Foreign.

Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.

It's a More Yourself episode and today I'm sharing with you a clip from actually a recent workshop I hosted for the More Yourself community.

And I really wanted to share this with you because it's something that I think will help.

We're right in the depths of winter right now and it's something that I struggle with.

I've always suffered with, I would say seasonal affective disorder symptoms or traits.

I really do struggle with the, the darkness and the lack of light and just everything.

I'm definitely a summer person.

I need that sunlight.

I love being outside and so that sort of like feeds me.

So when everything feels darker and gloomier and colder, I do notice that with my mood and my maybe with my sleep as well.

So I did this workshop and I'm sharing with you a really poignant part which I wanted you guys to have.

So you're going to hear about why people with ADHD do tend to suffer with SAD a bit more and the importance of prioritizing our circadian rhythms to improve our mood and our brain function.

And I wanted to share with you some tips and some practical ways for you to find these more sustainable rhythms to manage your energy and your mood and your cognition and all the different things.

And I also mentioned about hormones because it's so important that we see that we are cyclical people, women, and not only are the seasons cyclical, but we are every day, every week, every month.

So how we can blend this knowledge together with genetics and lifestyle factors and how they impact our sleep as well.

So I really hope that this short.

Clip offers you that self compassion so you can adapt your routines and your rituals and the way you go about life in this season to align more with how you are showing up perhaps in your work or perhaps how you're showing up in friendship relationships and really kind of prioritize your needs because it's not an easy time.

And if you are wanting more support and you are wanting to connect with this community, all the details are on my website.

Just look for the More Yourself membership.

I'll put the details in the show notes, but it's an amazing community of really like minded women, all mostly diagnosed later on in life.

We're having fantastic conversations, online meetups, workshops.

I'm providing voice notes and free on demand videos.

It's really, really, really accessible and it's a place to go where you just kind of, if you don't really know where else to go and you've just been diagnosed or you're curious, or you.

Just want to ask questions to people.

Who just get it.

This is what I'm trying to create in the more yourself community.

So I will let that land.

Here is the clip and I hope to see you all soon.

What I want to focus on is this season.

We are in this transitional period of where we're noticing the days getting shorter, it is getting colder, we're not getting as much sunlight, and there's a direct correlation between that and our sleep quality.

And so it's really important that we address this.

We really, it is so important that we don't sort of skirt around this because there are things that we can do.

So just a little bit of an understanding.

So light, natural light, daytime, being outside, getting that on our face, Vitamin D, however you want to call it, is how we balance our circadian rhythms and we get to that natural melatonin, which is our sleep hormone.

And if we're not getting that, we're getting less morning light, then it's going to be harder to do all the things that we want to do, whether that is exercise, whether that is getting up on time, whether that is for our mood or concentration or cognition.

And so it can feel like an extra push up the hill with adhd.

And many of us kind of notice that in the summer things do feel a bit easier.

We're not quite sure why, or maybe that's because we're outside more and we're getting more natural sunlight.

And we don't make that correlation until we have these kind of conversations.

And if you are a natural night owl, again, many of us are with adhd, and I'll come to that in a minute, we can find that we push our nights even later, that this sort of feeling a little bit out of sync can put us in this world of almost like no man's land, of not quite knowing where we are on the clock because it kind of feels dark the whole time.

So what we do best for our ADHD really is trying to figure out simple, sustainable, repeatable rituals and cues that don't feel boring, that still have a bit of novelty, that help us find more light, more movement, that can help us have this structure with our meal times and give us these soothing wind downs every single day, especially when we're going to get less light and less time outside.

So when these structures change, I want you to recognize it can feel hard sometimes.

You know, even when we go on holiday, all of a sudden our routines out of sync and Then we.

We think, why?

Why do I feel so anxious?

Or why do I feel so unsettled?

I'm on holiday.

I should be relaxed.

It's very often the break in the structure, it's the break in the routine that kind of throws us a bit off guard.

And we need to start peeling that back and thinking of a new way, a different way to do things.

While it does feel so tricky.

So very often we're hearing, you know, things about autumn.

It's the time to slow down, it's time to get cozy, it's time to wrap up all these different things, and we can do that in our way.

We can find a way to slow down with kindness and with compassion and with an acknowledgement that the environment has changed.

It's not anything that you're doing wrong.

It's the seasons that are shifting.

It's external cues that we haven't got control over.

And instead of criticizing ourselves, breaking our, you know, our routines or not sticking to the habits that we've been doing or the different structures that we've had in place, we don't criticize and blame ourselves.

We just acknowledge.

We take a bit of a moment, maybe just today will be that moment, and we realign and we readjust and we find different ways to help ourselves through these harder months.

And again, it might not be hard for everybody, but it might.

You might need a bit of steadying, you might just need a little bit of assistance to put you back on track, so to speak.

So many of us with adhd, we do lean towards this night owl, this kind of feeling that we do become awake, become alive at night, or we just feel like we have so much more that we want to do, and it tends to happen at night, and many of us struggle in the morning.

It takes us a while to wake up, and that can be due to lots of different types of sleep issues or difficulties, but also the way our circadian rhythms are.

