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.

Hi everyone.

So welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate More Youssef, as always, and today you've just got me.

I'm doing a short solo episode because I have a little announcement to make and the announcement comes with a lot of excitement, actually.

And I am not doing anything drastic, but I am doing something that I feel is going to be really worthwhile for so many people who are my very, very loyal listeners, and I hope that's many of you out there.

I am going to be starting a offshoot to podcast, a subscription podcast, which is going to be all about offering my resources, my workshops, my webinars, all my different content, the resources that you find in my website, and it's typically behind a paywall.

I want to offer this for a fraction of the price.

I want to bring this to you as a subscription onto the podcast.

So those of you who are really, really sort of determined and ready and open to learn more about adhd, to help improve your lives, to expand your lives, to change, to grow, all of the things that I talk about and I want to bring to you my exclusive content at a lower price.

So the subscription, if you're not familiar with subscription podcasts, typically it's either bonus content, it's ad free listening, it's anything that is extra to the podcast.

So the podcast will always be free.

There's always going to be a free resource.

I'm always going to be bringing to you the guests, the experts, the specialists, and I'll be having these conversations.

But what I want to be able to bring to many of you who do listen, who have been there from the very beginning, who are actively learning more about the neurodivergence, wanting to help yourselves, maybe your children, students, grandchildren, just the ripple effect that the podcast can do by lots of education, awareness.

I want to bring that to the masses.

And as I talk so much about energy and burnout in all aspects of my community, I was trying to think of way how can I serve more people at a cost effective way that really doesn't kind of take advantage of this ADHD and I hate to use it, bandwagon, trend, whatever, is sort of emerging.

I want to ensure that I am giving what I can give and it feels authentic to me.

And I'm not feeling like I'm taking advantage of the fact that there's a lot of people, especially women, who are only just understanding their own neurodiversity, who are wanting to help themselves and help their loved ones, but not necessarily having the funds and the means to do so.

And for this you will get every single week new resources, exclusive content, access to lots and lots of my guidance, my classes, my courses, my workshops, whatever I have typically been selling.

I want to bring this to you in podcast format and I want to have this so you are able to know that you are accessing the most up to date information.

And this is not necessarily the podcast information.

This is more about specific topics.

So it can be varying from rejection, sensitive dysphoria, understanding that, how to help yourselves, growing from that, the awareness, learning about anxiety, learning how it manifests, and how we can use different language and new techniques and tools to help ourselves through the lens of adhd.

Every single week, I'm going to bring to you a selection of what I believe is the best content that I have.

And I'm going to be constantly updating this so there's going to be access to previous workshops, things that you've looked at and thought, you know what, I can't afford it right now, or it's not something I'm able to do.

Perhaps you're waiting for access to work and you don't know when that's coming.

This is going to be at a low cost.

And you may be wondering, why am I doing this?

So I'm not stupid.

I know that I have a very active, loyal listener base.

And so I'm weighing this all up and thinking, what can I do?

That feels abundant, that feels good to me, that feels like there's a great energy exchange where I can tap into my thousands of listeners, I can offer them the resources, offer you guys exclusive content, bonus content, and it feels good to me.

It feels like I'm not exhausting myself, I'm not burning myself out because I really want to be here and I want to be showing up every single week.

And if I burn myself out constantly by launching new workshops and new series and new programs.

I'm not able to then do the job that I want to do, which is essentially bring to you the most up to date conversations I can have with the most knowledgeable people from around the world around adhd, neurodiversity in girls and women.

And we're only scratching at the surface here as a huge passion of mine is bringing in more self compassionate and awareness and education.

So we're understanding ourselves better, we're understanding our loved ones better.

We're able to offer ourselves the forgiveness, the self compassion, the understanding all the things that we may have gone for decades not having.

And then bringing this through the lens of okay, like where can we work from now?

I want to be able to offer to you the resources to help you reframe.

Reframe how you've been speaking to yourselves for years and years and start really leaning into how you want to live, how you want to feel more authentic, and how you want to start accepting the brain and the nervous system and everything that comes with adhd.

So here's what you need to do.

