Foreign welcome back to another More Yourself episode here on the ADHD Women's well Being podcast.

And I'm really enjoying recording these sessions, these episodes for you because I have so much, I guess, extra things I want to say that I don't get to say on the Thursday episodes.

And a lot of it is some of the coaching guidance or the stuff that goes on within the More Yourself community, which is my new membership space for newly diagnosed or newly aware ADHD women.

And I have wanted to bring these episodes for quite a long time.

And I think I've said in previous episodes the whole point of them is for us to have a place where we can speak authentically, that we're able to talk with truth and vulnerability and in a way discover those parts of us and reflect and give perspective in different areas of our life which perhaps we've struggled with or we've suppressed or we've not wanted to acknowledge or recognize we've not had validated from other people as well.

Now I'm gaining inspiration from so many different places and I'm going to my bookshelf and also different podcasts that I listen to.

I'm a huge podcast fan.

I listen to podcasts quite a lot.

And of course I've written my book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, which has been out now for a few months.

And I have decided today's episode I'm going to use the chapter called Build a Life that Works for you.

It's chapter seven for a bit of inspiration because it is part of the book where we start delving more into building this life, building a way of living that we have this acknowledgment.

Okay, now I understand what's going on with how my neurobiological makeup is that ADHD has been part of me.

It's been there all my life in different capacities.

I've not quite understood it or had it acknowledged or recognized or validated or supported.

But now I'm beginning to understand how it's shown up in different ways, good and bad.

And I want to be able to drop that shame and drop that guilt and the embarrassment or the, I guess maybe the blame, either on myself or on the people, and start harnessing our adhd.

Because that is what I'm here for.

I'm here to be able to hopefully give you a space to reflect and to strip back and simplify how you want to live your life now that you have this awareness.

Essentially, that is what we're doing here in More Yourself.

You Know whether it's the podcast, whether it's in our community, whether it's my coaching, my one to one coaching, that I really genuinely just want to offer a non judgmental, compassionate, curious space to allow everyone to be able to process who they are and what they want out of life.

We only get this one opportunity to live our lives and do things authentically, do things that bring us joy and give us the energy and the breath for us to keep going and no longer feel restricted or doing things for other people or according to other people's expectations.

And how we can start very, very slowly and gently start stepping into who we want to show up as.

And that is in lots of different capacities.

Now, you may have spent years masking your ADHD and living in a way that feels authentic may have probably felt beyond your reach.

Like masking may have just been so part of your identity that maybe living in a way that feels quite truthful and open and on honest has never felt safe.

And that's okay.

You know, many of us have not even been able to understand this or articulate it.

So to even say these words out loud can just feel expansive and they can maybe feel quite emotional as well.

So in the book, in this chapter we explore how we can leave these days behind us and get curious about curating a life that finally works for you, where your ADHD can become a strength rather than a mystery force that has been holding you back perhaps your whole life life.

Now, I've said in the book here that we've never been able to harness our ADHD because we don't.

We didn't know that it was adhd and it's really hard to know what to do with the problem or an issue or a challenge if we don't know what it is.

It's like fumbling around in the dark, which many of us have.

So what I've written here is that if you've been living with your adhd, especially if it's gone undiagnosed, you'll likely be in basic survival mode.

And that's why I do a lot of work with our nervous system.

Because living in survival mode is living in a constant sort of fight or flight, hyper vigilant state in our nervous system and you may be doing what you need to do to get by and you may have done this all your life and questioning and this self doubt and this worry and this am I doing things right?

Has been part of your default system.

So in the book, I say in this chapter that it's time to begin this new chapter by creating a compassionate and ADHD informed blueprint for a new version of yourself.

One that embraces your integral values, deep desires and conscious choices.

So I say to you, questions to ask yourself as we begin this new chapter are in the different areas of your life, such as friendships, career and energy.

What are you not willing to accept anymore?

What boundaries are you ready to unapologetically put in place?

And what are you ready to let go of that has blocked you from feeling energized, grounded, centered or balanced?

And together, we're going to embrace this shedding process to help you become the most truthful version of who you are and live a life that may be imperfect, but one that feels far more authentic.

This is not about perfection.

This is not about doing things or wrong.

This is just making those gentle, conscious choices to reconsider how you live.

I go on to say that many of us have been conditioned to think that there's a right or a wrong way to live or this linear path that we must follow.

And for those of us who are neurodivergent in this neurotypical world that we have been brought up in, and all the conditioning and the way the academic system is, and how we've been taught to work, to live, to parent, to have relationships, to speak to ourselves, and these expectations are no longer fitting with us now that we have this awareness.

And I want to be able to say to you that when we create and curate the right conditions, we begin to thrive.

But we have to have this awareness to create these right conditions.

And I use this analogy that when we buy a house, plant, there's always these instructions of where to position it and how much water and whether it needs food or whether it's better with more or less water in a big container, a small container, all of this.

And it's, it's a plant and of course it's a living object and it's a living species.

But why do we not give ourselves that same level of care?

If you are into plants, and many people say, oh, I kill houseplants, so maybe this analogy might not work for you, but think about it in lots of different ways.

You know, whether it's our car, you know, with the constant oiling or mot or taxing, but ourselves, we have to take notice and we have to afford ourselves this same treatment.

And why are we all expected to thrive in the same conditions, situations, and when we don't know what this is, we blame ourselves.

But we can change the story.

No one tells us this, but we can.

We get to look at these areas of our lives that are no longer working or perhaps never worked, and find more soul assigned or soul aligned techniques.

I write soul aligned, but maybe soul assigned as well.

