine till three.
Speaker B:And that's no accident that school is crafted that way to indoctrinate us from a very young age.
Speaker B:And obviously I'm a big fan of school.
Speaker B:I was a teacher, but I also have a lot of criticisms of the way that school can turn children.
Speaker B:It's the sausage machine, you know, that classic example.
Speaker B:And it's creating students that are going to be model employees down the track in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:And for neurodivergent kids, they don't fit into the box of school.
Speaker B:So I think I did have a lot of fear and I think that fear came from growing up and being told, no, no, you can't do that, especially in school.
Speaker B:Like that project that you want to go and keep working on because you absolutely loved creating a radio show in year six or writing a novel or whatever it was.
Speaker B:I really wanted to do that and I wanted to keep doing it.
Speaker B:And the teacher said no, now it's time to go on to spelling.
Speaker B:And I'd be like, what, are you kidding?
Speaker B:Like I just had seven great ideas and our whole group here is working on this project and.
Speaker B:Or actually, if I'm honest, it was me wanting to work on the project on my own.
Speaker B:Classic neurodivergent kid in a class finding it hard to work with other kids.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so I think that's really difficult.
Speaker B:So I did feel fear.
Speaker B:And I think the only thing that helped me push through my fear was my husband trusting.
Speaker B:He'd seen me do it before.
Speaker B:And we had tried to create space in our lives partly through the COVID lockdowns and being self employed where we didn't have to do things on a deadline where we could just take time.
Speaker B:I felt the fear.
Speaker B:But I also had been reading a lot about creativity in neurodivergence and that really deep urge that you can't control that deep thing and once you let it out, just see where it can take you.
Speaker B:And so in the book I actually try and give advice as well around this that doesn't say you need to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker B:You don't need to take that leap out of the employee system if that's where you are in a corporate system or with a job.
Speaker B:But even if you schedule a six hour session one Saturday a month to be undisturbed to say housemate, partner, kids, parents, whoever you're with, I need time.
Speaker B:I'm going to go to an Airbnb and book a bit.
Speaker B:Airbnb if I can afford it.
Speaker B:Or I'm going to be in my room, I have snacks here, I don't need to be disturbed.
Speaker B:And just see how your brain responds to that because there's so many ways that we can find these Uninterrupted periods of time.
Speaker B:There was actually a fantastic article I read in my research period called the Fear of Being Interrupted.
Speaker B:And it's a phenomenon, and that really sums it up for me.
Speaker B:It is a fear.
Speaker B:It's when you're working on something amazing and all the ideas are coming together and you can see everything at once.
Speaker B:And that's where you don't really want to have a sense of time.
Speaker B:You just want everything to be able to mix around in your brain without limitations.
Speaker B:And if someone interrupts that.
Speaker B:I liken it sometimes to an artist working on a sculpture made of glass up in the air.
Speaker B:And if someone comes in, the whole thing can fall down and smash on the ground.
Speaker B:That's how it feels, is that you're trying to keep this thing buoyant and alive.
Speaker B:Does that make sense?
Speaker A:100.
Speaker A:And I'm exactly the same as you, and I feel it in my nervous system.
Speaker A:So I've just recently finished writing a book.
Speaker A:And if I knew that I only had an hour and then my kid was good, one of my kids was going to say, right, you need to take me here, or I had to then go and make dinner.
Speaker A:My nervous system wouldn't relax enough to know that it was safe to just kind of get into that flow, get into that hyper focus.
Speaker A:And it just.
Speaker A:It didn't work for me if I knew that.
Speaker A:I said to my family, do not interrupt me unless there is, like something catastrophic happening in the house.
Speaker A:I would literally put a sign on the building saying, please don't interrupt me.
Speaker A:I could sit there, I put my headphones on, I'd light my candle.
Speaker A:My foot massager was on.
Speaker A:I had like all my little rituals, my essential oils.
Speaker A:And I would just go into this headspace where it almost felt like there was.
Speaker A:And it sounds a bit kind of esoteric, this bit like this divine kind of like channeling where I could just go in and write.
Speaker A:And my nervous system was calm and relaxed enough to know that it was okay to just go into that place.
