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.

I am here today with a fantastic guest.

Her name is Sonia Ponzo and she is a psychologist.

She's also a researcher and the founder of Outset Wellness.

And Sonia has spent over a decade working at the intersection of mental health and behavior change, including a Director of Science at Flow Health, which is one of the world's largest women's health platforms.

And her work focuses on how we sense what's going on in our bodies, how that shapes what we do and what happens when that system breaks down.

And.

And Sonja has published over 30 scientific papers.

She's built tools used by millions and is now focused on creating real world support for people with adhd.

I'm really excited to have you here, Sonia, and to you to share, I guess, your story, your background, and what you're contributing to people with ADHD to help them live better.

So welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much.

That was a lovely introduction.

It's actually fascinating.

You're a doctor.

So is that a doctor in.

In psychology?

What was the doctorate for?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not the very useful kind of doctor.

The other type, the one that if you need one on a plane, you don't call me the other kind.

But yeah, I have a Doctor of philosophy in psychology in cognitive psychology, and I basically studied during my PhD.

I was really focused on figuring out how you integrate different sensory modalities.

So from vision to proprioceptions, to the sense of your body in space to interoception, which is the internal state of how your body is doing at any given moment.

How do you integrate all of these different signals into a coherent sense that you are yourself and your body belongs to you.

That's where I started.

Interesting.

Wow.

And obviously you're doing this in a second language, in English because you're Italian, so that's incredible.

Anyway, to be fair, like, after I've been here for 10 years.

I moved here in 2015 to do my PhD and now I cannot speak in Italian about my work.

Like if someone asks me about work in Italian, I just freak out.

No way.

That's mad.

So you've got the, the articulation and the language in English.

And it's so interesting, isn't it?

Because you're working, you know, you've obviously done a huge amount of research, you've published these papers and you've put I guess what you know from this.

But I want to talk maybe a little bit about your lived experience because I think that's so interesting because what you're kind of combining all of this and you've created something really helpful.

So tell me a little bit about your journey towards understanding your own neurodivergence.

Yes, that was not one would expect someone with a PhD in psychology was also worked in a service that was doing diagnosis for autism and adhd.

I was VP of Science at Helios and the service was all, you know, intended to help people get their diagnosis and treatment.

And what would suspect that at that point I would have half of an idea that maybe, you know, I have ADHD too.

But it actually took me much, much longer to get there.

So I started working on outset.

And at the beginning, outset wasn't really what it is today.

So the focus wasn't really on neurodivergence and adhd.

It was more in general to help people build healthy habits around exercise and well being.

And the more I built, the more I realized that actually I built a product for neurodivergent people.

So it wasn't necessarily intentional, but it was baked into the way I built the product because it was intended first to help me, you know, figure out how to stay consistent with exercise, which has been one of the big, biggest struggles of my life.

But also at that point when I started figuring out that maybe there was much more to the way that I was approaching the problem and building the product than I thought, that's when I started doing a lot of soul searching, calling my friends and family and they were like, yeah, of course you have adhd.

But yeah, it would have been nice if you just told me, you know, it's like when you have a boyfriend that no one likes and yeah, we never liked him.

Tell me when I'm there.

When I'm there, it might be much more useful.

Yeah, you'd have saved me a few years of my life.

Exactly.

And so the moment I started talking to people and I started doing a lot more reading around it a lot more soul searching about my symptoms, about my journey and my struggles.

That's when I figured out probably I need to get a diagnosis my myself.

I'm not your typical textbook case of adhd.

First of all, my main problem was always hyperactivity, much more than inattention, which is not typically how textbook says it shows up in women and in girls it tends to be kind of the opposite, but for me it wasn't.

And also I never really struggled academically because for me studying was always interesting.

What the pro.

The problem was that I couldn't pay attention in class, but that was never a problem because.

Because I would make up for it in my own time.

So there were a kind of.

There was so many scaffolding and coping strategies.

And my family, my mom and my grandma were always very, very.

They were spending a lot of time trying to get me into the sense that education was my way forward.

We are from a working class background, so for us it was kind of the ticket to a better life.

And so they embedded in and ingrained it in me so much that then it became kind of part of it.