That means that going back to our truth, our purpose, you know, and we have to create some space and quiet and strip back.

And this could mean a diverse work environment, something different, something new, new friendships, new hobbies, an interesting holiday, you know, going somewhere completely different, seeing different sites, filling ourselves that we're genuinely interested in and not things that we think, you know, other people expect of us or what we should be doing.

And this is our time to position ourselves wherever feels good throughout these seasons.

Now, I want to say this as we close this episode, that this is not a whole big new assignment that you have to do.

This is about leaning into simplification and stripping back and whether that looks like decluttering your house, your office, your bedroom, your bedside drawer, your bathroom drawer, whether that is clearing out your emails, it's all energetic.

And you're telling the energetic space, whatever you want to call it, God, the universe, yourself, your internal wisdom, that you are ready to process things differently, that you are ready to make space, to listen within more.

And we've never been in a noisier world with more external things coming at us and more need for external validation.

So it feels very much like this external world.

We're having to pacify and validate and bring kind of this version of ourselves that will look good for the external world.

But we are giving very, very little time to nurture the intern world.

And we can only do that by quietening everything down.

And that's very difficult for an ADHD brain.

And sometimes the chaos and the noise and all the distractions and everything is a way that we quiet our brain.

And I genuinely think that we have to almost push through this difficulty, this discomfort that kind of feels like our norm but doesn't soothe and calm our nervous system.

And again, so much of this is blended into the book.

You know, I've got chapters on the nervous system, on lessening our anxiety, on simplifying life, you know, building a life that works for us, tuning more into joy and creativity, because it's all so interrelated that we have lived a life perhaps that has been chaotic, noisy, maybe dysfunctional in many different ways, that we've been seeking productivity, seeking busyness, seeking more because we've not felt enough, where this is about gently allowing ourselves just to be and make space and to try and listen within with all the discomfort and to tune in to your needs.

And I say in the book, it's time to look forward and consider how you can start really listening to your needs and begin advocating for yourself, creating better awareness of what helps you thrive and live your life more authentically.

And when we can accept who we are and let go of all the expectations, we can start tuning into what we really need.

And this could mean perhaps changing your work environment, working outside or in nature, or using your hands more, or maybe choosing to work from home, or reconsidering how you exercise or move or you see your friends.

It's really, really a powerful exercise to maybe just sit down for a few minutes, 10 minutes, create a really lovely environment, whether you want to light a candle, like, be really intentional, put some headphones in, put some nice music on, you know, essential oils, whatever really helps.

You sit outside by a tree or on a bench in nature and ask yourself, what is it that I need?

What can help me right now?

What is it that my internal wisdom is crying out for?

What is it that my soul's crying out for?

What is feeling more and more authentic to me now that I have more awareness of what perhaps stresses me out, makes me, makes me more anxious, makes me more hyper vigilant, frazzled version of our nervous system.

What doesn't feel safe for me anymore and what does reconnect me back to myself again.

And we can do this again using our bodies.

Somatic work is very, very helpful breath work, I would 100% say.

I've got lots of good techniques in the book as well.

Just a few short but deep long inhales and exhales can make a really big difference, as can a walk with no technology.

You know, detaching from all that noise that was sort of the input, and start listening to that output from ourselves, that internal output, and connect with our bodies to tune back into ourselves and that wisdom and what we need to be listening out for.

Because our wisdom, perhaps it feels hard, weird, uncomfortable.

It may not feel like you even know what it sounds like, you've been so disconnected from it.

But we need to go back into our bodies somatically.

And I'm going to talk about this in the next episode, about using our bodies to tune back into our inner voice, our inner wisdom and that authentic voice or the, the words or the internal dialogue that perhaps has been really detrimental and critical and not so compassionate, and how we can start listening out for what it is that we do need to hear.

So I'm so glad that you have Been here for another More Yourself episode.

Thank you so much for giving yourself this time, this space.

And if these episodes really resonate with you and they relate with you and you feel like you'd kind of like to step a little bit further into this and into this sort of gentle curiosity of how you want to show up now that you have more understanding about your neurodivergence, check out More Yourself.

This is a very compassionate, gentle, easy space where I'm going to be showing up for a Q and A or a live or a workshop once a month.

There's going to be flexibility, fluidity.

We're going to have some guest workshops.

There's going to be On Demand workshops that I have previously hosted that you can access.

I've mentioned in the other episodes that we're going to have an opportunity for the community to interact with each other as well.

You're going to be able to speak and ask questions and we're going to be able to have this mentorship which I hope will be up and running by the time you hear this, where if you want to tap into the wisdom of other women, which I know women have got such powerful wisdom, these female circles that used to be part of our history, our ancestors, it used to be part of our society, this matriarchal support that has been sort of been ground out by patriarchal systems of not listening to this deep feminine wisdom.

And I know that so within us, I see this in our friendships, in our communities, that women naturally want to build each other up.

Up.

But perhaps society has told us that we must compare or we must compete or we must tear each other down to make ourselves feel good.

And I want to build a community where we build each other up, we support each other.

There's friendship, there's mentorship, there's fun, there's laughter, there's inspiration.

It's all there.

So I am building this as we speak.

All the details are on my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk head there, search for More yourself.

And it should also be in the show notes as well.

And.

And don't forget the book, which I've just been quoting.

The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.

It's available, Kindle audiobook and in print.

I use it all the time just to go back to remind myself what I've written as well, because it kind of feels like it came from a bit of a download, if I'm honest.

So I go back to just check in and remember what I have said and hopefully used as guidance for you guys as well.

So take care and I will see you for the next episode.