Speaker A:And there's this joke in my.
Speaker A:My house that if I'm in that place and if I'm just like, pottering in the house or like cooking and I'm relaxed, I jump out of my skin if someone comes into the room or someone says my name and I'm like.
Speaker A:And they're like, like.
Speaker A:Like I'm in my own little space, my own.
Speaker A:My own headspace.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I wasn't expecting to be interrupted.
Speaker A:So my nervous system kind of like jolts me out of that place.
Speaker A:So I think the joy of knowing that you're not going to be interrupted potentially could be up there with one of the, the best things in life.
Speaker A:So we never should underestimate that.
Speaker A:And I wanted to ask you, like, obviously we're talking about productivity and we're talking about leaning into all of that, but actually with that, you know, there's a, there's this sort of the scale, this equilibrium that we have to find in life of like finding those moments of productivity and hyper focus.
Speaker A:But how do we then go into rest?
Speaker A:Especially when we have a nervous system that is kind of interest based.
Speaker A:We're always kind of high alert, hyper vigilant.
Speaker A:Our dopamine levels are kind of like, you know, they're wanting to be stimulated.
Speaker A:But actually sometimes we do need to bring things down a notch and we need to, we don't find rest that easily and we have to actively seek rest.
Speaker A:And when ADHD is say to me and both or DHD say to me, I really struggle just to sit, I struggle, I'm too restless.
Speaker A:I can't just sit on a couch and relax.
Speaker A:You know, I've got to scroll on my phone, I've got to be doing something.
Speaker A:And I love what you've got in your book.
Speaker A:You've got the 10 types of rest.
Speaker A:And I found that so helpful because we're told, like you say in this neurotransmitter neurotypical world that this is how you do rest.
Speaker A:You sit on a couch or you go to bed.
Speaker A:But actually for us rest is many different things.
Speaker A:Can we kind of dive into those ten types of rest?
Speaker A:Because I think people will find that very interesting.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think just before I dive into the details of it, I want to say that rest is so crucial because really ADHD is work in extremes.
Speaker B:So like I was just explaining that if we were allowed to, we could hyper focus potentially on something for hours, days or weeks depending on how big the topic is and how much it maybe connects to what we want to do with our lives or our, you know, career.
Speaker B:It's depending on, you know, sometimes hyper fixations can last only a few hours and that's normal too.
Speaker B:But those extremes of focus are often then you need to go into an extreme of rest in order to balance that out.
Speaker B:And so with so many things, when we compare ADHD or neurodivergent traits, because I like to also include or DHD is in this, when we look at those traits compared to neurotypicals, whether it's emotional highs and lows, whether it's focus or inattention or needing rest or intense focus.
Speaker B:And intense rest for ADHD is it's a very steep up and down sort of wave if you were graphing it along a straight line.
Speaker B:So that's pretty much our whole personality.
Speaker B:Every aspect of our personality has these incredible highs and incredible lows.
Speaker B:Same with our moods, same with our energy levels.
Speaker B:And that also has to do with the menstrual cycle.
Speaker B:If you're someone who menstruates as well, that can also change depending on where you are in your phase of the month.
Speaker B:But for neurotypicals that is just a gentle wavy line.
Speaker B:And I think that's really hard to grasp for a lot of neurotypicals is how you could possibly have these extremes of productivity or hyper focus or intensity and then these extremes of needing rest.
Speaker B:And the reason it's helped me to understand that is right now, for example, I'm promoting my book and I was sort of feeling a bit guilty for quite a while leading up to my book launch because I actually had a really long period of time before my book came out.
Speaker B:It was actually over a year when I finished my final manuscript to when it came out.
Speaker B:And that's partly because it's a full color book and full color printed books compared to black and white take a lot longer to produce and distribute.
Speaker B:So I had to wait a really long time.
Speaker B:And there were periods of time where I was feeling really unmotivated to talk about it and I felt guilty because I had to do, you know, like, let's talk about the book and blah.
Speaker B:And actually it was because I needed to rest because in that time I had finished writing the book, which was a really intense period of time.