And it is been known that it is part of our genetics and our biology.

So you might end up seeing that you have similar sleep patterns to a family member or to a parent.

And very often that is typically kind of our genetic makeup, but it can be exacerbated by our epigenetics, which means our lifestyle, the conditioning, where we are in the world.

I guess what we're doing to help ourselves as well.

So some of it is down to our lifestyle and, you know, what we have control over, but a lot of it is down to genetics.

And we understand how genetic neurodivergence is now and how that shows up.

And so that's just to give ourselves that break, that compassion, that there are some things that do feel harder to us.

And no matter how much we push and try, it can just feel like that is the way we sleep.

For sleep is really, really important because it helps us with our brain functioning and our energy and our mood.

But it also can be part of the debilitating way our ADHD shows up.

And that's really important to acknowledge as well.

And I had Lynn Peoples, who is who wrote a brilliant book on circadian rhythms and she was on the podcast last January and She says around 78% of people with ADHD identify as night owls.

So that's a really high proportion which recognizes that there is something biological going on, which unfortunately we still don't have clear cut evidence for.

So what I want to suggest to you today is try and lean towards your natural clock while also trying to find some consistency without having to push like every single day, right?

Today's going to be a new day, right Today I'm going to go to bed at 9 o', clock, I'm going to be up at 5 o' clock and I'm going to do all these really productive people do.

We can spend a whole lifetime doing that, pushing against ourselves.

And I'm not sort of advocating, you know, a free for all everyone going to bed at like 2 in the morning every night.

But there may be times where you do work better.

You know, you have a deadline and that 2 o' clock in the morning when the house is quiet is going to be that time when that deadline happens.

And not to shame yourself for that, but we want to try and find some gentle consistency which also aligns to how you best work and thrive.

So if you don't take anything from today's session, I want to say one thing.

That light is going to be your medicine, especially morning light.

If there's nothing else that you can do or is that everything else feels really, really overwhelming or beyond your control right now, if there's a way that you can almost set an alarm or a reminder to get yourself outside in the morning light for 10 minutes, whether that is sitting outside with your coffee, whether that is going for a walk, whether that's just walking around your garden or your patio or whatever that is, getting off, you know, public transport a little bit earlier and walking before you get into your office, where there's probably going to be artificial light.

If there's anything that you can do, I would suggest 10 minutes of morning light is going to be your medicine that will really, really help if you can do more.

Amazing, really, I would strive for that.

I've got a light box.

It's a Lumi.

They are quite expensive.

I think they're about 60 to 100 pounds.

But if you're sitting in an office and you are not getting any natural light and you are really feeling those seasonal effects of dysphoric, dysphoria or disorder, I think it is traits, those impacts that you just feel low, your mood is low, your is low.

Just having that on your face for about 15 minutes a day can be really, really helpful.

And find these ways to make all these little things up that you're going to add in.

Easy, enjoyable, pleasurable.

Find a warm drink that you enjoy.

You know, is it a hot cocoa, herbal tea?

If you enjoy a tea or a coffee, like, really make that a ritual.

Light a candle now, have a lovely playlist where you lean into feeling that moment of rest and restoration or recalibration where your nervous system just has a moment to recharge and allow yourself some gentle movement.

Find ways that make it a ritual for you.

Because if you enjoy it, no matter how much people say, oh, it's willpower, it's discipline, it's not for us with adhd, we need, we really do need to find a way that's pleasurable and enjoyable for us.

It's all about how we can reduce the overwhelm, this over stimulation the brain that just wants to keep going and calm and soften our nervous system.

And, you know, in the morning, give yourself that compassion.

Acknowledge that getting up at 6 o' clock in the morning, 7 o' clock in the morning, when it's pitch black outside and it's cold and it's snowing and it's raining, whatever that might be, that isn't easy.

You know, back in, you know, caveman times, there we would be hibernating.

There would be a time where we wouldn't really go out as much and we would stay inside and we would wrap up.

And having to do life consistently throughout all the seasons is quite a new thing.

Very much, you know, this productivity, need for productivity.

And it doesn't matter where we are seasonally or in our cycles as an expectation that we have to be consistently productive.

And the outdoor season gives us that clue.

It's literally telling us, it's like, you may have forgotten loads of things about nature, but here we are telling you that we are, we are releasing, we are letting go, we are planting, we are harvesting and we are recouping energy because it's going to be winter and we need to save our energy.

And it's allowing nature and it's allowing the seasons to show us what, what we could and should be doing.

And we can look at things like the acorns that are dropping from the trees now and they are falling on the floor and they are being planted, you know, and noticing that nothing needs to be done right now, we're never gonna, we're not gonna see this acorn tree for a really, really long time.

But we know that very gently things are happening.

And maybe we can use this season where maybe from a work perspective or a life perspective, you can give yourself that allowance that maybe this isn't going to be your most productive time.

You know, launching a business or launching a new project or launching something that might feel like it's going to be attacks on your energy or maybe, you know, come December, January, your mood might be quite a bit lower or your energy or you just might struggle a bit more.

