Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

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.

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.

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.

Here's today's episode.

Today I have a fascinating guest.

I'm so excited to bring Dr. Judith Mooring here into the podcast or onto the podcast.

And Dr. Judith Mooring is an award winning and respected consultant, psychiatrist, coach, therapist and trainer and she is also the owner or and CEO of the education service ADHD Ed which is about group based psycho education for clinicians, therapists, coaches, educators and anyone really wanting to understand their ADHD better.

So I'm absolutely delighted to have you here, Judith.

We're going to have a lot of interesting, I hope, conversations, conversations because I want to touch on things like emotional overwhelm and regulation and how we can help ourselves.

Especially if someone's listening right now and maybe they don't have that diagnosis or they don't have that support yet, but are just desperate for day to day ways of, of managing their, their emotional reactivity and regulation, especially when hormones are so interplayed with, with women with adhd.

So first of all, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

It's really, really kind of you to have me here.

So thanks very much Kate for inviting me on.

Well, I'm delighted to have you here because your expertise is vital.

I know that you are, you know, you're focusing everything now on psycho education, which is so important.

It's so empowering for people to have those tools because no one's been taught any of this.

We didn't have the language.

So perhaps you can tell me a little bit about what got you into this because I know that there's been incarnations throughout your career.

Really essentially I was working as a general adult psychiatrist about five, six years ago.

I realized there was a real call for high quality mental health education.

I was also working as a trainer for the UK Adult ADHD Network, so really kind of embedded in the science of adhd and I'd been working with adults with ADHD in a clinical way and then it became apparent that actually we needed a way of talking about ADHD that people could remember and hang on to and explaining it, because ADHD is really complicated.

The more you dig into it, the more, the more complicated it becomes.

And the brain is more complex than space, basically.

It's hugely complicated.

And so much education, so much information is like very sort of snappy, sound bitey, black and white.

But that's not the experience of ADHD is, and it's not the reality.

It's actually much more like a sort of complex, balanced ecosystem that we have to work with.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.

I always say this is a condition that is like no other because it spans across so many areas of our life.

It's like a Venn diagram that just keeps on creating more Venn diagrams because of the layers of the complexities of how it can show up and how it shows differently for everybody and to understand all the different impacts, you know, in our life.

And maybe we can touch on regulation, emotional regulation and I guess our emotional well being to live alongside a condition that perhaps many of us didn't know about until our, you know, 40s and 50s, and especially when maybe you're the first person in your family to be diagnosed as well, and maybe your ADHD looks different to your parents because they would have definitely been undiagnosed.

If we're talking about, you know, a lot of the listeners and my audience who are sort of midlife, they are going to be the first people maybe alongside their children.

And so it is, it's like this new lens, this new perspective of how they looked at their childhood, how they look at themselves, their children.

And it's, it's, that's why I'm so passionate about psychoeducation, because, you know, once we have the facts, then we can understand it, then we can say, right, what can I do with this and that?

You know, there's always ways and we don't have to be diagnosed, we don't have to have that kind of official diagnosis to start this journey of helping ourselves, would you say?

I mean, we talk about hormones all the time on the, on this podcast and we understand now the impact of our hormones and how that shows that throughout the different chapters of our life, you know, from puberty onwards.

But for a lot of women, ADHD or not, perimenopause seems to be that catalyst to very difficult moments in our life, overwhelming moments, difficulty coping.

Can you speak a little bit about how women who are starting to realize where their anxiety is coming from or Maybe this feeling of just general overwhelm or just feeling disconnected from family members and giving themselves a little bit of self compassion and self acceptance for where they are and maybe some self kindness or regulatory tools to help them if they haven't got any support.

Right now.

I'm really glad you mentioned psychoeducation because I think that's really important.

Education is key and we know psycheducation works.

And one of the first things in terms of self regulation and self care is to know you're not making it up.

So if you're in perimenopause and it's difficult, you're not making it up.