Speaker B:And then I needed to rest.
Speaker B:And now I'm promoting it again.
Speaker B:I can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker B:I'm awake at all hours of the night and I'm.
Speaker B:Today I was meant to switch off and have time with my family and I couldn't.
Speaker B:And I usually would feel guilty that I can't switch off my phone.
Speaker B:And I said to my husband, I tried not to check it, but I had so many ideas zipping through my head.
Speaker B:Had this interview later with UK and that's okay because when we're switched on, we're so switched on and the momentum takes us that we actually do need that extreme rest.
Speaker B:And I don't think our society caters to that at all.
Speaker B:If you take into account the amount of rest we need and if we were truly able to go as fast and as intense as our brains want to on a project.
Speaker B:It probably evens out to something similar to what neurotypicals can achieve.
Speaker B:Except for that you can really make progress in an interesting and different way when you work on one thing for three weeks straight or.
Speaker B:But the 10 types of rest.
Speaker B:So this is a model that a researcher called Nicola Jane Hobbs kindly allowed me to appropriate in the book.
Speaker B:So I need to give credit where it's due.
Speaker B:It's a fantastic model.
Speaker B:She talks about physical rest, emotional rest, cognitive rest, sensory rest, psychosocial rest, spiritual rest, altruistic rest, ecological rest, playful rest, and creative rest.
Speaker A:I really like that.
Speaker A:And like, let's just pull a couple out.
Speaker A:We don't need to go through all 10 of them, but maybe more of the more unique ones.
Speaker A:Well, tell us a little bit about the spiritual rest.
Speaker B:This may sound odd and you don't have to identify as spiritual, even religious, to resonate with this.
Speaker B:Although it could if, if you do identify that way.
Speaker B:But what it says in the book here is protecting your energy flow.
Speaker B:So often ADHD is a neurodivergence feel a very strong sense of connection to energy to flow to the energy of other humans, to the, the outgoings and ingoings of that energy.
Speaker B:And sometimes that can feel spiritual.
Speaker B:And like you said before, Kate, when you're in that hyper focus mode and you're left alone, it can feel almost divine.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, I'm personally not a religious person, but I like to think of that as kind of working perfectly within our neurotype without any guilt or shame.
Speaker B:Just like a lion does not get told that it can run and sprint for a kilometer or 10 kilometers chasing prey and then it can lie in the sun and relax.
Speaker B:It just does it because it, it's designed to do that or it's evolved to do that.
Speaker B:And we're the same.
Speaker B:And I think that we feel that divine feeling when we do what our brains are intuitively designed to do.
Speaker B:And so I actually feel rest sometimes when I'm hyper focusing on a project or researching doesn't always have to be rest, doesn't have to be doing Nothing.
Speaker B:I think ADHDers get scared because we're.
Speaker B:Our brains work so fast.
Speaker B:We think rest has to stop.
Speaker B:Stop rest has to be nothing.
Speaker B:It has to be like when you meditate, your brain has to be empty and that's not true.
Speaker B:And so sometimes spiritual rest can be reading poetry or prayers or meditation or the writing of a philosopher that you really love.
Speaker B:It could be having a really intellectual conversation around these bigger existential questions with someone else that's been thinking about them.
Speaker B:And that can make us, our souls feel rested.
Speaker B:It doesn't always have to be lying down, as I said.
Speaker A:So that's it.
Speaker A:And also, you talk about being stimulated in a good way and if, you know, reading poetry, whatever, but we know that being understimulated can be just as draining and just as exhausting as being overstimulated.
Speaker A:And if we were sort of lying there, we haven't got anything to do and our brain's whirring and we want to be able to sort of read something or work on a project and we can't and we're sort of sat there.
Speaker A:It can be torturous.
Speaker A:I mean, absolutely torturous.
Speaker A:I was talking to someone before about, we both said how getting our nails done, if you're the type of person that likes to have nice nails.
Speaker A:And I actually really like having nails.
Speaker A:I can see today I've got yellow nails.
Speaker A:I love having my nails done, but the sitting and having my nails done is akin to torture to me.
