Self-Compassion and ADHD: How to Break the Cycle of Drama

Speaker A: 00:01:10

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Wisdom version of the podcast.

This is the option for you to be able to listen back to some really insightful guests and hear some takeaways and maybe just hear some new parts of the conversation you may have missed last time. And I love bringing back these insightful guests. And today is no different. I have got Dr. Miguel Toribo Matias, and he is a.

Well, he's affectionately known as the creative scientist, but he's also a distinguished clinical neuroscientist and nutrition researcher in the uk. He's also navigating life with ADHD and autism and has this deep personal understanding of the different needs we have as neurodivergent individuals.

So I loved speaking to him. We really connected and I know he has been working hard on a book, so that's going to be coming out very, very soon.

And in this conversation we talk about the importance of the gut brain connection for ADHD management.

I think this is such a vit, vital conversation that so many of us need to hear that what we put in our gut and how we feed ourselves, but also look after stress management and really understand that the gut brain is so interconnected. I think it makes a profound difference with adhd.

And we can also glean from this conversation understanding our emotional dysregulation so when we can start bringing in new ways to help calm ourselves.

Perhaps, you know, look at our mood and what we're putting in our bodies and how we can create different changes and that impacts our mental health, our emotional health, our wellbeing. And we also talk a little bit about Dr. Miguel's personal journey and how his ADHD traits manifest in different ways.

So I really hope that this clip with Dr. Miguel helps you and I will see you all very soon.

Tell us a little bit about what you believe is the way to live thriving with ADHD through your lens of the gut brain connection.

Speaker B: 00:03:11

Yeah, absolutely. I think the gut brain connection plays a crucial role because it connects the external world with your internal world in a way.

And going even a little bit deeper philosophically than that, food choices that before you even put anything in your mouth, food choices are determined a lot by emotions and by memories and by associations between those memories and the way that that food may have made you feel, the way that the food actually is perceived by society, because, for example, now carbohydrates are very demonized and people kind of shy away from them thinking that all carbs are the same. So going to have a low carb diet and that's going to be better for me. So all of those things are kind of like playing in your mind.

And take an ADHD mind, it's going 100 miles an hour, it's going a lot faster than the neurotypical mind.

All of those things that are kind of like little snippets of information are kind of like little bits of data that are floating around in the spin cycle of a washing machine that doesn't stop running. That, that is a typical overwhelmed ADHD mind that is not either not treated or that you're not aware of it.

So if you choose not to go with your traditional treatment with stimulants and so on, you can actually at least be aware that your mind is behaving a certain way and then you can do something about it.

So with all of that in mind, before you even put anything in your, in your mouth and you think, okay, I'm going to engage my, my digestive system, I'm going to engage my, the microbes in my gut, they're going to produce nice molecules that then are going to travel to my brain, and all of that is going to happen. And that is the kind of like the, the basis of the gut brain connection. In a nutshell. You have all of those emotions to deal with.

And one of the key things in, in ADHD is that emotional dysregulation, the fact that emotions can affect us to an extent, that they can overpower us, they can feel overwhelming, that something tiny can feel like a mountain, that something negative that somebody without ADHD or a neurotypical person can deal with in two seconds, and they archive it and it's dealt with and that's fine. It can actually bug us the whole day, and it can bug us for days.

You know, so a little act of unkindness, words that some, that you've heard from somebody and they didn't sit right with you, they can actually be sitting with you for days and weeks. So all of that is going to have an impact on the kind of foods that you're going to choose.

And if you go through your life without being mindful that that is the case, then you could actually be drawing, you could be drawn to the wrong foods for the wrong reasons in your life, and then you can actually get into unhealthy behaviors for your ADHD as well as for the rest of your body and your brain.

So not just adhd, but what is very basic in terms of the gut brain connection, is that there is a gut brain connection and a brain gut connection it is a bidirectional connection.

They are both talking to each and the brain with emotions that are as powerful as we know they are in ADHD is sending incredibly poignant messages to the gut, to the point that that is the primal way of communication between the gut and the brain in a situation of fight or flight, which can be how our brains are actually and our nervous systems are hardwired in ADHD because of years of being told we're not good enough, of rejection, of tiny traumas, massive traumas.

All of that wires the nervous system in such a way that we are hypervigilant, we are meer cutting, we kind of, you know, just ready for the next negative thing that is going to hit us.

And sometimes we don't even realize because we have become almost so used to that rejection, that it is part of that basic mechanism as what I'm trying to say.