And so the way that my ADHD showed up, up until I was in university was not really in attention, but it was more around doing 50 things at the same time.

Not studying in a way that you would consider standard.

I would not go to lessons, I would not go to lectures and I would simply just study in my own time the day before the exam and just do very well.

And so all of the things that typically they ask you throughout the diagnostic process weren't quite right with me, which took a little bit of time to explain and to make sure that the assessor understood what that meant.

So the academic struggles weren't there in a standard sense, but obviously there was a lot of coping and a lot of internal unrest because you still need to deal with systems that are not quite geared towards your brain.

I started the process early 2025 and I got my diagnosis just before Christmas of combined adhd, because even though my symptoms were mainly hyperactive at the beginning, it kind of blended into inattention and more inattentive symptoms towards adulthood.

I think the point is when you get out of the structure of university, even if it is an imperfect structure, it's still a structure the moment you start working, especially when you start being an entrepreneur, where, you know, the boundaries of everything are much fuzzier, that's when you really get when things really come up more.

Yeah, I mean, it's so fascinating, isn't it because everyone is so different and the way it shows up is different.

And we need to kind of move away from these, like, stigmas now, even with women, now that we're understanding more that it's not just this inattentiveness that we're seeing or this daydreamy or this internal side.

It can.

I mean, I know quite a lot of women who you can see straight away the external hyperactivity, and they've achieved loads and they've, you know, the amount of women that I've met with ADHD have got doctorates who have got.

You've got PhDs who have gone on to further education.

And we need to just blast all of this out the water because we need more nuances, we need more understanding.

And I'm glad that you're sharing your story because I think there'll be a lot of women listening to it.

Go, yes, that's me, that's me.

So it's obviously been a driver for you, and especially the fact that you have managed to find what's interesting for you.

So that's, that's another thing we know that that works really well, that if you find what's interesting, we don't suffer with attention.

It's almost too much attention, and we overwork and burn out.

Would you say that that has been a part of your story as well?

Oh, I burned out several times.

I think the very first one, the worst one, was the one that gave rise to everything that happened without it.

I was.

I was working in tech in a 9 to 5 job that was more like 8 to 8 rather than 9 to 5.

And the demands were really high.

I was in a really senior role and exercise became kind of my way out.

More.

More than my way out.

It became my way to manage myself because it would keep me.

It would keep me sane, basically throughout the day, and it would keep my focus in place, it would keep my stress in place.

But then the problem is that the more I tried to stick to exercise, the more difficult it became.

Because obviously for ADHD is to get a routine to stick.

Not so easy, especially when it comes to just exercising willpower.

Just be more disciplined.

That doesn't work.

That's not work.

And so it took me a long time to figure out how to crack the system, which led to the creation of outset eventually.

But everything started from a place of really deep burnout.

And I would say the way the burnout and chronic stress show up according to where you are in life, it's very different, especially with adhd.

I think at the very beginning it tended to be more, more of an acute burnout state.

Whereas when I experienced it again in life, especially during my years as an entrepreneur, it was more like a chronic sense of chipping away, a self confidence.

Especially when you're.

When you're an entrepreneur, you don't have a lot of mirrors and a lot of people that are part of your day to day that can reassure you, yeah, you're doing all right.

The thing that I think we all underestimate is that whilst you're in employment, at least there is a structure of people above you and below you.

They can tell you, yep, you're doing all right.

Or maybe we should adjust this.

When you're on your own, the same criteria that applied before don't quite apply.

And most of the time you need to be your own mirror and you need to be your own benchmark, which is very difficult when you have a lot of RSD or when, you know, when you have ADHD specifically.

I think that poses different challenges.

Yeah, it's exhausting, isn't it?

Also because you kind of in this internal dialog all the time and when you're an entrepreneur, you're there and it's like, well, is this a good idea?

Should I do this?

And essentially you've got to be making those decisions and you could be having a week where you've not slept well, you've not, you're not exercised properly, diet's gone out the window, hormones, cycles, all of that.

And all of a sudden it's like you're having a really bad week and that internal dialogue is really negative and it can really throw you, you know, throws your self esteem and your self belief and that can feed into the burnout as well because it's exhaust, mentally exhausting being inside your own head.