Speaker A:And someone said to me, why don't you just put your AirPods in?
Speaker A:Because I go to one of these places and it's like, you know, as quick as they can be.
Speaker A:And I put.
Speaker A:And she says, well, I just go and listen to a podcast and put my headphones in.
Speaker A:But I'm so worried about offending or being rude.
Speaker A:I try not to do that, but I'm kind of like considering maybe having one AirPod in.
Speaker A:So at least when they're not talking to me, I can, you know, I can listen to something because I come out of there and even though I've been sat down for an hour getting my nails done, I am probably more exhausted than I would be if I'd sat and listened to a lecture from an hour.
Speaker A:So it's just so important that we, we know this and we understand and we're not questioning ourselves and feeling, going back to that, you know, that feeling, that shame.
Speaker A:Other types of rest, you know, involve things like being walking outside in nature or that can be, you know, like you said, creativity.
Speaker A:It can be doing something artistic, it can be making something, could be cooking, it can be sitting on the bed and it can be watching Netflix as well.
Speaker B:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:That's one of my favorite forms of rest.
Speaker B:And again and again, like I like to say that I, I do enjoy a good documentary, I do enjoy a stimulating watch, stimulating show or something with a fast paced dialogue.
Speaker B:But I also love reality tv.
Speaker B:I love binge watching trash because it is that perfect level of stimulating without being over stimulating and without being under stimulating.
Speaker B:And often it's restful because my brain is reading so many books and thinking about so many concepts around my work and around neurodivergence.
Speaker B:And I think about neurodivergence a lot, like six out of seven days a week, if not more.
Speaker B:And I have a kid that's neurodivergent and Tara, who I run the ADHD Besties podcast with is neurodivergent and I work with her a lot too.
Speaker B:So I am thinking about it a lot.
Speaker B:And truly I need to find something that is not that and is just a rest for my brain is something inane.
Speaker B:And that's really important too to make sure that you're giving yourself intellectual rest.
Speaker B:So cognitive rest, it talks about non thinking activities like cooking, binging, a trashy TV show.
Speaker B:Put that one in there to remind myself how important it is.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've got one of my kids, all of them are neurodivergent, but one of them, especially recently rewatches things all the time.
Speaker A:And she just sits and she says that's just the only way because if she has to sit and watch something new, it takes brain capacity.
Speaker A:But for her just to sit and watch the same film over and over, the same TV series, for her, that is, that's rest.
Speaker A:So we again, you know, it's, it's different for everybody and we have to find that, that place of rest, which like you say is just that, that, that perfect balance between, you know, being being slightly stimulated enough to kind of serve that interest based nervous system that we've got, but also just to help calm and relax us and allow us to switch off.
Speaker A:And I'm exactly the same as you, Grace.
Speaker A:You know, I think about this all the time.
Speaker A:My job is my passion is, my interest is my hyper focus and I'm constantly thinking about new things and I have to actively choose to step away from that because even though it's my passion and I, I want to be saving the world with this, but at the same time I know that I have to have a place where I'm not thinking about it and I can look after myself.
Speaker A:And for me it's always water.
Speaker A:So I just run myself a bath and I have some books by the bath that aren't work based and I bring my iPad and I have it and that's when I watch my trashy tv.
Speaker A:And for me the bathroom, the salts the, you know, the essential oils that kind of activates that thing in my brain that says right now it's time to rest.
Speaker A:And so I find, I find that really important.
Speaker A:Can I ask a little bit about, actually, I really love this, what you, you described it with when talking about rsd, but you gave it this kind of like this terminology of clickbait, click bait thoughts, which I found really interesting because straight away I thought, oh my God, that's exactly what RSD is.
Speaker A:That is what happens.
Speaker A:Perhaps you can explain a little bit about this concept.
Speaker B:I developed this concept because I needed to explain it to my 9 year old.
Speaker B:And this is the teacher coming out of me.
Speaker B:But I think that when you're trying to explain things to kids, you're trying to find a really clear example that they understand.
Speaker B:And because he's a, he's a Gen Z, giving him an example around the Internet worked.
Speaker B:So in the book I explain that in a simple way based on science, but also so that anyone can understand it.