We know it's difficult.

We know one in six women gets depressed.

And if you also have ADHD traits, those can be tipped right into a sort of full ADHD diagnosis and perimenopause.

Because estrogen levels vary in perimenopause and then drop around menopause and after menopause.

And estrogen has a direct impact on the availability of dopamine in the brain and dopamine is implicated in the neurobiology of adhd.

So I think it's really important not to gaslight yourself, but if you're feeling terrible in perimenopause, there's probably a reason for it and to really be compassionate and come to yourself and go, oh, we know this is something that happens and to begin to connect to other people with experience so that you can advocate for yourself because that's so important.

It's so difficult being disbelieved.

And the first thing is you have to believe yourself that this is a real issue and a real brain based difference.

Real brain based problem.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been speaking to a lot of hormonal experts recently and there's evidence to say that it's the progesterone that starts to drop earlier on in perimenopause and that progesterone is the reason why we can feel that kind of rise in anxiety.

Sleep starts to get impacted.

We used to think that estrogen was just sort of the main hormone that was kind of impacting our adhd.

But from a lot of learning that I've done recently, I'm starting to think or believe that it's actually the drop in progesterone that starts the kickstart of the ADHD symptoms coming to the forefront.

Because it's always the same that I keep hearing.

It's I'm struggling to sleep properly.

The sleep obviously impacts the coping or the feeling more overwhelmed, the anxiety the feeling, sort of restlessness, our nervous system.

I mean, I'm not a scientist like you, but I, I'm starting to connect a lot of dots with, with being able to understand that.

I wonder if progesterone, which I know impacts adrenaline, if that could be a part of this ADHD makeup in women that we're seeing.

So you're absolutely right to outline the fact that there's complex interplay all the time with different hormones and also neurotransmitters.

And the really scary thing is that until even a few years ago, nobody was talking about this.

And also there's a real lack of research so I present on hormones in adhd and there is a real lack of good research on this.

And we know that progesterone also has different impacts for different women.

So for some women, progesterone can be calming, for other women, it can be depressing.

It has different impacts for different women.

So we also know, as you say, progesterone is metabolized to allopregnanolone and that's the GABA receptors.

And when progesterone is withdrawn for many women, there's an increase in anxiety.

So there's no one simple single answer.

And this is what makes it tricky for women, because I say, particularly for women because of the hormonal variability, because ADHD is diverse and our response to our hormones is diverse.

So there's no single response of, you know, every woman will respond in this way.

People worry a lot.

But what we do know is that perimenopause is a very difficult time.

And also we also know that women with ADHD are more at risk of postnatal depression, pmdd, perimenopausal depression.

So it's, it's being able to have those kind of nuanced conversations and developing a sort of tailor made, bespoke care plan for you in consultation with whoever's prescribing for you, which can be really difficult.

Yeah, really difficult.

Unfortunately, I think what, what's, what seems to happen with women and thankfully that education is growing, the awareness is growing, you know, even just in the perimenopause area of women be able to understand those nuanced symptoms on traits of early perimenopause.

But a lot of women, what happens is it kind of coincides with challenges in life.

People have been married for a while and life gets harder through marriage and relationships.

Our parents getting older, we're having got teenage kids, careers, financial issues.

It's sort of this perfect storm of just life being More challenging.

Then we've got hormones kicking in.

And then, because if you're neurodivergent, the hormones are then stripping back the coping, Coping mechanisms of maybe how we dealt with adhd just about, you know, I always say it's like white knuckling, and we just about get through it.

And that is when I have women messaging me and, no, I'm desperate.

My doctor won't listen to me.

I'm on a waiting list.

My marriage is about to crumble.

My children are suffering with anxiety.

I don't know where to go.

I don't know what to do.

And, you know, obviously I want to help people, but I'm also like, I can't help everybody.

And that's why a big part of my mission and what I bring people like yourself in is, right, how can we empower more women to feel more educated, more, you know, understand this and also ask for the help.