When you're an entrepreneur, I think it's.

You forget the entrepreneur.

It's mentally exhausting being inside your own head when you've got ADHD and you are constantly overthinking every move that you make.

And I see that a lot, that the burnout comes, yes, from the, the restlessness and the overworking and the proving and that out somewhere it's like sort of like having to out prove yourself because you might not trust yourself.

But then it's also that ment.

Fatigue of, oh my God, this is just exhausting being me.

Yeah, that, that state.

So this is something that we thought a lot about at outset and in general we had to go through for this process of understanding this paralysis state.

Because that is what, is what underlies the inability to start, right?

So what this paralysis state is, is one of those very ADHD experiences where you know exactly what you should be doing, but you can't get yourself to start.

And you keep replying all of the steps in your head, you keep like beating yourself up because you're not able to do even that simple thing that everybody else can do.

And what, where we got to when looking at this, I looked at all my research, I look at other people's research, and I think the reason that underlies all of this is because ADHD is.

We're terrible at reading our internal state.

We're really bad at knowing what our body needs at any given moment.

So you might feel something is wrong, flip a coin.

Is it unrest?

Am I tense and I need to go for a walk or am I tired, exhausted and I need to go for a nap?

And typically neurotypicals might be a bit, a bit better, typically on average at figuring out if they need a nap or if they need to go for a walk and, you know, chill a little bit.

Is this interoception that you're talking about?

Yes, that's exactly it.

That's interoception.

And the problem is that for ADHD is due to a variety of reasons that have a lot to do with the physiology of it, but also with obviously the pileup of experiences throughout life.

For us, ADHD as interoception tends to be very scrambled.

Signals are either too high, too low, but never just right.

Like the, the fable of the free bears, never just right.

And the problem is that the more we are subject to situations where we read the situation wrong because we don't know what our body needs, the more we put ourselves in this cycle of, oh, see, I'm not even able to send an email.

The reality is that you're so exhausted, so dehydrated, so hungry that your body right now is telling you, go, eat, drink, do something else.

The email is not what we need right now.

But you can't read that.

And the more you don't read that, the more you actually give yourself the blame.

So you, you, you're going into the cycle of self shame, self doubt that then builds you, basically gets you into a spiral of, oh my God, I'm not even able to do the basic things humans do.

But the reality that if you knew that the problem is not that you can't do it, is that you're in the wrong moment to do it.

Interesting when you say you're in the wrong moment.

So say someone has been working all day, hyper focus, like you say, dehydrated, hasn't gone to the toilet, needs to eat.

How would somebody get them out of that state to be able to say, right, what do I need?

I mean, I know what I do now, but I'd be interested from a sort of a scientific perspective.

What, what you'd suggest there is no right wrong.

Because training interoception is not as easy, especially because interoception has been historically considered mainly the majority of interoceptive tasks or interoceptive training sort of over on breathing and heart reperception.

The reality is that it's much more complex than that.

One thing that we know helps is taking a moment to reflect how you feel right now.

So even just taking stock of, hold on, how is my breathing?

How is my heart rate?

How is my body right now?

Do I have tension?

And that might not work 100%, especially because, as we said, your interoceptive signals are very scrambled.

But if you put them in your focus of attention, chances are that you will see see some level of information.

And the more you do it, especially if you do it in a moment where your body is being loud.

That's why we tie it to exercise.

The idea basically is to get you to exercise, then ask you how you're feeling in a moment where you're sweating, your heart rate's pumping, that pieces of information are very salient for you in that moment.

So they're very loud.

So that helps you understand how your body feels in different moments.

And the idea is the more you do it related to exercise, the more you will.

It will basically snowball into the rest of your life.

But if you don't feel like doing it, if you want to try and get a shortcut to doing it in the rest of your life, the point is to try and to pay attention, but also get your body in a state of arousal.

Breathe, move, do something that makes you feel your body, and then ask yourself, how do I feel?

Because that will help you get your interoceptive state a bit more in focus.

Yeah, thank you for that.

So tell me, you've mentioned outset a few times.