Where can you harvest your energy?

And then it towards the evening, the wind down, we want dimming, soft lights, nothing artificial.

We want to really nurture our circadian rhythm in the evening.

And then find, find something that works for you in the evening, like a decompression menu.

If that feels nice to you, you know, write it down.

Have that prep playlist, have herbal oils, the natural oils and the salt, or a tap along, an eft, tap along.

Breath work, just learning a lovely piece of breathwork.

Put in a guided meditation, maybe some gentle creativity that works for you.

Whether it's just sort of some coloring, knitting, whatever that might be, baking, cooking, just really soft, gentle pottering.

Low stakes.

We don't want anything highly stimulating.

And it's that low light time before lights out.

So don't just get into bed and turn the lights out and everything just goes dark from like lights on, bathroom light on, all of that.

And then get into bed, turn the lights off, and just, you know, your nervous system, your stress response, of course, all in your body will still be there.

It's like you've got a dimmer switch for your cortisol and you kind of, you know, trying to shift from your sympathetic nervous system, which is your kind of fight or flight, to your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest.

And if you want to think of it as two hours of your evening, two or three hours of your evening, you slowly turning that dimmer switch down, which is just a lovely way of really understanding why.

Getting into bed and turning lights out, your heart still racing and you're having palpitations, and your brain is like a million miles an hour.

But make your bedroom your sanctuary.

Get rid of anything that has lights.

Beeps, notifications A weighted blanket is lovely in the winter.

Really, really lovely.

Anything that, you know, intuitively calms your nervous system, whether it's white noise, earplugs, eye masks, anything that you need.

I always say, don't be ashamed for needing scaffolding for sleep.

People kind of think, oh, you should be able to just forget about and fall asleep.

There's actually a much more of a minority of people that get into bed, turn the light off and fall asleep.

There's many more of us that need these more sort of decompressing strategies.

And yes, maybe at the early stages of a relationship, it may not be the most sexy thing in the world, getting into bed with, you know, an eye mask and earplugs and white noise and all sorts of other things.

But essentially, further down the line, these things will be the things that will get you through.

Because sleep really is everything.

We know that sleep, good sleep really helps protect our heart health, protects our cognitive health.

And it is really important we can protect it where we can.

And so I want to say the.

The way we look at it is just reduce whatever stimulates you, whatever is a sensory load, Move that out the bedroom, move that out of the evening and boost anything you can that will naturally ground your body, Whether that is just some tapping, some breath work, just, you know, warm water, hot tea, hot water bottle, weighted blanket, anything like that.

Okay?

And obviously I could not talk about sleep today without talking about hormones, because you could be doing all of this.

You know, you could be tick, tick, tick and do all of that, but all of a sudden my sleep's gone out the window, or gradually my sleep's gone out the window, or you notice from a cyclical perspective, you really, really struggle with sleep, you know, for a month, not a month, a week or so of your cycle.

So it's really, really important that you understand that we have all these different cycles going on within our body, our adrenals, our thyroid, the endocrine system.

It's.

It's all there.

And it can impact our sleep of things off now, our cycles impact our sleep.

And to break it down, you probably heard me talk about it on podcast and you probably heard me talk about in workshops, but if you are starting to get those early perimenopausal symptoms that are impacting your sleep and you are able to take hrt.

I would go and speak to a doctor about it because, for example, I was starting to get my perimenopausal symptoms around 40.

And for about a year I just managed horrendous night sweats, but also debilitating anxiety at night, heart palpitations.

Every single night I'd wake up at like 2, 3 o' clock in the morning with a jolt, like a, like a real jolt, like almost like a cortisol kind of nudge.

And for me I did all the maths and thankfully I, you know, been speaking to people through my work and I recognize that these were the beginning signs of my, you know, perimenopause.

And I went on HRT when I was 41 and within a couple of weeks of being on HRT, my night sweats went, which helped me sleep better.

Took me a bit longer to get my progesterone sorted.

And I've been doing a lot of work, progesterone for me and quite a lot of people who have struggled with maybe more of an adrenal dominant state.

Something that I'm going to talk a lot more about soon because I've been doing quite a lot of research from Dr. Michael Platt.

He's now retired, but he's written a few, quite a few books on body identical hormones and also adrenal dominance.

Feel free to have a look.

He is a doctor, but he works on more of an insight, integrative, sort of functional health, preventative perspective.

And a lot of his work is using progesterone to help balance adrenal or adrenaline.

And he has a theory which I really support from a personal perspective, but also from a lot of the work that I've done in this community, that many people with ADHD are adrenaline dominant, why so many of us operate in this very sort of heightened stress response the whole time.

And he is a big believer of using topical progesterone to help with things like that.

And so I would urge you to have a little read if it does sound interesting to you.

And I came up with a bit of an acronym here because I think that everything that we do in this community, everything that we do to support ourselves with adhd, it has to be easy, it has to be consistent, and it's got to be kind, these ideas.

And so I've just put the eki.

So if you can't remember, you know, anything, it's just what is easy, what is consistent, what feels kind.

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.