Ask, you know, advocate for themselves, because I'm sure you're getting the same.

So this is why I want to say right today, I wonder how, if you can explain a little bit about DBT and explain what it is.

We've spoken a little bit about, about it on the podcast, but I actually think it's such a.

A practical, beneficial modality for everyone to have some sort of tools in their.

In their box of.

To pull this out when life is just feeling very hard.

So DBT is dialectical behavior therapy.

So maybe you can just explain a little bit about dbt.

So DBT wasn't designed for adhd.

It was designed for Borderline Personality Disorder.

Okay.

So it was designed a long time ago by a therapist called Marsha Linehan.

And the reason it's been used with ADHD is because there isn't a single therapeutic program for ADHD at the moment.

I'm looking into the research to see what would be best, because there's lots of things that we know can help.

So I'm drafting a program at the moment that involves some DBT skills for adhd.

But DBT is useful for ADHD because it integrates some really practical tools, one of which is emotion regulation and the other of which is mindfulness.

So DBT has four components.

Emotion regulation, mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance.

The emotion regulation piece and the mindfulness piece are particularly beneficial for ADHD because emotion regulation is an executive function.

So executive function is how the brain organizes itself.

Executive function is often impacted in adhd.

So emotion regulation is an issue.

And mindfulness works in ADHD because it encourages us or it allows us to practice focusing our attention.

And because attention is the dysregulated in adhd, if you practice focusing your attention, that really does help.

Most people with ADHD find mindfulness unbearable.

So I'm totally up for that discussion.

Most people with ADHD want to punch me in the face when I say mindfulness.

So we talk about Tai Chi, moving, mindfulness yoga.

Do it your way.

It's your way.

Do it your way.

Go for a walk, but do it your way because movement works and focusing your attention works.

Yeah.

So the dialectical.

Just explain that a little bit.

You tell me what dialectical means.

The dialectical is more like it is possible to hold two positions at the same time.

It is both and it's dialectical.

So it is possible to be both despairing and also hold hope.

Those things are possible.

That's dialectical.

It's called, you know, foot in the door, door in the face.

This idea that things can be both terrible and also it's possible to move forward.

DBT was designed for people who have severe problems with self harm and are highly at risk of suicide.

So we're not talking about that with adhd.

We're talking about what do we bring in that is, that is more of the mindfulness and the emotion regulation.

But emotion regulation is quite a complex thing to teach because you have to encourage people rather than to push emotions away, to acknowledge them, recognize them, bring them in and regulate them.

And that's not an overnight skill.

That's a recurrent practice with support.

But it does work.

It does work.

And it's, it's a good skill set.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess that that both and is to kind of contradict the, the black and white thinking that many of us have.

Yeah.

Where it's just sort of one extreme to the other.

And it can't be, you know, there can't be both, like you say.

And that helps us recognize a bit of perspective, especially when our emotional reactivity is sky high.

Yes.

And the thing with emotional reactivity coming back to sort of executive function and prefrontal cortex is we know that we are better emotionally regulated when we've had all the things that we need, like we've slept well, we've done some exercise, we're not ridiculously stressed.

But for a woman in perimenopause who's maybe managing work, kids, elderly, parents, insomnia, you're not going to slept well, you won't have time to exercise, you're already annoyed.

And then, you know, your executive function is Impaired.

So there's all these different things that are undermining.

It seems really belittling to say to people, self care is important, but self care is really important.

And actually one of the first things is advocating for yourself and saying, I, I am no good to any of you if I'm in this state.

So I have to put myself first, which is really difficult, I think, for a lot of women in midlife to say, no, I need to be looked after as well.

In fact, possibly first, because I can't do all of this stuff unless I'm being 100%.

I mean, I've written a book recently and it's basically a book on all of this.

I mean, I talk about DBT practices, but it's.

Everything is about creating an awareness and understanding what's been going on, painting that picture, nature of our nervous system, dysregulation, why we're feeling overwhelmed, all the different things.