Tell people what it is and what, I guess, what you created it for.

Yeah.

So our main work kind of goes into two parallel streams.

The first one is the Outset App.

The Outset App has been created to help people with adhd, executive dysfunction, and even just very chaotic schedules stay consistent with exercise as one of the best ways to manage symptoms in the day, to Day beyond medicine, medication, of course.

And there is an awful lot of literature around the benefits of exercise for ADHD that go well beyond fitness and, you know, being able to lift, whatever.

That's not the point.

The point is about focus, mood and self regulation as the main building block.

And so the way the app works is it helps you with, with fighting decision fatigue by planning exercise for you in your calendar.

You can either have the planning in your app or you can connect it to your Google Calendar, Kuvul and Outlook so that we know when you're busy.

When you're free, you can connect your work calendar as well.

And we plan exercise for you throughout the week based on your availability and the weather forecast.

So we plan a walk when it's nice outside, we plan an indoor, a small indoor workout when it's terrible outside, which is kind of what it is these days.

But the idea of tying it to the weather is connected to the fact that the weather has a lot of benefits for your mood and your overall health.

So trying to be outside when it's sunny will actually help you cement the habit a bit more because sunshine will make the experience more positive, but also it will give you much needed vitamin D. So it first plans and adapts to you.

So the more you use it, the more it understands when it's best to put certain things.

But it also keeps you engaged via gamification.

And the way that it works is we've created a little bit virtual garden in the app.

So every time you move, a little plant grows with you.

And every day you're going to be up, the plant might ask you, I need some water.

Can you go get water at the well or can you move me to a sunnier spot?

So everything that you do is linked to the app's health, the, the plant's health.

And the more you, the more you move, the more plants you complete and you create your garden, you can regrow plant, you can change the way that you grow them.

It's very customizable.

And this is really to help you tie progress to something visual that doesn't feel performative.

Because the problem that you have when it comes to fitness apps and more, most of the health apps out there is that everything is linked to how long you've run, how much you have done.

It's not about showing you progress in a way that signals growth without necessarily being aggressive.

That's what we try to do with the Cant.

And the final aspect of it, we connect you with other people that are on a similar journey.

You can match workout schedules with them.

So invite each other to be friends.

But also we have a little community where you can ask questions and, you know, confront yourselves with other people.

And we will be building a bit more on the social aspect as we go.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds so interesting.

Obviously rooted in behavioral science and an understanding of ADHD and sort of like this little dopamine hits.

But I love, I love the idea of it being sort of connected to, to being outside and getting you outside.

And as you were talking, I was thinking about all the different things that I guess keep me moving because for me, movement has always been my number one for my adhd.

It boosts my mood, my energy, helps with my sleep, my hormones.

It helps with my brain sort of just to kind of like de.

Scramble my brain a little bit.

I come back from a walk and I'm just like, oh, okay, I've got.

Figured something out now, but I have a dog, so my dog.

My dog is my accountability.

And I literally see that because if I didn't have a dog, the way I exercise has to be with accountability.

So whether that's with a personal trainer, I've paid for it.

I pay in blocks for my yoga classes, like a dance class.

I play, I pay for.

It's that.

That helps me.

I'm not very good.

I know that I haven't got that in internal, whatever you want to call it, willpower, discipline, to just go to a gym on my own.

And I've wasted so much money being a member of a gym and every day I'm like, I'll go, I'll go.

And I don't go.

And that's because I don't enjoy being in a gym.

So it.

It really does matter to us, doesn't it?

I think the way we move our bodies and the way we stay consistent.

And I just wondered how that feeds into the app.

Yeah, so a lot of things that a lot of food for fun you gave me.

So one thing I would start from the last point that you made.

I think enjoyment is the most important thing.

However, we live in a.

In a culture that typically deprioritizes it.

When it comes to exercise, what you hear is no pain, no gain.

Extremes.

You need to do this, you need to lift this, you need.

No, it doesn't work like that.

Especially for ADHDs, you need to do what feels good in the moment.

And it's not going to look the same every day.

Today it might be five minutes of yoga, tomorrow it might be an hour and a Half of running, it will depend on a day to day, how your environment is, how you woke up your cycle.