If you are listening right now on Apple Podcasts, you'll be able to find it on Apple Podcasts and you're then able to do a free trial, try it out, see what you think.

If you're really enjoying the content and you're happy to pay this low cost alternative, I promise you I will keep offering you all these resources, all these workshops and all these resources that are really difficult to find.

And I get testimonials and emails and messages pretty much every day telling me that if it wasn't for these resources, one of their children may not have been diagnosed, or a student may have gone missed or for themselves, or they weren't able to advocate for themselves at work or to the doctor, or they weren't able to understand the connections between hormones, women's health issues, autoimmune issues, chronic fatigue, all these different things, gut issues.

As you know, I cover all of these in the podcast, but I go much deeper in a lot of my online resources.

So I want to bring this to the masses.

That is my goal, my purpose, my passion.

I want to help you get access to this groundbreaking information and really be able to educate yourself so the ripple effects can start occurring that the next generation is able to have this awareness and have this knowledge and not feel like where has it been all my life.

So head to Apple Podcasts, you'll see this subscription offer.

Give it a try.

Try the free trial and see what you think.

And I'm open to lots of ideas, but I really want to ensure that whatever I have offered originally behind quite a high cost paywall eventually is going to be coming through the subscriptions.

So I really want to maybe show you how this is impacted people.

I'm going to read out a testimonial here and I hope this helps you and makes you make that decision that it is worth it, you are worth investing in, you are worth and you're worthy and you are deserving of the help and support that can often feel really tricky to find.

So this is one of the testimonials Kate has accompanied me through my ADHD journey.

Her podcasts have been invaluable, steering me through diagnosis to the complex questions that come up when you dig deeper.

I had some one to one sessions which were incredibly powerful and professional and valuable, providing the confidence I needed to change things.

Kate's course helped me rediscover my authentic self with weekly check ins, strong supportive content and video calls every few months.

Kate really values her clients and puts in so much effort to support ADHD women with her content.

She's a guiding light I couldn't be without.

I mean that really makes me feel quite emotional reading that.

Because this is what I needed.

This is why I started the podcast, is why I started with all the resources, because I needed it.

So I've been doing all the digging, getting curious, asking the questions, bringing in all these guest experts and learning and teaching myself all of this, going through the courses so I can then kind of break it all down, make it as simple as possible so all of you guys can understand yourselves better.

And I wanted to be able to share maybe one more.

Here's one.

I'm feeling a lot lighter and after our session, my struggles were so clear and I could articulate exactly why I needed the help and was able to see the things with my eyes.

It was great.

If the conversation would have happened before our session, I would have felt like a fraud.

So I'm breaking all down, I'm opening it up.

I'm allowing you to really delve into the resources and see what works for you.

So I really hope this new alternative, this new version of the podcast will help you.

So I'm going to give it to you, give it a try.

And I hope to God that, I really hope to God that this does help.

Because as you can see and hear, my energy is all there, my passion is just as strong and I am here on a mission to empower as many neurodivergent women to accept, understand and love themselves even more now that they have all this new awareness.

So now you've just heard me talking about the toolkit and everything that we're going to be bringing.

So I wanted to share with you an exclusive sneak peek into Sunday's episode.

It's going to be the first episode, and I want to share this with you because I need you to understand how powerful I think these conversations are going to be.

Now, you may have heard a little while ago, I launched the ADHD hormone series.

And this is something that I'm incredibly proud of.

I was having groundbreaking conversations on the hormone series, connecting the dots between ADHD and hormones a lot, lot, I would say quite a lot before many other experts were, because I was noticing for myself and also noticing with a lot of my clients and my community, how profound the impact of hormones were on the ADHD traits and symptoms, and how many women were coming and getting diagnosed or assessed for ADHD while they were going through perimenopause or at the beginning stages of perimenopause.

And what we do know now is that neurodivergent women tend to go through perimenopause earlier.

We also know that neurodivergent women are more likely to suffer with PMDD and postnatal depression.

Now, I know this can sound difficult to hear and maybe very validating also of your experience and sort of looking past at your own hormonal journey.

And this is why the ADHD hormone series was so powerful for so many people and so many women.