So once we've got that awareness, we can pause, we can breathe, and then we can choose with regulation how to respond.

It's interesting you say awareness because the, the way I've been designing the coaching is awareness and regulation coaching, which is actually we can't do anything until we know what's going on.

And that requires us to pause.

You've got to learn to pause, even for a minute.

And when you pause, because the brain processes sensory information much, much faster than it processes thought, most of the time our brain is actually catching up.

The thoughts are catching up with all the sensory input.

And because we know that ADHD have more sensory sensitivities than others, very often there's a vast amount of sensory information coming in and the prefrontal cortex and thoughts are overwhelmed.

So we have this slower.

And it's only recently been discovered, it was last year, some scientists interested in AI discovered this, that the thought is much, much slower than sensory because the brain is fundamentally a giant sensory organ and emotions are a sense, are a sensation, maybe a sixth sense.

They're called feelings because we feel them.

They are a sensory thing.

So many of us are more, both more sensitive to other sensations, but also to emotion.

We're very, very tuned in, which can be a strength or a strain.

Yeah, that makes so much sense because we're so easily overstimulated.

And like you say, we might not have actually, actually realized when we're in a busy classroom or a meeting and there's lights and there's noises and music and smells and all of that, and we're sort of not even registering, but our Body is registering everything.

And then we wonder why we get through the door and all.

And that's when we break.

That's when we snap.

And we can't.

Can't handle it, or why there's these cycles of burnout when we're not acknowledging.

What is it that's tipping us, all these little tiny things, because we are such sensitive beings and there's so much shame in the community.

It's like.

Well, other people can cope with that.

You know, other people go to work every day, other people, parents and do all these things, but they're not having meltdowns or they're not.

They're not burning out or crashing.

Why is it always me?

And then it goes.

It's this internalized shame, which is why here all the time.

Because they've never understood any of this.

And it's finding a way to create a new.

A new existence.

Not kind of like closing and shutting everything down and removing yourself, but finding different ways with compassion to create, I guess, an existence or an environment that doesn't impact us so negatively.

I wish there was a perfect way.

There isn't a perfect way.

Actually.

This.

I spoke in.

In a festival.

It's a.

It was called the Mind, Body and Spirit Festival in Birmingham.

It's in the nec.

I don't know if you've ever been to the nec, but my God, it's like.

It's just overstimulating in itself.

It's a big, huge conference.

In the room itself, there must have been about four different talks all go happening.

And there was no closed space.

So there was microphones, there was music, there was yoga.

And I had one area with a microphone, but on either sides of me, there was drumming on one side or something, and then a talk with whooping on the other side.

And I was trying to get into my headspace and deliver the talk.

And I was, like, quite confident with the talk and it was a lovely audience and everyone was engaged.

But afterwards I got in my car and I could feel like how depleted I was because that took every essence.

I got through it.

And that's.

That is the.

The thing, isn't it?

So many of us get through it and we.

We do the thing on the exterior, everything looks okay, but, oh, my God, did I have to, like, recharge afterwards?

I mean, that was.

That was a lot.

So it is.

I think that's what women struggle with, especially, is that we externally get through it, but internally everything's sort of crashing and breaking down and it's being able to Find a way to decompress and recharge and recalibrate our systems.

That doesn't feel like we've got all these extremes all the time and not.

Even asking for permission, but being given permission to say this is too much.

I can't do this.

Which is something that I think is quite new for people to research.

I can't do that thing in that way.

And I think also the overlap as well, hearing what you're saying about sensory sensitivity, overwhelm, masking, meltdowns that link also to.

We see features of autism in lots of women with adhd and I think previously the ADHD phenotype and the autism.

So the phenotype, so the way they've been described is very much kind of male pattern ADHD and autism.

But when we see women with adhd, we very often see feature, very often see features of autism as well.

The two things co occurring.

