Reframing our Inner ADHD Dialogue: Moving From Criticism to Compassion
In this week's More Yourself episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, Kate explores one of the biggest and most powerful shifts that happens after a late ADHD diagnosis: learning to trust yourself again.
This clip from the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Summer series workshop, Boosting your Self-Belief and Self-Trust after a late-in-life ADHD Diagnosis, is all about rebuilding self-belief, understanding your inner dialogue, and shifting the unhelpful stories we’ve been telling ourselves, often our whole lives.
Many women diagnosed later in life carry years of internalised shame, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and chronic self-doubt. In this episode, we explore how to recognise and rewire limiting beliefs that have become your reality for so long, but may not actually be true.
This conversation will help you embrace life with self-compassion, clarity, and trust in who you are, what you believe, and how you want to navigate your life.
Key Takeaways:
- Learning how to recognise, rewire, release, and rebuild beliefs to develop stronger self-trust after an ADHD diagnosis
- How what we believe often shapes how we see ourselves and our reality
- Understanding how internal criticism and old thought patterns influence our choices, confidence, and emotional wellbeing
- The power of self-trust and how to reconnect with your inner voice, which knows who you truly are
- Using affirmations and mantras to gently shift how you speak to yourself, moving from self-doubt to self-support
- Understanding how you want to show up, speak to yourself, and regulate your emotions with compassion and clarity
- Why self-acceptance starts with awareness to make space for growth
- How to reframe limiting beliefs to move towards healing and self-confidence
Timestamps:
- 04:47: Understanding Beliefs and Self-Trust
- 07:40: Understanding Our Beliefs and Their Impact
- 11:06: Trusting Your Inner Voice
- 16:53: Embracing Self-Trust
If you enjoyed this clip, we'd love you to join us for our next live workshop on 16th December. Explore below to join the More Yourself community.
The More Yourself Community doors are now open!
More Yourself is a compassionate space for late-diagnosed ADHD women to connect, reflect, and come home to who they really are. Sign up here!
Inside the More Yourself Membership, you’ll be able to:
- Connect with like-minded women who understand you
- Learn from guest experts and practical tools
- Receive compassionate prompts & gentle reminders
- Enjoy voice-note encouragement from Kate
- Join flexible meet-ups and mentoring sessions
- Access on-demand workshops and quarterly guest expert sessions
To join for £26 a month, click here. To join for £286 for a year (a whole month free!), click here.
We’ll also be walking through The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit together, exploring nervous system regulation, burnout recovery, RSD, joy, hormones, and self-trust, so the book comes alive in a supportive community setting.
Links and Resources:
- Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Check out the full workshop here: Boosting your Self-Belief and Self-Trust after a late-in-life ADHD Diagnosis Workshop
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.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome back to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker B:And it's a More Yourself Monday episode.
Speaker B:And today I'm bringing you a clip from a summer workshop series that I did.
Speaker B:So I did a ADHD Women's Wellbeing workshop series and I just did different workshops on some of the main topics or the main ways I see ADHD really challenging women, especially women who are being diagnosed later on in life.
Speaker B:And so I try to address lots of these things because I get a lot of messages, a lot of emails, and it's really hard for me to be able to give everybody my individual kind of guidance and advice.
Speaker B:So I thought, let's just do this in workshops.
Speaker B:They're all available online on my website.
Speaker B:And today I wanted to share with you a clip from the workshop where I talk about boosting our self belief and self trust after an ADHD diagnosis.
Speaker B:So I believe that a huge part of living better, living well with our newly diagnosed, newly aware, newly recognized neurodivergence is really understanding our inner landscape, our inner dialogue, and giving ourselves a bit of space and self acceptance and then that self compassion for us to think, how can I make a change of what's going on inside my head?
Speaker B:Because that is not an easy place to live.
Speaker B:And we may have lived with a conditioning or a programming of self criticism, self doubt, low self worth, low self esteem.