Speaker B:I just explain how the brain is based on feedback loops.
Speaker B:And when we're creating patterns in our brains, our neurons are all firing together and wiring together and creating these habits and these mental habits.
Speaker B:So I actually kind of lead into talking about RSD by talking about our emotions as habits.
Speaker B:We often don't realize that we don't have as much control as we think we do over our emotions as ADHDers.
Speaker B:We get pulled a lot of the time by these emotional currents and on autopilot.
Speaker B:And so explaining how our thought processes work, I use the example of an algorithm like the Google algorithm, where when you put a search topic in, it'll give you a list of things that it thinks you're going to click on.
Speaker B:And it always puts the clickbait thought at the very top because it wants you to click on that.
Speaker B:And so the clickbait result is usually very emotional.
Speaker B:If it's an emotional topic, it's usually very controversial and it could be something that probably is unverifiable.
Speaker B:And so when we're experiencing things in our life, maybe our friend cancels on us at the last minute or maybe our boss sends us a text saying, I need to have a meeting with you.
Speaker B:Our brains will try and give us the thought that it thinks will protect us the most, that clickbait thought.
Speaker B:And it's usually the most RSD fueled one, the most unverifiable, the most dramatic and the most emotionally intense thought.
Speaker B:And so in the book I kind of explain how to identify a clickbait thought and how to actually kind of pull it apart in slow motion and say, okay, that RSD thought, that dramatic thought, that was my brain's algorithm working.
Speaker B:And just like on Google, I can choose to scroll past it and go down and find something five, six, seven spots down that might be more suitable to this scenario.
Speaker B:So, for example, in the book, the clickbait thought for one scenario, you perform really well in a job interview, but you don't get the job.
Speaker B:We've all been there, we thought we did really well.
Speaker B:We were expecting that call saying, you've got it.
Speaker B:And they say, thanks so much for your time, but we've gone another direction.
Speaker B:I don't know about you, Kate, but my first thought is usually they hated me.
Speaker B:I'm a terrible human being.
Speaker B:Clearly they exposed me for the fraud that I am.
Speaker B:I don't know why I ever thought I should apply for that job.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And that if we kind of go for the clickbait thought, we kind of feel weirdly not good.
Speaker B:But it's just like, ah, yeah, that feels right.
Speaker B:It's like a, it's like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
Speaker B:Because our brain's an algorithm and our thoughts are patterns and so it goes.
Speaker B:Yep, that's the thought that we've had before that feels right.
Speaker B:If you asked your brain to keep on thinking of other thoughts and what other things could be further down the list, you might find, and I'm just reading from the book here, I thought I made a good impression, so that's really disappointing.
Speaker B:That could be the second thought, third thought, Maybe someone higher up made the decision.
Speaker B:Maybe it wasn't the person that interviewed me for the job.
Speaker B:Maybe they hired internally.
Speaker B:Maybe they hired someone who was happier with a lower salary.
Speaker B:Maybe they hired someone who could work more flexible hours.
Speaker B:And that's just that one scenario.
Speaker B:But straight away, by the end, you're left feeling a little bit more curious.
Speaker B:And if there's one thing I've learned about the ADHD nervous system, number one, it doesn't really age in the sense that things that work for kids work for us.
Speaker B:And something I've used a lot in my teaching experience and with my kids is curiosity.
Speaker B:So if they don't, if they can't move through something, I'll usually try and activate their curiosity because that's activating their interest based nervous system, which is one of the strongest systems in the ADHD body.
Speaker B:So by kind of working further down that RSD clickbait list and getting to the point where we say maybe they hired someone who could work more flexible hours or had a lower salary.
Speaker B:We start thinking, oh, I wonder if I could work more flexible hours.
Speaker B:I wonder if in the next job interview, if I mentioned that, whether that might make me a better candidate.
Speaker B:And so then we feel a bit more empowered instead of focusing on that, I'm the worst, no one likes me, I'm going to never get a job kind of energy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think I love this analogy and I love everything that you've just explained, and you can really see how this educator side of you comes out, because we just need.