There's so many factors that will determine how you feel in the moment.

The point is that if you get out of the all or nothing mindset and you get into this idea that everything counts, that's when things start feeling different.

If you make movement part of your everyday in a more natural way, in a way that follows what you enjoy, it gets much easier.

And so we try to to kind of have this feel philosophy throughout the app.

For us, the entry point is walks, because walks are the most simple exercise there is and typically they don't even consider the exercise.

There is a lot of debate is walking exercise.

Of course it is.

You're moving your body, right?

And I think that is, that is one of the things that people really liked about the app.

We're not much about the gym.

We're more about intuitive movement throughout your day.

Whatever works for you, that's completely fine.

We have a little bit of content within the app to help you before activities and after activities to get into that mindset.

But also the general feel is not a pushy, performative place.

It's a place where you can feel safe and you can do whatever feels right for you in that moment.

And we talk a lot about this idea of treating movement as a journey rather than a sprint.

It's not something that you have to do today and never again.

It's something that you need to put into your life as a constant.

So whatever opportunity presents itself within your life to move, just do that.

If it doesn't feel like it's exercise, it doesn't matter.

Of course there are benefits for people with ADHD in raising your heart rate.

There is a, a wealth of literature around benefits of cardio, benefits of strength training, whatever.

But starting somewhere is much better than doing nothing.

So whatever works.

And then using a sort of check in with yourself.

If today you feel just like doing five minutes, just do five minutes.

If you feel good, you will keep going naturally.

But don't put goals for yourself that feel too far removed from where you are right now.

I think in general, the point is to always reduce the space between where you are and where you want to be in a way that doesn't push you beyond your current state.

You need to always first check in with yourself.

How am I today?

Have I slept?

Have I eaten?

Am I irritated?

And that's where you stop.

That's what I really like about what you're doing is because you're understanding it through that neuro firmly lens and it removes that shame because there's a lot of people who I, I speak to and hear from who they really do want to use movement, they do want to move their body, but they have had fatigue, fibromyalgia, chronic pain.

Yes, all of that.

And that has to be, you know, it has to be understood and been brought into and especially the hypermobility sides because yeah, because that, that, that can, you know, you do one wrong thing of one wrong move and then you sort of back to square one.

I mean I would love to see hypermobility being understood within the sporting profession so much more in the with physios and anyone work that who's working in sport that they can understand all of this and the impact of hypermobility on, on your health as well.

I'd be interested to know now that you have sort of embedded yourself into, into this space, how do you see things evolving and guess what you do and now that you know, neurodivergence is better understood in behavior change, what, what do you see hopefully coming out of this?

That is an interesting question.

I think one thing that we definitely realized is that you know, exercise is an incredibly important part of it and it definitely helps with managing ADHD day to day.

But the reality is that if you spend, spend eight hours a day in a place that misunderstands the way you think and doesn't give basically treats you as a problem to manage, it's not going to work.

And this is one of the reasons why we started working with organizations to try and make more inclusive workplaces.

The idea is to try and leverage cognitive style, different cognitive styles, both neurotypical and neurodivergent in a way that best suits the person and the team.

So kind of use it more as a fine tuning way of understanding what computer communication is breaking and where workflows are breaking so that we can fix it in a way that makes people suffer much less at work, feel much more understood, but also ties into their normal, you know, cycles and ways of working and being.

So that's the work that we're doing with organizations.

But in general what I'm seeing is that depending really where you are geographically, things are very, very different.

So in the UK there seems to be more of a more awareness now.

But I still don't see much more beyond the awareness stage in most places.

But I, I don't really see organizations really going into okay, how do we, how do we leverage this for the good?

What do we need to do.

And it's not just making about making accommodations.

I think that's where.

That's where things break up a little bit.

It's not just by giving people extra time after meetings and making reasonable adjustments.

It's about really, how do you think?

Like, how do you perceive this thing?

Because this, this is what I read.

What do you read?

Why don't we use this as a way of complementing of.

There is so many things that people with neurodivergent traits can do that others have much more difficult time doing.

So if we really started leveraging these differences in a way that makes work and life better for everybody else, yeah, it would be.