Speaker B:And so I want to be able to help you start challenging those limiting beliefs and start noticing when that inner talk, that has probably been a really difficult sidekick, I would say, to live with and when we didn't know about our adhd, our neurodivergence, however, that has shown up in so many different capacities for so many of us, whether it's money or it's food or it's relationships or it's our career or academia.
Speaker B:It shows up in so many different ways.
Speaker B:And many of us have lots of limiting beliefs about what we can and we can't do and what we always sort of, you know, stumble on or the blocks or all these different things when we can start recognizing actually this has been part of our neurological makeup.
Speaker B:There's different wiring in our brain, there's different genetic makeups.
Speaker B:It helps us distance ourselves from that inner critic and that that version of us that thinks we're never going to amount to anything or we've not done enough or we've not achieved enough or we've not produced enough and allow ourselves to think, how can we start reframing how we want to speak to ourselves So I hope that this clip will help you with that and to maybe reshape your inner landscape, your inner beliefs and start building a bit more self trust and the power of using more positive affirmations, mantras, reframes whatever you want to call them for a inner dialogue that suits us.
Speaker B:An inner dialogue that perhaps would reflect how you'd speak to, you know, one of your best friends or someone that you really care about, or one of your children.
Speaker B:And I hope I will leave you with some positives around this sort of sense of worthiness and authenticity and self compassion and prioritizing this as we start understanding and learning to accept who we are and showing up more authentically.
Speaker B:So I hope that this episode today helps you wherever you are right now and helps bring you a bit more self acceptance.
Speaker B:And if this is the kind of conversation and this is the kind of thing that you are feeling you need right now, don't forget there is support in the More Yourself community.
Speaker B:This is where I'm showing up monthly.
Speaker B:We've got guest workshops, we've got connections online.
Speaker B:I'm busy trying to organize an in person meetup.
Speaker B:So I'm really hoping that this community will serve as a connection point but also a place where we can learn and we can get curious.
Speaker B:We can support each other and ask the questions where we feel there's nowhere else to turn.
Speaker B:So I'll put all the details in the show notes, but if you do go to my website ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk you'll find the more yourself community on there and have a little look and see if it's for you.
Speaker B:No pressure at all, but I have made it as accessible as I can to ensure that if you are awaiting a diagnosis or you've chosen, maybe you don't want to have that diagnosis, but you do want to connect more with this type of, I guess maybe more aligned tribe then I hope that this is something you might consider.
Speaker B:So take care and I will see you all soon.
Speaker A:What's really interesting, if you take the words belief and you take the words trust, we can't trust ourselves based on beliefs that we don't, that don't work for us anymore, that we're not feel aligned with.
Speaker A:So we have to start with our beliefs first and start recognizing what are those beliefs and start breaking them down, rewiring them, changing them, creating new ones, letting go of old ones so we can lean into more self trust.
Speaker A:So if you think about it, the beliefs are the foundations and the trust is the cement and the bricks and how we build it.
Speaker A:And that can look very different to everybody.
Speaker A:But we can't build any of that without these strong core foundations of really understanding those values, understanding the beliefs that have carried us to this point, good or bad, and where we want to go with them.
Speaker A:So if we, and I'm going to speak very generally here, I guess the crux of it is that we are choosing every single day, we're choosing to look at everything, shining that spotlight where everyone is, shine it, and say, right, what's that?
Speaker A:Is that belief serving me?
Speaker A:Is it not serving me?
Speaker A:Is it helping me?
Speaker A:Is it helping me trust myself?
Speaker A:Is it helping me back myself?
Speaker A:Is it helping me become the person that I want to be?
Speaker A:Is it helping me to drop the mask finally?
Speaker A:Is it helping me lean into this more authentic version of me?
Speaker A:We have to really get this, this torch, this flashlight and hone in.
Speaker A:And it can be actually really uncomfortable.
Speaker A:And it feels very like, like that's a discomfort we might not want to go towards.