And I'm a huge advocate for women understanding their own cycles, understanding their own hormones, so they can help themselves, empower themselves, but also discuss it with family members and partners and work colleagues and however it can manifest, make life feel easier and more effortless.

Because I think I can speak for many of us that life has probably felt like we've been swimming upstream, that we've been carrying bags of rocks on our back and not quite understanding why we found life so difficult.

So I'm going to have a little snippet of our conversation from the first episode of the Toolkit, and it's with Lizzie Swan, Elizabeth Swan, and we talk quite a lot about pmdd, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is a condition that occurs before our periods and affects mood and physical health.

And we know that women, especially girls and women, can really suffer of having a higher risk of having PMDD alongside probably undiagnosed neurodivergence.

So we discuss this a lot and I wanted to share this clip with you so you understand the value of what I'm going to be bringing to the toolkit.

So here is today's short clip with Lizzie Swan, and you're going to get the full clip on Sunday's episode.

I've been really fortunate to have two incredible gps.

One who saved my life should always book me a double appointment.

And I think this is a top tip, is you can request a double appointment for mental health and you should always make space for me because it takes me, you know, I'll say in 500 words what most people can say in 10, because I talk a lot, but she'd always make time.

And time with GPS is something, you know, those two words don't usually come together positively at the moment, but I have that time and that space to explore.

And then I moved house and I almost didn't want to move house because I'd lose my gp.

But, you know, we'd got on this pathway to really positive treatment.

And then I met another gp.

I was really fortunate.

And I have to say, in order to get that gp, I had to see six others in the same practice first.

And so if you hear no, or you have treatment that doesn't work for you from one gp, try another, go back and see another.

You know, as people with ADHD and women with adhd, we are determined.

Most of us have been through incredible adversity to get to this place.

Don't take no for an answer, go back in and, like I say, ask for that double appointment.

But it gave me the opportunity to try different things.

I mean, if I could tell you all the different medications I've been offered and tried, it would go on for a while.

I mean, just some ones that your listeners will have heard of, probably.

Citalopram, Sertraline, venlafaxine, pregabalin.

These are.

These are medications that I have tried and just weren't successful for me because I knew that the sense of.

I call it, I'm vibrating at higher frequency, but at all times I had the difficulty with the mood swings that were really severe and those periods, not so much of depression, but of almost flatline.

And I now know that that's the period when I need to rest, but also that sense of fizzing and not quite having enough ability to focus.

And it just got harder with age, particularly when I went on to have children, because I wasn't just responsible for caring for myself, I had to be responsible for others.

And that Additional demand on my executive functioning broke me, I'll be honest, just broke me.

But going on to the medication, what I've been able to do with my current GP is go to her, with recommendations from Attitude magazine, from Chad, from people like yourself online, and be able to say, I know this isn't the silver bullet, but can we try?

And I've been able to try these medications and find one that works for me.

Similarly with the ADHD team who.

That's how they're supported the nhs.

We have an ADHD team.

And that was one of the challenges with my diagnostic pathway, is that in my county, you can only be assessed for ADHD and then you start a new referral process for autism and you can't just go in for one holistic assessment of need, which I find very, very challenging because.

Yeah, but that's where we are at the moment and I'm hoping that will change.

But in terms of treatment, the first medication I was prescribed was a stimulant medication called Concerta.

And it's a wonder drug for lots and lots of people.

And it's really important that everyone knows that what works for one person may not work for another.

And likewise.

But what happened with the concert when I took it, particularly when you titrate, which means you get your medication levels right, I actually was flung straight back into feelings of absolute panic all of the time and it heightened my feelings of anxiety to an almost unmanageable level.

And I did some research and it seems that concert, there are links to exacerbating pre existing conditions of anxiety and I was able, I did have to chase quite a bit.

It wasn't easy, it wasn't a matter of me just phoning up.

I had to chase over a few weeks to sort of come off the concert and to find another way.

And I was terrified at that point because I thought, first of all, I thought, okay, maybe I've not got ADHD and I've imagined everything because if I had ADHD and I took medication, then the medication would stop my ADHD symptoms and I'd feel better.

But now I've taken it, I don't feel better, I feel worse.

So maybe I'm.