It would be much better.

The problem is that, of course, when it comes to, you know, organizations, it takes time for them to move.

Not just organizations, governments.

You've seen that.

The recent move from the government to.

To get more people out of PIP and into employment, that will see a lot of people with neurodivergent trades being pushed into employment with what I suspect is not going to be a lot of support.

So, I don't know.

Whilst there is a lot of awareness and we see the problem, the solution side of things is still kind of lacking, I think.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you.

Sadly, it's sort of like, yes, we've got all the talk and people ticking the boxes and doing the things that they should be doing, you know, from sort of like big corporations and everything.

But like you say, where's the action?

And often it is comes back to us having to advocate for ourselves and people having to push and then eventually, actually they're still not being understood and being supported and they either have to leave or they become entrepreneurs.

And sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it can also be overwhelming, exhausting.

And not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur.

A lot of people want to work collaboratively or they want to work in teams.

And it's interesting because I think we've kind of moved on from that.

This conversation, like you say, of awareness of, like, what is adhd, how does it present?

I mean, we're still having those conversations, but it's like now, how can we leverage it?

And we need people, neurodivergent people, to be leading teams because it's the people at the top, really, that makes all that change.

And, you know, slowly but surely we'll see it, but it's not happening as quickly as one would like.

And I guess the question is, is how do we do this?

So it's sustainable, you know, and if you're an entrepreneur and you are trying to, we're trying to fix problems, aren't we?

We're trying to fix systemic problems, but we're also trying to look after ourselves.

And I guess you're probably doing the same as me is that you're seeing, oh, this really needs, you know, people really need this and, but you will.

You also have to look after yourself.

And I have to look after myself.

And I think I'm coming out of five years of head down in this industry and I'm tired.

But I, I think before Christmas I was definitely burnt out, but I still have a lot of passion and drive to keep, you know, the messaging out there.

But would you say as an entrepreneur yourself who's also with adhd, are you conscious of how, where your energy goes?

Because we're here for the long haul, aren't we?

It's not, you know, it's not a year or two that everything's going to be fine.

Yeah, I think you touched on something really important and on one side.

So the past couple of years have been really different from anything else in my life.

So I started my company in the end of 2023.

So it's been, yeah, a couple of years and it's been really different from anything else.

The stress that in general the vibe of, of life is different for the better or for the worse.

And it goes up and down, up and down, up and down all the time.

But one thing that I did learn more to do more is taking time for the small things.

So I never allowed myself to do that before.

But I realized people, people around me, I have my best friend and my partner with my partner in business and life, they keep banging and saying, you're gonna burn out badly.

We can't have you burn out this bad because then who's gonna do this?

There's no one else to fall back.

If you burn out and you're in employment, there might be someone able to pick up the pieces for a little while.

If you are, you know, your own business.

If you're, if you're running your own business, that's not the case.

So we need you to contain yourself.

And so I started doing small things.

Like I started growing vegetables.

I've always been absolutely terrible when it comes to keeping plants alive.

Surprisingly, when it comes to having to eat them.

That's the Italian side of me.

I'm able to keep them alive and actually I can get them to grow and I can get them to, to get.

I had a lot of tomato Plants I.

All sorts.

But it gave me.

I had this like, routine in the morning where I would go out in the garden and water my plants and have 10 minutes in the sunshine.

And it was so, so, so much better, which is why these months of winter have been really difficult.

I lost grounding routine.

But other things, like playing with the kittens.

Before, I had a cat who passed away August last year.

And one of the things that I regret the most is saying no to her, where she would come to me for cuddles or for playtime.

And now I try to do the opposite of what I was doing back then.

Try to treasure those little moments that can't wait more than the things that can wait.

So, you know, playing with the kittens when they want to play is more important than sending that email as, as a general, you know, rule of life.

So you can send that email in 10 minutes, but the kitten doesn't understand that you don't want to play with them right now.

And that will kind of make you feel much more fulfilled if you do dedicate those 10 minutes and then go back to your email the other way around.

And I think it's about finding little ways to enrich our life so that we keep.

We feel more grounded as we go.

It doesn't eliminate the burnout, but it helps a little bit.