Speaker A:And unfortunately, through the discomfort, the kind of the discomfort is where we come through the other side.
Speaker A:And you know, anyone that has gone through any form of healing process, and if you've gone through therapy or anything that involves healing, we have to go through that discomfort, we have to talk about it, we have to process the trauma, we have to acknowledge it, accept it, and we can't do any of that, you know, unless we go through that.
Speaker A:Uncomfortable.
Speaker A:Even if you have had really uncomfortable conversations with people, if you think about, you know, with partners, friends, colleagues, anything, and that involves uncomfortable conversation, there's always an outcome.
Speaker A:The outcome is either, oh, you've connected, things have gone better, it's gone beyond your, your expectations, or there's been a realization that you've come to the end of a journey, you've come to the end of that relationship, and that is going through that uncomfortable process.
Speaker A:And so recognizing the beliefs that we're holding and recognizing beliefs that perhaps have been restricting us, constricting us, suppressing us, holding us back.
Speaker A:Maybe have been leading to a lack of self trust.
Speaker A:Now, anyone that hasn't done any type of sort of understanding about their beliefs, but I.
Speaker A:What I would say to you as you're struggling to understand what are those beliefs, think about things that maybe that have just been ingrained in you from childhood.
Speaker A:Beliefs about money, beliefs about friendship, about relationships, about work, about who we're here, what we're meant to be doing in life.
Speaker A:Some people have a belief that life is meant to be hard, that we're meant to graft.
Speaker A:And if we're not in pain and we're not grafting and it's not hard work, then we, we're not worthy, we're not deserving.
Speaker A:Some people have a belief that money just doesn't, doesn't happen to us.
Speaker A:And from that we have a different reality.
Speaker A:You know, on the flip side, people, you know, if you talk about, see people who really into manifestation and really aligning and visualizing and all of that, their belief is their reality.
Speaker A:They believe so deeply in who they've been put here to be, what they're here to offer, what, who they want to become, that nothing takes them off that, that road.
Speaker A:So it just shows you that it very often mirrors our reality.
Speaker A:So our beliefs hold so much truth in inverted commas.
Speaker A:It's how we perceive the world and it's through the lens we see the world as well.
Speaker A:So you might know people or you may yourself be that person that has a negative look on the world that everything is terrible, glass half empty.
Speaker A:And you know, we, we just see the negativity in the world.
Speaker A:And then you might know somebody who might be that person who is always glass, glass half full.
Speaker A:No matter what happens to them, they aren't thrown, they're not destabilized.
Speaker A:They just keep going.
Speaker A:So if you can imagine the words and the criticism and the negativity and all the things that bring us down is going on in our heads, think what that does to us every single day.
Speaker A:And that is the beliefs that we hold, the internal dialogue, the thing that is navigating is every single day with our choices and our decisions and how we want to show up in the world.
Speaker A:And we can't control the stresses and all the things that.
Speaker A:That are going to be thrown at us in life.
Speaker A:Like we just can't control that.
Speaker A:We know that is, that is life.
Speaker A:But if we have this aligned navigation system, this internal navigation system, we where we're operating from inside.
Speaker A:That inside feeling of I'm going to trust.
Speaker A:I'm going to trust that the decision I make is going to be the right one.
Speaker A:I'm going to start trusting my voice.
Speaker A:I'm going to start trusting that I do know better.
Speaker A:That after all these years of listening to other people.
Speaker A:So this is almost like me trying to say to you this, this call to action of.
Speaker A:Start stepping into that voice that perhaps you've been ignoring, that you've been pushing away, that you've not been trusting.
Speaker A:Start choosing the way you want to speak to yourself.
Speaker A:Start bringing in Affirmations, mantras.
Speaker A:Your words hold such strength.
Speaker A:They hold such, such strength.
Speaker A:It's this, this gift of the words that come out are like spells.
Speaker A:And when we speak, not only can we hear it, other people can hear it, but our body hears it.