And it's a different kind of presentation because there may be less obvious social difficulties, less obvious verbal difficulties.

They may or may not because it's diverse, but it is, I think, I hope that science is evolving and waking up to this and seeing that this is evolving and emerging because I think women's experiences of neurodiversity are different in many ways.

I'm interested to hear a little bit about your clinical experience with this because I believe that it's kind of just flows and into, you know, and I was just diagnosed with adhd and that was five years ago.

And I'm sure now I think I'd probably have a diagnosis of dyslexia, but I know there's autistic traits there, but I do think the ADHD is more prominent.

Do you think that for women, and I wonder if cyclically and hormonally, could we flow in between, depending on what's going on in our life, with different traits showing up?

Totally.

So neurodiversity is diverse.

And so in a way, I think we may probably move beyond categorical explanations of neurodiversity at some point soon.

And go, neurodiversity is diverse.

Shall we actually look at what's causing you difficulty?

What's a strength, what's a strain and how does that change across the lifespan?

Because it changes across the lifespan for lots of reasons anyway.

Not least because the brain changes and develops, particularly in adolescence.

And also when we become mothers, there's that matrescence piece where you become a mother.

If you become a mother, your brain changes.

If you become a father.

Also when we become parents, the brain Changes.

When we go through menopause, the brain changes.

So you've got brain changes all the time.

As we grow and develop, there's neuroplasticity.

When we go through stress, there's neuroplasticity.

Things change.

Actually, one of the big things for me in the last five years is Covid was a massive, massive stress.

Stress is bad for the prefrontal cortex.

It's bad for executive function.

None of us functions well under stress.

So you put everybody through this big period of stress.

And then.

And now we're sort of looking at neurodiversity.

And many, many more people are aware of their neurodiversity.

Now.

They were perhaps always neurodivergent, but the stress of COVID really sort of.

And then the stress of returning to the workplace, people are becoming more aware.

Actually, that was manageable.

Perhaps now it's not because my executive function so derailed, so it flows, it changes.

It's not static.

The brain is not static.

The brain.

I talk about ADHD being tidal, this kind of tidal neurotransmitter in, tidal neurotransmitter out.

And when the tide is low and there are lower tonic levels of dopamine or adrenaline, it's harder to get motivated.

When the tide is high and there's higher clonic levels of dopamine and noradrenaline, then we can get into hyper focus or hyperactivity or real kind of, you know, these energetic periods.

And I think the brain is very, essentially is very tidal.

And we know the brain seeks balance all the time.

It's looking to balance.

And so there's a sort of yin and yang thing going on.

You can't have everything going on all at once.

So the brain's adapting, changing all the time.

And I think we have to move beyond kind of static categories to a more holistic understanding of human experience.

I'm interested in what you say about in the balance and this sort of balancing the ecosystem, because I guess balance shows up differently at different times in our life.

And balance in one chapter of our life might feel a bit sort of like choppy waters in another chapter of our life.

And I know this might feel like a bit of a generalized question, but if you could create a way of living or an ecosystem for a neurodivergent person to live in.

And again, you know, seeking that, the balance just in that.

How do you think that would look, you know, if we didn't live in a neurotypical world and we almost had neurodiversity as the leading way of living.

What do you think that could look like?

So people can almost curate a little way of living in their own tiny little ecosystem of their world.

Well, neurodiversity is diverse, so each of those ecosystems would be different and each person would have tailored something that was sort of more suited to them.

But there would be a balance of how much social connection people do or don't want.

Some people thrive with a lot of social connection, other people with less.

We all need some social connection.

But there'd be balance around social connection.

There'd be a balance around learning.

Learning is an all round good thing.

So we need to be learning and learning.

Lifelong learning is associated with well being.

So that learning development, neuroplasticity piece, there would be movement, there'd be sleep, there'd be nutritious food, there wouldn't be alcohol, limited alcohol, there wouldn't be drugs, there'd be nature connection, major nature connection.