Yeah, it says micro, micro sort of moments, like you say, of connection, of growth grounding, of just being there and breathing.

I mean, I couldn't agree more.

And I, I'm definitely trying to be a lot more intentional and, and I, I always have been, but I, I've noticed it slipping away.

And I actually, when you say about winter, I, I really, I didn't realize up until this year how much I've struggled.

This winter's been a really hard winter and I.

A few people have said that actually.

I don't know if it's just autumn kicked in really early this year or life has just felt hard.

And the climate, the global work, you know, climate, politics, everything is just.

It's quite dark at the moment.

And I definitely have to be more intentional, like you say.

And I love that what you said about the vegetables.

I've actually really decided that I'm going to be mindful when I'm cooking.

So when I'm cooking, my phone goes away and I really put music on, maybe a glass of, of wine.

And I'm just really enjoying because that's what I love doing.

I love cooking.

It's really solidifying.

Coming from a behavioral science expert, because Sometimes we think these are a bit fluffy or we really should just get our head down.

We've got emails to send, work to do, but actually, you cuddling your kittens and growing your vegetables and getting some sunlight or having a fulfilling heart to heart with a friend, that is what drives things.

That's what keeps you going.

I think so.

And I think, you know, I used to be much more like that, much more like, let's grind, grind, grind, grind.

And I realized that at some point, not only it takes away meaning and purpose from you, because it just becomes an endless cycle of producing, doing things, doing things, and then you lose the meaning attached to those, to those things.

But also, again, going back to what we were saying earlier, it's a way of checking in with yourself, checking in where your body's at right now, because if you get distracted a second and play with the kittens, you will notice how you feel much more than if you're there with all of your attention on that email and that piece of work that needs to be done.

And I think in general, you know, the more I, the more I grow older, the more I feel meaning, where meaning lies, shifts.

When you're, when you're younger, it feels like work and career and everything.

But then slowly but surely, you realize that you're are one, you have one body, you are one person, you have one life.

So you need to really take stock and figure out what matters to you in the moment and what matters to you of tomorrow so that you don't do yourself a disservice.

Effy?

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, I'm interested to know that being of sort of like your Italian culture and seeing how Italians live.

And I, I've been to Italy quite a few times and I do notice that there are older men sat around drinking coffee and connecting.

There's people outside and having long lunches and there's more opportunity to grow your food and eat your food, you know, from a, an organic perspective, all things like that.

Is that part, would you say that Italian part of you?

Do you miss that being here in the uk, do you notice that difference?

So, to be honest with you, I kind of always thought that part, much like I wasn't really of that predicament myself when I was there.

I was too young.

I had like, different ambitions.

I wanted to, you know, change the world, do everything and be the one to overall everything.

It was a different moment in my life and I think if I were there now, I would much more lean into it and appreciate it and Also actually champion it.

I remember I had my very first job after I finished my PhD in a company called Biobeats and they had, and part of the leadership team is Italian, part of it is English and they had an office in Italy and we, we, we and I went there for a, for a little while to work with the Italian team.

And every time that everybody would stop at lunchtime, go out together to have lunch, have like an hour, an hour and a bit lunch, then we would work a bit later in the evening.

But in general the vibe was always we need to have time for something else that isn't staring at a computer.

So we need to take this time and it's important and we're going to do it all together and we're going to spend this time, we're going to have a moment of conviviality and camaraderie and it's going to be nice.

And it was really nice.

And then I came back to the UK and I was still eating my lunch in front of my computer.

The problem is that unfortunately there are.

The environment in which you're in does a lot.

So if your environment is not really conducive and it doesn't really help you keep those habits, you will lose them.

Which is why if in my home I try to do that.

I also love cooking, so I completely, I'm completely with you.

Cooking for me is an experience.

I take my time with a glass of wine, with music,'70s music in the background.

That's what I go for when I'm cooking.

But I try to recreate this little, these little habits and this little experiences in my house and in my life as much as possible because I know that outside it's going to be difficult.

Yeah, I mean I, I remember we went to Italy a few summers ago and me and my husband went on a bike ride and we had on this really long bike ride and it was so hot we needed to stop.