Speaker A:So if you've ever done, you know, visualizations or meditations and you're using positive affirmations, positive wording, or you're using sort of I am statements, I am worthy, I am abundant, I honor myself, I offer myself, I send myself love.
Speaker A:All these different words and then you think about how that lands in your body.
Speaker A:Compare it to words such as, I'm so stupid, why can't I do that?
Speaker A:I'm not enough.
Speaker A:Why would anyone pick me?
Speaker A:Why do I always do this?
Speaker A:Think about how they land in your body, how different it is, how different it feels.
Speaker A:And you can come from a place where there's acceptance, there's self compassion, there's self recognition, there's self kindness.
Speaker A:So if you've ever been in a situation where there's panic and your cortisol and your adrenaline is sky high, to make a decision from a place like of this place is really, really hard.
Speaker A:Unless you are one of those people that works in, you know, emergency services.
Speaker A:You're an A and E doctor, you're really used to working in these kind of like high adrenaline environments.
Speaker A:And actually you notice that your best decision making skills is like this.
Speaker A:There's not many of us like that, but we often find that we come to better places of clarity and decision making and openness when we are able to come back to ourselves and have this place of sort of calm and equilibrium.
Speaker A:And that's when we can start recognizing, okay, well, what, what am I worthy of?
Speaker A:What are my desires?
Speaker A:How would I like to move through the world and my life now that I have this understanding of who I am.
Speaker A:How my brain works.
Speaker A:How I can regulate myself better.
Speaker A:How I want to show up, what works for me.
Speaker A:When we come from this place, can you feel?
Speaker A:I can feel it in my body now.
Speaker A:It feels like calm.
Speaker A:And I can make decisions with more clarity.
Speaker A:And we know.
Speaker A:That this is coming from a place like our deep knowing because we can trust it.
Speaker A:But if you come from a place of frenzy, we come from a place of lack.
Speaker A:We come from a place of scrabbling around, well, let's just try this.
Speaker A:And that didn't work.
Speaker A:So I'm going to try that.
Speaker A:And that so, and so is doing it like that.
Speaker A:So you know, if it's working for them, I'M going to do it like that from comparison.
Speaker A:From lack of self belief, like not believing in ourselves.
Speaker A:So we just kind of think, right, let's just do something else.
Speaker A:From an imposter syndrome.
Speaker A:Can you feel the difference when we start leaning into actually changing the beliefs of, well, I am worthy of a good life and what if I did choose to feel more authentic or to show it more authentically?
Speaker A:How would it feel if I dropped the mask and the pretense and spoke more truthfully and honestly?
Speaker A:Those little decisions start building new foundations now.
Speaker A:I now feel like I'm speaking quite sort of quite lofty way, you know, in a way that feels quite esoterical.
Speaker A:And I'm not giving kind of practical examples.
Speaker A:But I wanted to start with this place here because I feel that our self trust can show up in so many different ways.
Speaker A:It can show up in.
Speaker A:Who we want to hire a partner, a friendship that feels a bit off.
Speaker A:It can show up in a career direction, in a holiday choice, in a house move, in something to do with our children.
Speaker A:And when we have historically not trusted ourselves.
Speaker A:Which I have a feeling quite a few of us have haven't.
Speaker A:It can feel really scary to then lean into self trust.
Speaker A:It can feel like, well, that didn't work out last time.
Speaker A:Or I've got lots of evidence to show that when I did, when I thought I was trusting myself, it didn't work out.
Speaker A:So how am I meant to.
Speaker A:How am I meant to know now?
Speaker A:But we're coming from a different place now.
Speaker A:We're coming from a place of deeper understanding and deeper alignment.
Speaker A:If this episode has been helpful for.
Speaker B:You and you're looking for more tools.
Speaker A:And more guidance, my brand new book.
Speaker B:The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.
Speaker B:You can find it wherever you buy your books from.
Speaker B:You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.
Speaker B:I have narrated it all myself.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker B:And I will see you for the next episode.