There would be compassion in giving to others because we know that that is an all round good.

There'd be enough money that you could survive, but not so much that you were always seeking money because money as an end in itself is not a good goal.

And there would be work, but the work would be in balance with everything else.

And the reason that's come out as quite a distinct prescription is that I was for a while what I call the natural psychiatrist.

And I wrote a program called 12 Steps to Wellbeing.

And those are the evidence based steps for well being, all of those things to get together.

And oh, and the other thing is there'd be mindfulness, there'd be presence.

And for me, one of the key things as a neurodivergent person is to be moving, to be mindful and to be in nature.

Those things really come every time I'm struggling.

If I am able to go for a walk, pause, be mindful and present with myself, it really regulates.

And so that for me is a key, a key regulation tip.

And it's free.

The outdoors is always there.

Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent.

I mean what's so interesting is that you obviously scientists, you work in research, you're a psychiatrist, you've been trained to medicate with pharmaceuticals.

But actually what you're telling me here and what you know is showing so many of us, we may have internalized this, but kind of thought, oh well, you know, maybe I do need medication.

All of this is based on, on sort of like a holistic way of living, well being, spirituality, leaning into a deeper meaning and everything is about tapping into our, I guess our authentic selves that more having a more meaningful life, really understanding what makes us tick and you know, interesting.

Some people may not need sleep as much but really value nature and connection and other people might really want to work in a meaningful career and whether and learn a lot.

You know, there's different fluctuations of how we can bring this into our life.

But what's so interesting, in all the capacities I've worked in this area, I've never spoken to a neuro, neurodivergent person that hasn't agreed with this, but has also struggled with this.

So when this is imbalance, things feel okay.

And with that comes privilege, with that comes money, with that comes support, awareness, education.

But when they don't have this, that is when they are feeling completely dysregulated and overwhelmed.

And that's when life feels very challenging.

Even if they have all of this but say things are going wrong in their marriage or they're feeling disconnected from their career purpose or they are struggling, you know, like I did with insomnia, you know, due to early perimenopause and because I wasn't getting the sleep, everything else was fraying.

So it does come back and that, you know, I wrote that book, my book about ADHD well being because I was just finding that all these things were working for me.

But all I could ever read about was ADHD in the clinical sense.

It was get a diagnosis, try the stimulant meds, they don't work, try them again.

If not, try anti anxiety or antidepressants or you know, blend the medication and all of this.

And for me that was so overwhelming and all I wanted to do was go for a walk in nature.

All I wanted to do was go and breathe in my yoga class and find a way back to inner peace.

And that is what's worked for my adhd.

But I, you know, I also know that a lot of people may need the medication alongside this as well.

And I wonder what you think about the ADHD medication, where we are right now with it and what do we need to improve, to help more people.

That's lovely to hear you say all that because I would respond and agree very broadly.

And I think what I've learned over the years is you can have science and you can have nature.

So all of those 12 steps to wellbeing that I outlined have an evidence base.

So there's research that says these things have an evidence base.

We know they work, they take time, Sometimes we don't have the energy, sometimes we don't feel motivated.

And when people say, what's the quick fix for adhd?

The issue with medication is very often it does work, can work quite quickly for people.

And so you can have science, you can choose the medicines, those may work for you if you can access them and you can have nature.

The two things are not in opposition and the two things work together.

Well, if.

If the medicines work for you, they don't work for everybody, but they can be very effective.

And so where we are at with medication, I would say, is that we don't really have enough specialists in this country who are trained to titrate.

We don't have enough people who understand that ADHD is linked to other mental health, is linked to mental health conditions.

There are plenty of people who have ADHD who don't have a mental health condition, but there are also people who have ADHD where there are other mental health conditions.

And in those situations they might require a different sort of support, they might require additional support.

And we don't have great, what I would call primary care plus psychiatry in the UK, which is common mental health conditions.

ADHD, OCD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, those things, PTSD.