Speaker A:We need analogies.
Speaker A:We need to be able to understand it.
Speaker A:Because when we understand our behavior, then we can choose different thoughts and we can choose, you know, to think exactly what you said with these different perspectives, which feel more compassionate, they feel more gentle.
Speaker A:And it's kind of like having that wiser person speak to us and say to us, well, have you thought about this?
Speaker A:And obviously, because our sort of propensity to catastrophize and this all or nothing thinking that many of us do have, we go straight for that very negative bias.
Speaker A:But actually, there's always other options and there's always other reasons.
Speaker A:And to have these other reasons presented to us always kind of calms everything down.
Speaker A:So I think straight away, when you said about the clickbait, I was like, it's kind of like the Daily Mail of our brain, you know, straight.
Speaker A:The Daily Mail just loves to just dramatize and make everything dreadful.
Speaker A:And you'll, you know, forever read the worst things in the world in the Daily Mail.
Speaker A:And so I actively never read it.
Speaker A:But if we then choose our media streams, the accounts that we follow, every everything is a bit more intentional, then it's the same with our thought process.
Speaker A:We can just be more intentional, but it does take time.
Speaker A:So I just wanted to say thank you for that because I actually think that's incredibly helpful, because RSD is one of those things that I hear about so much.
Speaker A:You know, it's something that I experience, see, with my children as well.
Speaker A:You know, constantly talking to them about it and helping them understand.
Speaker A:And also, you know, a lot of my clients, my community say it's so hard because, you know, whether it's relationships, it's career, it's friendships, you know, it doesn't matter how old we are, we're navigating, we're navigating this.
Speaker A:So it's a great part of your book.
Speaker A:So thank you.
Speaker B:No, you're welcome.
Speaker B:And I want to just quickly add, because I can't talk about these top down approaches when we're, when we're talking.
Speaker B:As you know, Kate, you're a coach as well and an NLP practitioner.
Speaker B:I think I read on your website and I know that you're so invested in the nervous system as well.
Speaker B:And you'll agree with this that when we talk about things like here's a thought process or a thought experiment that might help you, these work in tandem with our nervous system.
Speaker B:And that's why I've written the book in the way that I have where I've talked about emotional dysregulation in one chapter which is color coded in red and I've talked about the nervous system in the yellow chapter and then talked about productivity in the grain chapter because they all tie together.
Speaker B:And if you're trying to do a thought process that's sort of like a, more of a cognitive behavioral therapy style thing or a dialectical behavior style thinking exercise where there's two things that can be true if you're dysregulated in your nervous system, if there are bottom up, we call them bottom up processes that are dysregulating us or stimuli, then that's not going to work.
Speaker B:So if you're overtired, if the lights are too bright, if you're uncomfortable, if your clothes are too tight, if you haven't eaten those interoceptive hormones, yeah, all of those things going on inside our bodies also affect obviously what's going on in our brains.
Speaker B:And so we have that top down approach of trying to come with our thoughts and use our thoughts to affect our bodies and then also using our bodies to affect our thoughts.
Speaker B:And so using those two things together is so important in understanding how ADHD is, can be more productive but also rest and work in those natural cycles that we've got because it's not only about, about, it's not all about being productive at all.
Speaker B:And, and yeah, I think we need to start to think about more holistically how am I functioning as a human rather than how much work am I squeezing out of myself, you know?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:I mean, I think we've talked so much about all the different parts of your book and I'm looking through it so much of it, it can be opened up and we can just look at something and just gain, you know, just a bit of help on one page and, and think, you know what, I'm just going to take that in today and I'm just going to think about that.
Speaker A:And if we are a parent with Children with, you know, neurodivergent children.
Speaker A:This book is going to be very helpful because we need to hold space for them.
Speaker A:We're navigating late diagnoses ourselves, but also seeing our kids through the eyes of what help could we have had back in the day if they're going through school and difficulties and friendships and also wanting to really fulfill their potential academically as well?
Speaker A:You know, there's so many people that unfortunately he didn't get that support academically.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of advice and guidance in this book that as parents we can utilize.