And we ended up finding this cafe that was obviously a cafe where construction workers would go and have their lunch because they were all dressed in like their, their construction work.

And there was about five or six men all sat down, they had a small glass of wine.

But the food they ate was like fresh food.

It was so cheap, really like home cooked, amazing food.

They sat there for an hour, they ate, they chatted, they laughed.

These were like men in there, maybe from their 30s to 60s all together.

And then they went back to work and me and my husband were just like, this is unbelievable.

They, they've had Lunch probably for about 10 pounds.

A really good lunch, full, you know, healthy, good lunch.

And they've taught, they've chatted, they've connected and then they've gone back to work.

And I don't know, maybe I saw a snapshot of, of not the reality of all of, you know, Italy, but for me that was like, wow.

Like we don't see that here at.

All, to be honest with you.

It really depends on where.

So big cities, they tend not to be like that as much.

Yeah, this was small.

Yeah.

You tend to have a similar vibe to London where everybody eats.

Like I remember when I was working in Turing, you would have half an hour, top 20 minutes and you would have to go like, just eat very, very quickly.

I would mostly while working, when I was working in, when I had an office based work, when I was office based job, when I was working in, in retail, then that's not very possible.

Very much possible.

But depending on the different, the different location, you will see different types of culture.

And I think big cities, especially at the north, they tend to behave more like the UK or other European countries.

The more south you go, the more like rural you go, smaller cities where there is more of a sense of community, the more people just take that time because they know what it means, they know what it does to them.

They know what, what the value of that time is.

And also they have much stronger boundaries when it comes to taking care of the families, picking up kids.

It's.

The boundaries are strong and they are there and you don't take them away from, from Italians oftentimes.

So I think that is, that is a good thing.

Yeah.

Something to learn from.

It's something to learn from because I don't think anyone's too busy or, or anyone's too important or anyone's too successful to have these wellbeing boundaries, you know, in place.

Because like you said just before, we only get this one life.

And yes, we can put all our sense of worth into our career, all our sense of validation, but essentially, you know, what is more important than connection and calm and a regulated nervous system?

Like for me, I would put that above everything.

Now, you know, if someone said to me, would you like to do this?

Or would you prefer just to have inner peace, calm connection and a regulated nervous system?

For me it would always be that.

But listen, you live in the real world, people need to make money.

We need to, you know, pay the bills and look after our kids and all of that.

But I just think there's, there's A way of finding a bit of balance.

And yeah, I, I think for ADHD people we need that.

We really do need that because we can go the other way.

Like you say, the burnout, the overworking, the pushing, the pressure, all of that.

And it does come back to, you know, the movement, the slowing down, the being intentional.

And like you say, whether we want to go for a run that day or we want to do just do some yoga, it's just being quiet enough to be able to listen to what we need.

And when we're rushing and pushing and stressing and all of that, we can't, we can't hear that.

And also, you know, being self regulated is kind of the foundation of everything.

Like at the end of the day, the more self regulated you are, the better you will be at your career, in your house, with your friends.

So it is a sense of like, be that being centered is not just because you enjoy it, but it's also because it is a scaffold for everything else.

If that foundation works, then everything else will be much easier.

Yeah.

Oh well, listen, Sonia, it's been fascinating talking to you and hearing about what you're doing and I wish you all the success and regulation in the world without set wellness.

And I know that you've offered the listeners a discount to try the app.

So I will put all that in the show notes.

But if anybody wants to reach out or get in touch, how's the best way to find your or learn more about what you're doing?

LinkedIn Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn.

Go visit the website outsourwellness.com or send me an email.

Sonia.

Onserhoutsawellness.com I'm always very happy to connect with anybody or if you have questions or whatever it is, please get in touch.

Okay, I'll put all that in the show notes, but thank you so much.

I'm going to go and have a quiet lunch.

Nice.

It's actually a bit early for lunch, but I'm going to, I'm going to use this conversation as a bit of an anchor and to remind me that, you know, to put my emails away and not check them while I'm stuffing something into my mouth.

But thank you so much, Sonja and I hope to speak to you very soon.

Thanks for having me.

It was really, really, really nice conversations.

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.