We don't have a great service that sits above GPs.

GPs are trying to manage all that on their own.

Psychiatrists are busy doing psychosis, but there's nothing in the middle and it's a problem.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

And you know, now that you say that, that's exactly what I guess so many people are grappling with because the gps don't know enough and don't have enough time.

And like you say, you know, we don't.

And hence the reason why we've got these crazy wait lists.

And we're also people being taken advantage of because people see the money in this situation as well.

I mean, I'm interested to know what you're doing now because you have launched this education service, adhd.

Ad.

What catapulted you to want to create more psycho education amongst, I guess, your colleagues?

I chose to give up clinical psychiatry a few years ago because I felt a real calling to be, to be honest, to be an educator.

It's like, that's clearly who I should be in the world.

I'm a good teacher, that's who I should be.

And that was really emasculating.

And it felt very disempowering to say, I'm not going to carry on prescribing very much anymore.

I'm going to put that down because we don't value education as a powerful thing.

We have a. Societally, we are, I think, very much in what I would call the pill paradigm, which is if you have a problem, you should take a pill.

And sometimes that's brilliant and sometimes it's not.

And saying to somebody, you can have the pill, but also look at all these other things that you could do that might help.

You can have this medication, but let's think about all the other things as well.

Let's do the two together is a more powerful intervention.

And that's why I'm really passionate about educating clinicians in particular, because ADHD is quite complicated to explain.

And so if you can explain it in a way that lands with people, the ADHD is tidal piece that lands.

People go, oh, I get that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Sometimes the tide's out and I've got no energy and I can't focus.

And sometimes the tide's in and I'm in hyper focus.

Getting loads done makes sense.

And we can talk about the neurobiology and go, okay, you're not gaslighting yourself.

We think this is what's going on.

And there's lots of ways that interacts with stress, et cetera.

So it really was being drawn to, to wanting to share better quality information with clinicians, but also with the public.

Because when we understand what's going on, when we are aware, then we can regulate.

And that's why it's called awareness and regulation coaching.

Because you, you have to slow down, you have to raise your awareness of all these different patterns, develop the ability to observe the inner observer and then go, okay, now I've paused and I've observed.

I have a choice how I respond.

And that's where the potency comes.

When you pause, you observe, then you can choose how you respond.

And sometimes that makes a difference, sometimes it doesn't.

But at least you have a degree of sense of control.

So that's why we're developing this awareness and regulation coaching model is so that people can learn what ADHD is from a scientific perspective and have that sense of confidence, and then they can practice the skills with other adults with ADHD as well.

And we're doing some DBT skills promotion, regulation, and we're looking also at executive function, and we have a mindfulness course that we've already piloted this year.

Brilliant.

So this is for maybe like existing coaches or psychologists.

I mean, you tell me, because people might be listening to this now and be like, this is what I need.

Yeah.

So this we have A client group which is for adults with adhd, and those are small groups of between eight and ten people, adults with ADHD who joined that.

That's six weeks for the psychoeducation, six weeks for the emotion regulation, six weeks executive function.

And then we have a clinician course which has been delivered over six weeks.

But I'm now doing as two full days.

And the first day is all it's about neurotransmitters, looking at the impact of variability in neurotransmitters.

And the second day is networks, looking at the impact of differences in balance between different brain networks and the triple network model.

And it's.

I love it because it's new neuroscience.

I don't have all the answers, far from it.

It's like that thing, the more you know about things, the less you know don't have all the answers.

But I can give you some ideas and I can explain sometimes somebody said to me yesterday, why is it so hard to automate things?

Why do I do everything manually, whereas other people have an automatic gearbox?

It's the cerebellum.

It's to do with differences in the way the cerebellum, the back of the brain, automates things that.

It's more difficult for some of us with ADHD to do that.

So we have to always do it manually.

Always.

Yeah.

It's fascinating stuff.

I really relate to that, actually, because I.

Everything is like, handwritten.