So if the brain is saying to the gut the emotions that are overpowered with now are negative, that is the same thing as having a lion just behind you that's going to attack you.

And literally, whether the brain is actually overpowered by a negative emotion or whether you have a negative situation that is physical just about to happen to you, that perceived stress or that real stress of the lion or the train or the bus that's going to hit you and the, and the stress of something that is just in your imagination but is happening in your brain is real, that is happening, that, that is having the same effect on your gut is basically the message that your brain is sent to your gut is can you tone down your activity? Because in a situation of danger, I don't want you to be spending any energy. I want the energy for me.

The brain is selfish and wants the energy for itself because it needs to get you out of that danger. So in a way selfish, knowing that it's going to need that energy to take you out of the, of the, of the potential threat.

And when you think about it, that is actually very powerful because a lot of people with ADHD will have digestive issues, will have kind of IBS type symptoms. They'll have potential low inflammation situations in the gut. They don't agree with certain foods, food intolerances.

All of that is quite typical in the neurodivergent community. That might also strike from the fact that the brain is constantly telling the gut to take a step down in terms of its activity.

So there's a lot of the processes that normally happen in the gut, like the very first steps in digestion, which Is saliva forming in the, in the mouth that carries enzymes that break down the food already from the mouth into the stomach to the formation of stomach acid, to the formation of enzymes in the, in the pancreas, to bile producing in the gallbladder.

All of those are necessary ingredients for food to start being digested more properly in the small intestine to then the appropriate amount and diversity of bacteria in your colon so they can actually extract the nutrients from the food that reaches the colon. All of that is depending on a calm nervous system or rather than a calm nervous system, which is it? It's never going to be completely calm.

A nervous system that is resilient and able to withstand these ups and downs of life.

And if your nervous system is hardwired for drama, which a lot of it is the case in adhd, and you're getting drama from yourself because of the self talk that you're giving yourself, or I'm not allowing myself to give to eat this because this will happen if I eat that and that, that self talk that stops you from doing things that are in a way common sense.

Unless you are of course, you know, celiac or you have any clinical situation that any of the ingredients you're allergic to or you know, some people, I talk about kefir, for example, and some people say, oh, I've got a, react really badly to histamine.

Okay, well of course that, you know, if you know that that is your situation, of course, don't take a food that will put you in danger that's going to make you feel ill. So I'm not talking about pushing foods that are potentially going to make you feel sick.

I'm talking about foods that have a purpose in health that is documented in literature quite widely at high level, quite high quality of experiments and that I wasn't allowing myself to put in my body because of different reasons. And when I talk to people, it happens to so many people. We do that to ourselves.

And that negative self talk is literally just fueling that fight or flight situation that our, our central nervous system is already wanting. You know, it's, it's, we are wired for drama and we're giving it drama.

So it's kind of like a cycle of perpetuating the drama in, in adhd and, and I think the way to get, to get out of the drama is self compassion and self acceptance in all different shapes.

So first accept yourself for the fact that, okay, I'm still carrying five kilos more than I would like to carry, although I'm carrying 15 kilos less than four years ago. My journey's been long since being diagnosed and being burnt out, but when I had no other choice but to actually be kind to myself because I had.

I was bedridden when I was burnt out and when I was diagnosed I was actually. I was finding it very difficult to get out of bed.

I had to like put on a smile to do zoom calls at work and then go back to bed for a while because I was really that, that burnt out. I think I was pushed to be kind. I didn't have the energy to think. I cannot allow myself to eat this. I'm just going to eat whatever.

I'm going to be intuitive in what I'm drawn to eating. Just because I didn't have the energy to get into the drama of this is allowed. This is not allowed. This is making me feel like this.

I'm going to get fat. My trousers won't fit. I was my energy, I didn't have the energy to spend thinking about all of that.

So in a way that helped me perversely to, to become more acceptance of, of accepting of myself.

Speaker A: 00:13:36

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:13:37

And then you start cultivating that compassion little by little. And we can talk about what brain parts are involved in all of that. But it's fascinating.

The whole science of, of compassion to yourself and to others taps straight into the gut brain connection and, and into diminishing inflammation throughout the body and into making you feel better and more hormonally balanced than everything else. Because all of that is connected.

Speaker A: 00:14:09

If today's episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.

I really hope this book is going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves the podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kind of conversations. Head to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk and you'll find all the information on the book there.