Speaker A:We don't have to be coaches, we don't have to have all the training.
Speaker A:We can take stuff from this book and help use these analogies and these pictures and, and the color and everything.
Speaker A:And just.
Speaker A:I'm going to have this in my kitchen actually, and I'm going to keep it out.
Speaker A:And so I've got something to hand.
Speaker A:So when I've got a daughter at the moment here is starting GCSE and I've gotten.
Speaker A:This is the third time now I've started this process and I think I still talk about how much I hate gcse.
Speaker A:Maybe I need to be less negative about it, but it is very debilitating for neurodivergent brains to have to kind of like sprinkle their energy and their focus across eight or nine different subjects and probably three quarters of them they're not interested in, but they're still having to go through the process and they've got to get these GCSEs.
Speaker A:So I'm going to keep this out and hopefully try and help her a little bit when things get a bit tough.
Speaker B:It sounds like you know exactly when you say you're being a bit too negative about gcses.
Speaker B:I don't think you are.
Speaker B:It's exactly what I was just saying about the system, the mainstream system, where if it's not a school that's catered to the neurodivergent brain, so few are.
Speaker B:That system is, is trying to spread kids thin across lots of subjects.
Speaker B:That's not how the neurodivergent brain works.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it does make a lot of sense what you've just said.
Speaker B:Don't doubt yourself.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, and it's actually as a parent, you know, even forget all the stuff that I know.
Speaker A:It's just really hard to see.
Speaker A:A child gets these sort of negative self beliefs and their self esteem is sort of dampened because certain subjects that she's being forced to.
Speaker A:To carry on with and it's just not her wiring, it's just not something that she's interested in.
Speaker A:She doesn't have the focus or the interest for it.
Speaker A:But then she's incredibly fascinated by three or four other different subjects and the processing and the retention and all of that.
Speaker A:It's a whole subject in itself.
Speaker A:But I think to be able to have tools and some support to help as parents, our children go through this so they can can fulfill their potential academically in whatever way that is is really important.
Speaker A:I wanted to also say that I have a book, a spare book and we've agreed that we're going to do like a little insta.
Speaker A:Post a post together and we're gonna give away a copy of this book.
Speaker A:So if you are listening to this.
Speaker B:And I'll give one away as well.
Speaker B:So we'll give away some copies.
Speaker A:Yeah, cool.
Speaker A:So we've got two copies to give away.
Speaker A:So if you just keep an eye on our socials when this episode comes out out will hopefully give away two copies to people who really need it.
Speaker A:But I just want to say thank you so much, Grace.
Speaker A:It's been really interesting and fascinating.
Speaker A:I love learning new things.
Speaker A:I've definitely learned some new things today and I've learned lots of new things from the book as well.
Speaker A:So thank you.
Speaker A:Tell people how they can find you.
Speaker A:I know you've got a podcast as well.
Speaker A:How can people learn more from you?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, it's been such a pleasure Kate, to chat with you.
Speaker B:I have a few different social platforms as every ADHDer does, a few different brands.
Speaker B:So I've got future ADHD and I'm on Instagramuture ADHD and our website where you can find links to get the book and the planner if you're interested in that more detailed planner that's available digitally, that is futureadhd.com and the book is available in at pretty much every big store.
Speaker B:So in the uk I know it's available in, in Blackwell's and Waterstones in the U.S.
Speaker B:you know, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, etc, all the big stores.
Speaker B:Of course it's on Amazon so that's where you can find that.
Speaker B:And then I also co host the your ADHD Besties podcast and that's on Spotify and Apple and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Speaker B:So I believe.
Speaker B:But I, yeah, I only focus on Apple and Spotify because otherwise it's too overwhelming.
Speaker B:But yes, it is available everywhere.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:Well, Grace, thank you so much.
Speaker A:It's been a pleasure and yeah, I hope to speak to you very soon.
Speaker B:Yes, thanks so much Kate.
Speaker B:It was such a pleasure chatting.
Speaker A:I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.
Speaker A:If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker A:And please do check out my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.
Speaker A:I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.
Speaker A:Take care and see you for the next episode.
Speaker B:Sa.