I will handwrite something, I will put it, you know, write myself an email, send myself a text, because I need simple.

I need simple.

You possibly also need physical.

That's the other thing is that the brain embeds physical objects differently from virtual.

So there's a reason why I have a physical dog here as a prop.

I mean, he's a bit hideous, really.

He's a Christmas dog.

But there's a reason I've had Quizzical Pops and there's a reason I say to people at the beginning, of course, is what you'll need first of all, is a pen and a paper, because if your working memory is a bit overwhelmed, you need to externalize and externalize.

Get it out.

And when we externalize with our hand, we're using our cerebellum, so we're using our motor and our motor cortex in order to get things out of our head.

So we are using both the cognitive process and also a motor process, and that makes it easier to learn and remember.

So actually, all this kind of frictionless AI, we need potentially to learn, we need more friction, not less so this is another thing that comes up is that people will say, how can I learn to do this thing?

It's like, well, sometimes if you make it a little bit more difficult, you're more likely to remember.

Weirdly, yeah.

I mean, that's why so many of us are practical learners.

And, you know, we struggle to sit in school and listen to all the theory, but get us out doing a job, being an entrepreneur, actually learning by failing and making mistakes, and then we sort of.

That is why so many of us succeed in that way.

I myself, I literally, I'm like, have you got an example for that?

Anytime I've studied or done it, you know, had a course or anything, like, can you give me a practical example?

How would you use that?

Yes.

You're going to use it?

Yes, yes.

Which is.

I'm saying it's like I find.

To talk about neuroscience.

How are you going to use it?

How are you going to use that?

And how are you going to explain it to someone?

Take it away and teach it.

Because if you can teach it, you know, it.

Can I ask just last question, as you mentioned about the cerebellum and externalizing, and I know that a lot of people, they actually struggle to get pen to paper to journal, but I often talk about the power of journaling because once we sit down with the pen and paper and we start activating what I guess it's the cerebellum, we do feel like that overwhelm kind of like dissipates.

We get more perspective, we get ideas, Things start.

There's a bit of clarity, but there is that friction to, you know, I get a lot of people that say to me, I wish I could journal, but I never do it.

And I've got so many journals and I never sit down.

What would you say about that?

So I think sometimes a barrier to journaling can be thinking that you're keeping a diary and that you've got the beautiful notebook and it's too nice to write in, and your writing's not very tidy and you're not sure what to say.

And so the perfectionism kicks in.

I journal on an app where I just literally empty my brain, like blurgh.

And it really varies.

And I think it doesn't matter how you journal, whether you voice, note, whether you write.

I like quite like writing on walls.

We use magic whiteboard at home a lot, which is a plastic sheeting you can put on any wall to turn it into a whiteboard.

It's just getting your.

The thoughts out.

Because one of the gifts of adhd, it can be a gift or it can be difficult, but is this creativity and the kind of creating many new thoughts and new ideas and that can be overwhelming in and of itself.

So if you can get some of that out, it creates a bit of space, however you do it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for that.

That's great explanation.

Judith.

Thank you very, very much for your time.

I found this really fascinating.

I'm sure a lot of people will.

I know you don't see clients now one to one anymore, but can.

If people are interested in your education service, how can they get in touch with you?

How can they find you?

The website is www.adhded.co.uk so it's ADHD ed for education and we do regular kind of information sessions.

People can just come along and listen in and I'll explain the model and things.

So.

And those are obviously free for people to come along and listen to those.

And yeah, there's usually we just did a whole load of free events also for ADHD Awareness Month, just sort of spreading the word.

So I did something with Matt Gockwell and also with Dr. Tom Nicholson and I did some with something with M and G about then you're a diversity program at work.

I do neurodiversity stuff for businesses as well.

So just really spreading the word, getting it out there.

Brilliant.

Well, thank you so much.

I'll make sure that goes in the show notes and I hope to speak to you again very soon.

Thank you so much, Kate.

Thank you.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.