Maybe I've just been making all of this up and it's all in my head.

And then I had to manually override that and I was able to try another stimulant.

I'm really open about it.

I take lvance.

And actually the ADHD team said to me, some people find this a smoother ride than Concerta.

And for me, it works, but alongside that, I have other things going on, like lots of people.

And I was able to work with my GP to manage those symptoms and address what was happening there.

It's been trial and error, but it also means you have to stick with it.

And, you know, it is exhausting.

And you're going through a process where you have this sense of bereavement for yourself and those years that this young person that you look back on didn't get that support and you're.

You're sort of managing all of those emotions, trying to understand yourself better and then you're going on this crazy ride of meds.

But I do want to say also what's been revolutionary for me is I take hrt and, you know, one of the things that I would love GPs and healthcare professionals to understand is that having that understanding of supporting estrogen levels for women with ADHD alongside other elements of treatment really needs to be part of a cohesive plan.

And simply going from two pumps.

I'm doing this because I have gel.

Going from two pumps to three pumps of estradiol gel made a phenomenal difference.

And I have the flexibility to increase my pumps in that week leading up to where my site, where my period is.

And I do wonder to myself, because I share, I try to share freely, as much information as I can, but I.

That's years of research that got me to that place of what to request and it's.

I don't feel it should have been my responsibility as the patient to come up with those suggestions and some of those ideas.

So it's a real constant conflict of emotion.

But trial and error and not expecting anything to be the silver bullet.

Maybe we can talk a little bit about postnatal depression.

I don't know if that was something that you experienced, if that was.

Maybe your mood was exacerbated post birth and how.

Maybe.

How did you find being pregnant with adhd?

I have a couple of areas that I'm really deeply passionate about and I'm doing lots of research and at the moment to try and raise understanding.

One is around girls and they're going through puberty and how they can have that empowerment and support within the school environment because of my background in education, but also perinatal and postnatal depression and the association with adhd, because the research has found, and there was a great research article that came out in 2023, so this year they have actually associated and found evidence that women with ADHD do experience more severe perinatal and postnatal depression and anxiety.

And first thing for us to be really clear about is that in that immediate postpartum period, just after that baby is born, your estrogen levels will drop, absolute steep decline and, you know, by 100 to 1,000 fold.

And hormonal fluctuations are likely the same for women with ADHD without.

But, you know, we have to come from the place that ADHD is a neurological condition and estrogen impacts on the brain and we just have to think about how those things correlate.

But the research has shown that particularly around that period of perinatal and postnatal, there can be additional complexities for women with adhd.

For myself, my children are the be all and end all of my existence.

And I love them to that goes without saying, but I feel like we have to qualify this here.

But I did not enjoy being pregnant.

And when I say I didn't enjoy being pregnant, that was for me probably the tipping point in terms of what I now look back and recognize as quite severe anxiety and extreme low mood.

So many, as, you know, I can look back and identify now, the mood swings for me intensify during pregnancy.

A loss of control over what was happening to my body and almost like a sense of being taken over.

There were so many elements to being pregnant I struggled with, not to mention the uncertainty of what was going to happen when that baby was born.

And the research, the recent research suggests that there are many reasons why perinatal depression is more likely in women with adhd.

And one of as well as the oestrogen fluctuations, our social anxiety is a major risk factor for women who, particularly in the third trimester and immediately after the baby is born.

Because what can happen as a consequence of that social anxiety is that we, this is a huge generalization, but we may be more unlikely to have those social structures in place to provide that support.

And looking back on my own experience, I did not want to ask for help.

I wanted to be capable.

You know, I've come from a really successful career.

There wasn't.

I hadn't really failed.

I was doing great.

And then all of a sudden I was in a situation where things were out of my control.

And I, you know, I make myself feel safe by trying to get control of everything.

But if there's one thing that's going to make you feel out of control, it's having children, whether that's biologically or that's through the adoptive process or fostering.

But research from 2009, there's a really interesting article which suggests that women with ADHD have fewer positive expectations around their self efficacy and their future maternal role, which affects the level or the likelihood of anxiety and depression.

And having read that research, I look back and I think I constantly thought that I was failing.